Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@social.cleverlibre.org
Software engineering contractor/consultant in Florida specializing in .NET C# #WebDev, plus #Indie #GameDev in #MonoGame, #Stride, and #Godot.
I like complex simulations and enjoy writing procedural generation algorithms for fun.
#Pilot in training. Burgeoning fan of #Aviation in general.
Fan of #1A jurisprudence and the kind of #FreeSpeech that applies to everyone equally.
Pro-Democracy. Pro-Rights. Pro-Freedom. In that order.
He/Him 🏳🌈
High risk of rants, especially with the lack of character limit.
Joined Nov 2022
@garyrogers @gregpak Uh, no. We're engineers. We break things for a reason (to learn how to build it without breaking).
It's not cruelty. It's professionalism.
@gregpak It's also no more "artificial" than it is intelligent. You should see the call centers full of humans helping it try not to screw up.
This is a great article on the subject:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/13/becoming-a-chatbot-my-life-as-a-real-estate-ais-human-backup
@chancerydaily From what I understand, you generally don't want to be too flowery. Like, if it's text, just transcribe it directly, no foreword. If it's an image, explain the key points of what one is seeing. The idea is to give someone without sight enough context to understand what's being posted without wasting their time with endless descriptors (text-to-speech isn't always the fastest talker).
Mentioning color would be fine, if it's key to what's being posted, but leave it out if it's not relevant.
Alt-text has been around for a long time, so there are many guides if you want more info. This one is a very reputable source for building the web: https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/
@doncruse If that were the case, they wouldn't charge for it (at least not at first) because mass adoption would be far more important than any initial revenues.
@greg as for the Myanmar thing, the below paragraph is from the Amnesty International report you cited.
In addition, they don't seem to have any real concrete evidence or recommendations about the algorithmic recommendations. It basically boils down to "Facebook should do more human rights due diligence for its algorithms". Which is like a teacher responding "think harder" when a kid asks why they got a bad grade.
They couldn't make specific recommendations because their entire paper is established on assumptions that may or may not be true. They *feel* Facebook is reckless with its algorithms, so it must be. 
The bottom line is that these companies are giving people what they want. That so many people seem to want hatred isn't an algorithmic problem; It's a human nature problem.
@greg And how much success have you had applying the contents of that patent in the real world? Because it seems to me that it would only work in very narrowly-scoped environments or for very specific types of users and wouldn't work as well for the general public in the billion-user scale systems.
Of course we could train the learning models to avoid certain types of harmful-but-legal content. But the problem is: other people still want to see that content and actively seek it out.
Like your diet example from before: Sure, the algorithm could be trained to disincentivize diet advice, but then you're pissing off a whole group of people looking to lose weight to try to protect anorexics.
You can't require the entire internet have kid gloves on because some people could be harmed by seeing some content.
@greg @joeo10 How are they supposed to know if presenting a user with a certain bit of content is a "good idea"? Do you want them to collect everyone's medical records to make value judgements about which content is good for them or not?
Because that sounds dystopian to me.
It really sounds like you simply don't understand the scale of the problem or how these things work at all. The recommendations the algorithm provides do not inherently match the whims or goals of the company that published it. ChatGPT should be about as obvious an example of that as any.
Also, it wasn't Facebook's "pursuit of profit" that led to the Myanmar thing. It was a lack of non-English-speaking moderators. Facebook ran a study and found they made *more* money when they turned off their algorithm (because people scrolled past more content they didn't care about, which meant they were shown more ads in between).
So, even the "facts" you're starting from are lacking. Maybe consider that the conclusions aren't nearly as sound either.
Question for fellow #Mastodon users:
When you want to boost a post, do you also tend to favorite it or just boost it alone?
Louis Ingenthron
boosted
Ah, figures that Elon firing most of the workers got rid of everyone fighting the actual SMS fraud so he got hit by a big bill and now he thinks paywalling sms 2fa will fix it (it won't)
@greg @joeo10 Gee, could that possibly be because people suffering from anorexia frequently search for diet-related content? How is that YouTube's fault that they're just giving them more of what they've asked for?
It's not big tech's responsibility to manage anyone's addiction for them.
And the reason people object to your rhetoric is because you're ignoring the people who are actually creating the hurtful content to instead focus on killing the messenger. Your views are misguided and actively harmful to marginalized communities, as was explained in the Amicus Curiae I linked above.
@jaysonmassey You could not have missed the point more completely 🤦♂️
@jaysonmassey You might try reading again, more slowly this time. Because you seem to have completely misunderstood what I wrote.
@jaysonmassey I'm not interested in defending Nazis or their ideology.
I'm just curious why you're so eager to engage in guilt by association. If a Nazi posts on QOTO (as has happened in the past before moderation was able to deal with it), does that make *you* a Nazi too for having an account here?
@jaysonmassey And you're willing to condemn a mass of people as Nazis because of the actions of one individual?
@greg @joeo10 "Those recommendations" that you think they should be liable for are comprised of the content of third parties.
And, in many cases, those recommendations are not driven by decisions made by people in the company, but rather by preferences expressed by the user.
So, no, an intermediary should not be legally liable for the content of one third party just because their algorithms show it to another third party who wants to see it.
@ceoln For sure, there is a degree of nuance.
I don't think I'd consider "self-imposed mental anguish" to be suffering, though.
If a person *chooses* not to eat, are they really "suffering" from starvation?
Likewise, if a person chooses to believe something that society has collectively decided is abhorrent (i.e. racism, pedophilia, eugenics), are they really "suffering" when that society inevitably collectively shuns them? They knew the rules of the game and chose their path anyway.
(Also, fwiw, my original reference to "suffering" was a bit off-topic to the original thread, since it was in direct response to my opponent wishing harm on me directly.)
@greg @joeo10 Making companies liable for the content of others *is* suggesting getting rid of content algorithms, whether you realize that or not. Google's not going to offer you an account if they're liable for getting sued for whatever you post/upload.
Most users can't even figure out how to sign up to Mastodon, and you want them writing content algorithms? Those are written by some of the smartest people in the world. And if a company dumbs it down enough for the average user, guess what we get? Exactly what we have now: where people customize their content by choosing who to follow and like.
@Thompson That's like asking if a hammer deserves free speech or censorship. Neither option really makes any sense in that context.
@greg @joeo10 Enjoy the hellscape you seem so keen on creating.
"Content algorithms" drive search bars, spam filters, internet archives and more, while protecting essential sites like Wikipedia and news from being overrun by bad actors.
The internet will be a far shittier place if this goes through.
If you want something a bit more scholarly to read on the subject, check out this Amicus Brief that lays out the arguments well (and look who signed it):
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-1333/252764/20230119182956110_230103a%20AC%20Brief%20for%20efiling.pdf
@ceoln I am familiar with that argument. And I agree that such bigotry should not be tolerated.
Where I draw the line is that the government is not the correct forum to deal with that.
People should not be jailed or beaten by the government for their bigoted thoughts or speech.
They should be shunned and shamed and outcast by society instead.
When we give the government the power to punish wrong-think, it is inevitable that a bigot will gain power and use it to beat and jail those seeking justice.
So, as for the comic, I agree with everything except "must be outside of the law". Instead, it should be "must be outcast from society".
Software engineering contractor/consultant in Florida specializing in .NET C# #WebDev, plus #Indie #GameDev in #MonoGame, #Stride, and #Godot.
I like complex simulations and enjoy writing procedural generation algorithms for fun.
#Pilot in training. Burgeoning fan of #Aviation in general.
Fan of #1A jurisprudence and the kind of #FreeSpeech that applies to everyone equally.
Pro-Democracy. Pro-Rights. Pro-Freedom. In that order.
He/Him 🏳🌈
High risk of rants, especially with the lack of character limit.
Joined Nov 2022
