3 ms·

That's clearly not a real policy. You can't trick a court with such obvious deception. In particular, moderators have bosses, and nobody can believe moderators

by orra 3y ago

That's clearly not a real policy. You can't trick a court with such obvious deception. In particular, moderators have bosses, and nobody can believe moderators can do what the hell they want without their manager having a say. > while enabling the social network to maintain maximum flexibility. In other words, giving the employees absolute discretion isn't normally what you would consider giving the company (owners/directors) flexibility.

adrr 3y ago
That’s why they are fighting it. They don’t want to put that Musk is the moderation policy.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  'It's a private company, they can ban/block/censor whoever/whatever they want' Pre-Musk, wasn't that always the standard standard response to criticism of activism-driven social media censorship?
  - tzs 3y ago
    So? That's still the standard response. All this bill is doing is saying that the company has to state what their rules for this are.
    - sebzim4500 3y ago
      Sounds like the rules are "We do whatever Musk wants. He's an unusual guy".
  - adrr 3y ago
    California just requires transparency of the policies. They just need to put in writing that free speech absolutist Musk is responsible for all the moderation of policies like censuring the account that tracked his plane with public data.
rgbrenner 3y ago
There's definitely at least one moderator at Twitter that uses that policy.
michaelt 3y ago
> That's clearly not a real policy. Of course not - a HN posts are hardly long enough to contain the real policy which would undoubtedly be many pages long. hirundo is posting a hypothetical, exaggerated example. But Twitter could have a policy that gave them great leeway to make arbitrary decisions, by stating things like: * We use automated systems, which ensure a timely response and let us stay on top of many millions of tweets per day. However, these automated systems occasionally err in both taking down reasonable content and leaving up unreasonable content. We are constantly improving these systems, but with x00 million tweets per day some errors are inevitable. * Bright line rules are not always possible in moderation. For example, we would generally not censor images of Michelangelo's David, the Venus de Milo, or napalm girl, despite a general policy of not showing genitals or female-presenting nipples. Similarly, a post might be parody, sarcasm, exaggeration for comic effect, or otherwise acceptable. For example, we might allow NWA's 1988 hit protest song "Fuck tha Police", or a tweet by Donald Trump threatening nuclear war with North Korea, despite a general prohibition on calls to violence. Decisions are made by our moderation teams on a case-by-case basis, following the vague subjective guidelines found in appendix A * We hire our moderation workforce from around the globe valuing diversity and multiple perspectives and timezones blah blah therefore details that may be obvious to some audiences may sometimes be overlooked by our moderation teams * The fact a tweet has been reported by a large number of people does not necessarily mean it will be blocked, as some more visible accounts may attract more flags proportional to their larger audience. Twitter also suffers from organised 'downvote rings' which systematically flag posts by their political opponents, hoping to reduce the reach of those posts. We may ignore such reports, when we detect them. * Content moderation is interlinked with spam, astroturfing and bot accounts. For example we may block posts about buying cheap viagra, despite it not being extreme content or hate speech. * Our automated systems may identify accounts as suspected bot or spam accounts based on heuristics that may not be obviously related to our moderation policies. Even a newly opened account that has never sent a single tweet or followed a single person may be blocked. * The ever changing spam environment, the ever-changing language used by Twitter users, and the cat-and-mouse game with people who'd like to not be moderated mean the guidance given to our moderators changes on a daily basis. This document is a snapshot and our actions in the past and in the future may be inconsistent with it. * We are committed to helping users stay safe and control their twitter experience, through options like Unfollow, Filter Notifications, Show Less Often, Mute, Block and Report. Expand with a few more pages of waffle and voilà, you have a policy that doesn't actually pin you down to taking any particular action in any particular situation.

by orra 3y ago

adrr 3y ago

That’s why they are fighting it. They don’t want to put that Musk is the moderation policy.

bluescrn 3y ago
'It's a private company, they can ban/block/censor whoever/whatever they want' Pre-Musk, wasn't that always the standard standard response to criticism of activism-driven social media censorship?
- tzs 3y ago
  So? That's still the standard response. All this bill is doing is saying that the company has to state what their rules for this are.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    Sounds like the rules are "We do whatever Musk wants. He's an unusual guy".
- adrr 3y ago
  California just requires transparency of the policies. They just need to put in writing that free speech absolutist Musk is responsible for all the moderation of policies like censuring the account that tracked his plane with public data.

rgbrenner 3y ago

There's definitely at least one moderator at Twitter that uses that policy.

michaelt 3y ago

> That's clearly not a real policy. Of course not - a HN posts are hardly long enough to contain the real policy which would undoubtedly be many pages long. hirundo is posting a hypothetical, exaggerated example. But Twitter could have a policy that gave them great leeway to make arbitrary decisions, by stating things like: * We use automated systems, which ensure a timely response and let us stay on top of many millions of tweets per day. However, these automated systems occasionally err in both taking down reasonable content and leaving up unreasonable content. We are constantly improving these systems, but with x00 million tweets per day some errors are inevitable. * Bright line rules are not always possible in moderation. For example, we would generally not censor images of Michelangelo's David, the Venus de Milo, or napalm girl, despite a general policy of not showing genitals or female-presenting nipples. Similarly, a post might be parody, sarcasm, exaggeration for comic effect, or otherwise acceptable. For example, we might allow NWA's 1988 hit protest song "Fuck tha Police", or a tweet by Donald Trump threatening nuclear war with North Korea, despite a general prohibition on calls to violence. Decisions are made by our moderation teams on a case-by-case basis, following the vague subjective guidelines found in appendix A * We hire our moderation workforce from around the globe valuing diversity and multiple perspectives and timezones blah blah therefore details that may be obvious to some audiences may sometimes be overlooked by our moderation teams * The fact a tweet has been reported by a large number of people does not necessarily mean it will be blocked, as some more visible accounts may attract more flags proportional to their larger audience. Twitter also suffers from organised 'downvote rings' which systematically flag posts by their political opponents, hoping to reduce the reach of those posts. We may ignore such reports, when we detect them. * Content moderation is interlinked with spam, astroturfing and bot accounts. For example we may block posts about buying cheap viagra, despite it not being extreme content or hate speech. * Our automated systems may identify accounts as suspected bot or spam accounts based on heuristics that may not be obviously related to our moderation policies. Even a newly opened account that has never sent a single tweet or followed a single person may be blocked. * The ever changing spam environment, the ever-changing language used by Twitter users, and the cat-and-mouse game with people who'd like to not be moderated mean the guidance given to our moderators changes on a daily basis. This document is a snapshot and our actions in the past and in the future may be inconsistent with it. * We are committed to helping users stay safe and control their twitter experience, through options like Unfollow, Filter Notifications, Show Less Often, Mute, Block and Report. Expand with a few more pages of waffle and voilà, you have a policy that doesn't actually pin you down to taking any particular action in any particular situation.