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Twitter Asks For Help Fixing Its Toxicity Problem (engadget.com)
Engadget: Twitter has come under a lot of fire in recent years for issues ranging from not doing enough to stop harassment on its platform to allowing foreign actors to sow political discord. In the past, the company has tweaked its tools, giving individuals more options when it comes to controlling what they're exposed to online, as well as updated its guidelines a handful of times. But today, Twitter announced it's trying out another route -- asking people outside of the company to propose ways that it can promote healthy, open and civil conversations online. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted today that the company isn't proud of how some have taken advantage of its service, specifically calling out troll armies, misinformation campaigns and bots. And he added that Twitter has been accused of apathy, censorship and political bias as it has attempted to fix its problems.
Has political bias.
And a huge share of the problem will go away.
Also they should hire execution squads to deal with scammers and fraudsters. Oddly this also includes Donald Trump.
asks the rest of us to solve their problems. Bravo.
"Toxic" is awfully poetic and hyperbolic.
The leftists keep reaching for new ways to describe how awful it is when their feelings are hurt, and they are tearing the language to shreds as they do it.
Perhaps it would be best of Twitter really was toxic.
That would solve the problem..
You are talking about a platform which has a character limit and has many anonymous individuals and where people can post without thinking. Any one of those by itself can lead to problems. All three together? They all contribute in the same direction: emotion and insult over calm and careful discussion.
This time he will strike us all down for our impunity.
And “toxic” to the left and right on many social media sites.
Most social media suffers from that because the way they function are a popularity contest and you get more likes when being a cunt towards outside your group and being a decent human being.
But Twitter’s format are even worse because it is best suited for short snarky comments.
So basically, they're going after the Trump base.
You are welcome on my lawn.
with all the other traitors
I highly doubt they are sincere about this.
But, for a start, they could, you know, stop banning people.
Want to get rid of the toxicity? Start by firing Anita Sarkeesian from Google's so-called “Trust and Safety Council.” Twitter's politically unbalanced, SJW-inspired suspensions and shadowbans are destroying Twitter shareholder value.
Clean your own house first. Then you can start worrying about the "toxicity" of others.
(What, no story about the outage?)
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
https://www.projectveritas.com...
I'm noticing this around other sites as well, conversation about nothing illegal the messages just vanish. I have also noticed if you start typ31ng lik3 th1$, stuff g3ts thr0ugh.
Free speech is essential .
The peak outrage period from the Google censorship rampage has passed, it's finally safe to re-enable posting!
Find some pragmatism, fast.
You are telling a criminal organization to clean its house.
No, WE have to clean house. This corporate plutocracy is aiming to destroy our society completely, and they are not going to leave peacefully.
Civil war is inevitable.
If not using twitter in the first place isn't an option for you, I have bad news for you.
The leftists mostly have commented here as anonymous cowards while the more conservative replies are from logged in folks. Says a lot.
Just ban System of a Down from Twitter, all your Toxicity posts will go away!
... my hayday was the 90s, I'm lost on this shit.
Perhaps they can try to be more like Slashdot where the comments are always civil. : P
Maybe they can try to be more like Slashdot where the comments are always civil. : p
Good luck getting a diverse population to not be offended by each other. While you are at it, also ask about how we can accomplish world peace.
Twitter encourages toxic behaviour on the left, while banning legitimate debate on the right. Jack's definition of toxic is any right wing opinion, and what he's really asking is how to fix the problem of right wing posters on Twitter. The answer will likely be more toxic behaviour by leftist hate mobs, and thus the problem will increase.
Things are only going to get worse has they ban more right wing posters for perceived toxicity while emboldening the left wing hate mobs.
And that's exactly the problem right there. Politically driving assholes trying to use their positions of power to suppresses view points they don't like.
After all, a clearly laid out TOS that get's evenly reinforced would solve 90% of your problems. But the moment when you begin to give an unaccoutable secretive group of enforces power over the rest of the platform you will eventually end up with some levels of abuse.
'Toxicity', 'Problematic'... these are code words for feeling-hurting speech. They're asking how they can have a kumbaya and a feeling-fest? Well, obviously, make it non-anonymous first. Then make people have to verify their identity to join and post, then finally make them show their democratic voting card. Oh, wait, if you make people actually verify themselves on Twitter, that would wipe out 70% of the accounts and expose the over-inflated user counts that Twitter boasts to it's investors. You can't have your cake and eat it too Twitter.
There are times in which hate speech is called for such as when an administration is corrupt and filled with criminal activities that approach a charge of treason. What amounts to a call for patriots to be active in driving out such an administration may seem like vile hate speech to others. Yet the last thing we would want is to have the public not contacting each other and help to wind ways to force such people out of office. Look at the hate speech that was used in the denial of Obama being born in America or the supposed crimes of Hillary Clinton. All of those lies were hate speech but could people no longer debate or accuse the liars of wrong doing? Censorship is as dangerous as any wrongs done on communication systems.
What does Google's council have to do with Twitter?
There is no point to promoting healthy, open and civil conversations on Twitter as a solution to this problem when the problem is that people want to use it for unhealthy, closed, uncivil conversations. So what Twitter is proposing is that others somehow help marketing for Twitter to make people not notice all the hate by promoting the good, as if it can be drowned out somehow. The only solution is to punish the wrongdoers and keep investing in that effort until the money you put in overpowers the bad stuff you want to suppress. Use AI. Hire moderators. Thousands and thousands of them. Outsource moderation to shithole countries and watch them to ensure they're being fair. Build AI that watches them. Keep investing. It's ludicrous to think you can stop bad speech by drowning it out with good speech is dumb.
Shut down.
Seriously, kill Twitter completely. Shut it down, shut it all down. The very core concept underlying Twitter is fundamentally broken, it cannot be made "safe". It is designed for sniping and sowing discord. There is no fix.
Kill it.
Oh, fuck you.
The President of the United States is openly defending Nazis and promoting child molesters for public office, and you're fucking worried about people being "too politically correct"? Get some God-damn perspective. The world is being taken over by fascists, nationalists, and far-right psychos, and you're whining like a little bitch about some weak powerless people on the left who dared to speak openly?
You are what is wrong in America right now.
(Seriously, is Slashdot completely controlled by Russian paid actors now?)
The same EPR (Earned Public Reputation) that could improve Slashdot could be used to improve Twitter. I even wrote up a proposal in their weird system. However I'm not holding my breath waiting for Twitter to become useful.
AtAJG, DSAuPR.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
He said SJW, hurrrrrrr
Ya, like, is the term still hot? Like, half of America now knows about the existence of these virtue signaling assholes. Knowing that doesn't cut it for our l33tness no more. Gotta move forward.
How bout Ukanda knuckles? That hot for you?
Oh please please please, ask help from the ADL and/or that Jigsaw group.
Do the world a favour and shut it down.
People can always feel offended. Misinformation spread always. But when one try to stop misinformation via censorship, it is just authority brand's misinformation that spreads and rulers' heart that got protected, while the people suffer.
A lot of people misunderstand what Twitter's goal is. They are not trying to 4chan without the doxing and porn. They actually want to get rid of the Nazis and are looking for ways to do it effectively. Most of their users don't want Nazis there, believe it or not.
I know, I know, what about free speech and the marketplace of ideas? It's a question of the greater good. Look at Reddit, it got a lot better when most of the really nasty stuff was pushed on to Voat. That's the reality here, if you want really good discussions and debates then there has to be some limit on the trolling and abuse or most people just won't participate and it becomes a fat-hating, Jew gassing echo chamber. A lot like Gab.ai, for example.
No one has come up with a solution to this yet. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe it's not actually a huge problem either. Look at the alt-right in America. They took fringe ideas on the very far right and mainstreamed them. It's proof that simply not giving Nazis a platform doesn't stop nationalist ideas from being discussed and seeping into the mainstream when there is enough support for them. It actually seems like the marketplace of ideas is working quite well.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
To have any suggestions to improve it.... only twits use twitter... sorry.
[($)]
The important thing is to look at the words you're using. What do you have if you're not fighting for social justice? You have the opposite, you have a world of social injustice: where the evil reign and good people are oppressed. You have injustices at all levels of the world, you have hell on earth. You see, fighting for social justice makes those people better than you. And the truth is, no matter how much you caw and crow and bitch and moan the likes of your evil will never win. Jesus transformed the earth with social justice. We live in a society predicated upon social justice. We will always bend towards justice, no matter how long your evil ilk whine and no matter how much your dilapidated hearts seek oppression. We will win. And it's not that we're fighting an 'equal battle' but that the very rhetoric you use to 'dismiss and discredit' reveals you as an enemy of the people and an enemy of good. We have already won, and we continuing winning.
Speak. Speak so you can help us win more. It reveals you for the evil heart you have. So I say keep talking.
Keep talking so we can see your disgusting heart revealed.
Speak.
Want to get rid of the toxicity? Start by firing Anita Sarkeesian from Google's so-called "Trust and Safety Council."
A feemale with opinions so dangerous that twitter can be fixed by firing her from uh... google.
Hoo boy do you not like the freeze peach when it's not something you agree with!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Femifascism is still fascism.
n/c
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Only then anyone will consider Twitte's intents seriously.
When you are willing to admit that Twitter also took the hyper fringe left and mainstreamed them, then we can begin to have a conversation on how to fix the problem.
twitter wants help killing itself? i dont think that they understand that they are the ones who have helped general human toxicity to get worse and the only way to cure it is to teach better conflict resolution in schools
The opposite of social justice is individual rights. You know, those pesky 10 add ons to the Constitution that limit the federal governments ability to harass its citizens.
Freedom of, Not from, religion. Freedom to speak and share ideas, however unpopular. Freedom of assembly, of commerce, not being forced to buy products from the government, or being forced to sell products to others. Freedom to defend oneself, ultimately to defend yourself from your own government.
Everything about social justice has twisted personal rights and responsibilities backwards and inside out.
Quit catering to pussies. Let people block and then quit trying to censor people into being Stepford users online. If someone doesn't like something some mean person says, they can block. Otherwise stay the hell out of people's way. Trying to cram everybody into the snowflake generation will never be easy, will never work well and will always screw someone out of an opinion.
Most of their users don't want Nazis there, believe it or not.
Most of their users don't want fuckwits that post #PunchANazi or #KillAllMen on there either, but those are the cunts Twitter chose to run their Trust and Safety Council.
if you want really good discussions and debates then there has to be some limit on the trolling and abuse
So why don't Twitter act to prevent it - from all sides on the political debates.
Some countries have a disproportionately small allocation of IPv4 address space. Home ISPs in those countries may put hundreds of subscribers behind one IP address using so-called carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT). Cellular ISPs worldwide use CGNAT as well.
Who gives a shit about Twitter? Twitter is only used by trolls, pedophiles and Russian bots. It is completely irrelevant! I do find it amusing that Donald Trump was able to use Twitter to propel himself to the Presidency yet I am sure just about every person working at Twitter hates Donald Trump.
Are you pro-life, or pro-death? But hey, you might be right; most of the world is stupid enough to be completely taken in by branding.
Most of their users don't want fuckwits that post #PunchANazi or #KillAllMen on there either, but those are the cunts Twitter chose to run their Trust and Safety Council.
Would be more convincing if you named them, perhaps with a link to when they said those things.
Having said that, I'm not sure punching Nazis is all that objectionable.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Oh, fuck you.
The President of the United States is openly defending Nazis and promoting child molesters for public office
Hyperbole much? Your post is 100% indicative of the problem. One side can state what you say above, and it's all A-OK. Say anything you don't agree with and it should be banned. You don't want a free discussion of ideas, you want a rigid ideology and limited conversation.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Here's the thing that has to really scare Silicon Valley: back on February 17, 2011, President Obama (along with his most trusted adviser, Valerie Jarrett) held a private dinner in San Francisco. Among those in attendance were the then-CEO's of Apple, Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Oracle Systems, Twitter and Yahoo! (there is even a picture of a dinner toast from that dinner published by the White House press office).
We're not sure what was privately discussed at that dinner, but if we find out a "gentlemen's agreement" was made by these companies to censor the political Right with Obama's personal approval, then all eight companies I mentioned could be subject to a First Amendment lawsuit because the companies engaged in censorship with the blessing of the US Government.
It is when they define anyone who disagrees with them as Nazis, though. It's more like #PunchANonFeminist #PunchAGenderRealist #PunchAConservative
perhaps with a link to when they said those things.
What things? He didn't claim anybody saying anything.
Just like how you said people didn't want Nazis on twitter without specifying what those Nazis say or did, he's applying the same standard back at you.
Having said that, I'm not sure punching Nazis is all that objectionable.
It's quite objectionable if you value justice.
In a just and civil society, punishments including punching are decided and handed out by the rule of law, not by angry mobs or a group of elites in some council of some for profit corporation (remember, that's what twitter and google and all those other companies are; they don't exist to promote social justice).
Feminists and other social justice advocates of the past had the right idea. They fought to gets things signed into LAW, not just by cozying up with private for profit companies or going on witch hunts punching people they didn't like. Guys like MLK Jr was quite adamant on non-violent resistance. And you know what? He actually got results.
Today's social justice movement? You got Trump and Brexit.
That's what I did. Never was a member of either twitter or facebook, but got tired of accidentally clicking any links to their shit, so I overrode them in my DNS config. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
The hysteria and lunacy of people like yourself is enough to drive even the most ardent liberal towards the right.
Keep up the good work!
Did you ever play Ultima V? In that game, the 8 virtues were twisted, contorted, and enshrined into law by a corrupted Lord Blackthorne, all coated in a facade of good intentions. Exactly what the Left are attempting now.
Considering that 2012 was an election year, I'm pretty sure it was:
Glad to solve this one for you.
The hallmark of the reich winger is that everything they believe about the world is a lie. Russia hacked the DNC, and tailored the document release to whatever would help Trump's rhetoric, and they did so knowing that the news agencies would report it. They also encouraged the spread of propaganda on social media, but that's a minor concern. Russian agents also approached the Trump campaign, and there seems to have been some NRA impropriety, but there isn't much reason to think that the Trump campaign actually countenanced any Russian offers of assistance. That is to say, aside from the extremely guilty way that Trump has responded to the issue, including obstruction of justice, the character assassination of the investigators, and having useful idiots like you spread blatant lies about his former opponent.
Logic and reason are actually poor choices for examining the world, so you know. Given the right choice of axioms you can prove up is down. Given the right axioms, you can prove Trump is pure as the driven snow. Maybe you can learn what empiricism is when you grow up.
If one tolerates bad manners, they grow worse. Our pleasant habitat could decay into the sort of slum Elli-Five is, with crowding and unmannerly behavior and unnecessary noise and impolite language. I must find the oaf who did this thing, explain to him his offense, give him a chance to apologize, and kill him.
Really? Hand on... nope, still liberal. Oh well, try again.
You're a "gender realist" as opposed to "gender empiricist", we take it. I'm sure if you conservative chucklefucks don't stop being retarded we will have to start with punching you, but you're all pretty old so we were hoping to just wait that one out. "PunchANazi" doesn't even extend to "PunchAWhiteSupremecist" most of the time. Even your fellow Trump supporter David Duke hasn't achieved that level of martyrdom. It's actually pretty easy not to get punched for being a Nazi. You just avoid embracing Nazi salutes, Nazi rhetoric, toothbrush mustaches, genocide, and the people who are into those things. I know, it seems so simple after you find out! It's okay, it's a mistake which many very fine people have made.
No need for all of Twitter's abusive censorship.
Too stupid to have any real thoughts. So just parrots memes.
But censors even the most moderate conservatives.
Conservatives have been banned for opinions, and facts. Even when done so in perfectly polite manner.
Tweets promoting killing Trump, killing all police, and killing all whites, are all over twitter.
The problem Twitter has is the same problem inherent to every platform (Slashdot, Reddit included) which ascribes value to any statement/opinion based on what people think of it. Any such upvote/downvote/trending/retweet/like system tends to select the *popular* opinion, not the correct solution.
Now it would be all good if this was done by automated bots and computers who run multiple simulations to check objective validity and then in some statistical measure determine that the solution supported by the maximum number of simulation runs is likely to be the correct one. This does not hold true when humans (flawed, emotion and biased in a myriad ways) determine what gets spread.
In short, there is no hope.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
They actually want to get rid of the Nazis and are looking for ways to do it effectively.
Yes, because there totally is a real problem with 1930s style socialism loving German nationalist on Twitter. Oh, of course I know that's what you mean. What you mean to say that everyone you don't agree with is Hitler.
Hey, if you're going to go full blown Godwin's law right off the bat that I'm not going to treat you with any respect or credibly. Especially when you're going to start citing every single retarded trope and accusation against other communities and platforms that the left has declared to be 'literally Hitler'. Hell, I don't even like most social media. Twitter, Gab, or Reddit. Some parts of 4Chan are fun, but I don't actually like Nazi memes. They're kind of dumb.
But as a final point I'll also point out that the idea of no-platforming any social out-group has literally zero chance of working in the long run. You'll just drive them underground and build more more social resentment towards to the point you actually end up invigorating these extremest groups. It's just basic human psychology.
Stop allowing celebrities to break the rules. Enforce your hate speech rules for all.
I'm pretty sure he meant the white supremacists pretty much everyone has been calling Nazis for well over half a century. Except you and some other weird Slashdotters of late who have suddenly decided now's the time to insist there's some meaningful difference between the various groups normally put under that umbrella.
And he's right. Pretty much nobody (outside of the Nazis themselves) wants Nazis on Twitter, and they're there, and given the extremism, and the consequences of that extremism, most Twitter users would rather they not be on Twitter. The question is how best to make that happen.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Now Slashdot got invaded by enough alt-right to drive off people like me who didn't want to read self-entitled hating teenagers. So that might need to be taking into account.
(Reading /. for the 3rd time in 2 years.)
I meant literal Nazis. They kindly wear swastikas to make themselves more easily identifiable.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Not sure if that qualifies as a request for additional details on the suggestion, but I admit that it's a touchy point. I don't think it would be good to use such dimensions as conservative versus progressive or gun friendly versus anti-gun. Basically a can of worms, but it also reflects my philosophy that I want to be open to differing perspectives as long as they aren't coming from a intellectually dishonest Sophist, a crooked salesperson, or some other flavor of liar.
I tend to think that Slashdot should have a block function for personally annoying nuisances, perhaps as an option on the Foe status. However I generally think that a moderate bias in favor of positive EPR would be sufficient to block most of the noise, and I might want to bump it up higher. For example, I favor funny people, though I think that dimension should be adjusted to a broader label, something like "makes me happy" versus "makes me sad". In general the group aspects of Slashdot are weak, but I sort of count that in Slashdot's favor...
Two other areas of interest... The first might be called contagious or predictive filtering. If some identity resembles identities that I've already reacted against, then that's a reason to reduce their visibility. (If you're a friendly guy who likes newbies or a masochist who likes feeding the trolls, then you could adjust your settings that way to make them more visible.)
The second would be the idea of "self-discreditation". For example, that could be done with a visibility check when someone starts a reply. If the person who wants to write the reply has a relatively low EPR such that the reply will not be seen by the OP, then there would be a warning and suggestion to comment somewhere else (such as the top level of the discussion), but if the low-EPR person insists on replying anyway, then it would get a self-discrediting prefix on the reply, something like "Not a sincere reply and not seen by the OP."
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Anita is a notorious content thief and liar, Google advertises on Twitter, and because of its prominence it can outright say to Twitter "Ban this user or we pull all sponsorship".
Nothing. Nova hasn't posted since January, but in his/her 2 posts today there are 3 links to their own blog... so we can assume they will take any excuse to put in a plug.
THIS !
Wait, aren't you guys talking about twitter? How do you see whether somebody across the Internet is wearing a swastika or not?
And if it's so easy to identify Nazis, why would twitter need to ask people to help them?
Except you and some other weird Slashdotters of late who have suddenly decided now's the time to insist there's some meaningful difference between the various groups normally put under that umbrella.
It isn't "of late", and it isn't just "some" posters. Slashdot is a site aimed at nerds, and nerds do care about differences that normies would "normally" just ignore and throw under one umbrella.
I dare say it's actually your focus on what people "normally" use the weird one. You're the ones who only showed up invading this site "of late" (relatively speaking, it's been going on for quite a few years all over the Internet)
And he's right. Pretty much nobody (outside of the Nazis themselves) wants Nazis on Twitter
He actually isn't. There is no evidence for this. There is in fact counter evidence, biggest being that someone like Trump got enough votes to win. Despite Nazis being soooo easy to identity, and how it is supposedly soooooo obvious that Trump is the candidate for Nazis, Hillary still lost and barely won the popular vote.