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'TrumpIsDead' trending on Twitter; verified user testing moderation under Musk

35 points by isaacfrond 4y ago

mikkergp 4y ago
This is a great test, and I think it nails a core issue with not having content moderation. If Something like this occasionally trends, then it’s engaging and a fun joke. Twitter is oddly better for it. If people can game the system such that “irrelevant misinformation” is the only thing that trends?
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Is anyone actually seriously advocating no moderation at all? I'm pretty close to being a free speech absolutist, but I still like to be in semi-moderated spaces. I don't want the state to do the moderating, but if a place like twitter that I can freely enter or exit has clear rules that are evenhandedly applied it's usually better for it. Now aesthetically I prefer fewer rules and more freewheeling interaction, but I understand that some people want a more constrained space. Both can and should exist.
jsnk 4y ago
Honestly, let people say whatever lies and nonsense they want and let relevant parties deal with them with libel laws if they want to, or liars destroy their own credibility if they want to.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  > let relevant parties deal with them with libel laws if they want to "Paul Pelosi was attacked by a gay liberal" doesn't fall into libel laws. > Liars destroy their own credibility And Elon Musk owns Twitter. So that destroys the credibility of the platform, does it not? ------- There's also organizations that explicitly peddle in misinformation. See "Russia Today" (or RT), who are trying to say that Ukrainians are gay Nazis, and were banned on Twitter because of it. There's no libel law that covers this case either (no one in particular is getting defamed). Its just war propaganda and is actively harmful misinformation.
  - garyfirestorm 4y ago
    > let relevant parties deal with them with libel laws if they want to Falling for 2016 trap. If it’s unverified info then it should be treated as such. Except majority of the people read it and consider it a true statement. Then it’s too late to debunk it.
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      I guess my point is that there's more kinds of harmful speech out there than just libel / slander. > COVID19 can be cured by drinking bleach and/or Ivermectin and/or hydroxyquinoline. These "cures" range from useless to harmful. But no one is getting defamed, so there's no one who will take the matter to court. What do you want, for COVID19 to take Joe Rogan to court over the Ivermectin statements? I don't think people realize how useless libel laws are in today's social networks.
      - wrycoder 4y ago
        There is no cure for COVID. But, telling you that nothing works, go home and wait, is not factual. Many things are helpful, especially in combination.[0] This information should not be suppressed. [0] https://c19early.org/ https://c19early.org/
        dragontamer 4y ago
        Monoclonal antibodies and Dexamethasone are effective treatments for COVID19 (depending on a lot of details of course. BA.5 and other variants are showing resistance to many Monoclonal Antibodies) Dexamethasone studies, even in April 2020, showed a 50% reduction in death rates. This is why the death rate in the USA was so much lower than Italy, because doctors studied the crap out of COVID19 and we begun to find effective treatments. Instead of spreading information about treatments, a large group decided it was best to spread misinformation about horse dewormers. ------------ In either case, I think I can safely say that the hoopla about IVM and all that was bullshit. It never worked, but people wanted to believe for... some reason? It got to the point where people were rejecting legitimate treatments (ie: Dexamethasone + Monoclonal Antibodies) and asking doctors for IVM. I know, my sister is a doctor and had to deal with this bullshit.
- Damogran6 4y ago
  There's a certain breed of person who's ethics can be summed up as: "If nobody convicts me, I must not be breaking the law."
  - paulluuk 4y ago
    Or worse: "If nobody convicts me, I must not be doing anything bad."
- threeseed 4y ago
  Problem there is that Twitter's revenue comes from advertisers. And corporate advertisers aren't looking to have their brand associated with 4chan 2.0. So if Musk believes in this unfettered free speech concept then it will destroy Twitter. Because what many people don't know is just how dominant Facebook and Google are in the advertising space. It's > 95% of total ad spend for many brands. So dumping Twitter because it's harming their brand will be a trivial decision.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    How is that a problem? It's his money to lose if advertisers all bail.
    - threeseed 4y ago
      And Musk likes his money as well as Tesla, SpaceX etc. So when it comes to the choice between that and allowing unfettered free speech I am quite sure he is going to choose the former.
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        So either way it's not a problem for the vast majority of users.
      - lost_tourist 4y ago
        I think so too. He will have to rehire all those content moderators that he is currently firing to keep the ad base alive. He will have to have people monitor and delete Trump and Kanye tweets when they come back online as well as probably 90% of whatever Alex Jones posts but I think he will stop short of closing their accounts; maybe he will have to block them for EU countries I would guess, because that's the law. I don't know how EU could force anything beyond that.
  - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
    "Advertisers" advertised on Rush Limbaugh. They keep advertising on Fox News. It'll just draw different advertisers. Advertisers are going to go where the money is. Will the changing demographics make the platform more money for advertisers, or less? That's all they care about. Incidentally, if it means there's even a chance that we stop seeing even a small percentage of )(&@(#& Liberty Mutual ads, I'm all for whatever that takes.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  Yes, do that. There's absolutely no second order effects that could possibly happen. We'll just go to the courts for everything. I'm sure it's easy and inexpensive to sue someone for libel in different jurisdictions.
- trauco 4y ago
  Good luck competing with the "jnsk is a pedophile"(1) trending topic. (1) this is, by the way, something that Musk did to that diver he didn't like.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    > (1) this is, by the way, something that Musk did to that diver he didn't like. It also should be noted that Musk __won__ that libel case. So that's "acceptable speech" according to our laws and courts. So no. Libel laws are _NOT_ the answer. Its too difficult to actually sue someone for libel today. You can apparently call someone a pedophile, advertised to dozens-of-millions of followers, and not be considered "libel" or "defamation". If there's one thing I learned from that event, its that our libel laws / defamation laws are not strict enough. Its not worth going to the courts on this kind of thing because you'll lose.
- Imnimo 4y ago
  If I see "TrumpIsDead" in the Trending box, that doesn't tell me who the liar is. So does that destroy the credibility of the source, or does it destroy the credibility of Twitter's trends feature?
toiletfuneral 4y ago
Starting to think Elon maybe isn’t capable of running a profitable company without massive government subsidies? Who on earth would want to advertise on this service?!
- throwawaywu 4y ago
  If I was selling tshirts with funny liberal memes, Twitter would know exactly who to target my ads to.
  - toiletfuneral 4y ago
tejohnso 4y ago
I don't understand the test. Is every nonsense tweet supposed to be reviewed and removed? There's nothing stopping me from going to the "town square" and yapping on about how God has returned, or that Kanye West is my dad, or is dead. People would just ignore me, I suspect. Maybe the odd passer by would insult me. But I wouldn't expect to have some authority figure come by and tell me that I can't say those things. Or worse yet, banish me from the town square altogether so that I could never go there and say anything ever again.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  One difference is that Twitter actively promotes trending topics in the sidebar, so it's as if someone noticed that multiple people in the town square were shouting about the same thing and circulated it throughout the town, not just the square, just because of that. Twitter has always exercised some editorial control over that trending topics sidebar, but it's never been clear to me how much.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  > There's nothing stopping me from going to the "town square" and yapping on about how God has returned, or that Kanye West is my dad, or is dead. People would just ignore me, I suspect. As I understand it, many people are actually incapable of performing this function and are desperate to have what they view as a higher authority (corporations, governments) protect and guide them. I do feel for these people, this must be a terrifying and bewildering time for them. Hopefully if Twitter does become less moderated, it could provide an affordable service for them that filters out content that they would be unable to cope with being exposed to.
- threeseed 4y ago
  In most countries if you were at a town square yelling offensive content you would be arrested. In fact the EU were quick to remind Musk that they do not share the US definition of free speech.
  - gadders 4y ago
    >>In fact the EU were quick to remind Musk that they do not share the US definition of free speech. Yes, that was particularly chilling. EU-approved opinions only.
wtcactus 4y ago
I don't see any real issue with Twitter allowing for this. We could pose the question of "what if we can't trust any information any more?". But I don't think that's really the case. People are free to follow a set of accounts on Twitter (or similar platforms) that they trust and get their news and confirmations from there. In my view, we are just moving away from Twitter being an enforcer of "real news" that can (and probably eventually becomes biased due to their power), to an organic platform based on trust and reputation that users are free to join or leave based on the perception of how trustworthy they are.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  The issue is the damage that can be caused by saying "January 6th is where we retake democracy and stop the steal". Such statements led to a riot, and were done by a very influential user of Twitter. Twitter, recoiling in disgust over that event, banned said user. It wasn't much all else considered, but we've woken up to the fact that a large segment of speech is actively harmful to this country. We don't know how to moderate that speech quite yet. But just letting it all back on surely isn't the answer.
  - YetAnotherNick 4y ago
    How is this a twitter's problem? If some country wants to censor someone, they could sent court approved letter. At least judges/legal system are trained on what is allowed or not, rather than random ban by faceless mod without any way to talk to contest the ban. Twitter should only ban on clear rules like e.g. no spam, no child porn etc. and leave other things to people who are expert in this. Because if they can't state their rule clearly they probably are prone to making mistake themselves.
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      > How is this a twitter's problem? Twitter exists in the USA, and Donald Trump's tweets were destroying the foundation our country is built upon. > If some country wants to censor someone, they could sent court approved letter. USA holds no laws governing or restricting the speech. Its up to individuals to rise up and say "Stop being a jackass", when a bully is messing with others. Similarly, Twitter is the owner of... well.. Twitter. Its Twitter's responsibility to govern and moderate the discussion on its platform. -------- When someone is harassing you here on Hacker News or engaging in damaging discussion, we rely upon moderators to cut off that discussion and lead us back to some useful path. That's why we're _here_ instead of a "freer speech" area like 4-chan or 8-chan. Because those other areas are composed of complete nutjobs. ---------- Anyway, its no big deal if Twitter's new owner wants to become the new 4chan / 8chan / whatever. Its absolutely in his right to take the platform in that direction. But we all know what a good owner _should_ be doing.
dieselhead 4y ago
Chaos Monkey for fake news?
aSithLord 4y ago
yawn... the salt is delicious though.
zuminator 4y ago
Weak. This is pretty clearly a joke meme. It might be offensive but nobody takes it seriously. So, Musk can let them keep it up, and think they've scored a point. But then they can't complain when there's much more serious and insidious disinformation posted by the opposition, can they?
tinalumfoil 4y ago
There’s obviously of people lashing back because of the acquisition, spreading offensive misinformation in this case, but that just proves the issues Twitter was already having. Mainly, the people who generate the most interest with their posts are bad people you wouldn’t associate with if they didn’t bring eyes to your platform. I doubt Musk will be able to solve the problem, and I doubt he’ll make his investment back, but he can rest assured it’s impossible to make Twitter worse.
ck2 4y ago
The ultimate outcome of this chaos is that the entire public FINALLY becomes trained to suspect every single thing on twitter is fake or misinformation until proven otherwise. But anyway how many missed payments of $1 BILLION PER YEAR can Musk miss and twitter still exist? By end of the decade the Saudis or whomever will own it instead.

35 points by isaacfrond 4y ago

This is a great test, and I think it nails a core issue with not having content moderation. If Something like this occasionally trends, then it’s engaging and a fun joke. Twitter is oddly better for it. If people can game the system such that “irrelevant misinformation” is the only thing that trends?

ch4s3 4y ago
Is anyone actually seriously advocating no moderation at all? I'm pretty close to being a free speech absolutist, but I still like to be in semi-moderated spaces. I don't want the state to do the moderating, but if a place like twitter that I can freely enter or exit has clear rules that are evenhandedly applied it's usually better for it. Now aesthetically I prefer fewer rules and more freewheeling interaction, but I understand that some people want a more constrained space. Both can and should exist.

jsnk 4y ago

Honestly, let people say whatever lies and nonsense they want and let relevant parties deal with them with libel laws if they want to, or liars destroy their own credibility if they want to.

dragontamer 4y ago
> let relevant parties deal with them with libel laws if they want to "Paul Pelosi was attacked by a gay liberal" doesn't fall into libel laws. > Liars destroy their own credibility And Elon Musk owns Twitter. So that destroys the credibility of the platform, does it not? ------- There's also organizations that explicitly peddle in misinformation. See "Russia Today" (or RT), who are trying to say that Ukrainians are gay Nazis, and were banned on Twitter because of it. There's no libel law that covers this case either (no one in particular is getting defamed). Its just war propaganda and is actively harmful misinformation.
- garyfirestorm 4y ago
  > let relevant parties deal with them with libel laws if they want to Falling for 2016 trap. If it’s unverified info then it should be treated as such. Except majority of the people read it and consider it a true statement. Then it’s too late to debunk it.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    I guess my point is that there's more kinds of harmful speech out there than just libel / slander. > COVID19 can be cured by drinking bleach and/or Ivermectin and/or hydroxyquinoline. These "cures" range from useless to harmful. But no one is getting defamed, so there's no one who will take the matter to court. What do you want, for COVID19 to take Joe Rogan to court over the Ivermectin statements? I don't think people realize how useless libel laws are in today's social networks.
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      There is no cure for COVID. But, telling you that nothing works, go home and wait, is not factual. Many things are helpful, especially in combination.[0] This information should not be suppressed. [0] https://c19early.org/ https://c19early.org/
      - dragontamer 4y ago
        Monoclonal antibodies and Dexamethasone are effective treatments for COVID19 (depending on a lot of details of course. BA.5 and other variants are showing resistance to many Monoclonal Antibodies) Dexamethasone studies, even in April 2020, showed a 50% reduction in death rates. This is why the death rate in the USA was so much lower than Italy, because doctors studied the crap out of COVID19 and we begun to find effective treatments. Instead of spreading information about treatments, a large group decided it was best to spread misinformation about horse dewormers. ------------ In either case, I think I can safely say that the hoopla about IVM and all that was bullshit. It never worked, but people wanted to believe for... some reason? It got to the point where people were rejecting legitimate treatments (ie: Dexamethasone + Monoclonal Antibodies) and asking doctors for IVM. I know, my sister is a doctor and had to deal with this bullshit.
Damogran6 4y ago
There's a certain breed of person who's ethics can be summed up as: "If nobody convicts me, I must not be breaking the law."
- paulluuk 4y ago
  Or worse: "If nobody convicts me, I must not be doing anything bad."
threeseed 4y ago
Problem there is that Twitter's revenue comes from advertisers. And corporate advertisers aren't looking to have their brand associated with 4chan 2.0. So if Musk believes in this unfettered free speech concept then it will destroy Twitter. Because what many people don't know is just how dominant Facebook and Google are in the advertising space. It's > 95% of total ad spend for many brands. So dumping Twitter because it's harming their brand will be a trivial decision.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  How is that a problem? It's his money to lose if advertisers all bail.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    And Musk likes his money as well as Tesla, SpaceX etc. So when it comes to the choice between that and allowing unfettered free speech I am quite sure he is going to choose the former.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      So either way it's not a problem for the vast majority of users.
    - lost_tourist 4y ago
      I think so too. He will have to rehire all those content moderators that he is currently firing to keep the ad base alive. He will have to have people monitor and delete Trump and Kanye tweets when they come back online as well as probably 90% of whatever Alex Jones posts but I think he will stop short of closing their accounts; maybe he will have to block them for EU countries I would guess, because that's the law. I don't know how EU could force anything beyond that.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  "Advertisers" advertised on Rush Limbaugh. They keep advertising on Fox News. It'll just draw different advertisers. Advertisers are going to go where the money is. Will the changing demographics make the platform more money for advertisers, or less? That's all they care about. Incidentally, if it means there's even a chance that we stop seeing even a small percentage of )(&@(#& Liberty Mutual ads, I'm all for whatever that takes.
giantrobot 4y ago
Yes, do that. There's absolutely no second order effects that could possibly happen. We'll just go to the courts for everything. I'm sure it's easy and inexpensive to sue someone for libel in different jurisdictions.
trauco 4y ago
Good luck competing with the "jnsk is a pedophile"(1) trending topic. (1) this is, by the way, something that Musk did to that diver he didn't like.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  > (1) this is, by the way, something that Musk did to that diver he didn't like. It also should be noted that Musk __won__ that libel case. So that's "acceptable speech" according to our laws and courts. So no. Libel laws are _NOT_ the answer. Its too difficult to actually sue someone for libel today. You can apparently call someone a pedophile, advertised to dozens-of-millions of followers, and not be considered "libel" or "defamation". If there's one thing I learned from that event, its that our libel laws / defamation laws are not strict enough. Its not worth going to the courts on this kind of thing because you'll lose.
Imnimo 4y ago
If I see "TrumpIsDead" in the Trending box, that doesn't tell me who the liar is. So does that destroy the credibility of the source, or does it destroy the credibility of Twitter's trends feature?

toiletfuneral 4y ago

Starting to think Elon maybe isn’t capable of running a profitable company without massive government subsidies? Who on earth would want to advertise on this service?!

throwawaywu 4y ago
If I was selling tshirts with funny liberal memes, Twitter would know exactly who to target my ads to.
- toiletfuneral 4y ago

tejohnso 4y ago

I don't understand the test. Is every nonsense tweet supposed to be reviewed and removed? There's nothing stopping me from going to the "town square" and yapping on about how God has returned, or that Kanye West is my dad, or is dead. People would just ignore me, I suspect. Maybe the odd passer by would insult me. But I wouldn't expect to have some authority figure come by and tell me that I can't say those things. Or worse yet, banish me from the town square altogether so that I could never go there and say anything ever again.

pwinnski 4y ago
One difference is that Twitter actively promotes trending topics in the sidebar, so it's as if someone noticed that multiple people in the town square were shouting about the same thing and circulated it throughout the town, not just the square, just because of that. Twitter has always exercised some editorial control over that trending topics sidebar, but it's never been clear to me how much.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
> There's nothing stopping me from going to the "town square" and yapping on about how God has returned, or that Kanye West is my dad, or is dead. People would just ignore me, I suspect. As I understand it, many people are actually incapable of performing this function and are desperate to have what they view as a higher authority (corporations, governments) protect and guide them. I do feel for these people, this must be a terrifying and bewildering time for them. Hopefully if Twitter does become less moderated, it could provide an affordable service for them that filters out content that they would be unable to cope with being exposed to.
threeseed 4y ago
In most countries if you were at a town square yelling offensive content you would be arrested. In fact the EU were quick to remind Musk that they do not share the US definition of free speech.
- gadders 4y ago
  >>In fact the EU were quick to remind Musk that they do not share the US definition of free speech. Yes, that was particularly chilling. EU-approved opinions only.

wtcactus 4y ago

I don't see any real issue with Twitter allowing for this. We could pose the question of "what if we can't trust any information any more?". But I don't think that's really the case. People are free to follow a set of accounts on Twitter (or similar platforms) that they trust and get their news and confirmations from there. In my view, we are just moving away from Twitter being an enforcer of "real news" that can (and probably eventually becomes biased due to their power), to an organic platform based on trust and reputation that users are free to join or leave based on the perception of how trustworthy they are.

dragontamer 4y ago
The issue is the damage that can be caused by saying "January 6th is where we retake democracy and stop the steal". Such statements led to a riot, and were done by a very influential user of Twitter. Twitter, recoiling in disgust over that event, banned said user. It wasn't much all else considered, but we've woken up to the fact that a large segment of speech is actively harmful to this country. We don't know how to moderate that speech quite yet. But just letting it all back on surely isn't the answer.
- YetAnotherNick 4y ago
  How is this a twitter's problem? If some country wants to censor someone, they could sent court approved letter. At least judges/legal system are trained on what is allowed or not, rather than random ban by faceless mod without any way to talk to contest the ban. Twitter should only ban on clear rules like e.g. no spam, no child porn etc. and leave other things to people who are expert in this. Because if they can't state their rule clearly they probably are prone to making mistake themselves.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    > How is this a twitter's problem? Twitter exists in the USA, and Donald Trump's tweets were destroying the foundation our country is built upon. > If some country wants to censor someone, they could sent court approved letter. USA holds no laws governing or restricting the speech. Its up to individuals to rise up and say "Stop being a jackass", when a bully is messing with others. Similarly, Twitter is the owner of... well.. Twitter. Its Twitter's responsibility to govern and moderate the discussion on its platform. -------- When someone is harassing you here on Hacker News or engaging in damaging discussion, we rely upon moderators to cut off that discussion and lead us back to some useful path. That's why we're _here_ instead of a "freer speech" area like 4-chan or 8-chan. Because those other areas are composed of complete nutjobs. ---------- Anyway, its no big deal if Twitter's new owner wants to become the new 4chan / 8chan / whatever. Its absolutely in his right to take the platform in that direction. But we all know what a good owner _should_ be doing.

dieselhead 4y ago

Chaos Monkey for fake news?

aSithLord 4y ago

yawn... the salt is delicious though.

zuminator 4y ago

Weak. This is pretty clearly a joke meme. It might be offensive but nobody takes it seriously. So, Musk can let them keep it up, and think they've scored a point. But then they can't complain when there's much more serious and insidious disinformation posted by the opposition, can they?

tinalumfoil 4y ago

There’s obviously of people lashing back because of the acquisition, spreading offensive misinformation in this case, but that just proves the issues Twitter was already having. Mainly, the people who generate the most interest with their posts are bad people you wouldn’t associate with if they didn’t bring eyes to your platform. I doubt Musk will be able to solve the problem, and I doubt he’ll make his investment back, but he can rest assured it’s impossible to make Twitter worse.

ck2 4y ago

The ultimate outcome of this chaos is that the entire public FINALLY becomes trained to suspect every single thing on twitter is fake or misinformation until proven otherwise. But anyway how many missed payments of $1 BILLION PER YEAR can Musk miss and twitter still exist? By end of the decade the Saudis or whomever will own it instead.