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

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351–360 of 412 posts

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Musk is a free speech absolutist, by his own admission. I don't think his concept of free speech absolutism matches yours. Given the other things I've heard (something about moderation teams with diverse voices, and this news about deboosting) it seems more likely that you're arguing against a strawman here. >It's a contrived example, but despite that free speech absolutism allows for it. Does the free speech absolu…

> Does the free speech absolutism you're arguing against allow for sonic cannons? When did I mention sonic cannons? WT actual F.

You are missing the point.

The point is that free speech advocates do not argue in favor of DDoS attacks, or using sonic cannons to destroy houses.

They also do not support following someone around, all day, and not allowing them to run away from you.

Since free speech advocates do not argue in favor of this, it is dumb for you to argue against a position that nobody believes.

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

#352

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…

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.

Algorithms heavily drive engagement and thus ad dollars, this is why all social media sites use algorithms and always will.

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"apply the rules consistently" is like "unbiased journalism", it is an impossible standard that literally nobody adheres to. Further, anyone claiming intentional bias in moderation behavior is just making it up because there are thousands of moderation decisions made every day, the details of which they are not privy to.

> "apply the rules consistently" is like "unbiased journalism", it is an impossible standard that literally nobody adheres to. Yes, but some claim to do so while deliberately doing the opposite, while others say they're bad at it while actually trying. Corporations (such as Twitter) are exclusively toward the former end of the spectrum.

> Corporations (such as Twitter) are exclusively toward the former end of the spectrum.

So it is claimed, but I don't think that's true and without data it's simply a matter of opinion.

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

#354
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He appears to be at least somewhat delivering on that hope. Unless they're pretending to be him (or advertisers) for a joke on Twitter, in which case they seem to very quickly get banned.

This is not being banned for what you say, however controversial (i.e. prevention of free speech). This is being banned for pretending someone else is saying something. Such bans are not a free speech issue. Fraud is fraud. (As for the joke angle, twitter has decided it's too risky to allow humour that relies on brazen impersonation. Parody accounts that are clearly indicated as such are still allowed.)

There's a lot of folks who clearly put "this is a parody" in every one of their "I'm Elon Musk" tweets and got banned and are still banned. He's kept redefining "clearly indicated" but only after banning people who were making fun of him.

Dude's got the most fragile ego as this whole episode has demonstrated.

Most of the folks getting banned for actually pretending to be someone else were either obviously a joke because they were totally silly, or were only able to look remotely real because of the idiotic $8 "you're real if you pay us" policy.

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, Twitter is most definitely not trying to be like the notoriously-toxic 4chan.

Trust me, once you get the hang of it, 4chan is surprisingly wholesome. Sure I've been called a nigg r/fagg t/subhuman/kike/retard, I've been asked to kill myself countless times, countless people told me they had fucked my mom, etc. But when you go above that, you see that it's refreshing and lot less toxic than passive-aggresiveness and the brigading that upvotes/downvotes/retweets bring (in places such as Twitter…

> I've been asked to kill myself countless times, countless people told me they had fucked my mom, etc. But when you go above that

There is no going above that. That's what psychological abuse looks like, and you're justifying it to yourself

You can have a community that isn't full of passive aggressive people and also not a disgusting shithole. Look at hn as an example. You're only hurting yourself in the long run

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

#356

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…

I don't think this fully captures his prior sentiments. This was all packaged with the idea that the algorithm should be made public, possibly literally even posted to github. Without that, he's just doing same kind of unaccountable tweaks as the previous operators, and there will still be sizable cohorts of users that feel "persecuted" and others who feel like their feed remains full of "negative/hate" content.

I don't think it's fair to expect the algorithm to be open-source so soon, but I also don't think this represents anything like the meaningful changes he promised, so it's relatively insignificant.

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

#357
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone outside of Twitter actually know what the criteria was for banning Tweets and Tweeters?

Look at the history of banned accounts [1] You don't need polynomial regression to figure out that nobody was being banned for traditional, non-hate and non-violence-inducing conservative or liberal speech. It's mostly harassment, threats, impersonation and disinformation. Nobody has been banned for advocating: lower taxes, higher taxes, cuts to government spending, increased government spending, abortion rights, ant…

The problems with Twitter's previous approach to banning is that those banned for "disinformation" were consistently anti-establishment and right-of-center. Twitter strictly enforced its Terms of Service against political opponents of its favored party, while often turning a blind eye to offenses from those more closely aligned with their staff's ideology.

The description on Wikipedia regarding ZeroHedge's suspension is heavily biased. Why do they link to a BuzzFeed News article, instead of ZH's actual article? Which parts of the ZH article are proven false? Buzzfeed doesn't say, and neither did Twitter. Same for Dr. Robert Malone, what exactly is "misinformation" about his content, and who is making that determination? What is the censor's area of expertise to make such a judgement? Who is the censor?

Candace Owens was banned for criticism of a governor's COVID policies. Where does that fit in your characterization of bannings as "harrassment, threats, impersonation, and disinformation"?

Meanwhile, grifter Talcum X still has a Twitter account with 1 million followers, despite endorsing violence on multiple occasions and threatening to dox innocent law enforcement personnel.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/16/shaun-king-ice-attacker-w...

https://hiphopwired.com/playlist/shaun-king-jacob-blake-shoo...

Rose City Antifa, which claimed responsibility for the attack that left Andy Ngo with a brain hemorrhage, still has their Twitter page un-suspended.

https://libertycenter.org/cases/justice-for-andy-ngo/

And of course Kathy Griffin not rating a ban for a pic of Donald Trump's severed head (because comedy), but numerous other users were banned for making similar violent jokes/threats about politicians.

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

#358
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, now scale to a few hundred millions users in lots of languages.

Not even just language, but culture subculture too. This is a very difficult problem.

You can’t sort sarcasm in all of the New Guinean languages? Amateur.

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

#359
post #273

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…

Twitter gives you the option to view a linear timeline.

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. It's an algorithm using rough sentiment analysis and god knows what else to judge your tweet, unaccountably and invisibly. "I hate mondays" I tweet. Whoops! Tripped the "negative tweet detector" and my tweet is deprioritized! No problem you say, let's just tweak the detector to let that through. So you're going to write exceptions? What happens when "mondays" becomes some sort of code word for racial epi…

How do you know it will be an algorithm? He did not even say how it would be implemented yet. It may be a dislike button. FWIW, I do not like the dislike or like buttons.

> How do you know it will be an algorithm?

Well, it seems unlikely to be human-driven, given how many of the employees and contractors who were responsible for content moderation have been laid off.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-outso...

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