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Given we have an election in less than a month hardly surprised that their moderation systems are erring on the side of caution. Especially with so many well-f

Given we have an election in less than a month hardly surprised that their moderation systems are erring on the side of caution. Especially with so many well-funded, state sponsored actors using LLMs to sow division as we've seen so often on Twitter recently.

gedy 2y ago
I just wanted to throw out there that having an informed electorate was one of the reasons there is the Electoral College. We can blame LLMs, etc. now but low-information, easily-swayed voters has always been an issue.
- stkdump 2y ago
  Can you elaborate on this? It is my understanding that electors are not allowed to change the vote based on anything like being more informed or something similar. Is this wrong? Or did the mechanics of the election change so much over time?
  - prewett 2y ago
    Originally the idea was you would vote for people who would do the actual voting. A nice idea, but obviously not workable for many reasons, especially since communication rapidly improved so that candidates could be known widely enough that the actual voters could be somewhat informed. (However, I believe the electors still can change their vote from what they promised, but forget ever doing anything in politics again.)
  - concinds 2y ago
    Electors weren’t bound to a candidate. The founding fathers wanted democracy but were worried about “well-meaning but uninformed people” who may be vulnerable to charismatic populists, candidates with blatantly unfit characters, and influence by foreign propaganda. Electors were meant to be well-informed, exercise their judgment and prevent unfit candidates from being elected. That didn’t work in practice, and eventually states passed laws to pick partisan electors via popular vote. Then that gate keeping power shifted to party insiders, who chose the nominee and were meant to gatekeep bad/insane candidates. Then populists took that away too, because “people power” can never go wrong, right? The current system, where you can vote in primaries, and where electors reflect their states’ vote, is just a few decades old. Penalties for “faithless electors” are somewhat recent and only exist in states which passed laws to give themselves that power.
    - FactKnower69 2y ago
      >Then populists took that away too, because “people power” can never go wrong, right? the blatant, sneering disdain for lowly commoners that supposed proponents of "democracy" are continually unable to contain for even a few paragraphs at a time will somehow never fail to shock me
      - concinds 2y ago
        I’m not a proponent for anything except competent leadership. Your need to project another group’s ideas onto me, to reinforce your preexisting feeling against them, does slightly prove my point.
wakawaka28 2y ago
The state-sponsored actors (with the US being one of those states) are censoring people and also using LLM bots as well to gaslight them. Democracy cannot work without freedom of speech, and I would argue anonymous freedom of speech. Block bots, not people.
- squigz 2y ago
  > anonymous freedom of speech. Block bots, not people. As we're hearing more and more from the large tech companies, this is a hard line to walk. How do you identify what's a bot as they become more indistinguishable from humans? Apparently identity verification and/or remote attestation, both of erode the idea of anonymous freedom of speech. Whether one believes them is another question.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    It is a fine line to walk. However, I think one easy not filtering solution might be to sell a cryptographic solution on the open market for a price high enough that it would be infeasible to fake that. Think of it like X's premium feature but with no credit card involved. Imagine going to Target or Best Buy, smacking down a hundred dollar bill, and getting your "trusted human level $100" token. You could then use the thing to register an anonymous account anywhere you like, and the price(s) of your token(s) could even be public (in case someone did decide to pay a high price for tons of fake bot accounts, you could potentially detect it). You would have to still prevent the thing from being linked to your real identity, but that should be doable. It would also be possible for these accounts to vouch for each other. So, you know, you get some web-of-trust type of fuzzy feeling about various accounts. Now that I think of it, maybe this can be done with TLS certs, although I don't know any CA that can take anonymous payment.
    - squigz 2y ago
      I don't have $100 to spare, so I guess I won't be able to be anonymous?
      - 2y ago
healsdata 2y ago
They're not erring on the side of anything. They removed a post containing two "Grinning Squinting Face" emojis but left one up telling all gay people to "get in the ground".
- threeseed 2y ago
  When you talk about they. You are talking about an inherently imperfect ML model. Even if it was 99.99% accurate there would still be thousands of false positives positives/negatives like you describe.

gedy 2y ago

I just wanted to throw out there that having an informed electorate was one of the reasons there is the Electoral College. We can blame LLMs, etc. now but low-information, easily-swayed voters has always been an issue.

stkdump 2y ago
Can you elaborate on this? It is my understanding that electors are not allowed to change the vote based on anything like being more informed or something similar. Is this wrong? Or did the mechanics of the election change so much over time?
- prewett 2y ago
  Originally the idea was you would vote for people who would do the actual voting. A nice idea, but obviously not workable for many reasons, especially since communication rapidly improved so that candidates could be known widely enough that the actual voters could be somewhat informed. (However, I believe the electors still can change their vote from what they promised, but forget ever doing anything in politics again.)
- concinds 2y ago
  Electors weren’t bound to a candidate. The founding fathers wanted democracy but were worried about “well-meaning but uninformed people” who may be vulnerable to charismatic populists, candidates with blatantly unfit characters, and influence by foreign propaganda. Electors were meant to be well-informed, exercise their judgment and prevent unfit candidates from being elected. That didn’t work in practice, and eventually states passed laws to pick partisan electors via popular vote. Then that gate keeping power shifted to party insiders, who chose the nominee and were meant to gatekeep bad/insane candidates. Then populists took that away too, because “people power” can never go wrong, right? The current system, where you can vote in primaries, and where electors reflect their states’ vote, is just a few decades old. Penalties for “faithless electors” are somewhat recent and only exist in states which passed laws to give themselves that power.
  - FactKnower69 2y ago
    >Then populists took that away too, because “people power” can never go wrong, right? the blatant, sneering disdain for lowly commoners that supposed proponents of "democracy" are continually unable to contain for even a few paragraphs at a time will somehow never fail to shock me
    - concinds 2y ago
      I’m not a proponent for anything except competent leadership. Your need to project another group’s ideas onto me, to reinforce your preexisting feeling against them, does slightly prove my point.

wakawaka28 2y ago

The state-sponsored actors (with the US being one of those states) are censoring people and also using LLM bots as well to gaslight them. Democracy cannot work without freedom of speech, and I would argue anonymous freedom of speech. Block bots, not people.

squigz 2y ago
> anonymous freedom of speech. Block bots, not people. As we're hearing more and more from the large tech companies, this is a hard line to walk. How do you identify what's a bot as they become more indistinguishable from humans? Apparently identity verification and/or remote attestation, both of erode the idea of anonymous freedom of speech. Whether one believes them is another question.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  It is a fine line to walk. However, I think one easy not filtering solution might be to sell a cryptographic solution on the open market for a price high enough that it would be infeasible to fake that. Think of it like X's premium feature but with no credit card involved. Imagine going to Target or Best Buy, smacking down a hundred dollar bill, and getting your "trusted human level $100" token. You could then use the thing to register an anonymous account anywhere you like, and the price(s) of your token(s) could even be public (in case someone did decide to pay a high price for tons of fake bot accounts, you could potentially detect it). You would have to still prevent the thing from being linked to your real identity, but that should be doable. It would also be possible for these accounts to vouch for each other. So, you know, you get some web-of-trust type of fuzzy feeling about various accounts. Now that I think of it, maybe this can be done with TLS certs, although I don't know any CA that can take anonymous payment.
  - squigz 2y ago
    I don't have $100 to spare, so I guess I won't be able to be anonymous?
    - 2y ago

healsdata 2y ago

They're not erring on the side of anything. They removed a post containing two "Grinning Squinting Face" emojis but left one up telling all gay people to "get in the ground".

threeseed 2y ago
When you talk about they. You are talking about an inherently imperfect ML model. Even if it was 99.99% accurate there would still be thousands of false positives positives/negatives like you describe.