Twitter to cut hundreds of jobs

Oh, you ARE that exact guy on a lengthy timeout because he doesn’t understand the diff between “censorship” and moderation of obnoxious posters.

No wonder.

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And then lots of tiny little bits of graphite got into the air, subsequently floating into the electronics causing shorts, thus demonstrating that the quick and easy answer isn’t always the right one.

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[quote=“beschizza, post:28, topic:88135, full:true”]Love the idea that excluding racial slurs from trending topics and the like is some elaborate machine-learning conundrum of political bias and nailbiting algorithmic decision tree failure[/quote]Because no one’s managed to circumvent an auto-blocker of racial slurs?


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INFOS3C was flagged because a human saw the word sex there, not an algorithm.

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The “saw” isn’t even real, so I don’t get the point beyond how poorly informed / gullible the Urban legend rebroadcasters are.

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actually, no, what happened was i got into a lengthy, respectful, thought-provoking, nuanced, and very satisfying conversation about it - never banned, never leaping to conclusions, always trying to see multiple sides of the big picture - try it one time

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In-crowd catchphrases among white supremacists aren’t really relevant? The point isn’t to eradicate hate speech entirely but make Twitter moderately better and less hateful for its users.

If they don’t use the words with the most power? If they sound ridiculous without using the most common epithets of hate?

GOOD.

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Oddly, besides Twitter, every other major site in that domain does seem to manage far, far better. It’s almost like the problem isn’t that the line is so incredibly difficult to draw that it’s sure to be done badly, but rather that they don’t feel like investing in fixing some major ongoing issues.

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Let me guess, the termination notices were done in 140 characters or less.

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I’m discussing whatever discussion that led to you crafting this sockpuppet, not one that happened offsite.

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Even a small barrier is enough to block a lot. Knowingly allowing your site to normalize racist slurs has its own own issues. If the people who want to use them have to go to extraordinary measures, then you are being effective enough at preventing your platform from normalizing racist slurs, and should be commended.

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The elements that matter to the intent and wit of the legend are untrue.

The US and Soviet cosmonauts used pencils. Private industry developed a pen and sold it to both the US and Soviet cosmonauts.

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And most racists aren’t the sort who would still enjoy using the words disempowered. They love the power held by n-bombs, they’re too full of themselves to use “Canadians”. Anything that suppresses that behavior and makes them look weird and exposes them to ridicule… good.

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I agree with you on this, Rob.

As one of those asshole libertarians who loves the idea of people being able to do what they want - I am not an idiot and acknowledge everything has limitations.

I COULD go to my friends house and act like an asshole, call him the n-word, and shit on his rug. I highly doubt he would let me come back… unless it was his fault for getting me that drunk. Should I then protest his house for being some anti 1st Amendment commie? Oh wait, bad analogy. That is a private place. How about the same thing at Walmart?

Same thing with the Internet. While some people take it too far with the concept of “safe spaces”, asking people to act like fucking civilized people isn’t the same as censorship. For example one could express controversial views, even ones deemed racist or sexist, etc, and do it in a civilized manner.

Now for sure there are places where there is “no holds barred”. Like 4chan. And really, who the fuck wants another 4chan? I mean places who have NO limits are fucking cesspools.

If one wants to 1) make money and 2) keep a viable and growing community, they need to make it a place where most people WANT to go. You get too many toxic people fucking things up and you lose it all.

As much as I still think Twitter is worthless, they should be working on keeping it halfway clean.

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[quote=“Phrenological, post:50, topic:88135”]If they don’t use the words with the most power? If they sound ridiculous without using the most common epithets of hate?

GOOD.[/quote]Well, y’know, just a couple of months ago I suspect no one would have thought that a sad cartoon frog could possibly be taken seriously as a symbol of hate either.

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If they must twist the ‘space pen’ story; they could at least tell the tale of how Fisher was forbidden from ever participating in military or aerospace contracting ever again when it was discovered that he independently funded the unsolicited development of a solution to a government agency’s problem; then sold it to them for a quite reasonable per-unit price.

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the best part is how the “punch line” is “…so enjoy paying your taxes” after a long story whose premise is the superior efficiency and resourcefullness of a communist country…

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Reminds me of how some people take anything they hear as recieved wisdom and never bother to check their assumptions.

Shhh… there. With your facts.

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Why is that worth keeping, when 300 employees aren’t?

This is (if you can zoom out beyond the pettifogging level) a good question. I can respect the experimental, let’s-try-something-and-see-where-it-leads attitude up to a point, because we’d never discover new stuff if everyone was always thinking about the potential problems. Like with 4chan — of course a petri dish like that had the potential to turn septic, but it it might also have led to good surprises, and the way to find out was to try it. And when it turned out to be mostly horrible, the guy was like “ew never mind” and walked away. That would’ve been an honorable direction for Twitter.

The problem is that they drank their own VC-funded Flavor Aid, and decided they were a Big Important Business supporting hundreds of people’s livelihoods, before they figured out how/whether what they’d created was something the world really needs. So now they’re in a position where, even if they think deep down that their product is worse than Hitler, there’s enormous pressure to keep going with it anyway.

It’s possible the bad could be separated from the good – and it does seem they should be trying harder – but I’m guessing this is much more difficult than it looks from the outside. I’d guess their finances are precarious, and they’re worried that if they trigger a Reddit-style backlash from their users, it could spook investors or advertisers and send them into a rapid death spiral. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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Aw I missed that, or I would have shared the same. The things you pick up working at a Space Museum.

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