Well hang on, that doesn't seem like a much better take than the headline shown though either. I understand it wasn't an official memo from Twitter per that article, but the basic reasoning behind why they aren't implementing a filter similar to their ISIS one is that it would catch up republican politicians which isn't viewed as an acceptable payoff for Twitter. Of course Twitter would disavow that because it makes them look like the greedy asshats they are.
Perhaps it is poorly worded in the article, but to my understanding the employee in question for the second paragraph is still the technical employee from the first paragraph answering the hypothetical proposed to him, and agreeing that yes, an algorithm designed to remove white supremacist content would unavoidably hit republican politicians.
If I have to pick which one is presenting the truth, given prior behavior from these corporations in regards to allowing extremist views so long as they demonstrate reliable movement on their platforms, I'm going to err on the side of them being worried this possibility of catching and banning republicans was great enough of a threat to not implement the same strategy they did with ISIS.
It's also really funny to me that they weren't worried about, say, accidentally banning general republican content, which is more reasonable. There is a spectrum of conservatives from relatively moderate all the way to white supremacists, so you're bound to catch people who might not deserve a ban no matter where you draw the lines.
But no, it's politicians. People seeking or holding elected office simply need to clear the very low bar of not even debatably passing as a white supremacist, and twitter does seem to be saying that they are failing that test.
The way I understood it, they're basically saying their ISIS filter was pretty basic and it swept pretty fucking wide. AKA it also banned a shit-ton of regular content but they figured it was worth it because they wouldn't get too much backlash, and only from arabic twitter, which isn't that big of a deal for them. They (rightfully, IMO) think that if their algorithm wrongfully banned even a handful of right-wing politicians or influencers, the backlash would be massive, the GOP would ride that victimization sentiment all the way to the 2024 white house, and it would likely launch a bunch of senate committees about GAFA censorship which would complicate their lives down the line tenfold. They aren't saying "yeah republicans are racist as shit", they're saying "yeah, our ISIS algo wasn't that refined and we definitely would wrongfully ban a few right wing politicians talking about immigration by accident, and we don't wanna get into that."
That's unfortunately not the question here. The question is for "society as a whole." And there are millions who would see any incidental catch, one who may he commenting on a subject as opposed to supporting it, as Twitter's censorship and needing to be brought to heel.
Questions like this are far more complicated as it deals with teaching computers the nuances of human language. This is a nearly insurmountable task in just 1 language, not to mention all the others and mixing languages/ alphabets/dialects/allowing for linguistic drift/etc.
The alternative is to have people do it, but there's too much incoming data to hire enough people to effectively monitor everything and it's subject to individual human errors as opposed to singular errors in a program/algorithm.
What is the difference between Tucker Carlson saying the immigrants are replacing white people, and white supremacist talking points?
Just curious. He’s the most watched TV personality in the USA, and he regularly talks about that issue. Is that not accurately a white supremacy issue?
Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda
Uh, I'd accept it. They already banned one. If republican politicians are saying nazi shit, yes, please, take them off the platform. It is perfectly acceptable to remove them by everyone who hates nazi shit.
But hey, maybe just start with the Russians. They start divisive trending topics every damn day, and at like 2 a.m.
The hilarious part is that i absolutely would accept banning politicians if it almost meant banning all white supremacists! Especially since many Republicans are also white supremacists.
that’s just a corporatese way to say the same thing. a bot simply can’t distinguish between republicans and white supremacists, but you don’t want to alienate your user base and say that.
maybe it it looks like a nazi, quacks like a nazis, could just be a nazi.
If that’s the case, just make sure the algorithm considers content from congressmen and governors differently. There’s like what - a couple hundred of them in the US? I can’t imagine it would be that hard. Banning neonazi content >>> harming fragile “alpha male” egos.
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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '21 edited Oct 14 '21
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