Christopher Byrd interviews the post-cyberpunk writer Cory Doctorow, about the monopolists of Big Tech, the weirdness of crypto, and the lessons of science fiction.
@woozle Excellent bit at the end of Doctorow's New Yorker profile on content moderation:
I worry that, because of the attacker’s advantage, the people who want to break the rules are always going to be able to find ways around them, and that we’re never going to be able to make a set of rules that is comprehensive enough to forestall bad conduct. We see this all the time, right? Facebook comes up with a rule that says you can’t use racial slurs, and then racists figure out euphemisms for racial slurs. They figure out how to walk right up to the line of what’s a racial slur without being a racial slur, according to the rule book. And they can probe the defenses. They can try a bunch of different euphemisms in their alt accounts; they can see which ones get banned or blocked, and then they can pick one that they think is moderator-proof.
Meanwhile, if you’re just some normie who’s having racist invective thrown at you, you’re not doing these systematic probes—you’re just trying to live your life. And they’re sitting there trying to goad you into going over the line. And as soon as you go over the line they know chapter and verse. They know exactly what rule you’ve broken, and they complain to the mods and get you kicked off. And so you end up with committed professional trolls having the run of social media and their targets being the ones who get the brunt of bad moderation calls. Because dealing with moderation, like dealing with any system of civil justice, is a skilled, context-heavy profession. Basically, you have to be a lawyer. And, if you’re just a dude who’s trying to talk to your friends on social media, you always lose.
I think Doctorow's touching on a universal truth: that any rules-based system ultimately ends up being a sort of barristered hell. It's why content moderation is so damned context-sensitive. And also why and how extremists on both sides of a divide can drive out moderates and give rise to a highly-partisan shriekfest. Closely related to SSC's "Toxoplasma of Rage":
Christopher Byrd interviews the post-cyberpunk writer Cory Doctorow, about the monopolists of Big Tech, the weirdness of crypto, and the lessons of science fiction.
Doc Edward Morbius ⭕
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •I think Doctorow's touching on a universal truth: that any rules-based system ultimately ends up being a sort of barristered hell. It's why content moderation is so damned context-sensitive. And also why and how extremists on both sides of a divide can drive out moderates and give rise to a highly-partisan shriekfest. Closely related to SSC's "Toxoplasma of Rage":
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
@pluralistic
#CoryDoctorow #NewYorker #ContentModeration #Lawyering #ToxoplasmaOfRage
Cory Doctorow Wants You to Know What Computers Can and Can’t Do
Christopher Byrd (The New Yorker)