this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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CouLSDon gets cancelled by Facebook’s algorithm police (insidecroydon.com)
submitted 1 week ago by Emperor to c/andfinally
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cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17027060

Businesses, community groups, arts organisations and residents in a thriving town on the Croydon-Surrey border are in uproar because the automatic systems employed to police social media have silenced them on one of the world’s biggest digital platforms – all because Coulsdon has the letters L, S and D in its name.

Residents’ associations and businesses with “Coulsdon” in their titles have found themselves “cancelled”, with posts being removed from Facebook and warnings issued as to their future conduct under a set of rules so vague that any post, however innocent, might fall foul of them.

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[–] GreyShuck 8 points 1 week ago

It's Scunthorpe all over again. Have we learnt nothing?

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

How have naive text filters survived this long? Even new software like lemmy still implements them for some reason.

[–] HumanPenguin 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

it's cheap and easy. So will always be the first solution for capitalism.

Until governments are willing to make and enforce laws. Guaranteeing the right to free speech on corporate platforms. Corporations have no motive to do more.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It was more along the lines of 'Haven't they figured out it doesn't work by now, and looks stupid?'. It's not just capitalism, even FOSS software like lemmy implements it as I pointed out. It's akin to tying game speed to FPS - something that didn't age well, and devs should really know better by now.

[–] HumanPenguin 0 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The other choices are limited. People or AI. Foss has not got the people willing to GAS or the infer structure to run AI. and corporations are not willing to pay them or develop the AIs.

As the business model of most corps tends to not care about the errors. And Foss sights that care about swearing, are better using what little man power they have correcting errors like this then dealing with the trolls constantly trying to stir trouble.

Yeah, honestly, based on the task. It sorta works well enough for most.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It sorta works well enough for most

Wut. Naive text filters have pretty much never worked for the intended purpose, ever.

[–] HumanPenguin 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, they have. Anyone who has modded anything can tell you the difference in work level from fixing errors vs dealing with troublemakers.

They work better than nothing. And unless you're willing to develop a better solution. That is what you have to compare it to.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm a former reddit default sub mod. Thousands of comments on the top posts. No, naive text filters contribute nothing to moderation. Anybody who is in any way incentivised to cause trouble isn't blocked, so all it's doing is catching unintentional stuff (like couLSDon)

[–] HumanPenguin 1 points 1 week ago

Compared to?

[–] HumanPenguin 1 points 1 week ago

it's cheap and easy. So will always be the first solution for capitalism.

Until governments are willing to make and enforce laws. Guaranteeing the right to free speech on corporate platforms. Corporations have no motive to do more.