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Protect me from what I want

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41–50 of 225 posts

Re: Protect me from what I want

#41
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of a paradox, but a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance.

It's a logical contradiction. There seems to be some overloading of the word "tolerance".

FYI, I think that you missed that this idea that "a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance" is better known as "Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance" You can find it under that name, numerous articles, from Wikipedia on down (1). Since 1945. it's widely known and accepted. It's not an actual contradiction, most "paradoxes" only appear that way on a superficial inspection.

it would be like saying, as the sibling comment did "a peaceful person would never punch someone in the nose" ... except that a society that aims for peace, and is beset with violent people, is going to have to quell that violence. This might involve reserving the right to punch the punchers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Re: Protect me from what I want

#42
Instagram, youtube & tiktok are a reflection of what you click on.

But, to make them nice, you need to give them both negative and positive feedback at the very early stage.

If you see something that you don't like? Don't ignore it, hit the "..." and select the "get tae fuk" option. Otherwise it'll keep trying that genre of what ever is popular with a similar persona to yours.

The problem is, the "I don't like this" button is often hidden. (in youtube I'm not sure how well weighted the downvote button is).

For mastodon its hard, whilst the data is out there for most people to grab, the models need to be stored and trained somewhere. Your model is a PII risk. Also, there isn't much info out there on how to make a good recommendation engine (for obvious reasons) Unlike object detection/text to speech/OCR and other freely available models, recommendation models are as valuable as the dataset. This means they are rarely made public.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#43
post #8

Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. In their view, they have the "correct opinions" and have not been biased by any algorithms or moderation. Meanwhile, the people that disagree with them are the ones being duped by algorithms, bad moderation, and bad actors. That's why there's a huge censorship movement right now in the…

> Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see.

I don't see any evidence for that

> In their view, they have the "correct opinions" ... the people that disagree with them are the ones being duped

This is getting very straw-man

> That's why there's a huge censorship movement right now in the US

Oh really, is there?

Re: Protect me from what I want

#44
post #18
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" to see why this is the case: https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repr... The tl;dr is that if you actually want to move toward a society of free and equal human beings and eliminate oppression, "free speech for all" is not how you go about it. One side of the political spectrum supports equality and emancipation, the other is opposed to it. Therefore the speec…

A bit of a paradox, but a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance.

"paradox of tolerance" is a hypocrisy. If you are intolerant only to the intolerant you are not tolerant, it is as simple as that.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#45
post #15
post #8

Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. In their view, they have the "correct opinions" and have not been biased by any algorithms or moderation. Meanwhile, the people that disagree with them are the ones being duped by algorithms, bad moderation, and bad actors. That's why there's a huge censorship movement right now in the…

Read Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" to see why this is the case: https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repr... The tl;dr is that if you actually want to move toward a society of free and equal human beings and eliminate oppression, "free speech for all" is not how you go about it. One side of the political spectrum supports equality and emancipation, the other is opposed to it. Therefore the speec…

No post body was provided.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#46

What criteria are being used to determine this is what we want? People also want heroin and we use literal impact on society to curtail use. Freedom of reach is what we’re talking about limiting; right and left seem to both demand they have access to my beliefs, and leverage big corp as a tool to hide their political agenda to that effect as government social programs are accountable to public oversight. I mean I’m p…

> What criteria are being used to determine this is what we want? The fact that it's what people choose. This isn't difficult.

Not in my experience - at least not entirely. There's almost certainly some weights/criteria that have nothing to do with what I want (in a previous thread someone suggested that YouTube may weigh videos by availability at the nearest CDN, for example). But these algorithms also interact with botting and SEO (for lack of a better term) in a way that surfaces stuff that I give no shits about but seems to be popular.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#47
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of a paradox, but a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance.

"paradox of tolerance" is a hypocrisy. If you are intolerant only to the intolerant you are not tolerant, it is as simple as that.

There's absolutely nothing hypocritical about e.g. "defending peace". It's realistic. between Karl Popper's well-known writings on the subject, and one accusatory sentence from someone on the internet, I'll take Karl Popper.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#48
post #21
post #8

Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. In their view, they have the "correct opinions" and have not been biased by any algorithms or moderation. Meanwhile, the people that disagree with them are the ones being duped by algorithms, bad moderation, and bad actors. That's why there's a huge censorship movement right now in the…

> Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. FWIW this doesn't match my experience at all, but I've hardly made a study of it. What I mean by that is that the limited complaints I have heard are mostly about a) bad quality advertisement targeting and b) political targeting, also mostly bad quality. "quality" here meaning accurac…

Oh come now. I constantly hear this concern from my friends (almost exclusively left-of-center).

And they aren't totally wrong? I have a qanon-er in my family; she's carefully curated her media sources to guarantee a pure, steady stream of nutjob garbage. The thing is, censoring twitter/facebook/youtube makes no difference - these people will find their fringe no matter how hard they have to look. At least on youtube there's a chance the algorithm will show some non-bullshit.

I don't know what "the answer" to any of this is, but I suspect we all need to be a bit more tolerant of online stupidity.

Also: If your social media feeds are showing you crappy content, you are to blame. It's incredibly easy to like/dislike/hide-like-this content. My feeds are fantastic. I suspect the people complaining about their feeds actually like garbage and even more so like to complain.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#49
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't noticed the chorus of coastal media types asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum, then you are truly oblivious.

Or maybe we’re all in filter bubbles, including you.

No post body was provided.

Re: Protect me from what I want

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a logical contradiction. There seems to be some overloading of the word "tolerance".

FYI, I think that you missed that this idea that "a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance" is better known as "Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance" You can find it under that name, numerous articles, from Wikipedia on down (1). Since 1945. it's widely known and accepted. It's not an actual contradiction, most "paradoxes" only appear that way on a superficial inspection. it would be like saying, as the sibling…

You are conflating protection from violence with protection of free speech. Paradox of tolerance is a hypocritical concept used by people to excuse their own intolerance.

Restrictions on free speech are much more dangerous than any hate speech. You won't get a new Hitler by blocking speech you don't like. It's the opposite: new Hitler will start with blocking free speech. That's what every authoritarian regime does first.

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