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“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”
- listenallyall 4y ago
- abnry 4y agoI think it is unverified, that is the issue.
- superchroma 4y agoThere's no real point discussing the way the site is run - they're not interested in user input and a lot of people like the idea of "reddit for professionals and VC bros". Causing trouble will just net you getting rate limited or a shadow ban.
- listenallyall 4y agoI'm surprised because I thought there was a passionate but healthy debate about the matter, unlike what you'd see on Twitter or Reddit. A lot of opinions were expressed but I didn't see anybody calling out names, using epithets, shutting people down, etc. HN's treatment of controversial topics generally is more respectful than elsewhere, which is why it is disappointing to see them shut down or buried here, when much more toxic discussions get promoted on other sites.
- lukeschlather 4y agoShutting down discussions when they start to get disrespectful is what ensures that you only see respectful discussions here.
- listenallyall 4y agoFair enough, good point.
- dang 4y agoOf course we're interested in user input. I spend most of my time talking to HN users in one form or another.
- genmud 4y agoAs someone who sits on some local boards and some committees, some people will never be happy and unfortunately people like that tend to be loud. However, I feel like the vast majority of people not only enjoy, but love the way HN is run & managed. I would like to say thanks for all the work you guys do, few folks take the time to say thank you.
- lapcat 4y agoThe account itself was not suspended: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33373377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33373377 It may or may not be suspended from tweeting. There are still no tweets since March.
- dang 4y ago> The HN story about Babylon Bee is off the top 5 pages despite generating 100+ points and 300 comments in 4 hours. HN seems to have its own "moderation council" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33371795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33371795 It set off the flamewar detector.
- listenallyall 4y agoI hear you, and I appreciate you stepping in to explain. But I think if you read the comments, they were quite respectful considering the level of controversy about this topic. Certainly a more civil treatment than Reddit or Twitter. If we can't debate here, the only outlets become much more toxic communities.
- dang 4y agoWe moderate HN threads by the HN guidelines, not by what's going on on the rest of the internet. By HN standards it is certainly a flamewar. Hard-nosed ideological battle and name-calling are not what we want here. The flamewar detector got it right.
- z7 4y agoI hope the detector does more than decreasing the visibility of topics on which there is more disagreement than usual (higher quantity of downvotes?). I think quite a few important discussions would have that feature (but also flamewars, which probably makes the distinction difficult).
- lapcat 4y agoDelay decisions, set up a committee... wow, that was fast, he's already becoming Jack. [EDIT:] The problem is that a "council with widely diverse viewpoints" is not going to come to consensus on moderation. They're inevitably going to disagree, just like in politics. So then what? How is lack of consensus not the inevitable outcome of a widely diverse committee?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- naasking 4y agoYou vote. Have an odd number of voters, and either majority or plurality gets their way.
- freen 4y agoHard problems, they are hard. “I can build a twitter clone in a weekend” is famous for a reason.
- scarface74 4y agoOf course any senior dev can. Isn’t being able to design Twitter a prerequisite to passing a System Design interview at any BigTech company? Edit: I was being sarcastic. I meant to add /s
- darkwizard42 4y agoI think what the parent comment is talking about and what you might have missed out on (though maybe your remark is tongue in cheek as well) is the challenge isn't building something with Twitter's functionality, but building something with its feature fit, timing, and growth. The core platform (while impressive engineering helps keep it running) is a fairly rudimentary idea, but execution is always a totally different story.
- scarface74 4y ago
- mikkergp 4y agoThis sort of justifies the viewpoint that despite all his bluster, Elon will probably run Twitter the way a "reasonable executive" would. Not just release the hounds. Keep the advertisers happy, but try to reduce the reliance on advertisers. Keep moderating content to reduce abuse, maybe eliminate the high profile banning but a person on the ground will have largely the same experience. (probably less action on more contentious issues, but you still can't use racial epithets and call for violence). Evaluate most employees or teams on the merits, there will be layoffs, probably big layoffs but they'll be managed incremental and strategic. Build more products and pivot the product strongly but again, not in the image of a Parler or a Truth Social. Twitter won't become a cesspool because he understands that people need to be able to control what they see or they'll leave. Essentially try to create more safe spaces on twitter, not less.
- jszymborski 4y agoA bunch of accounts like The Babylon Bee and Ye have been unbanned w/o input from any such committee of diverse viewpoints. I don't have much faith that Musk will not act unilaterally in service of his friends and allies.
- mikkergp 4y agoWere they? I know I can see their pages, but I don't see any new content from them. realdonaldtrump is still suspended, I imagine we'll just have to wait to see what happens.
- MBCook 4y agoMany of the “unbanned” accounts weren’t banned before and that didn’t change. They were in Twitter jail (or whatever the term is). The account is there but they couldn’t publish new tweets. That’s the change to watch for. He could unban Trump, say he kept his promise, but keep the account locked so that Trump couldn’t actually tweet. As a hypothetical example.
- 4y ago
- unity1001 4y agoIsn that how it should have been from the start...
- deanCommie 4y ago
- mellosouls 4y agoSo anyone that is celebrating this Musk announcement is telling on themselves This is exactly the sort of tone that improving balance is intended to counter.
- delecti 4y agoIf you take a quick scroll through the quote-retweets of Musk's "the bird is freed" tweet [1], there are a lot of slurs and bigotry. Musk might or might not be bigoted himself, but lots of bigots seem awfully happy at the prospect of him in charge. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585841080431321088 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585841080431321088
- naasking 4y agoLots of people get happy when their "enemies" are unhappy and whinging about it. This implies nothing about whether the changes will be good for them too.
- uniqueuid 4y agoThis is the most important worry. Populism from the far right has adopted a strategy of re-defining key terms such as nation, citizen, fairness, representation. Under these conditions, a highly diverse council will either not be able to decide or will need to decide in favor of maximum leniency. By the way, Adam Curtis made this point in his documentary "HyperNormalisation", where he argued that Trump had hijacked "fair and balanced" reporting.
- denton-scratch 4y agoRedefining terms seems new, but it's a traditional rhetorical tactic. I think it's on the uprise. I think it's a sneaky, deceptive tactic. I'm a big admirer of Adam Curtis's films!
- addingadimensio 4y agoIt would be amazing if a council with diverse viewpoints could even sit together without killing each other in this day and age. Does this exist anywhere?
- rootusrootus 4y agoIn the real world, sure. The Internet would have us believe that civil war is imminent. We need to stop letting the 1% of people who bother to post online drive our national dialog. We have put the crazies in charge of the asylum.
- jstummbillig 4y ago> In the real world, sure. Can you point at one? A council with "widely diverse viewpoints" that is actually an effective, tie-braking decision maker?
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoSupreme Court justices, despite their huge partisan differences and passionate disagreements on many individual cases, often talk about how they personally enjoy working with each other. My impression is that this is true of many Congressional committees as well, although it's less legible there because most congressmembers find it politically advantageous to talk about how mad they are at the other party.
- UncleOxidant 4y agoThere's a huge amount of history there, though. It didn't just get formed this week. It's got some members who have been on the court since the early 90s. Some since the late 90s and others in the aughts. The SCOTUS has long-lived institutional memory and norms of behavior. It's members also tend to become somewhat isolated from what's going on in the culture outside.
- 4y ago
- m3kw9 4y agoBy going private he doesn’t need to show numbers to investors every quarter to justify himself. He can play a longer game if he’s competent enough to
- hn2017 4y agohttps://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/28/eu-official-warns-musk-hell-have-to-fly-by-our-rules-as-he-buys-twitter.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/28/eu-official-warns-musk-hell-... will still have to oblige. Definitely no "hate speech, incitement to terrorism and child sexual abuse." For his part, Musk has said he wouldn’t allow illegal content on the platform.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoAt least in the US, there's a lot of noxious speech that's legal. The US has very permissive free speech laws overall.
- unknownaccount 4y agoAnd conversely the US is one of the most restrictive nations on earth when it comes to speech that supposedly infringes Copyrights or can be interpreted as defamation/slander. The premise that US has anything resembling freedom of speech is completely untrue.
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoWait, doesn't the US generally have really high standards for what can meet defamation/slander? Esp. compared with other western countries?
- ncallaway 4y ago> the most restrictive nations on earth when it comes to speech that supposedly infringes Copyrights That's absolutely true. > or can be interpreted as defamation/slander That's absolutely false. The United States tends to be much harder to press a defamation/slander case than many other territories. Perhaps you're thinking of the United Kingdom? They have much looser libel laws than the United States.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
- pupppet 4y agoSo if I go off about how awful the Jews and the gays are, is that a "diverse viewpoint"?
- bobkazamakis 4y ago
- assetlabel 4y agoDiverse in this context means the different people on the council will have very different viewpoints from each other.
- tootie 4y agoI'm sure that already existed. Unless he intends to expand the diversity into the realm of racism or other types of bigotry or conspiracy beliefs. In my observation, Twitter is extremely permissive in what kind of speech it allows, drawing a line only at abject hate speech, threats or deliberate disinformation. None of that suffers from lack of diversity of viewpoints. Musk is either intending to allow a lot more shit flinging or he's really deluding himself that he can solve this problem. I'd honestly be more optimistic if he was bringing OpenAI in to do moderation.
- Latty 4y agoRight, so the game becomes making your viewpoint as extreme as possible to shift the window of the council in your favour. What could possibly go wrong. Not all viewpoints are equally valid. Just finding the middle of the viewpoints that exist isn't moderate because you can't just pretend that all sides have equal numbers of extremists and that somehow their views automatically "cancel out".
- ErikVandeWater 4y ago> What could possibly go wrong. Simply stating a council will have diverse views is enough for people to ring the fire alarm these days.
- tootie 4y agoBorrowing the best failed ideas of Mark Zuckerberg https://radiolab.org/episodes/facebooks-supreme-court https://radiolab.org/episodes/facebooks-supreme-court
- wahnfrieden 4y agorw operatives at fb were allowed to bypass their "court's" oversight
- wahnfrieden 4y agosince i'm getting heavily downvoted, here are sources to this FACT of rw bias: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/mark-zuckerberg-joel-kaplan-facebook-alex-jones https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/mark-zuckerberg... https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-joel-kaplan-washington-political-influence/ https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-joel-kaplan-washington-...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tibbydudeza 4y ago"In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules."
- unknownaccount 4y agoLet’s see how popular that policy is once they make the site completely unavailable in Europe.
- uniqueuid 4y agoGiven that approximately 5% of Germans use Twitter, I don't think many people would care or even notice.
- ohgodplsno 4y agoGod, stop, don't give me that much hope. Elon blowing 44 billions on a site worth maybe 5, before making it unavailable to half its userbase ? As well as reducing the amount of russian propaganda (that Elon does like to regurgitate all on his own anyways) that can be spewed on social networks ? This could be the biggest waste of money since the Tumblr acquisition, I'd love to help set records. Can we nuke Facebook on the way too ?
- synu 4y agoHonestly that would be wonderful
- speedgoose 4y agoIt’s not like twitter is rocket science. And Europe is alright at rocket science anyway. It twitter abandons the European market, people will use something else.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago> It twitter abandons the European market, people will use something else. Yes, and then be disconnected from the rest of the world.
- duxup 4y agoI'm curious what diverse viewpoints even means. Is it "diverse" for twitter? Is that even diverse? In the US there's a very defined almost meme level concept of right or left and folks absolutely want to toss people into those buckets and make all the usual assumptions. Online it's almost impossible for me not to be told what group I fit into ... I'm often told one way one day, the other the next. Is that all there will be? What happens if say 6 people perceived as on the left and 3 on the right and 4 other people are on there? Will it be credible, or does this al have to match some twitter-ish concept of "diverse"? A rando executive making decisions and some twitter-ish idea of "diverse" doesn't seem any more likely to be "fair".
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- a-dub 4y agobut what about "full self moderating?!" jokes aside. there actually could be some opportunity to do some really cool stuff like some kind of experimental political science. like, mechanisms for population clustering and distribution of representation. like, running human clustering algorithms and then using the size of those clusters to allocate representation. a blueprint for future attempts at stable democracy that don't rely on gerrymanderable geographic hand drawn borders or hand picked classifications.
- encryptluks2 4y agoTwitter isn't a government entity. If anything, simply removing algorithms and stop suggesting content and let people set rules on how much or what type of content by other users is seen is sufficient.
- a-dub 4y agocontent moderation in any form is policy, is political, is governance. they're talking about setting up a council with diverse viewpoints, that's an attempt at representative government! they already support blocklists and most of the content it suggests is directly related to your activity on the site. it seems they have a small random factor, but it's pretty easy to ignore or block if you don't like it. but honestly, that's not really the issue. i think it's more a matter of a change in the fabric of how humans communicate and organize. everyone can see that it's powerful, nobody is quite sure or agrees on what the adoption curve looks like. some think you just throw it out there and wait for the dust to settle, others think that's a path to armageddon and that a dampened rollout is necessary. who knows what's right, but there's a good chance we're about to find out.
- encryptluks2 4y agoNo there isn't. Twitter isn't the bastion of communication for human connection. It is a place for people seeking attention to spew their PR snippets. For God's sake, please go out into nature and then take a walk somewhere with people before suggesting that Twitter is the place for humans to communicate and organize.
- nnopepe 4y agoas long as it's not homogenously american it'll be a good thing
- aliswe 4y agoamericans are pretty heterogenous, in all ways relevant to this situation.
- skyyler 4y agoThere are many more viewpoints than the American's.
- MisterSandman 4y agoWhat makes you say that? You can not possibly argue that 1 region in the world has people with all worldviews covered.
- estebarb 4y ago
- lern_too_spel 4y agoIf there aren't any flat earthers on the council, it's a sham.
- jonathankoren 4y ago"I believe nicotine is not addictive." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6B1q22R438 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6B1q22R438
- aliqot 4y agoSunlight is the best disinfectant, lad.
- drngdds 4y agoThis is a catchphrase, not a thing that's actually true.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- spot 4y agoSunlight allows us to look (and kills bacteria). Unbanning accounts gives them a megaphone. Totally different.
- lovich 4y agoThat makes so much sense as to why the OG nazis were only stopped once they ended their long standing stance of keeping their rhetoric on the undermensch hidden from the world
- MrMan 4y agodefinitely a statement that is false
- norwalkbear 4y agoWell you have to keep people in the uniparty otherwise they vote for extreme candidates. The problem if living conditions don't improve, things get extreme regardless.
- aksss 4y agotyped while reclining on the best living conditions in the history of the planet
- jeffbee 4y agoIf you are exposed to things on Twitter that are tweeted by people not personally known to you, IMHO you are using Twitter incorrectly. I have no idea why anyone gives a damn what the content moderation policies might be. Speaking for my own account I have never once seen anything said by Trump, Kanye, the pillow guy, any neo nazis, any anti-vaxxers, or anything like that. In what way are people using Twitter that makes them care?
- lapcat 4y agoAnyone in the world can reply to your tweets. You see replies. Harassment is a huge problem on Twitter.
- jeffbee 4y agoNo? You can set your tweets to by replied to by only those you follow, or only those you mention.
- lapcat 4y agoI think you have to do that manually for each tweet. The setting isn't persistent. Anyway, you can also make your account protected, so that nobody can see or reply to your tweets unless you approve. However, I would say it's not fair to claim that "you are using Twitter incorrectly" if you don't make your account protected, or if you don't restrict replies to every tweet you write. Even if you restrict replies, people can still quote-tweet dunk on you. What's the point of a "social network" if you use all the most "antisocial" settings?
- intrasight 4y agoIt makes it a social network of your social network. I don't see what's antisocial about that. How can someone quote tweet dunk you if your tweets are private?
- lapcat 4y ago
- dpflan 4y agoThis cross-post seems pretty relevant to have here given the amount of discussion about this whole acquisition -- one of the key points in the submitted article is that "content moderation is the product": - HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33371297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33371297 - Submitted article: https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...
- monksy 4y agoThis is going to be an interesting claim considering that he's pro letting Trump back on the platform. That guy, despite being the president, repeatedly said things that got other people banned with their rules. Some how other leaders claimed this was a said day that he finally got punished for it.
- YetAnotherNick 4y agoI think Twitter should have a concept of silent ban i.e. only people that are following the account can see someone's tweet and other's could see that only by opening full link and not through search. While it was obvious that Trump's tweet was causing negative emotions in people, it is also clear that Trump had other sources in which he could express opinions and it was liberal newspaper who are the first to report that he said something wrong.
- nikodotio 4y agoAs far as I understand all the major platforms do this all the time, and it’s called a shadow ban. Often they even stop showing to followers, you just get blended out of the algorithm
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cr4nberry 4y agoWith facebook dying, twitter getting bought out, reddit's eutrophication, and tiktok on the rise, it seems like things have unsettled quite a bit The next couple years are going to be very interesting. Facebook will probably get bought out or something. For twitter, I can't really say. Reddit is probably going to become even more repulsive (and hopefully gets replaced). Hopefully tiktok goes away also :/ Also interesting to see the phrase "diversity of viewpoint" catching on so quickly
- mikkergp 4y ago“Eutrophication is the process by which an entire body of water, or parts of it, becomes progressively enriched with minerals and nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. It has also been defined as "nutrient-induced increase in phytoplankton productivity" What is happening to Reddit?
- nonameiguess 4y agoToxic algal blooms like crimson tide can tend to choke off and kill all other life in a body of water that experiences eutrophication. It's actually such a regular thing in the Salton Sea from nearby fertilizer runoff that you could drive by and see rotting fish carcasses littering the shoreline. Probably means something analogous to that.
- cr4nberry 4y agoOne missing part of the definition is that the increased nutrients cause algae to overgrow and reduce oxygen supply in the water, killing the fish The process is similar to what's happened to reddit: new users come in like agricultural runoff, which leads to overgrowth of more suffocating aspects of the site culture
- knife1nhead 4y agoIs HN next?
- mikkergp 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hitpointdrew 4y agoFinally, diversity of ideas, and not diversity of skin color.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y agoYou cannot have the former without the latter.
- negamax 4y agoAs a PoC imo diversity of ideas/viewpoints is much more important
- jasonlotito 4y agoAnd yet... "As a PoC" I think it's fair to say that ideas/viewpoints are very important, but to ignore the reality of groups of people frequently targeted is silly.
- such12 4y ago> to ignore the reality of groups of people frequently targeted is silly. He clearly isn’t.
- jasonlotito 4y agoThey are downplaying them, which is clearly my point.
- such12 4y agoI don’t think so. As a PoC, their comment is by definition a reflection of the reality of a targeted group.
- cman1444 4y agoWhy not?
- knorker 4y agoGood. Most such councils are echo chambers, because people who want to be on such councils are activists who want to destroy "the other". Which makes for a stable state of echo chamber extremists.
- northisup 4y ago"how can twitter be truly unbiased in how we allow our most wealthy users to go 'death com 3' on all marginalized people and not just one small group of marginalized people"
- kranke155 4y agoIt’s amazing to me that the HN hive mind has decided that somehow one of the most successful people on the planet, who’s built a successful electric car company, a private rocketry company and was part of the people who laid foundation for a “payment system for the internet” is somehow doomed to fail in his new venture. The excitement for this new move seems not just low here but overwhelmingly negative. “It can’t be done” is the overall sentiment. Really? Or are we just the people saying an electric car company can’t be done, a private rocketry company can’t be done, etc etc. This one of the most successful people who has ever lived on this planet. And yet HN doesn’t seem to see any advantage to him leading twitter in a new direction, a company that overwhelmingly could be agreed before had no real direction and wasn’t making any progress anywhere. But somehow a pretty smart billionaire taking it over doesn’t trigger any outpouring of sympathy and excitement but of disdain and condescension. Really? What happened ? When did we become so calcified against change? Also; For anyone who says “twitter/facebook gave us trump” well, no. The unleashing of mass cognitive warfare as a consequence of the availability of micro targeting in these platforms gave you Trump/Bolsonaro/Meloni. For all the details on that, read “Mindfuck” by Christopher Wylie and “Targeted” by Brittany Kaiser.
- chasd00 4y agoi've said it before, there's much easier money to be made than better against Musk. When presenting a big idea he's pretty much been laughed out of every room he's ever walked into. Then, much to everyone's dismay, he does it. I'm withholding judgment for a few years...
- AlexandrB 4y agoI too enjoy commuting to work using my city's hyperloop while charging my self-driving cybertruck with my solar roof. An objective assessment of Musk's batting average requires considering the big ideas that flop, never materialize, or fall far short of what was promised. Once you do that, Twitter seems like it could go either way from here. That's not even considering how split his attention must be at this point.
- sangnoir 4y ago
- rossjudson 4y agoAdvertisers are going to be pretty concerned when their paid content is showing up in screenshots mixed in with "questionable" content. Advertising and freedom-for-jackasses doesn't mix well.
- throw_m239339 4y ago> Advertisers are going to be pretty concerned when their paid content is showing up in screenshots mixed in with "questionable" content. Are you aware Twitter already allows all sort of depraved porn on their platform already? Did Advertisers leave the platform as a result of this already? Maybe Twitter should get rid of the hardcore pornography first.
- bergenty 4y agoWhat’s wrong with hardcore pornography?
- throw_m239339 4y ago> What’s wrong with hardcore pornography? What's wrong with what Twitter progressives deem questionable opinions?
- WaxProlix 4y agoHard to say with how vague that is, can you give concrete examples of these things that Twitter progressives deem questionable opinions?
- the_doctah 4y ago"Men can't be women and vice-versa". But you knew that was the answer.
- WaxProlix 4y agoIt's not exactly shocking, but there's plenty of 'right wing stances' it could be. A lot of this going around (cw racism, slurs) for example https://www.reddit.com/gallery/yfxkbf https://www.reddit.com/gallery/yfxkbf
- incomingpain 4y agoFundamentally twitter didn't twirl their moustache and aim to shutdown conservatives. There was no conspiracy as it were but they didn't consider the consequences of decisions, ultimately culminating in shutting down conservatives. If Elon ran roughshot in making decisions without considering consequences, he ends up in the same fundamental root cause problem twitter is already in. He understands this and hence why he's not making changes on read-only friday.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoPotentially of intellectual interest: Some people here might be wondering about speech that is "harmful," with the famous quote about "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater." That quote from the Supreme Court is commonly used to justify why there need to be restraints on free speech. This is actually a popular misconception. The decision where "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater" was from was actually overturned in almost entirety in Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969. And even then, it was only an analogy, and never actually was the law. You actually, theoretically, CAN yell fire in a crowded theater. Websites on both sides of the isle have admitted it is a terrible analogy for defending censoring certain content for being potentially harmful. It is, quite literally, a legal myth. A legal myth that still affects our Congress today while they examine how to prevent the spread of misinformation [1]. https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/why-falsely-claiming-its-illegal-to-shout-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-distorts-any-conversation-about-online-speech/ https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/why-falsely-claiming-its-ill... https://reason.com/2022/10/27/yes-you-can-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theater/ https://reason.com/2022/10/27/yes-you-can-yell-fire-in-a-cro... https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-fire-crowded-theater-speech-regulation/621151/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-f... https://www.whalenlawoffice.com/legal-mythbusting-series-yelling-fire-in-a-crowded-theater/ https://www.whalenlawoffice.com/legal-mythbusting-series-yel... https://www.thefire.org/you-can-shout-fire-in-a-burning-theater-part-5-of-answers-to-bad-arguments-against-free-speech-from-nadine-strossen/ https://www.thefire.org/you-can-shout-fire-in-a-burning-thea... [1] For an example (out of many) of why regulating misinformation is legally almost impossible, see United States vs Alvarez, which ruled that the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 (which criminalized faking having a military honor) is legally protected speech and the act was a violation of the constitution. Since then it has been extended with a new 2013 act which requires intent to gain something by fraud, which hasn't been struck down (yet).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ghayes 4y agoThere is clearly speech that is harmful without considering that case. Basically the entire concept of “conspiracy” is harmful speech. That said, Twitter is a private company and the First Amendment isn’t the holding factor.
- sbate1987 4y ago
- sass_muffin 4y agoThe Ministry of Truth?
- jimjimjim 4y agoCannibalism? Shocking or untapped resource? Not all viewpoints are equal
- Waterluvian 4y agoI got a 7 day ban for a tweet that included “political suicide pact” as an idiom. I then got permanently banned for including the line, “sending their children to die in Ukraine” in a tweet. The “appeal” button causes me to get a denied email within one minute. This tells me no humans are in the loop on any of this. I don’t think these tweets were controversial or require any diversity of viewpoints. They just require appreciation that you cannot automatically moderate anything accurately unless you are prepared to be very very VERY relaxed about the rules. I’m not sure Elon is even interested in fixing this kind of problem. He seems focused on the politics and “cancel culture” type issues (whether they’re real or imagined).
- concinds 4y agoTwitter ignored multiple reports of personal threats directed at me specifically (involving concentration camps and general death threats, etc.) "This tweet doesn't violate Twitter rules." People I didn't know, who I had zero negative interactions with before. That was way before Musk. You just can't have human moderation at that scale. They have to brainstorm how to prevent these tweets in the first place, rather than how to catch and delete them.
- Waterluvian 4y agoThat’s awful. And I’ve also witnessed the same kind of abuse that goes ignored. Has any large social media site ever solved this? 4chan does by having no rules: if you show up, expect the absolute worst of humanity. Reddit does by having countless volunteer moderators who basically do 98% of the moderation. Facebook suffers from the same problems as Twitter.
- concinds 4y agoThe way I'd solve it is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33377423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33377423 Basically, more siloed converations would ironically create a better "public town square", because it would reduce the need for moderation and allow freer speech. > That’s awful. And I’ve also witnessed the same kind of abuse that goes ignored. Honestly, it wasn't. Maybe due to my temperament (and I certainly received far less hate than high-profile people do) but I could never empathize with the "online bullying" concerns. It's the nature of the internet, and you just develop the mental strength to tune it out, or use it to your advantage as fuel. Even after those experiences I'd still be much happier with Musk's content policies, or Dorsey'd blockchain-free-for-all with users being able to choose the moderation algorithm they want. I have friends who were suspended for BS reasons and that's a far bigger concern to me.
- papito 4y ago"The election was stolen by Italian spy satellites" is not a viewpoint.
- intrasight 4y agoTwitter is not a megaphone. So tired of news sites using that analogy. I can choose what I see on Twitter.
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoNot only that, such services - unlike a megaphone or the agora - are a) incentivised to keep you there, b) algorithmically curate the content that you view, and c) are businesses and their responsibility is first and foremost the shareholders and not the public.
- squeaky-clean 4y agoI only follow about 25 people on Twitter, Elon Musk is not one of them. Yet the first tweet in my feed when I just opened up the homepage is Elon Musk said "let the good times roll" 8 hours ago.
- sixstringtheory 4y agoI would amend GPs statement to say “Twitter doesn’t have to be a megaphone” but then I guess their only/biggest revenue stream would dry up if people truly could curate their feed to only show what they actually wanted to see.
- merely-unlikely 4y agoI keep mine on chronological sort so I only see people I follow.
- jacooper 4y agoNow they added the similar tweets section under tweeg replies. Its always confusing for me when I am just scrolling through replies then see something totally irrelevant. Though I gotta hand it to them, the tweets suggested are often related, and it will resort to funny tweets when it can't find something similar.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
- rat87 4y agoMight theoretically work as long as you have no Trumpers/MAGA types on the council. If you put them on the council they'll try to ban their political opponents and allow every kooky antivax and racist far right tweet.
- harshtruths 4y agoKooky antivax = the people who have been correctly calling COVID for the past three years Racist = like calling Kanye West the n-word on twitter. Oh wait that was one of your blue checks.
- icare_1er 4y agoMight probably happen. But what DID happen though, is the opposite team doing the same and banning anything or anyone right-wing.
- esotericimpl 4y ago
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoYou think there is nothing right wing on Twitter?
- lob_it 4y ago
- twtw99 4y agoMeta did this in 2019[0]. I guess Elon realized that it's better to copy the largest social media company out there? [0] https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/facebook-oversight-board-for-content-decisions-overview https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/facebook-oversigh...
- rhaway84773 4y agoSo he’s not a free speech absolutist.
- krapp 4y agoNever has been.
- ergocoder 4y agoMusk already insists that tweets that violate laws would be removed. But content moderation should be less than what it is today or minimal. Everyone else: "Musk is all for free speech. You can say anything even things that break the laws"
- bergenty 4y agoWhich is a sane viewpoint.
- unicornmama 4y agoProbably a honeypot from Elon. He will solicit volunteers to self identify across the company and then fire them.
- paulpauper 4y agoNice to see inaction being taken against hacked verified accounts promoting scams: https://twitter.com/carlyodellnews/status/1586103044202168320 https://twitter.com/carlyodellnews/status/158610304420216832... https://twitter.com/SSSINGHDHIRAJ/status/1586070067476840453 https://twitter.com/SSSINGHDHIRAJ/status/1586070067476840453 https://twitter.com/IllingworthCC/status/1586086464730824707 https://twitter.com/IllingworthCC/status/1586086464730824707 https://twitter.com/TishaCustodio/status/1586103112263094272 https://twitter.com/TishaCustodio/status/1586103112263094272 https://twitter.com/chscott8/status/1586102966582661120 https://twitter.com/chscott8/status/1586102966582661120 https://twitter.com/AlianaNieves/status/1586086297906446336 https://twitter.com/AlianaNieves/status/1586086297906446336 right on musk's post. This person is hacking into 10+ verified accounts/day. Did it yesterday too some things never change
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- smcl 4y agoGuess his fans celebrating their newly acquired “free speech” by spamming the n-word were wrong
- harshtruths 4y agoThis was never about that. Except very few fringe people (and progressives towards black people leaving the plantation) nobody wants to use or see racial slurs on social media. That shit doesn't even fly on Zerohedge and most are absolutely fine with that. What we want is to be able to say "okay dude" and "only women can get pregnant" without being banned.
- smcl 4y agoAre you sure? Because it looks like a lot of these guys wanted to use and see racial slurs on social media...
- throwaway4837 4y agoTwitter can largely be ruled by financial incentives. 1. Add a cost for tweeting, like a gas fee. This fee is paid to Twitter. 2. Add a cost to subscribing to a channel. This fee is paid to the channel owner. We need financial incentives around tweeting. Letting people tweet freely gives them no incentive for quality. Twitter should be exploring ad-less business models like the one above. If it cost a few DOGE to tweet, people would think twice before posting inflammatory content.
- koonsolo 4y agoThe real question is what will happen to this account: https://twitter.com/ElonJet https://twitter.com/ElonJet
- anshumankmr 4y agoI believe he only bought Twitter to nuke this account./s
- ergocoder 4y agoWell, Twitter is a private company and can ban whomever they want... according to the trump banning situation back then.
- karmasimida 4y agoThis is good news isn’t it, twitter has been this biased this can only do good
- karmasimida 4y agoThis can only be good than bad. Twitter had let it loose for too long.
- wexomania 4y agoI wonder who will decide what diverse viewpoints means exactly.
- nemo44x 4y agoYes - the boundaries on it. I’m sure the most woke collective believes they are diverse. So what does diverse mean? What’s included in that? Far left anarchists? Far right fascists? Do Furries get a voice in the council?
- ergocoder 4y agoI don't think it's that hard. The laws are the boundaries of it. Then, you form the council but err on the side of not banning.
- animitronix 4y agoSounds like a spectacular waste of time that will never agree on anything, so why even bother?
- paxys 4y agoThe second part of the Tweet is equally interesting. > No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes. This gives him at least a temporary respite from the Trump question.
- beachy 4y agoI wish that Twitter - or some other social network - would experiment with the type of moderation seen on HN. Some would maybe call it heavy handed but I think of HN as a place that is mercifully relatively free of trolling, outrage culture, political bullshit and other toxic behaviors. In my experience there's no place like HN on the internet, and that's due I suspect to having a highly professional moderator (@dang) who uses top level communication skills to firmly but politely pull people into line. That in turn creates a virtuous circle where users socially moderate each other. It's hard to describe just how relaxing and pleasant it is browsing HN. It's always jarring to read the comments on e.g some Facebook groups I belong to, which feel like they're authored by a bunch of teenagers that have just found the key to their parents liquor cabinet. If Twitter was like HN I would spend time there.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- smeagull 4y agoHN is pretty much like any subreddit. And there is a line of prevailing thought that you can't go against.
- mdeeks 4y agoI guess it depends on the subreddit and mods, but most subreddits I've been to are littered with jokes, memes, and various levels of anger. They are usually hilarious but not what I want to wade through most of the time. It hides the useful info.
- cmh89 4y agoEh, I think not showing 'downvotes' really helps. Reddit really has a confirmation bias when it comes to upvotes/downvotes so its harder to get inertia to downvote dump on someone.
- christophilus 4y agoWhat’s the prevailing thought you can’t go against here? I tend to be a right-leaning libertarian, but am liberal on some issues. I see conservative comments. I see liberal comments. I see plenty of “Something bad happened? That’s because of capitalism” comments. I see plenty of pro-capitalist comments. It seems to me that the moderation here is pretty balanced.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- badcarbine 4y agoShould have bought Reddit
- eruci 4y agoDiversity of viewpoints is good, even if they are all "wrong" with various amounts of "nuggets" of truth. The futile exercise of preventing someone from hurting someone else's feelings, is the main casualty, and that's a very very good thing.
- hackernewds 4y ago"vaccines cause mild autism" Misinformation has real world impact
- halfjoking 4y ago
- harshtruths 4y agoI am not sure the last word on that has been spoken. But you obviously are. You guys are alway so sure that you got the last and final truth, aren't you? How many last and final truths are we up to for COVID btw? Misinformation is propaganda term that's employed to give the state the power to define what the truth is.
- eruci 4y ago"earth is flat" - that misinformation has no impact unless you make a big deal about it, we can simply laugh it off and move on.
- ikiris 4y agoWe'll have both kinds of music, country AND western!
- hansthehorse 4y agoTwitter moves way faster than any council possibly could. By the time a council decides some content is bad the damage has been done and people have moved on. Unbanning all the extreme right accounts will blow up twitter.
- tenpies 4y agoI would love to see some testing. For two weeks: ban every Blue checkmark. Evaluate. The next two weeks: ban every reporter. Evaluate. The next two weeks: ban every politician. Evaluate. The next two weeks: ban anyone without a Ukraine flag, vaccine, or mask on their profile. Evaluate. The next two weeks: ban everyone with a Ukraine flag, vaccine, or mask on their profile. Evaluate. Make it interesting and never tell people what you will ban for two weeks this time, but leave it up to them to figure out. Run enough tests and you'll find the magical blend. Or conclude that the best course of action is simply to ban everyone.
- motohagiography 4y agoIf they wanted to really add value, they could write their decisions like SCOTUS does, as the reasoning in the decisions would be available to all involved, and they would be taking ownership of their assessments, with Elon as a tiebreaker for them. The discourse around those decisions itself would add value to the platform and the internet. The "public editor" role at newspapers is close, but it's still one person, and they're usually just sustaining critical narrative anyway, but run it like SCOTUS instead. I'd like to see the arguments and rationale of the people who prevail, and the ones who dissent, as it demonstreates the integrity and legitimacy necessary to wield this kind of power, imo. The main tension in the culture comes down to really old dichotomies between material vs. essential, and the material has prevailed so much that language itself has been subordinated to exigent material ends. The balance I would strike on a board like that would be any decision would need to sit on a foundation of open principles and axioms, many of which could seem to be in conflict with each other, and then the given situation would indicate which principle prevails in a given decision. That way, even if you get ruled against, or a policy comes out that sweeps you up in it, you have been given your just due.
- hackernewds 4y agoThe departure from that analogy is the fact that we the people do not really have influence over who gets elected to this counsel. Power in the wrong hands is just as dangerous
- systemvoltage 4y agoBut I thought we were supposed to go along with "Private corporation, they can do whatever" line? See Cloudflare/Kiwifarms incident.
- supernova87a 4y agoEM is going to bring technology from Tesla over to help, and Twitter instead will become fully self-moderating.
- MisterSandman 4y agoI hope this is sarcasm. Nothing in Tesla's stack can come close to fully auto-moderating online speech.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bigmattystyles 4y agoIf twitter does want to be a public square and truly attempt to be neutral (as far as that is possible or realistic without letting it become a dumpster fire) should it have someone to act as a sort of an ombudsman? Is this what Musk is suggesting here? I guess the details will reveal that, one hopes that this group's decisions will be independent of the business implications or aspire to be.
- standardUser 4y ago"Forming a committee", the slowest, most expensive way to say "we have nooooo idea how to solve this".
- throwaway4837 4y agoI would imagine a uniform distribution of people from across racial, political, age, and socio-economic classes would be a good start. The theory is that if a moderation council is mostly well-off, white liberals, then their decisions will more likely contain bias from those sorts of people. A moderation council needs people of various ages, races, and political backgrounds so that the net bias in their decisions is reduced. I would also imagine that a dozen people isn't enough to achieve a good enough distribution over these variables. They might need a more scaled moderation approach that involves potentially hundreds of individuals, like a jury, but much bigger.
- lelanthran 4y ago> I would also imagine that a dozen people isn't enough to achieve a good enough distribution over these variables. They might need a more scaled moderation approach that involves potentially hundreds of individuals, like a jury, but much bigger. I like that; add in "banning decisions must be unanimous" and I think you'll have better decisions.
- fleddr 4y agoIn such a diverse council, which in theory is good, you'll find that moderation policy will be dominated by whatever the "marginalized" members say. Which quite likely is the way it already works.
- hackernewds 4y agoWe have arrived at the peak of capitalism where corporations are as powerful as governments
- solardev 4y agoI think they've been more powerful for decades now...
- jscipione 4y agoElon Musk repeated Jonathan Greenblatt’s line “I believe in freedom of speech, but I don’t believe in freedom of reach.” (which is not very journalistic of them) on a leaked phone call with Twitter management a few months back, so even Musk knows whose really in charge here: the ADL. So don’t worry too much about Twitter. PayPal re-reintroduced their $2,500 fine for misinformation just as the Twitter deal went through, so that’s the backup plan for censorship advocates.
- robomartin 4y agoThe hatred exhibited in all these Twitter-related threads, both here and elsewhere is truly something to behold. In a free society everyone should be for the protection of free speech. Note that this does not mean unmitigated slinging of fecal matter. It does, however, mean that platforms with significant reach should not be engaged in explicitly favoring one side or another. They need to enabled open and "color blind" discussion. And, yes, while moderation is necessary even in places like HN, it cannot, should not, be ideological. That's how you end-up with China, North Korea, Iran, etc. Cue arguments about the first amendment only being applicable to government. That isn't what this is about. At all. Imagine an extreme case where all social media outlets, news stations, newspapers and even universities are controlled by, say, the Chinese Communist Party or some other extreme. Yes, a crazy out-there hypothetical. Sometimes exaggeration is able to lend clarity that is hard to convey in other ways. Well, that's the kind of thing we have had for years now. Don't believe me? Kindly present a list of right wing, left wing and independents who have been banned from places like Twitter and Facebook. One side of that list will be almost empty. And that, precisely, is the problem Elon wants to solve. He isn't interested in tilting it in the opposite direction. He wants that list, when it comes to Twitter, to be equitable and, more than likely, as small as absolutely necessary. What is wrong with that? Why the hatred?
- kumarvvr 4y agoProtection of free speech, its intent atleast, is to protect citizens from governments. Not to give citizens a free for all tongue wagging that can harm others or incite violence. Free speech is to be used against tyrannical governments. If someone is saying "jews are vermin", they absolutely have to be gagged.
- robomartin 4y ago> Not to give citizens a free for all tongue wagging that can harm others or incite violence. Absolutely agreed. And that should be applied EQUALLY, which has not and does not happen. That is the problem. Hatred from the left has had a free pass in social media and the 90% of media outlets that support the ideology. People even cheer them on, not realizing just how much damage they are causing and how ugly the slipper slope actually is. As an independent, that is what is deeply disturbing to me. My vote is already irrelevant in California. It has been for decades. I am taxed. I am not represented. And my voice? If I dare side with republicans in a public way, my life could be absolutely ruined by the violent left. Here's what's interesting: I have actually lived under military regime. So has my entire family. We absolutely cannot believe how the left in the US has become very much the kind of thing anyone who has lived under oppressive regimes will recognize as such. The left, in this nation, has done an amazing job of taking over educational institutions and indoctrinating young ignorant minds. That's what we are battling. It isn't about wanting to go full-tilt-right, that is also a horrible reality that nobody wants to live under. Neither extreme should have control of a nation, because they are both detrimental to society. > If someone is saying "jews are vermin", they absolutely have to be gagged. No. That's wrong. You want to know who they are. You want human garbage like that in the open. You don't want them hiding. As the descendant of genocide survivors, I want assholes like in plain view. I want them to be well-lit, not in the shadows. So, yeah, forgive me for thinking that moderation and rules applied EQUALLY to all sides is actually better for not only this nation, but humanity as well. Notice I said "moderation". Nobody with two connected neurons wants a free-for-all or thinks that is a good thing. Elon certainly does not and has been very clear about this. The hatred for Elon/Twitter is only coming from the left, because of the potential of having to live by the same rules on a single platform. This should cause everyone pause. This is no different from a totalitarian regime feeling like they are losing control and moving to suppress all ideas and media not in alignment with them. It will be very interesting to watch this develop. If our government gets involved and treats Twitter with a heavy hand, well, I have lived in places resembling where this is going. You won't like it.
- blacksqr 4y agoYes, with luck we can get both Hannity AND Colmes.
- valeg 4y agoThere is Chinese leverage over Musk and the Saudis, so, it is diverse indeed.
- fistfucker3000 4y agoI’m excited to see the anarchists, marxist leninists, and police abolitionists be brings onto this diverse council
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dqpb 4y agoCan't you solve the moderation problem by simply having the default view be the social graph of depth N of people you subscribe to? In that case, unwanted comments actually provide useful information about your social graph.
- 55555 4y agoEveryone seems to say there’s no moderation policy that will please everyone. Sounds right. But the real physical world has freedom of speech and it works pretty well. There’s a KKK meeting going on somewhere right now and yet none of us are bothered. Is the issue really freedom of speech or is it that Twitter puts people who would absolutely hate each other into the same room? What if you just fix that second part instead of worrying about the first?
- root_axis 4y ago> the real physical world has freedom of speech and it works pretty well If someone were to enter a privately owned "public square" in the physical world and start yelling racial slurs, they'd be removed by the cops.
- airhangerf15 4y agoNo, that is protected and has been for decades: Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center
- ericbarrett 4y agoThat ruling is (a) only relevant in California, (b) has been significantly narrowed since it was issued in the 1970s, and (c) involved political solicitation, not simply yelling slurs.
- zug_zug 4y agoFascinating, I didn't know that ruling. However, to the larger point, in pre-internet times if you were to enter a public forum and shout racial obscenities it wouldn't be possible to do so anonymously, I imagine you'd get cited for creating a public disturbance (possibly thrown out on appeal if you bought an expensive lawyer?), and you'd suffer multiyear reputational damage [at least in small town]. These mechanisms seem to work - I scarcely ever seen in-person behavior that sinks to the level of online behavior. And I think we're all happier for it, imagine if the public playground allowed strangers from all over the world to shout whatever phrase they want anonymously with no transportation cost.
- 6510 4y agoImagine for a moment how Musk responds to pressure from the Chinese government. edit: Not to single out the chinese there is Germany, India, Iran and the rest of the Middle East. Как тебе такое, илона маск?
- lazyeye 4y agoYou mean genuine diversity (of thinking) instead of the fake, superficial kind (skin color, gender, sexual orientation etc)? Sounds like a good idea to me..
- beezlewax 4y agoI can't help but think this model will lead to over-representation of fanatical or fringe viewpoints.
- polski-g 4y agoGay marriage is a fringe view point. Interracial marriage is a fringe viewpoint. Women voting is a fringe viewpoint. Abolishing slavery is a fringe viewpoint. Every social progress that has ever occurred started out as a fringe viewpoint.
- beezlewax 4y agoWe had a referendum in Ireland on gay marriage. Over 62% of voters voted in favour of a constitutional change to allow it with a turnout of 61%. Hardly fringe to us. You're correct though it did start out that way.
- locallost 4y agoSo basically it's not the limiting of free speech, but who is doing it that was the problem.
- flipbrad 4y agoThe end result will be the emergence of a filter bubble industry - something you select, and choose to put up around your own feeds - as predicted by Neal Stephenson in Fall, or Dodge in Hell
- praptak 4y agoFree speech absolutism, eh? It only sounds good until the reality hits. There already exist platforms which have it. Twitter becoming one of them is not compatible with keeping ad revenue (and probably carries legal risks on top of that).
- consumer451 4y agoThere is another word for absolutism: extremism.
- ergocoder 4y ago> Free speech absolutism, eh? It only sounds good until the reality hits. Musk already said that it couldn't be free for all. Of course, it should be removed if it is against the laws. But moderation should be minimum or less than what it is today. But you don't seem to care; you parrot misconception which is akin to fake news, which I thought we didn't like.