Slashdot Mirror
US Secret Service Wants To Identify Snark
beschra (1424727) writes "From the article: 'The U.S. Secret Service is seeking software that can identify top influencers and trending sets of social media data, allowing the agency to monitor these streams in real-time — and sift through the sarcasm. "We are not currently aware of any automated technology that could do that (detect sarcasm). No one is considered a leader in that,'" Jamie Martin, a data acquisition engineer at Sioux Falls, SD based Bright Planet, told CBS News.'
Why not just force Twitter to change TOS to require sarcasm tag?"
Why not just force Twitter to change TOS to require sarcasm tag?"
that's gonna work
Search the text for /sarcasm or #sarcasm.
Done. Where's my paycheque?
They hunted till darkness came on, but they found
Not a button, or feather, or mark,
By which they could tell that they stood on the ground
Where the Baker had met with the Snark.
In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
This will TOTALLY work. Detecting sarcasm will be DEFINITELY not be hard to do in software, seeing as how it's SO EASY for humans to do already.
With all the sarcasm, don't you all realize you're creating the perfect dataset for them to train their algorithms on?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Sorry, you want the dismissive banter department. This is sarcasm.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Just feed a bayesian analysis with postings from /. and use that to match against twitter. Should be able to get within 10%...
Some conspiracy insight - the government's quantum based AI big brother master computer of the NSA is up and running in order to completely surveil the internet in real time.
The problem is, it is nearly useless because it can't determine if someone is being sarcastic / snarky or not.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Because people would instantly start using them sarcastically.
[sarcasm]It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife[/sarcasm]
The automated detection of sarcasm and derision will be one of the fastest growing segments in the new economy.
Already at least 3 startups have begun with this included in their mission statement, along with a stated goal of relieving venture capitalists from the burden of their investment money.
It is of vital national importance that we identify who is merely being a dismissive arrogant douchebag, and who is at risk of inadvertently hurting someone else's feelings so we send them for re-education and thought alignment. It will also help to identify people who haven't yet fully swallowed the kool-aid and don't believe that the government is, in fact, here to help us, uphold the Constitution, and defend our rights.
The US Secret Service is going to aggressively fund a second mandate to decode the mysteries of eye rolling, sneering, and derisive snorts.
This should further embolden the usage of widespread warrantless collection of our personal information with the knowledge that law enforcement agencies will be able to accurately detect sarcasm and redirect scarce resources to fondling young children and old people in airport security lines.
A spokesperson for the Treasury Department indicated that popular internet forum Slashdot, as well as Digg and 4Chan will be used as exemplars for this technology, as these have been identified as the single largest sources of snark on the interwebs since Al Gore invented it.
It has been further reported that Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has said he welcomes this new initiative in the spirit of cooperation between the two countries, and that Kim Jon Un is hoping this will lead to a normalization of relations as it will allow the US to realize that North Korea was only kidding.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Nobody seems to be asking WHY.
Why would the Secret Service, in particular, want to tell sarcasm apart from other speech? Think about who they are.
They want to be able to distinguish sarcastic political speech, from sincere political speech. Of course both are protected speech.
Now, they might have a benign purpose, but from the description in TFA it doesn't seem so. After all, the administration would look pretty foolish if they tried to harass or jail someone for being sarcastic.
The reason the Secret Service wants sarcasm detection is because of the bad PR they get every time they harass someone for being sarcastic. The problem is not sarcastic political speech vs sincere political speech; it's sarcastic threats vs sincere threats.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Well ... gee ... let me think.
This kid:
It's a real thing, it has happened already. No evidence of a crime (or even the actual intent to commit one). But someone sees it and goes "eep", and then you get dragged off to jail.
You seem to be under the impression this isn't happening already.
It is.
So, ask me again if I think what I said is a plausible scenario. Because I said it with the full knowledge it has already happened.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Actually, what they could do would be to correlate English language postings with equivalent German language postings. As Germans are known world wide for their fun-loving sense of humor and sarcastic wits, the difference should yield accurate, non-snarky posts in English.
John
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. /sarcasm
Conspiracy insight level 2: The government already has a sentient AI, but it's an Aspie like Data on Star Trek, so they're crowd-sourcing its emotional development. *dun-dun-DUN*
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
so they're crowd-sourcing its emotional development. *dun-dun-DUN*
...and they're seeding it with all the data from Twitter, Reddit, Slashdot, and 4chan. So this is how the world ends