7 ms·

X scraps tool to report electoral fake news

20 points by vinni2 3y ago

unsupp0rted 3y ago
Report to whom? Who are the Fake News Police and why are they more qualified than Community Notes?
- SilverBirch 3y ago
  To X. You know, X runs a website, X has some responsibility that what it presents on that website isn't actively harmful to democracy. Both a moral responsibility everywhere it operates, but a legal responsibility in many jurisdictions. And if they don't manage the content on the website themselves in many jurisdictions they open themselves up to fines and regulatory penalties. To be honest it's a pretty uniquely American view to say "Well yes, Elon owns the website, Elon runs the website, Elon personally intervenes to boost and endorse wild disinformation and conspiracy theories, but I just don't think you could possibly expect Elon to be held responsible for that".
  - nailer 3y ago
    > X has some responsibility that what it presents on that website isn't actively harmful to democracy. Yes, that's why the team that pushed false narratives about the Biden laptop being "Russian disinformation" have been removed.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    There's no general responsibility to not "present" things "actively harmful to democracy". And there's nothing uniquely American about that. I'm a European living in Europe and there's no such obligation or responsibility here either. Please don't insinuate there is. That's especially important because a significant chunk of the left no longer use the dictionary definition of the word democracy, so there isn't any chance of agreement on what it means. They seem to be using it either to mean the unelected institutions (courts, media, academia, civil service agencies) or sometimes to mean left wing policies. So if a conservative politician wins an election then that's a "threat to democracy", example: The AfD has achieved top municipal office for the first time in Sonneberg, Thuringia [...snip...] Green Party leader Ricarda Lang has interpreted the result as a warning to all supporters of democracy. [...snip...] Robert Sesselmann’s win is an alarm signal for democracy, said Martin Schirdewan, co-chairman of the Left Party https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/afd-sonneberg-reaktionen-100.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/afd-sonneberg-...
    - SilverBirch 3y ago
      In the US there is specifically Section 230 - which legally absolves X of any liability from user generated content. That is unique to the US, in Europe, social media companies don't enjoy those same legal protections and field all sorts of requests for removal of content from government. As a European living in Europe, presumably you're aware of the passage of the Digital Services Act which puts legal requirements on large platforms to have systems in place to tackle disinformation.
      - unsupp0rted 3y ago
        Isn't Community Notes a system to tackle disinformation?
      - nvm0n2 3y ago
        I'm aware of the DSA but fortunately am not required to follow it, being in one of the parts of Europe that's not a part of the EU. Section 230 doesn't have anything in it about being "actively harmful to democracy" so what's your point?
        azernik 3y ago
        Mentioning Section 230 is to back up the "To be honest it's a pretty uniquely American view..." part of the GP comment.
        nvm0n2 3y ago
        It's really not that American. Americans didn't invent the concept of free speech, not by a long shot. The idea that it's somehow "un-European" to allow people to say things "harmful to democracy" is wrong legally and culturally, but the cultural affinity so many Europeans have for authoritarianism is exactly the reason Europe has no tech industry to speak of.
        azernik 3y ago
        Americans did not invent the concept of free speech, but they take it to an extreme that is extremely far out of the mainstream in Europe and always has been.
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    > To be honest it's a pretty uniquely American view Interestingly, my comment was sitting at 3 points all day in European Time, and quickly got downvoted to -1 when America woke up this morning. So I agree there is some geographical/culture disparity in views on this topic.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
I’ve had a pet theory which I don’t take too seriously but which is comedically difficult to empirically dismiss. Musk recognises Twitter for the albatross it is. Unfortunately, he has too much reputation tied up in it. He needs a way for someone else, preferably a bogeyman, to kill it. The perfect bogeyman would be an unelected bureaucrat. Cut to Musk systematically disbanding Twitter’s electoral guardrails, including by laying off its European team, right after the European Commission told him not to [1][2]. [1] https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1662194595755704321?s=20 https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1662194595755704321... [2] https://www.disinfo.eu/advocacy/how-the-digital-services-act-(dsa)-can-tackle-disinformation/ https://www.disinfo.eu/advocacy/how-the-digital-services-act...
- throwawayqqq11 3y ago
  But isnt Musks inability to let his megalomaniac illusions loose the reason he ended up in this kuvafle?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Musks inability to let his megalomaniac illusions loose Twitter’s LBO followed a few weeks of poor impulse control followed by frantically trying to reverse course. If a court would have let him out of his deal to buy Twitter, he’d have taken it.
    - nailer 3y ago
      That's because the value of Twitter dropped remarkably after he agreed to buy it, and he had some concerns - warranted or not - about actual use compared to bots.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        Sure, but evidence he doesn’t have an “inability to let his megalomaniac illusions loose.” The market changed and he attempted to correct course.
savef 3y ago
[flagged]
drt5b7j 3y ago
Twitter scraps tool to report electoral fake news. FTFY
- bdcravens 3y ago
  The owner of the company changed the name. No one's opinion changes that.
- mikeravkine 3y ago
  It's now called Xitter (with the X pronounced 'sh')
bamboozeell 3y ago
You want to give any pseudoanonymous actor in the world access to the thoughts and desires of anyone else - you got it! Thanks Big Tech! Honestly, China has more like the right approach when it comes to allowing its citizens access to the internet.
- leosanchez 3y ago
  > China has more like the right approach when it comes to allowing its citizens access to the internet. Really?
  - hfuyf65 3y ago
    It is kinda fascinating is it not? A person genuinely clamoring for the state to carefully control what they they can say/do/think.
    - bamboozeell 3y ago
      You mis-read. I think a government has a responsibility to limit who can influence what I (and those around me) decide to do/say/think, whether that's through maintaining a physical border, implementing domestic law and order, or limiting remote access. After all, I don't want to live in a country where significant numbers of my fellow citizens have been unduly influenced by external propaganda and misinformation.
      - wenebego 3y ago
        "limit who can influence" is a form of control. Why are you also qualifying "external" propaganda and misinformation? You're fine with both of those things as long as its "internal"? Can you define what source of misinformation you're okay with?
        bamboozeell 3y ago
        >"limit who can influence" is a form of control. Sure is, and govenments also control what kinds of goods can be sold to me, what kind of transport I may drive, places and buildings I may enter, and so on. Are you advocating for no government? Or are you saying that all (most?) of the controls they currently exert are ok, but they must allow completely free transfer of data in and out? If so, why is the internet so special? >Why are you also qualifying "external" propaganda and misinformation? Assuming I live somewhere half-decent, I have greater trust in the government and culture that I know. >Can you define what source of misinformation you're okay with? None, really, although defining "misinformation" gets very tricky when you start breaking it down to local specifics. After all, we all knowingly and unknowingly spread some form of misinformation just going about our lives. In any case, why is it a good idea to allow the world's misinformation in, in addition to what we have to sort through from a bloke in the pub / my town's micro-politics / my government's constant battle with the opposition party?
nailer 3y ago
It sounds like this tool was produced by the previous "Trust and Safety" team which is known for attempting to manipulate public discourse and was sacked. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707147926789554422 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707147926789554422 Obviously this article is the BBC, a competing media platform.
- jdiff 3y ago
  It is not known unless you take every attention-seeking word of Musk literally and at face value. As they released the whole mess that was the "Twitter Files" they repeatedly lied by omission and disproved themselves with the fragments of actual files they released.
  - nailer 3y ago
    The NYTimes has confirmed the laptop is real. So have most other media outlets. Do you think the letters from the FBI pressuring Twitter to remove the story are false? What evidence do you have to support this theory?
    - jdiff 3y ago
      Didn't say anything about any laptop. I said Twitter's own files contradict their statements and are dishonest attention-seeking.
      - nailer 3y ago
        You raised the matter of the Twitter Files. The biggest revelations in the Twitter files, which you discussed, were the FBI tampering with reporting of the Biden laptop story. I can’t discuss any other matter you may be concerned about because you have been incredibly vague in specifying what it is you are actually concerned about. You have mentioned lying through omission, Twitter being dishonest, and attention seeking but have given zero examples of any of these behaviours except saying they have something to do with the Twitter Files. The only concrete information you have conveyed is that you dislike Elon Musk very much.
victortan83 3y ago
What is electoral fake news may turn out to be true. Kinda foolish to ask platforms to decide what is true and what is not. Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? Was it fake news?
- bdcravens 3y ago
  I tend to agree with your first point, and feel that for user-driven content, allowing users to submit context to be displayed below the source is a good middle-ground. As for the second point, I think that most critical thinkers understand that the laptop changed hands several times, undermining the "news" of the matter.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    As far as I am aware, the laptop's original owner has not denied that the content that's been made public is genuine. If the info had been tampered with, I think Hunter Biden would have said so.
    - bdcravens 3y ago
      He actually recently filed a lawsuit claiming that Giuliani et al altered data. https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-laptop-lawsuit-94fbf97f52aea73b8421e3be017767f1 https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-laptop-lawsuit-94fbf... "The suit filed in California also claims Biden’s data was “manipulated, altered and damaged” before it was sent to Giuliani and Costello, and has been further altered since then."
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  How was/is Hunter Biden "electoral news". He never ran for office.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    His father did, and was involved in his son's business deals.

20 points by vinni2 3y ago

unsupp0rted 3y ago

Report to whom? Who are the Fake News Police and why are they more qualified than Community Notes?

SilverBirch 3y ago
To X. You know, X runs a website, X has some responsibility that what it presents on that website isn't actively harmful to democracy. Both a moral responsibility everywhere it operates, but a legal responsibility in many jurisdictions. And if they don't manage the content on the website themselves in many jurisdictions they open themselves up to fines and regulatory penalties. To be honest it's a pretty uniquely American view to say "Well yes, Elon owns the website, Elon runs the website, Elon personally intervenes to boost and endorse wild disinformation and conspiracy theories, but I just don't think you could possibly expect Elon to be held responsible for that".
- nailer 3y ago
  > X has some responsibility that what it presents on that website isn't actively harmful to democracy. Yes, that's why the team that pushed false narratives about the Biden laptop being "Russian disinformation" have been removed.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  There's no general responsibility to not "present" things "actively harmful to democracy". And there's nothing uniquely American about that. I'm a European living in Europe and there's no such obligation or responsibility here either. Please don't insinuate there is. That's especially important because a significant chunk of the left no longer use the dictionary definition of the word democracy, so there isn't any chance of agreement on what it means. They seem to be using it either to mean the unelected institutions (courts, media, academia, civil service agencies) or sometimes to mean left wing policies. So if a conservative politician wins an election then that's a "threat to democracy", example: The AfD has achieved top municipal office for the first time in Sonneberg, Thuringia [...snip...] Green Party leader Ricarda Lang has interpreted the result as a warning to all supporters of democracy. [...snip...] Robert Sesselmann’s win is an alarm signal for democracy, said Martin Schirdewan, co-chairman of the Left Party https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/afd-sonneberg-reaktionen-100.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/afd-sonneberg-...
  - SilverBirch 3y ago
    In the US there is specifically Section 230 - which legally absolves X of any liability from user generated content. That is unique to the US, in Europe, social media companies don't enjoy those same legal protections and field all sorts of requests for removal of content from government. As a European living in Europe, presumably you're aware of the passage of the Digital Services Act which puts legal requirements on large platforms to have systems in place to tackle disinformation.
    - unsupp0rted 3y ago
      Isn't Community Notes a system to tackle disinformation?
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      I'm aware of the DSA but fortunately am not required to follow it, being in one of the parts of Europe that's not a part of the EU. Section 230 doesn't have anything in it about being "actively harmful to democracy" so what's your point?
      - azernik 3y ago
        Mentioning Section 230 is to back up the "To be honest it's a pretty uniquely American view..." part of the GP comment.
        nvm0n2 3y ago
        It's really not that American. Americans didn't invent the concept of free speech, not by a long shot. The idea that it's somehow "un-European" to allow people to say things "harmful to democracy" is wrong legally and culturally, but the cultural affinity so many Europeans have for authoritarianism is exactly the reason Europe has no tech industry to speak of.
        azernik 3y ago
        Americans did not invent the concept of free speech, but they take it to an extreme that is extremely far out of the mainstream in Europe and always has been.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  > To be honest it's a pretty uniquely American view Interestingly, my comment was sitting at 3 points all day in European Time, and quickly got downvoted to -1 when America woke up this morning. So I agree there is some geographical/culture disparity in views on this topic.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

I’ve had a pet theory which I don’t take too seriously but which is comedically difficult to empirically dismiss. Musk recognises Twitter for the albatross it is. Unfortunately, he has too much reputation tied up in it. He needs a way for someone else, preferably a bogeyman, to kill it. The perfect bogeyman would be an unelected bureaucrat. Cut to Musk systematically disbanding Twitter’s electoral guardrails, including by laying off its European team, right after the European Commission told him not to [1][2]. [1] https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1662194595755704321?s=20 https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1662194595755704321... [2] https://www.disinfo.eu/advocacy/how-the-digital-services-act-(dsa)-can-tackle-disinformation/ https://www.disinfo.eu/advocacy/how-the-digital-services-act...

throwawayqqq11 3y ago
But isnt Musks inability to let his megalomaniac illusions loose the reason he ended up in this kuvafle?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Musks inability to let his megalomaniac illusions loose Twitter’s LBO followed a few weeks of poor impulse control followed by frantically trying to reverse course. If a court would have let him out of his deal to buy Twitter, he’d have taken it.
  - nailer 3y ago
    That's because the value of Twitter dropped remarkably after he agreed to buy it, and he had some concerns - warranted or not - about actual use compared to bots.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      Sure, but evidence he doesn’t have an “inability to let his megalomaniac illusions loose.” The market changed and he attempted to correct course.

savef 3y ago

[flagged]

drt5b7j 3y ago

Twitter scraps tool to report electoral fake news. FTFY

bdcravens 3y ago
The owner of the company changed the name. No one's opinion changes that.
mikeravkine 3y ago
It's now called Xitter (with the X pronounced 'sh')

bamboozeell 3y ago

You want to give any pseudoanonymous actor in the world access to the thoughts and desires of anyone else - you got it! Thanks Big Tech! Honestly, China has more like the right approach when it comes to allowing its citizens access to the internet.

leosanchez 3y ago
> China has more like the right approach when it comes to allowing its citizens access to the internet. Really?
- hfuyf65 3y ago
  It is kinda fascinating is it not? A person genuinely clamoring for the state to carefully control what they they can say/do/think.
  - bamboozeell 3y ago
    You mis-read. I think a government has a responsibility to limit who can influence what I (and those around me) decide to do/say/think, whether that's through maintaining a physical border, implementing domestic law and order, or limiting remote access. After all, I don't want to live in a country where significant numbers of my fellow citizens have been unduly influenced by external propaganda and misinformation.
    - wenebego 3y ago
      "limit who can influence" is a form of control. Why are you also qualifying "external" propaganda and misinformation? You're fine with both of those things as long as its "internal"? Can you define what source of misinformation you're okay with?
      - bamboozeell 3y ago
        >"limit who can influence" is a form of control. Sure is, and govenments also control what kinds of goods can be sold to me, what kind of transport I may drive, places and buildings I may enter, and so on. Are you advocating for no government? Or are you saying that all (most?) of the controls they currently exert are ok, but they must allow completely free transfer of data in and out? If so, why is the internet so special? >Why are you also qualifying "external" propaganda and misinformation? Assuming I live somewhere half-decent, I have greater trust in the government and culture that I know. >Can you define what source of misinformation you're okay with? None, really, although defining "misinformation" gets very tricky when you start breaking it down to local specifics. After all, we all knowingly and unknowingly spread some form of misinformation just going about our lives. In any case, why is it a good idea to allow the world's misinformation in, in addition to what we have to sort through from a bloke in the pub / my town's micro-politics / my government's constant battle with the opposition party?

nailer 3y ago

It sounds like this tool was produced by the previous "Trust and Safety" team which is known for attempting to manipulate public discourse and was sacked. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707147926789554422 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707147926789554422 Obviously this article is the BBC, a competing media platform.

jdiff 3y ago
It is not known unless you take every attention-seeking word of Musk literally and at face value. As they released the whole mess that was the "Twitter Files" they repeatedly lied by omission and disproved themselves with the fragments of actual files they released.
- nailer 3y ago
  The NYTimes has confirmed the laptop is real. So have most other media outlets. Do you think the letters from the FBI pressuring Twitter to remove the story are false? What evidence do you have to support this theory?
  - jdiff 3y ago
    Didn't say anything about any laptop. I said Twitter's own files contradict their statements and are dishonest attention-seeking.
    - nailer 3y ago
      You raised the matter of the Twitter Files. The biggest revelations in the Twitter files, which you discussed, were the FBI tampering with reporting of the Biden laptop story. I can’t discuss any other matter you may be concerned about because you have been incredibly vague in specifying what it is you are actually concerned about. You have mentioned lying through omission, Twitter being dishonest, and attention seeking but have given zero examples of any of these behaviours except saying they have something to do with the Twitter Files. The only concrete information you have conveyed is that you dislike Elon Musk very much.

victortan83 3y ago

What is electoral fake news may turn out to be true. Kinda foolish to ask platforms to decide what is true and what is not. Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? Was it fake news?

bdcravens 3y ago
I tend to agree with your first point, and feel that for user-driven content, allowing users to submit context to be displayed below the source is a good middle-ground. As for the second point, I think that most critical thinkers understand that the laptop changed hands several times, undermining the "news" of the matter.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  As far as I am aware, the laptop's original owner has not denied that the content that's been made public is genuine. If the info had been tampered with, I think Hunter Biden would have said so.
  - bdcravens 3y ago
    He actually recently filed a lawsuit claiming that Giuliani et al altered data. https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-laptop-lawsuit-94fbf97f52aea73b8421e3be017767f1 https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-laptop-lawsuit-94fbf... "The suit filed in California also claims Biden’s data was “manipulated, altered and damaged” before it was sent to Giuliani and Costello, and has been further altered since then."
HumblyTossed 3y ago
How was/is Hunter Biden "electoral news". He never ran for office.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  His father did, and was involved in his son's business deals.