Reading these headlines is like living in a dystopian waking nightmare.
This is not remotely at all the role that Twitter or any other Silicon Valley tech company should play in society.
This is not remotely at all the role that Twitter or any other Silicon Valley tech company should play in society.
But most of the time people like getting content recommended. It's what consumers want.
The only reason people keep using services like Twitter is because their network keeps them there.
Yes, people say they don't want recommendations, because 95% of them are irrelevant.
But then the 5% (or 2% or 0.5%) turn out to be super-relevant, and they find new people to follow that they love, and learn about things they love, and the experience in the end turns out to be a net positive.
Their actions show that it's valuable in the end. Otherwise the feature wouldn't exist at all. Recommendations aren't advertisements, sites don't make money off them -- sites use them because people genuinely find things that lead them to use the sites more.
People aren't stupid if you don't build your UI/UX around the assumption that they are. They also like transparent, understandable algorithms. Chronological feed of (only) the people one follows is as transparent as it gets. A chronological feed with some recommendations mixed in is more opaque and confusing. An algorithmic feed is an epitome of opaqueness. Opaqueness naturally drives users away because it doesn't exactly instill confidence that their posts will reach their followers.
Another example: do you understand what the "see less often" button in Twitter does? No one does. No one likes cryptic algorithmic bullshit forced on them with no way to disable it.
Choice is very important.
> versus what they actually do.
Do manipulations work? Of course they do. Are people happy when they are manipulated? Of course they are not.
> Recommendations aren't advertisements, sites don't make money off them
They absolutely do. Recommendations aren't there because Twitter wants to be helpful — they'd be more user-respecting as I said above if that was the case. They're there because they drive engagement metrics up, and those in turn translate into someone's KPI.
Do consumers want it, or is it merely taking advantage of some more subconscious human behavior patterns. And if the latter, is this something that is bad for humankind?
Automated recommendations of a human-curated set of content - e.g. Netflix recommendations for its suite of programming - are much less objectionable, because they can't amplify anything the organization has not intentionally decided to present. It's the combination of UGC and ML recommendations that presents problems.
Do they, or do they just boost some KPI that suits proxy for actual utility?
Anecdotally even in non-tech circles most of my friends complain about how bad recommended content has gotten, or roll their eyes at whatever "personalized" ad for garbage they've been recommended.
Gigantic unmoderated platforms existing like this that promote random snippets of speech to drive user engagement and ad-revenue is a thing that shouldn't exist. The problem we still haven't solved is how to specifically kill off platforms of this type without killing forums and discussion boards in general. I think there is a distinction there but I'm not certain precisely what defines it - but if anyone figures it out please let us all know!
IMO the moment you start highlighting things that people didn't explicitly ask for, it's an endorsement.
A threshold that calls the First Amendment in the US into question.
For example foreign states that pays armies of internet trolls to in effect choose president in the US -- is that what the 1st amendment wants to happen
I think "information" can kill more people than cocaine, is more dangerous
Indeed, I mean exactly what I said: the questions you raise call the First Amendment into question.
You're saying that maybe the 1st amendment could be edited a bit so that it was more clear that such things aren't okay?
I'm thinking people interpret "free speech" in sometimes quite different ways
The appropriate situation for those that want cocaine is something similar to the rules around purchasing/possessing/using alcohol.
From an economic standpoint (increased tax revenue, reduced spending on "enforcement" and incarceration, increased economic output because fewer people are in prison, etc.) and a societal standpoint (more resources available to the 2-5% of folks who end up with dependency problems, reduced property crime, not harming communities with significant numbers of residents being pulled out of the community and incarcerated, etc.)
As such, there's no good reason for any mind altering substances to be illegal. Rather, they should be regulated and taxed appropriately.
In particular, I appreciate:
"10/2019 - Banned all political ads on Twitter, including ads from state-controlled media"
I hope Facebook employees are taking notes.
I'm also a huge fan of:
"...we will label Tweets that falsely claim a win for any candidate and will remove Tweets that encourage violence or call for people to interfere with election results or the smooth operation of polling places."
Does anyone know whether the next one is official US policy, or whether it's just Twitter's policy?
"To determine the results of an election in the US, we require either an announcement from state election officials, or a public projection from at least two authoritative, national news outlets that make independent election calls."
Mail-in ballots can arrive at the voting office as late as November 20th this year (depending on your state.. you still have to mail your ballot out by November 3rd, though) [0]. With so many people voting by mail this year, we might not know the election results until November 20th. I hope that election officials (and Twitter officials) will take that into account.
[0] https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/vote-mai...
No that's an apolitical choice.
The political choice was not doing this in 2012 when it was Obama benefiting from it.
>Colonel : But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible.
>Rose : Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander...
>Colonel : All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate.
>Rose : It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution.
The writing has been on the wall about the dangers of social media for a very long time. It's just taken this long for people with the power to even consider doing anything about the dangers to start taking it seriously.
Dystopian futures aren't hard to predict. The hard part is getting enough people to listen to the predictions to prevent them from coming to fruition.
The ability of social media platforms to spread malicious propaganda intended to incite division is incredibly dangerous. The moment where a US president has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election is absolutely not the moment to test how well society can withstand the use of social media as a propaganda platform.
Society needs a long term solution for social media--my take is that it should be shut down completely--but this is a short-term emergency and now is not the time to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Being cautious is not a virtue when erring on the side of caution may lead to tanks in the streets.
No it’s not, this is propaganda. If Facebook/Twitter wanted to tomorrow they could limit stuff in your feed to people you know IRL. This would take less than 1 sprint for top tier engineers with the right access to implement and ship.
They’re only dangerous because the real problem is social media’s hypergrowth strategies are incompatible with policies that are good for society.
Any suggestion otherwise is like oil companies encouraging end users to recycle.
Has Twitter actually read Twitter?
To pretend that they have some "democracy breaking" power in their platform of the loudest 1% of individuals that actually contribute and that this needs to be tamed with special rules to protect the integrity of elections seems like an absurd fantasy.
Either they're right and their platform can be a tool used for evil in general, in which case, why limit these rules purely to one particular federal election? Or they're wrong, and this really is just some bizarre internal marketing effort.
As a result of this, Twitter's changes won't have much effect. It still all depends on whether journalists are reporting tweets to the public, and which tweets. Even if tweets get censored by Twitter, ironically that in itself becomes "newsworthy", and journalists spread the censored tweets.
Politicians love Twitter because it allows them to say whatever they want, without having pesky reporters ask them unpleasant questions. And the reporters nonetheless report these unfiltered messages (often lies) to the public. It's basically free press, free advertising. A politician doesn't have to be invited onto a news program, they can just make "news" whenever they want, in convenient soundbites.
The ultimate danger of Twitter to society is that journalists can't resist the temptation of reporting tweets as news. Of course this is a failing of journalists, not Twitter, but Twitter is giving these people a global public unfiltered platform they wouldn't otherwise have.
it's about a tweet.
(European observer)
Regardless of their internal culture, Twitter will always have to make some political decisions.
Mostly one world leader. The rest of them seem to continue to primarily communicate through press conferences, television appearances and other fairly traditional methods.
Edit: I mean, Sundar must be an opportunist rather than an ideologist, right?
Larry and Sergey: I assume very few people know what they actually think about the big issues.
Overall, the majority has been pro gay rights since around 2004. By 2017 it was 70% for, 24% against. Breaking down by party in 2017, Democrats were 83% for, Republicans 54% for.
Women 73% for, men 66% for. White 73%, Hispanic 70%, Black 63%.
81% postgrad, 77% college grad, 66% some college, 64% high school or less.
83% 18-29, 79% 30-49, 65% 50-64, 58% 65+. See [1].
When it comes to same sex marriage, by 2019 61% overall approved. That's been above 50% since 2013, and above the percentage opposed since 2011.
Republicans still aren't majority in favor, at 44%. Democrats are at 75%.
By religion, 79% of the unaffiliated are in favor, 66% of white mainline protestants, 61% of Catholics, 44% of Black protestants, and only 29% of white evangelical protestants.
66% of women, 57% of men. 62% of whites, 58% of Hispanics, and 51% of Blacks. 74% of Millennials, 58% Gen-X, 51% Boomers, and 45% of the Silent Generation. See [2].
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2017/10/05/5-homosexual...
[2] https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...
That fact alone makes me believe this is a result of internal pressure.
In many cases, Twitter's rules have been used to suspend accounts that people thought they were supposed to protect. And Twitter has gone out of its way and contorted every rule in order to protect the President from censorship and suspension, out of "public interest", despite the fact that he has repeatedly violated the rules that would have caused anyone else to be suspended.
It's the quest for "engagement" and getting always more users and ad views that generates this situation. What can be used to sell you shoes and earphones can also be used to sell you political ideas. When the algorithm wants to show you some inflammatory and misleading political factoid because it knows that it's very likely to make you react, it's working as intended. Not because it was written by a communist, but because it was written by somebody optimizing for this metric.
As a counter example: do you think HN manages to remain mostly not completely trash because it's run by apolitical people or because it's effectively run not-for-profit? I think I know the answer to this question.
It's amusing how I've seen this "internal politic" boogeyman pop up in discussions over the past month or so. As if all the woes of the silicon valley could suddenly be blamed on those pesky "woke" devs while everybody else just tries to get the job done. This American election can't be over soon enough, everybody seems to be losing their marbles.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1310583298666696705
Edit: To clarify, he is saying the right way ahead for companies is to be apolitical, or, "mission-founded".
Coinbase offered employees not comfortable with the non-political mission-founded way exit packages:
I'm not saying that an ultra-politicized workplace can't be an issue, I'm saying that it's silly to blame this particular problem on it. The very concept of ad-supported social networks is the issue, not the political alignment of the guy who writes the CSS.
Dang will kick you off HN for all sorts of reasons - that's his right, and it's generally not 'political'.
It's hard to ban 'fake news' without maybe getting possibly political, but it's not rocket science.
There are already all sorts of things on FB and Twitter that are censored, and it shouldn't be 'political'. If you say you want to murder someone, well, then that's a problem.
Now email that's different. If you want to be a moron over completely private network, or, you want to be a moron on your own website, then go ahead.
Edit: but also good for China, and they're a lot better positioned to take advantage of this.
Second, if America eats itself, impact on Europe will be negative. There is little Europe has to gain on this and a lot to lose.
On the bright side social media is becoming so unbearable that we'll see more decentralization. It's hard to get banned from a forum when you run an instance of it yourself. And hard not to be when they are run by the mentally ill who think that saying crazy is a bannable offense for being ableist.
It isn't possible to be completely "apolitical" but you can be non-partisan. For me this isn't a left vs right or Republican vs Democrat issue, its an establishment vs everyone else issue. If this policy was in effect in 2002 and 2003 people would be getting censored and banned for disputing "the fact" that Iraq had WMD. Just a few days ago NATO members blocked the former OPCW chief from giving testimony on the (very much disputed) narratives regarding the alleged chemical attacks in Syria. You can be sure the people being blocked and censored by Twitter won't be those pushing the official US government narrative. The argument Twitter is making that, "people are too dumb to figure out what is true, so we will tell them what is true" is very dangerous when Twitter doesn't have a monopoly on the truth, and is run by people with a vested interest and belief in "establishment" narratives - no matter how questionable (or provably false) those narratives are.
As a thought experiment: imagine if Twitter did the same thing as Coinbase did, got rid of all the politicized people. Problem solved? Of course not. The problem is that Twitter has this incredible influence. Asking them not to do anything is also not neutral and not a solution, you'll end up with 4chan or gab.
Take WhatsApp in Brazil. It's been instrumental to Bolsonaro's election due to the astroturfing and dissemination of fake news by pro-Bolsonaro supporters. Do you think it's due to Facebook's employee being pro-Bolsonaro? Or Facebook itself espousing a pro-Bolsonaro stance? Of course not.
It's really missing the forest for the trees IMO.
Literally nobody was buying that Iraq had WMD. It was clear that the politicians were riling themselves up in a patriotic furvor.
The evidence was weak from day one and it was clear a propaganda machine was in play.
> Twitter doesn't have a monopoly on the truth,
I am so sick of statements like this that ultimately lead to inaction and apathy.
SOME THINGS ARE JUST TRUE AND SOME ARE NOT. There is no "two sides" to them. There is objective truth and objective lies.
This is literally false. As you said, "SOME THINGS ARE JUST TRUE AND SOME ARE NOT."
I didn't buy it myself, and there was certainly significant opposition to the Iraq invasion, but to say nobody was buying it is a huge exaggeration, unfortunately.
Bullshit isn't always, or even mostly, an outright lie. I'd go so far as to say that making shit up whole cloth is the rarest kind of deception.
I am so sick to death of hearing this "argument." Because it's irrelevant to the situation. And I'll tell you why:
In the United States,
1. Private entities are not bound by the First Amendment. That means they can host (or refuse to do so) any speech they choose, because that's the First Amendment right of all individuals and private entities;
2. The US government is forbidden to be the arbiter of speech, except in a few, clearly defined areas (advocating the violent overthrow of the government, making credible threats of violence, etc.);
3. If you don't like decisions about speech that a particular individual or private entity makes, you are perfectly free to speak out against those decisions, organize others to do so, and/or vote with your feet/wallet and don't engage with that individual or entity;
4. Unless you have a management and/or ownership role in a private organization (e.g., Twitter), you don't have the right to change their policies or speech;
5. You absolutely have the right to speak out and say just about anything, but you don't have the right to force others to host that speech on their private property. And that's a very good thing. If that weren't the case, I would have the right to blare midget furry porn or all-goatse-all-the-time projections or all manner of other offensive, hateful, disgusting things in your living room.
I'm sure many will disagree with me. If you do, please engage me in discussion in addition to taking other action -- both of which (and thank you HN for making that possible) are your free expression.
You won't get any argument about that from me.
>That’s not the style of forum people should be defending. It’s legally permissible but all types of dystopian.
I'm not defending any such forums. In fact, I avoid them like the plague.
But I do support freedom of expression.
And whether you (or I, for that matter) dislike Twitter or Facebook, or even Stormfront or the ACLU, while we are perfectly free to express our dislike, expose dishonesty or bias, recommend/create other forums and encourage others to do the same, we aren't allowed to block the speech of others.
What would you suggest as a viable alternative to the status quo?
I think Justice Brandeis[0] said it much more succinctly than I did: "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitney_v._California#Quotes
You must be very young, because this is totally false. Both political parties, every network and every newspaper was not only uniform in their belief and assertion that Iraq had WMD, they ridiculed and attacked everyone who denied this falsehood.
>Israel, Russia, Britain, China, and even France held positions similar to that of the United States; France's President Jacques Chirac told Time magazine last February, "There is a problem—the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq. The international community is right ... in having decided Iraq should be disarmed." In sum, no one doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/01/spies-l...
There should be no doubt that disputing the official narrative on Iraq WMD would have been censored by Twitter and other big tech companies that use establishment narrative as the only benchmark for truth.
>SOME THINGS ARE JUST TRUE AND SOME ARE NOT. There is no "two sides" to them. There is objective truth and objective lies.
And just who should decide what these things are, you? Twitter? The US government?
There was an incredibly harsh and damaging debate on this matter. Back then I was on the losing leftist side. We watched the Fox News broadcasts in horror.
Nowadays I find myself on the rightish side. Fox News is still insane though.
In my mind the current equivalent of the outsized influence of 2002/2003 Fox News programming is the political influence of employees of SV companies.
Somehow the common factor here is americans imposing their misinformed view of the world to the rest of the world with force, be it physical or cultural.
Maybe employees have power in Europe, but here in the United States employees have almost no power. Employment is at-will, and anyone who causes trouble for management is summarily fired.
Even management itself can be summarily fired by the board of directors of publicly owned corporations, like Twitter. Jack Dorsey is answerable to the stockholders, and also to the advertisers who generate Twitter's revenue. Not to the employees, who could all be eliminated and replaced if necessary. Jack too could be eliminated and replaced if necessary.
The only exception is Mark Zuckerberg, who set it up so that he has total voting control over Facebook and is untouchable by the stockholders. But that also means Zuck is untouchable by the employees.
The idea that SV corporations are run by the employees is a strange one.
Brace yourself then, because this election will not end on November 3rd. And the craziness we see today will be nothing compared to whats coming next. Regardless of which side "wins".
This is what a lack of will to clamp down on misinformation, and lies from the President on their platform, out of fear of being of subsequently being politically repressed has resulted in.
Twitter is twisting and contorting itself in a million knots to avoid simply banning the president's account for the damage it is causing to society, the economy, and literally human life.
The worst part is that the people in these companies rarely have any experience with traditional religion, let alone extreme/fundamentalist religion, and therefore don't see the obvious patterns used by these extreme activists. I grew up as a dissenter in a fundamentalist Christian family, and the reactions I got when I stood my ground and said that I believed in evolution and a billions year-old earth are incredibly similar to what I see when trying to argue with these extreme activists. Also similar to my fundamentalist upbringing are the subgroup (minority) of people who obviously derive immense satisfaction from their piety, and won't hesitate to condemn others in the in-group for not demonstrating their full dedication to The Mission. These enforcers fit a personality profile that is identical to what I encounter at my overly woke workplace. Recently one of these enforcers told a guy (he was raised by Polish immigrants in a poor, inner-city neighborhood of Philadelphia) that he was wrong when he committed the horrible atrocity of celebrating the purchase of his first car, and saying how he "deserved it" after all these years. She was quick to spoil the happy hour at the outdoor bar by forcing him to acknowledge his privilege.
That's all Twitter sells is ads. You can't purchase any other service from them. The only purpose of the social platform is for there to be people to serve ads to. That's not a product, that's a marketing strategy.
So why shouldn't they have a moral responsibility to curb the use of their platform to do societal harm through the dissemination of misinformation? They don't exist to provide an uncensored social platform, they exist to generate profit through advertising. If their practices do harm they should answer for it.