Welcome to Hell, Elon • Hacker News Board

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#161

Post by joshstrange » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:44 PM UTC

Schroedingersat wrote: post #127

joshstrange wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It wasn't until I moderated a community myself that it finally clicked. The key is that each community needs to moderate itself. The second you give one entity centralised or external control over moderation it can be used for terrible things. I can't think of any solution for the toxic communities other than to cut themoff and let them fester. The youtube/facebook/etc strategy of 'all engagement is good, show them…

> The key is that each community needs to moderate itself. The second you give one entity centralised or external control over moderation it can be used for terrible things.

Do you have any examples of this in practice? I'm not saying I for "1 person has all the power" but I'm not aware of any community that doesn't require 1+ moderators who have the power to hide/remove/block/etc, even HN has that.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#162

Post by Bubble_Pop_22 » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:46 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #152

uni_rule wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> WeChat is essentially what Elon wanted x.com to become

Yeah that doesn't count. Stuff you don't do doesn't count.

Similarly with Tesla, legacy automakers will electrify the world. Being a cheerleader on the side doesn't count.

CEOs are people who sign off quality of life for the people who buy the products/services that the company they lead is selling. And that is all there is to it. There is nothing tough or poetic about it. Sane people are scratching their heads at how some people are falling for the cult of the founder which started with Jobs.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#163

Post by noxer » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:46 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #34

Can't wait to see that hot takes from the free speech absolutists who have never experienced that first-hand on a platform they frequent regularly. We already know what that looks like, it's 4chan/8kun/etc and surprise, it's absolute shit.

>it's absolute shit.

So is twitter. At least in the last years it turned to absolute s*it. In mid 2021 I resurrected my old long not used account. I made maybe 20 comments in 3 month before I got "banned". I'm probably not really banned I would just have to remove my last comment but I cant do that because I can not login anymore (which may or may not be related to the "banning").

The post in question was an obvious sarcastic wordplay/pun that even if interpreted literally would have meant something along the lines of "dead people wont complain" which is not only factually true its also rather soft dark humor. As expected they lump everything together in their ToS so they can give you a paragraph of things as a reason and you dont know which rule you actually broke.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#164

Post by labrador » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #93

augusto-moura wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open AI?

Interesting. https://openai.com/blog/new-and-improved-content-moderation-...

Yes, I was thinking of something like this when I heard he bought Twitter. He's not stupid obviously. Turning over content moderation to an AI that is open source might shut a lot of people up. Have a complaint? Go look at the source code to see how you are getting filtered.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#165

Post by jongjong » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

uni_rule wrote: post #111

jongjong wrote: post #83

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…

If that initial statement about not caring about the ad's context were true the advertising companies wouldn't have torched Youtube's as revenue 5 years ago because explicitly their ads were played on unsavory content. It turns out they do care, probably not for moral reasons but presumably because some bean counter actively calculated that they'd lose more than they gained from such perception of being associated wi…

The problem seems to be that large companies don't want to be associated with certain 'deplorable' content but at the same time, they don't want to vacate those spaces and thereby allow other companies (I.e. competitors) to target and acquire those 'deplorable' customers... They'd prefer it if those 'deplorable' spaces simply did not exist on these platforms.

If this is the case, it is anti-competitive. Companies should not prevent new markets from forming around growing new ideologies and communities (regardless of how deplorable they find them). Companies have to choose; stay true to their current ideology and miss out on new market opportunities or embrace changing ideologies and risk losing some of their existing user base.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#166

Post by BossHogg » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

wooque wrote: post #150

joshstrange wrote: post #34

Can't wait to see that hot takes from the free speech absolutists who have never experienced that first-hand on a platform they frequent regularly. We already know what that looks like, it's 4chan/8kun/etc and surprise, it's absolute shit.

>4chan/8kun/etc and surprise, it's absolute shit ...for you, 4chan is one of the last places on the internet that feel like the old internet, organic, unfiltered, raw. If you can't handle it, there is Facebook for you.

As someone on the internet in the early 90s, that is absolutely not the case.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#167

Post by lastofthemojito » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

throwaway71271 wrote: post #84

half the article is about moderation because of advertisement, but he could just not do advertisement.

Then how does Twitter make money?

According to their latest quarterly report they had $1.18B in revenue, $1.08B from advertising. Is there really enough potential in "premium users" or something else to forgo that billion dollars per quarter?

https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/2022/q2...

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#168

Post by rospaya » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

muaytimbo wrote: post #134

rospaya wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love to see somebody use the word cancelled, because it means absolutely nothing. Louie CK jerked off in front of women, got cancelled and got a Grammy last year. He's still wealthy and does shows. So is Kanye. Cancelling doesn't mean shit.

Ye got his deals with Adidas (and others) cancelled and Louie CK got a Netflix show and comedy tour cancelled. In both of your own examples "shit" happened.

Both still have profitable businesses and communication channels. Both are celebrities that still have large fanbases. If and when they end up poor and forgotten, then they'll be canceled, now they just lost the privilege of being promoted via some media channels.

I'm having a hard time defending wealth people who lost a Twitter account because they acted like dicks. Some of them literally.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#169

Post by memish » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

_hypx wrote: post #154

memish wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

He's the chief engineer of the leading space company and successfully manages thousands of employees across several companies. That's not vague.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#170

Post by joshstrange » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

Dracophoenix wrote: post #160

joshstrange wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With the government? Yes. Within a community? It's more complicated than that. Is someone coming into a community posting the n-word or just being incredibly abrasive/offensive "pushing the line" or just being a troll? Online communities get to set their own rules and if you want to buck that trend then try to get support to change those rules or create your own community where you can make the rules.