People want an algorithm for how to moderate speech. But there's no such thing. You just need people with good judgement and it's hard to define what good judgement is. HN has it. Previous twitter did not have good judgement. It had a left-bias and banned people for saying things like "there are two genders" and "men aren't women tho". It also banned various accounts for jokes (prominently Babylon Bee, a right-wing T…
> It had a left-bias I don't know what it will take for this lie to die. It has absolutely zero supporting evidence. The data suggests just the opposite. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/01/facebook-youtu... > "There is no evidence to support the claim that the major social media companies are suppressing, censoring or otherwise discriminating against conservatives on their platforms,” Barrett said. “In fac…
Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve
251–260 of 352 posts
Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve
#252> “Right, boss, apparently because you keep talking about freedom, a large group of people are taking it to mean they have ‘freedom’ to harass people with slurs and all sorts of abuse. People are leaving the site because of it, and advertisers are pulling ads.” > That seems bad. Quick, have someone write up some rules against hate speech. > Level Four: “We’re the free speech platform without CSAM, infringement or hat…
Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve
#253One 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…
Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve
#254Doesn'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…
West tweeted an image of a swastika in a star of David - technically an obsolete symbol of the Raelian UFO cult, in practice it suggested Nazis vs Jews to any casual observer. In the context of West's long-simmering beef with Jewish people and current manic episode of shouting about his enthusiasm for Hitler from inside a ski mask, it was certainly meant to taunt and would fit most people's standard for hate speech.
But incitement to violence? Not exactly, and that's why I say Musk doesn't seem to know what he's doing. There is an indirect kind of incitement, in that it inciting people to behave like Nazis is synonymous with violence; neo-Nazis might deny the holocaust but are just as likely to follow up with the suggestion that it would be a good idea, and in conversation among themselves are a lot blunter about their desire to do violence, preferably on a grand scale. This is why Nazis complaining about free speech is a bad joke, since their gameplan for pretty much any speech they dislike is to simply kill the speakers.
But legally speaking, incitement to violence has a much narrower threshold; it has to be be specific and produce imminent lawless action. For a long time this meant internet speech didn't cunt at all, as jurists figured there couldn't be an imminent risk if the speaker and the recipient were in different places, and that electronic communication was too attenuated to inflame the passions of its receivers. Legislators and courts have somewhat caught up to the realities of the internet age and so things like SWATting or issuing threats by voicemail or online are taken much more seriously than they used to be (to a fault in some jurisdictions like the UK, whose legislators have a Canute-like fondness for prescriptivism).
In this sense, West's tweet absolutely is not incitement to violence, because while it endorses Nazism and Jew-hatred in a trollish way, it lacks the specificity (in action, time, or place) to merit a legal charge. It's not impossible that West might end up suing Twitter or Musk personally for defamation, given his wealth, mania, and apparent ability to hold a grudge.
Free speech advocates have long wrestled with the ramifications of declaring some speech to be 'hate speech' - I think myself that hate crimes are a legislative punt by making a new and scary-sounding law that doesn't mean very much, rather than clarifying existing law and letting juries weigh the significance of hatred as a possible motivation in the trials of violent crimes. Free speech absolutists, in whose company Musk previously placed himself, generally insist on the narrow legal standard of criminality as the only acceptable reason to inflict bans, and argue that all other speech should proceed unchecked. This argument generally arrives clad in the purple robes of Platonic idealism, though in practice totally un-moderated environments soon resemble an orgy of cynics behaving as obnoxiously as possible to maximize their sense of freedom.
So if Musk is just making it up as he goes along, then he's in the situation of alienating everyone to his left and right simultaneously. I don't know how closely he's supervising content moderation decisions, (probably not very) but the reappearance on Twitter of super far right figures like Brett Stephens and Andrew Anglin (currently evading a federal arrest warrant) suggests the 'public square' is going to see regular brawls for a while.
Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remembering the context of people being killed for being trans as a relatively common event. It hasn't reached the millions by any means but we'd like it stopped sooner than that.
It's incredibly uncommon. Not only that, the murder rate for women is higher than the rate for transwomen. And higher for men then transmen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide_statistics_by_gender
Worldwide, men constitute 78.7% of homicide victims, making cis men the largest group of homicide victims.
Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve
#256Earlier 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…
Elon Musk becomes a Fox News darling right before he launches an electric pickup truck. He obviously doesn’t want Tesla to be a brand associated with left wing politics.
Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve
#257Earlier 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...
Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve
#258Earlier 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.
Well his free speech thing was also stated alongside the fact that he wanted to authenticate everybody. Free speech can work if real identities and reputations are clearly visible. Anonymity combined with free speech is what creates the places most normal people don't want to be.
It accomplishes absolutely nothing - people are perfectly willing to put their real name and reputation behind their harrassing and toxic behavior. It does, however, make it easier to extend harassment campaigns to people's homes, businesses, families, etc.
Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I don't understand why people are upset when they get banned from the 40% of all roads, parks, and sidewalks that are owned by GloboCorp. In the old days of private homes, sure it sucked when you got thrown out of a houseparty, but that's just the game. It's both private property, there is no difference."
Oh no, you got banned from those places for wearing a nazi armband, but there's multiple other roads, parks, and sidewalks, that allow that (e.g. 4chan), just as easily accessible.
That's about as ham fisted a censorship policy as you can have.
Please don't be dismissive of valid free speech concerns. The open Internet is a critical feature of the kind of society I'd like to live in.
Re: Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve
#260Earlier 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…