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I 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 di

I 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 ago
Yes 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 ago
  So 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 ago
    Well, 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 ago
    Smart? That's the wrong methphor. That said, yes apparently so. Else it wouldn't have "canceled" this idea.
alpaca128 6y ago
> resolved once the right person at Twitter sees it that is being pushed by a biased website Which only validates the existence of that "biased website" if Twitter and other giants in the industry decide to ignore such issues otherwise. Except for Google, which just won't care at all.
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  This is not the only site reporting it, for example there is this article in a more mainstream site: https://extra.ie/2021/02/21/news/irish-news/irish-bishop-twitter-opposing-assisted-suicide https://extra.ie/2021/02/21/news/irish-news/irish-bishop-twi... That one also seems to clarify that he didn't actually get "locked out", the Tweet just got removed: > However, Bishop Doran’s profile remains active, although the tweet in question has been removed.
MikeUt 6y ago
On the one hand you may be right, on the other hand you're giving Twitter so much deniability that you'd never get enough evidence to convince you that you're wrong.
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  If they deliberately made plans to block statements against issues like these then there would be proof. There would be documents. There would be people who could become whistleblowers. If you can shown me one of those I might be convinced that there's something going. But a single anecdote like this that can easily be explained in a less conspiratorial way is not particularly strong evidence.
  - MikeUt 6y ago
    > there would be proof. There would be documents. Would there? Or would such blocks simply be the result of strong, shared political leanings at Twitter [1], without any need for central organization? In age when so much is being attributed to unconscious bias and systemic effects, this seems like a strange spot to draw the line that now we need evidence of deliberate organization. [1] Twitter is so liberal that its conservative employees ‘don’t feel safe to express their opinions,’ says CEO Jack Dorsey - https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-employees-conservative-trump-politics https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...
    - DangerousPie 6y ago
      I get what you're saying, and if this was a conservative politician getting banned for saying "I think we should lower taxes and reduce government spending" (or whatever) then I would be much more concerned. But in this case there is a much simpler alternative explanation so in good old Occam's razor fashion I'm going with that one.
MarkPNeyer 6y ago
Here’s what I am told to believe by everyone at these big tech companies: > bias is inescapable, you can’t stop doing it even if you don’t want to be biased, it’s impossible not to have an implicit preference for your race or identify group over others, so it’s critical that you try to mitigate these biases by making sure you’re part of a diverse group > the fact that almost every employee of a big tech company is on one side of an intensely polarized political divide has no impact on the decisions the company makes. Ok.

chiefalchemist 6y ago

Yes 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 ago
So 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 ago
  Well, 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 ago
  Smart? That's the wrong methphor. That said, yes apparently so. Else it wouldn't have "canceled" this idea.

alpaca128 6y ago

> resolved once the right person at Twitter sees it that is being pushed by a biased website Which only validates the existence of that "biased website" if Twitter and other giants in the industry decide to ignore such issues otherwise. Except for Google, which just won't care at all.

DangerousPie 6y ago
This is not the only site reporting it, for example there is this article in a more mainstream site: https://extra.ie/2021/02/21/news/irish-news/irish-bishop-twitter-opposing-assisted-suicide https://extra.ie/2021/02/21/news/irish-news/irish-bishop-twi... That one also seems to clarify that he didn't actually get "locked out", the Tweet just got removed: > However, Bishop Doran’s profile remains active, although the tweet in question has been removed.

MikeUt 6y ago

On the one hand you may be right, on the other hand you're giving Twitter so much deniability that you'd never get enough evidence to convince you that you're wrong.

DangerousPie 6y ago
If they deliberately made plans to block statements against issues like these then there would be proof. There would be documents. There would be people who could become whistleblowers. If you can shown me one of those I might be convinced that there's something going. But a single anecdote like this that can easily be explained in a less conspiratorial way is not particularly strong evidence.
- MikeUt 6y ago
  > there would be proof. There would be documents. Would there? Or would such blocks simply be the result of strong, shared political leanings at Twitter [1], without any need for central organization? In age when so much is being attributed to unconscious bias and systemic effects, this seems like a strange spot to draw the line that now we need evidence of deliberate organization. [1] Twitter is so liberal that its conservative employees ‘don’t feel safe to express their opinions,’ says CEO Jack Dorsey - https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-employees-conservative-trump-politics https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...
  - DangerousPie 6y ago
    I get what you're saying, and if this was a conservative politician getting banned for saying "I think we should lower taxes and reduce government spending" (or whatever) then I would be much more concerned. But in this case there is a much simpler alternative explanation so in good old Occam's razor fashion I'm going with that one.

MarkPNeyer 6y ago

Here’s what I am told to believe by everyone at these big tech companies: > bias is inescapable, you can’t stop doing it even if you don’t want to be biased, it’s impossible not to have an implicit preference for your race or identify group over others, so it’s critical that you try to mitigate these biases by making sure you’re part of a diverse group > the fact that almost every employee of a big tech company is on one side of an intensely polarized political divide has no impact on the decisions the company makes. Ok.