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

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

#111

Post by hungryforcodes »

tj-teej wrote: post #17
mmastrac wrote: 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…

It only goes against his "free speech thing" if his "free speech thing" was actually a coherent ideology. Instead his "free speech absolutism" is a brand, it's there to signal what kind of person he is, it's not a set of principles and therefore cannot stand up to scrutiny.

I'm not sure I understand thus.

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

#112

Post by prmoustache »

nickthegreek wrote: post #57
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not relevant. Was his post blocked in those countries?

It is very relevant. His posts were blocked in every country (by removing his account). As an american, I dont expect to be banned from a social media company (ran in my country no less) because of a speech law halfway around the world. Elon isn't following policies, he is following his whim. The problem with that is all the previous moderation statements he made did not align with this banning.

Well that would be reasonnable if said social media company was only publishing your content to US geolocalized IP.

It doesn't.

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

#113

Post by ideamotor »

guerrilla wrote: post #107
tj-teej wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only goes against his "free speech thing" if his "free speech thing" was actually a coherent ideology. Instead his "free speech absolutism" is a brand, it's there to signal what kind of person he is, it's not a set of principles and therefore cannot stand up to scrutiny.

> it's there to signal what kind of person he is An incoherent person? What do you mean?

It signals that he’s full of shit and will do or say anything for the grift.

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

#114

Post by guerrilla »

jcranmer wrote: post #34
mmastrac wrote: 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.

I agree, but can I start a side-branch here... Why is that exactly? Wish I could tag @dang.

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

#115

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

nicce wrote: post #99
wnevets wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning people who made fun of him also went against the whole free speech thing.

People have been literally banned for saying that Musk should pay taxes...

Source?

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

#116

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

zimpenfish wrote: post #87
mabbo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the context of the banning of Kanye West is important. Kanye posted some really super antisemetic things. At one point, he posted a picture of a swastika overtop of a star of David. Then he posted an unflattering picture of Elon Musk- and was banned within minutes. When Elon Musk says "free speech" he means "free speech for me, not for thee". You can say anything you like, as long as Elon likes it too.

> Then he posted an unflattering picture of Elon Musk- and was banned within minutes. Oh, that's probably the reason - Ol' Muskie is really quick on the suspension button for people who mock him.

Source?

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

#117

Post by martindbp »

_ea1k wrote: post #23
mmastrac wrote: 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…

He backed away from unlimited free speech pretty quickly. Sometimes he's said it has to do with a legal boundary, but he hasn't had consistency about that. He's been pretty clear that hated by ~50% and fine with the other 50% of the population is the old line, not the new one. Where that puts the threshold is still an open question, and unfortunately one that will likely be answered somewhat capriciously. Then again,…

Twitter before Musk banned Babylon Bee, a Christian version of The Onion, for this:

"The Babylon Bee, was suspended by Twitter, after it had mockingly awarded transgender government official Rachel Levine the title 'Man of the Year.'"

This is the type of speech that Elon believes should be allowed, and I agree. He has repeatedly said freedom of speech absolutism is still subject to laws, and inciting violence past that line, but clearly not transgender satire.

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

#118

Post by enumjorge »

tj-teej wrote: post #17
mmastrac wrote: 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…

It only goes against his "free speech thing" if his "free speech thing" was actually a coherent ideology. Instead his "free speech absolutism" is a brand, it's there to signal what kind of person he is, it's not a set of principles and therefore cannot stand up to scrutiny.

> is a brand

I wish more people would understand this. For people like Musk, his personal brand is extremely important and they spend a lot of effort portraying and selling a specific image. It is an important part of his success as a businessman. FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried is another example. His disheveled, messy geek look was calculated, and in an interview after FTX’s collapse he basically admitted that some of his opinions and philosophies that he espoused before were BS to push a specific narrative.

Musk has repeated “free speech” enough times that it’s become part of his brand. And people will associate that with him regardless of what he actually does. In his view Twitter is free speech. An attack on Twitter (as he alleged Apple was doing) is an attack on free speech. Twitter dying means the death of free speech. To claim that a company is the embodiment of free speech is ridiculous yet so many people buy into it.

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

#119

Post by dragonwriter »

mmastrac wrote: 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…

> Doesn't banning Kanye West from the platform go against his whole "free speech" thing?

No, like the broader right, his whole “free speech thing” is nothing more than “speech I like should be more favored by private parties than it currently is”.

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

#120

Post by abruzzi »

throwawayacc4 wrote: post #90
musk_micropenis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is much more heavily moderated than those websites. Which is a good thing, it's why conversations here tend to be of a higher quality. I don't think the HN style of moderation would scale to places like Reddit even if they wanted it.

>HN is much more heavily moderated than those websites. This couldn't be further from the truth. Reddit is orders of magnitude more heavily moderated than HN. Your average run of the mill subreddit has more moderators than the entirety of HN. >Which is a good thing, it's why conversations here tend to be of a higher quality. I think the conversations here are higher because of the userbase, not dang's moderation. The…

Don’t forget that HN is also self moderated through upvotes/downvotes (I’ve never used Reddit, does it have similar?). This does two things IMO—first, low quality posts become less and less readable which reduces incentive to make inflammatory posts, but second it also imposes self moderation (except for users that resort to throwaway accounts) since losing too many karma points removes some of your ability to participate on the site.
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