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I forgot about those gaudy animated badges. Social media does have tough challenges ahead, especially as bots/spam become more and more prevalent. I would lov

by et-al 9y ago

I forgot about those gaudy animated badges. Social media does have tough challenges ahead, especially as bots/spam become more and more prevalent. I would love to work on a bot-prevention team somewhere, but my background isn't in ML.

alanfalcon 9y ago
I like the idea of building a reputation system that accepts bots as first class citizens instead of imagining them as an inherent problem. Anyone who meaningfully contributes is good even if they are a bot, and anyone who doesn’t gets left behind. (Easier said than done but the approach to the problem is what’s fundamentally different.)
- Natanael_L 9y ago
  (there's always a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/) Bots can definitely contribute meaningfully in many ways. Mostly through organization (suggesting labels & other metadata, album creation, etc), spam filtering & rule enforcement (like reddit's automoderator), and even automatic editing (like some of the stuff Google Photos offers, like rotation suggestions and various automatic filters).
  - usrusr 9y ago
    Custom moderator automation would be a very valuable tool, bots are terrible at beating bespoke solutions. Is there some open source Amazon lambda clone that community platforms could easily make available to their power users? Funneling automaton onto a platform runtime could be extremely helpful in distinguishing between good and bad automation.
- nkristoffersen 9y ago
  Think of the bots on Reddit
- usrusr 9y ago
  Reputation systems, if they try too hard, quickly reach a point where ambitious fakes are more successful at convincing the system than casual real users. Case in point: Google visibility, if you are not Wikipedia no amount of quality content will get you above the link farms if you don't also follow the customary rites of pleasing the algorithm.
- thanatropism 9y ago
  reddit (or some reddit users, it's hard to know) does this. There's a bot crawling around and whenever someone replies to a bot saying "good bot" or "bad bot" it updates a ranking.

by et-al 9y ago

alanfalcon 9y ago

I like the idea of building a reputation system that accepts bots as first class citizens instead of imagining them as an inherent problem. Anyone who meaningfully contributes is good even if they are a bot, and anyone who doesn’t gets left behind. (Easier said than done but the approach to the problem is what’s fundamentally different.)

Natanael_L 9y ago
(there's always a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/) Bots can definitely contribute meaningfully in many ways. Mostly through organization (suggesting labels & other metadata, album creation, etc), spam filtering & rule enforcement (like reddit's automoderator), and even automatic editing (like some of the stuff Google Photos offers, like rotation suggestions and various automatic filters).
- usrusr 9y ago
  Custom moderator automation would be a very valuable tool, bots are terrible at beating bespoke solutions. Is there some open source Amazon lambda clone that community platforms could easily make available to their power users? Funneling automaton onto a platform runtime could be extremely helpful in distinguishing between good and bad automation.
nkristoffersen 9y ago
Think of the bots on Reddit
usrusr 9y ago
Reputation systems, if they try too hard, quickly reach a point where ambitious fakes are more successful at convincing the system than casual real users. Case in point: Google visibility, if you are not Wikipedia no amount of quality content will get you above the link farms if you don't also follow the customary rites of pleasing the algorithm.
thanatropism 9y ago
reddit (or some reddit users, it's hard to know) does this. There's a bot crawling around and whenever someone replies to a bot saying "good bot" or "bad bot" it updates a ranking.