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Protect me from what I want

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Re: Protect me from what I want

#141

Post by shadowgovt »

fleddr wrote: post #93

If one was to be a purist, you'd remove the boost option. With a boost you want to increase the visibility of a post by somebody else. Probably because you agree with it. Something has to happen with that boost signal, otherwise boosting is pointless. Hence, in some way a boosted or often boosted post is promoted over ones that are not boosted. As the boosted post gets more eye balls, it will get even more boosts. No…

Boost is a shortcut for "re-toot by copying and pasting all the contents and a link to the original" with some convenience sugar on the timelines.

If boost were removed, users would re-invent it.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#142

Post by zmgsabst »

shadowgovt wrote: post #137
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…

People sometimes down-signal a comment because it's not the type of comment they want to see on HN for reasons other than factual content. Prognosticating the zeitgeist is a fraught enterprise, but in this case, I'd guess tone twanged a lot of nerves. The first two sentences of comment guidance [ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ] are "Be kind. Don't be snarky." There's a vast Internet that lacks a ru…

No post body was provided.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#143

Post by toofy »

zmgsabst wrote: post #140
toofy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you expand on this a bit?

In what way? My experience of WarnerMedia is that they have politics among their staff reflective of the cities they’re in, but which may not reflect the overall demographics of the US. Eg, their Seattle office had politics at place in Seattle — but those are far left of most US politics. That bias impacts the choices made about content. This matches other peoples experience and apparent business decisions — eg, the…

> in what way

expand on how this in any way shows that a "...chorus of coastal media types..." (again, still waiting for a definition of this) are somehow factually "...asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum"

Re: Protect me from what I want

#144

Post by zmgsabst »

toofy wrote: post #143
zmgsabst wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way? My experience of WarnerMedia is that they have politics among their staff reflective of the cities they’re in, but which may not reflect the overall demographics of the US. Eg, their Seattle office had politics at place in Seattle — but those are far left of most US politics. That bias impacts the choices made about content. This matches other peoples experience and apparent business decisions — eg, the…

> in what way expand on how this in any way shows that a "...chorus of coastal media types..." (again, still waiting for a definition of this) are somehow factually "...asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum"

Sorry — I didn’t realize you were being disingenuous.

I don’t believe you’re sincerely unaware of the calls to censor misinformation in media; and we literally just explained which media companies based in politically biased bubbles we were discussing.

Have a great evening!

Re: Protect me from what I want

#145

Post by pixl97 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #64
stickfigure wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come now. I constantly hear this concern from my friends (almost exclusively left-of-center). And they aren't totally wrong? I have a qanon-er in my family; she's carefully curated her media sources to guarantee a pure, steady stream of nutjob garbage. The thing is, censoring twitter/facebook/youtube makes no difference - these people will find their fringe no matter how hard they have to look. At least on youtube…

> these people will find their fringe no matter how hard they have to look This is likely true. Most of the discussion around "the algorithm" is mainly centered around whether there's something about the way the major online sharing channels are selecting what to present that acts as a funnel towards QAnon and other radical theories, not whether people already dedicated to finding such information can find it.

YT: "you searched WWII", recommended video is "how to become a nazi in 2022"

I had to click do not recommend this content on a ton of videos.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#146

Post by shadowgovt »

zmgsabst wrote: post #142
shadowgovt wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People sometimes down-signal a comment because it's not the type of comment they want to see on HN for reasons other than factual content. Prognosticating the zeitgeist is a fraught enterprise, but in this case, I'd guess tone twanged a lot of nerves. The first two sentences of comment guidance [ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ] are "Be kind. Don't be snarky." There's a vast Internet that lacks a ru…

Quoted post unavailable.

I think whether "be kind" is at odds with, or a criteria of, an intellectual discourse is left as an exercise for (possibly literally, in this case) the reader.

One could imagine a smart person can figure out how to phrase a thought in a way palatable to an audience, or at least respectful of the notion that different individuals have different life experience.

If failure to do so gets one's comment "censored" out of an intellectual discourse, perhaps that is a feature not a bug.

When I was younger, I used to believe "The pursuit of truth is so important that even truth coarsely spoken should not be quieted." As I've gotten older, I've come to observe that more often than not, people conflate coarse speaking with truth when the two are more likely to be divorced from each other than walking hand-in-hand. And the ability to smooth a harsh truth is a virtue... If for no other reason than most people read for entertainment, not truth-seeking, so the important facts are likelier to land in their minds and germinate if they aren't coated in a protein shell of personal attack language.

But again, prognosticating downvotes is a fraught enterprise (and also recommended against by the guidelines, so I shall say no more on the topic).

Re: Protect me from what I want

#147

Post by shadowgovt »

pixl97 wrote: post #145
shadowgovt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these people will find their fringe no matter how hard they have to look This is likely true. Most of the discussion around "the algorithm" is mainly centered around whether there's something about the way the major online sharing channels are selecting what to present that acts as a funnel towards QAnon and other radical theories, not whether people already dedicated to finding such information can find it.

YT: "you searched WWII", recommended video is "how to become a nazi in 2022" I had to click do not recommend this content on a ton of videos.

Precisely. If I had to hazard a guess, I think their algorithm is hyper-optimizing for linkages, and when linkages are broad but tenuous, it hyper-optimizes for the ones with only the slightest dominance.

Hypothetically: all sorts of people are interested in the history of World War II... it's a big war, it defined politics for over half a century, and it's taught every year in the history classes of at least a hundred nations. So you're looking at a topic with hundreds of "also likes" connections but no strong winner.

Perhaps there is a 0.000001% chance that if you watch a WWII video, your next video will be one on modern Nazism (including recruitment videos). I wonder if YouTube's algorithm boosts that small fluctuation in a sea of noise into a single recommendation result (or even grabs the top 5, but the signal is so noisy that this one still shows up in that top 5)?

Re: Protect me from what I want

#148

Post by toofy »

zmgsabst wrote: post #144
toofy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in what way expand on how this in any way shows that a "...chorus of coastal media types..." (again, still waiting for a definition of this) are somehow factually "...asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum"

Sorry — I didn’t realize you were being disingenuous. I don’t believe you’re sincerely unaware of the calls to censor misinformation in media; and we literally just explained which media companies based in politically biased bubbles we were discussing. Have a great evening!

im trying to understand what is being argued here.

the person i responded to said it was a fact that "a chorus of coastal media types" are "asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum"

the comment said this was a fact. and i still don't think thats a fact.

now in this comment you say they're sending "calls to censor misinformation in media"--then sure. are you implying that journalists should be forced to report misinformation? and if they choose _not_ to report misinformation, they're censoring?

Re: Protect me from what I want

#149

Post by XorNot »

MrPatan wrote: post #98
tpm wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably should read Popper before dismissing his ideas. If you don't want to, it's fine, but in that case it's hard to take your dismissal seriously. Like more or less anything real, this is not a simple binary problem.

"...for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument..." That's Popper. Does that sound like "we can't let people speak"? Or would that actually be more in the lines of "we should expose their followers to the arguments their leaders don't want them to see"?

People who don't fear physical violence make this argument all the time. They don't know why it's wrong, because again, they do not fear violence. Speech is just things on the internet, that aren't actually real.

They don't get doxxed, they can't be identified in a crowd, they can blend with whatever the majority is.

It is very easy to defend "free speech absolutism" when you're not the target of hate speech. When you're not the target of harassment. When no one is declaring that your rights should be removed, that violence against you or one of your group memberships should be acceptable.

"We just need to have good arguments" is something said by a person who's participation in the discourse is entirely voluntary, and who's stakes aren't "I have a right to make decisions about my own body", "I have a right to live unharassed in my private life", "I am equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

"Free speech absolutism" is something only ever advocated for by people who don't have to care about what that speech is advocating. Who have the privilege to turn a blind eye to stochastic terrorism, and will argue out one side of their mouth that "police have no duty to protect you from crime before it happens" while arguing out the other "well a few bad actors should be dealt with by the police".

Meanwhile, in the real world - bomb threats to children's hospitals[1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/31/boston-child...

Re: Protect me from what I want

#150

Post by themacguffinman »

floxy wrote: post #139
KaiserPro wrote: post #42

Instagram, youtube & tiktok are a reflection of what you click on. But, to make them nice, you need to give them both negative and positive feedback at the very early stage. If you see something that you don't like? Don't ignore it, hit the "..." and select the "get tae fuk" option. Otherwise it'll keep trying that genre of what ever is popular with a similar persona to yours. The problem is, the "I don't like this"…

>Youtube...Don't ignore it, hit the "..." and select the "get tae fuk" option. Is there a way to downvote something on the Youtube "home" page? Before you would click on it to play it? There is a vertical ellipsis, but the only options under that are "Add to Queue" and "Share".

I'd guess it's because you're not logged in. There are three options if you're logged in:

- Not interested

- Don't recommend channel

- Report

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