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“Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

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Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#271

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

nomel wrote: post #197
SoftTalker wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just ditch the algorithms. Go back to what twitter was in the beginning: you see the tweets of people you follow. That's it.

I don't want purely that, because I end up drowning in uninteresting tweets from everyone I follow. I want to see notable tweets, from the people I follow, because I don't care if they're eating a sandwich. I also want to see tweets I would find notable/interesting, from people I don't follow, if I knew they existed. An algorithm would help with that suggestion. What I really want is Spotify's "Discover Weekly", and…

Why not both? You have the option to see whatever tweets an algorithm decides you want, I have the option to see all the tweets from the people I'm following? In fact, I'm not even 100% sure that the 'latest tweets' / 'top tweets' setting isn't supposed to do exactly that, it's just unclear (and twitter regularly switches the setting from latest to top anyway). If I had my dream twitter, I'd go further: let me choose whether I want to see retweets, let me choose to show quote tweets, but only if the quoted tweet is from somebody I follow, etc.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#272

Post by zmmmmm »

sssilver wrote: post #260
SoftTalker wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just ditch the algorithms. Go back to what twitter was in the beginning: you see the tweets of people you follow. That's it.

Perhaps the most infuriating “feature” of all modern social media is that people I specifically follow do not manage to land their more interesting and controversial thoughts on my timeline, and vice versa. I don’t understand what the point of following someone is, if some of their content is not gonna reach me. How can I be more explicit in conveying my intent of reading those thoughts?

Seems to me that at some point in nearly every company's timelines, the customer relationship inverts and the company stops seeing their role being to service the customer and rather the customer's role being to service the company. It's a nearly inevitable aspect of success that customers come to depend on a company's product or service and at that point the power relationship inverts. If a company is any good, it achieves this, and if it's not, it probably gets replaced by a competitor who is better at it.

So in the end, you have things like this where eventually "following" is not there to help you it's there to help the social media company data mine you for signals. The contract is that you then can get indirect secondary benefit, hopefully you have a better chance of then getting the messages people are trying to send you. But the power relationship is very clear; their needs are first and yours are second.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#273

Post by saurik »

phphphphp wrote: post #142
boole1854 wrote: post #105

Many commentators seem to think this is a sudden, recent backpedaling from a previous absolutist view on free speech. However, Musk has been promoting the "freedom of speech" vs "freedom of reach" distinction for a while, at least months before his takeover, including describing how such a policy should be implemented at Twitter. Here's one example quote from June, 2022: “I think there’s this big difference between f…

That analogy doesn’t really fit with the model of Twitter. If we are using the town/time square example, what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them. A message spreads on Twitter because individuals on Twitter amplify it (with engagement, retweets etc.) which is itself a form of speech: if you say something bad, an…

> ...so they could be removed entirely and this problem would remain.

Which problem? Seriously: the only legitimate problem I know of is that Twitter gives artificial reach to things via algorithmic engagement. They literally send me push notifications for tweets their algorithm thinks is interesting.

If you retweet something some asshole says and I don't like it, I should probably just unfollow you because you could have just screenshotted the original tweet and included the image... that was you actively sending that content, and wasn't the original anymore.

(FWIW, the reason I don't trust this is because I actually further disagree with your assertion that the algorithms aren't causing reach, because Twitter no longer does linear timelines: everything you see, including from your followers, has been curated by the engagement-driving algorithm, and so if he starts down-modding stuff then it actually will work and actually will reduce reach as you will be less likely to see it even if the people you follow retweet it.)

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#275

Post by anhncommenter25 »

Sounds like a complicated moderation position to take. "Negative" and "hate" are a matter of perspective and Twitter is a global product. What meets a legal definition of "hate" in one nation is state-sponsored "religious belief" in another. Do you weigh the tweets differently based on who's looking at it?

I'm by no means a proponent of the fediverse but this is one arena it has a leg up in. Federators are free to draw their own cultural borders online rather than relying on a centralized for-profit company to draw them. (Or leave them undrawn, which has been Twitter's stance so far.)

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#276

Post by idlewords »

sssilver wrote: post #260
SoftTalker wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just ditch the algorithms. Go back to what twitter was in the beginning: you see the tweets of people you follow. That's it.

Perhaps the most infuriating “feature” of all modern social media is that people I specifically follow do not manage to land their more interesting and controversial thoughts on my timeline, and vice versa. I don’t understand what the point of following someone is, if some of their content is not gonna reach me. How can I be more explicit in conveying my intent of reading those thoughts?

Have you made sure to turn on the option for viewing them in strict time order? It gets mysteriously reset sometimes, particularly when using the phone.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#277

Post by seti0Cha »

paxys wrote: post #36
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #22

I'm certainly not a fan of how Musk has handled the Twitter takeover, but this sentiment, "New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach", seems highly reasonable to me, no? That is, what I find so awful about most social media (and places like YouTube) is how they focus on some of the most anger-inducing content for "engagement". That is, I think the problem is much more their algorithms than wha…

People’s problem with Twitter was always that they would arbitrarily decide what is or isn’t acceptable speech, and Elon’s new solution does…exactly the same thing. The only thing that will change now is that liberal politicians and views will start being targeted rather than conservative/alt-right ones. Is anyone here really naïve enough to believe that this whole saga has been about “free speech”? It is simply a sh…

> Is anyone here really naïve enough to believe that this whole saga has been about “free speech”?

I am, although I disagree with the characterization "naive". Twenty years ago Musk's attitude was widely held, particularly in the tech industry. I see nothing incredible about the proposition that Musk believes this still. Also, the whole "if you have any point of agreement with people on the right, you are alt-right" thing seems silly to me. There are other positions between team red and team blue.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#278

Post by hypothesis »

tootie wrote: post #221
phphphphp wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That analogy doesn’t really fit with the model of Twitter. If we are using the town/time square example, what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them. A message spreads on Twitter because individuals on Twitter amplify it (with engagement, retweets etc.) which is itself a form of speech: if you say something bad, an…

The biggest thing he can actually do is taking the company private. Until then it's just an ad platform with a goal of delivering shareholder value. Any users that decrease the value of the platform get silenced because they cost money. Yishan Wong made the excellent point that spam is free speech and is rarely hate speech or threats, it's just really annoying. And nobody bats an eye at banning spam.

I was under impression that he did take it private and it is no longer publicly traded.

Also, how does this change “users cost money” issue? Does not private company need to pay bills? Unless you mean that he’s now free to bail company out using his income from elsewhere…

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#279

Post by m-p-3 »

phphphphp wrote: post #142
boole1854 wrote: post #105

Many commentators seem to think this is a sudden, recent backpedaling from a previous absolutist view on free speech. However, Musk has been promoting the "freedom of speech" vs "freedom of reach" distinction for a while, at least months before his takeover, including describing how such a policy should be implemented at Twitter. Here's one example quote from June, 2022: “I think there’s this big difference between f…

That analogy doesn’t really fit with the model of Twitter. If we are using the town/time square example, what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them. A message spreads on Twitter because individuals on Twitter amplify it (with engagement, retweets etc.) which is itself a form of speech: if you say something bad, an…

> what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them.

So an even more insidious and targetted form of shadow ban.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#280

Post by 998244353 »

35amxn35 wrote: post #193
phailhaus wrote: post #40

Oh great, more unaccountable black-box "algorithms" that invisibly classify your tweets. Machines can't detect satire, they don't understand nuance or context, they don't understand tone. This will affect platform speech in strange ways as people naturally attempt to evade the algorithm. Twitter needs a dislike button. Every social media platform needs a mechanism for explicit negative feedback. Yes, people will use…

No, there should be no like nor dislike button. Just number of replies. 4chan does this and it works surprisingly well.

I heavily suspect that "number of replies" is exactly the type of thing that creates an unpleasant atmosphere, unnecessary conflict and promotes ridiculously radical views and hot takes to the top. People like to argue, and the more objectionable a tweet is, the more they will argue.

Of course, this is great for user engagement, but it will also make the actual user experience pretty horrible.

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