I wouldn’t describe human-based curation like that. I don’t think any reasonable person should.
Bear in mind that the discourse of what’s trending is being already dictated by a tiny minority of users who have their own agenda. If you’re concerned about things being messy, that ship sailed.
Someone should have told them that most science fiction is a warning, not a blueprint, and that SF which presents promising futures is extremely short on how it came about or actually works, because the difference between SF authors and astrologers futurists is hubris. SF authors are drawn to penning warnings because it’s readily apparent how things can go badly and really fucking difficult for a person or a think tank or a corporation to solve a problem that’s stumped the entirety of humanity.
Sometimes breakthroughs happen on the shoulders of giants, but the myth of algorithmic enlightenment is predicated on the hubristic† fallacy that subjective and ineluctably biased choices can be rendered objective and impartial by throwing capital at engineers.
† Autocorrect tried to change hubristic to heuristic. That’s a little on the nose, Autocorrect, even for you.
The link is broken.
[twitter] Sorry. Im sorry. Im trying to remove it
Dang. You’re right. I’m trying to relocate it now. The account is still there, but there was a whole thread a few days ago.
I can’t find it. The argument, summarized according to my best memory (which sucks, by the way) was:
Twitter could ban the Nazis if they wanted to, they’re not permitted in Germany. But they choose not to for other, inscrutable, reasons.
I have my own lengthy theory [insert wanking motion and eyeroll here] that science fiction is really about interrogating the past and, to some extent, the present, rather than attempts at prognostication. The future is just a convenient possibility space.
I think that’s correct. But it’s also about exploring the foundation and limits of the human condition in a general sense, which doens’t so much prognosticate outcomes as ask what choices are available to us and why we might want to be more careful in how we make them. Unfortunately, certain readers, especially among those enamored of their own sense of superiority, forget or miss entirely the warning and just throw open Pandora’s box to get the shiny baubles inside.
Meanwhile, guess who non-sarcastially said to kill all non-christian men?
Of course it was a Republican.
Obligs:
The existence of grey areas doesn’t preclude things being black and white. The existence of statements that may or may not be anti-semitic doesn’t prevent people from enforcing the rule against statements that are clearly anti-semitic.
Great opening line.
Maybe there should be a hashtag #KillAllTwitters, just as an experiment, of course.
Right, but when we’re dealing with the Nazis, isn’t anger at Twitter a bit misplaced? This is like blaming the mail service for delivering suspicious packages sent by a terrorist. We should be angry about those packages, but not necessarily at the mail service.
Until we have an all-knowing computer, it’s almost as feasible for Twitter to have an editor check every local trend and semi popular tweet as it is for the mail service to check every package, but we don’t say things like, “the mail service is enabling terrorists”.
Some folks say exactly that.
That aside, there is a fundamental difference to the retail 1-to-1 deliveries of the mail service, and the global rebroadcasting that Twitter does, along with actively pushing content, like some sort of deranged Clippy “oh, I see you’re reading posts about genocide. Here, let me put you in touch with these folks talking about burning synagogues!”
Or like complaining that the luggage of an airline passenger isn’t scanned for bombs.
Well, of course, because there is nothing in human history worse than misandry, right? /s
Holy shit, this is not some fringe nazi who will never be elected, the is an actual sitting Congress critter! i know eastern Washington is a whole different world, but still part of the USA. I just… damn.
He’s a representative in the state government so he isn’t part of the national government yet, but who knows what will happen in two years time.
Key word is “elected.” A majority of voters in his distrrict are at least not outraged by a stance like this.
