4 ms·

The same is true for gore, porn, or other types of undesirable content, yet hardly anyone wishes to post on platforms that make no effort to control those.

biesnecker 5y ago
It's not though? Sure, there are edge cases (breastfeeding being labeled as porn, for example), but the vast majority of what is blocked as porn on major social networks is actually porn as understood by most people. That's not the case for most misinformation.
- nitwit005 5y ago
  What the Twitter post asked for was doing things in a "fair, reproducible, and representative way", rather than just being correct most of the time. I suspect the vast majority of the time the misinformation removal is accurate as well. People tend to post the same dumb stuff over and over.
- nickthegreek 5y ago
  I'd argue against this. From the things that I see removed from those I follow on instagram, I would never label as porn. And then they loose their entire account based on extremely puritan value judgements.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  Even if that's true, you can still moderate in a fair, reproducible and "representative" way, because the goals are different. In the case of NSFW content, the filtering can be opt-in: "don't show me this stuff, because I'd rather not see it". The point of moderating "misinformation" is not to let anybody see it, because you don't want them to see it.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  The whole argument being made here is about just those "edge cases."
mfer 5y ago
This is where things get more complicated. For example, things in the US have moving and TV ratings based on the type of content. People can opt-in to watching things at that rating level knowing the types of content in it. They can do it for themselves and their children. Some TV stations only have certain types of content and remove others. With social networks some will say that certain types of content isn't for that network. It's the same idea. What these channels and networks aren't doing is telling you what is misinformation or not. They aren't making truthy statements. Modern social media is making truthy statements. booleans. Not about what content is allowed in the network but about what is true and not as a whole. That's different.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  You are simply not allowed to show hardcore porn on broadcast TV. That said, standards were edging toward allowing more things until the FCC cracked down hard after the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake Super Bowl performance. This question is more political than you like to pretend.
bduerst 5y ago
Yep. Many of the social or content websites advertising as being "moderation free" don't seem to thrive or last very long, even though that tends to attract a specific type of crowd.
- freeflight 5y ago
  For the longest time they thrived and were considered the de-facto standard. But the politicization of that whole field, trough FUD about "social bots" and "fake news", made that very difficult to keep up. Case in point; Liveleak is now gone, with it at lot of content that's now hidden away in private archives of data hoarders. Now, one can handwave that away as just a bunch of snuff and gore porn, but there was so much more there than that; Controversial livestreams that were deleted from the original platform also serve as evidence, war footage, all the things authorities and governments often don't want people to see. Like footage from the Syrian civil war on YouTube; Google scrubbed massive amounts of that, possibly including evidence for war crimes [0] By now it's reached a point where even documentaries about certain wars get an automatic age-lock from YouTube, the only way to watch those is to confirm your real identity with Google. On that end the surface web has lost so much of its "bite", it hardly feels like the web anymore. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-socialmedia-rights-trfn-idUSKBN23Q2TO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-socialmedia-rights...
belorn 5y ago
platforms that has no content controls tend to give users the ability to perform content controls themselves. The Internet is a nice example where as a platform, undesirable content does not generally diminish the usefulness of the Internet. Few is leaving the Internet because there is too much gore and porn, nor is it desirable to have ISP censor the Internet in an effort to reduce gore and porn. If there is too much gore and porn, it better for the user to simply decide for themselves to not visit sites with gore and porn.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Most people spend most of their time on moderated Web sites, not the Web sites that allow you to post gore and porn whenever you want.
commandlinefan 5y ago
That isn't true though - you can police those in a fair, reproducible and representative way. Whether or how widely they ought to be policed or not is another question, but NSFW content filtering effectively never produces false negatives and really only produces false positives in rare cases.
- deeg 5y ago
  I don't think we can. What is (or isn't) revenge porn? Are we policing that effectively? Do people get in trouble for posting cute pictures of their kids in the tub? We should get away from thinking that moderating perfectly is the goal. There is no way we could even decide what perfect moderation is, let alone carry it out. Our goal should be "mostly effective", or something like that.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Do you think? How about medical content? Or artistic content? Is nudity OK even if it's sexual, provided certain sex acts are not shown? Which sex acts and how graphically? There have been plenty of dust-ups over the years about what kinds of nudity should be allowed.
marcusverus 5y ago
There's an important distinction. The power to censor gore can't be used to gain undue influence over society and democratic process. The power to censor political speech can. The founders didn't trust themselves with the power to censor political speech. The idea that such dangerous power should invested in unelected, unaccountable tech barons is, frankly, so absurd that I struggle to believe that anyone advocates it in good faith.
- archagon 5y ago
  That is definitely false. See censorship of war footage, for one.

biesnecker 5y ago

It's not though? Sure, there are edge cases (breastfeeding being labeled as porn, for example), but the vast majority of what is blocked as porn on major social networks is actually porn as understood by most people. That's not the case for most misinformation.

nitwit005 5y ago
What the Twitter post asked for was doing things in a "fair, reproducible, and representative way", rather than just being correct most of the time. I suspect the vast majority of the time the misinformation removal is accurate as well. People tend to post the same dumb stuff over and over.
nickthegreek 5y ago
I'd argue against this. From the things that I see removed from those I follow on instagram, I would never label as porn. And then they loose their entire account based on extremely puritan value judgements.
commandlinefan 5y ago
Even if that's true, you can still moderate in a fair, reproducible and "representative" way, because the goals are different. In the case of NSFW content, the filtering can be opt-in: "don't show me this stuff, because I'd rather not see it". The point of moderating "misinformation" is not to let anybody see it, because you don't want them to see it.
emodendroket 5y ago
The whole argument being made here is about just those "edge cases."

mfer 5y ago

This is where things get more complicated. For example, things in the US have moving and TV ratings based on the type of content. People can opt-in to watching things at that rating level knowing the types of content in it. They can do it for themselves and their children. Some TV stations only have certain types of content and remove others. With social networks some will say that certain types of content isn't for that network. It's the same idea. What these channels and networks aren't doing is telling you what is misinformation or not. They aren't making truthy statements. Modern social media is making truthy statements. booleans. Not about what content is allowed in the network but about what is true and not as a whole. That's different.

emodendroket 5y ago
You are simply not allowed to show hardcore porn on broadcast TV. That said, standards were edging toward allowing more things until the FCC cracked down hard after the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake Super Bowl performance. This question is more political than you like to pretend.

bduerst 5y ago

Yep. Many of the social or content websites advertising as being "moderation free" don't seem to thrive or last very long, even though that tends to attract a specific type of crowd.

freeflight 5y ago
For the longest time they thrived and were considered the de-facto standard. But the politicization of that whole field, trough FUD about "social bots" and "fake news", made that very difficult to keep up. Case in point; Liveleak is now gone, with it at lot of content that's now hidden away in private archives of data hoarders. Now, one can handwave that away as just a bunch of snuff and gore porn, but there was so much more there than that; Controversial livestreams that were deleted from the original platform also serve as evidence, war footage, all the things authorities and governments often don't want people to see. Like footage from the Syrian civil war on YouTube; Google scrubbed massive amounts of that, possibly including evidence for war crimes [0] By now it's reached a point where even documentaries about certain wars get an automatic age-lock from YouTube, the only way to watch those is to confirm your real identity with Google. On that end the surface web has lost so much of its "bite", it hardly feels like the web anymore. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-socialmedia-rights-trfn-idUSKBN23Q2TO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-socialmedia-rights...

belorn 5y ago

platforms that has no content controls tend to give users the ability to perform content controls themselves. The Internet is a nice example where as a platform, undesirable content does not generally diminish the usefulness of the Internet. Few is leaving the Internet because there is too much gore and porn, nor is it desirable to have ISP censor the Internet in an effort to reduce gore and porn. If there is too much gore and porn, it better for the user to simply decide for themselves to not visit sites with gore and porn.

emodendroket 5y ago
Most people spend most of their time on moderated Web sites, not the Web sites that allow you to post gore and porn whenever you want.

commandlinefan 5y ago

That isn't true though - you can police those in a fair, reproducible and representative way. Whether or how widely they ought to be policed or not is another question, but NSFW content filtering effectively never produces false negatives and really only produces false positives in rare cases.

deeg 5y ago
I don't think we can. What is (or isn't) revenge porn? Are we policing that effectively? Do people get in trouble for posting cute pictures of their kids in the tub? We should get away from thinking that moderating perfectly is the goal. There is no way we could even decide what perfect moderation is, let alone carry it out. Our goal should be "mostly effective", or something like that.
emodendroket 5y ago
Do you think? How about medical content? Or artistic content? Is nudity OK even if it's sexual, provided certain sex acts are not shown? Which sex acts and how graphically? There have been plenty of dust-ups over the years about what kinds of nudity should be allowed.

marcusverus 5y ago

There's an important distinction. The power to censor gore can't be used to gain undue influence over society and democratic process. The power to censor political speech can. The founders didn't trust themselves with the power to censor political speech. The idea that such dangerous power should invested in unelected, unaccountable tech barons is, frankly, so absurd that I struggle to believe that anyone advocates it in good faith.

archagon 5y ago
That is definitely false. See censorship of war footage, for one.