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Welcome to Hell, Elon

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Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#151

This article makes no sense; it sounds like leftist propaganda. Advertisers only care about 'brand safety' to the extent that it impacts their ability to sell stuff. So long as users keep using the platform, advertisers will keep coming back - They're not going to vacate the platform and let their competitors get all the eyeballs... If they did, those competitors would gain market share and make incumbents irrelevant…

It does sound a bit like someone panicking that the Twitter might stop censoring stuff they don't agree with.

And the whole "content moderation" argument is really weak, sites worked entirey fine without the heavy content moderation (including Youtube, porn and copyright violation was removed but for good part of site's existence pretty much anything went). It only got more heavy because Google wanted to appease the ad market

Sure you can argue you have to take account laws and such and that will take effort but social sites don't exactly stop there.

> Having front-row access to users, Twitter is actually in a position to dictate the rules; it should not be taking orders from politicians and corporate executives when those orders are harmful to its users.

It's a corporation so priority will always be money one way or another. Now putting themselves as "open" might work, but so might doing what Twitter (and google, and facebook, and pretty much any big tech with social media) does and nudge the visibility of content to stuff they want to happen. "Censorship" isn't even needed, it isn't removed, it just won't show up in search results or recommendations. Pretend people don't click it and of course nobody can verify that and you're all good.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#152

Never bet against Elon. Starlink alone will make more money than twitter ever could. If you don’t see the potential for Twitter. That’s fine. But don’t write an article about how it’s “hell” if you don’t have the vision for how to improve it. That’s like someone who has no idea how to cook leaving a bad review for food they could never hope to improve on. If Elon listened to Haters/Doubters like this Verge journo, th…

I doubt it because it's a braindead decision. It's also totally out of his wheelhouse. Twitter is not a commercial product, nor is it an engineering project. It's a forum. A really volatile forum. Elon has no experience moderating forums, he's not a site administrator. If he's the one actually calling the shots he's gonna run it into the ground because it simply isn't his field. This is the acquisition the least simi…

Remember that Elon co-founded x.com, which merged with confinity to form PayPal. WeChat is essentially what Elon wanted x.com to become, so it's not totally out of his wheelhouse.

Turning Twitter into WeChat is probably a bigger challenge than sending a rocket to Mars, but...

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#153
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it would help a lot if either side actually articulated any arguments

Quoted post unavailable.

this is the problem. the arguments are the point. they aren't just weapons one picks up to defend ones beliefs

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#154
post #142
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk failed at countless things. It's pure delusion to think that he has "repeated success in different domains."

Engineering. Finance. Management. Electric cars. Charging stations. Satellites. Reusable rockets.

Are you seriously listing things as vague as "engineering" and "management?"

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#155
post #46

I'm betting that something like the Google Circles gets implemented but at a higher level. In order to engage with certain people you have to be a member of certain groups/circles or not a member of certain circles/groups. These groups would be moderated by the people that run them. So instead of having Twitter pick and choose who is allowed on the platform, you crowdsource it to the people who want to moderate their…

> or not a member of certain circles/groups.

Don't think that works when you can just make another account if you do not want to be associated with something on your main one.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#156
post #3

My first thought when Musk bought Twitter was "His engineering has team figured out content moderation" but I've seen no evidence or talk of that. So I think it's true that he impulsively bought himself his worst nightmare.

Perhaps Elon has heard of K-Means Clustering, and you haven't... "Solving" content moderation is a losing battle -- there is no way to humanly moderate anything at the rate it can be produced, and Elon knows this. It's insane, so he probably won't do it. But, allowing content to be produced, but making sure no real person ever sees it, until the content producer earns their way into "your" group -- now that can be au…

Oh sure, we can talk about Voronoi cells all day, but the Weber problem indicates an increasing number of k-medians and and a decreasing number of k-medoids. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with the Rocchio algorithm knows that.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#157

The key quote which other comments are overlooking: > Here are some examples: you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals p…

Elon has also talked about open sourcing "the algorithm" or letting people customize the algorithm that suggests content for them, etc. I suspect that plays in here - by default, Twitter users (and unauthenticated browsers) will probably continue to see Twitter the same way as today, with relatively safe, moderated content. Logged-in folks will also have the option to go into unmoderated mode, which will drop you int…

Well, giving users of social media tools to filter stuff they want to see themselves rather than making site's moderators be moral guardians of the site (lmao) is certainly a better approach.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#158
post #46

I'm betting that something like the Google Circles gets implemented but at a higher level. In order to engage with certain people you have to be a member of certain groups/circles or not a member of certain circles/groups. These groups would be moderated by the people that run them. So instead of having Twitter pick and choose who is allowed on the platform, you crowdsource it to the people who want to moderate their…

Isn't that... reddit?

I don’t think so. Reddit is about topical groups.

Circles are more like trusted connections between people. Like how society works.

I should be able to see the content “everyone” makes or be able to limit myself to exclude certain groups or only include certain groups of people.

This way if there is content that you consider harmful to yourself or you are unable to live with it, you can still participate on the platform. It’s an individuals choice, not a corporations.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#160
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you want a more direct analogue if you assume that the problem with 4chan is the culture and not the moderation that the absolute worst most vile Mastadon servers are no moderation to the point where major servers had to just completely blacklist them. If you want to lose all faith in humanity peruse the Gab database dump. No moderation is a loosing game because any platform that offers better moderation will…

Yep, I used to be a free speech absolutist when I was younger, back when I thought the world was black and white and that simple ideas could "solve everything". Then I participated in forums/groups that had zero moderation and it was hell. Even then I didn't recognize the issues fully. It wasn't until I moderated a community myself that it finally clicked. I tried to be unbiased as possible but that lead to me silenc…

The point of free speech is to push the line. Imagine if people stuck with the speech standards of the 1950s. There would be plenty of people here who would be disenfranchised.
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