Twitter won't autoban neo-Nazis because the filters may ban GOP politicians

[G_j]

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-won-t-autoban-neo-193850606.html

Is booting neo-Nazis from Twitter a simple process? Probably not. Can steps be taken at the very least to punish racist tweets? Probably, but not everyone will be happy with whose hate speech gets scrubbed as a result.

With a user base of 321 million monthly tweeters — a few millions less than the total US population — the micro-blogging site could help minimize the rapid spread of digital hate speech in the country if they helped silence racist and xenophobic tweets. Turns out one Twitter employee couldn’t help but wonder why they don’t take action.

During an all-hands staff meeting on March 22nd, an employee asked why the company refrains from using its AI to kick white nationalists off the site. After all, Twitter had previously ushered a sweep of bans on accounts pushing Islamic State propaganda. The answer was unsurprising for anyone who’s ever perused Twitter: Content filters created to identify hate speech could potentially result in Republican politicians being banned, an executive explained.

Motherboard broke down the executive’s explanation of the algorithm process:

With every sort of content filter, there is a tradeoff, [the executive] explained. When a platform aggressively enforces against ISIS content, for instance, it can also flag innocent accounts as well, such as Arabic language broadcasters. Society, in general, accepts the benefit of banning ISIS for inconveniencing some others, he said.

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[Dennis Donovan]

1. ...but didn't the Nazis create the Autobahn?

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Major clue, there!

[MontanaMama]

3. And therefore...