this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
137 points (90.1% liked)

Technology

59770 readers
3133 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

X's CEO tells staff data will show efforts to fight hate, as advertisers flee::Social media company X CEO Linda Yaccarino told employees that "data will tell the real story" about its efforts to battle antisemitism, according to a note to employees, amid growing outrage over the issue.

all 27 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 101 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does it really matter what internal effort there is to battle hate when the celebrity owner is publically boosting it himself?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Wouldn't be surprised if the teams are just working on removing those who fact check musk or hurt his feelings

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's interesting that Elons companies always seem to have internal data that can't be verified by third party and the data always show that the company has done nothing wrong. Weird how the current CEO seem to operate exactly in the same way Elon would.

[–] iterable 11 points 1 year ago

He is like Alex Jones. But instead of piles of random blank papers being "facts" it's the "data"

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I like the data they had to release under new EU regulations so far. For example, they have a single employee that speaks my native language, which is sixth most-spoken among languages of the European Union. It definitely shows when trying to report things like "kill yourself" posts, which apparently is OK with both Twitter terms of service and local law (that one came as surprise to me and would probably surprise lawyers as well).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, they really fucked up with the automated messages saying something doesn't violate the rules.

Because that's a paper trail that twitter looked at something and decided not to remove it.

They'd be covering their own ass better if those didn't get sent, at least they could pretend they hadn't looked at it yet and kept it a grey area

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They can't ignore reports and have to allow at least one follow-up dispute per EU regulations. Unfortunately there's no dedicated government office here for escalating it further (unlike Germany for example) but I imagine giving Digital Services Act more teeth will come with time.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How much effort that they've put into battling hate speech is irrelevant; all that matters is how successful those efforts are. It feels like there is far more hate speech on the platform than there was a couple of years ago, ergo they're failing.

If I were an advertiser concerned that my brand will appear alongside rampant neo-Naziism, it would be scarce comfort to be told "yeah, but we tried..."

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

And noticeably it trended way up after Musk went in and fired a lot of people doing jobs that he considered a waste of money.

Like moderation.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I kind of disagree with your first statement but only in rare conditions. For example (hypothetically) if a platform was doing the absolute most it could (to its detriment) and was leagues ahead of everybody else, then i would say the effort does matter

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

"Data will show" if they had the data, they would have shown it already instead of making false promises about the future.

[–] Voroxpete 14 points 1 year ago

"The data will show it. We're just not done falsifying it yet."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As a CEO, they should know that the data is pretty much available instantaneously. It's all digital.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Assuming it's truthful, she wouldn't have been able to make the claim without already having the data meaning there is no reason why we'd all need to 'wait and see' especially with something so damaging to the company.

Assuming it's a lie, all she needs to do is make the false claim and hope it leads to good PR before everyone forgets about it and the news cycle moves on. This explains why she'd tell us to wait and see.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Twitter was doing just fine in this regard, the only difference is phony stark and his quest against moderation (unless the topic is about himself, then and only then are fact checking and censorship acceptable apparently.

Simply put, Elon and friends have made a space for hate deliberately. “Efforts” to stop hate isn’t good enough, especially when you literally were handed the goddamn solution and the first thing down was kill moderation teams and the like.

Fuck these bad faith capitalist pigs who can’t get fascism’s orange dick out their mouth

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Written be Elon, parroted by CEO.

There has never been a more useless CEO role in a company.

[–] iterable 7 points 1 year ago

I am sure that data won't be altered...or it will show the bare minimum effort had been taken. Well beyond functional and just for legal purposes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With hate posts it is the same as with rats. The more that you can obviously see, the more rats are hiding in that area. If you happen to meet a rat in the open, broad daylight, you can assume a population of at least 5000. So if people can obviously see well-known companies' ads next to nazi content, how much nazi content must be hiding in there?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, and when the leader of said area is also the Giant Rat that makes all of the rules, it kinda feels like there's a much worse issue than a rat infestation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

"Look at all the data!" ol' Musk shouts as he gets distracted to retweet a post about how unfair it is that white people can't have a "white people only" club.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


X, formerly Twitter, lost several major advertisers including IBM and Comcast, and owner Elon Musk was blasted by the White House after he agreed with a post on the platform Wednesday.

"While some advertisers may have temporarily paused investments because of a misleading and manipulated article, the data will tell the real story," Yaccarino said in the Sunday night note to employees seen by Reuters, adding that X has been clear about its efforts to fight antisemitism and discrimination.

Over the weekend, Musk posted on X that his company would file a "thermonuclear" lawsuit against Media Matters for what he said was a "fraudulent attack" on the platform.

In a response on Monday, Media Matters President Angelo Carusone, said, "Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate.

The controversy comes amid a surge in antisemitism in many countries, including the United States, since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel and the subsequent bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military.

After buying Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion, Musk laid off thousands of employees, including many who worked to moderate content on the platform.


The original article contains 377 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 44%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is she going to "release the kraken" like Sidney Powell did?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

As if a CEO had any idea of data, other than requesting it from their staff.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's all about pleasing the inverstors, shareholders and advertisers. The users are just the product that is being sold.

[–] mindbleach 2 points 1 year ago

Your owner retweeted Nazis.