[HN Gopher] Birdwatch, Twitter's collaborative fact checking system
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Birdwatch, Twitter's collaborative fact checking system
Author : mcint
Score : 332 points
Date : 2022-11-05 07:28 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.github.io)
| mikotodomo wrote:
| This is great. So sick of watching influencers tweet blatantly
| wrong information.
| petilon wrote:
| Related story: Musk got a note attached to his tweet removed.
| Edit: but now it is back.
|
| "After new Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted a complaint about
| losing advertisers on the platform Friday, a note offering
| additional context was added to his tweet, before it later
| disappeared."
|
| https://www.semafor.com/article/11/04/2022/birdwatch-note-di...
| cdash wrote:
| I think it is gone again, but after reading the article you
| linked it makes sense why it is coming and going.
|
| "Users are able to vote on whether the fact-checks are helpful
| or not. They can appear or disappear based on how many people
| found them to be helpful, Twitter's Vice President of Product
| Keith Coleman said Friday."
| twodave wrote:
| It is my belief that any fact checking system based on consensus
| and not actual factual evidence will eventually result in an echo
| chamber. What's the value of homogenizing a community down to
| just the voices that agree with you?
| naasking wrote:
| Depends how you define "consensus". If two people who disagree
| on most things agree on X, then arguably we can have more
| confidence that X is true. There is no left-right divide on
| whether the sky is blue, for instance.
| twodave wrote:
| We both know that this will be applied against will be
| applied universally to more nuanced scenarios than that. It
| shouldn't be.
|
| More often the "fact-check" is synonymous with "what we know
| based on publicly-available information" than what is
| objectively true (or, as more often is the issue, what is
| untrue). This basically rules out anyone from being able to
| credibly whistleblow/call attention to something known only
| by a few that would be incendiary if it became widely known.
| Knowing and proving are often in different arenas, and I
| don't think constraining conversation to only facts that can
| be checked is helpful for genuine discourse.
| naasking wrote:
| I don't think this constrains the conversations that can
| happen on Twitter, so much as adding "context" to any
| conversation. The context that something is not provable
| using publicly available information although some people
| claim to know it's factual status is also valuable, and I
| agree this nuance would ideally be available in that
| "context".
| xiphias2 wrote:
| While I agree with most of the comments that it can be easily
| abused, if the bots can be kicked out, this (trying to get rid of
| echo chambers and highlighting posts from people with different
| viewpoints recognized by the algorithm) would be a better way for
| all social media to work than what we have now.
|
| In the current situation (showing most liked posts) the only
| common ground is good looking people (TikTok/Instagram/Youtube
| shorts) and most outraging posts with lies to get more likes
| (Twitter/Youtube)
| threeseed wrote:
| > if the bots can be kicked out
|
| The problem is that people disagree about the term bot.
|
| It should mean an account whose content is controlled
| exclusively by an algorithm.
|
| But instead it has come to mean anything they consider low-
| quality which often includes a lot of real people who are
| either paid to do so by state actors, have been radicalised or
| are just looking to troll. And it's very hard if not impossible
| to detect and ban those people.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Not to mention most studies on Twitter bots define one as
| "fifty interactions per day". If you define "heavy Twitter
| users" and "bots" to be the same thing, _of course Twitter is
| going to be full of 'bots'_.
| Karunamon wrote:
| I have a prior, validated by experience, that anyone
| spending that much time of their day on Twitter likely has
| nothing of value to contribute.
|
| It would imply they work in PR, marketing, propaganda, or
| failing all of those, have little life outside the
| internet. Either way their content is likely to be of
| extremely low quality.
| devmor wrote:
| There is also the side case that they just have friends
| that use the platform. Or they like to retweet pictures
| of cats.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Sorry, but no. I tried following people with different
| political perspectives than mine, and it was a total shit show.
| These people don't have incentives to post well-thought-out
| arguments. They have incentives to bander to the base, telling
| them how smart they are and how bad the people who disagree
| with them are.
|
| And I purposefully chose a person who had other qualities
| outside of the political opinions that I very much admired. If
| the Twitter algorithm were to just show me things outside of my
| buble, it would be even worse.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > get rid of echo chambers and highlighting posts from people
| with different viewpoints
|
| Sounds good in an internet comment, but in practice that means
| I end up reading racist propaganda, which is not something that
| improves my life. So then you eliminate the crap, and boom, you
| have an echo chamber.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| No. It's the echo chamber that leads you to believe all
| content that disagrees with the echo chamber is crap.
| notduncansmith wrote:
| People are capable of deciding content is crap on their
| own, without an echo chamber leading them to that belief.
| I've looked at the facts, analyzed a lot of situations, and
| have come to the independent conclusion that bigotry is
| pretty unhelpful so I don't want to see it (online or
| anywhere). I don't have a responsibility to engage with it
| online, so I frequent online spaces that have a minimum of
| it.
| ceres wrote:
| > this (trying to get rid of echo chambers and highlighting
| posts from people with different viewpoints recognized by the
| algorithm) would be a better
|
| But people _want_ echo chambers. No one wants to be in a group
| where people share opinions that they dislike. It's just human
| nature. Why do you think private Facebook groups are so
| popular?
| naasking wrote:
| > No one wants to be in a group where people share opinions
| that they dislike.
|
| The relevance of this is way overstated. Most people haven't
| formed opinions on most topics and just want to hear
| different viewpoints so they can form an opinion.
|
| > It's just human nature. Why do you think private Facebook
| groups are so popular?
|
| Because people have specific interests they want to pursue
| and engage with other enthusiasts, without being inundated
| with other crap. Might as well ask why subreddits are
| popular.
| toofy wrote:
| > Because people have specific interests they want to
| pursue and engage with other enthusiasts, without being
| inundated with other crap.
|
| i suspect this is exactly what the comment you're replying
| to means.
|
| i too have a problem with how many times i read people
| crying out "echo chamber" repeatedly as if this is always a
| bad thing.
|
| i mean, when i have a party, i don't invite assholes.
|
| when we go to bars, we don't invite spazzy people.
|
| i don't invite people who think its oppressive if they're
| asked to have common courtesy.
|
| i dont invite abusive people who have the social skills of
| a tantrum throwing 3 year old.
|
| they just ruin the time for everyone. by many of these
| people's definitions, this is an echo-chamber.
|
| we exist in the real world. i can have parties with friends
| and discussions with friends, this doesn't mean im somehow
| _never_ exposed to different ideas--no one ever shuts up
| about their ideas. not wanting to be around people we find
| weird is absolutely normal.
|
| at the end of the day, if a website or party or bar is full
| of shitty behaving people, ill just go to a different space
| where people behave with basic social skills. thats not
| weird. thats not an echo chamber.
|
| every bar or club in the world has different expectations
| of behaviors, its not evil of them, its not nefarious, its
| not scandalous of them. its just the culture the owners are
| curating. that isn't some scary echo-chamber. its a
| completely normal thing that happens _all_over_the_place_
| in the real world.
|
| but oddly theres a weird segment of people who are trying
| to convince me if someone is just constantly rude or
| spazzy, and im like "yo, this dudes kinda weird" that
| everyone should always have to be around them. thats just
| strange and not the norm in the physical real world. its
| really odd from the foundations.
|
| edit to add: a perfect example of curation is this site
| that we all spend a decent amount of time on. dang curates
| the discussion. its not an echo chamber by any rational
| definition of the term. the site owners and mods have
| curated the patrons, the environment, the overall tone of
| the site--and from an end-users perspective, it works very
| well. its fun. its an enjoyable experience.
| deadpannini wrote:
| That isn't what anyone means by "echo chamber". You're
| talking about manners, not different viewpoints.
| deadpannini wrote:
| I'm in favor of letting people pursue their preferences, but
| echo chambers are antithetical to civil society - much more
| dangerous than so-called misinformation (indeed, they are
| environments in which errors and lies are more likely to
| flourish), so counteracting then is a valuable goal, in my
| book.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I think you are diametrically mistaken and echo chambers
| are actually good for civil society because they allow the
| illusion that people outside your ingroup are basically
| good. I think what happened is our echo chambers got
| punctured and so we _suddenly got the realization_ that
| other people lived in echo chambers, which is why it seems
| like those suddenly popped up. But well-insulated echo
| chambers (ie. _not_ what controversy-driven twitter gives
| you) are good for mental health and society as a whole.
| deadpannini wrote:
| This has some internal logic, but every experience I've
| had contradicts your proposition.
|
| For example, I'm in my late forties. When I was growing
| up, it was rare to encounter (out) gay people outside of
| major cities, and people would believe practically any
| negative statement about them, not so much anymore.
| Conversely, in my college town today, most of my
| accquaintences have never met a Republican, and they
| predictably believe in a stupid cartoon caricature of red
| staters. I'm definitely not buying it.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Maybe if you have safe spaces (echo chambers) and
| overlapping meeting places, but also a strong standard of
| not policitizing the meeting places, you can get the best
| of both worlds?
| Joeboy wrote:
| For me, the "trending topics" show me plenty of people
| screaming at each other from diverse (and often vile and
| insane) viewpoints. Maybe I've brought that on myself though.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The other day I saw "Trending in Sports: The Jews" on the
| Twitter trending topics page. I do not want to see that.
| Maybe we need the "echo chambers are better than gas
| chambers" slogan.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The reason echo chambers are dangerous is precisely because
| of the lack of dissent. Imagine politics is little more
| than a math problem. The actual answer is 0, but one group
| insists the answer can't be any smaller than 43, and
| another group insists there's no way it can be large than
| -51.
|
| Split these two groups off on their own, and they're just
| going to diverge more and more. Those in the bigger group
| will flaunt their in-group virtue by insisting on ever
| large numbers, and vice versa for those in the other group.
| They will diverge further and further from reality, but
| bring them together and the two sides help keep other in
| check.
|
| Getting back to real history, the Nazis were never notably
| popular. Their best result in anything like a fair election
| was in 1932 where they took 37% of the vote [1]. They
| managed to get an enabling act passed by political
| maneuvering, not genuine popularity. At that point they
| created an artificial echo chamber, and the rest is
| history.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1932_German_federa
| l_elect...
| pjc50 wrote:
| So does that mean it's "dangerous" for Jews _not_ to have
| someone following them around debating their right to
| exist? After all, their continued existence might be a
| mistake, and their erroneous insistence on survival
| merely in-group virtue.
| deadpannini wrote:
| No, but it is _very_ dangerous to Jews for those people
| to be isolated, never have their ideas challenged, and
| miss out on the moderating influence of other viewpoints
| acdha wrote:
| It's also dangerous if those ideas are widely circulated
| to people who wouldn't otherwise have had them
| reinforced.
|
| What this comes down to is the level of good faith at
| play: hearing dissenting ideas is good if you're in a
| place to take them seriously and the dissenter is being
| genuine and willing to discuss them in good faith. If
| those aren't true, it's not a win: nobody benefits from
| giving a liar or propagandist a podium and someone who
| can't agree on some kind of objective baseline won't be
| able or willing to adjust their beliefs.
| deadpannini wrote:
| > people who wouldn't otherwise have had them reinforced.
|
| You mean people without access to niche communities /
| echo chambers?
|
| I grant there are people ready to embrace destructive
| ideas, but the fraction of them that don't already have
| access to those ideas is small enough to be irrelevant,
| especially in the age of the internet.
|
| Better to have them out in the open, for the reasons I
| mentioned, and moreover, because it's better to have an
| accurate view of what they think.
| acdha wrote:
| It's more the people who might get pushed to the next
| level as they get positive reinforcement and, especially,
| as more moderate people leave because they're tired of
| dealing with the zealots.
|
| Extremists don't care about disagreement - they're there
| to talk, not listen - and if they see a few fellow
| travelers they'll start to tell themselves their position
| is mainstream.
| watwut wrote:
| 37% is quite a lot of support tho. It is not majority,
| but it is a lot in multi party parlament system. Second
| most popular part got 21%.
|
| Yes, those elections were violent and also final step to
| power was under threat of violence. At this point, nazi
| were already clearly violent. Their first steps after
| getting power were creation of concentration camps for
| opposition.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Violent elections... well this is deeply disturbing for
| the US.
| MandieD wrote:
| Having spent most of my adult life in or near Nuremberg,
| I am _dreading_ this upcoming election back home, in
| large part because the various possibly-armed, self-
| appointed ballot drop box /poll watchers who have been
| marinating in conspiracy theories for the last several
| years is just a little too reminiscent of one of the
| displays at the Dokumentationszentrum in the 1918-1933
| section.
| ufmace wrote:
| > Getting back to real history, the Nazis were never
| notably popular. Their best result in anything like a
| fair election was in 1932 where they took 37% of the vote
| [1]
|
| This seems misleading. The governmental system at the
| time was a parliamentary system, not a first-past-the-
| post like most American elections. In a parliamentary
| system, there are ~dozens of parties and it's vanishingly
| rare for any party to ever get a simple majority. Your
| own link lists 16 parties who had enough votes to get at
| least one seat in the Reichstag. Selecting the leaders to
| form an overall government normally involves political
| maneuvering to bring multiple smaller parties into an
| alliance to form an actual voting majority. Naturally if
| there's so much division that it's impossible to form a
| majority in favor of any particular government, weird
| stuff is gonna go down.
| somenameforme wrote:
| If they formed a normal coalition government, I would
| wholeheartedly agree with you. But they did not, and
| could not. They couldn't get 13% of the other 63% of
| people to side with them, even in exchange for shared
| political control!
|
| And that 37% was brief and their biggest moment in light
| of absolute civil chaos including things like a 30%
| unemployment rate. 4 months later, elections were held
| again - elections that the Nazis were exceptionally
| optimistic about. They ended up going down to 33%. Then
| shenanigans started. There would be no more fair
| elections in Germany for nearly 2 decades.
| philwelch wrote:
| Echo chambers lead to gas chambers.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I'm of two minds with opposing viewpoint presentation, one of
| them being I respect giving a reader the opportunity to
| consider multiple viewpoints for themselves. The other I worry
| about giving false equivalency to flat earthers or something
| like that. I don't know if I want holocaust denial presented as
| an equal opposing viewpoint to holocaust remembrance, for
| example.
| naasking wrote:
| They don't have to be given equal treatmet, the idea is only
| that we should not normalize suppressing things that are
| "distasteful", because that is easily abused by people with
| power to oppress those without. Speaking truth to power is
| not possible if arbitrary and capricious rules prevent you
| from speaking.
| awb wrote:
| Totally agree, but how would you go about categorizing ideas
| into those that are worthy of equivalency and those that
| aren't? Seems easy enough for fringe conspiracy theories but
| harder as you get into the realm of well sourced but bad
| ideas.
| toofy wrote:
| > but how would you go about categorizing ideas into those
| that are worthy of equivalency and those that aren't?
|
| obviously this is one of the most complicated questions
| that would require actual libraries full of books and
| experienced actual experts to properly come to any solid
| conclusions, but my suspicions are that some of the pieces
| that would be important would circle around:
|
| - we start by recognizing that most of us are dumb in most
| areas. if we're lucky, we have expertise in one or two
| areas. if we're really lucky, peers in our field will
| publicly recognize our expertise. outside of our areas of
| expertise, compared to the experts in those fields, we're
| dumb. and thats ok. comparatively im an idiot in fluid
| dynamics, soil sciences, and millions and millions of other
| areas. i might have some hobby level interests, but
| compared to recognized experts in those fields, im an
| idiot. collectively we seem to have forgotten our
| limitations. i mean, the old phrase is there for a reason:
| the smartest person is the one who recognizes what they
| don't know.
|
| - i dont know shit about anesthesiology, if an algorithm
| weights my comment discussing anesthesiology with the same
| weight as an actual widely peer-respected anesthesiologist,
| something is _severely_ broken. this type of thing is
| happening across the board.
|
| - often, more speech is not necessarily better. if the
| _more speech_ is all nonsense babble, the conversation is
| just DDOSed and the situation is absolutely worse. as
| yishan said in that incredible HN post the other day [1],
| its about managing signal-noise. if its just simply "more"
| speech, we end up with noise.
|
| - if we've already collectively decided that 2+2=4, yet
| someone keeps screaming they're not convinced, maybe its ok
| to ignore them. i can't tell you how many times ive seen
| people's arguments get thoroughly dismantled, then we'll
| see them screaming the exact same arguments an hour later
| pretending the dismantling didn't happen.
|
| - this is gonna be a hard pill to swallow for many but,
| when we're building something with social as the primary,
| we _need_ to have _more_ people deeply involved in the
| building process who have expertise in humans. people who
| understand the human condition. some of us don't understand
| people very well and its absurd how many of us (myself
| included) turn our noses up when our projects involve human
| complexities. could you imagine a party planner building a
| bridge without heavily including engineers?
|
| this is a hard problem, but the very first place id start
| is, no, not all of our opinions have equal weight in all
| topics. i know how difficult that is for some people to
| take. but its just true.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1586955288061452289
| samwillis wrote:
| For important context, _this isn 't new_ (it started a couple of
| years ago I believe), and has not been introduced by the new
| owner. It is _not_ related to outsourcing work to unpaid
| volunteers that was previously done by paid employees who have
| been made redundant during the layoffs over the last few days.
| aaron695 wrote:
| > done by paid employees who have been made redundant
|
| Could you cite this. I'm not saying you are a liar pushing
| misinformation, but it's fair and important that you link the
| proof I think.
|
| For instance we know Keith Coleman wasn't sacked and Musk said
| the project is awesome
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587798343622737925 so your
| fact is surprising.
|
| We should be able to read for ourselves. Especially if we tell
| other people this information it allows us to link back. A
| chain of facts.
|
| If you know it personally, that also gives us context.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Poster you're replying to said it's _not_ replacing work done
| by paid, now laid off, employees.
| iinnPP wrote:
| It is worded in a way that 'can' imply that there has been
| a switch from paid worker to unpaid volunteer.
|
| 'it is not related to X' suggests that X exists in order to
| be the subject of such a relation.
| samwillis wrote:
| I didn't intend for my comment to be interpreted that
| way, I don't think most people are. But you are right, I
| could have phrased it better.
|
| There has been a lot of rumour and speculation about the
| moderation teams being sacked. I don't know what's true,
| but it does sound like they may have had fewer
| redundancies than in other departments. But what we do
| know is this "birdwatch" initiative isn't related to it
| if it has happened.
|
| The post has been made with an editorialised title
| implying that this is new. Nowhere on the linked page
| does it say it is new. In the context of this week, and
| the rumours, it would imply that they are connected. They
| are not.
|
| The post smells a little like someone generating
| clickbait for karma.
| keewee7 wrote:
| Birdwatch is not new but this is new:
|
| >Birdwatch doesn't work by majority rules. To identify notes
| that are helpful to a wide range of people, Birdwatch ratings
| requires agreement between contributors who have sometimes
| disagreed in their past ratings. This helps prevent one-sided
| ratings.
|
| This is something Elon Musk tweeted out recently. He seems to
| think that agreement on topic B by people who previously
| disagreed on topic A means they must be right on topic B.
| BryantD wrote:
| That is not new.
|
| The documentation is checked into GitHub[1]. It was checked
| in on March 2nd, 2022. This was a month before Musk bought
| his 9.2% share of Twitter.
|
| [1] https://github.com/twitter/birdwatch/blob/main/content/di
| ver...
| RickHull wrote:
| Sweet fact check!
| BryantD wrote:
| Easiest kind! I knew the fact already, and Twitter made
| it really easy for me to validate it.
| pjkundert wrote:
| No, it means diversity of opinion.
| keewee7 wrote:
| Keep the "diversity of opinion" in the tweets but not in
| the fact checking.
| claytongulick wrote:
| How?
| sgc wrote:
| So easy for a government twitter farm to game, and amplify
| the "authority" of the opinions they care about after
| disagreeing on starcraft or cooking.
| clarkmoody wrote:
| Yet still more difficult than having a _direct login for
| government_ to come in and censor things, the existence of
| which leaked a few weeks ago.
| sgc wrote:
| Two different use cases, both of which suck.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Link? I missed the news about this.
| stevewatson301 wrote:
| https://thepostmillennial.com/facebook-portal-for-dhs-
| conten...
| lumost wrote:
| Would like to see some data on this, but it sounds like an
| effective rating system. I'd be concerned that getting
| statistical significance would be challenging without
| creating pseudo pairs of labelers likely to disagree on
| issues.
| keewee7 wrote:
| In Europe the political fringes, the far-left and far-
| right, disagree about almost everything. But they have also
| agreed on a lot of things like being anti-EU and pro-
| Russia. Elon Musk's system will consider their opinions
| about the EU and Russia to be more correct than that of
| other users.
| wongarsu wrote:
| This is known as the horseshoe effect, where far-left and
| far-right are closer to each other than they are to the
| center.
|
| It doesn't necessarily doom the system though, as long as
| people with extreme views don't outnumber more moderate
| people.
|
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
| nqlart wrote:
| But (as stated) they _disagree_ on most things. Because
| they are both usually in the opposition to the governing
| parties, they do opposition work and present dissenting
| opinions on vaccine efficacy, war support etc.
|
| Often these _few_ common topics overlap with the
| libertarian viewpoint.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I don't understand that argument. If the government
| supports a war, doesn't that make any opposition parties
| more likely to agree with each other that the war is bad?
| Of course they can disagree with the war for different
| reason, but both parties being in opposition and
| dissenting still makes them more likely to have common
| ground.
|
| Edit: unless we are talking about one or two party
| systems, there the dynamics are stranger
| watwut wrote:
| They agree on few things and disagree on most. Horse shoe
| effect is just a way how to dismiss actual real politics
| and ideologies so one can wave hands.
| wongarsu wrote:
| They disagree on a lot of things, but they also disagree
| on a lot of things with moderate people, so that
| observation alone doesn't refute "far-left and far-right
| are closer to each other than they are to the center".
|
| Of course the horseshoe effect is not some objective
| truth that's true in every country, that would be silly.
| I think the interesting part of it is that extreme ends
| of any political spectrum experience a similar
| environment: they are often shunned, distrust the
| mainstream media, attract social outcasts, etc. Just the
| shared experience of being on the edge of the spectrum
| often leads to similarities between them.
| naasking wrote:
| > Elon Musk's system will consider their opinions about
| the EU and Russia to be more correct than that of other
| users
|
| Speculation. Also, this system predates Musk's
| acquisition.
| blitzar wrote:
| > this isn't new (it started a couple of years ago I believe)
|
| 4 CEOs have supported this project ... so far.
| cpach wrote:
| Huh! Never heard of it before.
| dang wrote:
| Yes, we've taken "new" out of the title now.
| spdustin wrote:
| I'm not an employee, and I've been a Birdwatch contributor
| since shortly after the feature was first introduced.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Fact checking systems can be and are gamed. I rather have the
| plain content and let everyone decide if it is true or false.
| vntok wrote:
| There isn't enough time in a no-sleep 24h day to verify every
| single piece of content one is reading/hearing online that same
| day. Just go to any major news site's homepage; there's at
| least 40 articles there, plus videos. Count the number of
| tweets or instas you're glancing upon on your feed, they're
| infinitely loading below your thumbs.
|
| Self-service fact-checking is not scalable.
| mistermann wrote:
| > There isn't enough time in a no-sleep 24h day to verify
| every single piece of content one is reading/hearing online
| that same day.
|
| If it was necessary to fact check every tweet, this would be
| a big problem. Luckily though, that is not a requirement.
| With a proper implementation, it should be reasonably easy to
| surface a historic list of (a subset of) any given user's
| incorrect statements, which provides objective evidence to
| distrust someone's claims and opinions. With the style of
| epistemology practiced by most people _in 2022_ , everyone is
| going to have black marks on their history. And if we had a
| cultural change as a consequence of this, people might start
| putting some effort into speaking in the form of true
| statements.
|
| > Just go to any major news site's homepage; there's at least
| 40 articles there, plus videos. Count the number of tweets or
| instas you're glancing upon on your feed, they're infinitely
| loading below your thumbs.
|
| Establish a _persistent and centralized list of well fact
| checked "untruths"_ (rhetoric, innuendo, etc) from popular
| media outlets, and we will then have undeniable evidence that
| can be easily referenced, making common claims that
| mainstream media is ~"not that bad" _transparently false_.
|
| > Self-service fact-checking is not scalable.
|
| There is an important difference between scalability and
| infinite scalability.
|
| If Elon is smart, this feature could be a very big problem
| for belief shapers.
| RootKitBeerCat wrote:
| Crowdsourcing content moderation always turns out real well
| ece wrote:
| Here are some of the fact checks (login required):
| https://twitter.com/i/birdwatch/rated_helpful
| est wrote:
| the most strange part is it's hosted on Github
|
| Really, a for-profit company can't host some static pages
| properly under its own domain.
| CSDude wrote:
| I thought the exact same thing. But then I noticed some code is
| also open-source.
| https://github.com/twitter/birdwatch/tree/main/static/source...
| easytiger wrote:
| Lol. So trivially abusable
| vntok wrote:
| > To find notes that are helpful to the broadest possible set
| of people, Birdwatch takes into account not only how many
| contributors rated a note as helpful or unhelpful, but also
| whether people who rated it seem to come from different
| perspectives.
|
| > Birdwatch assesses "different perspectives" entirely based on
| how people have rated notes in the past; Birdwatch does not ask
| about or use any other information to do this (e.g.
| demographics like location, gender, or political affiliation,
| or data from Twitter such as follows or Tweets). This is based
| on the intuition that Contributors who tend to rate the same
| notes similarly are likely to have more similar perspectives
| while contributors who rate notes differently are likely to
| have different perspectives. If people who typically disagree
| in their ratings agree that a given note is helpful, it's
| probably a good indicator the note is helpful to people from
| different points of view.
|
| https://twitter.github.io/birdwatch/diversity-of-perspective...
| theCrowing wrote:
| As it was designed it's all about liability and like this
| twitter has none.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I'm afraid of what every single political tweet will look like
| now.
| vntok wrote:
| This is a feature.
| dbbk wrote:
| This has been around for ages, it's not new
| dandanua wrote:
| https://twitter.com/wallstmemes/status/1586409344395976704
|
| People who lie the most will "fact check" their opponents.
| alex23478 wrote:
| Just to make sure I didn't miss anything: They're not paying
| anyone for their fact-checking?
| veidr wrote:
| This particular technology initiative does appear to be an
| effort to build a system that harnesses unpaid volunteers as
| fact-checkers.
|
| However, according to today's front-page Washington Post[1]
| article, they are also still paying people in the "Trust &
| Safety" department, to do jobs including fact-checking (and
| presumably acting on fact-checking done by other humans, and
| possibly trained-model automated fact-checkers as well).
|
| From what I can understand, the company was recently purchased
| by an oligarch, who then implemented massive staff cuts of
| around 50% generally across the board, but the "Trust & Safety"
| department had a lower level of layoffs, at around 15%. So
| human staff is apparently still involved in fact-checking,
| aside from the system described here.
|
| It seems likely that fact-checking on a global "social media"
| network would necessarily involve various approaches and
| multiple layers to be effective, so the core idea of this
| system seems worth trying.
|
| However, it is a difficult problem, with powerful financial and
| political incentives for various parties to game such a system,
| it will be interesting to see if this ever yields results, and
| if so, what those results are.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/05/twitter...
| abraae wrote:
| Elon is not an Oligarch, unless the US is an Oligarchy (it's
| not).
|
| > An oligarch is one of the select few people who rule or
| influence leaders in an oligarchy--a government in which
| power is held by a select few individuals or a small class of
| powerful people.
| veidr wrote:
| There is considerable debate[1] about whether or not the US
| is, in its contemporary form, an oligarchy (including, I
| suppose, your (parenthetical) refutation of that notion
| above).
|
| Personally, I'm persuaded by the argument that it is an
| oligarchy, or at least, it is more one than it is not.
|
| Unlike some (most?) others, where the government is the
| seat of ultimate power and chooses its accomplices, in the
| US that arrangement is inverted; the very rich (the few
| hundred billioniares, and a few thousand of not-quite-that-
| rich individuals and families) excercise enormous control
| over the government, without having to directly participate
| in its execution or hold office themselves.
|
| (And our politicians themselves almost never achieve that
| level of wealth; many do become rich by ordinary standards,
| but its clear where the actual power resides.)
|
| So we could quibble about definitions and degrees of words
| like "oligarch" and "the klept" but in my view the US is
| clearly more toward the oligarchy end of the spectrum than
| the other end.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_United_St
| ates#...
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Incredible, I've never met anyone who could alter reality
| through the power of parentheticals before.
| drstewart wrote:
| They're paying the same amount you got paid for creating free
| content for YCombinator
| fazfq wrote:
| Isn't putting whatever you want next to a popular guy's tweets
| enough payment?
| neura wrote:
| I mean... they don't pay anybody for it, or actually have any
| sort of fact-checking right now... and they're still one of the
| most dominant cessp... err, social media sites.
| melbourne_mat wrote:
| How to save some cash: 1. Fire your staff, 2. outsource their
| work to the general public. Brilliant!
|
| But seriously folks: Twitter is rubbish. Find something more
| useful to do with your time.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > How to save some cash: 1. Fire your staff, 2. outsource
| their work to the general public. Brilliant!
|
| Imagine this as a sarcastic comment about why a country
| shouldn't move from a monarchy to a republic.
| vntok wrote:
| > How to save some cash: 1. Fire your staff, 2. outsource
| their work to the general public. Brilliant!
|
| What are you talking about? This program has existed at
| Twitter for years.
| esskay wrote:
| Whats the betting this gets canned pretty quickly. Musk just
| fired all the teams responsible for ethics, accessibility,
| accountability, fact checking, content curation, etc. Not just
| made them smaller - totally removed anyone involved with them.
| mrits wrote:
| He literally didn't though.
|
| https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1588657227035918337
| saurik wrote:
| Prior discussions with comments:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906672
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25908439
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906775
|
| An article arguing for a different UI:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935407
|
| Discussion from yesterday on a thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33474196
|
| In that final discussion SilasX noted:
|
| > Interesting, I remember someone on /r/slatestarcodex having the
| idea to rate/sort reddit comments by that metric, which I dub
| "sort by should-be-uncontroversial" (because normally-disagreeing
| people all think it's correct).
|
| Honestly, that sorting mechanism sounds sane to me? It certainly
| sounds a lot saner than optimizing for engaging content (which
| seems to result in arguments), but I would guess is a lot less
| profitable (and so likely won't happen).
|
| But like, in a world where informative comments actually were
| sorted highly, wouldn't that mostly obviate the need for this
| notes / fact checking system in the first place?
|
| Put differently, isn't the very existence of and interest in this
| second system for voting on content attached to a tweet a
| demonstration that the primary system (for sorting replies, which
| are merely content attached to a tweet) sucks?
| maeil wrote:
| Such a scoring mechanism sounds useful at first but on websites
| like Reddit it would likely cause puns, cultural references and
| such to be even more dominant than they already are, as those
| are most likely to be similarly appreciated by "normally-
| disagreeing people".
|
| I could only see it add much value on heavily moderated/high-
| effort sites like HN, where there's much less need for it in
| the first place.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Puns and cultural references being more dominant than
| extremist bickering would be an improvement to Reddit.
| highwaylights wrote:
| This might be the one real value proposition to come out of all
| of this (if there is one).
|
| Part of the scoring metric is awarding more weight to
| historically diaposed views. Bold strategy, let's see if it
| pans out for them Cotton etc.
|
| At worst it stays a cesspool, but maybe we find a way to (shock
| horror) promote actual civil discourse on the Internet.
| oxff wrote:
| "Collaborative fact check" really does show that there is a
| demarcation between "fact" and "truth".
| theCrowing wrote:
| Who watches the Birdwatchers? Joke aside that's an experiment I
| can appreciate at least it will show us how bot invested and
| deranged twitter and it's users really are. I actually thought it
| was launched months ago..
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Notably yesterday a birdwatcher added a note to one of Elon's
| tweets, and then later the explanation was removed. They do use
| opaque algorithms that take other birdwatchers' feedback and
| decide whether to keep a note. Of course, many immediately
| suspected Elon had it manually removed.
|
| Regardless of whether he actually did it I think this is a
| fatal flaw that will prevent birdwatch from ever being trusted.
| BryantD wrote:
| I am a member of the Birdwatch program.
|
| The note wasn't removed. It's still visible as a potential
| note; it just dropped below the threshold necessary for
| general display. This is not common but it's not abnormal
| either; it happened to one of my notes on a controversial
| topic.
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| Are you talking about this one?[1]
|
| I see the fact check still there.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880?s
| =46...
| plazmatic wrote:
| makomk wrote:
| Part of the reason this is gettting attention right now is that
| its users added a note to a White House tweet that was
| accurate, informative, and so politically embarassing they
| deleted the tweet:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33472161
|
| This is a tad different from the previous approach which
| involved third-party fact checkers that were, uh, visibly
| slanted towards the Democrats to put it lightly (and whenever a
| non-Democrat-aligned news source got blessed as a fact checker
| by a masjor social media network there was a major media storm
| over it).
| blamazon wrote:
| Are you referring to this?
|
| > Facebook fact checker has ties to news outlet that promotes
| climate doubt
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/facebook-fact-
| checke...
|
| It's not the democrats' fault that the modern republican
| party has aligned with groups centered around anti-truth
| tactics and ideas. There is an expression of speech: 'reality
| has a documented liberal bias.'
|
| All that aside, I do think that the distributed Birdwatch
| approach is better than the previous centralized methods.
| origin_path wrote:
| _" the modern republican party has aligned with groups
| centered around anti-truth tactics and ideas"_
|
| Did fact checkers tell you that?
| blamazon wrote:
| I have lost friends and family to this nonsense. Both
| literally, to antivax Covid deaths in '20-'21, and
| figuratively, to the insane and ever-escalating
| pizzagate-style conspiracy networks from which adherents
| rarely emerge.
|
| Would you count those as fact checkers?
| GameOfFrowns wrote:
| >There is an expression of speech: 'reality has a
| documented liberal bias.'
|
| There is also another popular expression: 'Get woke, go
| broke.'
| blamazon wrote:
| First I've heard that one - trying to take it at face
| value, is the thesis that truth, equity, justice, etc
| _should_ (must?) be discarded or suppressed if there is
| money to be made in the short term?
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| It's more like: focusing the marketing or intended
| audience of product on the smallest viable minority of
| potential customers _with the intentional exclusion and
| or derision of other potential customers_ is not
| generally a profitable marketing strategy.
|
| Exceptions that prove the rule are those that focus on
| exclusivity or rarity, such as products that truly only
| are needed/desired by a niche audience but at a higher
| cost to make up for the lack of broad
| appeal/availability.
|
| Movies and TV shows (about which the "get woke, go broke"
| saying originated) don't fall under that sort of
| exclusivity-at-a-higher-price concept. Intentionally
| alienating 80% of your customer base to appeal to 20% is
| a risky strategy.
| theCrowing wrote:
| I mean I get it as a slight offhand joke but the most
| succesful companies are "woke" asf. Apple, Nike, most car
| manufacturers...
| iinnPP wrote:
| In the last two years I have come to put much more
| importance on the freedom of association.
|
| The linked article is a fantastic example of what. "Partial
| truth" and "missing context" can be said about absolutely
| everything.
|
| Who was it that chopped up a journalist and enjoys the
| association of a world figure? Quite a few people. Let's
| condemn the lot.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| You can download all the data apparently, so you could watch
| the birdwatchers!
|
| However although users get a permanent id it's not possible to
| get actual Twitter handles from these ids. So identification of
| who the birdwatchers are is not easy (wisely so)!
| altacc wrote:
| From the page: "We believe regular people can valuably
| contribute to identifying and adding helpful context to
| potentially misleading information."
|
| That'll end well! ;) Problem is that on Twitter people aren't
| "regular", they're either seeking their own echo chamber for
| confirmation bias or the opposing echo chamber to insult, so
| crowd sourced feedback will simply be used as a tool for either
| of those.
| davedx wrote:
| I dunno, Wikipedia is 100% based on regular contributors and
| it's turned out exceptionally well
| blitzar wrote:
| Wikipedia is not for profit, twitter is.
| insickness wrote:
| It doesn't work for controversial topics.
| jfengel wrote:
| It is, but it has the opposite issue. Wikipedia isn't a
| place for opinions and it doesn't portray itself as a "free
| speech zone". It easily rejects new information. Too
| easily, in that "notability" can bias it towards rejecting
| consequential but obscure historical figures, especially
| from people who were marginalized at the time.
|
| That's great for making Wikipedia safer from abject
| misinformation, which is a huge plus. It's less good at
| ongoing discoveries and news.
| juujian wrote:
| This can so easily be gamed...
| presentation wrote:
| I'm not a crypto fan but spitballing here: what if it were
| tokenized? Not necessarily in a distributed blockchain sort of
| way, after all this is Twitter which is centralized, but rather
| in terms of setting economic incentives for making good
| moderation judgements, eg when you make a judgment you stake
| something of value (money, tokens, reputation, whatever) and set
| up some mechanism such that making "bad" moderation judgments is
| an expensive choice. Seems like this is a scenario where there is
| low levels of trust and therefore can use the thinking of a
| similarly low-trust domain (crypto).
| wyck wrote:
| yes, having skin in the game (staking for example) prevents
| bots, trolls and creates more responsibility. With added
| benefit of zero-Knowledge, security, and decentralization.
| twodave wrote:
| Isn't that how most political ads/disinformation campaigns
| already work? Many absolute truths in politics are self-
| evident, but if you need to get some lies out there... buy some
| ads.
| dekervin wrote:
| Hey I can't resist showing what I am working on:
| https://datum.alwaysdata.net .
|
| The goal is not that far from what birdwatch wants to do, but
| it's restricted to adding data context to online discourse.
|
| I am frequently pondering those kind of thoughts regarding, low
| trust and crypto. And I would love to discuss it with you, or
| other people, if you are interested.
|
| Basically the design dilemna is you want to anchor the
| moderating behavior to some hard identity or value, without
| ruining the collaborative spirit task.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The basic use case for crypto is imposing costs, and a protocol
| that uses it decides where you or your parties impose those
| costs. A cryptographic moderation protocol question would be,
| on what aspect of publishing a statement would you like to
| impose a cost?
|
| To do that, we would need to break out publishing a statement
| into a collection of dimensions, like origin, destination,
| distance/reach, length, entropy/novelty, and likely some dozen
| or so others, then express our evaluations of them in terms of
| those criteria. The HN method of 'effect' is pretty good, and
| an origin's track record of engagement could give a new
| statement momentum, etc. Not to solution it - but in terms of
| what you would use tokenization for, it would be to impose
| costs on criteria expressed in these underlying message
| dimensions.
| specialist wrote:
| Enabling authenticated identity online (personas) is an
| objectively good thing. Authenticity is a precondition for most
| of modern life; small things like payments, driver's licenses,
| voting, education, employment, surgery.
|
| Alas, the $8/mo blue check is not that. Payment method is the
| only verification. No further effort is made. (Please correct
| me as Musk's answers change.)
|
| Instead, the blue check is nothing more than flare.
|
| Twitter's pivot towards freemium, gacha, and ultimately
| Freemium Speeches(tm) (pay-to-say) could work.
|
| There are precedents. Vanity press and academic journals, for
| instance.
|
| And I can envision a substack, medium, or twitter that enables
| a marketplace for value added services. Fact checking,
| copyediting, visual design, and so forth. An Upwork for content
| producers.
|
| Alas, I doubt that's Musk's vision for Twitter.
|
| For that, I recommend historian Jill Lepore's podcast The
| Evening Rocket. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/elon-musk-the-
| evening-rocket
|
| Spoiler: With the purchase of Twitter.com, Musk is likely
| rejuvenating his original goal for X.com.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| The problem for him going forward is that he's burned all
| trust. Maybe his alt-right bootlicking is theater to get a
| volatile crowd on board, but it alienates the rest of
| society, not to mention putting him on the wrong side of
| Popehat's rule of goats.
| m348e912 wrote:
| The question I am wondering is twitter doing any due
| diligence for the 60/year you're paying to verify you are who
| you say you are. (Other than charging your credit card) I am
| guessing probably not.
| jmull wrote:
| This seems practically useless for high-profile issues where
| people will make the effort to manipulate the system.
|
| As it states, it's not direct majority rules, but it requires the
| bulk of the raters to be people acting like people. Bots and
| brigades won't have a problem adding their desired notes.
| BryantD wrote:
| I put around 15 minutes a day into Birdwatch for a couple of
| months before the purchase was finalized. This is purely
| anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt.
|
| The requirement for agreement seemed to work well at preventing
| weird factchecks from anywhere on the political spectrum. I saw a
| fair number of people trying to use Birdwatch to argue with each
| other, bad faith factchecks, and so on. None of them made it to
| general visibility.
|
| I wrote 45 notes. I tried very hard to keep them unbiased, but
| I'm human and I have strong political opinions. 5 of them wound
| up approved. I suspect the requirement for agreement tended to
| keep anything that's more than a little divisive from getting
| approved; no evidence for this, though. I'd be curious to know
| what the average percentage was for active users.
|
| There are _way more_ Birdwatch notes getting written right now. A
| lot of them are terrible quality. However, they mostly aren 't
| getting approved, so I think the system is working as designed.
| Nowado wrote:
| I would be worried about users falling off seeing their notes
| have ~10% approval rate, but it doesn't seem to bother you at
| all. I wish I had smarter question to ask about it, but... how
| come?
| BryantD wrote:
| That's a great question, actually. Factors which I think play
| a role:
|
| 1. I'm not _that_ heavily driven by ego in this kind of
| context. I know that approval is largely a function of how
| many people bother to vote on my notes.
|
| 2. The satisfaction I got from getting a note approved on one
| of Elon Musk's tweets was sizable. It is literally one of the
| most-read pieces of text I've ever written, which is kind of
| wild.
|
| 3. I define success here as "good notes are approved," rather
| than "my notes are approved." I'm used to casting a wide net
| and being happy at a few successes. I'm a hiring manager, so
| I have to know how to be happy with a low success rate.
|
| 4. I also know that other Birdwatch contributors were reading
| my notes, and I tried to write them in such a way that people
| can easily research and draw conclusions. (Not always easy,
| since I'm opinionated.) So even a note that isn't approved
| might do some good.
| watwut wrote:
| I have seen people complain about bad check today (notably
| Radley Balko had one), so it seems like some bad faith checks
| are starting to creep in.
| bmelton wrote:
| I didn't see anything right-wing about Radley's fact check
| other than his assertion that it must be so.
|
| For those who haven't seen it, Radley tweeted[1] that of 760
| million Subway riders, there were only 8 murders, so it is
| intrinsically safer than riding in a car.
|
| The birdwatch message retorted that he was conflating 1 year
| of Subway death statistics against the lifetime vehicular
| fatality rate, and implied that his stats weren't an apples
| to apples comparison. Birdwatch recalibrated his statistic
| using (the generally more meaningful) "miles traveled" and
| determined that riding a mile on the New York Subway was ~1.8
| times riskier than that same mile in a car, which is also
| probably wrong, but right if you use _the data he provided_
| against "miles traveled" vs overall ridership.
|
| [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/radleybalko/status/15888941041
| 333...
| BryantD wrote:
| The Birdwatch note also assumed he was using lifetime risk
| of dying in a car crash, which he wasn't (I double
| checked).
|
| I am not 100% sure that miles traveled is the most
| meaningful statistic, FWIW. Wouldn't it make more sense to
| use hours spent on each form of transportation?
| spikels wrote:
| Appears that that Birdwatch was removed. I assume this
| was from people rating it after it appeared and the
| annual versus lifetime error was found.
|
| Deaths per X miles traveled is the standard metric.
| Deaths per hour would be a very strange way to compare
| forms of transit given that the purpose is travel not
| wasting time.
| BryantD wrote:
| Only if everyone can always optimize their travel choices
| by time, which obviously we can't or all travel in
| Manhattan would be via helicopter.
| BryantD wrote:
| It is vulnerable to numbers, I think, for the same reason
| people believe misinformation. If a check looks plausible,
| some number of people will say it's correct without double
| checking.
| eloff wrote:
| It's a really smart idea. Look for agreement between people who
| often disagree as a signal of truth. Like you point out, it's
| probably a stronger signal of less divisive, less polarizing
| info than truth. But still decentralized and not biased right
| or left (biased center, effectively.)
|
| I think it will only work if they can keep the bots out.
| Otherwise it will be gamed like everything else.
| pixl97 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation seems
| like the envitable outcome of this system.
| ninefathom wrote:
| This is my concern as well. The idea here seems to be that
| the thing that offends the least must be fact.
|
| This behaves very differently for falsifiable vs. non-
| falsifiable information, but the end result is not
| something in which I'd place much stock either way.
|
| Edit: to be clear, from Twitter's perspective, this is
| excellent, i.e. this is precisely what a revenue-motivated
| entity would want. It's the rest of the world that I'm
| concerned about.
| hammock wrote:
| I don't see that.
|
| What parent is suggesting is that only the subset of things
| which are agreed by two parties who, demonstrably, disagree
| on most things, are approved and noted.
|
| You're not going to get "a fetus becomes human life at 4.5
| months" out of such a system
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Interesting example. Because the hardcore on both sides
| have zero percent agreement on that. To some people a
| fetus isn't a person until intended birth, so how would a
| birdwatch context work on something nonfalsifiable like
| this?
| tacitusarc wrote:
| Presumably it would not approve anything, and thus have
| nothing to say, which is probably the best outcome.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| How then do you decide on the sets of things to allow it
| to moderate or not? That sounds like a bootstrapping
| problem since it is a question people will disagree on.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > It's a really smart idea. Look for agreement between people
| who often disagree as a signal of truth.
|
| This is horrible epistemology actually. Often times enemies
| agree on complete lies because it benefits them both.
| Example, both the US and USSR called the USSR "communist"
| despite it not being (or even trying to be) a stateless,
| moneyless, classless society rather than calling it for the
| imperial fascism with red flags that it obviously was. It
| doesn't even lead to the centrism you desire (which itself is
| a terrible bias, the truth has no political alignment at all)
| since the different sides can choose the lie for different
| reasons.
| unity1001 wrote:
| The Communist Party in the USSR was a party with communist
| ideology, aiming to achieve communism. They were
| communists, but they did not claim that USSR's system was
| communist at any point. The system was designed to
| industrialize the USSR, increase literacy and life
| standards and work towards achieving communism. It wasnt
| communism itself.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| *Until the party was co-opted by authoritarian
| plutocrats. and still said all the same things without
| tangibly moving towards those goals.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Yeah, that's what they _said_ and it was in the elite 's
| material interest to _say_ that, which is my point.
| martinlaz wrote:
| I agree with your point, just to add a little detail to
| your example- USSR & Co called themselves "socialist". They
| considered socialism to be an imperfect intermediate state
| en route to communism.
| canjobear wrote:
| You could have chosen an example that wouldn't have led to
| a useless flamewar about the definition of the word
| "communism." For example, the USSR agreed with Nazi Germany
| that Jews were a problem, Poland didn't deserve to exist,
| etc.
| microjim wrote:
| 'Horrible' epistemology is a bit harsh (signal =
| approximate measure rather than direct), but this is indeed
| a valid loophole. Would be interesting to explore if third
| or fourth groups that do not benefit from the mutually
| agreed lie could feasibly counter this.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I don't think it's harsh at all. Such an epistemology
| contributes nothing but false positives because parties
| with conflicting interests agreeing has zero bearing on
| truth. It's not even a good rule of thumb; it's just
| completely useless and irrelevant to knowledge
| production. Most people believe in some kind of religion
| or other nonsense like astrology; that they disagree on
| other things yet agree on that has absolute no bearing on
| the truth of any of those things. Think about it.
| SilasX wrote:
| "Nothing but false positives" is obviously over-the-top.
| Just yesterday they caught a pretty clear one.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33472161
| rad88 wrote:
| It's not an epistemic problem. Twitter has to address
| their users' toxic behavior turning the whole place/world
| into a dump. Rather that the confrontation taking place
| in replies and quote tweets and spreading all over the
| network, it happens in birdwatch (in theory).
| microjim wrote:
| I agree that solid epistemology has better specificity
| and sensitivity for what's true, and that's the idea with
| independent fact-checker institutions, but it appears
| none have managed to gain or retain widespread trust.
|
| An approximate correlation is progress here. If you know
| of a better heuristic I'd be very interested in hearing
| it.
|
| Also, can we agree on what problem is most important to
| be solving right now? Is it 1) we haven't reached
| complete truth across all dimensions of knowledge or that
| 2) we need to build bridges crossing the massive societal
| trust schisms?
| philwelch wrote:
| The USSR never claimed to have "achieved communism". I know
| there are Marxists who claim that the USSR wasn't even
| properly socialist, but this sort of doctrinal bickering
| doesn't make any historical difference until it reaches
| somewhere outside the realm of fringe radical movements and
| academic ivory towers. And even then, the power dynamics of
| the differing groups of adherents matter a lot more than
| the doctrinal nitpicking, just as with any other sectarian
| dispute.
|
| Arguing about whether the Soviets were "true" Marxists is
| like arguing about whether the Roman Catholic Church is the
| "true" "catholic and apostolic church" of the Nicene Creed;
| at some point everyone who isn't a theologian taking a
| break from the equally important "angels dancing on the
| head of a pin" problem just uses the word "Catholic" to
| refer to the biggest and most powerful institution that
| insists on calling itself that.
|
| But, even setting all that aside, all you've proven is that
| finding common ground between _two_ disagreeing viewpoints
| is insufficient. If you had to find a point of agreement
| between the US, USSR, and whatever disgruntled Trotskyites
| you could find, you'd address that point of disagreement as
| well.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I know there are Marxists who claim that the USSR
| wasn't even properly socialist,
|
| You don't have to be a Marxist to claim that the USSR
| wasn't properly "socialist." You just have to read
| whoever you think lays out a clear definition of
| socialism, and compare it to the government of the USSR
| as observed.
|
| When your analysis of the facts of the situation values
| the power dynamics of differing groups of adherents to
| fringe radical movements over simple observation and
| checking of requirements off of a list, you're caught up
| in political drama, not ideological drama.
| philwelch wrote:
| It's a semantic argument and I'm not attached to any
| particular definition of socialism. Also, I find that
| most arguments that "the Soviet Union wasn't actually
| socialist" are disingenuous attempts by socialists to
| deflect from the fact that their ideas have never
| actually worked in practice, but that's beside the point
| somewhat.
| PixyMisa wrote:
| That's because all communist countries are imperialist
| fascist ones.
|
| Trying to be a stateless, moneyless, classless society is
| just trying to make 1+1=3 by killing everyone who points
| out that 1+1=2. Claiming that you are trying to be that -
| same process, same result.
| dropofwill wrote:
| Don't disagree with you on the epistemic point, but for
| that example, I don't think anyone in the USSR was under
| the illusion that they had achieved communism. During the
| 60s the propaganda (originally for and then also used
| ironically) was that the USSR was "actually existing
| socialism". It was of course run by the communist party,
| which I think is what people generally mean when they say
| it was communist.
|
| It's obvious in hindsight, but looking back there are
| plenty of thinkers that i look up to (e.g. Du Bois) that
| supported the regime far longer than is comfortable (so i'm
| hesitant to say i would have been any different at the
| time).
| CPLX wrote:
| Your premise is dubious. This is a definitional question,
| what's the commonly accepted meaning of a word.
|
| There's no other way words are defined, widespread
| acceptance of the applicability of a term is self-proving.
|
| The fact that the official government representatives of
| the whole world agree on the definition means that's the
| definition.
|
| It's certainly possible there's injustice embedded in word
| choice (consider what is and isn't called terrorism, for
| example) but the system is providing a defensible result.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > The fact that the official government representatives
| of the whole world agree on the definition means that's
| the definition.
|
| It seems you misunderstood. That they did _not_ agree on
| the definition is part of my point. They only agree on
| the word, to mean opposite things (the US meant dystopia,
| the USSR meant [on their way to] utopia.) In any case, it
| 's just an example. See my other[1] comment for
| clarification of the general point.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33482679
| CPLX wrote:
| In both cases they agreed in a clear and understandable
| way.
|
| They agree the word means "the system of government and
| economics currently being practiced in the Soviet Union
| and affiliated countries"
|
| Your assertion that the USSR should not be referred to as
| communist is incorrect. The relevant parties agree that
| it should, definitionally.
|
| Asking a fact checking system to produce an alternate
| result isn't a reasonable expectation.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > They agree the word means "the system of government and
| economics currently being practiced in the Soviet Union
| and affiliated countries"
|
| No, neither had that definition for the word "communism"
| and as I said, it's beside the point, which you seemed to
| have missed even if that were true.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Meaning is use. And people neither think in definitions
| nor learn language through definitions (there is a reason
| dictionaries usually provide examples and use cases), it
| is an entirely artificial construct with limited use.
| soheil wrote:
| Tweets are near real time so how do they keep up with them when
| it's a consensus system that could take a lot of back and
| forth? The period between when a tweet is sent and when its
| reviewed is posted could be enough time to indoctrinate a lot
| of people, no? I think the average tweet impression over time
| graph looks like a reverse exponential.
| z9znz wrote:
| I'm skeptical that using a wikipedia-like approach will work for
| small, essentially ephemeral content. There's just not enough
| time to debate each tweet, especially now that so many people
| (with large followings) tweet so much debatable content
| frequently. There's probably also not enough interest... or the
| interest and fascination with moderating will wane quickly
| (fatique).
|
| Reading the various recent news items about Twitter, one would
| think that Musk was trying to revert the company to a crowdsource
| startup. I don't think that's possible, at least not without
| shedding a great many of the users. Of course, I also think the
| entire system and premise behind Twitter is bunk, so it doesn't
| really matter.
| mistermann wrote:
| I don't think there's necessarily a need to fact check every
| tweet. If fact checks are maintained in a list, and one can
| navigate from a user account to their position in the list
| which also shows their past history of fact checked
| falsehoods/untruthfulness/lying, it could make a difference.
|
| I think the general public is intelligent enough to start to
| come up with strategies to target the most influential people
| (politicians, journalists, activists, celebrities, etc) and
| work down from there.
|
| Of course, fact checking is a complicated skill, but people can
| learn new skills. The public learning new skills on social
| media on an ongoing basis may be problematic for some people,
| but it could be very healthy for the overall ecosystem.
| puyoxyz wrote:
| > Twitter doesn't choose what shows up, the people do > > Twitter
| doesn't write, rate or moderate notes (unless they break the
| Twitter rules.) We believe giving people a voice to make these
| choices together is a fair and effective way to add information
| that helps people stay better informed.
|
| Well, this isn't true anymore. There was a birdwatch note on one
| of Elons tweets that got removed. And it wasn't removed by the
| people, because in the Birdwatch UI it still said "this note was
| voted helpful and is showing on the tweet".
|
| Here's a picture of the note before it was removed:
| https://twitter.com/goldman/status/1588576046743687170?s=46&...
|
| I couldn't find the picture of the Birdwatch UI showing it's
| still helpful and showing on the tweet when it wasn't :( If
| anyone really wants it, reply and I'll look more, I probably have
| it in my likes
| klabb3 wrote:
| > Birdwatch works differently than the rest of Twitter. It is not
| a popularity contest. It aims to find notes that many people from
| different points of view will find helpful. It takes into account
| not only how many ratings a note has received, but also whether
| people who rated it helpful seem to come from different
| perspectives.
|
| I had to read this twice. Is it just me or is this Twitter
| officially acknowledging the issues with their platform (and by
| proxy all engagement optimized platforms), the main root cause
| and a solution in the same paragraph? And then proceeds to launch
| it only for a minor sub-feature of the platform as a whole?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Seems correct and reasonable.
|
| When it comes to fact checking, they optimize for group
| satisfaction and consensus. For general content, they optimize
| for individual satisfaction/engagement.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Isn't this ... science for everyday things?
|
| I'm fascinated by the idea that we have enabled everyone to talk
| to everyone else and now have to find ways to agree on, what are
| and are not facts, what is and is not "acceptable".
|
| Eons ago we old buffers dreamed of a new world online - a virtual
| world. And we built it. And it has the same problems and we are
| trying to find almost the same solutions - but they fit
| differently.
|
| And there is opportunity- to share wealth and knowledge and
| spread out power.
|
| It should be a more democratic world. Virtually.
| uri4 wrote:
| It is centralised and only for US. I am not going to participate
| on any platform that is not decentralised, federated and zero
| trust.
|
| In past I put a lot of effort into various forums. Well sourced
| information, several thousands hours of work. But very ofter it
| was all wasted, wiped and deleted.
|
| Now I only write books. There are well established censorship
| laws. And work I put into writing book will be preserved!
| p1necone wrote:
| Some third party forum/social media site failing to host your
| writing for eternity is not even slightly the same thing as
| censorship.
|
| If you've written a bunch of stuff that you think is valuable
| and you want to make sure it's available forever then you
| should make a blog and host it yourself. (Which you have sort
| of done by writing a book, but you didn't need to go that far
| if all you cared about was longevity)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| There's nothing quite like walking into a bookshop, library or
| someones house and seeing a copy of your book.
|
| You can see from the well thumbed edges that it's been read.
| It's been around for 10 years and it will be around for another
| 30 or 40 (modern bindings notwithstanding) - and some copies
| will probably outlive you.
|
| The same cannot be said for the "Internet" - although I think
| what Brewster Kahle has done with The Internet Archive is
| amazing - much of which remains ephemeral.
|
| Once books were the preserve of "elites". Now I think the
| tables are turned. Some marginal voices get traction only
| through traditional publication forms because they live in
| repressive technological regimes or outside the walled gardens
| of the so-called "town square". It is not the egalitarian
| utopia once promised.
|
| Here's an excerpt from Digital Vegan "With
| opportunities to fix our digital world from /within/ the
| system vanishing, book publishing remains a bastion of open
| intelligence. What you hold in your hands (or have as a non-DRM
| file) may soon be one of the few remaining means to circulate
| critical opinions that would quickly be censored online."
| fredgrott wrote:
| ahem you do already, it's called the internet!
|
| Maybe you forgot internet is not decentralized.
| threeseed wrote:
| Actually the internet is decentralised. It's just that a lot
| of people either don't know or simply aren't willing to trade
| convenience for ideological purity.
|
| Anybody can run a web server at home, get a domain name,
| write a Twitter clone, host it and publish whatever content
| they like. And when you exceed your traffic limits you can
| take that web server, drive to your local co-located provider
| and in almost all cases they will let you grow that site
| almost ad infinitum provided the content isn't illegal.
|
| You don't need to ask permission. You don't need to
| compromise your ideology. You can just do it.
|
| But people don't want freedom or decentralisation. What they
| want is the ability to say anything they like _and_ for
| everyone to hear it.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Until of course you piss off someone with connections and
| ever higher levels of ISPs start trying to cut you off from
| the rest of the world.
| nunobrito wrote:
| So the "actshually" meme comes true. Instead of reddit-
| style legalisms, just try to be more human and understand
| their perspective for a change.
|
| People do have the desire and right to ask for mainstream
| platforms to be decentralized. Is it feasible today?
| Technically: yes, realistically: no.
|
| Why?
|
| Because even MORE people are needed to effectively demand
| the right for mainstream platforms to be decentralized. You
| know that. Now be nice to them, please.
| [deleted]
| nathias wrote:
| how do you think hackernews works?
| aliswe wrote:
| _I am not going to participate on any platform that is not
| decentralised, federated and zero trust._
|
| Well you just did.
| sib wrote:
| I'm confused. Isn't Hacker News centralized & non-federated?
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's totally different. HN isn't owned by an unaccountable
| billionaire
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Every 12-24 months there's a five mile long line for the
| soapbox so all the computer nerds can get up and tell us that
| they're putting a line in the sand and that federation is the
| only answer. Now, just as always, the world will continue
| spinning without them and this sort of idealism that seems
| completely blind to reality that for all the Smart People that
| have put their mind to federated / decentralised social
| networks, none of them are any good. Now, as always, all that
| make this claim will inevitably succumb to the reality that
| their vanity is worth more than their ideals, and will make
| their way back to Twitter.
|
| Don't get me wrong. I hate and despise both Twitter and Musk.
| But to act like Mastadon or any of the other attempts at this
| stuff appeal to people that aren't tech / privacy wonks is tone
| deaf. And as much as Twitter is a 'platform for elites to
| disseminate their thoughts that's pretending to be a social
| network', "publishing books" is certainly amother step in that
| direction.
| jl6 wrote:
| Don't forget, it's not a choice between Twitter and a
| federated alternative. You can happily use neither.
| kmlx wrote:
| > I hate and despise both Twitter and Musk.
|
| how could one get to a level of "hate and despise both
| Twitter and Musk"?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Years of trouble and misbehavior coming from both of those
| would seem to explain it, no?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| That seems like the default position for both those things?
| How could you not unless you're an alt-right shitposter?
| narrator wrote:
| Search doesn't really work on Mastodon and it's full of
| boring content. It only works if you can get all your friends
| to use the same server. That's impossible these days. Nobody
| is going to install and figure out an another app just to be
| on your personal mastodon instance.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > It only works if you can get all your friends to use the
| same server.
|
| I'm the only user on my server and I have a bunch of (not
| on my server) friends on my timeline. I'm not sure what
| you're suggesting isn't happening?
| mcint wrote:
| Birdwatch is a collaborative way to add helpful context to Tweets
| and keep people better informed Birdwatch is a pilot program that
| aims to create a better-informed world. It empowers people on
| Twitter to collaboratively add helpful notes to Tweets that might
| be misleading.
|
| https://github.com/twitter/birdwatch
| https://twitter.com/birdwatch
| fazfq wrote:
| "empowers" is such a red flag in my book...
| Eupraxias wrote:
| Sounds like its time for a new book, but you don't have to
| take my word for it...
| aksss wrote:
| Or stop using rhetorical buzzwords and the language of
| demagoguery.
| jengland wrote:
| Does anyone here know how it works _and_ thinks it can be easily
| abused? The paper is here[0], but I would be satisfied with an
| explanation from anyone who just generally knows what "bridge-
| based ranking"[1] is. I'm pretty excited about the idea and I
| wonder if people mostly just don't know or if I am being too
| optimistic.
|
| [0]:
| https://github.com/twitter/birdwatch/blob/main/birdwatch_pap...
|
| [1]: https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bridging-based-
| rank...
| BryantD wrote:
| The source code is also in that repo, so easy enough to dig
| into it. Harder to form a useful opinion, at least for me.
| shakna wrote:
| The greatest weakness in the scoring system [0] that I can see
| is age. There is a requirement for valid scoring to occur
| within 48 hours.
|
| > Made within the first 48 hours of the note's creation
| (because we publicly release all rating data after 48 hours)
| [1]
|
| However, in the real world, our understanding of a message's
| context may actually take much longer than that. Especially
| when more information can come to light, that changes the
| landscape.
|
| The second greatest weakness I see is that rater's with a lower
| mean are automatically filtered. Whilst you can discuss using
| APIs to do it, if you have large groups of individuals
| dedicated to promoting specific viewpoints, you can utilise
| that manpower to de-rate anyone promoting an opposing view by
| ruining their helpfulness average.
|
| That makes the system easily abused by highly motivated
| political factions, especially foreign ones that admit to
| employing large groups of people for such a purpose.
|
| > Their rater helpfulness score must be at least 0.66 [1]
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/twitter/birdwatch/blob/main/static/source...
|
| [1] https://twitter.github.io/birdwatch/contributor-
| scores/#vali...
| [deleted]
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| I think this problem is similar to fighting spam, or ranking
| webpages for search queries: you don't want to be too public
| with your methods, because any metric can be gamed.
|
| I actually suspect "bridge-based ranking" has already been
| deployed on a large scale, and the group that did so has not
| publicly disclosed this -- likely for good reason. (There is a
| big social media site that used to be _famous_ for having
| _terrible_ comments. You fill in the rest...)
|
| In any case, yes it is very exciting. Including from an
| epistemological point of view -- the idea of promoting
| arguments that actually change someone's mind is pretty cool
| (assuming the argument is sound and truthful).
| pluc wrote:
| So they went the Reddit way: free labour.
| iinnPP wrote:
| Any company taking user content for profit is doing the same.
| Including this website.
| machina_ex_deus wrote:
| I don't like this at all. The thing that bothers me is the UI
| appearance of authority. If they found a good algorithmic way to
| add context, apply it to twits themselves.
|
| Opaque assertions of authority are a dark pattern. Getting
| someone's "context" stuck on your words when it's just another
| person's opinion, but your voice has an origin and their voice is
| given an authoritative appearance without origin feels bad. It
| tricks people into being more trusting than they should.
| netfl0 wrote:
| Do you have a specific example where this is tricking people?
| Spivak wrote:
| It's not tricking people on purpose but it's trying to
| distill information that can't be distilled.
| > true but grossly misleading statement said specifically to
| capitalize on the wrong conclusion people will make about it.
| > - Every Politician
|
| Fact Checker: "seems legit"
| netfl0 wrote:
| Did you have an issue with Twitter adding the "context",
| based on their delegated authority's opinion, to tweets
| prior to this?
| Spivak wrote:
| Assuming we're in a world where fact checking by the
| platform in some capacity makes sense then this then this
| feels like the right way to do it.
|
| Another way would letting fact checking by an extension
| of the report feature where you can say, "woah this needs
| some context" and write a reply or link to your article
| discussing the issue. And the Twitter moderators just
| decide whether to show it in the privileged spot with
| attribution. Bonus if the moderators can highlight a
| person's credentials if they happen to be an expert in
| the topic or directly related to the events.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| It's not just someone else's opinion, it's agreed upon opinion.
| The alternative is the authoritative approach.
| Karunamon wrote:
| The alternative is not using the platform's voice to
| privilege viewpoints at all.
| logifail wrote:
| > It's not just someone else's opinion, it's agreed upon
| opinion
|
| Q: Agreed upon by whom?
|
| I'm reminded of this quotation:
|
| "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
| It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
|
| which The Big Short (2015) says is Twain but I gather
| probably isn't.
| zzzeek wrote:
| the most important issues are those where there is no
| agreement.
|
| i've already seen some birdwatch "fact checks" that were much
| more misleading than the thing they were "fact checking"
| blindriver wrote:
| I wonder how this can be brigaded and manipulated. Remember,
| there are millions of bots out there that can be programmed to do
| whatever they want. If you can brigade them properly, then it can
| be manipulated. Maybe that's a part of the $8/month plan that
| Elon has, make it very expensive to run bots.
| spikels wrote:
| "Payment verification" is a big part of the rationale behind
| the $8/mo plan.
|
| According to Musk bot accounts on Twitter cost less than a cent
| to create. This plan increases their cost more than 800X per
| month.
|
| He explained this at an investment conference yesterday.
| Relevant section here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgQBTo0EUxA&t=2065s
| jbverschoor wrote:
| So who's paying for free 'collaborative' research work? I guess
| it'll pay about $8 month
| codyogden wrote:
| No no no. You see? If you want to be a Birdwatch contributor,
| you'll have to pay them. /s
|
| It's actually pretty okay. The contributor & rating system
| seems to work well, and contributions are anonymous. I
| participate mostly through rating contributions a little here
| and there when I see some things that are wildly unfounded or
| misleading claims.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I dunno.. I think I'd go crazy with all the BS being posted
| these days.. It would probably make me wanna walk off of the
| edge of the earth.
| keewee7 wrote:
| >Birdwatch doesn't work by majority rules. To identify notes that
| are helpful to a wide range of people, Birdwatch ratings requires
| agreement between contributors who have sometimes disagreed in
| their past ratings. This helps prevent one-sided ratings.
|
| This means the political fringes get to decide what is truth. The
| far-left and far-right disagree on many things but also agree on
| many things that are bad for the rest of society. Until very
| recently the anti-EU sentiment in many European countries was
| high among both the far-left and far-right.
| twodave wrote:
| I think what bothers me more than anything is how often even
| fact-checkers are just wrong. We had a moderator in the last
| presidential election literally interrupting the president to
| tell him something wasn't factually correct, and the moderator
| was wrong!
|
| Fact checking should be reserved for things that are just
| provably untruthful (i.e. flat earthers and other nonsense). But
| when only applied in that capacity, it doesn't really have much
| value anymore.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Hi, birdwatcher here. I resent the implication that the time
| honored tradition and enjoyment one gets from watching birds
| could be used as a metaphor for adjudicating the integrity of bad
| actors on social media. One is a graceful reflection on the
| pristine experience of being alive, the other is a form of
| policing bad behavior. It is a shame they had to soil such a
| worthy endeavor as birdwatching with this name.
| joelrunyon wrote:
| Twitterati would have been a much more apt/fun name.
| christophilus wrote:
| Twaughtpolice?
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| Twat Police?
| z9znz wrote:
| Hi. Twatwatcher and lover here. I resent the implication
| that a twat is a bad thing which need policing.
|
| Yeah, one meaning of the word is synonymous with "fool",
| but let's not encourage overloading the word since one of
| the meanings is related to that which is necessary for
| human life (and is also quite fun) with stupid human
| behavior.
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| In my experience, having lived in a few English speaking
| countries, "twat" is commonly understood as a fool,
| whereas it's derivative "twot" can be used to describe
| either a fool or for female genitalia. So given this
| distinction, I am very much pro twot but anti twat.
|
| Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twat
| z9znz wrote:
| I get that. I am familiar with the common usage of that
| word, although I have never seen the spelling with 'o'.
| The spelling with 'a' appears in dictionaries with
| definitions including both meanings.
|
| I'm just objecting to the common usage (and also trying
| to make a joke related to the Birdwatcher objection
| above).
|
| It's fascinating and unfortunate that (slang) names for
| human sexual organs often get used as derogatory
| adjectives for people.
|
| That guy is a d-ck! She's a real tw-t. What a c-nt!
|
| Likewise, the overloading of f-ck is a shame too.
|
| Edit: fixing formatting stuff related to asterisks.
| sfmike wrote:
| Ironically It's an implication that something of which is
| policed is a bad thing.
| classified wrote:
| I've long since lost count of project/product/company names
| that hijack and overload existing terms with new, possibly
| opposite meanings. I don't like it either, but if you don't
| want that you'll essentially have to emigrate from humanity.
| synu wrote:
| Maybe some kind of sewage treatment metaphor would be more apt?
| pkilgore wrote:
| TurdPolish
| wantoncl wrote:
| GuanoWatcher
| Gigablah wrote:
| Turdwatcher rhymes better
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Then again the beautiful, pleasing sounds of birds tweeting has
| also been used as a metaphor for short form posts, many of
| which are not at all beautiful or pleasing.
| acomjean wrote:
| I guess use Birder, birding. Those are the "insider" terms. (I
| got this from how to be an imposter article by the Audubon head
| in nytimes magazine.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/magazine/how-to-be-an-imp...
| specialist wrote:
| Given that it's Twitter, I humbly suggest "bird dogging".
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Twatting.
| rvba wrote:
| How does it prevent an organized group of trolls who maek
| everything as "true". Or everyrhing from a source as "false"?
|
| Does it have some sort of a "raid" prevention? What about sleeper
| accounts made earlier to abuse this system?
| hristov wrote:
| So if it is, on one hand, "collaborative" and it expects people
| to work for free, and on the other hand there is apparently so
| much value in putting misinformation on twitter, wouldn't most
| people that work on that be paid by the various parties that want
| to put misinformation on twitter?
|
| You know how amazon reviews are collaborative and volunteer based
| and 99% of them are made for money and are easily spotted lies.
| vntok wrote:
| Paying some of those people to manipulate reviews wouldn't
| really work at scale. See here how Twitter automatically ranks
| reviews: https://twitter.github.io/birdwatch/diversity-of-
| perspective...
|
| > To find notes that are helpful to the broadest possible set
| of people, Birdwatch takes into account not only how many
| contributors rated a note as helpful or unhelpful, but also
| whether people who rated it seem to come from different
| perspectives.
|
| > Birdwatch assesses "different perspectives" entirely based on
| how people have rated notes in the past; Birdwatch does not ask
| about or use any other information to do this (e.g.
| demographics like location, gender, or political affiliation,
| or data from Twitter such as follows or Tweets). This is based
| on the intuition that Contributors who tend to rate the same
| notes similarly are likely to have more similar perspectives
| while contributors who rate notes differently are likely to
| have different perspectives.
| baxtr wrote:
| Easy. We just need a collaborative fact checking system for the
| collaborative fact checking system.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| ...and it's working as well as you might expect.
|
| https://nitter.pussthecat.org/radleybalko/status/15888941041...
| klabb3 wrote:
| Seems more like a "lies, damn ed lies and statistics" (ie the
| moderators were duped by not being statisticians) rather than a
| bad faith argument.
|
| That said, I don't get why context is necessary here, isn't
| this what... The discussion is for?
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