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Protect me from what I want

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Re: Protect me from what I want

#121

Post by Karrot_Kream »

mgerdts wrote: post #117

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…

When RSS was hot stuff circa 2005, a friend on IRC and I were working on a bayesian classifier for RSS entries and it worked just like this. +1 trained it as "ham" and -1 trained it as "spam". It failed (among other reasons) because we were both really young and didn't have enough mathematial/computational maturity. With modern ML techniques, this doesn't seem hard to do at all. But you'd need access to the actual data stream which is something that the big social networks don't seem willing to provide.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#122

Post by toofy »

nostromo wrote: post #92
viraptor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's some nuance here though, where people do make a distinction between opposing views and harmful content. (likely not everyone, but still) What I mean is, I don't care if someone reads a politician I hate. I care if they read a politician who enables the next pizzagate or worse. Or if they read state sponsored misinformation while thinking it's genuine opinions. And yeah, I do acknowledge there's some o…

This is an age-old panic that happens with each new technology. The printing press was seen as dangerous. Then the phone, then TV, and then the internet. And now it's social media. Each time the arguments are the same. People worry that the "wrong people" will have the ability to share ideas to a broad audience. And yet each time we've shown that more speech is correlated with an expansion of civil rights and liberal…

> Then the phone, then TV…

doesn’t the FCC heavily limit broadcast television and radio who and what behaviors are tolerated? like very heavily, no?

and aren’t there limitations on what you can and can’t do with a telephone?

Re: Protect me from what I want

#123

Post by fleddr »

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…

The parent comment implied that a particular political faction engages in silencing and perhaps its extremer form: cancellations. The reaction to the statement is to soft-silence that remark.

This means it hit a nerve, presumably for the exact demographic mentioned, whom then proceeded with (mild) censorship. That's perfect irony.

Just like it's irony when Singapore authorities banned any newspapers stating that the authorities are authoritarian. That's irony by its very definition.

I'm just saying it's irony. I don't care if one agrees with the statement or not, or what is allowed/popular to say on HN. I'm well aware this is a California forum. I now expect downvotes to confirm that it is.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#124

Post by fleddr »

miloignis wrote: post #120
fleddr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

"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!"

Sure there is, it's called "effort". And that's the problem. You can scan directories of users, search based on topic, tags, explore chronological timelines of instances. Manually craft your feed like this, organically.

But I agree that this will not work anymore these days as people are used to algorithms taking care of this.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#125

Post by toofy »

zmgsabst wrote: post #119
shadowgovt wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> …it’s factually true and relevant to the context.

this is factually true?

what exactly is a “coastal media type”?

Re: Protect me from what I want

#126

Post by woooooo »

nostromo wrote: post #40
bitwize wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ahistorical. Germany outlawed Nazi ideology and went 80 years without renazifying; the danger of such was very real after WWII. Marcuse, a German Jew, was considering the real, immediate, terrifying problem of how to prevent another Holocaust.

You're cherry picking. Look at Joseph McCarthy and see a counter-example. He used the exact same logic: to prevent a Soviet-style totalitarian government in the US, we had to be intolerant of everyone left of mainstream Democrats. It destroyed many peoples' lives, most of who were not at all sympathetic to Soviet-style communism. Similar to your example, we could also argue that McCarthy was indeed effective at preve…

Worth adding on that McCarthy knew exactly what he was doing and didn't care. It raised his profile. (Source: master of the senate, caro)

Those who validate dirty pool in pursuit of the greater good will always be enabling people like that.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#127

Post by dsfyu404ed »

nostromo wrote: post #92
viraptor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's some nuance here though, where people do make a distinction between opposing views and harmful content. (likely not everyone, but still) What I mean is, I don't care if someone reads a politician I hate. I care if they read a politician who enables the next pizzagate or worse. Or if they read state sponsored misinformation while thinking it's genuine opinions. And yeah, I do acknowledge there's some o…

This is an age-old panic that happens with each new technology. The printing press was seen as dangerous. Then the phone, then TV, and then the internet. And now it's social media. Each time the arguments are the same. People worry that the "wrong people" will have the ability to share ideas to a broad audience. And yet each time we've shown that more speech is correlated with an expansion of civil rights and liberal…

You can credit the printing press and increase in accessible information to the literate classes with the enlightenment, broader literacy, modern banking and a whole lot of other good things but the backdrop of all these developments was 100-300yr (depending on how you count) of religious and succession wars as some power was taken from the catholic church and the rulers that were closest to it and redistributed to a broader set of local rulers.

It was definitely a step forward for humanity but it wasn't all unicorns and rainbows.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#128

Post by Karrot_Kream »

toofy wrote: post #122
nostromo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an age-old panic that happens with each new technology. The printing press was seen as dangerous. Then the phone, then TV, and then the internet. And now it's social media. Each time the arguments are the same. People worry that the "wrong people" will have the ability to share ideas to a broad audience. And yet each time we've shown that more speech is correlated with an expansion of civil rights and liberal…

> Then the phone, then TV… doesn’t the FCC heavily limit broadcast television and radio who and what behaviors are tolerated? like very heavily, no? and aren’t there limitations on what you can and can’t do with a telephone?

You might be thinking of the Hays Codes which were voluntary or the Fairness Doctrine, which was repealed by the FCC in 1987.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#129

Post by zmgsabst »

toofy wrote: post #125
zmgsabst wrote: post #119

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. 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…

> …it’s factually true and relevant to the context. this is factually true? what exactly is a “coastal media type”?

Large US news companies have their staff largely in areas like California, New York, etc. because US media conglomerates are concentrated in those areas.

Eg, WarnerMedia who is the parent company of CNN — a news agency that’s undergone substantial cuts under a new CEO due to its bias.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#130

Post by toofy »

jrmg wrote: post #76
nostromo wrote: post #8

Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. In their view, they have the "correct opinions" and have not been biased by any algorithms or moderation. Meanwhile, the people that disagree with them are the ones being duped by algorithms, bad moderation, and bad actors. That's why there's a huge censorship movement right now in the…

I don't think that's correct. I think most people are complaining about what they see, and how they feel when using Twitter. I'm basing my opinion on: - The experience of seeing people move to Mastodon and comment on how much more pleasant they find it (I do think this might be fleeting - more because they're seeing only early adopters than because there's intrinsic 'bitterness' missing on Mastodon, at least compared…

> My own experience of Twitter... it’s transformed from a pleasant place…

yep. this is what many of these people just continually fail to understand.

it’s just not fun being around abusive, abrasive, anti-social people constantly.

its not complicated. it’s not scandalous. it’s not shocking. people don’t enjoy being around anti-social rude people.

when they’re given an alternative where the promise is less shitty behaviors (the current iteration seems to be mastodon) then people go there, and this drives a certain group of people crazy.

what we should be asking is why it bothers them so strongly when some people say “i’m personally going to move away from that rude abrasive person over there.”

why are they so insistent that we spend our free time around abrasive assholes? they’re adamant about this. why?

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