Protect me from what I want • Hacker News Board

Re: Protect me from what I want

#111

Post by ilyt » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 11:26 PM UTC

kannanvijayan wrote: post #106

pessimizer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main takeaway is that you care what other people read, not about what people are making you read.

> The main takeaway is that you care what other people read, not about what people are making you read. As do I, and you. I was pretty happy when all of those ISIS accounts that were spewing violence and hate got shut down. I'm sure you have your boundaries on what you'd want society to allow and restrict on public mediums. The specific details of what those boundaries are will depend on your personal notion of what…

Right but I don't want some wanker at Twitter or Facebook office decide that.

If I want to press the ban/blacklist button on tag, account, group, or whatever social unit to not see it again that's my decision. Sure, some of them should be default (probably don't want people to get porn the second they sign up), but user should be in power to moderate and filter their own stream.

> Copyright violations. Beheading videos. "Pornography" or pseudo-"pornography" involving minors. Direct threats of violence towards individuals or groups. Deepfakes generated without consent. Etc. Etc.

3/4 of what you mentioned is illegal in most places in the first place so it isn't point of contention.

And that isn't really a problem. Site deciding this or that political view is now bad is.

You try to put removing the illegal/disturbing content in same category as worldview manipulation. The first is way more black and white than the second and should not be considered together, even if similar systems are used for them.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#112

Post by jimmytidey » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 11:27 PM UTC

Am I missing something? I have Twitter set to show the timeline of tweets as they happen, which although I accept it requires a deduplication algorithm is broadly non algorithmic.

I realize there is also another 'curated' timeline setting, but you can always switch it off.

There are all kinds of problems with Twitter, but I'm surprised to see so many people saying 'the algorithm' is one of them.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#113

Post by ilyt » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 11:28 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #59

wallfacer120 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't noticed the chorus of coastal media types asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum, then you are truly oblivious.

I've seen them asking for private forums to stop giving such folk a platform, because an organization can choose to do what it will with its private property. But public forums? No, I can't say I have. In fact, I remember witnessing a President giving a large speech in a public forum that was followed by a riot at the Capitol (whether said speech was causal to the riot is still a matter for the courts). Nobody challe…

Define "public forum". Because both Facebook and Twitter have way more range than most of what would be defined as "public forum" does

Re: Protect me from what I want

#114

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 11:30 PM UTC

giantrobot wrote: post #99

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ok to be intolerant at some things. What's not ok is to be intolerant and still claim to be tolerant. That's hypocrisy. Also, do not equate actions and speech - and we're mostly arguing about free speech here, right?

Quoted post unavailable.

People feel very smart when making quips like this. Unfortunately for you, my goalpost is precisely the same:

> "paradox of tolerance" is a hypocrisy. If you are intolerant only to the intolerant you are not tolerant, it is as simple as that.

> It's ok to be intolerant at some things. What's not ok is to be intolerant and still claim to be tolerant. That's hypocrisy

(Don't hurt yourself, I understand it is an uncomfortable situation for you)

Re: Protect me from what I want

#115

Post by miloignis » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 11:34 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #103

tensor wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately every time I hear this sort of thing be suggested there is a rallying cry from the original mastodon crowd to block said thing. It's really unfortunate and why I don't see mastdodon as a truly viable alternative to twitter. Perhaps if a fork of it gains enough influence that isn't hostile to algorithms and indexing it would work better.

Instance blocking will ultimately create the exact same dynamic as found at Twitter. Aggressive online activism, regardless of your political direction, is here to stay. So it can and will be used to pressure other instances into blocking yet other instances.

Small and single-user instances don't really fall prey to this - how is one even supposed to know what a single-user instance is blocking if you don't tell them?

Anyway, even for those that do what you'd have is a stratification into levels of instances with different tolerance levels of blocking. I think this is a very different dynamic than exists on Twitter, can you explain more about what the identical dynamic would be?

Re: Protect me from what I want

#116

Post by thereald0tt » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 11:37 PM UTC

No, it isn't showing you what you want. It is showing you what it thinks will get you to spend more time on the service, that's all

Re: Protect me from what I want

#117

Post by mgerdts » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 11:38 PM UTC

An algorithm that I can tune by having private +1, -1, and "hell no" buttons would be helpful. If I follow too many people and/or hashtags, I will end up with so many posts/toots that I spend a bunch of time reading through things that really aren't that interesting. If I had a way to easily mark content as interesting or not, an algorithm could construct my feed such that the things that I find interesting are more likely to be read. There have been people that I followed because they had an interesting post or two, then the other side of them started posting that is not interesting to me.

As an example, one person posted that they were working on end-to-end encrypted messages. That was really cool, nearly instant follow. This person identifies as a furry and posts a lot more content related to their furry identity than E2E encrypted messages. I'm not really into the furry scene, even as a spectator. Nothing against this person - I'm happy they can be who they are. I just wish there was a way that I could tune into the once in a while updates about the tech project without the part that is of no interest to me. That person may be equally annoyed with my feed if I posted regular updates of my love for mac n cheese.

Importantly, the +1/-1 that I give should be used only for my feed with no feedback to the poser. My -1 does not mean I disapprove and I certainly don't want it to hurt anyone. I don't want it to influence others' feed. A -1 needn't mean that I never see something like that, but a "hell no" should.

Such a system would allow me to follow more people and be exposed to different ideas that come from more exposure. It's then up to me to tune my feed to match my interests and available time.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#118

Post by toofy » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 11:39 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #86

twoWhlsGud wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old joke: "If you owe the bank $1M it's your problem, if you owe the bank $1B it's theirs". New joke: "If a few citizens become radicalized/crazy in ways that threaten the very functioning of your society it's their problem ... "

...but if the majority of citizens act in ways that threaten the very functioning of your society, you may live in a monarchy or oligarchy.

i’m not sure why this would be the only option you come to.

it’s much more likely that folks are concerned because the populism wishes to destroy pluralism.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#119

Post by zmgsabst » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 11:39 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #108

fleddr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It's not irony. The ability to say something doesn't imply anyone is obligated to either listen or agree. Downvotes imply a desire to quiet a signal (or at least, a belief the signal is uninteresting and should show up below other signals) and the site is designed to enhance interesting signals and suppress uninteresting ones. Everything here is doing exactly what it says on the tin. The weird notion is that one shou…

> If you haven't noticed the chorus of coastal media types asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum, then you are truly oblivious.

This doesn’t seem like a low-signal comment: it’s factually true and relevant to the context.

Rather, people are falsely marking it as low signal because they don’t like it and want to manipulate the discussion by hiding things they don’t like.

Which is classic censorship — and I think highlights a deeply anti-intellectual trend in this community.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#120

Post by miloignis » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 11:40 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #107

mhink wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other downside of boosts, retweets, quote tweets is that it discourages writing your own original posts. More than 80% of what Twitter calls tweet activity is simply retweets, not new tweets. I don't really see a way around this unless you explicitly try to prevent people from posting things that have been posted before. IIRC, retweets were originally just normal tweets that people tacked the letters "RT" in fr…

I'm under no illusion that such feature will ever be removed, but I stand by the concept/idea that social media should be about people sharing their own thoughts and ideas, rather than this lazy and mindlessly redistribution.

I think it's the opposite - without an "Algorithm" (instead just the simple algorithm of sorting posts by time) there's no natural way to find other interesting people to follow!

What Mastodon does is replace a computerized algorithm that tries to find you things you would be interested in with a "social algorithm" which is people you follow boosting posts that they like or find interesting.

It's like getting book recommendations from a friend instead of Amazon! Sharing things that we like with others is a deeply human activity, one I think is generally very positive.

Anyway, if you don't like what someone's boosting, you can prevent their boosts from showing up on your feed. Great thing about a FOSS, interoperable system is it's configurability!