Live data from Hacker News

Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve

techdirt.com

31–40 of 352 posts

Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve

#31
His argument breaks down here:

> Fire the engineers! Bring me new engineers who don’t suck. And, I guess, maybe hire someone to manage at least some of these things. We can call them… “director of trust.” That sounds good! Level Nine: “We’re the trustworthy free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement, and spam, and we follow

Block illegal (civil and criminal) content and spam. Hate crime is already covered under that umbrella.

The problem again is the plague on our society, advertising. Ideal brand association isn’t compatible with free speech, you have to pick one, and SV picks ads. Lumberg: If the ad industry could just go ahead and disappear from the planet that would be great.

Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve

#32
Elon went from free speech absolutist to "Twitter aims to serve center 80% of people, who wish to learn, laugh & engage in reasoned debate." Quite the u-turn. I'm sure he put zero thought into that 80% figure, but even banning 2% instead of 20% is a shockingly huge number.

Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve

#33
post #6

Doesn't banning Kanye West from the platform go against his whole "free speech" thing? The absolutists say that there should just be more free speech to drown out the hateful speech. Why isn't he just encouraging people to drown it out instead? I find the unlimited free speech arguments to be disingenuous and lazy most of the time. There's always a limit to speech, and it's not easy to find. That doesn't mean we shou…

No post body was provided.

Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve

#34
post #6

Doesn't banning Kanye West from the platform go against his whole "free speech" thing? The absolutists say that there should just be more free speech to drown out the hateful speech. Why isn't he just encouraging people to drown it out instead? I find the unlimited free speech arguments to be disingenuous and lazy most of the time. There's always a limit to speech, and it's not easy to find. That doesn't mean we shou…

I mean, the entire point of this article is that "free speech" is not a sufficient basis for content moderation.

The history of social media platforms shows that not moderating away, well, "hateful speech" tends to lead to it drowning out all the other voices.

Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve

#36

90% of the problems come from laws not people. Except the CSAM laws (which are justified as they relate to real physical harm), I think all other laws shouldn't have existed. DMCA, hate speech, mocking presidents, it's all the same. If you're dealing with law might as well just pay good lawyers and stick to your principles instead of gently bending over.

> hate speech

is constitutionally-protected free speech.

> mocking presidents

ditto.

The only things that are actively illegal in the US on the list in the article are CSAM and copyright infringement. There are examples that are illegal in other countries, but in the US, vanishingly little speech can be illegal.

Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve

#37
post #6

Doesn't banning Kanye West from the platform go against his whole "free speech" thing? The absolutists say that there should just be more free speech to drown out the hateful speech. Why isn't he just encouraging people to drown it out instead? I find the unlimited free speech arguments to be disingenuous and lazy most of the time. There's always a limit to speech, and it's not easy to find. That doesn't mean we shou…

[deleted]

Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve

#38
post #6

Doesn't banning Kanye West from the platform go against his whole "free speech" thing? The absolutists say that there should just be more free speech to drown out the hateful speech. Why isn't he just encouraging people to drown it out instead? I find the unlimited free speech arguments to be disingenuous and lazy most of the time. There's always a limit to speech, and it's not easy to find. That doesn't mean we shou…

We all know Elon Musk is going to relearn the entire moderation curve. We're just amused that the dude thinks he is a genius, but is unable to think a step or two ahead. The rules will come down, because they have to. If it took "Ye" posting a Swastika and saying Hitler was awesome to convince Elon then so be it. Elon will meet many, many other people who will push the moderation curve towards where everyone else has…

Anyone who has ever moderated knows that allowing a free-speech-for-all, while seemingly a noble ideal, turns into something that nobody needs nor wants. Communication becomes noisy, the topics tend to favour a lowest denominator of quality, and more akin to a soapbox arena then a place of pure speech.

The solution it seems to me is in the name : moderation.

Instead of unfiltered thoughts, we moderate so we can more clearly communicate. In that sense the word censorship loses all meaning : because meaning should be conveyed carefully, especially when topics are sensitive. And so often online people aren’t sensitive at all, for many reasons that seem evident.

Source : moderated several chatrooms for many years.

Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve

#39

Is this the 12th time this article has been posted? @dang is there any chance HN will resume de-duplicating submissions in the future? Do you need a hand with anything? Don't tell my boss but I've got a few spare cycles this sprint. ;) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33448038 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33442277 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33749415 [3]: https://news.ycombinator.c…

Most of those probably didn't get enough points to hit the front page. This is the first time I've seen the article, so I'm happy it was let through.

Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swastika is illegal in many countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bans_on_Nazi_symbols

Did he post a swastika? I'm not aware of what exactly got him banned. Wasn't Elon talking about the US anyway? Political speech itself is banned in many countries, so surely that wasn't his measure.

Literally yes.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/dec/02/kanye-west-sus...

Post reply on HN