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Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account

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111–120 of 351 posts

Re: Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account

#111
post #55

In general it seems like moderating platforms with millions/billions of users is a fool's errand, but is required to be attempted due to the level of centralization we've ended up with. Regardless of how much of it is automated away via blackbox ML algorithms lacking transparency or via outsourcing to cheap labor that spends their days looking at terribly offensive and shocking content, the end result is going to hav…

Killfiles worked for usenet

They really didn't. And they certainly don't work now; just look at how completely overrun with spam Usenet is these days.

Re: Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account

#112
post #34

Twitter has increasingly slid into user-hostile territory. I moderate /r/Twitter on reddit and we have a pinned thread just showing nothing but complaint after complaint, because content moderation is a failure when you attempt to scale it. We'd like to get Twitter Comms to address it at some point, but the company is opaque. It's just nuts.

Unpopular opinion: I am not sure if I come to the the same conclusion (that Twitter is user-hostile). Even if you see "complaint after complaint". It could be actually true that the complaint ratio is going down, because the # of users or engagement is actually growing. I am not saying I know the rate, but I don't think we can rule that possibility out. As a thought exercise, if you assume there is 1% chance of someo…

I come to the conclusion that Twitter is user-hostile based not on complaints but rather by details mentioned in this post (user suspensions in response to posting 'memphis' in a tweet.) It doesn't take much else to make this determination.

I will note that your thought exercise is a statment, least in part, of Masnick's Impossibility Theorem (Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible To Do Well):

- Any moderation policy will anger someone

- Content moderation is inherently subjective

- Errors at scale result in many errors over time

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191111/23032743367/masni...

Re: Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account

#113
post #29

I love the sheer number of hacker news commenters saying “Well I tried it, seems to work”. At what level do you guys go “I’m just going to assume those 10 other guys aren’t lying”

"Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."

Re: Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account

#115
post #55

In general it seems like moderating platforms with millions/billions of users is a fool's errand, but is required to be attempted due to the level of centralization we've ended up with. Regardless of how much of it is automated away via blackbox ML algorithms lacking transparency or via outsourcing to cheap labor that spends their days looking at terribly offensive and shocking content, the end result is going to hav…

The old internet with webforums for particular topics, where the moderators knew the posters, was a better model.

Re: Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account

#116

Apparently fixed, judging by going to twitter.com/explore and searching for "Memphis".

Not everyone who tweets it gets blocked. It's not clear why.

I don't have a Twitter account anymore, so I couldn't test it.

Re: Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account

#117
post #113
post #29

I love the sheer number of hacker news commenters saying “Well I tried it, seems to work”. At what level do you guys go “I’m just going to assume those 10 other guys aren’t lying”

"Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."

That's simply not true, evangelization is hard and requires connection to personal experience much more the convincing people of wet paint does, and it requires connecting it to personal experience for which people haven’t already accepted a better explanation, which is a lot harder than with “the paint is wet”. You don't just tell people “God exists” and they're like “Oh, sure, thanks.” (Well, except perhaps sarcastically.)

It’s a cute quote, but it has nothing to do with reality.

Re: Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account

#118
post #29

I love the sheer number of hacker news commenters saying “Well I tried it, seems to work”. At what level do you guys go “I’m just going to assume those 10 other guys aren’t lying”

> At what level do you guys go “I’m just going to assume those 10 other guys aren’t lying” For something easily testable? Never. Edit: Account just got locked, lol.

I think I should put up a lever that gives people an electric shock, charge admission, and set up a live stream.

I bet the lever will be popular.

Re: Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account

#119
post #77

Users: social media is too addictive. Twitter: we're testing out a new safe word feature to address that. They should keep this. Randomly pick a new word each day, anybody who says it gets locked for a day.

Eventually everyone will get locked, and Twitter will be a much better place by virtue of having no users.

It'd be interesting to see Twitter adopt the old "Robot 9000" automod rules, where every tweet would have to be unique from all previous tweets system-wide or else you get a temporary ban that exponentially grows in length after every infraction.

Re: Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account

#120

Cancel Culture 2.0: entire cities purged ;)

May be the Sodom and Gomorrah were just a similar automated system error, and the story that we know is just a spin by the heaven's PR department in the aftermath of the mistake.

Also jives nicely with another topic - automated drones - at the top of HN today. Giving that Twitter with all its money has probably an AI among the best and still makes such a gaping errors...

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