Live data from Hacker News

Twitter meets TensorFlow

blog.twitter.com

41–50 of 73 posts

Re: Twitter meets TensorFlow

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember hiw bad YouTube comments have been? And it's significantly better lately? That happened due to ML. Not everyone is out there to use ML for nefarious purpose. And there are multiple use cases for ML.

At least for music videos, comments are still pretty shitty. It feels like more than half of them are one of the following patterns: - "Like if you're watching in June 2018?" [2k upvotes] - "Most underrated artist of our time" [5k upvotes] - "Wow, mad respect for " (written by verified account by other artist trying to promote their own content)

Why are those bad comments? The first one is a bit ridiculous, but the others are fine. They're comments. They're not discussion points. YouTube isn't a forum or a social network. There's nothing compelling people to leave intelligent or even constructive points. The comment section is for people to note what they think. That's it.

When people say these sorts of things are bad I think it's because their expectations and understanding of a comments section are wrong.

Re: Twitter meets TensorFlow

#42
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for music videos, comments are still pretty shitty. It feels like more than half of them are one of the following patterns: - "Like if you're watching in June 2018?" [2k upvotes] - "Most underrated artist of our time" [5k upvotes] - "Wow, mad respect for " (written by verified account by other artist trying to promote their own content)

Why are those bad comments? The first one is a bit ridiculous, but the others are fine. They're comments . They're not discussion points. YouTube isn't a forum or a social network. There's nothing compelling people to leave intelligent or even constructive points. The comment section is for people to note what they think. That's it. When people say these sorts of things are bad I think it's because their expectations…

It's just super repetitive, and actually good and original comments get buried because they don't match the hivemind.

Of course, it's a question of taste what comments should be more visible. If the community actually prefers reading the same stuff over and over again, then the current state is probably justified, and it's just a moronic community.

Re: Twitter meets TensorFlow

#43
post #2

> Machine learning enables Twitter to drive engagement, surface content most relevant to our users, and promote healthier conversations. One that wants to manipulate your mind, one that echochambers your discovery, one that censors arbitrarily.

If Twitter ever moves to a fully algorithmic timeline like Instagram (has annoying done), it will shrivel up and die. The linear timeline of Twitter is what makes Twitter....Twitter. I've noticed a lot lately that more and more I see tweets out of order because of the algorithms. I believe you can turn that off, but sometimes those are useful...but more often they are spam in the moment, especially if a big story has…

Unfortunately you can't turn off the algorithm which treats other people's favourites as if they were retweets, which makes me think twice about using the favourite feature at all. I know I've had stuff put into my feed which the person doing the favouriting would never have retweeted.

I wrote an extension/user script to filter those - and retweets - out into their own lists on the front page [1], as I just want a chronological timeline of what people are saying now, which mustn't be "engaging" enough for Twitter's purposes.

[1] https://github.com/insin/manage-twitter-engagement#readme

Re: Twitter meets TensorFlow

#44
post #2

> Machine learning enables Twitter to drive engagement, surface content most relevant to our users, and promote healthier conversations. One that wants to manipulate your mind, one that echochambers your discovery, one that censors arbitrarily.

Do you remember hiw bad YouTube comments have been? And it's significantly better lately? That happened due to ML. Not everyone is out there to use ML for nefarious purpose. And there are multiple use cases for ML.

>Do you remember hiw bad YouTube comments have been?

Yes

>And it's significantly better lately?

It's gotten worse and a few youtubers I follow have simply disabled it in recent time (less than 1 month ago was the most recent one)

Normal conversation on youtube is barely possible since the algorithm randomly decides to not notify me of responses anymore or removes entire comments from my view that other people reference and I'm left wondering what is going on.

The only good thing about youtube comments is that I can remove them easily with a plugin.

Re: Twitter meets TensorFlow

#45
post #14

Brought my following down to 9 accounts last week and enjoying the flow again. I have always used Twitter passively, only re-tweeting 3-4 interesting stories a day. Hoping TensorFlow for healthy conversations does not spoil this sort of 24/7 breaking news from trusted sources, now. What I fear the most, is having my flow made of one tweet from sources I choose & one tweet TensorFlow suggests to me.

> I have always used Twitter passively, only re-tweeting 3-4 interesting stories a day

That seems fairly active to me. In almost 10 years I did my first re-tweet last year.

Re: Twitter meets TensorFlow

#46
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is I have a timeline and am able to choose what's on it. Good, bad, ugly. It's up to me. If I don't like what someone's saying I unfollow, mute or block. Easy. With Twitter, FB, and modern social media, they let their algorithm decide what I should see. They think they know what people want and ultimately what's best for me. I disagree with this so I opt-out of their services. Sadly. Because there are ( or w…

> Easy. If you're spectating, maybe. Completely falls apart when you try to engage in dialogue on Twitter, which is what both Twitter, Inc. and I want. Say I follow someone because I like what they say. And I want to discuss what they're saying, or to explore existing discussions. I'm going into this ready to have a thoughtful debate or two. So I open the replies, and they're what I consider to be garbage: flamewars,…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter meets TensorFlow

#47
post #2

> Machine learning enables Twitter to drive engagement, surface content most relevant to our users, and promote healthier conversations. One that wants to manipulate your mind, one that echochambers your discovery, one that censors arbitrarily.

Just to play Devil's advocate: One that wants to manipulate your mind Like your post here? Or my present reply to it? And so on... one that echochambers your discovery Which is good, because nobody has enough time in the day to process every conceivable byte of information they might stumble across... one that censors arbitrarily OK, because while everyone may have the right to speak freely, not all speech needs to b…

Not enabling echochambering doesn't mean you get overwhelmed.

If the algorithms only ever selects things you already like, how would you discover things you might not know you like? Or change your mind about a subject because you only ever see tweets that agree with your worldview?

A good timeline would not only show you speech, ideas or content you agree to or like but also stuff you don't like and don't agree with.

Re: Twitter meets TensorFlow

#48
post #2

> Machine learning enables Twitter to drive engagement, surface content most relevant to our users, and promote healthier conversations. One that wants to manipulate your mind, one that echochambers your discovery, one that censors arbitrarily.

Do you remember hiw bad YouTube comments have been? And it's significantly better lately? That happened due to ML. Not everyone is out there to use ML for nefarious purpose. And there are multiple use cases for ML.

"Significantly better" is a stretch.

The comments got much better after Youtube added user ratings. Hardly "ML". I'm guessing they added ML later, but I haven't noticed any difference, to be honest...

And by "much better" I mean they went from amoeba level to early multi-cellular organism :)

Re: Twitter meets TensorFlow

#49
post #14

Brought my following down to 9 accounts last week and enjoying the flow again. I have always used Twitter passively, only re-tweeting 3-4 interesting stories a day. Hoping TensorFlow for healthy conversations does not spoil this sort of 24/7 breaking news from trusted sources, now. What I fear the most, is having my flow made of one tweet from sources I choose & one tweet TensorFlow suggests to me.

> I have always used Twitter passively, only re-tweeting 3-4 interesting stories a day That seems fairly active to me. In almost 10 years I did my first re-tweet last year.

You’re right, of course, ehehe. Just avoiding to express personal opinions, so that no flamewars or endless arguments waste your day, is not passive enough if you still sign up once and sign in daily. Therefore, the next step is deactivating my account for good while following trusted sources without logging in at all? Twitter cookies would still track my activity, though.

Re: Twitter meets TensorFlow

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember hiw bad YouTube comments have been? And it's significantly better lately? That happened due to ML. Not everyone is out there to use ML for nefarious purpose. And there are multiple use cases for ML.

At least for music videos, comments are still pretty shitty. It feels like more than half of them are one of the following patterns: - "Like if you're watching in June 2018?" [2k upvotes] - "Most underrated artist of our time" [5k upvotes] - "Wow, mad respect for " (written by verified account by other artist trying to promote their own content)

I wonder, what comments are you expecting under pop music videos? Deep discussion about chord progressions or lyrics themes?
Post reply on HN