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Protect me from what I want

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201–210 of 225 posts

Re: Protect me from what I want

#201
post #79
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dunno. Mostly I don't want to see ads. I liked Facebook when it just told me what my friends were doing. I don't want a "news feed" from a social network. But the news media suffer from a huge punditry to hard facts ratio problem. Today's first-screen news stories on major outlets that didn't begin as a press release or punditry: * Fox: "Remains of missing toddler Quinton Simon found in landfill, mother charged"…

I liked Facebook when it just told me what my friends were doing. I don't want a "news feed" from a social network. I have the completely un-researched and un-backed opinion that Twitter changing its prompt from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?" in 2009 has had an unappreciated, oversized negative affect on the world.

That change in language was likely prompted by a boost in news media relevance for Twitter after the Iran protests against then-leader Ahmedinejad in summer 2009.

Prior to that, I had not heard of Twitter. I was on Facebook and Digg and that was about it.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#202
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also: If your social media feeds are showing you crappy content, you are to blame. Yes and no. Youtube radicalisation / algorithmic extremism is a thing, because the engagement-maximising algorithm has a strong bias for rabbit-holes, kooks, con-artists and incendiary nonsense. The "funnel towards QAnon" that the sibling comment mentioned. Unless you lean hard against it - which first requires awareness of the probl…

The sentiment I've heard a lot is "I'm not clicking on that, it'll take weeks to undo the damage to my recommendations".

How many average users are even aware of this?

It took until 2021 for people to figure out that quote-tweeting politician hot takes to dunk on them, actually helped politicians' reach because Twitter counted it as engagement.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#204
post #138
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say someone living in a specific media bubble. Politico has an article about this with some data: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bub... Pew has done a study recently on this as well: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/07/13/u-s-journal...

neither of these at all show that a "...chorus of coastal media types..." (still waiting for an honest definition of this) are "...asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum."

You asked for the definition of "coastal media" type and got one. You need your own definition of "chorus" or whether it applies in a given context.

I'm sorry you don't think the definition is "honest" -- whatever can that possibly mean? It's the definition. You may not like the word, but even words you don't like have definitions. Even dishonest slurs have a meaning, they are not random sounds, even if you don't like the meaning.

I suspect you are feigning ignorance.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#205
post #171
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing. Looking for subtext is an error on your part. The words they wrote were what they meant.

i wasn't asking for subtext, i was asking so it would be clear and _not_ vagueness. i asked specifically so we could remove subtext.

You asked explicitly what the other person was implying. If you ask that and then say that you weren't asking about any subtext, then one of us has some misunderstanding about the meaning of these words—and that person is not me.

(This comment by me, for example, is definitely imbued with subtext.)

Separately, put some effort into your attempts to have a discussion, please. I.e., beyond the bare minimum that it takes to type one or two sentences and press "reply" without giving it much more thought.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#206
post #164

I completely agree with the article. There is a vast soup of user generated content that could be displayed and there's always an algorithm of some sort employed, even if that algorithm is "show me only content from people I explicitly follow and sort it chronologically". If you wanted to give the social media companies the benefit of the doubt, you would say "they just want to have a feed that the user enjoys and th…

I think this “marketplace of algorithms” idea (aka algorithmic choice) is a bit naive. Imagine using an app for the first time. What algorithm do you choose? Now remove your technical context and imagine reading through the top 10 algorithms to make a choice of which one to select. Twitter actually has quite a few knobs for curation (eg you can apply Regexps to filter content), and Id be very interested in knowing ho…

Its very easy, you have a configuration setting with the list of algorithms and a short textual description. Users try them and quickly change off ones they don't like till they settle on one they like best.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#207
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“What calls for censorship?” “Oh, those calls I already knew about, but pretended not to?” This is why I think you’re being disingenuous. Your comment about misinformation ignores that what they call “misinformation” is merely information they don’t like — eg, when they censored the Hunter Biden story during an election, while calling for Republicans and news outlets (eg, NY Post) who told the truth to be deplatforme…

We should be very skeptical of claims of "censorship" and "deplatforming" from a corporation that literally has its own press and can manufacture its own platform.

Twitter chose to block the Post's story as factually incorrect because they were skeptical of it. That's their choice, much as the Post can choose not to trust a source. Twitter were wrong, but media outlets are sometimes wrong (for example, https://nypost.com/tag/correction/).

The Post is right to criticize Twitter's error, but any claims that Twitter lacked the right to make that call is, well, chipping at the rights the Post itself enjoys of control over its own pages. The Post can't force Twitter to run their stories any more than anyone should have the right to force the Post itself to quash the laptop story; both editorial authorities stem from the same freedom of the press.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#208
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Range doesn't make something a public forum. Generally, control of the space by the public (or their delegates) does. A letter to the editor of the New York Times has the potential to be seen by 343,000 households (a number down from 1.3 million). This never made the New York Times' letters page a public forum. Twitter, for example, was at least previously accountable to shareholders. Now, it's very much a private fo…

And New York Times have competition in the space. There is no meaningful competition to what Twitter or Facebook does. If you stifle voices on that platform majority of the country won't hear them. Them not being technically public is the problem in itself , they function like public forum for opinions but one that is manipulated by corporation.

Twitter is competition to Facebook, Facebook to Twitter, and as we're observing thanks to Twitter coming under new management, Mastodon is competition to Twitter also.

> If you stifle voices on that platform majority of the country won't hear them

This is technically correct (the best kind of correct) but doesn't imply either a legal or moral responsibility on Twitter's part. Freedom of the press has never meant one is obliged to let others use one's press; in fact, it means the opposite.

If people want a channel more unbiased than Twitter [1], they should build it. The Musk purchase has shown how fragile the bird really is when the users lose confidence in it.

You note that them not technically being public is a problem. I think you raise an interesting question: what would a technically public forum look like and who would build it? If the government built it, do we imagine it would run the Post story, or would those in charge of it squelch it because the story is harmful to the active regime? It is, perhaps, best for the government to be out of the business of editorial work; leave that to the press.

(... and if one wants a government-subsidized communication channel that isn't edited by someone else: that's the Internet and we already have it. Then one's goal to combat Twitter becomes building a service as easy-to-use as Twitter that everyone can use; make the press itself as free as possible. I recommend supporting the Mastodon project if that's one's goal. Or put effort into making one of the many, many blogging software packages of the world ever more turnkey. The way to maximize freedom of the press is to maximize presses, not constrain how the freedom can be used).

[1] long experience suggests to me what you actually get when you try this experiment is a channel with different biases, but by all means.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#209
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a complete strawman. I'm muslim, born in a muslim country, and am living in the west yet I absolutely agree with the person you are replying to. Muslims are targeted by hate speech constantly, and there was a period in time (like, 3-4 years ago) when that was particularly intense. Much more so than almost any other minority, and in a much more concrete way (christchurch, travel bans, secret prisons, etc) Yet,…

This is just arguing via slippery-slope fallacy. You're pretending that action against one type of speech would implicitly allow action against others without any due consideration or decision making process. What were you prevented from saying "because it was hate speech" with no extra deliberation? It's almost like the content matters .

It's not slippery slope when it literally happened to muslims not even a decade ago. What are you talking about? You are ignoring most of my comment. I'm not pretending anything, you literally used the same terrorism scare that was used not even a decade ago against Muslims. You are the one arguing for some sort of slippery slope, where if we allowed more free speech we would end up with terrorism and deaths. Your entire premise is based on a slippery slope between free speech and "stochastic terrorism".

Content does matter, in an ideal world. But in reality that type of "consideration" will be weaponised against minorities. You are arguing against yourself when you say that we just have to have "due consideration and a good decision making process" to decide what would be allowed. When said process will inherently be controlled and steered by the majority, in any democratic country. It's the type of argument that usually comes from privileged white people who have never experienced what "due consideration" means. It's a completely ridiculous premise, because it does not fit reality. Not the reality of most minorities at least.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright violations. Beheading videos. "Pornography" or pseudo-"pornography" involving minors. Direct threats of violence towards individuals or groups. Deepfakes generated without consent. Etc. Etc. > None of those examples are "abhorrent" as much as "complicated". Uhh, if you say so. They are your words after all, not mine. > So is violent revolutionary religious politics the boundary? I think the parent comment…

> Uhh, if you say so. They are your words after all, not mine Was there a particular reason you ignored the elaboration and re-quoted the original comment? And if there is something you want to express about it please do. This is kind of a meaningless retort. > I think the parent commenter's point was that you were both pretty much on the same page as far as being fine with illegal content I don't remember a due proc…

Yes there is a reason I used your original comment, it was an attempt to hold you accountable for your words after you backtracked. The actions you mentioned in your original remark was more along the lines of abhorrent than questionable and I wanted to make that clear.
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