20 ms·
Inside Twitter’s Long, Slow Struggle to Police Bad Actors
- neonate 8y agohttp://archive.is/J3kIj http://archive.is/J3kIj
- malvosenior 8y ago> Twitter and rival Facebook are increasingly caught in a Catch-22 situation—criticized by some users for allowing hateful posts, but blasted by others for removing content because it curtails free speech. I don’t think this is an accurate framing of the problem. What people want is consistency. If you want to ban people for being fringe, obnoxious or worse, you need to do it regardless of who they are. What happens is one side of the political spectrum gets their worst actors banned while caustic tweeters on the other side of the isle can often be found with blue verification checkmarks (and unchecked aggressive tweets). Imho Dorsey was correct in not wanting to ban Jones and Spencer because that’s more consistent with how the far-left is treated.
- tomlock 8y agoWho would you consider a visible far-left figure that ought to be banned who hasn't been, and why?
- malvosenior 8y agoI don’t think anyone should be banned. If I had to pick a very visible example of caustic far left tweets I’d say the New York Times tech editor is a good example: https://mobile.twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1025437806775226368 https://mobile.twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/10254378067752... In fact someone changed those tweets from “white males” to something else and got banned from Twitter.
- tomlock 8y agoAlex Jones' personal account has almost 10 times the twitter following of "the New York Times tech editor" who's name I've actually never heard before. I think Alex Jones' active disparagement of the parents of mass shooting victims is more actively harmful than what you're linking here.
- colordrops 8y ago"active disparagement" does not constitute a very high bar for censorship. A US platform with with an emphasis on free speech should leverage the work put into US legal precedent as closely as possible. There has been a massive amount of thought put into the reasoning behind legal limitations on speech.
- tomlock 8y agoAnd after that "massive amount of thought" there was no legal restriction put on companies that "deplatform" users like Alex Jones. Go figure.
- colordrops 8y agoIt feels to me that you are intentionally misunderstanding my comment. I was suggesting that the platform claiming to support free speech would be true to their word by opening up as much as legally possible, rather than do anything they want just because it's legal.
- tomlock 8y agoDo you feel like I would have gained anything from your observation that thought has been put into the American legal system? That legal system deliberately doesn't place restrictions on platforms like twitter - might I similarly suggest that you should consider that there was a great deal of thought put into that deliberate omission. If a platform like twitter supports free speech as thoughtfully considered by the American legal system, they are acting consistently with that if they deplatform people like Alex Jones. An example of them not acting consistently with that would be taking government direction on silencing users.
- black6 8y agoRob Reiner.
- prolikewh0a 8y agoWhy the heck are we banning anything unless it brings physical harm to others? (Alex Jones & Sandy Hook) Far left, far right opinions shouldn't be banned as it would set a precedent that anything outside of the status quo is not valid discourse.
- stass 8y agoTwitter should either be banning both far left and far right extremists, or nobody. Otherwise it should be considers a media, and not an internet service and regulated as such.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Otherwise it should be considers a media, and not an internet service and regulated as such. It is considered a communications medium (part of the “new media”). Media and internet are not mutually exclusive categories, and the media in the US (outside of broadcast media, where it is the broadcasting, rather than media, aspect that brings regulation) is generally unregulated and largely Constitutionally protected against regulation.
- pietroglyph 8y agoMedia isn't really regulated much different than Twitter, and an "internet service" isn't required to be politically neutral in its handling of what content it chooses to host.
- Waterluvian 8y agoSo I'm (rather intentionally) ignorant to all this stuff. Can you share an example or reference to what a far left extremist looks like? It just doesn't exist in my current mental model. And I recognize this is terrible when my goal is to be judicious and balanced in all opinions.
- stass 8y agoCheck out @ucf_socialism or videos of Senator Maxine Waters calling for attacks on members of administration: https://news.iheart.com/featured/joe-soto/content/2018-06-25-rep-maxine-waters-encourages-supporters-to-harass-trump-administration/ https://news.iheart.com/featured/joe-soto/content/2018-06-25...
- stass 8y agoWe can begin here: https://tinyurl.com/y8rk9yjn https://tinyurl.com/y8rk9yjn I personally reported many accounts, including an antifa group that called for killing cops and white peoples to no avail. At the same time twitter bans people for sharing news about job growth. Go figure.
- rhcom2 8y agoI've never heard of any of these people, certainly none rise to the visibility of Richard Spencer or Alex Jones. Half of these are actual white people complaining about white people...
- dominotw 8y agoOnly one i recognise is saachi kaul from buzzfeed.
- tomlock 8y agoIt's possible to find literally any opinion on twitter. What's the magnitude of this problem compared to Alex Jones' active disparagement of the parents of victims of mass shootings?
- creaghpatr 8y agoHow would such magnitude even be measured? Subjectively, perhaps legally?
- eganist 8y agoIt's pretty straightforward. Twitter even offers it as a feature for your own tweets, something called Tweet Activity (the bar chart icon on every one of your own tweets). The specific stats e.g. impressions, engagements, detail expands, clicks, replies, etc. are all measured. And that's just what's exposed to us. Twitter doubtless has more than that on hand.
- tomlock 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- downandout 8y agoI replied with one of the worst examples of a far-left person that ought to be banned, but it was almost instantly flagged. That kind of shows the problems with politically biased communities like HN and the workforce at Twitter (the people actually making the decisions talked about in the article). Intolerance in such communities has reached such a fever pitch that even legitimate responses to a question soliciting the names of bad actors get flagged.
- leereeves 8y agoSarah Jeong would the most obvious example of Twitter's bias. Candace Owens was suspended for just two tweets copied from Sarah Jeong. Sarah Jeong made hundreds of such tweets without consequence...and the left defended her.
- pvg 8y agoSarah Jeong is not a 'visible far-left figure'. Candace Owens was not suspended for tweets 'copied', she changed the tweets. This bizarre and tediously repeated idea that you can change the actual words of something and not change the meaning and degree of offensiveness doesn't meet the logical argument standard of most toddlers. It's worse than unconvincing, it just makes you sound like an idiot - I'd reconsider using it.
- malvosenior 8y agoNo one is changing the meaning of anything. You're the one making personal attacks against someone who was just answering a question. Plenty of people would see the editorial board of the NYT as "visible" and Jeong is certainly far-left (unless it's a moderate opinion to blast white men publicly for years on end). You should try to stick to arguing the facts and leave the personal attack nonsense out of it. Calling other users "toddlers" doesn't help your argument.
- pvg 8y agoIf you change the words, you've changed the meaning. That seems like it should be uncontroversial and straightforward. If your argument is based on that not somehow being the case, I think we can safely say it's a dumb argument. This isn't a personal attack, and I haven't called anyone a toddler. Although if one then takes it as a personal attack, I'd be inclined to think that person is a bit of a snowflake. But I wouldn't say it because that would be namecalling. Sarah Jeong is not 'far left', nor is writing silly tweets about white men. That's neither a left, nor a right nor a swift uppercut to the jaw.
- 8y ago
- DanBC 8y agoLet's not pretend that left wing violence is anywhere near the scale of violence on the far right. There are literally dozens of murders each year in the US from members of the far right.
- malvosenior 8y agoWe're not talking about violence (and you're statement is pure conjecture anyway), we're talking about tweets and yes the left wing tweets are just as bad as the right wing tweets as I and others have given examples of in this thread.
- zaroth 8y ago> On Aug. 14 the company did suspend Mr. Jones for seven days after CNN flagged tweets to the company. Many staffers viewed that as a half measure and complained that the firm hadn’t acted decisively. Mr. Jones’s account has since been restored. Wow, did not know it was CNN that flagged the Jones post which got him suspended for 7 days.
- ageek123 8y agoThey don't like competition.
- creaghpatr 8y agoThat’s the implication but I’m not sure that’s technically what happened. I think CNN incited their readers to report the tweets they highlighted, which is more or less the same kind of thing but adds the plausible deniability of hiding behind an algorithm. Someone at the hearing should ask did someone at Twitter make an editorial decision based on CNNs reporting?
- craftyguy 8y ago> which is more or less the same kind of thing but adds the plausible deniability of hiding behind an algorithm. Bay of Pigs on the internet.
- williesleg 8y agoMost verified accounts are connected to Chinese bots.
- forgotmine0101 8y agoObviously there is no such thing as a far left extremist- the viewpoints of the so called 'far left' are acceptable only. CNN and the freedom fighters antifa are valid while any questioning of them or their direct action is not. Read the comments on this thread 'what left wing extremists??' A Dallas peace officer was shot in the back, and that was not a right wing actor.
- Razengan 8y agoWhy is it so hard to codify “Don’t be a dick”? I’ve seen some highly toxic accounts on Twitter promoting hate, rape and death, and despite being reported, they continue to spread their vitriol. It’s saddening to think of what could have been; if frequently-visited places with organic subcultures like YouTube or 4chan had implemented some basic, sane moderation from the beginning, they could have far exceeded any of the popular social networks of today.
- dang 8y agoIt's not as easy as it seems. People assume we're in favor of the worst things that appear on HN, when in reality we don't see most of it and certainly aren't in favor. And HN is orders of magnitude smaller than Twitter.
- ternaryoperator 8y agoWell, you do a fine job. It's one of the few places I can come and participate in interesting conversations with adults acting intelligently. Thanks for the great work!
- dang 8y agoThanks! I can't imagine having to deal with the equivalent problems at Twitter's or Reddit's or Facebook's scale. To me it seems likely that no one knows how.
- Razengan 8y agoMaybe some ML can help now? Weigh the content of the reported comments against the reporter's trustability etc., and have actual mods train the system by having the final say on all reports at first before making it fully automated.
- forgottenpass 8y ago>Why is it so hard to codify “Don’t be a dick”? Because everyone that tweets more than once a week would be banned. Twitter's KPIs are tied to keeping the eternal flamewar alive. They need people emotionally engaged and saying thing they would decide against posting if forced into a 10-minute cool down period. Their moderation problem isn't that they're fighting a wildfire. They're trying to protect a few acres while torching the rest.
- speedplane 8y agoRemoving bots and accounts unconnected to an individual should be the priority. Police the mechanisms not the content.
- singularity2001 8y agoBad Actors is a misnomer: They are Writers of Evil, or Spreaders of Hatespeech.
- originalsimba 8y agoTwitter's struggle is to be profitable _at all_, which they are failing, and their effort to police the thoughts of their users is not going to have any effect on that.