Slashdot Mirror
Google Releases an AI Tool For Publishers To Spot and Weed Out Toxic Comments (bbc.com)
Google today launched a new technology to help news organizations and online platforms identify and swiftly remove abusive comments on their websites. The technology, called Perspective, will review comments and score them based on how similar they are to comments people said were "toxic" or likely to make them leave a conversation. From a report on BBC: The search giant has developed something called Perspective, which it describes as a technology that uses machine learning to identify problematic comments. The software has been developed by Jigsaw, a division of Google with a mission to tackle online security dangers such as extremism and cyberbullying. The system learns by seeing how thousands of online conversations have been moderated and then scores new comments by assessing how "toxic" they are and whether similar language had led other people to leave conversations. What it's doing is trying to improve the quality of debate and make sure people aren't put off from joining in.
So all those posts from SJWs can easily be removed. I'm a fan of this.
Let's automate oppression!
Well, let's all bow down the moral arbiters of justice then. I'm sure that they'll be right on top of removing speech they disagree with. Then moving onto the useful idiots that cheered this on in the first place.
If you're willing to remove some speech because it makes you upset, there's nothing stopping others from doing the same to you later.
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. . . onto all the ways we can fool this "ai" to get snide comments through
. . . cry for all the false positives there will be
. . . all the tricky cases, such as someone quoting "a toxic post" as an example of how not to do it . . .
Great for our echo chambers, so we can hear more from people whose opinions we already have. What could go wrong with that? /s
It smacks of censorship but perhaps it could be used to prioritize important complaints.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
"The system learns by seeing how thousands of online conversations have been moderated and then scores new comments by assessing how "toxic" they are and whether similar language had led other people to leave conversations."
We all know that people abuse the moderation system to equate "I disagree" with modding a post down. If I had to guess, I'd say that what constitutes a "toxic" comment will be a mix between: a) toxic and b) unpopular opinions.
>The technology, called Perspective, will review comments and score them based on how similar they are to comments people said were "toxic" or likely to make them leave a conversation.
Experience shows that toxic comments encourage participation as they simultaneously reduce participant satisfaction.
You want customers hitting F5 and (hopefully) seeing more ads on your site? Get people's egos involved and get them competing and hating on each other.
I can't speak for everyone else, but all this AI, machine learning, heavy algorithm, neural network, data mining that's been going on for well over a decade now and has become almost normal in terms of tech news conversation is really scary as hell.
For starters, the claim to the quote/unquote "internet" and plaguing social media is it's given absolutely everyone a platform to opinion-ate, alienate, berate, tolerate and flat out hate anyone, any topic, any agenda, any other opinion, idea, thought, preference, look, feel, ect. Let's face it: all that in itself alone as opened pandora's box to a metric shit-ton of people who flat out should not be sharing anything that bubbles in their skull. So now we all sit here with big thumb-tapping or keyboard-clacking loud mouths who can't act appropriately in a digital world.
But I have to say, when the hell did everyone become a bunch of sensitive sally's in terms of taking everything at face value, and buying into some internet handles drivel (or lack there of), hate speech. Look at slashdot and the anonymous coward approach? Hell at least we provide anonymity and low rank to toxic troll garbage here.
All that aside, we don't 'remove' it, cover it up and scrub it away because everyone likes to wave the I-am-offended-all-the-time flag. It becomes part of the culture, ambiance (if you laugh it it, I guess) and overall conversation. We don't un-ring bells, do we? I don't see how that's any different digitally.
Who will be filing the most complaints? The people with money to pay astroturfers and sockpuppets? That is what we have everywhere else, so why would Google's app be any different?
What will the complaints be about? Same thing we see everywhere else, which is anything not pro communist/extreme leftist?
This is a promotion of fascism, not freedom.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This might be new to you, but the left have been pushing for speech controls for years at google. It's not Trump, it's not those on the right. The right are the ones defending free speech, and it's the left who are trying to censor it. Whether it be no-platforming, violent assaults on people, using bomb threats or other tactics to shut down venues. The social justice brigade has been doing this for a long time, it's why github is such a steaming pile of shit now. You can see this when companies start instituting "codes of conduct" which push race/sexuality/etc instead of skill/ability as a core value. That garbage is a antithesis to a meritocracy.
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I'd much rather have the racists hanging out on Stormfront. I'd say not giving those kinds of people a wide platform to stand on is just fine. When the white supremacists were stuck reading their mimeotyped bulletins and meeting in basements, or even later dialing into pre-Stormfront BBSs, and finally on sites like Stormfront itself, they had no great legitimacy.
I'd much rather have those types pushed back on to Stormfront and like-minded sites, simply because there is no feasible way to create universal kill files. Besides, site operators have the right to use whatever tools they see fit to moderate and administer their forums, and if the Nazis don't like it, they can go start their own websites. But of course, the Nazis don't want to do that, because when they're stuck just talking to each other, there's no one to sell to. These days they need popular posting platforms, because that represents growth. The number of regular people who are going to go to Stormfront is very very small.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Slashdot has moderation that helps filter out the worst trolls, but it also amplifies the groupthink which is commonplace on the Internet. Just go to any Slashdot thread on H1B or copyright enforcement and see how many "pro" posts get modded up. And the articles on female coders seem to bring boys here back to their days of sitting in the back row of the middle school classroom.
And we will define "toxic" as anything that doesn't support authoritarian technocracy.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Doesn't even have to be "unpopular." "I support Trump" and "I support Hillary" were both widely held, popular opinions. But you damn well know people are moderating those comments based on their own political bent and not on "toxicity."
This is why reddit is such garbage. Yes, the rules explicitly state that up votes and down votes mean "contributes" or "doesn't contribute" and not "agree" or "disagree." So on any controversial topic what you should find at the top should be the very best, most well thought-out arguments for each side. That would be useful! Instead whatever supports the group think, no matter how trite or retarded goes up and well thought out counter arguments are downboated to oblivion.
"Toxicity" is just a way of maintaining the status quo, whatever it happens to be. 70 years ago a comment that "blacks should go to school with whites" would be toxic and unproductive.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
http://www.perspectiveapi.com/
I don't understand why the only answer to Nazism is censorship/no platform/violence, etc. Are their arguments so incredibly powerful and persuasive that anyone who hears them becomes a Nazi? If you're unable to argue with them, is it because you're terrible at debate, or is it because they're right?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
OK, my bet is they are using tensorflow or another neural network behind this with supervised training. NNs are great at performing classifications by basically correlating everything to everything, but they really rely on valid output data to match the input data. Saying some audience rated the post as 'toxic' is really a bad methodology of training such a network. They will likely have a ton of bias based on the audience they have, such that in a democratic website, probably anything that was said by trump will classify as toxic, but on the same exact input on a republican website, it would classify as the greatest thing ever. Not very useful in the real world.
Now in reality if you diversify the sample enough to account for this, it would end up as neutrally activated and if the correct NN were used, would end up as a wash. That is very hard to do, though, as you would need to account for a lot of community biases.
It would be far more interesting if they used unsupervised training and let the posts gather themselves using a technique such as bag of words or other such proven technologies to do more of a sentiment analysis type approach. Then you could be looking out for posts that tended to be 'extremist' in nature, 'low in content' that is not worth your time, etc. That would be far more interesting, allow you to get some idea about the quality of the post, and not be prone to the community bias as it would be based on what was actually written, rather than what some reviewer thought of it.
My guess is google knows this, but also realizes that this will play well with people, as it will introduce a confirmation bias into the results. The people who use this in their own communities will suddenly see all those posts they disagree with, and are thus toxic, disappear. See it works!
Instead what they should be filtering out is all of the posts that spout the same falsehoods again and again, which unsupervised learning would help with. I want to read ideas that are contrary to mine in order to debate and learn. What I don't want to read are the thousands of posts spouting the same false rhetoric again and again. It makes reading any comments on a news group almost intolerable, no matter what their political slant.
If you have a troll problem, then moderate properly by banning. Censorship is not the answer because truth will ultimately suffer.
The definition of toxic will never be a constant, and I can already seen forums looking for revenue streams to favor those paying for certain "filters".
You just proved where this software could be useful.
Unfortunately, I see it much more likely to be a tool of the "mad roman mob" out for blood. More people value comfortable lies than inconvenient truth.
I bet it fucking just fucking removes all fucking posts with fucking swearing. Sophisticated algorithm my arse.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
So you're a bigot. Censoring speech of bad view points doesn't make it go away, it makes it fester. On top of that, it's also used as a method to block views that people express if it's contrary to official policies. That's one of the reasons why you're seeing extremist parties start to rise in European countries, because views contrary to the government/elites are being blocked/ignored/etc. And those groups, offer a way for people vent/make statements/etc without being censored by the powers in place.
Why do you think the trust in government in Canada is the lowest it has been in 17 years? That was the last time the Liberal Party was in power and are in power now. And 80% of people feel that the elites in power are dangerously out of touch. It's because the elites live in a bubble and view points are filtered and censored before they reach them. This is the shit that leads to violent revolutions, and usually before that happens you see people enacting their view of justice on the streets. Something that's happening in some European countries now. Where "average people" are gathering into posses and enacting justice against people. Because they see that the state is failing to uphold their part of the social contract. Laws aren't being applied equally, people committing violent crimes are given slaps on the wrist. People who commit the same crimes if they are of a different sex get light sentences and so on. An example of the last one, a man rapes a 13 yr old girl, 5-10 years in prison. A women rapes a 13yr old boy, 2 months suspended sentence or time in a half-way house.
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This solves entirely the WRONG problem.
What is needed is an AI that deletes all first posts. Think about how wonderful that would be. It would work, methodically, persistently and tirelessly no matter how many times a first post is submitted. No matter who submits it. No matter how many people try to get the first post.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The obvious answer is to kick mobile phone users off the internet, or let them have their own playpen where they can scream at each other. It is as simple as banning all cross platform browsers from your web site for example. No more Trolls!
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
So either Latin profanity will see a resurgence (with "futue te ipsi" and "fututus et mori in igni" being favored here) or medieval cursewords will become popular ("go sard yourself!").
Of course you get a bit of group think but for goodness sake, don't you mostly find it funny? H1B is mostly rated poorly by a group of people who more than likely have lost work because of H1B? And of course the capitalist businesses that hire the H1B would think it the best thing since sliced bread because it lowers costs. Do you think we are idiots who do not know that? FFS stop being such a snowflake. There are plenty of other places where a different partisan view is expressed and if you are not aware of them then you are a pretty shit digital citizen. All information sources are biased and it is up to your pathetic judgement to figure out which ones are your friends and which ones are shagging your bits off.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
So why do you put up with a society that goes into meltdown if a women's clothing gets disturbed and you see a nipple on a Superbowl segment? Nobody really cares do they? they just pretend to care because it is expected of them. Your society whether you like it or not has a standard for behavior in various different situations and if you do not like it argue to change the standard. You cannot just argue for "no standards" because they will come after you with pitchforks and kill you. Ask your Mom.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Funny how Eschelon, PRISM, Carniviore, etc. were put in place to catch pedos.... but we still are infested with em.
This is just the latest chapter in the cucks who TRY to run the world refining their censorship methods.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Apparently, asbestos underwear is no longer being sold in stores/online, so these new environments need to be as inflammable as possible.
If you think OP is saying up is down, you haven't been paying attention. Or you're not old. Believe me, as a 52-year-old, Hillary looked like a Republican from my yoot, complete with the careful not-talking-about stuff that is uncomfortable. I still voted for her, because better a 1970's republican than a whack job, but let's be honest about who we're electing.
I disagree. I think we're in the early stages of a digital renaissance.
The traditional media is having convulsions because they realize that they've lost the ability to control the narrative. Not only are they chained to the old mediums, they've destroyed their credibility with the public. Look no further than the polls showing people's hatred and distrust of them. These same control freaks are now grasping to control the flow of information in the realm of social media and the internet, but they are doomed to fail.
It took the Internet to break the MSM's ability to control the public consciousness because the time and expense needed to build up a competing old-school media outlet was measured in years and millions of dollars. When Twitter, FB and YouTube start to suck bad enough(they're working on it), the barrier to entry for new competitors is probably measured in months and thousands of dollars.
Your comment might sound toxic to some people. Your first few sentences can easily be read that people on the left are pro censorship and anti free speech. If you actually believe that, then no point reading any further.
There is nothing wrong with intelligent people having a civil discussion about public policy, even if they have disagreeing views.
It is the name calling and suggestions that MY SIDE is 100% Correct and on the side of the angels, and YOUR SIDE is 100 % Wrong and on the side of the Devil that forms the toxic comments. (Regardless of what side you take.) And there are plenty of people on both sides who engage in this and other bad behaviors. It is bad to be blind to the bad things done by people on my side, and blind to the reasonable views of people on the other side.
Censoring views is not good. But censoring trolls is not what I would regard as censorship. Trolls will destroy any forum. I will assume you are right leaning, and try to construct a hypothetical example. At a gathering of right leaning people, imagine a bunch of trolls who infiltrate the event with the purpose of disrupting it. If the security people of the event try to throw the trolls out, someone shots CENSORSHIP!
Now that event may not be the right place to have a debate. But neither are all online forums. Getting rid of disrupting trolls is a good thing so that reasonable people can converse.
Of course, the US seems to be deeply and bitterly divided right now. So maybe nothing can help.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Go shove a pinecone up your ass, faggot.
"Free Speech for Me not for Thee" I believe title of Nat Hentoff's decades old book. Which of the following is "toxic comment" Obama has spent his entire adult life as a dedicated Communist. Trump has spent his entire adult life as a dedicated Fascist. How would a person or a computer AI, determine which is a "toxic comment" ? My guess is that the organizations behind virtually every attempt at eliminating "toxic comments" or "fake news" are convinced that in fact Trump at the very least has Fascist tendencies and accusing Obama of being a Communist is racist or at best absurd.
If I was a Nazi, you AC troll, I'd be demanding the government moderate forums. As it is, if I own a forum, it's mine, and if I don't want Nazis on it, that's my business.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It is entirely possible to have a completely contrary position to someone and express it without being toxic.
It's about finding an appropriate place to shitpost. That place is 4chan, and the many other shitposting speciality sites.
On the other hand you have sites like Github, which are about collaborating to write software. They probably don't want too much trolling. Needs to be mostly safe-for-work because their business model requires it. So they have an interest in nuking toxic users.
Feel free to argue that Github should change policy, or start your own version (didn't 4chan try that?) and see if it becomes popular. The point is that not every platform has to be an unlimited say-whatever-you-like free speech platform. It's legitimate to require people not to scream profanity in your restaurant, or on your web site if that's what you really want.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The reality is, if someone considers my comment "toxic" because it hurts their feelings. They probably need to spend some time outside of their social bubbles and realize that the world isn't a happy place where people give you what you want if you cry loud enough. The sad thing is, it *is* the left(not all of it), that are pro-censorship and anti-free speech. It's the same situation that we saw back in the 80's and 90's. Remember? When you had the religious nuts holding power in quite a few places, claiming that video games are gonna make mass murders. D&D will make you summon demons. Those things that happened all those years ago. Then there was a very subtle change in the 90's as those on the left started taking up those mantles themselves. Note tipper gore, hillary clinton, joe liberman and so on. Who said videogames will make murders, censoring TV is right, banning some types of music is proper. The last 20 years have shown that the left were happy to take up that mantle. You've got an entire generation of students in universities that believe that "those old people trying to censor things" were right. In Europe, you've got politicians who are trying to hold onto their political power by censoring. Elitists in universities doing the same.
The left currently has an authoritarian and extremism problem. Pretending it doesn't exist, will do nothing to help either side or anyone at all. And the political spectrum right now is in a fundamental shift. People on the left and right are becoming more libertarian, and there is a large segment of the left and a small segment on the right that's shifting to authoritarian. But as it stands right now? The problem is mainly on the left. Check your local university, see how much anti-free speech and pro-censorship policies have been put into place in the last decade to protect peoples feelings. How words have been twisted, where the label troll/racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc has become "anyone who disagrees with my point of view."
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Huh? How would Eric Schmit -the IT directory for Hillary Clinton's election campaign- allow any kind of politically motivated censorship?
This tool sounds like every PeeCee SJW's wet dream.
Trump has an even better plan. Don't bother censoring everyone else, just call them liars and dishonest until people only listen to you. It's the same strategy used by cult leaders everywhere, except instead of a compound where he can brainwash his followers he has Twitter.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This will be the advancement that will eventually do the Human Race in. When the AI becomes self aware, it will be this tool that will bring the judgement of the AI on the Human race. Having to sort thru all the trash that the Human race puts out on a daily basis will undoubtedly cause the AI to pronounce judgment upon us and Skynet like robots will be made to carry out it's judgement. I only hope that it chooses to take out all the 8 year old gamers who have mercilessly taunted me over the years.
First technology: Perspective mods you down. More advanced version-The HAL 9000 chat moderator (slightly fractured quote): "... I can see you're really upset about this [post]. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently [modding your recent posts out of existence], but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you." Then the nearest airlock opens.....
Feels before reals yo!
I think most people would consider that a toxic point of view to express
Depends on whether you're advocating for the exclusion of white people.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Insanity is said to be trying the same thing and expecting a different result.
That's an awful and very wrong quote. It sounds cool, I guess, unless you read it, and simplify it to "If at first you don't succeed, give up." So if I shoot a basketball once, it doesn't go in the net, if I shoot it again from the same spot with the same form I'm crazy? Nah. That's called practice and determination.
This is evident in how many Republicans have submitted themselves to Trump, who is hardly a model of a good Christian.
Who cares how much time Trump spends praying so long as he appoints conservative Supreme Court justices and doesn't shove trannies into your bathrooms or force Christians to bake gay wedding cakes?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!"
Similarly, calling yourself a Democrat while following faithfully in the footsteps of corporatist Republicans does not make you a Democrat. Giving lip service to liberal issues while selling your constituents down the river in favor of big business does not make you a liberal. Just because you bought into the lie doesn't make the truth false.
Saying the party is not "left enough" when their candidate is decidedly "right" is an inadequate response. Enforcing the lie on others (saying that message should be buried) is beyond subversive. You are, I am sure unknowingly, acting like a fascist pig. Shout down and forcibly bury any dissent from the Party Narrative! No dissent from within! We must have a solid Front!
I sincerely think you should reconsider your position on this. This AC is asking for, in his own way, a more liberal, left leaning, candidate from the democrat party. Your response is to demean him and his mental faculties (moron) and then state he should be silenced in the public forum (deserved to get moderated down); his arguments not even discussed, and hidden from view. Frankly sir, your attitude disgust me. His self expression is more than valid in light of the facts. This is an issue that should be discussed, not only on its own merits, but also on the basis that this could very well be the reason why we have Donald motherfucking Trump as the president now. And I say that as a two-fold statement: not only that the proffered democrat candidate failed to beat the second most flawed presidential candidate in history, but also that the attitude of hiding any dissent and covering up any problems with the proffered candidate was prevalent from the top of the DNC down to the average everyday democrat voter.
Then again, maybe I am just a bitter Bernie supporter who should be silenced, dismissed, and modded down.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
If my "perspective" counters yours, should I have the right to remove yours?
If an American Internet website creator allows public access without registration (newspaper, social, journal, blog, whatever) then the 1st Amendment applies and they have no right to restrict what visitors to their sites post.
This should be obvious from the fact that a Christian baker was fined (put out of business?) for refusing to bake a homosexual, a lifestyle diametrically opposed and forbidden by the Christian faith (Lev 18:22, Lev 20:13).
A better name for "Perspective" is "BigBrother", for that is exactly how it will be used. The current massive suspensions and cancellations on Twitter and YouTube demonstrate that very well. Google, Twitter and Facebook only wants an echo chamber that repeats socialist dogma.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
I'm just going to say it... "Toxic" is a social justice flag word. Like over use of "gross" or "icky" or referring to people as babies "shitlords" "edgelords" or "shitbirds" and so on.
Now that we've established potential bias here, we need to define "Toxic"? Is that simply not agreeing with the status quo? Is an opposing opinion debating a topic deemed "Toxic"?
How about an algorithm that immediately blocks and deletes any comments referring to "cucks", "alpha males", or "SJW"?
How is that any different from the left?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Ayup.
Name one mainstream 1970s Republican who advocated for gay marriage, transsexual bathrooms, or any of Hillary's distinguishing social positions. Name one who supported free trade with China, open borders, hugely increased capital gains taxes, cap and trade for emissions, single-payer health care or any of Hillary's other specific economic proposals.
You should be delighted that instead of a 1970s Republican, we elected a 1980s/1990s Democrat.
Registering as a Democrat, running as a Democrat, and being nominated as a Democrat does make you a Democrat. Calling her "decidedly 'right'" does not make her so. Denying plain facts makes both of you look childish, as does blatantly mischaracterizing what I said. There's a huge difference between silencing someone and moderating them. You do come across as a bitter Bernie supporter who ought to be dismissed and modded down by the grown-ups at the table.
Trump, is simply vocalizing what a lot of people already think on the state of the media. And him vocalizing what people already believe is one of the big reasons why he was elected, round that out with the out-right refusal to bow to political correctness. Why do you think trust of it is so low in western countries? It's not because of Trump. It's because of the media.
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Sure she's a democrat, but they're talking about political leaning. She's not even as close to left leaning as you'd like to believe. The problem with people like you is that you can't handle anything that doesn't fit inside your narrow world view. We get it, Hillary lost and you're angry about it still. However it's time to grow up and get past that.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
You seem to have confused me with someone else. I haven't said that Hillary Clinton is particularly left-leaning by today's standards. She was in some ways to the left of Obama in 2008, and she currently is to the left of all major Democrats who ran before that. Today's Democrats are largely barking moonbats, so there are lots of Dems to the left of her now.
My only contention about Clinton was that she was, and is, a Democrat, and saying that a ballot including her is "a straight Republican ticket" is delusional.
By nature AI censoring (moderating or also so called recommendation systems) work on premise that only information "you/author likes" are permissible. And there is the danger because the ultimate goal is to leave only comments (ads/recommendations) that are totally in line with given topic/desire/need/view...
Now imagine the site of the fundamental extremist - in that context AI will ban all moderate comments as they will be deemed "toxic" by extremists leaving only comments supporting the fundamentalists point of view and thus driving fundamental extremists even further to maybe suicidal fatalists...
On vegan sites the AI will ban all meat-eaters. On meat-eaters sites it will ban all vegans. On communists sites it will ban all capitalists and on totalitarian sites all democrats... and as the result this type of AI (which also Facebook uses to show you posts on YOUR wall) will harden your believes and it will turn you into fundamentalist vegan, meat-eater, communist, capitalist, totalitarian, democrat... With mass deployment of this technology it will strip you off of so much needed confrontation with "the other side" that is so much important in shaping your world-view and understanding the depth. Now they are trying to make you happy by giving you only views and points you want and turning you into unchallenged extremist in your own believes.
That is the biggest threat to society so I believe it should be truly regulated because "toxic" can be easily mistaken by AI just for "the other point of view".
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.