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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

#181

Post by Karunamon »

sangnoir wrote: post #176
martindbp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> This is the type of speech that Elon believes should be allowed, and I agree. And yet when the same satire it directed at Musk, he blows a gasket. Jeph Jacques[1] changed his profile picture and name to Musk's and tweeted (paraphrasing) "I like drinking my own piss first thing in the morning" and got permabanned for it. It was clearly satire to me, and broke no laws AFAICT. 1. Author of Questionable Content webcomi…

Rules against impersonation had been on the platform since 2018. IMO if you can't do satire without making your self indistinguishable from the person you are satirizing, you suck at it.

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

#182

Post by threatofrain »

sangnoir wrote: post #176
martindbp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> This is the type of speech that Elon believes should be allowed, and I agree. And yet when the same satire it directed at Musk, he blows a gasket. Jeph Jacques[1] changed his profile picture and name to Musk's and tweeted (paraphrasing) "I like drinking my own piss first thing in the morning" and got permabanned for it. It was clearly satire to me, and broke no laws AFAICT. 1. Author of Questionable Content webcomi…

IMO repeatedly accusing a rescue worker of pedophilia is just as likely to provoke violence as Kanye posting a Nazi symbol on Twitter.

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

#183

Post by gjulianm »

martindbp wrote: post #130
woah wrote: post #125

One big online platform that has totally skimped on reasonable moderation is the charmingly named "E-Mail". Child porn, copyright infringement, harassment, hate speech, spam, you name it. Anything goes. It's a complete free-for-all. Giant internet companies like Google and Microsoft make billions of dollars a year through their partnerships with the E-Mail platform. These big companies do make a token effort to remov…

This is unfortunately exactly what will happen. What is scary to me is how censorship has become completely accepted by the new generation, including software engineers here in their 20s. No true hacker (this is Hacker News after all) would be OK with corporation or government censorship. Slippery slope is real.

Censorship is a cheap and bad solution to a problem that a lot of people feel very real. We have a real issue of regular people and malicious actors using the unprecedented reach of social networks to spread falsehoods, conspiracy theories, attacks on certain groups... Yes, the usual response will be "it's the responsibility of adults to filter what they see" but the reality is that doesn't happen. We are not ready for such an influx of information, and the structure of social networks incentivizes outrage and false or misleading content, and penalizes nuance and well-researched arguments. Social networks are being used to manipulate massive amounts of people. That's what should be scary. Censorship is just a response to that.

Personally, I think the solution is to limit reach, for everyone, full stop. Place legal limits on recommendations and pushed content, to incentivize people choosing their sources. Limit how many times a content can be easily shared (think of the ease of retweeting something you didn't even read) to incentivize organic spread. Limit the reach of unverified and new accounts to incentivize trust building. Increase fines and punishments (through courts, of course) for organizations that blatantly lie to the public to incentivize proper research.

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

#184

Post by finspeech »

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…

Agree with everything you said. Especially that what is acceptable speech is dynamic and it’s hard to define.

I view the boundaries of acceptable speech as a resource. And like other resources in which we need to allocate in society, we use the power of markets to come to the “fairest” allocation that we can.

I believe Elon could implement a “free speech market” on Twitter where Twitter creates an asset which gives the owner the right to ban or allow a particular controversial user. This asset is then auctioned off (providing revenue for Twitter) and then the users get the ultimate control over who is or isn’t allowed on the platform.

This also has the benefit of taking the decision making out of the hands of Elon and those at Twitter and giving power directly to the people.

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

#185

Post by PathOfEclipse »

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…

Except Musk was never ever for absolute free speech. Also, the free speech absolutists have it wrong. Read speechless: controlling words, controlling minds for a much better and more coherent conservative philosophy on free speech.

Absolute free speech is an illusion that has never existed and never will. Our problem in society is that that we censor the wrong kinds of speech and tolerate the wrong kinds of speech. Overton windows aren't bad. Ours has just been corrupted. Musk explicitly said he wants to essentially broaden and fix the tolerance window, not abolish it.

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

#186

Post by krapp »

nightski wrote: post #151
enumjorge wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

People aren't as stupid as HN wants to think they are. Twitter will be judged based on how it actually evolves, not Musk's brand. Time will tell. Let's not pretend the site wasn't an absolute disaster before the acquisition though. If I clicked on even a single trending topic about a game or news item I'd often be presented with unfiltered hardcore porn. Then there would be topics of innocent things like landscapes t…

> If I clicked on even a single trending topic about a game or news item I'd often be presented with unfiltered hardcore porn.

No, you wouldn't. Either you don't know what hardcore porn actually is, or you're exaggerating.

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

#187

Post by airza »

finspeech wrote: post #184
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…

Agree with everything you said. Especially that what is acceptable speech is dynamic and it’s hard to define. I view the boundaries of acceptable speech as a resource. And like other resources in which we need to allocate in society, we use the power of markets to come to the “fairest” allocation that we can. I believe Elon could implement a “free speech market” on Twitter where Twitter creates an asset which gives t…

I sort of admire the clarity of vision to take the current decade’s political subtext of “people with money should be allowed to dictate the values of society” and turn it into the supertext.

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

#188

Post by katbyte »

lynndotpy wrote: post #95

I really like this post. These are lessons I learned a long time ago, when I was 10 or so running web forums. But there are three big things this misses: 1. What is and is not legal is usually decided in the courts. That's expensive, and lawyers help prevent you from getting to the courts in the first place. 2. The ideal goal for good discussion on a forum is transparency and consistency in moderation. For example, S…

What is legal in one country can be very illegal in another

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

#189

Post by drivebycomment »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #141

It's all very Brexit reminiscent. "Let's leave the EU and get rid of all this red tape and beaurocracy" leave EU discover why all those rules were necessary slowly re-invent a crappy copy of the above rules, at great personal expense, because the same external forces that existed before require them

100%. In both, it's clear people who got rid of the existing framework failed to follow Chesterton's fence.

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

#190

Post by Zagill »

Karunamon wrote: post #181
sangnoir wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the type of speech that Elon believes should be allowed, and I agree. And yet when the same satire it directed at Musk, he blows a gasket. Jeph Jacques[1] changed his profile picture and name to Musk's and tweeted (paraphrasing) "I like drinking my own piss first thing in the morning" and got permabanned for it. It was clearly satire to me, and broke no laws AFAICT. 1. Author of Questionable Content webcomi…

Rules against impersonation had been on the platform since 2018. IMO if you can't do satire without making your self indistinguishable from the person you are satirizing, you suck at it.

It says a lot that a tweet saying "I drink piss everyday" is indistinguishable from a real Elon tweet
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