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Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

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Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#151
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They couldn't ruin HN because of the system of voting, flagging, and high karma requirement for downvoting. And this applies in general, the only working way to moderate is distributing the effort between users who are interested in the final result. Ideally big sites would not have one single system for moderation, but multiple lists so that if two groups keep flagging each other they get separated and don't see oth…

You haven't seen how the bots have ruined similar subreddits. They either hijack old accounts with karma, or they create accounts and age them manually, farming karma by reposting content or hopping onto a repost and reposting the top comment from the original post. Being able to sway opinion is big business for them and they are always coming up with new ways to do it while seeming as genuine.

Good point about bots, i am happy that hn has separate protection against them and other methods of self-upvoting.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are interpreting this as a political statement. Threatening to bomb a country is threatening violence, this is against the terms of service: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules to quote: > you may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people Like the law, it either applies equally to everyone, or its does not apply. > You don't get to impose pacifist foreign policy on…

Bombing another country is a legitimate act of the state. It's no more an endorsement of "violence" than wishing for the arrest of a notorious serial killer is an act of "kidnapping". Conflating legitimate acts of the state with extralegal personal criminality is a political statement. If a site's terms of service prohibit endorsing legitimate acts of the state, that TOS is a political statement.

> Bombing another country is a legitimate act of the state

yes, it can be.

> It's no more an endorsement of "violence"

War _is_ violence.

> conflating legitimate acts of the state with extralegal personal criminality

Well, you're saying that I equate the president's tweets as his personal threats. That's orthogonal to extralegal. It is also irrelevant, for the reasons I'm about to lay out:

The Terms of Service are the basis of a contract for using the site[1]. Unless there is a specific clause for "legitimate acts of state" then its a binary choice. Choosing not to implement them equally is a political choice.

look, its perfectly possibly to not agree with a person, but insist that legal/procedural process is adhered to. The president is a person like any other, and subject to the same legal/procedural process as the rest of us.

[1] well usually.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are interpreting this as a political statement. Threatening to bomb a country is threatening violence, this is against the terms of service: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules to quote: > you may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people Like the law, it either applies equally to everyone, or its does not apply. > You don't get to impose pacifist foreign policy on…

Bombing another country is a legitimate act of the state. It's no more an endorsement of "violence" than wishing for the arrest of a notorious serial killer is an act of "kidnapping". Conflating legitimate acts of the state with extralegal personal criminality is a political statement. If a site's terms of service prohibit endorsing legitimate acts of the state, that TOS is a political statement.

> Bombing another country is a legitimate act of the state.

You're wading into deep waters here. What makes a state's actions "legitimate"? There are a lot of theories on this.

One of these theories says that a state's legitimacy and sovereignty rests in the will of the people it governs. For example, the U.S declaration of independence states in it's first paragraph "Governments ... deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed". Accordingly, if a state does a thing, and enough people ruled under that state believe it's illegitimate, then it is indeed illegitimate.

Under this principle, criticizing the actions of those that govern you is not unpatriotic or "a political statement" as you say, it's an integral part of government itself.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#154
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The citation by Gwern mentions a number of traits which could plausibly be improved 5 SD, like height (which would be +20 inches -- ie, a 7'5" man).

Height has nothing to do with intelligence, which is what the discussion thread is about.

I think pointing to evidence that many traits are susceptible to +5 SD increases by genetic screening is reasonable in the context a discussion about intelligence, even though +5 SD change in intelligence hasn't been demonstrated.

+5 SD change in intelligence (ie, average IQ of 175) would be amazing, but it's not obviously impossible. So it's "on the table" in the sense that cities on Mars are "on the table". It's not prohibited by any known laws of nature, and some experts are working on it.

There are lots of actual lies in circulation, so I encourage you to reserve the use of the word for things that are demonstrably false, not just ambitious claims that one might be skeptical of.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#155

To me it is fallacy of bigtech to misclassify moderation problem as just a typical ML problem. Hence a false belief that ML models, standard approaches that they use for their other ML problems, and cheap annotators can solve it. What, I think, can be done: 1. Don't just hire expensive PhDs and hope that algorithms can correctly classify racism, etc. Hire an expensive product visionary who can build holistic approach…

I'm reading the new book on the failings of pure ML based AI by Gary Marcus and Ernie Davis (Rebooting AI) that makes a similar point

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#156
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Height has nothing to do with intelligence, which is what the discussion thread is about.

I think pointing to evidence that many traits are susceptible to +5 SD increases by genetic screening is reasonable in the context a discussion about intelligence, even though +5 SD change in intelligence hasn't been demonstrated. +5 SD change in intelligence (ie, average IQ of 175) would be amazing, but it's not obviously impossible. So it's "on the table" in the sense that cities on Mars are "on the table". It's no…

That was never shown, it is you who are stretching what can reasonably be claimed with basically no evidence supporting such nonsense. None of what you said was in the original source.

Stretching the truth like this is lying, whether you like it or not.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#157
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole post repeats everything I've been saying while also threatening me with the ban hammer. I am saying that you are missing the big picture. There are much bigger problems here than school yard insults that go unaddressed here, as mentioned multiple times. I would take impoliteness over toxic ideology backed by fake news any time. Listen to George Carlin much? This whole line of thinking exemplifies why tech…

You're assuming that we read everything that gets posted here. That's far from the case—there's far too much—so it's a non sequitur to conclude that if a bad comment shows up unmoderated, moderators are somehow allowing it. The likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. Software can do some things, but I don't know how to write software that determines whether comments are right or wrong and kills the wrong ones…

Your whole post is one long and droning denial. I didn't have to go back a year to find an example. That's just what HN gave me the fastest. There are plenty of examples. Maybe you should try looking harder yourself.

HN has a problem with fake news. So does Facebook. And Twitter, and so forth.

Instead of saying "we can do better", you've taken the route of complete and utter denial. And in a kind of off the cuff, blame shifting way.

Just like so many other tech bros in SV. Completely unprofessional and unhinged when faced with real issues. You're enjoying the club, I guess.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#158
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that we read everything that gets posted here. That's far from the case—there's far too much—so it's a non sequitur to conclude that if a bad comment shows up unmoderated, moderators are somehow allowing it. The likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. Software can do some things, but I don't know how to write software that determines whether comments are right or wrong and kills the wrong ones…

Your whole post is one long and droning denial. I didn't have to go back a year to find an example. That's just what HN gave me the fastest. There are plenty of examples. Maybe you should try looking harder yourself. HN has a problem with fake news. So does Facebook. And Twitter, and so forth. Instead of saying "we can do better", you've taken the route of complete and utter denial. And in a kind of off the cuff, bla…

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Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#159
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that we read everything that gets posted here. That's far from the case—there's far too much—so it's a non sequitur to conclude that if a bad comment shows up unmoderated, moderators are somehow allowing it. The likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. Software can do some things, but I don't know how to write software that determines whether comments are right or wrong and kills the wrong ones…

Your whole post is one long and droning denial. I didn't have to go back a year to find an example. That's just what HN gave me the fastest. There are plenty of examples. Maybe you should try looking harder yourself. HN has a problem with fake news. So does Facebook. And Twitter, and so forth. Instead of saying "we can do better", you've taken the route of complete and utter denial. And in a kind of off the cuff, bla…

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