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Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:35 pm
by Little waster
Chris Preston wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:27 pm
This is the same Representative that was using Twitter during the Capitol invasion to report on the whereabouts of Nancy Pelosi.
Mr F.B Iers has entered the chat.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 11:21 pm
by Chris Preston
Stranger Mouse wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:34 pm
Chris Preston wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:27 pm
This is an idea that Trump has adopted from his Qanon followers. I suspect their thinking went that if Section 230 was removed, Twitter et al. would be forced to publish all their nonsense. They clearly haven't thought about the alternative, that Twitter et al. could adopt a fully moderated model where all posts are moderated before going live.

They are aware, because they have done it at multiple venues, that in an unmoderated environment they are able to bully all their opponents off. That is what they want. It is indeed ironic, that these people are going on and on about free speech, but it is only their speech they want to be free.

On a side note, one of the Qanon Republican Representatives, Lauren Boebert, has been blocking her constituents on Twitter who ask difficult questions, even though social media accounts of Senators and Representatives are considered limited public forums. This is the same Representative that was using Twitter during the Capitol invasion to report on the whereabouts of Nancy Pelosi.
I would put dirty Russian money on the chance that she is being referred to here https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/ ... 78506?s=21
While Boebert is way out there, she is not the nuttiest member of the Republican Congress. Don't know if she was also on Parler. That would be the give away in terms of inside knowledge.

ETA. Westword tells me that Boebert had a Parler account and encouraged her Twitter followers to follow her there.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 11:25 pm
by Stranger Mouse
Yeah I had a look at her Parler account and it seemed to be identical to her Twitter account

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:43 am
by Millennie Al
bolo wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 4:01 am
I'm still not sure I understand what point you're trying to make.

If a company exercises complete editorial control, like a newspaper publisher, then it's liable for what it publishes. If a company exercises no editorial control at all, like a telephone network, then it's not liable for what other people say using its platform. Before Section 230, the position was that Internet platforms were, or were feared to be, liable for anything they carried because they exercised some editorial control, even though it was limited.

The point of Section 230 is to allow some moderation, without creating full liability. That isn't because it's "often the case with actual legislation"; it's because it's the entire point of the provision.
The significance is that Internet services cannot operate without at least some form of moderation. Unlike a telephone service or postal service, a completely unmoderated Internet platform gets overwhelmed with spam. This is as a result of how cheap the Internet makes it. Robo-calling and junk mail afflict the phone system and the postal system but, while they are found to be very much of a nuisance, the economics of the service means it never gets so bad as to threaten the viability of the service itself. There are two problems with any level of moderation - legal and political. Legally, it creates a risk of being held liable for all content, while politically it makes it very easy for a provider to be blamed for not doing more - which puts them in an impossible position as the more they moderate the bigger the legal risk. Section 230 was intended to provide a shield which would effectively restore the status quo by ensuring that minimal moderation, such as getting rid of spam, would not result in legal liability. However, it didn't simply do that, because that would not allow unconstitutional censorship, so the Communications Decency Act which it was part of went further and had to be taken to the Supreme Court to get fixed.
And I wouldn't describe subsequent changes to the law as "eroding" anything. They've adjusted the terms of the compromise -- how much moderation is allowed, and what kind, and what sorts of liability are excluded from protection, but all within the same basic framework that Internet platforms are somewhere in the middle between the fully liable newspaper publisher and the not-liable phone company.

An important point is that because U.S. constitutional protections for free speech are so broad, a lot of social media moderation would be illegal under the First Amendment if the government attempted to require it, rather than leaving it to a company's discretion.
The constitutional protections are deliberately broad and are supposed to cover things that many people find offensive, such as p.rnography. It is perfectly clear from the subsequent legislation that the intent and effect of such legislation is to narrow the protections to exploit technological change to undermine the value of the protections.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:45 am
by Millennie Al
Herainestold wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 4:04 pm
What is the legal situation in the UK?
Very bad. The UK is a popular choice of venue for people wanting to suppress publication of material.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:49 am
by Millennie Al
Chris Preston wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:27 pm
This is an idea that Trump has adopted from his Qanon followers. I suspect their thinking went that if Section 230 was removed, Twitter et al. would be forced to publish all their nonsense. They clearly haven't thought about the alternative, that Twitter et al. could adopt a fully moderated model where all posts are moderated before going live.
It is impossible to run a service like Twitter with pre-moderation. The volume of content is far too big. The key to a successful platform is to have hugely more users than staff, so that a trivial revenue per user pays for the staff. That means that you have absolutely no chance of having your staff even read all the content - never mind assessing it against guidelines.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 7:37 am
by Woodchopper
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:49 am
Chris Preston wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:27 pm
This is an idea that Trump has adopted from his Qanon followers. I suspect their thinking went that if Section 230 was removed, Twitter et al. would be forced to publish all their nonsense. They clearly haven't thought about the alternative, that Twitter et al. could adopt a fully moderated model where all posts are moderated before going live.
It is impossible to run a service like Twitter with pre-moderation. The volume of content is far too big. The key to a successful platform is to have hugely more users than staff, so that a trivial revenue per user pays for the staff. That means that you have absolutely no chance of having your staff even read all the content - never mind assessing it against guidelines.

Yes, we couldn’t even pre-moderate this place. It might be possible to pre-moderate Twitter at some point in the future if AI got a lot better.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 12:29 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Woodchopper wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 7:37 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:49 am
Chris Preston wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:27 pm
This is an idea that Trump has adopted from his Qanon followers. I suspect their thinking went that if Section 230 was removed, Twitter et al. would be forced to publish all their nonsense. They clearly haven't thought about the alternative, that Twitter et al. could adopt a fully moderated model where all posts are moderated before going live.
It is impossible to run a service like Twitter with pre-moderation. The volume of content is far too big. The key to a successful platform is to have hugely more users than staff, so that a trivial revenue per user pays for the staff. That means that you have absolutely no chance of having your staff even read all the content - never mind assessing it against guidelines.

Yes, we couldn’t even pre-moderate this place. It might be possible to pre-moderate Twitter at some point in the future if AI got a lot better.
I get the impression that Big Tech is spending huge resources developing AI to target advertising more successfully, and very little in doing anything socially useful.

They like flogging stuff to the military, though - maybe some AI moderation software could be advertised as "spotting radicals" or something.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:54 pm
by Herainestold
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 12:29 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 7:37 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:49 am


It is impossible to run a service like Twitter with pre-moderation. The volume of content is far too big. The key to a successful platform is to have hugely more users than staff, so that a trivial revenue per user pays for the staff. That means that you have absolutely no chance of having your staff even read all the content - never mind assessing it against guidelines.

Yes, we couldn’t even pre-moderate this place. It might be possible to pre-moderate Twitter at some point in the future if AI got a lot better.
I get the impression that Big Tech is spending huge resources developing AI to target advertising more successfully, and very little in doing anything socially useful.

They like flogging stuff to the military, though - maybe some AI moderation software could be advertised as "spotting radicals" or something.
All the big social media apps have been using AI for moderation. Maybe its not working so well.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:40 pm
by bolo
I believe they mostly use AI to flag posts for further review by humans. They and their contractors have tens of thousands of employees doing this type of review. It's not a nice job. In 2020, Facebook paid a legal settlement of $52 million to content moderators who had developed PTSD based on the disturbing stuff they'd had to look at.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:44 pm
by Little waster
bolo wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:40 pm
Facebook paid a legal settlement of $52 million to content moderators who had developed PTSD based on the disturbing stuff they'd had to look at.
Thoughts and prayers for the Scrutable NMCs.

If you mod the Scrutable forum long enough, the forum mods you back.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:49 pm
by Herainestold
bolo wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:40 pm
I believe they mostly use AI to flag posts for further review by humans. They and their contractors have tens of thousands of employees doing this type of review. It's not a nice job. In 2020, Facebook paid a legal settlement of $52 million to content moderators who had developed PTSD based on the disturbing stuff they'd had to look at.
I know that youtube, for one, sent all their human mods home because of covid, and relied almost exclusively on AI. Reviewing videos has to be done on special screens, they didn't want people doing it at home on their laptops. I don't know whether the others did the same.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:44 am
by Bird on a Fire
bolo wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:40 pm
I believe they mostly use AI to flag posts for further review by humans. They and their contractors have tens of thousands of employees doing this type of review. It's not a nice job. In 2020, Facebook paid a legal settlement of $52 million to content moderators who had developed PTSD based on the disturbing stuff they'd had to look at.
A lot of it is outsourced to Portugal. They get €800+ a month salary (with a bonus for each additional language spoken), and there are round-the-clock shifts available. I have a few friends doing it, all immigrants from Brazil.

Compared with the investment in targetting adverts, very little has been done on recognising disturbing content.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:26 am
by dyqik
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:44 am
Compared with the investment in targetting adverts, very little has been done on recognising disturbing content.
I suspect there's a big asymmetry between those two problems. Ad targeting is useful with a 25% hit rate, as there's so many ads that 1 in 4 being relevant is useful, and loads better than randomly showing ads.

Only detecting 1 in 4 problematic posts doesn't help that much though.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 10:18 am
by bjn
dyqik wrote:
Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:26 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:44 am
Compared with the investment in targetting adverts, very little has been done on recognising disturbing content.
I suspect there's a big asymmetry between those two problems. Ad targeting is useful with a 25% hit rate, as there's so many ads that 1 in 4 being relevant is useful, and loads better than randomly showing ads.

Only detecting 1 in 4 problematic posts doesn't help that much though.
The other asymmetry is that one makes you money, the other is just a cost.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 11:22 am
by Woodchopper
dyqik wrote:
Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:26 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:44 am
Compared with the investment in targetting adverts, very little has been done on recognising disturbing content.
I suspect there's a big asymmetry between those two problems. Ad targeting is useful with a 25% hit rate, as there's so many ads that 1 in 4 being relevant is useful, and loads better than randomly showing ads.

Only detecting 1 in 4 problematic posts doesn't help that much though.
There’s also a big difference in the consequences of false positives. People usually don’t care if the see an advertisement for something that doesn’t interest them. That’s normal. But they’d get very upset if they were wrongly flagged as being a racist etc.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 11:45 am
by Bird on a Fire
People also get very upset if they receive racist abuse, but so far tackling it hasn't been a priority.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 3:12 pm
by dyqik
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Jan 15, 2021 11:45 am
People also get very upset if they receive racist abuse, but so far tackling it hasn't been a priority.
No.

But there's also no reason to believe that anything like ad targeting algorithms would be useful for the task. The argument "they can target ads, why can't they flag racism" is about as good as "we can build swimming pools, why can't we hold back the rising oceans?"

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 3:20 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Yes, obviously they would need different algorithms. I'm saying that less work is going into developing them than into targeting ads, which should hardly be a controversial statement given that it's pretty much their entire business model.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 4:57 pm
by Stranger Mouse
Lauren Boebert isn’t too bright. Somebody doesn’t give her name in an interview as a person who worked with the insurrectionists but she volunteers it and says “YOU MUST BE TALKING ABOUT ME!!!!!”

She must be a fantastic poker player

https://twitter.com/fritschner/status/1 ... 89442?s=21

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2021 9:56 pm
by Woodchopper
Despite Parler backlash, Facebook played huge role in fueling Capitol riot, watchdogs say
Deadly Capitol raid would have still happened without Parler, says Media Matters head — but not without Facebook

[...]

"If you took Parler out of the equation, you would still almost certainly have what happened at the Capitol," he told Salon. "If you took Facebook out of the equation before that, you would not. To me, when Apple and Google sent their letter to Parler, I was a little bit confused why Facebook didn't get one."

[...]

As many as 128,000 people used the #StoptheSteal hashtag promoted by Trump and his allies until Monday, Eric Feinberg, a vice president with the Coalition for a Safer Web, told The Washington Post. At least two dozen Republican officials and organizations in at least a dozen states used the social network to plan bus trips to the rally that preceded the riot, according to a Media Matters analysis. Media Matters also identified at least 70 active Facebook groups related to "Stop the Steal," against which the platform could have acted long before the riot. Days after the siege, Facebook's algorithm was still suggesting events hosted by some of the same groups that organized the Stop the Steal rally.

These groups didn't just spread misinformation but actively "encouraged people to attend the riot last week and to potentially arm themselves and to potentially engage in other violent acts," Getachew said. "These are the types of things from a public interest side that make it harder to monitor because the groups are closed, right? You need permission to enter and Facebook isn't doing a good enough job of actually facilitating or moderating these groups to prohibit this type of content, or to ban these groups altogether."
https://www.salon.com/2021/01/16/despit ... hdogs-say/

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2021 10:09 pm
by Stranger Mouse
Marjorie Taylor Greene given a twelve hour ban by twitter so she’s responded by sending begging texts for money to her fans

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:55 pm
by bmforre
Stranger Mouse wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 10:09 pm
Marjorie Taylor Greene given a twelve hour ban by twitter so she’s responded by sending begging texts for money to her fans
Didn't she travel to putsch attempt by private plane? Comfortable planes are expensive.

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 7:05 am
by Stranger Mouse
bmforre wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:55 pm
Stranger Mouse wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 10:09 pm
Marjorie Taylor Greene given a twelve hour ban by twitter so she’s responded by sending begging texts for money to her fans
Didn't she travel to putsch attempt by private plane? Comfortable planes are expensive.
No she’s the Qanon congresswoman. You are thinking of Jenna the realtor.

Founder of Cowboys For Trump arrested

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/cl ... l-arrested

Re: Social media bans for Trump and his supporters

Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2021 5:29 pm
by Woodchopper
Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook
https://www.techtransparencyproject.org ... g-facebook