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Alright, let's say you get appointed at Twitter to clean up this mess. You get full authority to do whatever needs to be done. How would you solve this? Your s

Alright, let's say you get appointed at Twitter to clean up this mess. You get full authority to do whatever needs to be done. How would you solve this? Your solution will be criticized by the other HN-ers here :D.

dumbfounder 6y ago
It should be criticized, why do you imply that is a negative? AI is just a tool, and it can be used incorrectly. In this case we have a policy that seems to be applied incorrectly. That is a simple problem to solve, require more review, or the ability to escalate. Don't make such decisions "final".
- koonsolo 6y ago
  Criticing is easy when you don't have to provide any solutions. Expecting Twitter not to have their hands full with these kinds of issues is very naive. It's always a question how to spend your very limited resources.
pgrote 6y ago
>Alright, let's say you get appointed at Twitter to clean up this mess. Announce a sale of intellectual and physical assets and close down. I would realize the company is a negative drain on society.
- koonsolo 6y ago
  So basically some other platform will take over?
  - _qulr 6y ago
    No, break up all the tech giants, and prevent monopolistic platforms from ever arising. A platform so gigantic that it's impossible for humans to intelligently manage it should simply not exist.
    - koonsolo 6y ago
      You do realize the network effect right? You mean that a bunch of your friends is on one platform, and a bunch of others on another platform, and your family on still another one. But then you have to be on all platforms, so this means everyone else also needs to be on all platforms. So how exactly do you see this working when reality pushes everyone to use a single platform? because you know, it's a social network.
      - _qulr 6y ago
        1) My family is on Facebook. I am not. ;-) It's already the case that Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for example have different "crowds", though there's some overlap. 2) Somehow humanity survived without these networks pre-2007ish. 3) I have no problem with the existence of many smaller special-interest social networks. Those are manageable, and we had them before the rise of the BigCos. The problem is with the existence of a few all-encompassing, world-consuming, general-purpose social networks. They have proven to be completely unmanageable and toxic. "Abolish Gmail", for instance, doesn't mean abolish email providers. Not at all. And it doesn't mean that "the next gmail" will replace it. Healthy competition is good, unhealthy monopolies are bad.
        koonsolo 6y ago
        Your point 1 contradicts your monopoly theory. Your point 2 says you really want to join the Amish. You mean smaller platforms like Parler or 4chan?
        _qulr 6y ago
        > Your point 1 contradicts your monopoly theory. What is my "monopoly theory"? I clarified what I meant: "A platform so gigantic that it's impossible for humans to intelligently manage it". We don't really have a good term for a corporation that has undue, oversized market power. Pedants like to argue "so-and-so is not literally a monopoly!" but this is just wordplay and doesn't really address the serious social issues involved. > Your point 2 says you really want to join the Amish. Maybe! > You mean smaller platforms like Parler or 4chan? I mean smaller platforms. It would be ridiculous to suggest that your cherrypicked examples are representative. You can make anything look bad by cherrypicking.
keiferski 6y ago
Hmm. Obviously I don't have a perfect solution, but I've often thought that a "tagging" system would work better than a "moderation" system. It would work like this: by default, nothing is moderated. Instead, every post/tweet/etc. has to be labeled by the user. There can be an auto-suggestion feature to make it a quick process. Then, other users can choose which tags they want to view or hide. If you don't want to see content tagged with X, no problem. If you do, you can. In my mind, this would solve a few problems: 1. Justifiably ban people that try to circumvent the tagging system. You aren't determining whether their speech is allowed or not, merely ensuring that they follow the very basic rules of the site. This is much simpler than relying on an AI to interpret a nuanced comment and then moderate it. 2. Allow everyone to say whatever they want. No one will feel silenced. Again, I'm sure there are holes in this idea, but I think it might be a better approach.
- matoro 6y ago
  Tumblr's tagging system is quite similar to this - you can "follow" tags or "blacklist" them and most people do tag pretty extensively - and it allows people to get away with some things that would be banned on twitter, like gore blogs. On the other hand, Twitter allows nudity, while Tumblr does not, and they both still ban for "hate speech."
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Right, it seems pretty implementable from a technical perspective. The hard part is having a company put I disagree with what you say, but will defend your right to say it in their company philosophy.
cat199 6y ago
document the filtering/ranking widgets and give the users their own knobs to control them.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lvass 6y ago
Migrate to a federated network, put up a large barrier for the ability to post and have employees moderate it. Facilitate administrators creating their own user moderated nodes and force users to opt into someone else's node if they want to read or post in them.

dumbfounder 6y ago

It should be criticized, why do you imply that is a negative? AI is just a tool, and it can be used incorrectly. In this case we have a policy that seems to be applied incorrectly. That is a simple problem to solve, require more review, or the ability to escalate. Don't make such decisions "final".

koonsolo 6y ago
Criticing is easy when you don't have to provide any solutions. Expecting Twitter not to have their hands full with these kinds of issues is very naive. It's always a question how to spend your very limited resources.

pgrote 6y ago

>Alright, let's say you get appointed at Twitter to clean up this mess. Announce a sale of intellectual and physical assets and close down. I would realize the company is a negative drain on society.

koonsolo 6y ago
So basically some other platform will take over?
- _qulr 6y ago
  No, break up all the tech giants, and prevent monopolistic platforms from ever arising. A platform so gigantic that it's impossible for humans to intelligently manage it should simply not exist.
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    You do realize the network effect right? You mean that a bunch of your friends is on one platform, and a bunch of others on another platform, and your family on still another one. But then you have to be on all platforms, so this means everyone else also needs to be on all platforms. So how exactly do you see this working when reality pushes everyone to use a single platform? because you know, it's a social network.
    - _qulr 6y ago
      1) My family is on Facebook. I am not. ;-) It's already the case that Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for example have different "crowds", though there's some overlap. 2) Somehow humanity survived without these networks pre-2007ish. 3) I have no problem with the existence of many smaller special-interest social networks. Those are manageable, and we had them before the rise of the BigCos. The problem is with the existence of a few all-encompassing, world-consuming, general-purpose social networks. They have proven to be completely unmanageable and toxic. "Abolish Gmail", for instance, doesn't mean abolish email providers. Not at all. And it doesn't mean that "the next gmail" will replace it. Healthy competition is good, unhealthy monopolies are bad.
      - koonsolo 6y ago
        Your point 1 contradicts your monopoly theory. Your point 2 says you really want to join the Amish. You mean smaller platforms like Parler or 4chan?
        _qulr 6y ago
        > Your point 1 contradicts your monopoly theory. What is my "monopoly theory"? I clarified what I meant: "A platform so gigantic that it's impossible for humans to intelligently manage it". We don't really have a good term for a corporation that has undue, oversized market power. Pedants like to argue "so-and-so is not literally a monopoly!" but this is just wordplay and doesn't really address the serious social issues involved. > Your point 2 says you really want to join the Amish. Maybe! > You mean smaller platforms like Parler or 4chan? I mean smaller platforms. It would be ridiculous to suggest that your cherrypicked examples are representative. You can make anything look bad by cherrypicking.

keiferski 6y ago

Hmm. Obviously I don't have a perfect solution, but I've often thought that a "tagging" system would work better than a "moderation" system. It would work like this: by default, nothing is moderated. Instead, every post/tweet/etc. has to be labeled by the user. There can be an auto-suggestion feature to make it a quick process. Then, other users can choose which tags they want to view or hide. If you don't want to see content tagged with X, no problem. If you do, you can. In my mind, this would solve a few problems: 1. Justifiably ban people that try to circumvent the tagging system. You aren't determining whether their speech is allowed or not, merely ensuring that they follow the very basic rules of the site. This is much simpler than relying on an AI to interpret a nuanced comment and then moderate it. 2. Allow everyone to say whatever they want. No one will feel silenced. Again, I'm sure there are holes in this idea, but I think it might be a better approach.

matoro 6y ago
Tumblr's tagging system is quite similar to this - you can "follow" tags or "blacklist" them and most people do tag pretty extensively - and it allows people to get away with some things that would be banned on twitter, like gore blogs. On the other hand, Twitter allows nudity, while Tumblr does not, and they both still ban for "hate speech."
- keiferski 6y ago
  Right, it seems pretty implementable from a technical perspective. The hard part is having a company put I disagree with what you say, but will defend your right to say it in their company philosophy.

cat199 6y ago

document the filtering/ranking widgets and give the users their own knobs to control them.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lvass 6y ago

Migrate to a federated network, put up a large barrier for the ability to post and have employees moderate it. Facilitate administrators creating their own user moderated nodes and force users to opt into someone else's node if they want to read or post in them.