4 ms·

Great article to read if you want to know how the "sausage was made" at Twitter. I think most people knew it was an absolute dumpster fire, but it's even worse

by refurb 4y ago

Great article to read if you want to know how the "sausage was made" at Twitter. I think most people knew it was an absolute dumpster fire, but it's even worse than that. As expected, the folks doing the policing of "disinformation" were entirely unqualified for the role (I love the banning of the Harvard School of Medicine epidemiologist who said "vaccines are for people at risk" - apparently the folks at Twitter know more about this than he does) and ended up making decisions that were "politically expedient" rather than focusing on the truth. Or the attempt by Jim Baker (Twitter general counsel, former FBI) to ban a tweet by Trump about his own Covid illness and Twitter's Roth saying "optimism isn't a ban-able offense". This article perfectly proves why campaigns against "disinformation" are bound to fail - inevitably factual and important information gets censored because it's inconvenient to the people in power. After reading this article I'm reminded of Rand Paul's quote "Do you know who the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world is? The U.S. government." Amazingly this news goes over like a wet rag at HN. Which is shocking considering the "hacker ethos" about not bowing down to authority.

deleted 4y ago
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est 4y ago
> folks doing the policing of "disinformation" were entirely unqualified for the role Sounds like how Stackoverflow works. 5 people have no clue about the technical question decides to close it entirely.
andrew_ 4y ago
It's what many of us thought was going on based on what we could see. It's nice to have it out in the open and verify/confirm what some of us were told was plain old paranoia.
gsatic 4y ago
Hacker ethos is to solve problems not rant, rave and cry about them and hope grandma shows up with a solution.
- laidoffamazon 4y ago
  Yeah. Seems to me that Twitter did a pretty good job overall!
RockyMcNuts 4y ago
it's a hard tradeoff between false positives and false negatives. it's like being a soccer referee or a judge, you can be almost perfect but the screwups are all anyone remembers. short of putting everyone away for life, some convict is going to get out and do something, and some tabloid is going to question why this person was on the street. You do the best you can subject to the Constitution, the laws, and common sense. there is so much absolute garbage bad faith BS on social media that is poison to a civilized society and a democracy, that there is no choice but to do the best we can to try to spread less of it. you don't get to throw up your hands and say, there is no perfect arbiter of truth and decency so let's say, anything goes. of course that's what all the worst burn-it-down extremists would like to see. A lot of US institutions were exposed as unfit for purpose by the pandemic and we have to do better. But I'm not sure Twitter would be near the top of the list. And somehow, the new regime seems able to make everything worse.
- _-____-_ 4y ago
  If it's such a hard tradeoff then maybe don't make the trade in the first place. Just don't censor speech. Problem solved. Insisting on censoring speech in this case is what's known as a Hegelian dialectic: there is a problem, we need to solve the problem, here's how we solve the problem.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - ryanSrich 4y ago
      > If you are running a social media platform for the masses, you have to censor certain things, and you have to abide by all regulations. You can’t just X. Legally speaking yes. You absolutely have to censor a decent amount of content. Outside of what is legally required (at least in the US), I’d be in favor of allowing the community to block and mute to curate their own experience. It seems a losing battle to rely on the whims of the people that run the business of Twitter/Facebook/etc. to be the deciders of what should and should not be allowed. > We have already seen that musk’s pathetic approach via free speech absolutism does not work. Is this tongue and cheek? Musk’s policies are the antithesis of free speech.
jklm 4y ago
Campaigns against disinformation are bound to fail because everyone has a different interpretation of the truth and assumes that everything else is “disinformation” (with quotes this time). Much like social media generally, disinformation is now one of the chief scapegoats across the aisle for all that’s wrong in the world.
deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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by refurb 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

est 4y ago

> folks doing the policing of "disinformation" were entirely unqualified for the role Sounds like how Stackoverflow works. 5 people have no clue about the technical question decides to close it entirely.

andrew_ 4y ago

It's what many of us thought was going on based on what we could see. It's nice to have it out in the open and verify/confirm what some of us were told was plain old paranoia.

gsatic 4y ago

Hacker ethos is to solve problems not rant, rave and cry about them and hope grandma shows up with a solution.

laidoffamazon 4y ago
Yeah. Seems to me that Twitter did a pretty good job overall!

RockyMcNuts 4y ago

it's a hard tradeoff between false positives and false negatives. it's like being a soccer referee or a judge, you can be almost perfect but the screwups are all anyone remembers. short of putting everyone away for life, some convict is going to get out and do something, and some tabloid is going to question why this person was on the street. You do the best you can subject to the Constitution, the laws, and common sense. there is so much absolute garbage bad faith BS on social media that is poison to a civilized society and a democracy, that there is no choice but to do the best we can to try to spread less of it. you don't get to throw up your hands and say, there is no perfect arbiter of truth and decency so let's say, anything goes. of course that's what all the worst burn-it-down extremists would like to see. A lot of US institutions were exposed as unfit for purpose by the pandemic and we have to do better. But I'm not sure Twitter would be near the top of the list. And somehow, the new regime seems able to make everything worse.

_-____-_ 4y ago
If it's such a hard tradeoff then maybe don't make the trade in the first place. Just don't censor speech. Problem solved. Insisting on censoring speech in this case is what's known as a Hegelian dialectic: there is a problem, we need to solve the problem, here's how we solve the problem.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - ryanSrich 4y ago
    > If you are running a social media platform for the masses, you have to censor certain things, and you have to abide by all regulations. You can’t just X. Legally speaking yes. You absolutely have to censor a decent amount of content. Outside of what is legally required (at least in the US), I’d be in favor of allowing the community to block and mute to curate their own experience. It seems a losing battle to rely on the whims of the people that run the business of Twitter/Facebook/etc. to be the deciders of what should and should not be allowed. > We have already seen that musk’s pathetic approach via free speech absolutism does not work. Is this tongue and cheek? Musk’s policies are the antithesis of free speech.

jklm 4y ago

Campaigns against disinformation are bound to fail because everyone has a different interpretation of the truth and assumes that everything else is “disinformation” (with quotes this time). Much like social media generally, disinformation is now one of the chief scapegoats across the aisle for all that’s wrong in the world.

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