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Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia
- bennyp101 6y agoHas to be an overzealous AI surely, or is religion the one thing they /really/ don't want arguments to start on - maybe safer to just nip any flamewars in the bud?
- bryanrasmussen 6y agothe screenshot shows an appeal took place and their team looked at it and upheld it. on edit: basically whoever read it probably did not have the English language skills to realize it was against Euthanasia, as the phrasing was more complicated than needed to make that point.
- bennyp101 6y agoEven with English language skills, maybe just scanning the text and not fully comprehending? Slightly off-topic: I wonder how impartial a human has to be - would the outcome be different depending if the reviewer was a devoted catholic or an atheist?
- bryanrasmussen 6y agowhen I say English language skills I don't necessarily mean they don't read English, but just that they don't read it well enough to have understood the distinction under whatever constraints they were working - if those constraints include scanning quickly then they did not have the skills to read that text quickly and understand it.
- mannykannot 6y agoTrue enough, but there really are at least two alternatives here that could be distinguished, except that we do not have sufficient information to make this distinction. In either of these two cases, the reviewer presumably did not understand the meaning of the statement, but in the first case this was because they did not know the language sufficiently well, while in the second, they lacked the critical reasoning skills to correctly discern its meaning. In the first case, but not the second, the reviewer's performance on this particular task would vary depending on the language it is expressed in. Of course, in neither case should the person be given the job of reviewing English-language tweets. There are additional possibilties, such as Twitter having created an environment in which it is much safer or easier to agree with the initial ruling, or where the reviewer is required to pick from a list of justifications for reversing the initial decisions, and none of the options fit (I'm sure you have seen questionnaires like that.) The one thing we can be sure of is that the Bishop should not have been banned.
- richrichardsson 6y agoThere is a possible 3rd option: they didn't have enough time to make a reasoned judgement. It's quite conceivable these human moderators are expected to get through <X> tasks per <time period>, and perhaps the values you plug in there are such that it only leaves a very short period of time for each one.
- Chris2048 6y agoIf your job is to read English text, and decide if it's semantics match banned semantics; Then maybe a good grasp of English is a job requirement - I'd say ignorance is no excuse (for the hiring employer).
- jowsie 6y agoGood native English speakers are pretty expensive.
- garmaine 6y agoContent moderation at scale is hard.
- fsflover 6y agoWhich is why decentralization is the future. Consider Mastodon instead of Twitter.
- codetrotter 6y agoI think being allowed to die on your own terms is a right that every human should have. And I think assisted suicide is a good thing. But I don’t understand why Twitter would block the Bishop for saying what he said. And the reason they gave, that it “promotes self harm”.. that’s straight up Kafkaesque.
- garmaine 6y agoThe simplest answer is that a bot at twitter initiated the ban, the the low-paid worker who managed the appeal didn't have enough of a grasp of academic English and/or catholic theology to understand that the tweet in question was actually against assisted suicide.
- DangerousPie 6y agoI don't think this is "cancel culture" or being "woke" like the article implies. This is just an AI or inattentive human reviewer seeing the phrase "There is dignity in dying" in the same Tweet as the word "suicide" and misinterpreting it. This just seems like a non-story that will get resolved once the right person at Twitter sees it, that is being pushed by a biased website in their fight against what they perceive as "cancel culture".
- chiefalchemist 6y agoYes and no, but likely mostly no. Keep in mind, the "intelligence" of those AI algorithms comes from datasets of previous behaviors. Given the popularity (?) of the cancel mindset on this particular platform it's reasonable to expect a bias in said data; and in turn the algorithm. Rinse and repeat.
- DangerousPie 6y agoSo you actually believe that Twitter's AI is smart enough to detect that this statement is critical of assisted suicide, and that the data it has been trained on was so heavily biased in favor of assisted suicide that it ends up classifying this as "undesirable content"? That sounds incredibly unlikely to me based on what I know about these kinds of algorithms.
- tgv 6y agoWell, if you take facebook's bart-large, and ask it to label the tweet on categories such as conservative, progressive, etc., you get these scores: critical 0.887 conservative 0.387 radical 0.325 progressive 0.003 If it can do that, it can generated a "biased" evaluation.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoSmart? That's the wrong methphor. That said, yes apparently so. Else it wouldn't have "canceled" this idea.
- alpaca128 6y ago
- keiferski 6y agoWhy does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aphorisms and short stories are much better than his novels. Quoting from Wikipedia: > The villagers hold the officials and the castle in high regard, even though they do not appear to know what the officials do. The actions of the officials are never explained. The villagers provide assumptions and justification for the officials' actions through lengthy monologues. Everyone appears to have an explanation for the officials' actions, but they often contradict themselves and there is no attempt to hide the ambiguity. Instead, villagers praise it as another action or feature of an official. Replace officials and castle with AI and it is almost the exact same scenario. 1. This is already happening: https://www.wired.com/2017/04/courts-using-ai-sentence-criminals-must-stop-now/ https://www.wired.com/2017/04/courts-using-ai-sentence-crimi... 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(novel)
- thedanbob 6y agoOr Gordon Dickson: https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133 https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133
- teh_klev 6y agoI remember reading this years ago, and it's still as bonkers as ever. Slightly related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film) "One day, shortly before Christmas, a fly becomes jammed in a teleprinter, misprinting a copy of an arrest warrant it was receiving resulting in the arrest and accidental death during interrogation of cobbler Archibald Buttle instead of renegade heating engineer and suspected terrorist Archibald Tuttle."
- 1234letshaveatw 6y ago
- chadash 6y agoThis is a non-story. Someone on twitter wrote: > There is dignity in dying. As a priest, I am privileged to witness it often. Assisted suicide, where it is practices, it not an expression of freedom or dignity, but of the failure of a society to accompany people on their "way of the cross" Twitter then flagged it for "promoting or encouraging suicide or self-harm". Obviously it is not, but this is a rather complicated sentence and I can imagine a false positive from AI. It sounds like it was appealed and then a human upheld the flag, but hey, I can't imagine that the person who upheld this honestly understood the sentence either. This is not "wokeness" or "cancel culture" as the post here describes... just bad moderation. They need to hire @dang.
- forty 6y agoExactly, that seems to be the obvious explanation to me as well. I don't know what this website is, but it looks like they really want me to subscribe, and I guess they need some content to make me think there is a problem they are solving :)
- yanderekko 6y agoSystematic bad moderation can be tantamount to wokeness / cancel culture, especially if its manifestation in practice exhibits biases in the expected fashion. This is actually a major problem with arguments that try to dismiss the need to have ideological diversity in these institutions - cancel culture can arise from genuine good faith moderation if those moderators also happen to just have extremely biased ideological priors, eg. "we need to fight back" is taken as a literal threat of violence when said by the outgroup but not by the ingroup. In this case, I think we need to be vigilant against NLP models meant to flag content that may not explicitly build in ideological biases but incorporate feedback loops that will reinforce them - eg. they're meant to detect posts that will likely be flagged by users / human moderators, but the baseline flag rates are ideologically-biased. Unsurprisingly, the woke are perfectly able to understand these concerns when it comes to concerns about say AI coming to exhibit latent racial biases. But when the same mechanisms may cause ideological biases there's a telling lack of concern.
- chadash 6y ago
- franciscop 6y ago> And even if euthanasia is just that – and Twitter is very proud to toot its horn as the sensitive and sensible, woke platform that clamps down on promotion and encouragement of self-harm, including its ultimate form, suicide – the tweet, even though it opposed it, got banned. This is such an interesting topic, because while euthanasia can be considered a way of suicide, advocating against it can also be considered advocating for painful suicide (since some patients will still suicide, just in a much worse way). Note that the bar for euthanasia is incredibly difficult - and it should be - in most countries that allow it. A draft to make it legal was approved recently in my home country, Spain, and to apply it you need to do: Prequisite: have a severe incurable illness. 1. Day 0. First written application. 2. Day 2. Doctor discusses with patient the diagnosis, treatments and their results, and other kind of alternatives. 3. Day 15. Second written application. 4. Day 17. Same as 2, Doctor discusses with patient the diagnosis, treatments and their results, and other kind of alternatives. 5. Day 17. Ask if the patient wants to follow up. 6. Day 27. Doctor consults with a different kind of doctor to approve situation. 7. Day 30. The president of "guarantee and evaluation" of the "state" has to be made aware of this. 8. Day 32. The president designates a doctor and lawyer to verify everything is okay. 9. Day 39. These new doctor + layer present their report. 10. Day 39. The patient signs and chooses modality of death (they can self-administer the substance or have it administer by a nurse). Note: days here point some times the shortest possible dates, e.g. Day 15 is actually "from 15 days since Day 0" and some times to the longest available "up to 2 days since Day 0".
- modo_mario 6y agoIn Belgium we were one of the earlies to approve it and I think it depends on ones condition (If you're guaranteed dead due to the likes of cancer it changes i think) but I think generally it needs to be judged by a panel of doctors and the person needs to have some consults with a psychiatrist and all in all there needs to be no alternatives for a good life. You won't get approved if you're just depressed.
- tgv 6y agoIn The Netherlands there's the possibility for severe cases of depression, too. "Uitzichtloos lijden" (irremediable suffering ) is the magic phrase, and there is the fear that it could lead to older people deciding to euthanize when living conditions in homes for the elderly would be worsening. Not that that's bound to happen soon, but imagine not being able to tweet about it...
- williesleg 6y agoOnce again twitter doing the needful and exposing their negative bias and cancer they bring on the world.
- s_dev 6y agoKevin Doran has some serious hang ups with gay people. Surprised he was never banned on that account by Twitter. He's quite the controversial Catholic figure even in Ireland.
- yurielt 6y agoWhy are people surprised or annoyed at catholics being catholics tho, he is controversial among pozzed circles but he seems to be a Catholic being a catholic and that is it.
- thaufeki 6y agoExactly. "Priest teaches Church teaching", woooah, what a radical. I think secular society (i.e. Big Tech, mainstream media, governments) is treading a very interesting line at the moment, because it simultaneously is ( or at least appears to be) embracing all faiths and cultures, while denouncing them as being inherently hateful (Christianity, Islam). The idea that they will ever reform and completely 180 on teachings they've stood by for thousands of years is naïve. And if we stand by the idea that we simply cannot tolerate hateful speech, with the definition of hateful becoming broader every day, where will we end up? The next 10 years will be very interesting
- refurb 6y agoWhy are people surprised or annoyed at catholics being catholics tho This made me chuckle as I’ve had similar thoughts. It’s like being surprised when a Mormon complains about drinking coffee. “But yeah, he’s a Mormon. That’s what they do?”
- vnchr 6y agoThat could be the source of algorithmic or human bias that played into the mistaken ban in this case. Or to theorize intention, maybe someone was looking for an excuse to ban him.
- 2ion 6y agoHow anybody could treat Twitter as anything but a read-only medium is beyond me. Twitter technically has (even if programmed) editors and what you get to see is what editors did not whitelist, but what they did not blacklist. The latter is only an accommodation of its size. If they could, they would choose a whitelist model.
- gedy 6y agoIronically you might be flagged by some for using the terms "blacklist" & "whitelist".
- _qulr 6y agoA couple weeks ago Twitter inexplicably suspended @AppsExposed, an account that has repeatedly exposed scams in Apple's App Store and was recently featured in Forbes. The account is still suspended. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/02/02/porn-app-network-scamming-iphone-users-for-26m-per-month-says-apps-exposed/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/02/02/porn-ap... This has nothing to do with euthanasia, but that's the point. It could be anything, or nothing. Twitter doesn't even have to give a reason for suspending accounts. There is no accountability. "Just don't use Twitter", some say. But Twitter has 300 million users, and you're supposed to "just" ignore that audience. How about "Just don't sell your product in the United States"? Doesn't sound so great, does it. The excuse is always is Twitter is a "private" company (not really, they're publicly traded). But Twitter is literally the size of the United States, it has approximately the same population. Facebook has a larger population than any country on Earth. These aren't just companies, they're almost nations.
- ghaff 6y agoI got blocked from posting on Twitter about 6 months ago. After a couple complaints and a couple weeks, they reinstated. No idea why. I don't even post mild political stuff. >"Just don't use Twitter", some say. And, yeah, it's one of the main ways I interact with a lot of people professionally. Losing access would be a major inconvenience and probably even somewhat professionally damaging.
- _qulr 6y agoYes, I actually deleted my Twitter account and joined ADN. I was gone from Twitter for 4 years. But this accomplished nothing, it only hurt me professionally, and ADN eventually shut down. Individuals can't win in this scenario. Like it or not, the big social networks have captured the masses.
- Tarq0n 6y agoForbes is a blogging platform nowadays, something being published there should be given about as much weight as a medium article.
- holistio 6y agoI live in Europe, in a country where black population is statistically insignificant, I only see black people about once every fortnight, and I live in a city of close to 2 million people. A lot of my acquaintances and friends have practically zero exposure to what caused the BLM movement and during last summer there was a significant number of people posting stuff along the lines of "all lives matter". To illustrate the absurd effect when "the words seemingly mean a good thing, but their actual meaning is flawed" I posted "All lives matter, arbeit macht frei." on Facebook. I was suspended for 24 hours and my appeal was rejected as well. Ever since then, I wondered a few times if actual people could have interpreted it as offensive. And I have since then always arrived to the conclusion that Facebook cannot interpret irony, satire, sarcasm and reflection.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> And I have since then always arrived to the conclusion that Facebook cannot interpret irony, satire, sarcasm and reflection. Sarcasm has to be the least effective possible way to communicate anything, anywhere. You are absolutely begging to be misinterpreted or misunderstood, either legitimately or even deliberately. And you can't really defend yourself because 'it was sarcasm' won't cut it as a defence with many people - it sounds like 'it was a prank bro'. Why would anyone choose to communicate about a complex issue this way? > I posted "All lives matter, arbeit macht frei." This seems positively suicidal - I can't imagine what good you thought could come of this!
- wombatmobile 6y ago> Why would anyone choose to communicate about a complex issue this way? Same reason other people make bad communications. They assume everybody else thinks the same as they think, and know what they know, and know nothing else and think nothing else.
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- aestetix 6y ago
- jkingsbery 6y agoIt's a half-joke in Catholic media circles that making comments like this is likely to receive some kind of punishment on social media... I say "half-joke" because it happens extremely frequently and those writers in that world all know it happens and try to laugh about it. As someone in the tech world, I spend most of my time interacting with more "liberal" people. I don't hear about this happening with any frequency, accidentally or otherwise, to those on the left. At the same time "diversity of thought" is something I only read about in right-leaning circles. Events like the one shown in this article are why diversity of thought matters. This is clearly an important debate, and Twitter, willfully or systematically, is shutting down a legitimate, notable voice in the debate, and Twitter is ill-equipped to even understand that the point made by the bishop is reasonable (if not universally shared).
- sjwalter 6y agoIt's not left/right any more, it's "people who want to control others" vs. "people who want to be left the fuck alone".
- DanBC 6y agoSo, abortions for anyone who wants one, right? Birth control for anyone who needs it? Trans people allowed to participate in sports? Stop pretending the right has no interest in controlling people's lives.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI can’t imagine the reasoning one must go through to want another person to suffer as much as possible at the end of their life.
- Balgair 6y agoMy Catholic dogma may be out of date, but I'd suppose it goes as such: Euthanasia is de-facto suicide, and suicide is a mortal sin. Such sins may damn a soul to eternal punishment in Hell. Suffering at such intensity for eternity is much worse than the suffering at the end of one's life. QED, euthanasia is bad. I'm certain that I'm butchering this. Also, to be clear, I am NOT advocating one way or the other on this reasoning, just giving what I can remember about the reasoning. Again, not my reasoning or advocation. If anyone with a better understanding of the reasoning would comment, that would be great! Thanks.
- im3w1l 6y agoThis is a mistake. Of course it is a mistake. But we should understand that mistakes happen disproportionally to views Twitter consider acceptable but only barely so, and that mistakes are not harmless. People are risk averse, and this will many other people will seal their lips. People with their whole life on twitter, who cant afford to take risks. And lets not forget the trouble for this particular bishop.
- qwerty456127 6y agoAlthough I support all the progressive ides I will never support banning (or shit-storming) people for having and expressing the opposite (or any) opinion (even if I really feel sure they are wrong). Today social network companies enjoy and exercise too much power. And this might be less of a problem if they didn't employ outdated algorithms to make ultimate decisions too quickly.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- LatteLazy 6y ago... Because the bot thought he was encouraging self harm. And he's back on the platform and tweeting away happily. Including criticising assisted suicide and not being kicked.
- jasonkester 6y agoMy money is on Twitter’s $0.50/hr offshore first tier support staff not being universally good at parsing the meaning of complex paragraphs of text. I bet you could find plenty of educated native English speakers who would accidentally flip the meaning of that tweet around if forced to skim it and 200 other “probably bad” ones every hour, every day, all week. So there’s probably no real news here except that big tech companies don’t do support tasks well.
- newbie578 6y agoKeep up the good work Jack. This is a good direction, keep pissing everyone off until the EU finally steps in and starts regulating Twitter. Would love to see them have a taste of their own medicine. Although I would prefer even more if Twitter went offline just like Parler did. I consider Twitter a net negative on the world honestly.
- ch_123 6y agoAs an Irish person who does not agree with the views of the Catholic Church, I think this is an incredibly stupid thing for Twitter to do. The post very clearly is not advocating self harm, and censoring these viewpoints serves only to galvanise support for religious conservatives, as well as swaying people on the fence over to their side.
- 1MachineElf 6y agoI've been thinking about euthanasia lately. Last night, my Aunt passed away. She has been suffering from early-onset Alzhemier's disease. A little over two weeks ago, she was admitted to the hospital because she lost the ability to swallow. Because of her deteriorating condition, they decided to send her to hospice care without life support. For two weeks, she had no food or water, save for the tiny amount in the morphine and atropine syringes they have her. No IV drip. Neither the medical staff nor my family expected she would survive that long. Two weeks of death by starvation and dehydration was horrible to witness. Almost a decade ago, suicide impacted my family, so I had a lot of reservations about self-imposed euthanasia. Now, after seeing what it was like for my aunt, I'm not so sure anymore. We tried to visit her every day and play her the music that she wrote and loved (she was a musician). They say hearing is the last sense to go, so hopefully maybe that meant something to her, and she did respond after the first few days, but for two whole weeks... It seems excessive, and I wouldn't blame someone for pre-empting that.
- RickJWagner 6y agoI'm convinced that big tech is becoming increasingly evil. I'll be encouraging my legislators to keep the net free (with accompanying individual freedoms).
- foolzcrow 6y agoStalin never had it so good.