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Content moderation is broken (2019)
- josephcsible 4y ago> Problematically, companies’ community standards also often feature exceptions for public figures: That’s why the president of the United States can tweet hateful things with impunity, but an ordinary user can’t. I'm kind of disappointed that the EFF never issued a correction or retraction for this claim. > users being censored for engaging in counterspeech or for using reclaimed terms A few paragraphs up, weren't they saying it was a bad thing that different rules apply to different people? Now they're saying it's a bad thing if the same rules apply to everyone?
- boardwaalk 4y ago> I'm kind of disappointed that the EFF never issued a correction or retraction for this claim. What kind of correction or retraction would you be looking for? That is explicitly Twitter policy[1]. Trump may have eventually crossed a line. That doesn't mean his line was in the same place as other people's. [1] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-interest https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-intere...
- mediumdeviation 4y agoAlso someone proved this experimentally just by tweeting out the same things that Trump did and got banned https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/bot-banned-from-twitter-for-repeating-trumps-tweets-verbatim/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/bot-banned-from-...
- SoftTalker 4y agoOf course the line isn't the same for everyone. Some people (such as presidents) are a lot more influential and consequential than others. Nobody cares what Joe Random thinks about something and if he crosses a line nobody cares if he's silenced. Trump isn't the only one who had a different line, though his was probably looser than anyone else got. Any celebrity or public figure is going to have more leeway in what he or she is allowed to say.
- anamexis 4y ago> A few paragraphs up, weren't they saying it was a bad thing that different rules apply to different people? Now they're saying it's a bad thing if the same rules apply to everyone? Or they're saying that the rules themselves are problematic, and more sophistication is needed than just "this word is not allowed."
- Spivak 4y ago> A few paragraphs up, weren't they saying it was a bad thing that different rules apply to different people. No, the rule is you can’t use reclaimed slurs unless you’re part of the group targeted by them. So yeah, you don’t get to call someone who’s gay a fa__ot unless you are gay yourself. That’s like the whole point of reclaiming them. The issue is that a dumb keyword filter can’t properly enforce this.
- tacitusarc 4y agoThis is, practically, unenforceable.
- v0idzer0 4y agoIt’s not just a dumb keyword filter that can’t enforce this. It’s not enforceable. Period. Are we going to have the content moderation team guess the sexual preferences of random twitter accounts?
- fatneckbeardz 4y agotrump tweeted all kinds of things that would get a normal user banned. you should retract your comment.
- josephcsible 4y agoMy whole point is that he did get banned, and "with impunity" basically means "without getting banned or otherwise punished".
- fmajid 4y agoOnly after he was no longer President. If he had won the election, he would still be spewing on Twitter. And now he is again.
- josephcsible 4y ago> Only after he was no longer President. No, he was still President when he got banned.
- incomingpain 4y agoContent moderation clearly found the line and blew past it. Those who have been taking advantage of this seem immensely upset they are losing this power. Really playing all their cards down and are talking about leaving the game and going out back. What seems inevitable is the US government starts hosting public forums to talk; but being bound by free speech. Virtually anything goes unless it's an actual crime. What happens after this?
- gardenfelder 4y agoIn theory, everyone needs a platform, to be heard. It seems to me that one question in that context is this: How can you give people a platform, but at the same time, tame the conversation?
- tunap 4y agoBack in the golden age of phpBBs, I would give posters 1 notice when veering OT or getting nasty, then transfer the (sub-)thread to our 'FlameWar' room. There, they could, and would, be as nasty as they liked to each other. I failed to stem the flow of toxicity, but merely re-directed it. It worked out pretty well, and ironically, the more toxic categories were the most popular viewed threads for trolls and lurkers, alike. Go figure.
- tbrownaw 4y ago> What seems inevitable is the US government starts hosting public forums to talk; but being bound by free speech. Virtually anything goes unless it's an actual crime. What happens after this? Everyone gets tired of 19 out of every 20 posts being about why they need Viagra, and goes back to MySpace.
- josephcsible 4y agoHow so? You just wouldn't follow the accounts that posted that kind of thing.
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- tpmx 4y ago
- atq2119 4y agoThe entire purpose of the EFF is political activism, and always has been. I suspect I know what you're trying to insinuate, but please at least be explicit instead of contributing to a world of increasingly fuzzy language.
- tpmx 4y agoSorry, I'm not a native speaker of English. I did struggle a bit with that sentence. How would you put it? What I tried to convey was: They abandoned their core mission, just like the ACLU did.
- throwaway14356 4y agobig platforms follow a concept like we've had for public places. Just like you cant visit the pub naked. The solution is to rent or buy your own turf. Just like the privacy of your hone you can go wild. Rules still apply but those are covered much better by the legal system. A platform can still rent space to you and they can chose to promote your content but if alternative aggregation is available their moderation can just be shooting from the hip
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoWell sure, but there are many many pubs, some require a tux and a tie, some requier shoes and a shirt, and some allow you to be there fully naked. Opening a new pub is also (relatively) cheap, and getting new users is relatively easy (if users are interested in what you have to offer). While current large social networks are not a real monopoly, they're not far away... if you want profiles, photos etc., you're pretty much stuck with facebook (this also counts instagram), forums are replaced by reddit and chat is concentrated on a few major platforms (whatsapp... so facebook again, whatever the current google chat is, viber, telegram and maybe signal). While saying "fuck you guys, i'm building my own reddit, but with hookers, and blackjack!" is simple, and setting up some reddit-like software is simple, moving users there is hard... that goes double for stuff like twitter or facebook, where in same cases, you need to use those to even get official government info. And even if you do succeed with making your own facebook, due to hookers and blackjack, even if perfectly legal (free spech and everything), hosting providers and domain registrars might turn off your service, because you're doing something perfectly legal, but they still don't like it. Proving a monopoly would probably be impossible, but avoiding one of the big social networks is becoming harder and harder... and who knows what new service someone like facebook or google might buy... could be telegram, could be viber,.. you never know. If you look further (eg china), it becomes ever harder to avoid those, since many real-life services (eg restaurants) accept payment only via WeChat ("ap pfor everything"), and if you get banned from there in china, you're even more fucked than if you lose your google account over here.
- tomcam 4y agoSpeak for yourself, party pooper! https://sports.yahoo.com/drink-british-pubs-nude-thanks-153511865.html https://sports.yahoo.com/drink-british-pubs-nude-thanks-1535...
- quelsolaar 4y agoI always wondered why platforms try to uphold the illusion that they are fair. Why not just say, "There are no rules. There is no fairness. If we think you make our site better you are welcome, if you don't we may or may not ban you if we feel like it. No we won't explain ourselves, because we have no rules, we do whatever we want. Don't piss us of, especially not before we have had our morning coffee." Then you would, forgo all the arguments, the arm chair lawyering, all the whataboutism, and trolls wouldn't have rules to push up against. No one could ever "technically not break any rules" by being an ass. When companies try to act like a law institution, they get all the politics of making and enforcing laws dropped in their lap.
- spoils19 4y agoBecause companies like to engage in censorship when opinions arise that go against what's popular. That's why HN is one of the best places to discuss, free speech is allowed wholly and there is no censorship or heavy-handed moderation at all.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoThe same censorship exists when you can’t read a message because it is too gray or white. There is also censorship when a comment is flagged even without actual reason. Another particularly annoying form of censorship is being unable to defend a position when providing something controversial which limits your submission rate. HN often comes out with very tone deaf responses and takes, so I don’t think that it is the best argument. HN is also a rather niche community that caters to a very specific audience.
- krapp 4y ago> Why not just say, "There are no rules. There is no fairness. If we think you make our site better you are welcome, if you don't we may or may not ban you if we feel like it. No we won't explain ourselves, because we have no rules, we do whatever we want. Don't piss us of, especially not before we have had our morning coffee." That is, essentially, what the terms of service for every social media platform (that no one ever bothers to read) have always said.
- miketery 4y agoI think moderation should be modeled by following / subscribing to different censors (taggers / flaggers). Then you can mix and match as you see fit. For example: - Blacklist using censor X for nsfw content with anything above level 3. - Blacklist using censor Y for political content to filter any ad hominem - Blacklist using censor Z on scientific studies and information to filter anything with small sample size or that’s politicized Obviously rather complicated, but this is what I want. A censor doesn’t have to be an org, it could be a person or a network of people you trust / follow. Yes bubbles will form. That’s fine, that’s our right to join and filter on a bubble. Each bubble will exhibit different behaviors, and much like nature the fittest will rise and “survive”.
- SoftTalker 4y agoWhat is the motivation to be a censor? Is it something that content consumers would pay for? Or would you monitize it by injecting your own ads based on the users expressed filter preferences?
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- makeitdouble 4y agoThis is the problem reddit is facing, and I think for anything at scale paying people is the only way forward. The amount of work required just goes way beyond checking some posts here and then towards the day, and distributing the load towards a huge community of moderators would give other issues on consistency, internal battles and keeping up to date on changes. To note the people getting paid don’t need to be employed by the platform, I’d totally see a community crowdfund a moderator to tag for them specific content.
- fmajid 4y agoMany people love the feeling of power they get from telling other people how to behave.
- bsder 4y agoThe problem isn't moderation. It's monopoly. If there were 5 Twitters all competing against one another, they would have to have customer service since you could move to another company. The companies would actually allocate the necessary resources and that would dampen the worst excesses. Until somebody (US, EU, etc.) gets serious and starts busting up these companies that rely on "network effect", this will all continue.
- diebeforei485 4y agoIt's pretty clear at this point that the people working the censorship departments (I mean, Trust and Safety) have started to become like HOA leaders and enforcing random rules that don't clearly benefit the users.