4 ms·

Still smells to high heaven to me. Not the Elon part, I don't really care about that. But collecting metrics about "republican" vs "democrat" sounds like a part

Still smells to high heaven to me. Not the Elon part, I don't really care about that. But collecting metrics about "republican" vs "democrat" sounds like a particularly bad set of priorities at work.

andsoitis 4y ago
> sounds pretty suspicious. Sounds toxic to me
bilekas 4y ago
This exactly.. But without the models or policies we can only infer, which give plausible deniability. Can't say I'm shocked overall, but it's strange to see it so 'on the nose'
seydor 4y ago
but the people who care about stats are usually american politicians. they can present them with this data. (and use Elon as a control LOL)
JohnFen 4y ago
About 40% of US voters are not registered with any political party, so at least they will avoid whatever this triggers.
- kuhewa 4y ago
  So you imagine these tags are set by looking account names up on state voter registration lists?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Well, if not, then the tags have such a large error bar as to be meaningless.
    - emmo 4y ago
      Or the data is assumed good and used dangerously.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  And then there is the rest of the world.
jonathankoren 4y ago
Anyone that has worked in social network recommendations (raises hand) knows that they'll be accused of being politically biased, particularly if the recommendations aren't explicitly promoting biased news sites on the Right. (e.g. The Associated Press[0] is leftist propaganda! Where's unbiased news like Gateway Pundit[1] or InfoWars[5]?!) So data scientists and engineers will get pulled in to investigate the latest ref working[2][4], and this will let them easily determine that no, there is no bias. None of this will matter though, because the complaints are made in bad faith.[2][3] You may say this is biased comment, but I’m not going to engage in false equivalences, when the outrage and results of the outrage aren’t symmetrical. Cite one story where a major social network (Twitter, Facebook, Google News, YouTube, etc) publicly came out and said that they were adjusting their algorithms to make it more lefty. I’ll wait. This bad faith of the complaints are particularly obvious when the most popular and influential right wing television channel, Fox News, has been caught red handed knowingly spreading conspiracy theories for ratings.[6] [0] "Associated Press is the least biased according to both Democrats and Republicans." https://www.businessinsider.com/most-biased-news-outlets-in-america-cnn-fox-nytimes-2018-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/most-biased-news-outlets-in-... [1] "The Gateway Pundit (TGP) is an American far-right fake news website. The website is known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateway_Pundit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateway_Pundit [2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-22-mn-26779-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-22-mn-26779-... [3] "Internal report finds ‘virtually identical’ rates of conservative and liberal topics, but guidelines updated to ‘exclude possibility of improper actions’" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/24/facebook-changes-trending-topics-anti-conservative-bias https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/24/facebook-... [4] "There is some strategy to it [bashing the ‘liberal’ media]. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is ‘work the refs.’ Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one." -- Rich Bond, 1992 Republican Party Chairman https://www.americanprogress.org/article/think-again-working-the-refs/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/think-again-working... [5] “InfoWars is an American far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Alex Jones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars [6] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/all-the-texts-fox-news-didnt-want-you-to-read.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/all-the-texts-fox-ne...
jcalder 4y ago
I suspect it plays into this stuff: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-admits-bias-in-algorithm-for-rightwing-politicians-and-news-outlets https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a... They wanted to answer the questions of "is twitter biased against Republicans" so they measured it, turns out they favored republicans.

Still smells to high heaven to me. Not the Elon part, I don't really care about that. But collecting metrics about "republican" vs "democrat" sounds like a particularly bad set of priorities at work.

andsoitis 4y ago

> sounds pretty suspicious. Sounds toxic to me

bilekas 4y ago

This exactly.. But without the models or policies we can only infer, which give plausible deniability. Can't say I'm shocked overall, but it's strange to see it so 'on the nose'

seydor 4y ago

but the people who care about stats are usually american politicians. they can present them with this data. (and use Elon as a control LOL)

JohnFen 4y ago

About 40% of US voters are not registered with any political party, so at least they will avoid whatever this triggers.

kuhewa 4y ago
So you imagine these tags are set by looking account names up on state voter registration lists?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Well, if not, then the tags have such a large error bar as to be meaningless.
  - emmo 4y ago
    Or the data is assumed good and used dangerously.
jacquesm 4y ago
And then there is the rest of the world.

jonathankoren 4y ago

Anyone that has worked in social network recommendations (raises hand) knows that they'll be accused of being politically biased, particularly if the recommendations aren't explicitly promoting biased news sites on the Right. (e.g. The Associated Press[0] is leftist propaganda! Where's unbiased news like Gateway Pundit[1] or InfoWars[5]?!) So data scientists and engineers will get pulled in to investigate the latest ref working[2][4], and this will let them easily determine that no, there is no bias. None of this will matter though, because the complaints are made in bad faith.[2][3] You may say this is biased comment, but I’m not going to engage in false equivalences, when the outrage and results of the outrage aren’t symmetrical. Cite one story where a major social network (Twitter, Facebook, Google News, YouTube, etc) publicly came out and said that they were adjusting their algorithms to make it more lefty. I’ll wait. This bad faith of the complaints are particularly obvious when the most popular and influential right wing television channel, Fox News, has been caught red handed knowingly spreading conspiracy theories for ratings.[6] [0] "Associated Press is the least biased according to both Democrats and Republicans." https://www.businessinsider.com/most-biased-news-outlets-in-america-cnn-fox-nytimes-2018-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/most-biased-news-outlets-in-... [1] "The Gateway Pundit (TGP) is an American far-right fake news website. The website is known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateway_Pundit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateway_Pundit [2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-22-mn-26779-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-22-mn-26779-... [3] "Internal report finds ‘virtually identical’ rates of conservative and liberal topics, but guidelines updated to ‘exclude possibility of improper actions’" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/24/facebook-changes-trending-topics-anti-conservative-bias https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/24/facebook-... [4] "There is some strategy to it [bashing the ‘liberal’ media]. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is ‘work the refs.’ Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one." -- Rich Bond, 1992 Republican Party Chairman https://www.americanprogress.org/article/think-again-working-the-refs/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/think-again-working... [5] “InfoWars is an American far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Alex Jones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars [6] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/all-the-texts-fox-news-didnt-want-you-to-read.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/all-the-texts-fox-ne...

jcalder 4y ago

I suspect it plays into this stuff: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-admits-bias-in-algorithm-for-rightwing-politicians-and-news-outlets https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a... They wanted to answer the questions of "is twitter biased against Republicans" so they measured it, turns out they favored republicans.