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These companies don't care about banning people because it's more profitable not to - unless you upset someone about a trendy topic like gender. This week I re

• Karawebnetwork 4y ago
  >- unless you upset someone about a trendy topic like gender. I am very active in the online trans sphere and let me tell you, they don't care about that either. The situation is not that any topic has a focus, the online moderation of sites of this size is simply flawed. Only clear hate speech is grounds for banning and muting. And even then, when I say clear, it's about keywords that trigger algorithms.
  • NotYourLawyer 4y ago
    But “kill yourself” isn’t a keyword?
    • miroljub 4y ago
      • martin_a 4y ago
        In Germany we have a saying "Steter Tropfen höhlt den Stein", which seems to be translated to "Little strokes fell big oaks". Hear it often enough, without any consequences for the people telling you that, and it will hurt you.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      I suspect the majority of the "AI" for these moderation systems is "has this been reported by X number or Y% percentage of post viewers? then ban".
    • Karawebnetwork 4y ago
      In my experience, the same string can result in different moderation based on unknown factors. For example, I used to report the trans slur of the "t" word and Facebook would remove the content. Now, when I report it, the comment stays posted. Maybe it has something to do with the age of the post or the number of positive reactions to it. Maybe I reported too much and the false positives resulted in my account being banned from reporting comments. Similar behaviors on other platforms.
      • tablespoon 4y ago
        > For example, I used to report the trans slur of the "t" word and Facebook would remove the content. Now, when I report it, the comment stays posted. Isn't that also a slang term for a transmission? An automated rule for that that would probably result in far too many false positives: merriam-webster.com has the transmission sense as the first meaning, and has collected many very recent usages from auto magazines: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tranny https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tranny.
        • 83 4y ago
          I couldn't actually think of what the 't' word was until you said transmission - that's the context where I hear it FAR more often.
        • Karawebnetwork 4y ago
          To be clear, I reported it under photos of people who are trans while it was used as a slur in comments that were derogatory. Usually, this would result in the comment being deleted. This is only an example to show there is no conspiration about moderation of gender related topics. You get the same issues with other slurs and other topics.
    • hotpotamus 4y ago
      Well, if "Please dont kill yourself" triggered the "kill yourself" algorithm, that might be a problem too.
      • Cthulhu_ 4y ago
        An automated moderation system should be smart enough to detect sympathy. And if it's in doubt, it should leave it to a person - a native speaker of the given language, because a lot of these systems are trained on English and western language and sentiments.
        • bmacho 4y ago
          "Please don't kill yourself" can mean "kill yourself" depending of the original post and poster.
        • hotpotamus 4y ago
          I know that my comment is a trivial observation, but an automated moderation system capable of detecting sympathy sounds like science fiction. Frankly it seems like humans struggle at it.
        • tablespoon 4y ago
          > An automated moderation system should be smart enough to detect sympathy. That sounds like a super hard natural language understanding task. > And if it's in doubt, it should leave it to a person - a native speaker of the given language, because a lot of these systems are trained on English and western language and sentiments. That costs lots of money that could be going to the shareholders or executive compensation instead.
          • anticensor 4y ago
            What if shareholders themselves are tasked to do that stuff?
    • criley2 4y ago
      KYS has traditionally been a one way ticket to a twitter ban for sure. With the impending Musk acquisition, perhaps the staff have lost their zeal and are preparing for more "free speech", as violent language and calls to violence online is often labeled.
      • NotYourLawyer 4y ago
        Calls to violence aren’t free speech under any reasonable definition. At the same time, “violent language” feels like a contradiction in terms.
    • collegeburner 4y ago
      yeah it is but "k1ll your$self" or whatever got through for a while, then it was "unalive", then "un@1ive" or sm when that got filtered, i've even seen "commit queen elizabeth". trying to filter automatically based on message is a retarded strategy.
• jwond 4y ago
  > Many girls have been banned for showing their shoulders I don’t use TikTok, but I thought TikTok was known to have a lot of videos of scantily clad women and girls dancing. Is that just a meme?
  • adwww 4y ago
    It's strictly no nudity, but with as much sexually charged activity as you can get away with. Presumably automated tools just see skin, but are useless against innuendo.
  • Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    It's more of a meme, but people are always looking for the boundaries. There was one weird one that featured a teenage girl getting all kinds of wet things thrown on her to make the shirt cling (followed by some guy coming into view yelling and falling over for some reason?). Keep in mind that there's a lot of teenagers (mostly boys) on there who really don't need much to get excited.
  • MichaelCollins 4y ago
    I don't use tiktok and haven't seen the videos so this is just a guess, but my first thought is they were doing the old hollywood trick of showing bare shoulders with the rest of their body out of frame, maybe covered with a bubble bath, to imply nudity without actually being nude.
• reaperducer 4y ago
  I was suspended for saying "America is worse" and also for saying "God isn't real" What is it about TikTok that makes you go back to it at least twice after being suspended? If I was suspended from a platform for doing something innocuous, I don't think I would go back, only to be suspended again, and then presumably return once more. I'm not on TikTok, so I don't understand its value. But is the content really so good as to subject oneself to that kind of arbitrary treatment?
  • lmm 4y ago
    You're saying this on HN, which has explicitly opaque moderation and a history of arbitrary soft-banning people on moderators' whims.
• madeofpalk 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    You're pushing an extremist view that promotes age-based genocide, of course you should be removed from the platform.
    • stopagephobia 4y ago
      I don't understand how this bigoted person (madeofpalk) thinks that agephobia is acceptable. Why does anyone feel the need to continue perpetuating hatred against PoA?
      • 7952 4y ago
        It can be a bit like black people using the N word, OK in context. We are all getting older, we have elderly relatives who we love and aging is just an obvious part of life. In that context people won't take it personally and understand the nuance. I can bitch about boomers to my boomer parents without contradiction. And I don't get offended if the kids in my family call me an old person. It is funny because it is so universal. Obviously that does not justify anything exactly and we should be respectful. But there is good sense in being generous and not taking offence.
    • madeofpalk 4y ago
      Completely fair. Not saying twitter was in the wrong. Just acknowledging that I received a moderation action for something that was somewhat similar to "kill yourself".
    • matheusmoreira 4y ago
      I've seen people pushing extremist views promoting gender-based genocide: "kill all men". Not only did they not get banned, they actually went on reddit to laugh at all the "virgins" reporting and denouncing them. They were that certain of their own untouchability. If they're gonna police free speech, the least they can do is be consistent about it.
• itsoktocry 4y ago
  >These companies don't care about banning people because it's more profitable not to That's why they banned (and continue to ban) Donald Trump, one of the most notorious Twitter users of all time (who singlehandedly kept CNN in business). >This week I reported someone on Twitter for telling me to kill myself ("Kill yourself" was their exact words). Twitter said they found this "Doesn't violate our rules". Sounds reasonable, no? Just saying "Kill yourself", which is a colloquialism for "f@uck off" or "get bent", shouldn't result in a banning in my opinion. If, in fact, the person was trying to convince you to do so, that's evil, and is a totally different story.
  • BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    Companies aren't consistent internally. At least Twitch had a list of 'do not ban' users leaked, and they also banned some high earners while defending others. Rationality is not a given.
    • eru 4y ago
      Applying different standards to different folks seems perfectly rational to me.
  • Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    > which is a colloquialism for "f@uck off" or "get bent" It's not; fuck off tells someone to go away, get bent means they want to have sex with you; kill yourself is... self explanatory.
    • dr_dshiv 4y ago
      To be fair, “fuck you” is a bit rapey— but the phrase is obviously acceptable in degree. In contrast, “I hope someone rapes you” is generally considered over the line. “Go jump off a bridge” is ok to say in person, but not online. Go figure! There is a morality to it all. Still trying to figure it out.
  • jeromegv 4y ago
    > Sounds reasonable, no? Just saying "Kill yourself", which is a colloquialism for "f@uck off" or "get bent", shouldn't result in a banning in my opinion. That's where we are on social media. Making the good faith argument that telling someone to kill themselves is not harassment or death threat.. just a normal thing to tell each other. Free speech absolutism is absolutely bonkers
• pjc50 4y ago
  It is extremely difficult to get people banned from Twitter even for repeated harrasment and clear hate speech. There are also lots of reports of people getting banned for trivial things. Two possibilities are widely believed: - mass-reporting works even if somebody is innocent, if you get enough reports - poor quality control: decisions are made by single individuals, and mistakes or even just a misclick may result in a ban. Remember that these people are working 8+ hour days just clicking on offensive tweets the system shows them.