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Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

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Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#751

Post by jackcosgrove »

ufo wrote: post #586

In the US, where Twitter & Facebook are dominant, the current consensus in the public mind is that political polarization and radicalization are driven by the social media algorithms. However, I have always felt that this explanation was lacking. Here in Brazil we have many of the same problems but the dominant social media are Whatsapp group chats, which have no algorithms whatsoever (other than invisible spam filte…

The problem is not the algorithms. It is the internet itself.

The internet enables multicast communication, whereas before we could only afford broadcast communication. Broadcast requires the same message to be sent to all, so it forces that message to be moderate and non-polarizing.

We always harbored the ability to be polarized according to our beliefs, but the technology didn't yet exist to allow that.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#752

Post by previnder »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #671

The solution is simple - only show users tweets from people they follow. People may say twitter can't make money this way, but with this model you don't need much money. You don't need moderation, or AI, or a massive infrastructure, or tracking, etc. You don't need managers or KPIs or HR, or anything beyond an engineer or two and a server or two. Musk could pay for this forever and it would never be more than a round…

Something like this, where the feed is ordered by time, has the added advantage of having a clear cue for when to stop scrolling. When you reach a post from yesterday, you know it's time to stop.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#753

Post by Gigachad »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #671

The solution is simple - only show users tweets from people they follow. People may say twitter can't make money this way, but with this model you don't need much money. You don't need moderation, or AI, or a massive infrastructure, or tracking, etc. You don't need managers or KPIs or HR, or anything beyond an engineer or two and a server or two. Musk could pay for this forever and it would never be more than a round…

This won’t work because it’s not good enough to just not see something you don’t like. You have to ensure that no one else can see the thing you don’t like as well. It should be deplatformed at the IP level.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#754

Post by AnimalMuppet »

didericis wrote: post #668
ufo wrote: post #586

In the US, where Twitter & Facebook are dominant, the current consensus in the public mind is that political polarization and radicalization are driven by the social media algorithms. However, I have always felt that this explanation was lacking. Here in Brazil we have many of the same problems but the dominant social media are Whatsapp group chats, which have no algorithms whatsoever (other than invisible spam filte…

Everything in that thread seems correct, but it doesn't address why its so bad on social media sufficiently, as those philosophical language and principal problems apply to all forms of written communication that have managed to avoid the problems of social media, including wide open written communication (remember actual bulletin boards instead of virtual bulletin boards? Wide open text forums are not a new thing) I…

All of our brains have limited bandwidth. I can engage with someone very different from me, but not many of them at the same time, and not many who are different along different axes. So if I want to talk - genuinely talk - to someone who's politically, religiously, or philosophically very different from me, one at a time works best.

So, I agree. The enormous size of the room is a problem. If you're X, you can't have a one-on-one conversation with someone who's Y without having a bunch of other Ys jump in, and then a bunch of Xs in response. And then you get a bunch of Zs piling on, and the whole thing becomes a shouting match, not a calm, reasonable conversation.

I echo what others have said. That article sounds important, and useful. Please write it.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#755

Post by previnder »

jxi wrote: post #675
jacobsenscott wrote: post #671

The solution is simple - only show users tweets from people they follow. People may say twitter can't make money this way, but with this model you don't need much money. You don't need moderation, or AI, or a massive infrastructure, or tracking, etc. You don't need managers or KPIs or HR, or anything beyond an engineer or two and a server or two. Musk could pay for this forever and it would never be more than a round…

I do want discovery though.

Youtube does this reasonably well; subscription page for channels you follow, and the home page for content discovery.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#757

Post by pstuart »

leereeves wrote: post #743
pstuart wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hunter Biden's "laptop" is a misdirection campaign. The contents appear to be from Biden but whether or not it was actually sourced as claimed will likely never be verified (the recipient is conveniently effectively blind). But those that care about this story only seem to care about the story about the story, i.e., that there was effort to prevent propagating it. I find it fascinating that every person who is hung u…

It wasn't my intention to litigate this story here. I was simply citing it as an example of the difficulty of identifying misinformation. Also, I think a fair discussion of Twitter moderation should include a post-mortem of one of their most famous mistakes, discussing what Twitter did and what should they have done differently, and not so much the story itself. (Of course, the substance is also important, but this i…

That's just it: I don't think it was a mistake (if we're talking "censorship" about the laptop story).

The story is radioactive. The veracity of it means nothing -- just the phrase is now a talking point, a campaign slogan.

If my points are correct per the prior comment, what good does it serve the people to be amplified in a short attention span economy? Why shine light on dialog that sucks oxygen out of the room?

HN is not the place to come to blows over tribal politics, but I think that discussing policies, strategies, and other political hacking is worthy of being explored if there's willingness to examine the impacts that these actions have.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#758

Post by piskerpan »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #629
ufo wrote: post #586

In the US, where Twitter & Facebook are dominant, the current consensus in the public mind is that political polarization and radicalization are driven by the social media algorithms. However, I have always felt that this explanation was lacking. Here in Brazil we have many of the same problems but the dominant social media are Whatsapp group chats, which have no algorithms whatsoever (other than invisible spam filte…

This to me is a vital point. One of the things rarely touched on about Twitter / FB et al are that they are transmission platforms and then a discovery / recommendation layer on top. The "algorithm" is this layer on top and it is assumed that this actively sorts people into their bubbles and people passively follow - there is much discussion about splitting the companies AT&T style to improve matters. But countries w…

> It lies in us.

As despicable as Facebook is, I wish someone there would just come out and say “have you looked at yourself in the mirror?”

It’s mindboggling to see them passively accept the questioning without mentioning that people are wolves and sheeples, and you don’t really need Facebook to join the two.

Platforms like Facebook only bring us closer but the rotten core is within us.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#759

Post by latency-guy2 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #497
ajmurmann wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Category 1 from Yishan's thread, spam, obviously isn't allowed. But also thinking about house general framework of it all coming down to signal vs noise, most "noise" gets heavily punished on here. Reddit-style jokes frequently end in the light greys or even dead. I had my account shadow-banned over a decade ago because I made a penis joke and thought people didn't get the joke.

Free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever, wherever, without any repercussions. It solely means the government can't restrict your expression. On a private platform you abide their rules.

Well, no. Free Speech is an idea, far more expansive than the law as written in the US constitution, or many other countries and their respective law of the land/documents.

Free Speech does mean what you describe it not as. But there is no legal body to punish you for violating the principle. It is similar to 'primum non nocere', translated roughly to 'do no harm', extremely common in medicine and something you may see alongside the 'Hippocratic Oath'. You can be in violation of that principle or the oath at any time, some people even get fired for violating either as a pretext to malpractice. Some even argue that it is quite impossible to abide by this principle, and yet, it is something many people take on as responsibility everyday all across the globe.

I won't argue about websites and their rules, they have their own set of principles and violate plenty of others, sometimes they even violate their own principles. But Free Speech is not just the law and interactions one may have with their government.

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