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Twitter and Facebook and Google and others share one common concern that, if addressed, would see their staffing budgets massively reduced (and thus profits inc

Twitter and Facebook and Google and others share one common concern that, if addressed, would see their staffing budgets massively reduced (and thus profits increased): Human moderators. Each grudgingly uses human moderators to squash the worst of the problems on their platform, and does a terrible job of it. Each underspends on human beings, using contractors without sufficient mental health care to ensure their well-being as they sift through our online sewer pipes. Google outsources YouTube moderation to third-parties: the Content ID system is a labor shifting device designed to force the labor cost of enforcement outside of Google’s responsibility. Twitter ended political advertisements rather than spend the human cost required to moderate them, and is now proposing a decentralized platform where Twitter is no longer responsible for content moderation for other platforms. By doing so, they can continue to act as your “aggregator” of individual (RSS-like) Twitter accounts, so that they can continue showing you ads based on the data they harvest from you and your feeds — while outsourcing responsibility for moderation to others. This is an effective strategy for increasing profits and if implemented correctly will permit mass layoffs of most of their content moderation workforce. This will also vastly increase the prevalence of abuse, racism, and other societal ills that infect Twitter with its underpowered moderation today. Props to Twitter for identifying a way to externalize the cost of civility while continuing to profit from the resulting cesspool that will ensue.

woah 7y ago
Microsoft and Gmail make a lot of money from the email protocol, despite the fact that they don't moderate it. Is this immoral?
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  I wouldn’t know, that question is apples and oranges different. Twitter is creating a syndicated public one-to-all feed system; Email is a syndicated private one-to-many feed system. The public/private difference cannot be discarded and makes your question unrelated to my statement. I encourage you to pursue a top-level thread about your concern instead, so that it’s not disregarded as a reply to mine.
  - 0x445442 7y ago
    Email lists are not private if you choose to sign up for one and post to it, the same way Twitter is not private if you choose to sign up and post to it. Email lists are very similar to Usenet which was the precursor to all these social media sites.
    - floatingatoll 7y ago
      Apples can be orange in certain breeds or lighting conditions, but that doesn’t make them oranges. Twitter is not equal to an email list. They share certain aspects but they are significantly dissimilar in UI, approach, social perception (by participants and by others), and publication. M Twitter has not replaced mailing lists, and mailing lists continue to operate effectively. Twitter is an electronic billboard that anyone with an app can post content to, and everyone can easily see it and do the same. Mailing lists are a town hall meeting inside a building: you can see them if you like, but participation from bystanders is quite rare and is often frowned upon or openly prohibited by the meeting’s coordinators.
      - woah 7y ago
        You’re acting like there’s some extremely clear difference, but there isn’t. The only real difference is that email has kind of a bad UX. The comparison is not apples and oranges, it is grapefruit and oranges.
specialist 7y ago
The problem is online social networks. There is no fix. Any medium supported by ads is toxic. This predates online social networks. Any news feed (recommenders) is intrinsically toxic. Such feedback loops are just outrage machines. It's highly doubtful that likes and ratings can be redeemed either. I'm fresh out of goodwill, so I don't care to try. So what's left? The graph. Maybe that could be useful. Meanwhile, it's hysterical that anyone tainted by Twitter imagines they have anything constructive to contribute. Now were he to completely renounce the whole effort, acknowledges it's deleterious impact on democracy and society, turn it off, and beg for our forgiveness. Well. That'd be a good start.
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  Would a social network, where every post is moderated, have the same issues?
  - specialist 7y ago
    Very good question. Moderation is the only known effective solution. Some times. FAANGs and others abandoned human moderation because it "doesn't scale". So what? When did we decide that scale was more important than civility? -- I also have questions. What is the feedback loop? For every medium, every style of communication? How do we break those loops into discrete steps? Then where can we add friction? To slow down the negative psychological and sociological pathologies. Defuse, disable those dopamine hits we all get from these social interactions. Maybe even figure out how to make it a positive feedback loop.
    - BlueTemplar 7y ago
      Just a technicality, but a "positive feedback loop" is probably the very thing that you might want to avoid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback
      - specialist 7y ago

woah 7y ago

Microsoft and Gmail make a lot of money from the email protocol, despite the fact that they don't moderate it. Is this immoral?

floatingatoll 7y ago
I wouldn’t know, that question is apples and oranges different. Twitter is creating a syndicated public one-to-all feed system; Email is a syndicated private one-to-many feed system. The public/private difference cannot be discarded and makes your question unrelated to my statement. I encourage you to pursue a top-level thread about your concern instead, so that it’s not disregarded as a reply to mine.
- 0x445442 7y ago
  Email lists are not private if you choose to sign up for one and post to it, the same way Twitter is not private if you choose to sign up and post to it. Email lists are very similar to Usenet which was the precursor to all these social media sites.
  - floatingatoll 7y ago
    Apples can be orange in certain breeds or lighting conditions, but that doesn’t make them oranges. Twitter is not equal to an email list. They share certain aspects but they are significantly dissimilar in UI, approach, social perception (by participants and by others), and publication. M Twitter has not replaced mailing lists, and mailing lists continue to operate effectively. Twitter is an electronic billboard that anyone with an app can post content to, and everyone can easily see it and do the same. Mailing lists are a town hall meeting inside a building: you can see them if you like, but participation from bystanders is quite rare and is often frowned upon or openly prohibited by the meeting’s coordinators.
    - woah 7y ago
      You’re acting like there’s some extremely clear difference, but there isn’t. The only real difference is that email has kind of a bad UX. The comparison is not apples and oranges, it is grapefruit and oranges.

specialist 7y ago

The problem is online social networks. There is no fix. Any medium supported by ads is toxic. This predates online social networks. Any news feed (recommenders) is intrinsically toxic. Such feedback loops are just outrage machines. It's highly doubtful that likes and ratings can be redeemed either. I'm fresh out of goodwill, so I don't care to try. So what's left? The graph. Maybe that could be useful. Meanwhile, it's hysterical that anyone tainted by Twitter imagines they have anything constructive to contribute. Now were he to completely renounce the whole effort, acknowledges it's deleterious impact on democracy and society, turn it off, and beg for our forgiveness. Well. That'd be a good start.

floatingatoll 7y ago
Would a social network, where every post is moderated, have the same issues?
- specialist 7y ago
  Very good question. Moderation is the only known effective solution. Some times. FAANGs and others abandoned human moderation because it "doesn't scale". So what? When did we decide that scale was more important than civility? -- I also have questions. What is the feedback loop? For every medium, every style of communication? How do we break those loops into discrete steps? Then where can we add friction? To slow down the negative psychological and sociological pathologies. Defuse, disable those dopamine hits we all get from these social interactions. Maybe even figure out how to make it a positive feedback loop.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    Just a technicality, but a "positive feedback loop" is probably the very thing that you might want to avoid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback
    - specialist 7y ago