[whitewing]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

If this could be done in less than a month by the vastly reduced count of engineers/data-modellers/moderators in Twitter, what exactly were they doing in the pre-Musk era?

From an another recent study (on hate speech) the moderation quality seems to be deteriorating. So, while this may be the way forward, it does not appear to be on par with the earlier mechanism on some other counts (see quote below from the article).

Originally Posted by binand

(At some point the trustworthiness of these figures need to be established. How?)

+1 to that.
There are so many different ways of measuring this (impressions, number of tweets, number of retweets etc.).
Since Twitter has said they would publish moderation data on a weekly basis, would be nice if they published the data on all these variations (in the interest of transparency). Rather than a random downward graph with a "trust me on this" downward trend.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/02/t...ech/index.html

The Center for Countering Digital Hate and Anti-Defamation League both said in reports that the volume of hate speech on Twitter has grown dramatically under Musk’s stewardship.
Specifically, the Center for Countering Digital Hate said the daily use of the n-word under Musk is triple the 2022 average and the use of slurs against gay men and trans persons are up 58% and 62%, respectively.
And the Anti-Defamation League said in a separate report that its data shows “both an increase in antisemitic content on the platform and a decrease in the moderation of antisemitic posts.”

This has been denied by Musk

Musk responded to a New York Times article about the research by tweeting “utterly false,” without specifying what aspect of the reporting he disputed. He then reiterated his claim that “hate speech impressions,” or the number of times a tweet containing hate speech has been viewed, “continue to decline” since his early days of owning the company when the platform saw a spike in hate speech designed to test Musk’s tolerance.

[mayukh42]

I think initially Twitter was designed to moderate through automation only. Such a vast platform cannot be managed with manual effort. But based on reports even much before the takeover, the algo had backdoors to override through manual intervention, which gradually became the norm rather than exception. And therein lies the answer to why so many people were required.

A typical manual moderation might go like this:
1. Use tools to filter out keywords and sentiments from people with > n followers.
2. Further filter out users based on past sentiments/ classification. There are machine learning algos to classify every tweet/ user.
3. Block/ suspend accounts based on this trimmed list, individually. This last step cannot be automated, because it will have lot of false positives and put the company in trouble. 100 accounts? Hire 2 people. 10K? Hire 200.

Crowdsourcing is actually most viable option. Let data clean itself. Over the years another set of unbiased data can be created, which can address most of the inefficiency of crowdsourcing. Where there are outliers, they will still need people for some manual intervention, but much less in number.

[Turbanator]

How is Wiki so clean and correct?

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by Turbanator

How is Wiki so clean and correct?

Are you sure ??

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has warned that the website can no longer be trusted — insisting it is now just “propaganda” for the left-leaning “establishment.”

Now, he insisted, conservative voices are “sternly warned if not kicked out” if they try to add a different take on establishment views — which Sanger deemed “propaganda.”

“You can’t cite Fox News on socio-political issues. It’s just banned now,” he insisted of the apparent clampdown on respected conservative voices.

Source

As Binand said, every organization, private or public, will eventually start to reflect the worldview of its owners/editors/content-moderators.

[amitoj]

Originally Posted by binand

Because this might lead to further confusion - the 14th amendment makes it applicable to state governments as well. And there are several supreme court judgments - 200+ years worth - that make it applicable to the executive & judiciary (at federal and state levels) and local governments.

But yes - Twitter has the absolute right to think that way and decide that way. They also have the right to reverse that decision.



That is not the right conclusion. Twitter decided nothing about NYP's 1A rights because that is not Twitter's decision to make. Twitter just decided their platform is not the place for the laptop story, a decision that is 100% theirs to take and is well within their (Twitter's) rights.

Thanks for putting it together so clearly. Yes, the original 1A got extended to all branches of the government later on.

Social media had faced a lot of criticism and scrutiny after the 2016 elections. Twitter was probably being being cautious. Below article makes a good argument that Twitter was in fact exercising its own right to 1A:

"the First Amendment protects Twitter, the Biden campaign team, and the Democratic National Committee. The “TWITTER FILES” released so far do not describe a violation of the First Amendment. Instead, they detail the exercise of First Amendment rights by independent, private actors."

Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson Don't Understand the First Amendment

It's quite easy to fall prey to hyperbole if you don't look at things through an unbiased eye.

Meanwhile, hate speech continues to rise on Twitter since Musk's takeover.

Racial slur usage triples on Twitter in first week of Musk takeover: study

[dragracer567]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Are you sure ??

Source

As Binand said, every organization, private or public, will eventually start to reflect the worldview of its owners/editors/content-moderators.

Hate to get political but when people in the west say 'left-leaning propaganda', it mostly just means asking equality for treatment for everyone.

And when they say 'conservative voices' are being muzzled, it mostly means their right to be racist, sexist, anti-LGBT etc i.e their right to poke their nose in other's business with no data to back their claims.

'Conservative voices' talk about being muzzled but will happily ban textbooks that teach kids about their uncomfortable past because it is 'inappropriate' in states like Florida.

When one side talks about freedom of speech, its the freedom to speak the truth. When the other side talks about freedom of speech, its the freedom to be racist, sexist and interfere in other's business because of what they think. Its not the same!

[binand]

Originally Posted by Turbanator

How is Wiki so clean and correct?

Wikipedia itself doesn't claim it is clean and correct. :-)

Just to take a recent example - the article on The Wire has no mention about the TekFog and XCheck controversies. These stories have been purged (and good luck trying to add them back in).

Wikimedia Commons has a reputation of being a porn repo. So much so that Jimmy Wales himself once purged the site off several problematic (illegal?) images.

Some other interesting stuff:

1. A Chinese woman wrote alternative accounts of medieval Russian history on Chinese Wikipedia.

2. Wrong man's photo and name used in article on a scandal.

3. Similarly, wrong man's photo used in article about a serial killer.

4. Wikipedia banned admins who pushed radical agenda.

5. I don't even know how to describe this.

And so on...

[amitoj]

Originally Posted by dragracer567

When one side talks about freedom of speech, its the freedom to speak the truth. When the other side talks about freedom of speech, its the freedom to be racist, sexist and interfere in other's business because of what they think. Its not the same!

Nailed it.
It is ironic that many of the popular commentators like Joe Rogan and Bill Maher have managed to fool so many people into thinking that "progressive" is a bad word

[RaghuVis]

Can we get back to the Twitter discussion, please?

Stop explaining to others what is democracy and what is free speech. We really don't need gyan!

Coming back to Twitter, It is just amazing that he recently had a Twitter space with close to 1 million listeners! This is the same twitter which was supposedly going to shut down because of mass layoffs and resignations.

I think the bird is right now more active than ever. I hope he angers both the liberals and conservatives and they leave the site for good. The rest 80% of the center are people who don't want to control other people's lives, interact with each other, have a good time, be not abusive and live a happy life. That in my opinion is worth saving the bird.

PS: Twitter has been one of the worst-managed sites from the beginning when it comes to restricting child pornography and pedophiles. If he does that, that is more than enough to support him.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by RaghuVis

I hope he angers both the liberals and conservatives and they leave the site for good. The rest 80% of the center are people who don't want to control other people's lives, interact with each other, have a good time, be not abusive and live a happy life. That in my opinion is worth saving the bird.

A correction. The liberals and the conservatives are the 80% in the center, I would even argue it is 90%. It is the 5% on the extreme left, and the 5% of the extreme right who are duking it out in public while silencing and outshouting the rest from their own side. I am not saying they are same (or fine people ), because one extreme owns most of the guns, and other extreme owns most the university campuses and corporate HR space.

Twitter management was being run by extreme left, that was clear from their moderation policies. This year Twitter was bought by someone who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016, and voted for Joe Biden in the 2020. Clearly, he is not extreme right. He is somewhere in the middle. But the extreme left is acting as if their birthright was stolen. Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said "To Those Accustomed to Privilege Equality feels like Oppression".

[vamsi.kona]

As @samurai said above the extreme left, just like extreme right, are creating a world where proper debate cannot take place. The extreme right shout you down while extreme left say you are dumb and your opinion itself is unworthy and as such no need to even consider that. And the problem is both these extremes are very powerful in their own ways. It has become a fashion to label anyone we disagree with. I am yet to meet a person who is conservative or liberal in all aspects of life. Some are conservative culturally but liberal in other aspects and so on. The extremists either force you to choose a side or simply label you if they don't like what you say. Given I don't use social media much, I will wait and see before writing off the Twitter story

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by Samurai

This year Twitter was bought by someone who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016, and voted for Joe Biden in the 2020. Clearly, he is not extreme right. He is somewhere in the middle.

This cartoon from WSJ (if I remember correctly) retweeted by Elon Musk sometime back sums this up perfectly.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

This cartoon from WSJ (if I remember correctly) retweeted by Elon Musk sometime back sums this up perfectly.

This meme was already discussed in the same thread back in May.

[dragracer567]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

This cartoon from WSJ (if I remember correctly) retweeted by Elon Musk sometime back sums this up perfectly.

Attachment 2387959

Elon Musk's political affiliations depend on which side would make him more money or treat him like a Demi-God, as simple as that.

About the meme, 'conservatives' in the US have gone from fiscal conservatism and traditional family values to questioning a free and fair election & white-washing an insurrection that mirrored a coup. How are the conservatives from 2008 the same as the conservatives now? They almost certainly are the ones who've moved farther from the center.

American progressives would probably be seen as center-right anywhere else in the West!

[dragonfire]

American progressives are just a bunch of millennials who thinks that they are entitled to everything they aspire for. Socialism was a hated word in America a decade ago, but Bernie and his gang has managed to sell the utopian dream wrapped in an oxymoron - democratic socialism. As if theft is fine if it is sanctioned by democracy. The moderates are now silenced by the radicals and cancelled if they utter any word that does not conform to the politics of the progressive left.