7 ms·

I think the problem lies in the impunity, not in the free speech itself. IMHO people should be allowed to say everything but they must accumulate the reputation

by mrtksn 4y ago

I think the problem lies in the impunity, not in the free speech itself. IMHO people should be allowed to say everything but they must accumulate the reputation for saying it. If someone is a racist bigot, they shouldn't be physically restrained(deleting posts is like physically covering someones' mouth) from being bigots but they should definitely be known for it. Then it's up to the community to decide how to interact with those people. That's how we do it in real life and works pretty well. Another thing is the amplification: people pretending to be multiple people. This is also an issue, giving wrong impression about the state of the society and must be solved. Lastly, we need some kind of spread management. We have the problem of BS getting huge traction and the correction getting no traction. Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development. For example, when people share someone's photo as a suspect and it turns out that the person in the photo is not the suspect, the platform can say "remember this Tweet? Yeah, there are some doubts about it. Just letting you know". The implementation of it wouldn't need a ministry of truth but an algo to track theme developments. IMHO if Musk manages to solve these few problems, which I think he can, a free speech social media is possible.

madeofpalk 4y ago
Please, deleting a tweet is hardly being 'physically restrained' > Than it's up to the community to decide how t interact with those people. Twitter is a private company, and it chooses to run it's service how it wants. The government avoids actually physically restraining racist bigots, and lets the community decide how to deal and interact with those people. Some may chose to harbor them (Parlor, 4chan, etc), and others (like twitter) may opt to not host them. It's not a huge social injustice if you're not allowed to tweet. Feel free to go to one of the millions of other websites, or your start your own (it's easier to do this than ever!) and see who's interested in what you have to say. > Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development. You're just reinventing content moderation!
- mrtksn 4y ago
  I don't accept that content deletion is a way to go. When an offensive content is deleted we lose the ability to jude it for urselves. The content must remain but be strictly attached to a persona so the persona can be "judged" rightfully. In real life, when we deal with these people we want to know what they did. It gives fidelity, unlike "the person said something that violates rule 4 section 3". We should stop pretending that we are not humans and embrace the human ways of dealing with human problems. There's nothing human in undoing speech. And no, attaching follow up to organic content is not moderation.
  - smcl 4y ago
    How do you feel about HN's approach - flagged or heavily downvoted comments are invisible if you are not logged in or if you have not changed "showdead" from the default unchecked state (at which point they're rendered in a hard-to-read colour)?
    - mrtksn 4y ago
      I don't like it when it's due to low score, it is an oppression of unpopular opinions. I like it when it's about flagged posts. I have the option enabled to show these posts and I would vouch if there's something worthy in it. So spam and other BS is "removed" but I still can take a look at it and see it for myself. Overall, I think HN is one of the best moderated online places.
      - smcl 4y ago
        So this is unusual to me, because flagging feels more open to abuse than the comment score. Indeed this very thing happened to me recently: - user A says vaguely racist thing - user B calls person out for racist thing - user A cannot downvote a reply, so they flag it instead - making it disappear So both can silence someone, but in one case many people need to disagree with someone and in the other you just need one person (or one person with an alt account if you want to go and revert a "vouch"). So if anything flagging is more prone to abuse than downvoting. I try to read greytext comments when I can and vouch whenever it looks unjust (and do something similar for downvoted posts) but from the looks of things not many people do. edit: might as well include my example - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001 So I'd understand if I was downvoted and called out for my confrontational response to racism. Because at that point I'd reply that actually treating this kind of casual xenophobic comment as unserious and mocking the person is the most effective counter to this kind of behavious. Getting bogged down in debating the merits or worth of any individual person or where they might "belong" is exactly what this kind of person wants to do.
dd36 4y ago
Agree. The big one you missed is identity. Most hate is anonymous. Being able to filter by tags like “known racist” or whatever, and seeing someone’s history of sharing misinformation is useful but most people would self-censor if their identity was known or other users would filter out those that won’t identify. What I wonder is what Musk will do if he finds out the scales are artificially weighted towards conservative content. Like if conservative content is artificially boosted by bots and algorithms. Facebook was much more liberal before thumbs were put on the scale. I don’t remember when but I think it was Mother Jones that saw huge traffic movement changes after algo changes like a decade ago? https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520634/facebook-reportedly-choked-traffic-mother-jones-zuckerberg https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520634/facebook-report... Like what if the natural state of humanity is much more liberal than the American media and social media allow for? Will Musk allow that or will he see anything that doesn’t align with his views as error or manipulation? What if a truly free and transparent self-moderating platform naturally promotes leftism more than a moderated but manipulated feed does?
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  A study showed that people are more aggressive online when using their real name > Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is reinforced if selective incentives are present and if aggressors are intrinsically motivated. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155923 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
  - dd36 4y ago
    Weird but I still think Elon’s idea of needing confirmed identity for a checkmark is solid. If anonymous users then are nicer than checkmarked users, I guess the filter will work in reverse? The elimination of bots will be nice if they can do it.
    - madeofpalk 4y ago
      Requiring validated identity is anti free speech. There's been so many words spilled online about how terrible of an idea it is to require confirmed identities for online. Recently, see https://twitter.com/mmasnick/status/1576274615231401984 https://twitter.com/mmasnick/status/1576274615231401984 or more casually https://www.garbageday.email/p/oh-cool-were-talking-about-anonymity https://www.garbageday.email/p/oh-cool-were-talking-about-an... > Generally, if your solution is virtually indistinguishable from one of the systems the Chines government is using to keep people in line, your solution is bad.
piva00 4y ago
> Another thing is the amplification: people pretending to be multiple people. For a free speech absolutist curtailing this could also be seen as removing free speech. > Lastly, we need some kind of spread management. We have the problem of BS getting huge traction and the correction getting no traction. Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development. For example, when people share someone's photo as a suspect and it turns out that the person in the photo is not the suspect, the platform can say "remember this Tweet? Yeah, there are some doubts about it. Just letting you know". The implementation of it wouldn't need a ministry of truth but a algo to track theme developments. Still this wouldn't solve the issue with spread of BS, specially targeted BS: it is tailored to invoke and reinforce inherent biases and, on average, someone exposed to it will become less inclined to read/critically judge any rebuttal. Bullshit spreads much easier than well researched rebuttals, just by the nature of bullshit. It's a game where truth is bound to lose, no matter how many "algorithms" you implement to spread developments of a story to the same audience, the engagement of said audience to the rebuttals will vary depending on their biases. I'm not even including the required inherent drive and energy to actually follow-up, as an audience, on further developments, in the fast-paced world of social media people will selectively choose what to invest their energy into. Someone falling for bullshits won't want their effort to be thrown out by rebuttals and so will avoid such activities perceived as a waste of energy, after you formed an opinion it's much harder to un-form it. I'm strictly in the camp that absolute free speech on social media is a fool's errand, at least in 2022. There is no upside to the massive downsides that we already see and experience, even in the scope of not existing with absolute free speech. The detachment on social media between the written words vs the real humans behind those words causes a non-insignificant amount of grief that wouldn't happen in a in-person interaction. It seems that we humans easily lose our humanity when not in a real world social environment, the vileness is exaggerated while empathy is easily pushed aside.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  I agree that we can't have a perfect solution but let's loose a good solution in the pursuit of a perfect one and I think there can be a good solution by implementing some of the real world social dynamics into the virtual one. Jerks and BS artist are nothing new but in real world we do have some tools to deal with them. IMHO, changing how some things work can create an atmosphere of healthy interactions.
colinmhayes 4y ago
> Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development. This doesn't work. Show people two articles, one that is false and one that is true, and most people will say the one that aligns with their priors is true. We need to either teach people to recognize fake news, censor fake news, or accept that basically everyone will believe false propaganda. There are no other options. Once someone has been shown an article they agree with telling them the article was false just leads them to think you're on "the other side".
- philippejara 4y ago
  And who is going to decide what those "fake news" are to censor and how will you assume they won't fall into the exact same trap of wanting to believe in what they already agree with. We're hot off the heels of hunter biden, surely that should be a wakeup call regarding how "misinformation experts" go both ways.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    No clue. All I know is that if we don't censor fake news people will believe it, no matter how much evidence to the contrary they are shown. Maybe we just have to accept that.
- Stupulous 4y ago
  If you took perfectly rational people and ran the same test, you'd get the same result. Evidence that supports a position that you already have evidence for is more likely to be true. If someone showed me very compelling evidence that the world was flat, even if I was unable to find any issue with it, I still would believe that it is false. If a single counterpoint could change your belief, you never had any business claiming it as a belief in the first place. Do you have cause to believe that repeated exposure to every side of every story won't lead the average person towards truth?

by mrtksn 4y ago

madeofpalk 4y ago

Please, deleting a tweet is hardly being 'physically restrained' > Than it's up to the community to decide how t interact with those people. Twitter is a private company, and it chooses to run it's service how it wants. The government avoids actually physically restraining racist bigots, and lets the community decide how to deal and interact with those people. Some may chose to harbor them (Parlor, 4chan, etc), and others (like twitter) may opt to not host them. It's not a huge social injustice if you're not allowed to tweet. Feel free to go to one of the millions of other websites, or your start your own (it's easier to do this than ever!) and see who's interested in what you have to say. > Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development. You're just reinventing content moderation!

mrtksn 4y ago
I don't accept that content deletion is a way to go. When an offensive content is deleted we lose the ability to jude it for urselves. The content must remain but be strictly attached to a persona so the persona can be "judged" rightfully. In real life, when we deal with these people we want to know what they did. It gives fidelity, unlike "the person said something that violates rule 4 section 3". We should stop pretending that we are not humans and embrace the human ways of dealing with human problems. There's nothing human in undoing speech. And no, attaching follow up to organic content is not moderation.
- smcl 4y ago
  How do you feel about HN's approach - flagged or heavily downvoted comments are invisible if you are not logged in or if you have not changed "showdead" from the default unchecked state (at which point they're rendered in a hard-to-read colour)?
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    I don't like it when it's due to low score, it is an oppression of unpopular opinions. I like it when it's about flagged posts. I have the option enabled to show these posts and I would vouch if there's something worthy in it. So spam and other BS is "removed" but I still can take a look at it and see it for myself. Overall, I think HN is one of the best moderated online places.
    - smcl 4y ago
      So this is unusual to me, because flagging feels more open to abuse than the comment score. Indeed this very thing happened to me recently: - user A says vaguely racist thing - user B calls person out for racist thing - user A cannot downvote a reply, so they flag it instead - making it disappear So both can silence someone, but in one case many people need to disagree with someone and in the other you just need one person (or one person with an alt account if you want to go and revert a "vouch"). So if anything flagging is more prone to abuse than downvoting. I try to read greytext comments when I can and vouch whenever it looks unjust (and do something similar for downvoted posts) but from the looks of things not many people do. edit: might as well include my example - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001 So I'd understand if I was downvoted and called out for my confrontational response to racism. Because at that point I'd reply that actually treating this kind of casual xenophobic comment as unserious and mocking the person is the most effective counter to this kind of behavious. Getting bogged down in debating the merits or worth of any individual person or where they might "belong" is exactly what this kind of person wants to do.

dd36 4y ago

Agree. The big one you missed is identity. Most hate is anonymous. Being able to filter by tags like “known racist” or whatever, and seeing someone’s history of sharing misinformation is useful but most people would self-censor if their identity was known or other users would filter out those that won’t identify. What I wonder is what Musk will do if he finds out the scales are artificially weighted towards conservative content. Like if conservative content is artificially boosted by bots and algorithms. Facebook was much more liberal before thumbs were put on the scale. I don’t remember when but I think it was Mother Jones that saw huge traffic movement changes after algo changes like a decade ago? https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520634/facebook-reportedly-choked-traffic-mother-jones-zuckerberg https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520634/facebook-report... Like what if the natural state of humanity is much more liberal than the American media and social media allow for? Will Musk allow that or will he see anything that doesn’t align with his views as error or manipulation? What if a truly free and transparent self-moderating platform naturally promotes leftism more than a moderated but manipulated feed does?

madeofpalk 4y ago
A study showed that people are more aggressive online when using their real name > Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is reinforced if selective incentives are present and if aggressors are intrinsically motivated. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155923 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- dd36 4y ago
  Weird but I still think Elon’s idea of needing confirmed identity for a checkmark is solid. If anonymous users then are nicer than checkmarked users, I guess the filter will work in reverse? The elimination of bots will be nice if they can do it.
  - madeofpalk 4y ago
    Requiring validated identity is anti free speech. There's been so many words spilled online about how terrible of an idea it is to require confirmed identities for online. Recently, see https://twitter.com/mmasnick/status/1576274615231401984 https://twitter.com/mmasnick/status/1576274615231401984 or more casually https://www.garbageday.email/p/oh-cool-were-talking-about-anonymity https://www.garbageday.email/p/oh-cool-were-talking-about-an... > Generally, if your solution is virtually indistinguishable from one of the systems the Chines government is using to keep people in line, your solution is bad.

piva00 4y ago

> Another thing is the amplification: people pretending to be multiple people. For a free speech absolutist curtailing this could also be seen as removing free speech. > Lastly, we need some kind of spread management. We have the problem of BS getting huge traction and the correction getting no traction. Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development. For example, when people share someone's photo as a suspect and it turns out that the person in the photo is not the suspect, the platform can say "remember this Tweet? Yeah, there are some doubts about it. Just letting you know". The implementation of it wouldn't need a ministry of truth but a algo to track theme developments. Still this wouldn't solve the issue with spread of BS, specially targeted BS: it is tailored to invoke and reinforce inherent biases and, on average, someone exposed to it will become less inclined to read/critically judge any rebuttal. Bullshit spreads much easier than well researched rebuttals, just by the nature of bullshit. It's a game where truth is bound to lose, no matter how many "algorithms" you implement to spread developments of a story to the same audience, the engagement of said audience to the rebuttals will vary depending on their biases. I'm not even including the required inherent drive and energy to actually follow-up, as an audience, on further developments, in the fast-paced world of social media people will selectively choose what to invest their energy into. Someone falling for bullshits won't want their effort to be thrown out by rebuttals and so will avoid such activities perceived as a waste of energy, after you formed an opinion it's much harder to un-form it. I'm strictly in the camp that absolute free speech on social media is a fool's errand, at least in 2022. There is no upside to the massive downsides that we already see and experience, even in the scope of not existing with absolute free speech. The detachment on social media between the written words vs the real humans behind those words causes a non-insignificant amount of grief that wouldn't happen in a in-person interaction. It seems that we humans easily lose our humanity when not in a real world social environment, the vileness is exaggerated while empathy is easily pushed aside.

mrtksn 4y ago
I agree that we can't have a perfect solution but let's loose a good solution in the pursuit of a perfect one and I think there can be a good solution by implementing some of the real world social dynamics into the virtual one. Jerks and BS artist are nothing new but in real world we do have some tools to deal with them. IMHO, changing how some things work can create an atmosphere of healthy interactions.

colinmhayes 4y ago

> Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development. This doesn't work. Show people two articles, one that is false and one that is true, and most people will say the one that aligns with their priors is true. We need to either teach people to recognize fake news, censor fake news, or accept that basically everyone will believe false propaganda. There are no other options. Once someone has been shown an article they agree with telling them the article was false just leads them to think you're on "the other side".

philippejara 4y ago
And who is going to decide what those "fake news" are to censor and how will you assume they won't fall into the exact same trap of wanting to believe in what they already agree with. We're hot off the heels of hunter biden, surely that should be a wakeup call regarding how "misinformation experts" go both ways.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  No clue. All I know is that if we don't censor fake news people will believe it, no matter how much evidence to the contrary they are shown. Maybe we just have to accept that.
Stupulous 4y ago
If you took perfectly rational people and ran the same test, you'd get the same result. Evidence that supports a position that you already have evidence for is more likely to be true. If someone showed me very compelling evidence that the world was flat, even if I was unable to find any issue with it, I still would believe that it is false. If a single counterpoint could change your belief, you never had any business claiming it as a belief in the first place. Do you have cause to believe that repeated exposure to every side of every story won't lead the average person towards truth?