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“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

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Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#231
post #24
post #2

Delay decisions, set up a committee... wow, that was fast, he's already becoming Jack. [EDIT:] The problem is that a "council with widely diverse viewpoints" is not going to come to consensus on moderation. They're inevitably going to disagree, just like in politics. So then what? How is lack of consensus not the inevitable outcome of a widely diverse committee?

> How is lack of consensus not the inevitable outcome of a widely diverse committee? That sounds fine to me if there’s actually a diverse set of view points. Getting censored should require a wide swathe of agreement. Not just a vocal minority.

A whole swathe of agreement will be difficult if your diverse viewpoints include racists and bigots.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#232
post #39

So if I go off about how awful the Jews and the gays are, is that a "diverse viewpoint"?

Why not? In my country, these opinions are uttered so openly and commonly that it does not even raise an eyebrow. Infact these are cherished religious beliefs, even. Yet, there are viewpoints that would be considered so utterly innocent in the west as to be as unnoticeable as punctuation, that have led to actual mob violence and lynchings, and I am talking this decade, not some old era bygones. Such speech is conside…

Yeah it’s almost like moderation is a really hard problem that requires serious people to think deeply about it, not something that can be solved with vague platitudes about freedom.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#233
Potentially of intellectual interest: Some people here might be wondering about speech that is "harmful," with the famous quote about "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater." That quote from the Supreme Court is commonly used to justify why there need to be restraints on free speech.

This is actually a popular misconception. The decision where "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater" was from was actually overturned in almost entirety in Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969. And even then, it was only an analogy, and never actually was the law. You actually, theoretically, CAN yell fire in a crowded theater. Websites on both sides of the isle have admitted it is a terrible analogy for defending censoring certain content for being potentially harmful. It is, quite literally, a legal myth. A legal myth that still affects our Congress today while they examine how to prevent the spread of misinformation [1].

https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/why-falsely-claiming-its-ill...

https://reason.com/2022/10/27/yes-you-can-yell-fire-in-a-cro...

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-f...

https://www.whalenlawoffice.com/legal-mythbusting-series-yel...

https://www.thefire.org/you-can-shout-fire-in-a-burning-thea...

[1] For an example (out of many) of why regulating misinformation is legally almost impossible, see United States vs Alvarez, which ruled that the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 (which criminalized faking having a military honor) is legally protected speech and the act was a violation of the constitution. Since then it has been extended with a new 2013 act which requires intent to gain something by fraud, which hasn't been struck down (yet).

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#234
post #24
post #2

Delay decisions, set up a committee... wow, that was fast, he's already becoming Jack. [EDIT:] The problem is that a "council with widely diverse viewpoints" is not going to come to consensus on moderation. They're inevitably going to disagree, just like in politics. So then what? How is lack of consensus not the inevitable outcome of a widely diverse committee?

> How is lack of consensus not the inevitable outcome of a widely diverse committee? That sounds fine to me if there’s actually a diverse set of view points. Getting censored should require a wide swathe of agreement. Not just a vocal minority.

How do you decide which diverse view points are worthy of including and which aren't? Do we need a neo-nazi, an ISIS supporter, a 9/11 truther, a creationist, and a flat earther on the committee for the sake or intellectual diversity? I guess people will want conservatives on the committee, but are you happy with a normie Reagan republican or do we have to add a QAnoner and JFK Jr guy for the sake of representation?

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#235
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have to do that manually for each tweet. The setting isn't persistent. Anyway, you can also make your account protected, so that nobody can see or reply to your tweets unless you approve. However, I would say it's not fair to claim that "you are using Twitter incorrectly" if you don't make your account protected, or if you don't restrict replies to every tweet you write. Even if you restrict replies, peop…

It makes it a social network of your social network. I don't see what's antisocial about that. How can someone quote tweet dunk you if your tweets are private?

How do you even acquire an online social network unless you use Twitter "incorrectly" according to the OP?

> How can someone quote tweet dunk you if your tweets are private?

They can't. Taking your account private was supposed to be the reductio ad absurdum conclusion of using Twitter "correctly". I mean that if your account is still public, but you restrict replies, people can still QT.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#236

It’s amazing to me that the HN hive mind has decided that somehow one of the most successful people on the planet, who’s built a successful electric car company, a private rocketry company and was part of the people who laid foundation for a “payment system for the internet” is somehow doomed to fail in his new venture. The excitement for this new move seems not just low here but overwhelmingly negative. “It can’t be…

What happened? The "pretty smart billionaire" started calling anyone who slighted him a pedophile. The "pretty smart billionaire" continues to commit fraud with false promises over at Tesla. The "pretty smart billionaire" seems to have a disdain for his lowly peasant employees.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#237
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be, if Elon implements effective agent-based clustering, such as with K-Means Clustering. "Solving" content moderation is a losing battle -- there is no way to humanly moderate anything at the rate it can be produced, and Elon knows this. It's insane, so he probably won't do it. But, allowing content to be produced, but making sure no real person ever sees it, until the content producer earns their way into "…

oh no, not k-means clustering

My life was going fine until my tweet got too close to Agent K's centroid.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#238

With facebook dying, twitter getting bought out, reddit's eutrophication, and tiktok on the rise, it seems like things have unsettled quite a bit The next couple years are going to be very interesting. Facebook will probably get bought out or something. For twitter, I can't really say. Reddit is probably going to become even more repulsive (and hopefully gets replaced). Hopefully tiktok goes away also :/ Also interes…

“Eutrophication is the process by which an entire body of water, or parts of it, becomes progressively enriched with minerals and nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. It has also been defined as "nutrient-induced increase in phytoplankton productivity" What is happening to Reddit?

Toxic algal blooms like crimson tide can tend to choke off and kill all other life in a body of water that experiences eutrophication. It's actually such a regular thing in the Salton Sea from nearby fertilizer runoff that you could drive by and see rotting fish carcasses littering the shoreline. Probably means something analogous to that.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#239
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Internet would have us believe that civil war is imminent. The person who could arguably be considered the third most powerful politician in the US just had their own broken into and their spouse assaulted in a suspected act of domestic terrorism. I wouldn't say "imminent" but if you don't think the possibility is at least somewhere on the table I would consider that being naive.

In 2020 in Ottawa, a man rammed through the gates of the Prime Minister's residence with a vehicle. He was in body armour and carrying multiple firearms. He claims he just wanted to meet with the PM, who thankfully wasn't home at the time. Is Canada on the verge of civil war? Multiple US presidents have been assassinated! Political violence is shocking but not actually so rare that we should latch on to any specific…

In Arizona, bands of visibly-armed thugs are parking themselves around mail-in voting points taking videos and pictures...and even following people in their cars to see where they go. There's a 75 foot distance law, but that doesn't mean much.

What happens if the also-armed liberals get sick of this crap, and the confrontations escalate?

It's not civil war, but it can lead to ugly conflicts.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#240

It’s amazing to me that the HN hive mind has decided that somehow one of the most successful people on the planet, who’s built a successful electric car company, a private rocketry company and was part of the people who laid foundation for a “payment system for the internet” is somehow doomed to fail in his new venture. The excitement for this new move seems not just low here but overwhelmingly negative. “It can’t be…

There is still animus between musk and certain groups of thought. Certain people always see the negative and worst case scenario. Others see opportunities with various levels of risk aversion.

Clearly Musk is in the latter camp.

I said earlier that twitter has been hemorrhaging money to tune of nearly 2 billion over the last 2.5 years.

While possible, its likely that Musk can't possibly do worse than the former leadership.

Obviously it is a gamble, but what isn't a gamble? And what do such men gain without nothing ventured?

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