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> One of the curious things about Twitter pre-aquisition was that underage content somewhat frequently stayed up for months while discriminatory remarks were ge

> One of the curious things about Twitter pre-aquisition was that underage content somewhat frequently stayed up for months while discriminatory remarks were generally taken down rapidly. Post acquisition such content seemed to disappear approximately overnight. This isn't evidence that they have a system for taking down content without a huge number of false positives. It's evidence that the previous administrators of Twitter were willing to suffer a huge number of false positives around accusations of racism and the current administrators are willing to suffer them around accusations of underaged content.

fc417fc802 1y ago
I agree that on its own it isn't evidence of the ability to respond without excessive false positives. But similarly, it isn't evidence of an inability to do so either. In the context of Australia objecting to lack of moderation I'm not sure it matters. It seems reasonable for a government to set minimum standards which companies that wish to operate within their territory must abide by. If as you claim (and I doubt) the current way of doing things is uneconomical under those requirements then perhaps it would be reasonable for those products to be excluded from the Australian market. Or perhaps they would instead choose to charge users for the service? Either outcome would make room for fairly priced local alternatives to gain traction. This seems like a case of free trade enabling an inferior American product to be subsidized by the vendor thereby undercutting any potential for a local industry. The underlying issue feels roughly analogous to GDPR except that this time the legislation is terrible and will almost certainly make society worse off in various ways if it passes.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > I agree that on its own it isn't evidence of the ability to respond without excessive false positives. But similarly, it isn't evidence of an inability to do so either. It is in combination with the high rate of false positives, unless you think the false positives were intentional. > If as you claim (and I doubt) the current way of doing things is uneconomical under those requirements then perhaps it would be reasonable for those products to be excluded from the Australian market. If they actually required both removal of all offending content and a low false positive rate (e.g. by allowing customers to sue them for damages for removals of lawful content) then the services would exit the market because nobody could do that. What they'll typically do instead is accept the high false positive rate rather than leave the market, and then the service remains but becomes plagued by innocent users being victimized by capricious and overly aggressive moderation tactics. But local alternatives couldn't do any better under the same constraints, so you're still stuck with a trash fire.

fc417fc802 1y ago

I agree that on its own it isn't evidence of the ability to respond without excessive false positives. But similarly, it isn't evidence of an inability to do so either. In the context of Australia objecting to lack of moderation I'm not sure it matters. It seems reasonable for a government to set minimum standards which companies that wish to operate within their territory must abide by. If as you claim (and I doubt) the current way of doing things is uneconomical under those requirements then perhaps it would be reasonable for those products to be excluded from the Australian market. Or perhaps they would instead choose to charge users for the service? Either outcome would make room for fairly priced local alternatives to gain traction. This seems like a case of free trade enabling an inferior American product to be subsidized by the vendor thereby undercutting any potential for a local industry. The underlying issue feels roughly analogous to GDPR except that this time the legislation is terrible and will almost certainly make society worse off in various ways if it passes.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> I agree that on its own it isn't evidence of the ability to respond without excessive false positives. But similarly, it isn't evidence of an inability to do so either. It is in combination with the high rate of false positives, unless you think the false positives were intentional. > If as you claim (and I doubt) the current way of doing things is uneconomical under those requirements then perhaps it would be reasonable for those products to be excluded from the Australian market. If they actually required both removal of all offending content and a low false positive rate (e.g. by allowing customers to sue them for damages for removals of lawful content) then the services would exit the market because nobody could do that. What they'll typically do instead is accept the high false positive rate rather than leave the market, and then the service remains but becomes plagued by innocent users being victimized by capricious and overly aggressive moderation tactics. But local alternatives couldn't do any better under the same constraints, so you're still stuck with a trash fire.