2020 Election MEGAthread

[Jibartik]

Originally Posted by BlackBellamy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Oh thanks! My concern is that "delicate" and "misleading" and all the reasons being articulated about whether someone's opinion should be allowed to circulate are specious.

Like I'm not seeing anything about Matt Walsh's post that's misleading. He's expressing his opinion about the statistical improbability mentioned below, which is documented. And if he's inflaming passions to an undue degree that he deserves to be censored, that's just a matter of opinion. For example I don' think he's doing that at all.

What I wouldn't mind is Twitter's counterpoint. Because it's THEIR opinion about whether something is inflaming or misleading. So if I can't see Matt's post without two extra clicks that's fine but part of that clicking should involve a reasoned explanation why he's misleading or what is factually incorrect. But I don't get that so it's just twitter telling me this guy is a liar but all they're doing is calling him a liar.

I also understand Twitter can do whatever it wants, so I'm not telling them they can't.

I just find it amusing how weak 'some of the content is disputed and might be misleading' is as an explanation. Who is disputing? Are they better or worse than Matt? I don't know. I don't know anything except when I want to read something sometimes the technocrats let me read it and sometimes they seed my mind that I'm about to be lied to by making me take positive physical action to affirm that I understand I am being subjected to operant conditioning.

Tech companies are pretty transparent why they do things, they try to figure out the best way to do things and screw up sometimes.

Zuck went to congress and said that he shouldn't moderate because he'll screw up and also show bias, and now both sides say he's screwing up and showing bias.

So between the two platforms you had two drastic different idiologies, twitter embraced self moderation, zuck wanted facebook to just let the fake news flow.

Both were hammered by congress and both political parties.

Cant win dont try.

Just say crazy things and shake maracas.

[BlackBellamy]

Originally Posted by Jibartik [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Tech companies are pretty transparent why they do things, they try to figure out the best way to do things and screw up sometimes.

I work for the [Data Acquisition Group] in the [Advertising Division] of [Big Tech Company] (generic names used to prevent doxxing).

We spend a lot of time manipulating you. We run A/B tests to see how. For example we will give you a web page that's 'happy', full of nice colors and soothing fonts and information designed to make you feel good. Then we check the response rates. Then we give the other people pages with more negative news, and then we check that. We find that angry people tend to stay on the page a lot longer, driving engagement and therefore offering more value. People reading about fashion will read that article then go somewhere else. People reading an intense article why their political opponent is a liar tend to read other articles of the same type. They click and click and click.

We assign a bid value to people based on their interests. If we have a bunch of low-value visitors, the ad revenue is small because people aren't bidding a lot for your engagement because your bid value is low, that is you're not likely to engage with the page for any significant time because you're not excited enough.

But if we can manipulate you into being more angry, and therefore more engaged, we can drive your value up. Then we can show our advertisers that our visitors are higher value so the advertisers pay more and we can deliver on our revenue forecasts.

We never ever talk about this stuff with people outside the industry. When we talk about manipulating people and operant conditioning techniques to drive revenue, that conversation stays there. That's because we're the opposite of transparent. When we issue a public statement regarding some data breach or privacy loss or anything, it's issued with one objective: Make people forget this shit so we can get back to business. Our 'transparency' is just another method of manipulation. We will be 'transparent' only if it helps you to be monetized over time.

This culture is endemic to the tech industry. I work for a big player and I talk to my counterparts at the other big players all the time, mostly because our businesses are so interconnected. And I hate to break it to you but we're ONLY in this for the money. The only concern regarding ethics is "will this ethics problem drive down revenue". There is never a discussion about what is right or moral, because revenue is paramount. It's all very objectivist - revenue equals success which equals morality.

Imagine Enron run by the Ferengi. Yeah, that's us.

[magnetaress]

mcdonalds definitely increased my bust size so we do have that going for us

sad reality is we could do more, but can we force people to do more?

i think the answer is obvious, and its going to take a lot of work to get people to be smart and efficient and gentle. And absolutely brutal and vicious and objective when necessary. And the only people who can do that is us.

Step 1 get those weird gay fantasy conspiracy head games out of our rhetoric. Good guys and bad guys. both.