What solutions to content moderation would be better than Elon Musk’s?

7 points by sepiasaucer 4 years ago | 9 comments

It seems a lot of people in tech believe the ability for anybody to share largely unmoderated content on large social media platforms is very important for free/open online communication. At the same time you could argue there is a desire/need to combat spam, disinformation campaigns, propaganda, hate speech, AI generated content, etc.

Much of the discussion around content moderation is about the many challenges, sometimes suggesting it is an impossible problem to solve. A lot of discussion also suggests content moderation is inherently bad because “free speech”. However, lots of problems are technically challenging and/or ethically challenging (e.g., self driving cars), but are not discussed the same way.

A perfect solution to content moderation likely does not exist, but I am curious what companies are working solely on providing content moderation as a service and what innovative solutions are being proposed. Also, what is the state of the art in content moderation research assuming such a thing exists?

psyc 4 years ago |

Give the user the ability to choose their preferred filtering for themselves. Think carefully about how to do it. Redirect your zeal there.

At the top-down platform level, focus on keeping out illegal material only. Take any further aspects of your value system and your theories about what is or isn't "good" for people out of it.

The current model is terribly contemptuous and anti-human. It assumes that someone or something has more legitimacy than "those people" to decide what EVERYBODY can/can't should/shouldn't create and consume. Whether that someone is "a private company that can do what it wants, no further examination needed", or a government, "society", "the people (really, 'my people')", the majority, the elite, the experts, the intellectuals, the 'responsible adults in the room', it's all the same. Tyranny over the experience of every single person by a subset of people in a position to make it so.

uberman 4 years ago |

Do you believe that Twitter and/or Facebook are not applying/working on "state of the art" moderation? I ask because I know first hand that they are. Further, I also know that when they do talk about how they are researching state of the art "AI based" moderation that the influencers who want no moderation at all come out of the woodwork to dog pile and invent conspiracies.

At this point I see no way for any social media company to talk about moderation (even legally mandated moderation) without getting dog piled. Note that even Musk is not advocating absolute free speech. In interviews about his attempt to purchase Twitter his frustration seems to be more about moderation being a black box not that moderation is not needed or wanted.

If you agree that AI driven moderation is "state of the art" and that moderation must be transparent and not a black box, how are you proposing that a company explain how transformers and hidden layers made a given moderation decision to the public when even the best PhDs can't really explain it to each other?

sepiasaucer 4 years ago | |

I believe they (Twitter etc) are working on moderation. I do not know if that is their core competency or if they want to be in the content moderation business. I was wondering if a 3rd party might provide content moderation as a service.

Transparency is very important. If you can’t explain your solution then maybe a simpler, but less accurate method is preferred. Maybe you could set some defaults but allow more user control. Maybe you could have humans in the decision making process, but still integrate with ML models for scale. I don’t know best solution, but offering content moderation as a service would shift some blame away from social media platform even if it was not better than what they were doing in-house.

liamwestray 4 years ago |

It’s not a government-run system, so it’s irrelevant.

A guy who got a court-ordered twitter-sitter should probably not be in charge of Twitter as he doesn’t seem to understand what protected speech is.

You don’t get to say whatever you want as the CEO of a publicly traded company without consequences — especially as it relates to stock prices and shareholder information.

You don’t get to argue that a company is infringing on your right to free speech — that’s not how free speech works.

As a long-time Musk fan, I find this unhealthy obsession with Twitter to really be the final straw. The man is unhinged and may be completely undermining all the good SpaceX and Tesla are capable of.

raxxorraxor 4 years ago | |

> that’s not how free speech works

De jure, but there is a far larger concept behind it. And it is very easy to differentiate here so don't be intentionally stupid.

liamwestray 4 years ago | | |

You don't seem to understand the basic concepts of free speech, securities laws, or what Elon Musk is actually doing. Your question is irrelevant. Accusing me of being intentionally stupid isn't helping your argument.

We have a free market, multiple social platforms exist. Ones that moderate certain content lose certain users. You can chose what level of moderation you want as a customer and platforms can choose what level of moderation they want a business. Moderation technology as a service exists already.

Elon is trying to short-circuit the basic principles of free speech because he lied in a way c-suite executives and directors are not legally allowed to lie as it runs afoul of anti-fraud laws. You may not yell fire in a crowded theatre and you may not use free speech to commit fraud or when you are subject to disclosure laws you may not use free speech as a defense for breaking them.

When you are a corporate officer or director of publicly traded company you agree to following securities laws, specifically not making false statements that may impact stock prices.

Elon's antics got him a twitter-sitter and now he wants to own twitter in some sort of byzantine strategy to get around rules he agreed to (and their consequences necessitating a twitter-sitter) and have helped make him incredibly wealthy.

His arguments about open-sourcing algorithms and protecting free speech are not the actual reasons for his bid to take over twitter, he has simply amassed enough money to try to own a media outlet for the influence he could wield with it. He probably also thinks he can skirt SEC/Judicial rulings about his behavior on twitter if he owns it outright. At Elon's level of wealth, the only thing left to buy is more influence.

PaulHoule 4 years ago | |

1000 years from now the last man will be dying on Earth and will have the bitter regret: "We could have gotten to Mars but Elon Musk just had to post that stupid tweet."

It is Elon Musk's brilliance that makes his stupidity so poignant. Electric cars will survive him and will survive Tesla but what he's doing in space travel is so important that he shouldn't undermine it.

raxxorraxor 4 years ago | | |

He doesn't undermine it at all, on the contrary. He answers attempts for consolidation raw ideas with raw responses. Something that maybe someone should have done sooner.

raxxorraxor 4 years ago |

Spam is something different than misinformation. Russians are targeted for misinformation if they criticize the war and labeled as spreaders of fake news. Sound familiar? If someone in western nations proposes the same because we are the good guys, that person did misunderstand one of the most fundamental implications of the enlightenment. Even supposedly educated people seem to fail here massively and this is still very basic.

And yes, moderation did ban content that was correct and only later admitted the mistake. But the damage is done at that point. I don't even believe Musk doesn't have his own opinion on allowed content, but his perspective is the vastly smarter one and if you think about being in opposition to someone like him, better start your homework yesterday.

Because what we got until now didn't have any sensible quality. Companies are interested in compliance. If you think you can leverage them to build good moderation you are either very naive or malicious. Same problem with Musk technically, but at least he writes the correct stuff on his banner.

Hate speech is a vehicle to enable dictators to censor content they don't like. You cannot ban people being hateful and contrary to pop-science believes it isn't as contagious as believed.

The solution is to have an iron framework of allowed content. Terms like hate speech make that impossible. Call it personal attacks and ban them if you don't want them on your platform. But ban only them and let supposed misinformation stay. Your crusade is more damaging than the info itself. And in some cases the info is correct and you are not. Basically the classical approach of many internet platforms.