Comments on post “Perspective”
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Interesting project from Jigsaw (an Alphabet company) which uses tech to scaleable fight online abuse. It's currently in beta but they've worked with a few big partners like Wikipedia and NYT.
In the meantime, Scale might be a good solution for those that need human oversight over internet abuse. cc @lucy_guo
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Mubashar Iqbal
@mubashariqbal · 2016 Maker of the Year.
@rrhoover So cool that they are working on this with other companies, the more content they have to analyze the better. Definitely needs to be in the API topic.
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Douglas Evaristo
@douglasevaristo · Front End
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Esbjörn Guwallius
@guwallius · Co-Founder, Coohl @getcoohl
Just tested the "toxicness" of some names... Donald Trump 22%, Barack Obama 16%, Hillary Clinton 5%, Bernie Sanders 4%.
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Alex Greene
@alexg473 · Cal Poly student
@guwallius Proper nouns by themselves should not have a grade, that doesn't make sense.
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Niv Dror
@nivo0o0 · Writer/Social Editor @ProductHunt
🙏
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Jordan Fourcher
@jfourcher · Badass from the future
This is dangerous. A program, trained by wikipedia and the nyt out of all people, shouldn't be able to censor or block people's minds and thoughts. The intention is good, but unfortunately abuse had been a thing ever since we could speak to each other
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Danny
@dannymout · Indie iOS developer.
@jfourcher I agree.
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Illia Strikhar
@crazzzytravel · UX/UI Designer at illia.co
The intention is good, but it may end up in bad places. I get that you're trying to make internet discussions more meaningful. But if the technology becomes good enough it may spread. For example, imagine CEO's setting up Slack so that coworkers can't chat about anything but work. That would kill creativity. People aren't robots, they need an occasional chitchat.
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Aalim Chin
@shyles25
Damn if only IMDB waited for this to come out before they removed their message boards.
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Thomas Burgess
@ninjinka · Creator of Material Design Palette Deck
I'm afraid this will lead to (perhaps accidental) censorship. For example, when I typed "Liberals are not stupid" it said that it was 93% toxic.
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Stedman Halliday
@stedman_rh · Working on something new...
@ninjinka I don't think the intent of the tech is stringent auto-moderation (at least right now). As it stands presently, the API seems a lot more suitable for things along the lines of assisting human moderators in quickly identifying potentially unsavory comments (for more focused and lower-effort moderation) as well as preemptively preventing toxic comments by increasing conscientiousness during composition. Maybe we'll see a really powerful auto-moderator once the model is polished enough.
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Thomas Burgess
@ninjinka · Creator of Material Design Palette Deck
@stedman_rh Yeah, I think that is the intent currently, but I can see lazy mods just auto-deleting anything over a certain threshold.
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o(^^Q)
@niket · Time Travel Researcher
@ninjinka Also, I think it gives you an opportunity to write something better. "Liberals are not stupid" may not appear toxic, but it actually is poor framing (and one that will automatically cause defensiveness).
You might write: "Liberals want ______" or "Liberals are aware that ___________" or "Liberals believe in _________"
I don't think we should think of comments in isolation as toxic or not, but also in their ability to prevent future toxic responses too.
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Haythem Haddad
@haythem · Co Founder / Creative Director of DUB
No thanks Alphabet, we don't need tools to enforce corporatist censorship.
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Cody
@rdbrdd · Owner of Redbearded
@haythem Totally agree!
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Matthew Boyle
@matthewboyle25 · Matt
Wonder how it deals with sarcasm or quotes such as:
"He said to me "Your an idiot" and it showed his understanding of the issue".
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Smokie
@xtoq · Smokie Does Stuff
@matthewboyle25 Looks like it thinks that exact sentence is toxic.
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Areeb
@hackingtag · Developer, Volcrado
@matthewboyle25 Their AI doesn't get along with sarcasm. One would probably get flagged if they used sarcasm in the messages.
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Danny
@dannymout · Indie iOS developer.
My concern with this is censorship. For example, would a comment on a website using this technology block me because I discuss a political candidate who is not liked? I do not like the idea censorship on the internet, and rather than blocking things that people consider toxic, I think they should use this technology to avoid spam.
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Li
@unbeliguoble
On the flip side, couldn't an enterprising troll use this to optimize their inflammatory comments? 🤔
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Rohit Srivastwa
@rohit11 · Founder, ClubHack
With almost all sentences marking up to "toxic" not sure how this is gonna save abuse online
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Cameron Banowsky
@cbanowsky · hacker
Made for Trump
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Trevor Young
@_tyoung · Product Designer @ Digit
Cool idea! Didn't explore the API, but I wonder how many orgs would be content to simply suggest to the poster that what they are saying may be toxic, vs just disallowing some types of comments altogether. Could bring up some messy (but necessary) convos on free speech vs hateful/abusive speech online.
Also - I wonder why they frame things, even positive things, in terms of toxicity. Something I imagine they'll improve in the future...
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Smokie
@xtoq · Smokie Does Stuff
@_tyoung I think this has to do more with the feedback they get. I'm sure there are more than a few people who say a comment is toxic just for kicks, or to maybe see if they can break the algorithm. Remember Tai?
Be sure to click the "Seems wrong?" link and give your feedback when you find something like that.
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Dj Stores
@djstoresssss
Interesting to play around with. Nice to see a project to help make the online world more positive for everyone. 😸 Successfully detects toxicity while allowing one to convey an opinion.
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Connor V.
@connorvo · Product Manager Intern, Zynga
Nice to see a large company release a product like this.
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jonathan barronville
@jonathanmarvens · Software Engineer
The intentions are definitely good with this project, but this will likely just lead to censorship. Pretty dangerous if you ask me.
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Manish Shahi
@_manishshahi_ · Startup Freak
Brilliant!
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Stedman Halliday
@stedman_rh · Working on something new...
This looks quite promising. Very interested to see what else becomes possible once the model has enough time and data to mature a little bit more. Already has massive potential to make usual moderation tasks easier as-is.
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Rob L'Heureux
@rob_lh
I'd be curious to see how this could be implemented in gaming chat. Lots of toxic communication there, but it's all variations on a theme that AI should be able to determine. Riot has implemented some interesting ideas for League of Legends, but they aren't transferable to other games.
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