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“Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

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Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#321

Post by krick »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #39

So free speech absolutist is starting to adapt rules which are roughly similar to Twitter's current rules. And those rules are existing for a reason, rules don't popup from a thin air. What a surprise... Now he will figure out that the bloat of microservices and employees was there also for a reason.

I'm careful about formulating an opinion on the topic, because I still don't understand what "deboosted" will mean in practice, but I don't think your evaluation of the situation is fair. I'm pretty close to an "antifan" of Musk, but I don't really think he is a fool, and I don't think it is news to him. Maybe the public believed he meant "an absolute freedom of speech" (did they? lol), but I don't think he was really meaning it at any point.

After all, he knows that revenue comes from ads, and those who pay for ads have some power to influence the rules. It's not like Twitter is totalitarian just because Dorsey is a totalitarian guy by nature. It even seems that he kinda isn't. It's just the fact, that there are other powers that at certain level start being far more influential, than the CEOs opinion. And these powers tend to be quite totalitarian.

Musk it just a populist. Not living up to his promises isn't a sign of short-sightedness. In fact, it seems to be working great for him so far. Not sure if it will with Twitter, but it did, and still does with Tesla, FWIW.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#322

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #93
achenatx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it isnt about truth or fiction, it is negative/hate tweets. I run a politics forum and the one rule is no insulting other people, groups, or positions. This makes for a very civil, but bland conversation. People engage with negative/hate tweets. I personally like talking politics without insults, but most people are incapable of it. It is easy to detect insults.

That's a truly amazing viewpoint, I honestly can't imagine how one could express the solution that clearly. In case you can't guess, I'm not serious. However if you download a sentiment analysis model and feed it my first paragraph it'll claim it was positive. Sentiment analysis is a really really really hard problem, especially for short texts.

Everyone is assuming OP is meaning ML and that they're in the just-enough-knowledge-to-be-dangerous phase.

The problem that needs solving isn't "catch anything that could, upon deciphering, hurt someone's feelings a bit". It's "catch enough despicable or aggressive comments before they cause problems for others".

The later is easily doable because part of the signal is the interactions and you only need to damp bad interactions down until they aren't self-sustaining wars across the feeds of the uninterested, not sanitize every post so that they're all toddler-safe.

Once you stop trying to prevent bad thoughts and switch to trying to create a good forum it becomes tractable at any scale.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#323

Post by SantalBlush »

phkahler wrote: post #311
boole1854 wrote: post #105

Many commentators seem to think this is a sudden, recent backpedaling from a previous absolutist view on free speech. However, Musk has been promoting the "freedom of speech" vs "freedom of reach" distinction for a while, at least months before his takeover, including describing how such a policy should be implemented at Twitter. Here's one example quote from June, 2022: “I think there’s this big difference between f…

I don't like platforms deciding what I see. I connect with people to get their posts. Period. I want them all, or let me control my filters if there are any.

>I don't like platforms deciding what I see.

Hacker News does exactly this, and the people using this site like it.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#324

Post by threeseed »

notyourwork wrote: post #293
hsn915 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is delusional. When you have a big tech company with thousands of employees, the pareto principle comes into play in a huge way: proably only 10% of these people are actually doing any work that directly impacts the platform. At least half the employees are probably not doing anything really useful. This applies even to tech companies with a mere 100 total employees. At 3000 employees it's probably even more so.…

> where a lot of the platform can be implemented from scratch in a few weeks by top engineers I stopped reading at this point.

Nobody who knows what they are talking about thinks Twitter is a simple system to build and scale.

Especially given it's highly distributed, fan-out architecture is not one that everyday engineers typically deal with.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#325

Post by zahma »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #75
nimbius wrote: post #38

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is the sort of damage control id expect to see from someone only peripherally aware of or involved in their businesses accountability or strategic operations. This concern from advertisers has existed far too long for an executive action to have any meaning. the marketing conference call on november 3rd was your red flag where advertisers voiced their displeasure with firin…

> At this point its best to hope markets dont start reconsidering your other companies as risky business. I think this is inevitable. One, Elon is trying to prop up Twitter by using SpaceX money to buy ads. He's dipping his hand into other companies to keep his new toy afloat for a while longer. I don't know if the word "contamination" is appropriate here, but it's pretty clear that Elon doesn't see any kind of sharp…

Teslas are nice cars. Owning one is a status symbol, but I don’t think Elon Musk is the deciding factor when it comes time to buy one or go elsewhere. Until other car makers get their acts together and produce luxury EVs with charger infrastructure, consumers will overlook Elon Musk’s antics.

I agree with you though that Musk’s brands are becoming too associated with his personality, which is mercurial and irksome. Caveat emptor.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#326

Post by epgui »

KerrAvon wrote: post #188
danans wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the history of banned accounts [1] You don't need polynomial regression to figure out that nobody was being banned for traditional, non-hate and non-violence-inducing conservative or liberal speech. It's mostly harassment, threats, impersonation and disinformation. Nobody has been banned for advocating: lower taxes, higher taxes, cuts to government spending, increased government spending, abortion rights, ant…

There is a joke, I don't know the origin: Conservative: I'm being silenced for my opinions! Me: lowering taxes? C: no, not that opinion M: smaller government? C: no, not that one M: which opinions? C: oh, you know the ones...

That sounds more like a review of the literature than a joke.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#327

Post by panopticon »

35amxn35 wrote: post #249
phailhaus wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, Twitter is most definitely not trying to be like the notoriously-toxic 4chan.

Trust me, once you get the hang of it, 4chan is surprisingly wholesome. Sure I've been called a nigg r/fagg t/subhuman/kike/retard, I've been asked to kill myself countless times, countless people told me they had fucked my mom, etc. But when you go above that, you see that it's refreshing and lot less toxic than passive-aggresiveness and the brigading that upvotes/downvotes/retweets bring (in places such as Twitter…

As someone who spent way too much time there in the mid 00's, 4chan is incredibly toxic and the existence of strong intra-group cohesion doesn't make it "wholesome". Otherwise we can say a KKK chapter is wholesome because they also do potlucks.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#328

Post by seti0Cha »

sidibe wrote: post #283
seti0Cha wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can get away with paying below market rates to Tesla engineers for the same reason video game companies can do it: people think it would be cool to work there. It doesn't seem plausible to me that if Musk can't get people to work at Twitter for cheap he wouldn't just offer more rather than let it die.

Waymo is working in the same "cool" field as many of the Tesla SWEs and pays much better than equivalent positions at Tesla, with less stress from impossible constraints and deadlines. He can get away with it because either he doesn't think he needs the top talent or some engineers are willing to make sacrifices to work for their idol

Well, either way, the fact that he's getting what he wants for a lot less than Waymo has to pay doesn't mean he can't or won't pay more if he has to. And if there are engineers who idolize him so much, why do you think he'll have trouble recruiting for Twitter? I think it's Tesla they idolize, not Musk, so he'll need to pay a lot more to get people for Twitter.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#329

Post by viscanti »

phphphphp wrote: post #142
boole1854 wrote: post #105

Many commentators seem to think this is a sudden, recent backpedaling from a previous absolutist view on free speech. However, Musk has been promoting the "freedom of speech" vs "freedom of reach" distinction for a while, at least months before his takeover, including describing how such a policy should be implemented at Twitter. Here's one example quote from June, 2022: “I think there’s this big difference between f…

That analogy doesn’t really fit with the model of Twitter. If we are using the town/time square example, what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them. A message spreads on Twitter because individuals on Twitter amplify it (with engagement, retweets etc.) which is itself a form of speech: if you say something bad, an…

In a world of bots and sock-puppets, it feels pretty far from a town square example already. If you acknowledge that you won't ever be able to stay ahead of bot and sock-puppet detection enough to remove it from the platform (and no one seems to think that's a winnable contest for the platform)), you're left with letting that drown out the town square, or to deemphasize it's worst impacts and maybe also impact some of your most negative and hateful users too. But maybe this just shows why Elon shouldn't have used the town square analogy before, it doesn't fit well with what actually exists and causes people to believe it should work in ways it can't (without the equivalent of letting someone bring a microphone and loud speakers to drown out the rest of the town square).

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#330

Post by SantalBlush »

luckylion wrote: post #167
blitzar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deplatforming is simply a form of limiting reach, a twitter ban isnt an internet ban

And disallowing someone to live on earth isn't a death sentence. They can always migrate to Mars.

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