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Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

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Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#831

Post by DeathArrow »

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 algorithms are tuned to vastly extend the time users spend on a network. They are going to moderate stuff if it improves the time spent on that network.

Of course there are political reasons for which algorithms also do content filtering and censorship but the money reason trumps all: the more time you spend on a network, the more ads you see, the more time you spend on a network, the more content you produce and the more you interact with others and that produces a smell that will attract other small insects which will be served ads, will produce more content and interaction.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#832

Post by slg »

MikePlacid wrote: post #725
slg wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal user filtering can't be the only form of moderation. There is some content that I don't care if it exists as long as I don't see it. Spam is one example of this. However there is some content that its existence on the platform makes me less likely to use the platform even if I never see it. I'm sure Yishan knows this from his time at Reddit. They seem to go through a controversy about this every year or two[…

> Its mere existence made normal users less likely to use Reddit despite users needing to go out of their way to see that objectionable content. To me it’s kind of perverse logic. If a platform hosts persons that some powerful group of people want to be removed - than I can trust the platform to less likely to remove me, when and if I cross some powerful or just loud and anger people. Like: there is a lot of people i…

It’s funny you mention the 14th Amendment. It is a little over 150 years old. For the first century interracial marriage wasn't on the list of protections provided by the 14th.

When enough people consistently say you shouldn't be allowed to do something, we won't allow you to do it. When enough people say you should be allowed, you will be. Maybe that is cynical, but that is life in a democracy. Churchill was right about it being the worst form of government.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#833

Post by INTPenis »

motohagiography wrote: post #91

I've had to give this some thought for other reasons, and after a couple decades solving analogous problems to moderation in security, I agree with yishan about signal to noise over the specific content, but what I have effectively spent a career studying and detecting with data is a single factor: malice. It's something every person is capable of, and it takes a lot of exercise and practice with higher values to rea…

I don't think it's as simple as malice either because the people who get worked up about online debate often believe they are doing the right thing, they believe they are trying to save someone else from thinking the wrong thing. There's no malice there.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#834

Post by makeitdouble »

abracadaniel wrote: post #714
makeitdouble wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As any simple solution, it becomes extremely complicated as you get into the details. I follow official gov accounts notifying of policy changing, deadlines etc. - Should I see their retweets ? Yes, they retweet relevant info from other gov, accounts. - Should I see replies to these tweets ? Probably, there’s useful info coming in the comments from time to time, in particular about situations similar to mine. So as a…

This makes me wonder if part of the problem is that it’s a bit like the psychology of road rage. It isn’t so much the trigger, as it is that it happened in an perceived personal safe space. Maybe It’s not that there’s someone wrong on the internet that makes people angry, but that the comment was fed to them while they were reading things they like. Something with a blended approach that makes it clear when you’re le…

Yes, I think there's part of that. In the same direction, compartmenting to have some stuff come within the frame you expect them might help a lot.

Google's defunct social network tried to embrace that concept to a point, and facebook also has some way to create explicit bubbles, but I think your vision of visually separate modes when moving between contexts coud be the best approach.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#835

Post by taneq »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #751
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.

Multicast communication is fine. It's the humans that are the problem. :P

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#836

Post by lifeisstillgood »

avivo wrote: post #677
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this gets almost all the way there but not quite — there is one more vital point: How we act depends on our environment and incentives. It is possible to build environments and incentives that make us better versions of ourselves. Just like GPT-3, we can all be primed (and we all are primed all the time, by every system we use). The way we got from small tribes to huge civilizations is by figuring out how to…

What a great reply thank you. i agree

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#837

Post by jryhjythtr »

I think this is a limitation of faceless communication, and boils down to the respect that users of a platform have for the other users and the platform itself. Ie - there isn't enough. And that's ok, because we should spend more time talking in real life.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#838

Post by originalvichy »

leereeves wrote: post #644
originalvichy wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually went into a deep dive of any statistical efforts that showed bans on twitter based on American political leanings. Apparently in both studies I found the most statistically significant user behavior for bans was if the user had a tendency to post articles from low quality online ”news” sites. So essentially even the political controversy around moderation boils down to the fact that one side, the right, is…

The first concern is identifying "fake news". One of the biggest political news stories of 2020, Hunter Biden's laptop, was falsely declared misinformation, and the NY Post was accused of being a low quality site. Now we know it's true. On the other hand, the Steele Dossier was considered legitimate news at the time and "many of the dossier’s most explosive claims...have never materialized or have been proved false."…

This is a tangent. Twitter declared this story a story about hacked material which they treated as rule-breaking at the time. They changed their rule afterwards, but it is a legitimate rule to have.

The quality was measured by a group that was selected due to their broad range of leanings. It should be in the final paper.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#839

Post by vasvir »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #751
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.

I believe the underlying problem is the actual human programming deep in our genes. People tend to get organized in clans (i.e. football teams in Europe, political parties etc) and to host polarized opinions such as conspiracy theories that tend to question the status quo.

There are two reasons for that:

1. Psychological Reason: It is tempting for an non educated man to adopt an opinion that derides existing knowledge because these guys now feel taller and not at a disadvantage when confronted with the more elaborate and complex nature of the truth or with educated people.

2. Biological Reason: People polarize against common accepted truths (i.e. Covid) as a safety precaution measure against humanity annihilation due to Lemming behavior. So in the case the majority belief ends up in a catastrophic event the 10%, 5%, 1%, 0.001% minority will survive.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#840

Post by pyinstallwoes »

I think the most interseting thing as a result from that post is the realization that given an intelligence tasked with reducing the most harm for humanity as a whole, it will identify behaviors that lead to physical confrontation and censor/out-gas/diminish/remove interactions/prevent paths to that behavior interacting with the network for as long as it sees the predicted behaviors leading to harm.

tl;dr AI bans any content that is likely to lead to physical confrontation. It's not the content that sucks, it's that people suck. It's not that people suck, it's that people are easily influenced into a state of mind and behavior that leads to harming other humans.

The bigger questionm which is also the oldest question: is human nature so luke-warm? Can we aspire to be 'wise elders' throughout the entire species while still retaining child-like curiosity and wonder?

Funny how it circles back around.

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