[HN Gopher] "Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demo...
___________________________________________________________________
"Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized"
Author : kweingar
Score : 100 points
Date : 2022-11-18 18:36 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| hedora wrote:
| So, what percentage of Musk's tweets would be max deboosted?
| Examples start about halfway down the list.
|
| https://www.insidehook.com/article/tech/elon-musk-worst-twee...
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Musk's vision for Twitter has finally been realized: if you want
| to whistleblow or say not nice things about Tesla, SpaceX, or
| Musk himself, no one will see it. Nothing bad about him or his
| companies will trend on Twitter ever again.
| mabbo wrote:
| It's all about economics of demand for what Twitter is offering:
| advertising. Elon's changes have massively harmed the value of an
| ad on Twitter.
|
| Moderation teams are massively cut, meaning advertisers have to
| worry about their products beside hate speech or worse. At the
| same time, Elon is explicitly un-banning people who were banned
| for hate speech, promising that no ads will show beside their
| future hate speech- it will just show to their many many
| followers who come to the site to see that exact thing. I'm not
| certain advertisers will be encouraged by this.
|
| Engineering is massively reduced, meaning the operational
| excellence of the system is in question- what good is paying for
| ads if the site is down so often that users don't come back?
|
| And there's all of the potential issues with the SEC and other
| legal problems that aren't being addressed because Elon fired the
| teams that handled those things. No sane advertising agency is
| signing a long-term contract with Twitter. There's just too much
| uncertainty.
|
| Elon Musk is not cut out to be the CEO of a software company. The
| problem is that he is the only person that isn't aware of that at
| this point.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Exactly. This is the same thing youtube did by taking away the
| downvote count. This is all about advertising.
| pschuegr wrote:
| It seems a little unfair that people who hang out in hateful
| places get a better UX (ie no ads). If anything, they should
| generate ads for anti-hate groups and therapy providers and
| plaster the feed with them.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| > demonetized
|
| You guys are getting paid?
| Ztynovovk wrote:
| Elon "free speech" Musk.
|
| >Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized.
|
| Guess this guy finally realized that a free for all model is not
| feasible.
| googlryas wrote:
| Is there any reason to naively interpret his view of free
| speech as "anyone can say anything at any time"?
| elgenioso wrote:
| It's impossible to detect negative sentiment purely by text.
| It's an unsolvable problem.
| paxys wrote:
| Having Elon in sole control of what is or isn't acceptable
| speech is a feature, not a bug.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Presumably he's going to realize this in a couple days and
| start trying to hire back the folks who were in charge of
| moderation, etc, on the platform.
|
| The possibility that Twitter was configured the way it was
| when he bought it for a reason apparently didn't occur to
| him.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I mean that whole idea sounds extremely dystopian. You can
| only post things that the AI considers "positive".
|
| Putin is a piece of shit who bombed my family! I'm sorry
| Dave, I can't allow you to post that.
| lrvick wrote:
| As someone who specialized in this area for years in social
| media specifically, I have never seen evidence you can get
| past 80% accuracy with any known sentiment analysis method.
|
| Brute force stats like Naive Bayes is still as good as it
| gets on platforms like Twitter where speech patterns are too
| short and irregular for traditional NLP to be very useful.
| elgenioso wrote:
| Even non-traditional NLP won't work. There is no way to
| algorithmically enforce "good" speech. I agree that the
| character limitations don't help and the 280 character
| limitation is the main reason Twitter is such a mess.
|
| There are no coherent long form texts generated by AI
| models but 280 characters is very easy because people will
| give the author the benefit of the doubt and interpolate
| the missing context.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| True! How would it detect sarcasm. For eg. I love what he is
| doing to Twitter
| lrvick wrote:
| In my experience people most often convey sarcasm on social
| media with emoji and the emoji is typically the most
| informative feature.
|
| I hate my job :) -> probably loves their job.
|
| I love my job :( -> probably hates their job.
|
| Without emoji sarcasm is often hard to detect even for a
| human.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| It's exceedingly easy to detect sentiment for any human
| who cares and follows context, next to impossible to do
| automatically. "Good job Elon :)" can mean diametrically
| opposing things depending on author's views and what they
| wrote up to this moment. Same with "I love my job :)",
| etc. Employing an AI solution could cause some fun
| blunders but would likely amplify the amount of burning
| sarcasm overall.
| rcoveson wrote:
| This is wrong as often as it's right. I predect that "I
| hate my job :)" on social media really does mean the
| speaker hates their job at least 40% of the time. It's
| sort of a "this is fine"[0] smiley; the smiley _is_ the
| sarcasm while the statement is literally true.
|
| 0. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-is-fine
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Elon is doing a great job at Twitter :)
|
| What do I really mean?
| zamalek wrote:
| It's more fundamental than that. Some forms of speech can
| indirectly or directly limit the speech of others. Free
| speech absolutism in an unachievable panacea; it is a logical
| fallacy.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| I'm not following you. What can I say that prevents you
| from saying something?
|
| That would seem to violate causality.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Humans function in a society only, no one exists and
| speaks in vacuum. What someone says can encourage you to
| say something or preclude you from speaking, if you are
| not a sociopath.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| What is "cancel culture" if not people saying things that
| prevent others from speaking in the future? Either speech
| can suppress other speech, or cancel culture doesn't
| exist.
| zamalek wrote:
| That causal violation is the exact problem with free
| speech aboslutism.
|
| "You are not allowed to criticize the CCP" is speech.
|
| "I order you to kill/hang that vice president" is speech,
| and the dead don't speak.
| mh- wrote:
| That last one would already fail the Brandenburg test
| [0], wouldn't it?
|
| _(I 'm not a lawyer.)_
|
| [0]
| https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/inciting-
| to-...
| zamalek wrote:
| > Brandenburg test
|
| The Brandenburg Test doesn't apply to free speech
| _absolutism._
| erichocean wrote:
| Elon Musk has already said he supports unrestricted
| *legal* speech on Twitter, and that individual cultures
| should decide what that is for themselves, through their
| local legal system.
|
| He's not a "free speech absolutist."
| krapp wrote:
| He calls himself a free speech absolutist, and he's
| already banned parody, racist but legal (in the US)
| speech and criticism of himself and his technical
| knowledge - which is _more_ restrictive than Twitter was
| prior.
|
| As is the plan to "deboost" negative and hateful tweets -
| I'll remind the court that when Youtube did the same
| thing, many people here considered _even demonetizing and
| downranking_ content to be censorship, and antithetical
| to free speech.
| erichocean wrote:
| Elon Musk discussed this on Apr 26, 2022:
|
| > _By "free speech", I simply mean that which matches the
| law.
|
| I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
|
| If people want less free speech, they will ask government
| to pass laws to that effect.
|
| Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will
| of the people._
|
| Source:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376
|
| If you want to argue Musk's position on free speech is
| anything else, "absolute" or otherwise, kindly cite your
| sources.
| krapp wrote:
| quote for quote:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600
|
| Even if you want to dismiss this, he still isn't
| following his own principles, since again, he's clearly
| banning legal speech.
| endominus wrote:
| Except this doesn't prove the point asked. I can
| literally write your second example and in fact, I will;
| I hereby order whatever shadowy figures monitor all
| internet communications to kick zamalek off of the
| internet. There; has that in any way impacted your
| ability to respond to me? Has my _speech_ at all affected
| yours? The thing you 're actually against is the
| execution of an action, killing or hanging or whatever
| else. The basic right of freedom of speech is not that.
| This equivocation between speech and action, this
| insistence that speech itself is fundamentally harmful
| and must be controlled, censored, and limited, is pretty
| fundamentally undemocratic in ways that most actual
| authoritarians who rose to power in the past century
| would be quite familiar with.
| zamalek wrote:
| What if I followed you around and shouted my speech
| really loudly every time you tried to speak?
| endominus wrote:
| What if I had a sonic cannon that could blast a house off
| it's foundations? Is a DDoS attack speech? No. No one
| argues that in good faith. Stop justifying your
| conclusions by redefining speech to something else. There
| are actual, reasonable arguments for the limitations of
| speech - "speech is actually just any noise and people
| can play noise really loudly and that can cause hearing
| damage" is not one of them.
| zamalek wrote:
| You are restating my argument as using a sonic cannon.
| That is not what I said. I said: what happens if I
| _shout_ my _speech_ so as to obscure yours?
|
| Given the strawman, I guess that you don't have an
| answer.
| endominus wrote:
| Your argument is, abstractly, "Isn't censorship also
| speech?" My response is, no, censorship is not covered
| under free speech. This is a faulty supposition that many
| people who are generally opposed to free speech hold.
| Preventing people from hearing someone speak is self-
| evidently the most anti-free-speech act it is possible
| for a private individual to do.
| zamalek wrote:
| > "Isn't censorship also speech?"
|
| That isn't my argument at all. My argument is that for
| you to stop me from shouting over your speech, you would
| be limiting my speech. I could argue that I am shouting
| so that everyone can hear me. I could be shouting
| important things. Limiting my speech is censorship.
|
| Free speech absolutism is a paradox. The only way to
| resolve that paradox is to limit speech that limits the
| fundamental (so-called "God-given") rights of others.
| endominus wrote:
| >I could argue that I am shouting so that everyone can
| hear me. I could be shouting important things.
|
| You could argue that, yes. What you can argue doesn't
| matter. I can also, equally, argue that I am free to DDoS
| someone I don't like, because there is no technical
| limitation to my doing so, and that anyone attempting to
| stop that is inhibiting my free speech or free use of
| whatever hardware I control. Where does anyone argue
| that? Where has anyone argued this version of free speech
| that you are presenting the fallacies of? I have never
| heard even the most die-hard free speech supporter
| advocate that someone is free to follow you around all
| day, yelling to drown out your voice. And if this free
| speech absolutism is a position that no one holds, why
| are you arguing against it?
|
| >"I order you to kill/hang that vice president" is
| speech, and the dead don't speak.
|
| This started by you giving the example of an order to
| kill someone as being free speech that so-called free
| speech absolutists would logically protect. But the thing
| that is actually a problem, in that example, is that you
| are (presumably) using whatever existing power you have
| to unlawfully kill someone. The fact that someone could
| literally say those words to cause that effect in no way
| mandates that free speech advocates defend literal
| murder.
| zamalek wrote:
| > And if this free speech absolutism is a position that
| no one holds, why are you arguing against it?
|
| Musk is a free speech absolutist, by his own admission.
| His followers are likely similar.
|
| > I have never heard even the most die-hard free speech
| supporter advocate that someone is free to follow you
| around all day, yelling to drown out your voice.
|
| It's a contrived example, but despite that free speech
| absolutism allows for it.
| endominus wrote:
| >Musk is a free speech absolutist, by his own admission.
|
| I don't think his concept of free speech absolutism
| matches yours. Given the other things I've heard
| (something about moderation teams with diverse voices,
| and this news about deboosting) it seems more likely that
| you're arguing against a strawman here.
|
| >It's a contrived example, but despite that free speech
| absolutism allows for it.
|
| Does the free speech absolutism you're arguing against
| allow for sonic cannons? Doxxing? Lighting burning
| crosses on people's yards? If so, again, it's pretty far
| away from any form of free speech I've ever heard a free
| speech advocate actually... advocate for. I'm asking this
| seriously; can you point me to anyone honestly arguing
| for that as a social ideal?
|
| Edit: In fact, this topic roused some curiousity in me,
| so I went to look up what the actual philosophical roots
| of "free speech absolutism" were. The first result[0] is
| rather creepily relevant, discussing Elon Musk's bid on
| Twitter and his self-admission as a free speech
| absolutist. Very relevant to your arguments are the
| following passages:
|
| > Free speech absolutism has its roots in philosophical
| theories dating back to the 17th century, but it was
| first discussed as a defined principle by the 20th
| century free speech advocate and philosopher Alexander
| Meiklejohn.
|
| > His writing focused on the United States, and much of
| his thoughts were put forth in the context of American
| constitutional law. In fact, the very idea of
| "absolutism" - that there are certain absolute principles
| in political, philosophical, ethical, or religious
| matters - is an American idea. In theory, a free speech
| absolutist would be extremely hesitant (or refuse) to
| draw a line between free speech and hate speech in most
| contexts, and in all contexts where the speech could
| possibly be considered political speech.
|
| > This commitment to self-rule, in Meiklejohn's view,
| justified and formed the basis of the constitutional
| right to unfettered free speech guaranteed by the United
| States Constitution, and warranted its absolute nature,
| meaning it should not be weakened or watered down to bend
| to other social values.
|
| > However, his understanding didn't extend to private
| speech about issues not of public concern. So, while your
| right to publish your views about a social issue is
| safeguarded, even if others may take offense, _Meiklejohn
| believed that you can't rely on free speech protection to
| shout casual abuse at someone on the street._ (emphasis
| added)
|
| So yes, even the original, definitive free speech
| absolutist disagrees that your example is allowed by the
| principles of free speech.
|
| [0]: https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/free-speech-
| absolutist/4...
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > "You are not allowed to criticize the CCP" is speech
|
| Yes... speech I'm allowed to (and do) ignore. You're not
| making the point you think you're making.
| zamalek wrote:
| What about Chinese nationals?
| ibejoeb wrote:
| You are suggesting that in an environment without the
| right to free speech, there is no right to free speech.
|
| Back to the twitter context: if I bought twitter and
| simply did nothing at all, anyone would be free to post
| anything, because in order to stop it, I'd have to act,
| which I already said I won't do.
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| >What can I say that prevents you from saying something?
|
| Any syntactially correct but illogical thing, basically.
| The textbook example is "have you stopped beating your
| wife? yes or no, asshole".
|
| Most humans aren't very good at being rational.
| Undermining someone's capacity for correct reasoning and
| effective communication is a whole dark art - one that is
| fundamental to our entire social reality. Also known as
| "trolling", in the offline world - as "bullying", or if
| you want to be academical about it, "exercising soft
| power".
|
| Of course, it's only considered reprehensible if an
| individual does it.
| hellfish wrote:
| The people who oppose free speech always try to redefine it
| this way.
|
| Freedom of speech is freedom from censorship or moderation.
| Not freedom from discomfort
| pixl97 wrote:
| Like the discomfort from being banned from someones
| private property from saying dumb crap?
| elgenioso wrote:
| I don't think that's true. The only way to limit speech on
| an algorithmicially mediated platform is via algorithms and
| there is no algorithm that can encode non-trivial
| properties of language regardless of what the AI
| maximalists might say to the contrary.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| Free as in capital, not beer.
| mistermann wrote:
| > Elon "free speech" Musk.
|
| Is your usage of quotations marks intended to adhere to one of
| these?
|
| If so, which one, and how?
|
| If not, what is the intent of them?
|
| -------------------------------------------------
|
| https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/quotes.asp
|
| - Rule 1. Use double quotation marks to set off a direct (word-
| for-word) quotation.
|
| Correct: "I hope you will be here," he said.
|
| Incorrect: He said that he "hoped I would be there." (The
| quotation marks are incorrect because hoped I would be there
| does not state the speaker's exact words.)
|
| - Rule 8a. Quotation marks are often used with technical terms,
| terms used in an unusual way, or other expressions that vary
| from standard usage.
|
| Examples:
|
| It's an oil-extraction method known as "fracking."
|
| He did some "experimenting" in his college days.
|
| I had a visit from my "friend" the tax man.
| Ztynovovk wrote:
| They indicate how much of a clown he is.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| If you are serious, it's a common way of specifying a
| nickname.
| mistermann wrote:
| I am serious, and it is indeed that _sometimes_...but I
| wonder if that 's the intent Ztynovovk had when making the
| comment (or: what it "is" _from within the initial frame of
| reference_ , as "is-ness" is relative to the observer).
|
| I think it's fun _and informative_ to draw attention to
| cognitive functionality of humans when they are opining on
| the cognitive functionality of other humans, particularly
| in "smart" communities when the topic of discussion tends
| to exploit cultural norms and catalyze ~unforced (note:
| speculation) cognitive errors.
| Imnimo wrote:
| I'm excited to see what the new policy will be tomorrow.
| deeg wrote:
| This is a perfect example of how an algorithm will fail. I
| suppose someone could argue that your comment isn't negative
| (or negative enough to warrant de-boosting).
| guelo wrote:
| I think he's heading towards making people pay for reach to try
| to get more subscription revenue. In my opinion paying for reach
| is what started Facebook's decline, when people realize that
| "your" followers are not actually theirs they lose interest.
| gnicholas wrote:
| So how does this work of people are using the chronological view?
| aquova wrote:
| There's some interesting discussion in this thread about whether
| this is the right or wrong move for Twitter. However, after the
| debacle last night, I think it's a moot point, I simply don't see
| twitter.com still running within the next few months, possibly
| within the next few weeks. He's fired 50% of the company, reports
| seem that conservatively 50% of the remainder just quit
| yesterday, their subscription service had to be cancelled in the
| process scaring off their primary revenue source. They don't seem
| to be in any position to moderate, develop features, or, if some
| ex-employees can be believed, even keep the service running with
| who they have left. I honestly think within the next week or two
| we'll see a significant outage of the platform, and it'll never
| be brought back up to 100%, if at all. It's a stunning display of
| incompetence from the once admired richest man on Earth. So he
| can make all the policy changes he wishes, I don't think anyone
| will be around to see them happen.
| abzolv wrote:
| This is the correct take. Without the staff and institutional
| knowledge of a 16 year old service, no amount of hand waving
| will keep the service healthy. It's a stunning display of what
| not to do.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The worst aspect of twitter is the anti-fans who follow people
| just to disrupt any conversations that they're having, and the
| organized trolling groups. You could interpret this is saying
| that those people are going to be pushed out of threads, but you
| could interpret it in any way. He's really not saying anything.
|
| The organized groups and the anti-fans would be easy to automate
| discovery of. Just flag people who reply in a similar manner no
| matter what they're replying to, and cross them with voting
| rings. Declaring war on negativity and hate is pretty silly,
| though.
| paxys wrote:
| I have lost count of the number of caveats that have been applied
| daily to his "free speech absolutism". Any bets on how soon he
| will permanently ban folks like AOC and Elizabeth Warren under
| some new "policy"?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > ban folks like AOC and Elizabeth Warren
|
| If he does, look for the _exact same_ people who defended
| Twitter bans a year ago to suddenly become "free speech
| absolutists" (for a while...)
| vkou wrote:
| Nah, they'll probably still have the opinion that Nazis and
| hate speech doesn't belong on Twitter.
|
| They'll also probably still be of the opinion that equating
| those groups with EW is utterly pants-on-head bonkers.
| memish wrote:
| Hopefully not. This would bring Twitter back to where it was,
| just swapping one bias for another.
| kornhole wrote:
| The main reason some of us go on Twitter is it is where the
| politicians and other leaders tweet. It is the only place where
| we can talk back to them. This talking back is probably
| considered negative. If our voices will be silenced, I will just
| subscribe to a few of the people still there using RSS feeds. All
| real discussion will move elsewhere.
| kweingar wrote:
| Further in the thread he names some banned accounts that will be
| reinstated.
|
| A couple weeks ago, Elon said that Twitter's content policy (and
| account reinstatement) would be decided by a moderation council
| composed of people with diverse views. There have been no reports
| of this council being formed yet.
|
| Edit: why was this post flagged?
| nixcraft wrote:
| From: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673844996288512
|
| Kathie Griffin, Jorden Peterson & Babylon Bee have been
| reinstated.
|
| Trump decision has not yet been made.
| cguess wrote:
| And he misspelled two of those three names. And one of those
| accounts _he_ banned.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| The correct spelling would be "Jordan Balthazar Peterson".
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm certainly not a fan of how Musk has handled the Twitter
| takeover, but this sentiment, "New Twitter policy is freedom of
| speech, but not freedom of reach", seems highly reasonable to me,
| no?
|
| That is, what I find so awful about most social media (and places
| like YouTube) is how they focus on some of the most anger-
| inducing content for "engagement". That is, I think the problem
| is much more their algorithms than what people actually post.
|
| That said, I think that, realistically, being at the bottom of
| the heap won't actually be much different from being banned -
| which I actually think is a good thing.
| fhood wrote:
| I'm actually really pleased with how well youtube avoids
| serving you rage bait once you have made it clear to the
| algorithm you aren't interested.
| attentive wrote:
| Freedom to "yell into the void" isn't really a freedom of
| speech. They might as well post-it on the bathroom walls.
| oska wrote:
| Your 'yelling into the void' here is every yell being
| recorded and kept, every person who has a link to a recording
| being able to hear it, every person who follows a
| chronological playback of your yells being able to hear them
| all, etc, i.e. there is no 'void'.
| seydor wrote:
| I don't see a difference between censorship and
| demonetization/"deboosting". end up in the same situation via
| different means. No centralized medium can claim to do that
| seriously, it's a waste of resources and attention.
| [deleted]
| elgenioso wrote:
| This is not a solvable problem. There is no algorithmic way to
| detect speech that needs to be boosted and deboosted on social
| media because there is no way to actually algorithmically
| detect what is truthful and what is just manipulative
| propaganda and marketing.
| achenatx wrote:
| it isnt about truth or fiction, it is negative/hate tweets. I
| run a politics forum and the one rule is no insulting other
| people, groups, or positions.
|
| This makes for a very civil, but bland conversation. People
| engage with negative/hate tweets.
|
| I personally like talking politics without insults, but most
| people are incapable of it.
|
| It is easy to detect insults.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| That's a truly amazing viewpoint, I honestly can't imagine
| how one could express the solution that clearly.
|
| In case you can't guess, I'm not serious. However if you
| download a sentiment analysis model and feed it my first
| paragraph it'll claim it was positive.
|
| Sentiment analysis is a really really really hard problem,
| especially for short texts.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >It is easy to detect insults.
|
| I would fully expect the next thing for you to say is "I
| can program my own Twitter in a week"
|
| Trying to figure out language intent is just the kind of
| thing an engineer/moderator says is easy and then is in
| deep water a month later after a phrase that means "you're
| great" in one language means "you're a donkey's anus" in
| another.
|
| When you're moderating a small group it can be somewhat
| easy, everyone tends to speak the same language, and quite
| often it just falls into a groupthink that excludes
| situations like this. But when the situation scales you
| don't just have users that actively want to use the
| service, you have adversarial users that want to abuse your
| service and make it hell... and those users can be
| exceptionally clever.
| Avshalom wrote:
| >>I would fully expect the next thing for you to say is
| "I can program my own Twitter in a week"
|
| as a perfect example you just called achenatx a moron by
| implying that they would insult twitter employees by
| implying twitter is trivial.
|
| it's an insult by way of a hypothetically ascribed insult
| and there's no chance in hell that either of them would
| trigger sentiment detection because they are so context
| dependent, even worse it's cultural context not textual
| context
| tclancy wrote:
| Ok, now scale to a few hundred millions users in lots of
| languages.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Not even just language, but culture subculture too. This
| is a very difficult problem.
| lmarcos wrote:
| I don't know about English, but in other languages you need
| to know the context to distinguish "hate" speech and
| insults. If I call someone "You, motherf*er!", without
| context you don't know if I'm insulting that person or just
| acknowledging my friend who just made a great joke.
| karmelapple wrote:
| It is a solvable problem: eliminate your algorithm.
|
| Facebook and Twitter both grew very popular without an
| algorithm. Then they chased the almighty engagement metrics.
| drooby wrote:
| Quick! Someone write an AI that classifies the likelihood of
| informal fallacies.
| brookst wrote:
| 100%
| [deleted]
| root_axis wrote:
| Yeah, it's very reasonable but it's also the status quo prior
| to Elon buying twitter. Elon openly attacked twitter for its
| moderation policies and made a public spectacle about big tech
| censorship and styled himself as "free speech absolutist" in
| his own words. Now that Elon's own money is on the line he's
| completely done a 180 and is using the _exact same_ reasoning
| to defend his moderation policies as did his detractors when he
| was on the other side trashing twitter.
|
| Elon is, as usual, totally full of shit, people have a natural
| disdain for flippant dishonesty.
| nomel wrote:
| > but it's also the status quo prior to Elon buying twitter.
|
| Wasn't the status quo to ban accounts completely, due to
| individual tweets, rather than hide individual tweets?
|
| This seems much much more permissive.
| paxys wrote:
| People's problem with Twitter was always that they would
| arbitrarily decide what is or isn't acceptable speech, and
| Elon's new solution does...exactly the same thing. The only
| thing that will change now is that liberal politicians and
| views will start being targeted rather than conservative/alt-
| right ones. Is anyone here really naive enough to believe that
| this whole saga has been about "free speech"? It is simply a
| shift of power from the left to the right, financed by a
| handful of billionaires, Wall Street banks and Saudi/Qatari
| Princes.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _It is simply a shift of power from the left to the right,
| financed by a handful of billionaires, Wall Street banks and
| Saudi /Qatari Princes._
|
| If anyone doesn't believe this how those involved viewed the
| situation, read Musk's text messages that were exposed in
| court[1].
|
| [1] https://muskmessages.com/
| bb88 wrote:
| Trump and Elon have learned how to be controversial, which
| drives engagement. They literally _are_ the result of the
| algorithms that have driven engagement.
| danans wrote:
| > The only thing that will change now is that liberal
| politicians and views will start being targeted rather than
| conservative/alt-right ones.
|
| Conservative speech like "lower taxes are better", "extract
| more petroleum", and "prayer should be allowed in public
| school" were never targeted.
|
| The "conservative" speech banned were things like "LGBT
| people should have their human rights denied" and "Let's get
| together and attack the Capitol to stop the transfer of
| power".
|
| > It is simply a shift of power from the left to the right,
| financed by a handful of billionaires, Wall Street banks and
| Saudi/Qatari Princes.
|
| That raises the question of what are the "dividends" for
| those parties, regardless of the financial success of
| Twitter.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Does anyone outside of Twitter actually know what the
| criteria was for banning Tweets and Tweeters?
| danans wrote:
| Look at the history of banned accounts [1] You don't need
| polynomial regression to figure out that nobody was being
| banned for traditional, non-hate and non-violence-
| inducing conservative or liberal speech. It's mostly
| harassment, threats, impersonation and disinformation.
|
| Nobody has been banned for advocating: lower taxes,
| higher taxes, cuts to government spending, increased
| government spending, abortion rights, anti-abortion
| rights, etc.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions
| KerrAvon wrote:
| There is a joke, I don't know the origin:
|
| Conservative: I'm being silenced for my opinions!
|
| Me: lowering taxes?
|
| C: no, not that opinion
|
| M: smaller government?
|
| C: no, not that one
|
| M: which opinions?
|
| C: oh, you know the ones...
| thefaux wrote:
| > That raises the question of what are the "dividends" for
| those parties, regardless of the financial success of
| Twitter.
|
| My guess is that they see twitter as the central online hub
| of anti-capitalist ideology, which is also correlated with
| marginalized identity politics. If the bankers could nip
| that growing movement in the bud before it fully coalesces
| into something with real political power, then that would
| seem to be well worth $44B (which of course they wouldn't
| actually lose because they'd write off their losses against
| their taxes).
| recuter wrote:
| Exactly! Jerry, all these big companies, they write off
| everything!
| danans wrote:
| > My guess is that they see twitter as the central online
| hub of anti-capitalist ideology
|
| Then joke is on them because the far right is also anti-
| capitalist, but in the form of ethnonationalist socialist
| authoritarianism (Yes, there are many shorter names for
| that).
|
| Or perhaps they're actually on board with that approach
| since according to some, it works quite well in Russia
| and China.
| Avshalom wrote:
| also raises the question of who paxys thinks was funding
| tech companies before this.
| timr wrote:
| > People's problem with Twitter was always that they would
| arbitrarily decide what is or isn't acceptable speech, and
| Elon's new solution does...exactly the same thing.
|
| That was perhaps _one_ problem with Twitter, and no, this is
| not the same thing.
|
| Other, _much bigger_ problems were that they 'd arbitrarily
| block (as in: make invisible) tweets, replace them with
| "warnings" of dubious provenance, declare "misinformation"
| (often based on poor/biased understanding of the topics at
| hand; recall the _repeated_ flagging of the Cochrane
| Collaboration Twitter account last year [1]), ban accounts
| entirely after "three strikes" of this sort, and many other
| egregious acts of censorship that frequently correlated more
| strongly with political ideology than with fact or actual
| threat.
|
| Musk's comment doesn't say _how_ they 're going to decide
| what is hate speech, and that's pretty critical context here,
| so we'll see. There's obviously going to be a narrow class of
| speech that needs regulation, on any social platform. But if
| it's possible to say pretty much anything outside of this
| narrow class of content without getting banned, it would be a
| significant shift toward freedom of expression.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/cochranecollab/status/150445846882413
| 363...
|
| (Cochrane is the gold standard for medical evidence review.
| Flagging them for "misinformation" would be hilariously
| misinformed, if it weren't so scary.)
| oxfordmale wrote:
| It is unfortunately not how Twitter works. It is very hard to
| restrict freedom of reach. If you follow a person with extreme
| opinions, you will still see their posts. Even if Twitter
| managed to address that problem, there will be users that
| created curated list of Tweets of interest to their followers.
|
| ...and not to forget the mainstream media that love to refer to
| extremist tweets as it is an easy article to write.
| [deleted]
| hunglee2 wrote:
| Fumbling forward, path still unclear. Who and how is negative
| determined? Is opposing oppression considered to be negative?
| Sentiment analysis of the protest orientated tweets would
| probably deem them so
| gnicholas wrote:
| So they will treat the following two tweets differently?
|
| * down with people who believe X!
|
| * long live people who believe not-X!
|
| The line between negativity and positivity is just a matter of
| framing.
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| Spot on. The terms "negativity" and "positivity" are basically
| tools for abuse.
| gnicholas wrote:
| You mean abuse by twitter, since it introduces subjectivity
| in the decision making process?
| memish wrote:
| There's still a question of how "negative/hate" is defined and
| whether this will be transparent. I'm skeptical, but the general
| principle of discouraging and not profiting from negativity is,
| uh, positive.
| kweingar wrote:
| Negativity is an extremely broad concept. There is no chance
| that "negative" tweets will be uniformly deboosted.
|
| Will Elon deboost tweets from Ukrainians condemning Russian war
| crimes?
|
| Will he deboost his own negative tweets toward US politicians?
|
| Will he deboost US politicians' tweets criticizing the other
| party?
|
| Will he deboost tweets critical of his management of Twitter?
|
| Discouraging "negativity" necessarily means "discouraging
| negativity based on some ideological priors"
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Want to make some money? Users can pay to boost their own
| tweets. But I think that's just advertising...
| [deleted]
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| "negative/hate" will be defined by the advertisers.
| pixl97 wrote:
| They who pay the bills set the rules.
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| We have laws that define this.
|
| What changed was that a small group of technocrats took it upon
| themselves that any questioning of their ideology was "hate
| speech."
| pessimizer wrote:
| We have bad laws that badly define this. The US has done no
| better than Musk at defining "hate."
| brookst wrote:
| Disagree. We don't have laws banning hate speech. We have
| laws that allow "hate" to be an aggravating factors in
| crimes. And we have juries to determine whether the
| application of hate crime statutes is appropriate for a
| particular crime.
|
| US laws are wildly imperfect, but the laws are at least
| applied by people rather than algorithms.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Ah yes the 69th amendment - no negative speech
| paxys wrote:
| Pretty much going according to plan. Next step will be tweets
| from the political left being downranked by the
| algorithm/shadowbanned because Elon considers them "hate speech".
| cm2187 wrote:
| What does deboosted mean? Does twitter show you tweets from
| people you don't follow (and people you follow don't retweet)? Or
| does that mean you won't see the tweets from the people you
| follow?
| Whatarethese wrote:
| Shadowbanned I'm guessing. Cant have Jordan Peterson anti-trans
| tweets reaching anyone but his followers.
| socialismisok wrote:
| There goes the free speech absolutist.
|
| (FWIW, I've always believed that moderation is a good thing on
| Twitter, and that free speech absolutism is just not tenable on
| the platform.)
|
| It's been fascinating to watch this guy come in and absolutely
| crush any dissenting voices then immediately start restricting
| speech on the "free speech zone" platform of his.
| detaro wrote:
| Now I'm curious how many of his tweets would count as "negative"
| wiredfool wrote:
| Demonetized? Was anyone getting paid by twitter to tweet?
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| boole1854 wrote:
| Many commentators seem to think this is a sudden, recent
| backpedaling from a previous absolutist view on free speech.
| However, Musk has been promoting the "freedom of speech" vs
| "freedom of reach" distinction for a while, at least months
| before his takeover, including describing how such a policy
| should be implemented at Twitter.
|
| Here's one example quote from June, 2022:
|
| "I think there's this big difference between freedom of speech
| and freedom of reach in that one can, obviously, let's say in the
| United States go in the middle of Times Square and pretty much
| yell anything you want. You'll annoy the people around you, but
| you're kind of allowed to just sort of yell whatever you want in
| a crowded public place, more or less, apart from 'this is
| robbery' -- probably that would get you in trouble.
|
| "So but then whatever you say, however controversial, does not
| need to then be broadcast to the whole country. So I think
| generally the approach of Twitter should be to let people say
| what they want to do within the bounds of the law, but then limit
| who sees that..."
|
| Source: https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-china-censorship-
| twitter...
| aaomidi wrote:
| Sooooo shadow bans.
| baq wrote:
| What do you think makes HN comments worthy of reading after
| all those years
| Natsu wrote:
| The modal shadow ban is that people can't read your stuff at
| all, even if they go looking for it.
|
| This is closer to the HN model where you can see it if you
| really want to via showdead.
| mr90210 wrote:
| You bet!
| [deleted]
| nomel wrote:
| It is per tweet, not per account. How is this a shadowban?
| shapefrog wrote:
| I thought shadow bans were bad ... its all very confusing.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| I like the idea of having personal filters on the receiving
| end, sort of like how I can decide to search Google using "Safe
| search: Moderate" or no safe search filtering.
|
| And I guess it makes sense to de-promote poisonous speech,
| since our primal brains have a tendency to naturally amplify
| and accord outsized importance to hate, outrage and other
| strong negative emotions, although those are mostly hugely
| detrimental to civil society.
|
| Social harmony is underrated in the West. We're all willing to
| sacrifice our social fabric - and thus ultimately our averaged
| personal happiness - in favor of individualism. A social system
| like Twitter should have systems and patterns that correct for
| our flaws here.
| hooverd wrote:
| Confusingly, that's what all the free speech absolutists spend
| their time yelling about. The right to not speak in the public
| square but have a megaphone.
| lliamander wrote:
| I disagree. What the free speech side is arguing is that by
| trying to restrict "reach" you are trying to prevent
| interested consumers of that speech from ever hearing it.
|
| The prime example is when someone's tweets don't show up in
| the timelines of subscribers. People who specifically what to
| hear that speech never get a chance to.
| blitzar wrote:
| Deplatforming is simply a form of limiting reach, a twitter
| ban isnt an internet ban
| luckylion wrote:
| And disallowing someone to live on earth isn't a death
| sentence. They can always migrate to Mars.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Why not just ditch the algorithms.
|
| Go back to what twitter was in the beginning: you see the
| tweets of people you follow. That's it.
| nomel wrote:
| I don't want purely that, because I end up drowning in
| uninteresting tweets from everyone I follow. I want to see
| notable tweets, from the people I follow, because I don't
| care if they're eating a sandwich.
|
| I also want to see tweets I would find notable/interesting,
| from people I don't follow, if I knew they existed. An
| algorithm would help with that suggestion.
|
| What I really want is Spotify's "Discover Weekly", and "This
| song's radio", but in Twitter.
| phphphphp wrote:
| That analogy doesn't really fit with the model of Twitter. If
| we are using the town/time square example, what Elon is
| describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling
| box around the people saying "bad" things so that nobody can
| hear them.
|
| A message spreads on Twitter because individuals on Twitter
| amplify it (with engagement, retweets etc.) which is itself a
| form of speech: if you say something bad, and I retweet it, I
| am engaging in speech. Imagine a piece of land with 500 million
| people on it: a person 500 million people away from you cannot
| hear you, but if you say something and people choose to repeat
| it until it reaches that person... that's Twitter. To prevent
| that is, in any framing, limiting free speech.
|
| Twitter has some magical engagement-driving algorithms (for
| example, the homepage) but these are not the primary driver of
| engagement/reach on Twitter, so they could be removed entirely
| and this problem would remain.
|
| So you're probably right to say this isn't a sudden 180 on his
| thoughts, but it still highlights how faulty his framing of
| free speech is.
| nicbou wrote:
| Where would you set the line of the right to reach? Would it be
| fair to say "not on my platform"?
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Sounds reasonable. I'm a bit of a free speech absolutist, so I
| say no to censorship no matter how insulting the content may be,
| but that doesn't mean anyone is required to amplify anything.
|
| The argument I hear most often from pro censorship people is that
| it's not as simple as having a voice, your voice is amplified by
| algorithms on these sites, you're giving someone a megaphone.
| This decision appears to solve that problem while not censoring
| anyone. I'd say a shadow ban would go too far, but just not
| promoting it sounds like a reasonable compromise.
| socialismisok wrote:
| What is a "negative tweet" or a "hate tweet"? Those two concepts
| sure seem ambiguous. Hate tweet, I suppose, is marginally easier
| to understand than a hate tweet, I guess...
|
| But what does this mean for like, the Babylon Bee or The Lincoln
| Project? I'd say both of them can be negative at times.
|
| What does it mean for libertarians or anti capitalists who are
| strongly averse to the way things are run today?
|
| (I deliberately tried to highlight that this sort of change could
| impact people of various political persuasions, trying to not
| "pick a favorite" by only showing how this could impact my
| "team".)
| minimaxir wrote:
| Note that this is the dictionary definition of shadowbanning,
| which is the primary thing the free speech advocates on Twitter
| were hoping Elon would _stop_ Twitter from doing.
| Hamuko wrote:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517716718382166016
| JamesianP wrote:
| I thought the point of shadowbanning was to trick the poster
| into thinking their posts were visible while they were hidden
| from everyone else.
|
| Here it seems like the poster and anyone else can directly
| search for the poster's account or the "filtered" post and
| still see it. But I guess the tags won't work. Kind of a middle
| ground. Perhaps they will explicitly remove/block the tags so
| the poster knows this is happening, which at least isn't
| tricking them.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| > But I guess the tags won't work. Kind of a middle ground.
| Perhaps they will explicitly remove/block the tags so the
| poster knows this is happening, which at least isn't tricking
| them.
|
| To clarify, Musk said nothing whatsoever about tags. Another
| read of Musk's tweet is that your timeline won't show tweets
| with a negative sentiment analysis score.
|
| Given recent events, I'm reluctant to assume Musk's vague
| goals will be implemented in the narrowest and most delicate
| way possible.
| [deleted]
| leereeves wrote:
| No, as explained in the thread following that tweet: "Note,
| this applies just to the individual tweet, not the whole
| account"
|
| Shadowbanning applies to accounts.
|
| Also, nowhere in that thread does it say that the user won't be
| told the Tweet was demonetized, which _is_ the dictionary
| definition of shadowbanning.
| oska wrote:
| I'm a Free Speech advocate. What I hoped Elon would do is stop
| the permanent banning of people from the platform and the
| removal of tweets. He appears to be at least somewhat
| delivering on that hope. Having a tweet 'deboosted' rather than
| completely removed and the tweeter also permanently removed is
| a substantial improvement.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| It also virtually requires human content moderation who, as
| we've seen time and time again, will classify more and more
| conservative opinions as "negative/hate" and fewer and fewer
| liberal opinions. So in other words, Jack Dorsey's Twitter all
| over again.
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| People have been seeing it as one big moderation problem and
| it's a bunch of smaller problems, plus the problem of people
| actively gaming the system and operating at large enough
| scale for it to always be bigger than humans can handle.
|
| But that's only true when you delete posts and block users.
| It makes mistakes so costly (and with machines being so
| easily manipulated) that we need to run too many decisions
| past people because our decisions here are making huge impact
| at a personal level for those involved.
|
| But if you're willing to accept " _hidden at default-browse-
| level_ " wrongly appearing every now and then it becomes
| totally solvable.
|
| We were trying to scale fact-checkers and playground-nannies
| but the trick is to get rid of those roles and use users to
| flag what users like and/or don't like directly. You can do a
| staggered release to previously critical people, and known-
| objective people, once a few posts have been flagged.
| datastack wrote:
| The difference between hiding a particular problematic tweet
| and all tweets of an account is important though. It seems Elon
| refers to the former, while shadow banning refers to the
| latter. Let's hope it is so.
| BryantD wrote:
| Is there clear evidence that shadowbanning existed on Twitter?
| Misunderstanding eventual consistency doesn't count. I'm not
| going to be surprised if there is real evidence, I've just
| never seen any.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| That's a good point. But I think also what mattered are how the
| content policies are enforced. I think Musk misread the
| situation. I do believe Twitter was biased about bans
| previously but that is because its user base wanted those bans.
| Social media apps tend to have a specific target demographic.
| In that sense, Twitter was not really in the "public town
| square" business but the memes and speech business of a
| specific demographic. It's not surprising there is an exodus
| from Twitter now that Musk has shown no loyalty to that base.
| Yes, it's petty but I've seen far worse on the internet. If
| Musk wanted something different he should have spent less money
| making a new app.
|
| I am not trying to provoke a flame war here either actually if
| it comes off that way. I think the business of social apps is
| trendy and you have to know your audience.
| nimbius wrote:
| Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is the sort of damage
| control id expect to see from someone only peripherally aware of
| or involved in their businesses accountability or strategic
| operations. This concern from advertisers has existed far too
| long for an executive action to have any meaning. the marketing
| conference call on november 3rd was your red flag where
| advertisers voiced their displeasure with firing large swaths of
| the content moderation team. The checkmark fiasco that wiped
| billions off corporate ledgers on a friday of active trading left
| a pretty sore spot with them as well that you never seemed to
| completely address. To corporations looking at this release today
| youre just some guy dragging a plumbing fixture through the lobby
| of your new office demanding hardcore work and cutting staff and
| --lets be honest-- at least Chainsaw Al Dunlap made stockholders
| rich in the process of scorching earth. So far youve just made
| the entire platform look like the bombing of dresden.
|
| by the 14th most reasonable advertisers had paused their spend if
| not backed out entirely.
|
| but after the bombshell office lockout and mass exodus _today_?
| to think a ToS change with a skeleton crew of H1B 's and lifers
| that arent even allowed at their desks is going to reverse the
| course of decline is farcical. This is the kind of massive
| failure that triggers disaster recovery plans. This ship is
| sinking, and whatever life thats valued on it will either jump
| ship to a competing platform or Mastodon. You took a 44bn USD
| risk and managed to absolutely destroy any credibility in your
| leadership in under a month. At this point its best to hope
| markets dont start reconsidering your other companies as risky
| business.
| notadev wrote:
| Please stop spreading the falsehood that Eli Lilly lost
| billions because of a fake verified tweet.
| https://medium.com/@westwise/did-twitter-just-take-8-billion...
| littlestymaar wrote:
| A discussion about viral tweets and stock price collapse that
| doesn't address the topic of high frequency trading bots? And
| written by a PhD in bioinformatics, who gives zero evidence
| of his claims. Why should we pay attention to his argument?
| dekhn wrote:
| is that all your evidence?
| automatom wrote:
| Even if it is, he's right. Although this is anecdotal, I
| have a friend who works in finance that said the drop in
| stock was coincidental to the stock price dropping.
| Apparently pharmaceuticals are a defensive sector in a bear
| market, and the market popping up last week meant the price
| of Eli Lilly dropped, as I understand it. In his words that
| tweet causing the stock to drop was "fake news"
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| mbreese wrote:
| There is never going to be a way to conclusively ascribe
| the drop in stock price to any one event. However, the
| act of pointing out the high cost of insulin to a large
| audience _not_ causing a drop in stock price would be
| highly suspect. I personally doubt it was the Tweet
| itself that caused the drop. No one should /would have
| believed it was an actual statement by Eli Lilly.
|
| But in a bear market, this bad publicity about the high
| price of a mandatory medication for a large population is
| likely going to have an effect.
|
| Or it could have also been a coincidence... there's no
| way to know.
| theonething wrote:
| > bad publicity about the high price of a mandatory
| medication for a large population is likely going to have
| an effect.
|
| I know this is orthogonal to the stock price drop, but
| this kind of bad publicity (gouging sick people in need
| of your product) actually turned out to be a good thing
| for the public and for overall justice.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > I personally doubt it was the Tweet itself that caused
| the drop. No one should/would have believed it was an
| actual statement by Eli Lilly.
|
| Your second sentence is probably true, but the first one
| is questionable.
|
| It's well-known that there are high-frequency stock
| trading bots which watch Twitter, news headlines, etc.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| High frequency trader bots watch random accounts? That
| seems like a bad strategy. Maybe they're watching news
| headlines - but that seems like a media problem where a
| storm of articles about nothing drive the very story they
| are talking about.
| root_axis wrote:
| Is it false? At best I think we can say it's unclear, but Eli
| Lilly seem to take it seriously since they pulled all their
| ad spend from twitter in response.
|
| https://seekingalpha.com/news/3907399-fake-free-insulin-
| twee...
| pannSun wrote:
| Advertisers sure have a lot of influence in what gets
| published. Perhaps it's time to look critically at that.
| They're certainly the last group of people I'd trust with...
| anything. Their job is literally to manipulate people, yet
| somehow they became the arbiters of morality and
| permissibility.
| rchaud wrote:
| > Perhaps it's time to look critically at that.
|
| What is there to look at? If you want other people's money,
| chances are it'll come with strings attached.
| tejtm wrote:
| It has to be deliberate. I have never been on twitter, and have
| not even been able read incidental twits that get pushed my way
| since they required JS. So it is truly a non issue one way or
| the other for me. But I can not see any possible goal except to
| not only destroy the particular company but to further destroy
| the idea of something like it as viable.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I've seen a lot of people comment, especially on Twitter, about
| "The checkmark fiasco that wiped billions off corporate ledgers
| on a friday" - but it's completely untrue.
|
| Eli Lilly was the pharmaceutical company that attracted the
| most attention. Their stock was down 4% the day of a fake
| tweet. But pharmaceutical companies were down generally that
| day, some as much or more than Eli Lilly. Lots of companies had
| fake tweets written about them - some had good days on the
| stock market, some had bad - almost like stock market prices
| are a random walk day to day, sometimes up and sometimes down.
|
| From a common sense perspective it's pretty implausible that an
| obviously fake tweet could shift market perceptions by billions
| of dollars. I don't think that really happened at all.
|
| I also don't see why advertisers would care about the office
| lockout or layoffs. Advertisers certainly don't want their ads
| running next to offensive content, but if Musk can control that
| - why should advertisers pull out?
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| > At this point its best to hope markets dont start
| reconsidering your other companies as risky business.
|
| I think this is inevitable.
|
| One, Elon is trying to prop up Twitter by using SpaceX money to
| buy ads. He's dipping his hand into other companies to keep his
| new toy afloat for a while longer. I don't know if the word
| "contamination" is appropriate here, but it's pretty clear that
| Elon doesn't see any kind of sharp boundaries between his
| various enterprises.
|
| And two, I think a lot of _customers_ are going to start
| rethinking Elon 's offerings. Tesla used to be a status symbol.
| Driving one meant you were forward thinking, that you were on
| the bleeding edge, and probably conscientious about the
| environment. Now, Tesla is "that company Elon owns." There is
| no way this doesn't hurt Tesla's bottom line, and there's no
| way investors don't realize this.
|
| All Elon had to do was shut up and bask in the accomplishments
| of others, but he couldn't manage to take his own ego out of
| it. Will it ruin him? Probably not. We he still be the richest
| man in the world in a year or two? Also probably not.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Why does SpaceX need to advertise on twitter? Who there is
| going to be buying their services?
|
| Come to think of it, why does SpaceX need to advertise at
| all? Those who need to launch rockets already know who can do
| it.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Starlink, not rocket launches
| snoot wrote:
| lapcat wrote:
| > Tesla used to be a status symbol. Driving one meant you
| were forward thinking, that you were on the bleeding edge,
| and probably conscientious about the environment.
|
| I hate to break it to you, but generally only other Tesla
| owners feel that way. Otherwise, I doubt the public does. In
| fact, I personally feel the opposite, that's it's a symbol of
| a "techbro".
| Kye wrote:
| Correct. All of my few encounters with a Tesla in the wild
| were a near accident. That + the attitude I see from Tesla
| fans online cement a negative view.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| My partner was sideswiped by a Tesla engineer testing
| Autopilot. Tesla's insurance did pay for the damages,
| FWIW.
| [deleted]
| fhood wrote:
| Could we avoid participating in this? The price hikes were
| pretty brutal, but tesla and their charging infrastructure
| are still at or near the top of the list when it comes to
| electric cars that you can actually purchase, at least from
| the perspective of someone looking to replace their ancient
| mazda in the next year or so.
|
| Also people don't deserve to be judged by their car unless
| it is a modern german luxury car in which case they
| obviously are the kind of person who makes bad life
| choices.
| bb88 wrote:
| Elon deserves a lot of credit for Tesla. But now I'm starting
| to hear the term "Muskmobile" bandied about when people refer
| to his car. It's not like Tesla is the only game in town
| anymore either.
|
| In a weird tangent, I've been thinking about the TV Show "Ted
| Lasso", and why it's so popular lately. Ted Lasso is the
| exact opposite of Elon Musk, even to a fault. People don't
| care if Elon succeeds anymore, but they do want Ted Lasso to.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Electric Jesus deserves credit for not firing the right
| people and shit a muskmobile that works eventually !
| jen20 wrote:
| "Magamobile" is the name I've been hearing. Unfortunate
| timing for Tesla really given that their early mover
| advantage has been basically eroded at this point.
| INGSOCIALITE wrote:
| What accomplishments of others? They took a simple database
| driven tweet index, that just showed tweets as they were
| posted, and turned it into a politically polarized echo
| chamber. They created dozens of internal social "teams" to
| ensure their algorithm blocked what they didn't like and
| showed only what they liked, and destroyed any actual
| discourse that was on the site at all. Elon likes the CONCEPT
| of Twitter, sees how simple it is once you strip away the
| shackles of the algorithm, and has money to burn. He's still
| unfathomly rich after the acquisition. Let him do what he
| wants. Let him shut it down for good. Who cares? It's his to
| do so with.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I don't know if the word "contamination" is appropriate
| here, but it's pretty clear that Elon doesn't see any kind of
| sharp boundaries between his various enterprises.
|
| Even without "contamination", TSLA stock price collapsed by
| over $100+ because Elon Musk predictably sold $Billions of
| stock to pay for the TWTR buyout. Its not like $33 Billion
| came out of nowhere. Elon had to sell TSLA to get that money.
|
| If TWTR keeps losing money, Elon will be forced to sell more
| and more TSLA stock to keep it afloat.
|
| And this is all the legal / ethical way of doing things. No
| "contamination" in just selling stock to support another.
| Even then, we can see the huge drop in TSLA stock prices
| (compared to the rest of the market, which rebounded in the
| past few weeks on good inflation data).
| mbreese wrote:
| Random thought -- is it a conflict of interest to sell so
| many shares, knowing that it will have a major impact on
| share price? If you know your personal actions (needing to
| sell a lot of TSLA shares to buy Twitter) will have an
| impact on your professional responsibilities (keeping the
| TSLA share price high), when does that become a conflict?
| Is there a way to mitigate that conflict?
| dragontamer wrote:
| That's the board's problem. Normally, you're not supposed
| to have the largest shareholder, CEO, and Board Chair be
| the same person.
|
| SEC forced Elon off the board chair at least. But yeah,
| its a well known fact that Tesla's setup is full of
| conflicts of interest. It doesn't seem like the
| shareholders (or the board) feels like fixing it though.
| [deleted]
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| So free speech absolutist is starting to adapt rules which are
| roughly similar to Twitter's current rules. And those rules are
| existing for a reason, rules don't popup from a thin air. What a
| surprise...
|
| Now he will figure out that the bloat of microservices and
| employees was there also for a reason.
| fsckboy wrote:
| a person who holds free speech absolutism as a value, trying to
| navigate a compromise with advertisers is a far sight better
| than a person who does not believe in free speech.
|
| It is not true that what twitter was doing was already the
| inevitable perfect compromise, or that advertisers were
| demanding that the sitting POTUS be banned even though SCOTUS
| had ruled people had a right to interact with him on twitter.
| krapp wrote:
| Either you believe free speech is absolute or you don't. If
| you're willing to compromise on those principles with
| advertisers, you don't.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > those rules are existing for a reason
|
| If they had applied the rules consistently, they'd be
| reasonable enough, but they never did or even particularly
| tried. I don't have any hope that Elon will, either, though.
| root_axis wrote:
| "apply the rules consistently" is like "unbiased journalism",
| it is an impossible standard that literally nobody adheres
| to. Further, anyone claiming intentional bias in moderation
| behavior is just making it up because there are thousands of
| moderation decisions made every day, the details of which
| they are not privy to.
| pixl97 wrote:
| For profit businesses will _never_ apply rules consistently,
| there is too much profit in inconsistency. Hell, anything ran
| by humans, in by belief, is incapable of applying any set of
| complex rules consistently. Individuals can 't even apply
| moderation rules consistently as our emotions and how we're
| feeling on a particular day can dictate what we ignore and
| the punishments we choose.
| ProAm wrote:
| What is not discussed is who decides what is negative and what is
| hate? (or what is parody). No one is going to disagree that hate
| speech has no place, but who is the watcher and who is the
| decider? Probably a bot.
| phailhaus wrote:
| Oh great, more unaccountable black-box "algorithms" that
| invisibly classify your tweets. Machines can't detect satire,
| they don't understand nuance or context, they don't understand
| tone. This will affect platform speech in strange ways as people
| naturally attempt to evade the algorithm.
|
| Twitter needs a dislike button. Every social media platform needs
| a mechanism for explicit negative feedback. Yes, people will use
| it to downvote ideas they don't like. Yes, it will come with its
| own challenges. That's how real life works. It doesn't make that
| speech disappear, it just deprioritizes it.
|
| Given that he already wants to do this, it's better to let humans
| have input than to pretend as if algorithms know what's best for
| us.
| 35amxn35 wrote:
| No, there should be no like nor dislike button. Just number of
| replies.
|
| 4chan does this and it works surprisingly well.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > Twitter needs a dislike button.
|
| This IS twitters dislike button.
| phailhaus wrote:
| No it isn't. It's an algorithm using rough sentiment analysis
| and god knows what else to judge your tweet, unaccountably
| and invisibly. "I hate mondays" I tweet. Whoops! Tripped the
| "negative tweet detector" and my tweet is deprioritized!
|
| No problem you say, let's just tweak the detector to let that
| through. So you're going to write exceptions? What happens
| when "mondays" becomes some sort of code word for racial
| epithets? How do you detect that? This has happened before,
| look up what happened to r/clownworld.
|
| This is straight up an unsolvable problem. You need human
| labeling, which is what a dislike button accomplishes.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| How do you know it will be an algorithm? He did not even
| say how it would be implemented yet. It may be a dislike
| button.
|
| FWIW, I do not like the dislike or like buttons.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Twitter has a dislike button .. for replies.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| You know this is all about the advertisers. He does not want to
| make Twitter better for people, he wants to make it better for
| corporate advertisers.
|
| This is the YouTube "Dislike" button for Twitter.
| 6510 wrote:
| This is like when you set up a forum for the first time and have
| all of these weird moderation ideas.
| boringg wrote:
| Hasn't he figured out that whatever the rules end up people will
| game them for their own benefit? Dynamic system next to
| impossible to police.
| [deleted]
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| I'm looking forward to seeing new forms of sarcasm evolve.
| rojobuffalo wrote:
| what's the difference between a valid criticism and negativity?
| it would be hard enough to identify "hate", but "negative"...that
| leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
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