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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”

#281

Post by not2b »

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…

This might be what Elon is thinking, but some of his fans will be bitterly disappointed if he executes on it and no one sees their tweets any more because they are hateful. How can they own the libs if the libs don't see their attacks (likewise for the reverse direction)?

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

#282

Post by pelorat »

ProAm wrote: post #162

What is not discussed is who decides what is negative and what is hate? (or what is parody). No one is going to disagree that hate speech has no place, but who is the watcher and who is the decider? Probably a bot.

Non-US governments? 80% of Twitter is international users.

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

#283

Post by sidibe »

seti0Cha wrote: post #263
camdat wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He is good at making engineers a "high status class" From what I've seen, Elon's companies pay below-market for most roles. Levels.fyi indicates that, on average, engs take a 10-15% pay cut by deciding to work for Tesla. I'm sure there are a handful of engineers that exist that could save Twitter single-handedly, but none that would do it for the pay he's offering.

He can get away with paying below market rates to Tesla engineers for the same reason video game companies can do it: people think it would be cool to work there. It doesn't seem plausible to me that if Musk can't get people to work at Twitter for cheap he wouldn't just offer more rather than let it die.

Waymo is working in the same "cool" field as many of the Tesla SWEs and pays much better than equivalent positions at Tesla, with less stress from impossible constraints and deadlines. He can get away with it because either he doesn't think he needs the top talent or some engineers are willing to make sacrifices to work for their idol

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

#284

Post by phphphphp »

saurik wrote: post #273
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…

> ...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…

My point is that the algorithms used by Twitter did not create the problem of bad tweets having reach. Elon could turn off every piece of engagement-hacking functionality within the Twitter system and it would not solve the problem. The algorithms just exist to eek out better engagement numbers.

Twitter provides reach to speech. You cannot remove reach from Twitter without rendering Twitter useless. Pre-Elon Twitter addressed the problem of giving bad speech reach by removing the bad speech. Elon’s “free speech absolutist” position is that removing speech is wrong so he’s going to remove the reach… which has the same outcome as removing the speech.

I think you’re vastly overestimating how much the algorithms matter, they’re not relevant to the problem Elon is trying to address.

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

#285

Post by sangnoir »

not2b wrote: post #281
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…

This might be what Elon is thinking, but some of his fans will be bitterly disappointed if he executes on it and no one sees their tweets any more because they are hateful. How can they own the libs if the libs don't see their attacks (likewise for the reverse direction)?

You may want to hold off on making any judgement until you see what will be considered "hate speech" as well the effectiveness of the Twitter sentiment analysis algorithms.

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

#287

Post by not2b »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #242
EMM_386 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'd equate it more to people in Nebraska can't hear the guy yelling in Times Square, nor should they. If people like this guy and want to hear him, they can go to Nebraska and listen to him (follow on Twitter). If he does s…

>people will know about it (a lot of retweets) Yeah, unless those get suppressed too which is what currently happens on social media sites like Facebook, Reddit and (pre-Musk) Twitter. There is no way authorities can gently steer public debates in the "right" direction. Any meddling is overstepping a line and problematic.

Any meddling? Like when people of one ethnic group use social media to organize a massacre of another group (as has happened in a number of countries)? Social media have correctly tried to suppress that, and I worry about what happens when people who speak the language get fired because they aren't coders.

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

#289

Post by iainmerrick »

I’m confused about what’s actually being suggested here, if anything. Regardless of whether stuff is “boosted” and “monetized” or not, people can still retweet stuff, right?

If they’re going to restrict the ability to retweet, that sounds a lot like shadow-banning, which is exactly what many people complain about, the people Musk seems to be listening to.

I guess it makes sense if people are really using the “home timeline” rather than chronological. That just seems bizarre to me as it misses the whole essence of Twitter. How is it a real-time news source if the newest stuff isn’t always front and centre? How is it a crowd-sourced “public square” if a black box algorithm decides what you read, rather than your own hand-curated list of followed accounts?

This whole debate would make sense if it were about YouTube, but Twitter?

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

#290

Post by terminatornet »

hsn915 wrote: post #240
aquova wrote: post #153

There's some interesting discussion in this thread about whether this is the right or wrong move for Twitter. However, after the debacle last night, I think it's a moot point, I simply don't see twitter.com still running within the next few months, possibly within the next few weeks. He's fired 50% of the company, reports seem that conservatively 50% of the remainder just quit yesterday, their subscription service ha…

This is delusional. When you have a big tech company with thousands of employees, the pareto principle comes into play in a huge way: proably only 10% of these people are actually doing any work that directly impacts the platform. At least half the employees are probably not doing anything really useful. This applies even to tech companies with a mere 100 total employees. At 3000 employees it's probably even more so.…

love to do the work of 10 people, receive the pay of 1, and getting fired because i wasn't "hardcore" enough
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