Live data from Hacker News

Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election

blog.twitter.com

21–30 of 371 posts

Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election

#21

Free speech has taken quite a beating in recent days. It's weird watching many of my friends and people I respect cheering while it happens. I honestly don't know what we do to fix our current situation where lies so easily go viral, but making Twitter arbiters of truth doesn't seem like the best solution.

I'm not sure you understand what "free speech" is, because it doesn't apply to Twitter, at all, in any way.

Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election

#22

Free speech has taken quite a beating in recent days. It's weird watching many of my friends and people I respect cheering while it happens. I honestly don't know what we do to fix our current situation where lies so easily go viral, but making Twitter arbiters of truth doesn't seem like the best solution.

I think the only way out is for governments to prohibited targeted ads as a business model. It’s deeply subversive to the informed populace when everyone lives in completely different realities based on their advertising profiles.

Making a business model like that illegal would force these services to go the paid route, or have less a subversive, and alas, less effective, advertising.

Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election

#23
post #19

Wow, some of these measures like removing out of network "liked by" and comment-retweeting by default are actually worse for Twitter's business. Looks like they are really trying to do the right thing even if it hurts them.

(For four weeks).

I mean, it's definitely better than nothing, but it's not a "we're fixing our business model" moment.

Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election

#26

Free speech has taken quite a beating in recent days. It's weird watching many of my friends and people I respect cheering while it happens. I honestly don't know what we do to fix our current situation where lies so easily go viral, but making Twitter arbiters of truth doesn't seem like the best solution.

bullshit. this measure is twitter deferring the arbitration of truth to actual authoritative sources:

"People on Twitter, including candidates for office, may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called"

Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election

#27

Free speech has taken quite a beating in recent days. It's weird watching many of my friends and people I respect cheering while it happens. I honestly don't know what we do to fix our current situation where lies so easily go viral, but making Twitter arbiters of truth doesn't seem like the best solution.

[deleted]

Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election

#28
post #5

How long before the "misleading" label is used on anything that doesn't match their own political views?

https://reason.com/2020/10/07/phony-fact-checking-on-forest-... (Facebook, not Twitter)

Reason is not a reputable source on anything.

Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election

#29

Free speech has taken quite a beating in recent days. It's weird watching many of my friends and people I respect cheering while it happens. I honestly don't know what we do to fix our current situation where lies so easily go viral, but making Twitter arbiters of truth doesn't seem like the best solution.

Twitter is a community and all communities require some level of moderation. There's never a situation where you let people say whatever they want, whenever they want without any moderation at all and everything goes well. You have to set some of sort of standard. We already do this as a society, so why shouldn't that extend to Twitter?

> Twitter is a community

Twitter has 330 million monthly active users and 145 million daily active users. Is that a community? It seems more like an unruly mob. :-)

I agree with the point that all online forums should have moderation, but for me the question is, should something like Twitter even exist? A centralized world discussion forum is not necessarily a good and healthy thing. Can humanity handle having Twitter?

Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election

#30

Free speech has taken quite a beating in recent days. It's weird watching many of my friends and people I respect cheering while it happens. I honestly don't know what we do to fix our current situation where lies so easily go viral, but making Twitter arbiters of truth doesn't seem like the best solution.

Twitter is a community and all communities require some level of moderation. There's never a situation where you let people say whatever they want, whenever they want without any moderation at all and everything goes well. You have to set some of sort of standard. We already do this as a society, so why shouldn't that extend to Twitter?

How do you do that effectively on a platform with hundreds of millions of people with wildly differing world views?
Post reply on HN