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twitter/the-algorithm

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Re: twitter/the-algorithm

#391

Post by fmobus »

donatj wrote: post #295
mhh__ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's an algorithm, but as software engineers we shouldn't pander to people who actually think there is a small flow chart dictating what happens in your search results. It's idiotic or dishonest.

I mean I'm sure Google has somewhere a UML chart of the entire process of ordering results. Your insistence otherwise is disingenuous at best, either that or you've never actually worked on any sort of major software, at least with any level of reliability/dependability.

> I mean I'm sure Google has somewhere a UML chart of the entire process of ordering results.

No, there isn't.

Re: twitter/the-algorithm

#392

Post by cscurmudgeon »

Traster wrote: post #379
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad take. Just because it is a stupid unaccountable heap of shit now doesn't mean it has to remain that way in the future.

I'm not talking about whether it's accountable or not, I'm saying that to actually share the algorithm you're basically saying that you're going to open source Twitter's entire code base. Oh and when you do that the average person will be no better off because they don't read code anyway. And when engineers read through the code it's going to like "Where did you get all these different variable values from?" and the…

> , it's going to be "We showed 7 billion people tweet X and 7 billion people tweet Y and tweet X caused 5% more people to engage so we tweaked this value".

There is an entire new subfield of ML that is tackling this problem. There are now conferences dedicated to this topic. It is not an easy problem, but it is not impossible.

There are hundreds of researchers working on fairness, interpretability, trust and explainability in ML and a lot of them are working on models much much bigger than what Twitter's feed might involve.

This is a good starting point:

[1] https://www.fatml.org

> And sure, you can say "Well that's a bad way of designing the algorithm" but then what you're really saying is that you don't want to open source the algorithm at all, you want to re-write the algorithm to satisfy your sense of how the world should work with no evidence it'll actually work.

You can still open source multiple steaming piles of shit and then let the community improve that so that it is more widely understandable and trusted. See [1] again.

Re: twitter/the-algorithm

#393

Post by asabjorn »

tomrod wrote: post #384
asabjorn wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and people tend to downplay the human influence on algorithms. Its fashionable to pretend that algorithms don’t carry the bias of their maintainers, while “the emperor is clearly naked”. Humans write and train algorithms, and the quality of a search engine stems from biasing the result. Human moderation is also done by people with bias. So tech workers that tilt heavily woke, not even just democrat, are likely t…

[0] The laptop controversy gives some false flag smell, does it not? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers... [1] Russia interfered with the 2016 election (though "collusion" seems a few steps too far into "they changed people's votes", which to my understanding did not happen with any high frequency, they just advertised and propagandized illegally) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interf…

We are in agreement that politics is kayfabe, it’s like wrestling the moves of a fight playing out a scripted story to manufacture consent around what they already wanted to do, and it’s a uniparty.

The laptop is real as verified by the FBI that has opened a grand jury on Hunter Biden due to this and other evidence.

Likewise, FBI verified that the Hailey Biden diary was real in its illegal raid of Project Veritas.

Despite the hoax Mueller found nothing despite spending immense resources. With regards to the Russia collusion hoax, follow the Durham indictments around it that show it was a Hillary political ploy all along. Example indictments is Fusion GPS fabricating the Steele report for Hillary, a tech executive thar tried to plant evidence on Trump computers, a Hillary lawyer that lied to the FBI about not acting on behalf of Hillary etc

Re: twitter/the-algorithm

#394

Post by I-M-S »

omoikane wrote: post #244
Irishsteve wrote: post #7

Many people have commented that it is empty. However what they do not realize is that there has never actually been an algorithm and that is why it is empty.

That sounds like a variant of this joke: https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/

Joke's on them, in the last 2 years QR codes made the greatest upset of all times

Re: twitter/the-algorithm

#396

Post by bscphil »

Yoric wrote: post #241
bscphil wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's why people on the far right keep starting lame Twitter alternatives. You don't see people on the far left doing that. They don't need to because they have cool Twitter alternatives. Like Mastodon.

Which is also the Trump alternative, iirc. Just the far left seems to respect the license.

That's fair, although part of the reason I call Mastodon the "cool" alternative is because of its federation. AFAIK the right wing forks don't generally have that.

Re: twitter/the-algorithm

#397

Post by stjohnswarts »

KrishnaShripad wrote: post #336
stjohnswarts wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will never happen, not even under Elon. It makes them wide open to litigation.

> It makes them wide open to litigation How? What specifically opens them up to litigation? It is a private company. It can do anything it wants as long as it is within the bounds of law. They have every right to ban anyone. Even on flimsy grounds. The idea here is to expose all the moral wrongs and bring it to the fore. Not that they are legally in the wrong (most cases they aren't). An audit is a good place to star…

Not every country follows section 230, actually only one does.

Re: twitter/the-algorithm

#398

Post by KrishnaShripad »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #397
KrishnaShripad wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes them wide open to litigation How? What specifically opens them up to litigation? It is a private company. It can do anything it wants as long as it is within the bounds of law. They have every right to ban anyone. Even on flimsy grounds. The idea here is to expose all the moral wrongs and bring it to the fore. Not that they are legally in the wrong (most cases they aren't). An audit is a good place to star…

Not every country follows section 230, actually only one does.

I don't think transparency of internal Company controls/audits has anything to do with Section 230.

Section 230, in brief, only provides immunity for social media providers from being responsible for the content that is posted by users on their platform. It has nothing to do with internal company policies. Rather, Section 230 actually enables internet companies to moderate content through the Good Samaritan protection.

So, it is actually worse that Twitter was moderating content in majority countries (except USA) where Section 230 wasn't even recognized. Revealing what exactly happened behind the scenes would not be a sufficient reason for litigation.

When Twitter was pulled up in India for its opaque moderation policies, it tried to quote American laws for its defense. In fact, when Jan 6th happened in USA, Twitter was quick to ban accounts of those who took part in the protests. 70,000 accounts were purged from Twitter. However, Twitter refused to ban accounts of those Khalistani terrorists who vandalized the Red Fort on Jan 26th in India and only partially complied with Government of India's orders. This double standard was visible to majority of Indians. So it is not like Twitter actually follows the laws set by the Country it is operating in either. There are multiple instances where Twitter has refused to follow directions by Government of India or by the Courts in India. You can read more about it here: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/have-to-follow-ind...

So yes, moderation policies cannot be opaque. It has to be transparent. The reason for transparency is so that we know exactly why and for what reason was an account banned/shadow banned. If the Government of India sends a legal request for take down of accounts, it has to be complied with. Twitter cannot decide to invoke US laws in India.

Also, read this to understand more about this issue: https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/twitter-now-in-compliance-...

Re: twitter/the-algorithm

#399

Post by jvanderbot »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #316
jvanderbot wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not. It could all be event-driven, distributed, and just pulling off various prioritized queues.

that's still an algorithm

We'll, it's ok if you feel that way given this is entirely subjective, but I disagree based on experience.

I disagree b/c: That's a system. An algorithm is designed, a system will emerge from pieces. An algorithm can be defined, a system's behavior has to be characterized post-hoc. You can characterize a system, but only as a black/gray box. An algorithm has invariants and stateful steps, a system has nearly infinite state and nearly zero meaningful invariants.

Re: twitter/the-algorithm

#400

Post by tomcam »

bigfudge wrote: post #371
tomcam wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like PewDiePie, Azealia Banks, Babylon Bee, and Carpe Donktum? By the way, in the USA there is no legal support for the term hate speech. It is covered under the umbrella of the first amendment.

No, pewdiepie was banned for five minutes for saying he was going to join isis. He’s still on the site but doesn’t tweet. https://mobile.twitter.com/pewdiepie Hate speech doesn’t need legal protection as a term to be against the rules of the site. I can’t remember if that’s the actual term twitter uses, but it’s the spirit of their rules. We could have a wider debate about whether our public square should be privatel…

I brought up the first amendment because Elon has pretty much said that that is how they will decide on what continent gets published.

I never came close to saying they don’t have the right to restrict speech anyway they wish

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