3 ms·

Issue is if you run such automation with aggresive settings that would pick up this - you also increase false-positives and those for such a business could have

by Zenst 7y ago

Issue is if you run such automation with aggresive settings that would pick up this - you also increase false-positives and those for such a business could have a more negative impact than a few small bot nets. So you do need people somewhere in the loop to handle these things. What would be nice though would be if social media offered rewards for identifying such abuse, after all - they happily pay bug bounties, why not abuse bounties! That would get them lots of zero-hour/non-contract workers doing their job for them and big companies love that it seems and to be able to do that in a PR way that has positives. Well, it works for BUG bounties, why not incentivise the populus to police the populus against abuse as well.

dmix 7y ago
Exactly, of course they’d have automated it by now if they could. This isn’t like spam mail, it’s propaganda that looks a whole lot like legitimate dissent or information, that’s the whole point. They won’t be full of spammy referral links and easily identifiable keywords for products or scams.
cat199 7y ago
> you also increase false-positives ... > if social media offered rewards for identifying such abuse couldn't this also be gamed for false positives, and create an incentive for groups to form smear-for-profit entities which try to spin small communities as 'bad' to the benefit of others?
- Zenst 7y ago
  When life is a game, everything is gameable. However, as humans are good at adapting, you are playing one large mass of people against a lesser mass of bad players. So whilst you may get gaming of the system, that would still stand out to others who would investigate. But let us not forget, things like posting IP and client and other such details that may prove useful in identifying such abuse, may well elude public investigation. So it would be these niche area's in which Twitter could then focus upon. However, as an example of a slightly comparable problem - wiki editing and the weighted credibility of editors over time, we may well end up creating a hidden social media based upon a small subset of society and perhaps yielding a bias in some direction or another in judgment of what is abuse.
  - cat199 7y ago
    agree all is gameable - this is why I argue social media should provide tools for users to filter their own content rather than being everyones nanny
    - Zenst 7y ago
      Totaly, that would work. Let people impose their world view upon themselves via filters instead of imposing it upon everybody, would solve so much and tick all the free speech boxes. But with the ways social media churns upon spam/botnets, it would place a huge load upon people self filtering.

by Zenst 7y ago

dmix 7y ago

Exactly, of course they’d have automated it by now if they could. This isn’t like spam mail, it’s propaganda that looks a whole lot like legitimate dissent or information, that’s the whole point. They won’t be full of spammy referral links and easily identifiable keywords for products or scams.

cat199 7y ago

> you also increase false-positives ... > if social media offered rewards for identifying such abuse couldn't this also be gamed for false positives, and create an incentive for groups to form smear-for-profit entities which try to spin small communities as 'bad' to the benefit of others?

Zenst 7y ago
When life is a game, everything is gameable. However, as humans are good at adapting, you are playing one large mass of people against a lesser mass of bad players. So whilst you may get gaming of the system, that would still stand out to others who would investigate. But let us not forget, things like posting IP and client and other such details that may prove useful in identifying such abuse, may well elude public investigation. So it would be these niche area's in which Twitter could then focus upon. However, as an example of a slightly comparable problem - wiki editing and the weighted credibility of editors over time, we may well end up creating a hidden social media based upon a small subset of society and perhaps yielding a bias in some direction or another in judgment of what is abuse.
- cat199 7y ago
  agree all is gameable - this is why I argue social media should provide tools for users to filter their own content rather than being everyones nanny
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Totaly, that would work. Let people impose their world view upon themselves via filters instead of imposing it upon everybody, would solve so much and tick all the free speech boxes. But with the ways social media churns upon spam/botnets, it would place a huge load upon people self filtering.