Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

911–920 of 1001 posts

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

#911
post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. The award is only ridiculous if you think trans people shouldn't exist in public as openly trans. I mean you even referred to her as "her" so you seemingly recognize that her being eligible for "Woman of the Year" is more appropriate than "Man of the Year".…

> The award is only ridiculous if you think trans people shouldn't exist in public as openly trans. I mean you even referred to her as "her" so you seemingly recognize that her being eligible for "Woman of the Year" is more appropriate than "Man of the Year".

One issue with people being coerced into using wrong-sex pronouns is that it restricts discussion on this topic.

In this case, for example, if you believe that he shouldn't have been awarded a "Woman of the Year" accolade because he is really a man, but have to refer to him as "her" to be able to say this such that other people can read this - i.e. to avoid your comment being removed or your account banned - then it undermines the entire point being made.

This thoughtful essay discusses some other repercussions of being coerced to use wrong-sex pronouns: https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/

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

#912
post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you think is the fundamental joke the article is making? That a man was voted “Woman of the Year”. By any non-tautological definition of “woman” and “man”, that’s objectively true. Are we not allowed to point out obvious truths when people claim the opposite?

Generally we consider jokes to be cruel when they mock an affliction that someone didn’t choose to have. You can just about get away with making such jokes about the abstract idea of an affliction, but when you name someone directly it crosses a line. Whether you think this particular example was cruel depends ultimately on whether you think it is targeting the individual’s gender dysphoria (the thing they didn’t cho…

[deleted]

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

#913

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…

> This tells me no humans are in the loop on any of this.

At that scale, it's very hard to achieve. 500M tweet a day. Let's suppose 1% of the tweets are flagged by users or by keyword, that would be 5M of tweets a day to review. Let suppose that one person can review 1000 tweets a day, that would be 5000 people working full time. And even with humans, there'll always be some flagging that will be contested.

Besides, different countries have different legislation regarding what can be be published on the web. It's a hard problem to solve, even with the best intent.

I don't think Musk is going to fix this. I think it'll be more about reinstating people like Trump on the platform.

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

#914
post #396

Guess his fans celebrating their newly acquired “free speech” by spamming the n-word were wrong

This was never about that. Except very few fringe people (and progressives towards black people leaving the plantation) nobody wants to use or see racial slurs on social media. That shit doesn't even fly on Zerohedge and most are absolutely fine with that. What we want is to be able to say "okay dude" and "only women can get pregnant" without being banned.

Are you sure? Because it looks like a lot of these guys wanted to use and see racial slurs on social media...

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

#915
post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take your point, but would suggest the joke is more pointedly aimed at society generally, and the magazine specifically. What makes the joke funny and culturally relevant — as opposed trivial cruelty — is that it represents a simple, forbidden truth for which one will be subject to severe public censure and deplatforming. Comedy is a final bulwark against uncritical thinking, and can be used to deflate ludicrous id…

>Comedy is a final bulwark against uncritical thinking, and can be used to deflate ludicrous ideas that are otherwise culturally unassailable. Comedy can inspire thoughfullness and push back against societal norms. Comedy can also be a way to normalize bullying marginalized people. Being a troll and saying 'But wait, I'm being funny!' still makes you a troll. It's not like the account in question was trying to genera…

The wider philosophical point is, if a man has gender dysphoria, does that mean he is a woman, or just wants to be a woman?

If the latter, there should be no issue in a satirical publication making the point that a man who wants to be a woman getting awarded a "Woman of the Year" accolade is nonsensical.

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

#916

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…

Did you have a lot of followers? Im guessing manual and auto moderation approach differ based on follower count?

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

#917
post #854

You mean genuine diversity (of thinking) instead of the fake, superficial kind (skin color, gender, sexual orientation etc)? Sounds like a good idea to me..

No, it will consist entirely of ultra-wealthy knobs. Don't drink the koolaid, kid

Well it cant possibly be worse than its already been, so here's hoping..

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

#918

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Social media apps don't let users download pictures anymore. These aren't problems with screenshots of text (although others have done a pretty good job in listing those) or even problems with computing. These are problems with shitty social media platforms that want to take control from their users, and with the users who accept those kinds of limitations. Stop using bad user-hostile platforms and they'll either i…

> Stop using bad user-hostile platforms and they'll either improve to win back users or they'll become obsolete and die as people flock to better alternatives. There's no point in migrating to some perfect encrypted federated free software platform and being alone because everyone I know is still using Instagram.

> There's no point in migrating to some perfect encrypted federated free software platform and being alone because everyone I know is still using Instagram.

If everyone went by that logic no one could ever stop using the social media sites they are using today. If you've found a good platform your best bet is to get people to use it in addition to the bad ones they use now and as more people join and use the better platform people could find themselves using the old ones less frequently. By enjoying and getting used to having the benefits of the new platform they could grow increasingly frustrated by the limitations of the older ones.

As long as the perfect encrypted federated free software platform is at least as easy to join and use as the old one asking a friend to add one more app to their rotation wouldn't be putting a huge burden on them.

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

#919
Free speech absolutism, eh? It only sounds good until the reality hits. There already exist platforms which have it. Twitter becoming one of them is not compatible with keeping ad revenue (and probably carries legal risks on top of that).

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

#920

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…

> This tells me no humans are in the loop on any of this. At that scale, it's very hard to achieve. 500M tweet a day. Let's suppose 1% of the tweets are flagged by users or by keyword, that would be 5M of tweets a day to review. Let suppose that one person can review 1000 tweets a day, that would be 5000 people working full time. And even with humans, there'll always be some flagging that will be contested. Besides,…

Where I'm from, minimum wage is around 15k per year. So hiring 5k people would cost 75M in salaries, and let's just double it for other operation costs, 150M. People don't work 24/7, so we must quadruple it for triple shifts + weekends. That leaves us at around 600M: yes, that's terribly expensive. 1

But maybe we don't need to review all the reports! What if we rank them? Correct reports grand a user positive 'report karma', and they climb higher. Posts that are 'trending' in reports should also climb higher. New posts take priority over old posts, ie let's police new content, not everything that has been ever written. And of course, we can also use modern techniques, ie AI to score the reports.

If Twitter did that and could review the top 10% of reports, at 60M per year, would that be worth it? If successful, I think so.

1: this number is biased because it assumes all reports are independent, but I suspect a significant amount of reports would concern a low number of posts, eg controversial or political posts from accounts with a large follow count.

Post reply on HN