Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run the Content Moderation Learning Curve • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #250

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…

> There's always a limit to speech, and it's not easy to find It is. Mid 2000s 4chan and more recently 8kun found it immediately. When you remove limiters people slap the rail immediately. What value does it add? No one is learning anything when posting anonymously without moderation, they're just lulling themselves into an easily manipulated state.

It'd be good for John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad theory to make a comeback

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...

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

#292

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 10:44 PM UTC

encryptluks2 wrote: post #218

themitigating wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware, I'm sure most people are because this tidbit is always brought up when the swastika is discussed. The context is clear all around though

Should we be burning school books and cancelling movies about the Holocaust because they have swastikas? Like it or not it is free speech and shouldn't be banned.

I'd stand against a government doing that.

If an individual book owner decides to have a backyard barbecue of all their pro-Nazi propaganda or an individual theater owner doesn't feel comfortable running Jojo Rabbit, that's up to them.

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

#293

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

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…

Two points on this..

1. It sort of is that insofar as advertisers (the actual customers) are free to stop buying ads, but when they do so Musk throws a conniption fit and says not giving him money is a step away from tyranny

2. If there's a tradable 'right to offend' asset then it will either be bought up by wealthy people who are assholes or assholes who raise money from other assholes on the promise that they will be bigger assholes (see also politics, US)

I mean, why not have a market for murder, and just limit the number of permits to 10% less than the current homicide totals? The government makes tax revenue and homicide falls by 10%, (almost) everybody wins! Vote for me in '24!

do not vote for me

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

#294

Post by dmix » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #285

dmix wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Maybe my Twitter UI is different than yours because my default home page is now "Latest Tweets" by default. I never see likes/RTs by people I don't follow anymore. After years of the homepage being AI-feed only (lists were the only chronological alternative) they finally added a small button in the top right corner to change to chronological aka Latest Tweets by default. Now the default options are "Latest Tw…

On Web and iOS it is a star button in the top right that switches between Home and Latest.

I posted a screenshot of the web UI in my comment and it doesn't show that anymore.

The default is now "Latest Tweets".

So I'm either seeing the new beta or you haven't been using Twitter recently.

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

#295

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #144

themitigating wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also appeared on Alex Jones and was accompanied by white supremacist Nick Fuente and decided to go all in. The rapper said: “I see good things about Hitler … Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.” Jones replied: “The Nazis were thugs.” “But they did good things too,” Ye said. “We gotta stop dissing the Nazis all the time.” “Oh my goodness … just because you don…

> “But they did good things too,” Ye said. That is the same exact boilerplate response we get over here by extreme right wingers (assuming non extreme right wingers do exist, which over here is not the case) when talking about the atrocities committed by the Mussolini regime: "he did good things too". Yeah sure, like conscience is something that can be recharged like a cellphone battery: "Ok, I've helped 99 old ladie…

IIUC, this example is specifically why Utilitarianism breaks down as a consistent philosophy.

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

#296

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

memish wrote: post #93

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.

False. He specifically pointed out which one was fine and which one wasn't. "Just clarifying that his account is being suspended for incitement to violence, not an unflattering pic of me being hosed by Ari. Frankly, I found those pics to be helpful motivation to lose weight!" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598546057138524160

You think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

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

#297

Post by zimpenfish » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 11:01 PM UTC

sidibe wrote: post #275

zimpenfish wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding a tiny Gladwell: I've been using Twitter since 2007 and pretty much daily for probably 10 years and same, never accidentally encountered "unfiltered hardcore porn" clicking on trends or pretty much anything.

As time goes on, it turns out that pre-Elon Twitter is becoming more and more of a disaster. Now it turns out it was full of porn, and especially child porn which previous leaders didn't care about. Also instead of a company struggling to be consistently profitable it was actually a complete dumpster fire that was doomed to fail in the near future if not for the timely intervention

> Now it turns out it was full of porn,

Well, it never had a ban on porn as such, did it? Although I'd venture "full of porn" is an exaggeration. Do you have numbers?

> and especially child porn which previous leaders didn't care about.

Got a source for that? As best I know, they weren't considered a problem by the authorities. Unlike now where they have one (1) moderator (thanks to Musk's firings) for the entirety of Asia (tens of millions of users.)

> it was actually a complete dumpster fire that was doomed to fail in the near future

Their 2020 figures show that, apart from an unfortunately timed $800Mi settlement, they'd have made $580Mi profit. Now that's not a great profit on $5Bi revenue but it's definitely not "a complete dumpster fire that was doomed to fail", is it?

> if not for the timely intervention

Which has added $1Bi a year debt payments. Now that is "a complete dumpster fire that was doomed to fail"...

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

#298

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 11:02 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #177

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is one to one or one to many. Twitter is one to all. The burden of responsibility is different because of the scope of reach.

You can still choose who you follow on Twitter. It seems to be moving back towards that idea, which is good. It's pretty easy to avoid political bullshit if you are careful with following. For years Twitter used to make it impossibly hard to switch to just "latest tweets" instead of their awful recommendation feed which include likes/rts of people you don't even follow. No wonder Twitter became such a heated trainwre…

> You can still choose who you follow on Twitter

The default algorithm shows you what people you follow are most interested in. This does a lot to shape the conversation. You can switch to seeing tweets from people you follow in chronological order, but it typically doesn't show all of them. If you don't interact frequently enough with someone they'll fall out of your feed. It's quite a lot of work to get rid of all the friend suggestions and retweets etc. etc. from other people by using keyword muting; and even when you mute individuals, they still show up with their asinine opinions in your search results. The only way you can be sure of not seeing someone is to block them, and even then you'll still get notifications that there's more content, but it might be blocked.

Blocking is also not that effective of a self-curation tool because the userbase isn't static. Habitual trolls buy farmed accounts for 50 cents a pop and for the price of a hot lunch they can have 25 new accounts to troll people with.

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

#299

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 11:03 PM UTC

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…

You say that as though email is not, in fact, currently an absolute minefield of authentication, peering, trust, spam-guarding, and black-holing policies.

In fact, email is more-or-less the most-used example of how a federated system deals with this: sloppily, one-at-a-time, generating a massive haves-and-have-nots Balkanization.

I can set up my own self-hosted mail server, but without some very careful configuration and planning good luck getting Gmail to forward its output to Google's users.

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

#300

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 11:05 PM UTC

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.

FWIW, plenty of "true hackers" observed the same data points and concluded that the cyber-utopia envisioned in the '90s is a pipe dream and deserves to be dead and buried.

A lot has happened in the past couple decades as society has tilted around into the information age. Some assumptions have undergone rigorous testing. Some deserved to be discarded. I don't think anyone has the One True Approach yet, but freedom-of-speech idealism proved wanting as a strategy.