Ethical bot-making | Hacker News Reader

Ethical bot-making

mewo2.com

43 pointshomarp13 comments

I was expecting a little more out of an article with a title like that, this piece is a lot of fluff that can be summarized as "be nice".

Yes, and "don't hurt people". Worse, I don't even think those are sufficient as guiding principles. In the real world many ethical situations are not best solved by being nice or refusing to hurt someone.

How about not hurting people unnecessarily? One might say, "well, bots are not necessary, so they shouldn't ever hurt someone." If they aren't necessary, then why make them to begin with? Besides, there is no end to what someone else may determine to be hurtful. I won't play the game of trying to avoid all that is hurtful to everyone else.

The article mentions a bot using racial slurs as something to avoid. Depending on the execution, this could be distasteful at best--assuming the intention of the creator was to have the bot use these slurs. But the use of slurs by bots has largely been unintended by my reckoning. So, you are telling me someone is genuinely hurt by a malfunctioning bot using a racial slur? That says a lot more about the user than it does the creator.

There may not be much in the article itself, but the "Further Reading" list is a great summary of good work that's been done to date by others.

Is there a dictum in journalism to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable"? That seems to be antithetical to what journalism's original mission of reporting facts and letting the public decide (yes, I know this bares little resemblance to most modern journalistic styles). That style of reporting seems motivated towards a specific narrative, which is less than impartial. I might be wrong on what journalism's mission is and would like to hear opinions.

I'd say the "original mission" depends on what you pick as the start of journalism, with the first written collections of news published by the state as a way of spreading its views on current affairs.

There are more facts in a day than would fit in a million newspapers. You have to make choices. Which news will you report? Who will you interview, and which sources will you consult? Which ones do you even have access to? Which ones will you still have once you publish this week's story?

Impartiality in journalism is a myth invented by those propping up the status quo. The most you can be is honest.

Impartiality is a scale, not an absolute. You can be more or less impartial even if you can't be perfect at it.

Saying its not possible to be (more) impartial is propping up the divisive partisan journalism we have today.

Do you consider The Economist to be part of the divisive partisan journalism we have today? Because they are explicitly partial in their approach to journalism, promoting specific values and viewpoints: https://www.economist.com/help/about-us

Partiality is not the same as partisanship or sectarianism.

I couldn't say, I'm not familiar enough with their work to have an opinion.

When I read the news, I want to know what happened in the world - I don't want to read it through the lens of the journalist. If there was a skirmish between Israel and Hamas, tell me that. Explain the events as we understand them, without spinning them to fit into a political narrative. What I dislike is when the Guardian reports it as Israel oppressing innocent Palestinians and Fox News reports it as a terrorist attack on unsuspecting checkpoint guards. People in the left-leaning tech industry tend to interpret this as "Fox News always lies" but from what I've seen it's more like both sides lie and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The real world is murky and complicated and political issues are very rarely black-and-white (if they were, there wouldn't be 2 sides). When journalists simplify a story to pander to bias, it promotes black-and-white thinking and I believe that's extremely harmful to meaningful political engagement.

[edit]

> Partiality is not the same as partisanship or sectarianism.

OK sure, I'll grant you that. The latter is what I take issue with. Reporting from a perspective is to be expected, a social commentary journal would focus on different facts from an economics or a culture journal and you'll have other differences. My issue is basically how political reporters spin stories.

Just found what seems to be a solid source [1] on the origin of the phrase. And it delivers. It was a sarcastic condemnation of the media pointing out the hypocrisy, misinformation, and so forth regularly printed in papers. It comes from one of his writings of Finley Peter Dunne. The whole book ("Observations by Mr. Dooley") is available here. [2]

"Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce

an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, conthrols th' ligislachure,

baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted,

afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward.

They ain't annything it don't turn its hand to fr'm explaining

th' docthrine iv thransubstantiation to composin' saleratus biskit.

Ye can get anny kind iv information ye want to in ye'er fav'rite

newspaper about ye'ersilf or annywan else. What th' Czar whispered

to th' Imp'ror Willum whin they were alone, how to make a silk

hat out iv a wire matthress, how to settle th' coal sthrike, who

to marry, how to get on with ye'er wife whin ye're married, what

to feed th' babies, what doctor to call whin ye've fed thim as

directed,--all iv that ye'll find in th' pa-apers."

Dated 1893. It's so interesting that our problems with media feel so new and even seem attributable to the digital era, yet they are literally centuries old. The digital era just brought everything to an extreme since there's more media than ever before and more people consuming it than ever before. That somebody would take a self contradictory piece of rhetoric and state it as genuine advice... well, who needs critical thinking when you have critical theory.

[1] - https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2014/today-in-medi...

[2] - https://ia802302.us.archive.org/24/items/observationsbymr047...

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