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Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

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Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#141

Post by theknocker »

somehnrdr14726 wrote: post #63
keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

One difference is that Twitter, Facebook, Google, are not governments and have no real authority over you. They only have the power you give them by choosing to stay in their ecosystem. Therefore it's a strain to refer to them as officials. If you're worried about them _becoming_ officials, then act now. Leave these platforms and convince others to do the same.

This post would have seemed a lot less naive 10 years ago.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#142

Post by sandworm101 »

onion2k wrote: post #95
keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The problem is very simple. Unless social media companies either stop moderating content, which will kill their profits because advertisers will run away, or pay people to moderate everything, which will kill their profit because it'd be wildly expensive, they'll continue to do the half-assed version of moderating they do now…

>> stop moderating content, which will kill their profits because advertisers will run away,

One common trend for decades has been that "conservative" advertisers quickly acquiesce once they see that their customers do not share such values. Once upon a time major brands wouldn't go anywhere near sexualized content. Now coke/pepsi/ford will pay millions to get their into a Miley Cyrus video. Once upon a time major brands didn't want to be associated with "shock jock" radio hosts. Then Howard Stern made that acceptable and they all jumped on board. Advertisers today don't want to be associated with unmoderated websites. That too will change as such websites become a norm.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#143

Post by cat199 »

koonsolo wrote: post #123
keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

Alright, let's say you get appointed at Twitter to clean up this mess. You get full authority to do whatever needs to be done. How would you solve this? Your solution will be criticized by the other HN-ers here :D.

document the filtering/ranking widgets and give the users their own knobs to control them.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#144

Post by koonsolo »

pgrote wrote: post #136
koonsolo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, let's say you get appointed at Twitter to clean up this mess. You get full authority to do whatever needs to be done. How would you solve this? Your solution will be criticized by the other HN-ers here :D.

>Alright, let's say you get appointed at Twitter to clean up this mess. Announce a sale of intellectual and physical assets and close down. I would realize the company is a negative drain on society.

So basically some other platform will take over?

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#145

Post by koonsolo »

dumbfounder wrote: post #133
koonsolo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, let's say you get appointed at Twitter to clean up this mess. You get full authority to do whatever needs to be done. How would you solve this? Your solution will be criticized by the other HN-ers here :D.

It should be criticized, why do you imply that is a negative? AI is just a tool, and it can be used incorrectly. In this case we have a policy that seems to be applied incorrectly. That is a simple problem to solve, require more review, or the ability to escalate. Don't make such decisions "final".

Criticing is easy when you don't have to provide any solutions.

Expecting Twitter not to have their hands full with these kinds of issues is very naive. It's always a question how to spend your very limited resources.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#146

Post by matoro »

keiferski wrote: post #139
koonsolo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, let's say you get appointed at Twitter to clean up this mess. You get full authority to do whatever needs to be done. How would you solve this? Your solution will be criticized by the other HN-ers here :D.

Hmm. Obviously I don't have a perfect solution, but I've often thought that a "tagging" system would work better than a "moderation" system. It would work like this: by default, nothing is moderated. Instead, every post/tweet/etc. has to be labeled by the user. There can be an auto-suggestion feature to make it a quick process. Then, other users can choose which tags they want to view or hide. If you don't want to se…

Tumblr's tagging system is quite similar to this - you can "follow" tags or "blacklist" them and most people do tag pretty extensively - and it allows people to get away with some things that would be banned on twitter, like gore blogs. On the other hand, Twitter allows nudity, while Tumblr does not, and they both still ban for "hate speech."

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#147

Post by Retric »

sandworm101 wrote: post #142
onion2k wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The problem is very simple. Unless social media companies either stop moderating content, which will kill their profits because advertisers will run away, or pay people to moderate everything, which will kill their profit because it'd be wildly expensive, they'll continue to do the half-assed version of moderating they do now…

>> stop moderating content, which will kill their profits because advertisers will run away, One common trend for decades has been that "conservative" advertisers quickly acquiesce once they see that their customers do not share such values. Once upon a time major brands wouldn't go anywhere near sexualized content. Now coke/pepsi/ford will pay millions to get their into a Miley Cyrus video. Once upon a time major br…

Sure, 1922 Coke advertising used women in a swimsuit, that’s about as sexualized as a Miley Cyrus video relative to the time period. If anything their very consistent in targeting various segments over time.

That said, US social norms get more and less restrictive over time. Dueling for example used to be perfectly legal as was harsh physical punishment for children. What we think of as progress is arguably just increasing similarity with our current views. Continue the same mutability and 2200 might seem much worse to us than today is, but they would similarly think of right now as unbearable.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#149

Post by jtbayly »

4ggr0 wrote: post #86
ceejayoz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would anyone get banned for being pro euthanasia? Because it's explicitly against the rules. "You may not promote or encourage suicide or self-harm." https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/glorifying-se...

Euthanasia is an official, assisted(!) suicide. We could technically label it as a plain suicide, but that's not what it is. It's an official procedure, assisted by doctors, and not allowed spontaneously for everyone. That would be like saying a limb amputation is illegal to talk about on Twitter, because amputating a limb equals to self-harm.

Euthanasia is killing somebody out of "mercy." It does not require the agreement or desire of the person being killed.

It is definitely a step beyond physician-assisted suicide, and the two should not be confused or used interchangeably, though both are morally repugnant.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#150

Post by keiferski »

matoro wrote: post #146
keiferski wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Obviously I don't have a perfect solution, but I've often thought that a "tagging" system would work better than a "moderation" system. It would work like this: by default, nothing is moderated. Instead, every post/tweet/etc. has to be labeled by the user. There can be an auto-suggestion feature to make it a quick process. Then, other users can choose which tags they want to view or hide. If you don't want to se…

Tumblr's tagging system is quite similar to this - you can "follow" tags or "blacklist" them and most people do tag pretty extensively - and it allows people to get away with some things that would be banned on twitter, like gore blogs. On the other hand, Twitter allows nudity, while Tumblr does not, and they both still ban for "hate speech."

Right, it seems pretty implementable from a technical perspective. The hard part is having a company put I disagree with what you say, but will defend your right to say it in their company philosophy.
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