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“Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

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Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#51

Post by omegaworks »

freehunter wrote: post #7

My business does a lot of posting on Facebook of sometimes controversial things (we're a news site and we sometimes cover local politics). By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. I have ~3k followers on one of my pages. Usually ~200-300 people see any given post if it has no engagements. If it has normal engagement, it might get to 1000-2000 views, st…

The surprising thing about all of this is that sentiment analysis--machine learning algorithms that can interpret the feeling you're trying to convey with your words--is a fairly solved problem.

These companies can easily put a filter over this engagement maximization algorithm and they are choosing not to.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#52

Post by acjohnson55 »

laughinghan wrote: post #41
vqdwj wrote: post #3

>The experience of having made a viral tweet is The Worst Fucking Thing. If you make a "viral tweet", don't read the replies. You have the tools to do so, since Twitter allows you to mute a thread.

Most people use social media not with the intention of shouting into the void, but with the intention of getting replies that they want to read, that they then do read, and perhaps reply in turn. If that's what usually happens, but sometimes randomly they get tons and tons of replies that they don't want (as claimed by this post), that's an interesting and noteworthy flaw that I've never seen specifically discussed.

Even if you like the replies, it's overwhelming.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#53

Post by padobson »

freehunter wrote: post #7

My business does a lot of posting on Facebook of sometimes controversial things (we're a news site and we sometimes cover local politics). By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. I have ~3k followers on one of my pages. Usually ~200-300 people see any given post if it has no engagements. If it has normal engagement, it might get to 1000-2000 views, st…

Mark Zuckerberg is the 21st century's Pablo Escobar.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#55

Post by freehunter »

benj111 wrote: post #47
freehunter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about banning these posts, or hiding them, or censoring them. Just not showing them as widely as they do other posts. It doesn't even need to go as deep as "this is hateful", but rather "this has the potential to be hateful" or giving the author the ability to control how widely the message is being shared. I see these people here trying to debate solutions like good engineers, but unless they work…

What's the line between censoring and "not showing them as widely as other posts"?

Not every post gets shown as widely as some do. What's that line? That's where I'd start.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#56

Post by alexanderdmitri »

padobson wrote: post #53
freehunter wrote: post #7

My business does a lot of posting on Facebook of sometimes controversial things (we're a news site and we sometimes cover local politics). By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. I have ~3k followers on one of my pages. Usually ~200-300 people see any given post if it has no engagements. If it has normal engagement, it might get to 1000-2000 views, st…

Mark Zuckerberg is the 21st century's Pablo Escobar.

Because he runs a vast, violent empire that smuggles illegal drugs?

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#57

Post by filoleg »

alexanderdmitri wrote: post #56
padobson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mark Zuckerberg is the 21st century's Pablo Escobar.

Because he runs a vast, violent empire that smuggles illegal drugs?

Probably because the parent dislikes Zuck, and the Hitler comparison has gotten too overused in recent times (and Zuck isnt a politician), so Escobar was chosen as an appropriate one. Fully expecting to see that comparison being used against Jeff Bezos soon.

tl;dr: “everyone i dislike is a nazi or something close” syndrome

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#58

Post by cat199 »

freehunter wrote: post #7

My business does a lot of posting on Facebook of sometimes controversial things (we're a news site and we sometimes cover local politics). By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. I have ~3k followers on one of my pages. Usually ~200-300 people see any given post if it has no engagements. If it has normal engagement, it might get to 1000-2000 views, st…

> That's the problem with these algorithms that humans don't watch over. ... and Facebook/Twitter profit from it and even promote it.

Don't be fooled.. Someone is spot checking the training data against the output at a statistically valid sampling interval.. ML in this case is the data equivalent of a limited liability corp..

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#60

Post by muckrakerz »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #26
freehunter wrote: post #7

My business does a lot of posting on Facebook of sometimes controversial things (we're a news site and we sometimes cover local politics). By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. I have ~3k followers on one of my pages. Usually ~200-300 people see any given post if it has no engagements. If it has normal engagement, it might get to 1000-2000 views, st…

> By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. Well, duh. If people are fighting they are definitely "engaged", but not in a good way. Defining that more engagement equals more success is what made social networks so toxic. The current state that more eyeballs equals more ad money needs to change.

Why do you state that? Some of the largest advances in our society have come from what would be seen as toxic or hostile engagements.
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