Reading these headlines is like living in a dystopian waking nightmare. This is not remotely at all the role that Twitter or any other Silicon Valley tech company should play in society.
By growing as large as they have, and by building automated systems to amplify content to mass audiences, they have acquired that role. It is unfortunate that their control over their responsibility is unilateral and undemocratic. But at their scale, if they chose not to try and assess the accuracy of information, but instead to blindly amplify it based on engagement metrics, that is also a political choice.
Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election
301–310 of 371 posts
Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Literally nobody was buying that Iraq had WMD. You must be very young, because this is totally false. Both political parties, every network and every newspaper was not only uniform in their belief and assertion that Iraq had WMD, they ridiculed and attacked everyone who denied this falsehood. > Israel, Russia, Britain, China, and even France held positions similar to that of the United States; France's President Jac…
From my perspective in Europe in 2002/2003: There was an incredibly harsh and damaging debate on this matter. Back then I was on the losing leftist side. We watched the Fox News broadcasts in horror. Nowadays I find myself on the rightish side. Fox News is still insane though. In my mind the current equivalent of the outsized influence of 2002/2003 Fox News programming is the political influence of employees of SV co…
Maybe employees have power in Europe, but here in the United States employees have almost no power. Employment is at-will, and anyone who causes trouble for management is summarily fired.
Even management itself can be summarily fired by the board of directors of publicly owned corporations, like Twitter. Jack Dorsey is answerable to the stockholders, and also to the advertisers who generate Twitter's revenue. Not to the employees, who could all be eliminated and replaced if necessary. Jack too could be eliminated and replaced if necessary.
The only exception is Mark Zuckerberg, who set it up so that he has total voting control over Facebook and is untouchable by the stockholders. But that also means Zuck is untouchable by the employees.
The idea that SV corporations are run by the employees is a strange one.
Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are nuking them right now (temporarily). It's not just being discussed, it's being done . But most of the time people like getting content recommended. It's what consumers want.
Consumers also want cocaine, but that doesn't mean you get to sell it to them with impunity.
The appropriate situation for those that want cocaine is something similar to the rules around purchasing/possessing/using alcohol.
From an economic standpoint (increased tax revenue, reduced spending on "enforcement" and incarceration, increased economic output because fewer people are in prison, etc.) and a societal standpoint (more resources available to the 2-5% of folks who end up with dependency problems, reduced property crime, not harming communities with significant numbers of residents being pulled out of the community and incarcerated, etc.)
As such, there's no good reason for any mind altering substances to be illegal. Rather, they should be regulated and taxed appropriately.
Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election
#304Twitter keeps running themselves into a trap, and it is unbelievable to me that they don't see it: they cannot be the arbiters of truth. It will not work, because inevitably they'll miss something, and then people will assume that that missed thing is true. The solution is NOT to do censorship based on truth. The entire system needs to be unreliable, because it is unreliable. People need to read things on twitter (an…
But there's no way to improve human behavior on BS detection. Certainly not this close to an election. What is one to do in an environment where a ridiculous number of people believe that the president is fighting a secret pedophile sex ring? It certainly doesn't seem to be a problem the free market of ideas is addressing successfully.
If this doesn't work, they can remove the button entirely during sensitive times (like elections).
Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Ahh! Conservative projection at its finest, combined with a little cherry picked racism as well. Great job! You represent your kind well. I'm not a Republican so I don't deny actual facts. Even if your numbers were up to date and accurate, which they aren't (get out of your bubble, Fox boy) the causes are tied to much more than race so it's a meaningless number designed only to incite racial hatred. Good job again! T…
Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election
#306Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
its amazing that this exact scenario was described in Metal Gear Solid 2, a ~20 year old video game. >Colonel : But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible. >Rose : Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander... >Colonel : All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rat…
A lot of people--authors, technologists, public intellectuals, and others in what was the broad spectrum of 'nerd culture' at the time--saw this crap coming decades ago but lost the fight to stop it. The writing has been on the wall about the dangers of social media for a very long time. It's just taken this long for people with the power to even consider doing anything about the dangers to start taking it seriously.
Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
> people would be getting censored and banned for disputing "the fact" that Iraq had WMD Literally nobody was buying that Iraq had WMD. It was clear that the politicians were riling themselves up in a patriotic furvor. The evidence was weak from day one and it was clear a propaganda machine was in play. > Twitter doesn't have a monopoly on the truth, I am so sick of statements like this that ultimately lead to inacti…
How do you not get that this is the exact point? “Experts” in the US government and the “intelligence agencies” declared forcefully that it was true. You—-not an “expert” and not a member of “authoritative” US intelligence agency—-claiming that it was just “propagandistic patriotic fervor” would be “misinformation” stated “without evidence”. Stopping people from questioning the narrative is fundamentally against free…
I am so sick to death of hearing this "argument." Because it's irrelevant to the situation. And I'll tell you why:
In the United States,
1. Private entities are not bound by the First Amendment. That means they can host (or refuse to do so) any speech they choose, because that's the First Amendment right of all individuals and private entities;
2. The US government is forbidden to be the arbiter of speech, except in a few, clearly defined areas (advocating the violent overthrow of the government, making credible threats of violence, etc.);
3. If you don't like decisions about speech that a particular individual or private entity makes, you are perfectly free to speak out against those decisions, organize others to do so, and/or vote with your feet/wallet and don't engage with that individual or entity;
4. Unless you have a management and/or ownership role in a private organization (e.g., Twitter), you don't have the right to change their policies or speech;
5. You absolutely have the right to speak out and say just about anything, but you don't have the right to force others to host that speech on their private property. And that's a very good thing. If that weren't the case, I would have the right to blare midget furry porn or all-goatse-all-the-time projections or all manner of other offensive, hateful, disgusting things in your living room.
I'm sure many will disagree with me. If you do, please engage me in discussion in addition to taking other action -- both of which (and thank you HN for making that possible) are your free expression.
Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I'll spot you that it's a fact, ignoring the racism behind how "violent crime" is defined. Using that fact as an irrational basis for despicable racist behavior doesn't jive with my worldview.
Re: Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the situation in the USA is quite unique. UK and Australia is not (as of yet) in any serious risk of their democracy being undermined in the next election. Sure you can say they could have had similar measures before the Kyrgyzstan or the Belarus elections. But there bad actors were perfectly able to undermine the democracy without the aid of social media.
That bad actors can only influence US elections through social media sounds like a very bold claim