“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints” • Hacker News Board

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#421

Post by hitpointdrew » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 9:39 PM UTC

virgildotcodes wrote: post #356

hitpointdrew wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll happily oppose any racist law or coporate policy. Do you care to point me to any? And not just some "systemic racist" boogie man in the sky?

To echo the person you're responding to, what have you actually done to date to "improv[e] opportunities for minorities, and spend a substantial amount of your time taking action to try and solve that problem"? Saying you will take hypothetical action is easy, but all that matters is what you've actually done and are doing. If you haven't taken any substantial action to date then perhaps consider that may be a sign t…

I am not saying I will take hypothetical action. I will take real action. But I need evidence that systemic racism exists, you need to point to something and say “that right there is a racist law/policy”. I have thus far seen no such laws or policies. And please, don’t start with a conclusion (there are only X number of PoC CEO’s or something) and then go on a witch hunt to prove your conclusion. That is not how reason and science works. Until evidence is brought forth I cannot accept the systematic racism theory (and that is all it is without evidence). And since I suspect no such evidence actually exists, and since I am not inclined to go in witch hunts, why is the burden of proof on me? No, you show me the proof, I have enough things to worry about. Not to mention, laws and policies are public information, if there were racist ones it shouldn’t be hard to find and would have likely already come to light, yet no one can point me to one.

This is no different than when someone claims God is real, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim, not the person denying the existence of God.

What you’re doing is essentially demanding I prove God doesn’t exist.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#422

Post by topynate » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 9:39 PM UTC

yamtaddle wrote: post #313

topynate wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called a temporary suspension. Twitter asks you to acknowledge your tweet was bad by deleting it yourself. If you do, you get a time-out in the naughty corner for 12 hours, or a week, or whatever, and then you can tweet again. If you don't, you stay in the naughty corner. Whoever designed this process could stand to learn how to treat people like adults, in my opinion.

> Whoever designed this process could stand to learn how to treat people like adults, in my opinion. So, simply shadow ban them, then?

If you're referring to HN policy then for an established account it's not really shadowbanning, because dang will tell you that you're banned and why. Being treated as a useless noob until proven otherwise is being treated as an adult.

Twitter is different (although perhaps more different than it needs to be). Seeing as you ask, here is how to handle content deletion on Twitter without infantilizing users.

Don't ask a user to "delete" a tweet – something which has no effect on that tweet's visibility anyway. Just hide it and tell him why. If the user chooses to appeal, that appeal can go forward without restricting the use of the account. Give time-outs sparingly. They should be more of a final warning than a routine measure. If it's necessary to give a time-out, start the clock immediately, not when the user takes some action.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#423

Post by matsemann » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 9:39 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #264

I got a 7 day ban for a tweet that included “political suicide pact” as an idiom. I then got permanently banned for including the line, “sending their children to die in Ukraine” in a tweet. The “appeal” button causes me to get a denied email within one minute. This tells me no humans are in the loop on any of this. I don’t think these tweets were controversial or require any diversity of viewpoints. They just requir…

I got a 48 hour ban recently for sharing a quote from an article we were discussing. The quote was nothing special, just a statement from a spokesperson for a company. The "problem" was that I included the name+title of the person I quoted, and that somehow got flagged as me "doxxing" that person and their place of work. Whose job it was was to be a public spokesperson for this company..

It wasn't any political or contentious topic, so no idea what set it off. Basically along the lines of "as X working at Y said in the article, they want to do Z soon".

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#424

Post by throw_m239339 » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 9:39 PM UTC

bergenty wrote: post #391

throw_m239339 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Advertisers are going to be pretty concerned when their paid content is showing up in screenshots mixed in with "questionable" content. Are you aware Twitter already allows all sort of depraved porn on their platform already? Did Advertisers leave the platform as a result of this already? Maybe Twitter should get rid of the hardcore pornography first.

What’s wrong with hardcore pornography?

> What’s wrong with hardcore pornography?

What's wrong with what Twitter progressives deem questionable opinions?

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#425

Post by mytailorisrich » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 9:39 PM UTC

fckgw wrote: post #372

mytailorisrich wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stick to a grown-up discussion, please? You are not replying to my points in any meaningful way. It's shocking that HN commenters could be so toxic, indeed.

Not sure what there is to discuss? I wholly disagree with your idea. There's plenty of other social network sites that have a similar moderation policy and they are overrun by people who wish to turn it into a platform to spread hate. Any content moderation needs to extend beyond "Legal? (Y/N)" unless your main goal is to drive any real community away.

You're obviously ignoring 'de facto standard', which makes Twitter pretty much a utility in my opinion, hence my comment.

Anyway, it is simply shocking that so many think it is the 'correct way' to disallow what they don't agree with and that they are, like you, so aggressive about it to the point of shutting down any dissenting opinions, as is happening here.

It's a big regression from the heights of the enlightenment, or just the recent past, IMHO.

Some would go as far as claiming that this is "little red guard" behaviour and they wouldn't be completely wrong.

Good day.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#426

Post by koonsolo » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 9:40 PM UTC

jszymborski wrote: post #25

mikkergp wrote: post #7

This sort of justifies the viewpoint that despite all his bluster, Elon will probably run Twitter the way a "reasonable executive" would. Not just release the hounds. Keep the advertisers happy, but try to reduce the reliance on advertisers. Keep moderating content to reduce abuse, maybe eliminate the high profile banning but a person on the ground will have largely the same experience. (probably less action on more…

A bunch of accounts like The Babylon Bee and Ye have been unbanned w/o input from any such committee of diverse viewpoints. I don't have much faith that Musk will not act unilaterally in service of his friends and allies.

I'm mostly curious what will happen to this account: https://twitter.com/ElonJet

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#427

Post by mbesto » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #406

slg wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Babylon Bee being suspended was one of the dumber things the previous Twitter rules had done. It's a satire site, it's right leaning, nothing in the piece they said was hateful or even an unpopular view. Twitter banned the Babylon Bee for targeting a random and rather anonymous bureaucrat that likely isn't among the 1000 most powerful people in government in the US for the sole purpose that she is trans. This target…

The piece satirized the confusion between sex and gender. It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." It's still a highly debated topic and well within the public sphere of debate. Also, this person was a public official and was in the news from general news outlets (named Woman of the Year) which puts them well within the public realm of…

> It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct."

What? Since when is sex a social construct?

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#428

Post by pjkundert » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

mchaver wrote: post #237

MrMan wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh no, not k-means clustering

My life was going fine until my tweet got too close to Agent K's centroid.

I think it'll work more like this.

There are people who enjoy reasoned debate, even if they don't agree with the counterparty. They won't downvote those tweets. Their cluster weight will be gently moving in the direction of others like them, and its weight will let through a wide variety of other gently weighted groups.

Others are compelled to screech and foam at the mouth if someone argues for a $WRONGTHINK - even in jest or as a devil's advocate, and will downvote them instantly. Their weightings will be heavy, and will exclude most other groups. They will see only what they want to see, and won't see what they don't want to see -- reasoned debate from groups they disagree with, for example.

This is a personal choice, and mirrors physical group dynamics.

If someone "in your group" starts talking crazy, they will begin to separate from the group (by mutual down-voting), and migrate to a different group. You (and the rest of your group) won't be affected much.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#429

Post by yrgulation » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #264

I got a 7 day ban for a tweet that included “political suicide pact” as an idiom. I then got permanently banned for including the line, “sending their children to die in Ukraine” in a tweet. The “appeal” button causes me to get a denied email within one minute. This tells me no humans are in the loop on any of this. I don’t think these tweets were controversial or require any diversity of viewpoints. They just requir…

Yeah buggy ais plague twitter and facebook. Something similar happened to me on facebook, apparently i violated a french law when using a harmless idiom. Was unbanned within the hour tho because it was obvious i wouldn't really sell my own kidney to buy ethereum if it dropped at 200 usd despite its ai thinking i am involved in human traffiking. They even apologised which was nice.

Having said that i think relying solely on the judgement and discretion of rich powerful ceos to regulate political discourse is dangerous. Its how oligarchies are born. We need clear laws on how such platforms and news sources or distribution mediums work.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#430

Post by concinds » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #407

concinds wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I'd solve it is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33377423 Basically, more siloed converations would ironically create a better "public town square", because it would reduce the need for moderation and allow freer speech. > That’s awful. And I’ve also witnessed the same kind of abuse that goes ignored. Honestly, it wasn't. Maybe due to my temperament (and I certainly received far less hate than high-…

Hmmm. Would you consider that to be similar to the Reddit model of cloistering themes so that unlike-minded people aren’t artificially pushed together?

The problem is that reddit clusters based on topic, rather than social group. If I'm a bad state actor who wants to influence America on a mass-scale, I buy a bunch of accounts, and buy upvotes, and can shift the hivemind. Or I just infiltrate the mod team. Obviously you'd need to be relatively sophisticated to not get caught.

But Twitter is based on social circles, not topics; those concerns don't apply. Instead of having an entire topic/subreddit be biased one way or another, you'd have small friends groups and small communities, that have social dynamics that are as close to real life as possible. Hence all the scale-related problems don't occur. The radicalization rabbit hole? Doesn't happen with siloes. Harassment? There'll be much less with siloes, where someone needs to "add" you (like on Facebook) to interact with you, rather than a drive-by quote-tweet. Ideological censorship? Again, with siloes, there's less need for moderation, so people who aren't harming any others get to communicate with each other. It's more organic.

Obviously implementing that isn't as easy, but there's good ideas for clustering in this thread.