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

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

#641

Post by blargey »

nverno wrote: post #604
blargey wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don’t understand the consistent (self) praise for HN comments. Perhaps the mods make valiant efforts to enforce some vague standard of decorum and it would be worse without that thankless work, but any topic that doesn’t lend itself to software industry anecdote sharing is filled with the same vacuous, uninformed polemic as any other generalist social media site, just with a thin veneer of politeness. And…

You have a much different experience on general social media sites than I do. When I open a twitter thread that isn't sandboxed to nerds geeking out with other nerds about cool stuff, half the stuff I see is flamebait or just nasty adhominem vitriol. But, I think it just goes with the territory, if HN was a place for politics/culture wars/etc. it would probably devolve into the filth despite Dang's best efforts. This…

That might be it - I’m just using the “saner” parts of the Internet as my reference (at least compared to Politics On Twitter), which usually means “smaller scope of community and discussion / human moderation”, much like HN on a good day. So HN wouldn’t feel special in that light.

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

#642

Post by smegger001 »

slg wrote: post #432
partiallypro wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... Would you have said the same thing about ridiculing someone for being openly gay in government 30 years ago, being Catholic in government 60 years ago, or being Black in government 80 years ago?

>being Catholic in government 60 years ago

you mean like the then current president John f Kennedy?

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

#643

Post by lelanthran »

slg wrote: post #516
partiallypro wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because those aren't even remotely similar things. It wouldn't be a "hate crime" to call a Catholic a Protestant, or a Gay person a Straight person or a Black person a white person. It would be a hateful to deny them rights or to call for abuse. In this instance the "hate crime" is merely saying someone's biological sex is x, even if they say they are y. However, If I called a non-trans woman a man or a non-trans…

What do you think is the fundamental joke the article is making? The only joke I see is "a trans person exists". The article isn't about her policies, her performance in her job, or even complexities in our evolving definition of either sex or gender like you are implying. The joke is that this person is trans. The message of that joke is the existence of a trans person in public is worthy of mockery. Therefore the o…

> he only joke I see is "a trans person exists". The article isn't about her policies, her performance in her job, or even complexities in our evolving definition of either sex or gender like you are implying. The joke is that this person is trans. The message of that joke is the existence of a trans person in public is worthy of mockery. Therefore the only way to stop the mockery is to stop being trans or retreat from public life. I think refusing to stop that mockery until the target does one of those two things qualifies as harassment.

meh.

Twitter allowed much worse things that joking about someones self-identified gender.

It's a satire site: it's exactly what it says on the tin. If you leave political affiliation out of it, then, yes, twitter has been taking sides.

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

#644

Post by Zagill »

peyton wrote: post #514
Zagill wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are we this far into the modern trans rights movement and people still haven't wrapped their brains around sex and gender being two distinct concepts?

It’s a distinction some guy just made up not too long ago. I can see why some people might not consider it a fact of the universe.

Gender as a concept distinct from sex is a way of describing an existing social phenomenon. Gender, though traditionally tied to biological sex, changes over time. What we define as "masculine" and "feminine" traits change as society changes, and can even differ between societies, despite the fact that male and female chromosomes have not changed. Just because no one had described this distinction before the last century doesn't mean it isn't legitimate.

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

#645

Post by partiallypro »

slg wrote: post #516
partiallypro wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because those aren't even remotely similar things. It wouldn't be a "hate crime" to call a Catholic a Protestant, or a Gay person a Straight person or a Black person a white person. It would be a hateful to deny them rights or to call for abuse. In this instance the "hate crime" is merely saying someone's biological sex is x, even if they say they are y. However, If I called a non-trans woman a man or a non-trans…

What do you think is the fundamental joke the article is making? The only joke I see is "a trans person exists". The article isn't about her policies, her performance in her job, or even complexities in our evolving definition of either sex or gender like you are implying. The joke is that this person is trans. The message of that joke is the existence of a trans person in public is worthy of mockery. Therefore the o…

The joke of the article was that she was named "Woman of the Year," so they named her "Man of the Year" to point out the ridiculousness of such an award for her. You can disagree with that, or you can agree with that, but it's still a very tame joke. I don't think the debate on transsexualism is a closed case in many regards. There are important topics to discuss on it; and satire, even if you don't find it funny, is important to that debate.

I mean the idea that a trans-woman could actually feel and experience the challenges a biological woman faces...is pretty controversial; or the fact that many base their identity on media stereotypes rather than the very diverse experiences of womanhood, also is a pretty important debate, especially among feminists.

We can't just close the debate off and disallow any discussion on it (or jokes about it), and call anything against it a hate crime. That's not how things work. It could also have massive political fallout if Progressives are unwilling to join in the debate and stifle any attempts at it.

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

#646

Post by jmyeet »

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…

So I believe your comment to be in good faith but it's overly optimistic.

First, whenever it comes to "free speech" 99% of the time people make that argument they're not arguging for "all speech". They're talking about "my speech". And most of that time they really just want to utter hate speech.

Second, the idea of what's normal or acceptable is built on deeply ingrained beliefs that typically aren't rational. You see this whenever Elon talks about the "far left". This is such a laughable concept. The "far left" in American politics quite often simply means "we should let trans people exist" (eg [1]). Even suggesting things like everyone deserves access to healthcare is viewed as an extreme left position in the US.

So when Elon argues he's a centrist, the calibration is off because your choices in mainstream American politics are mostly between extreme right (often called the "alt right") being the party of Trump and the center right in the form of the Democratic Party (eg [2]). There is no "left" in American politics. The takeover of neoliberalism in the US is near-total.

As for Elon's plans for Twitter, he's put a lot of money on the line and the letter to advertisers I think gives a good signal of where this is going. I predict Elon will simply cut costs, unban a few conservatives as a token gesture and wait a couple of years to take the company public again and get out. He may as well start making a "Mission Accomplished" banner now and book the aircraft carrier. This is basically the private equity playbook.

[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/17/elon-musk-should-apologize-f...

[2]: https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1471615893411090433?lang=en

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

#647

Post by andsoitis »

mikkergp wrote: post #502
bmitc wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are the other shareholders? I thought the entire point of the purchase is that he bought out all the shareholders.

Maybe shareholders was the wrong term, doesn’t he have a duty to like the banks and Saudis and other investors

The only duty to creditors is to service the debt.

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

#648

Post by [deleted] »

mquander wrote: post #566
ajross wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to reply to my own comment to extend the last point, because I think it's important to point out: I think it's clear, and that everyone would agree, that if you showed up here on HN making fun of another commenter for their gender in exactly the way that the Bee did, using exactly the same words, that you'd be banned. And we'd all agree that you should be banned. I think the logical trap that the "free spee…

I agree with this, but I would emphasize something you glossed over, which is that the target is a "public figure." It's normative to be cruel to "public figures" in ways that would be totally unacceptable in any normal interpersonal relationship. I personally think that's fucked up, but it really is normative. So singling out e.g. cruelty specifically about trans people's gender presentation seems targeted and polit…

[deleted]

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

#649

Post by hot_gril »

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, people self-censor nowadays. Common to see TikTok videos where a benign use of the word "kill" is crossed out or spelled differently just to avoid running afoul of automatic filters. You do what you gotta do.

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

#650

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

freejazz wrote: post #555
solveit wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I absolutely don't want Twitter to decide which organisations are like the NAACP and which are like the Klan. This is regardless of who runs Twitter.

Well, good luck having a readable twitter then

I don't think the problem is whether Twitter is readable. The problem is whether it is advertisable for Twitter: whether advertisers will complain about being placed next to a tweet.
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