Roughly 18 months ago I had a small survey.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

Roughly 18 months ago I had a small survey. I asked whether you would change a content algorithm you made if you found out it made people hate each other. Most of you said yes.

Since then things have sadly not improved. I have argued that we need to ban user profiling. That the cost outweigh any benefits. I really do not think there is any other way.

#SocialMedia #Misinformation #HateSpeech

UserMicha

@jon You are right. And you and your team have done a lot for it, thank you for that!
But I think it's our turn as users now! We must finally act consistently, leave our comfort zone and boldly cut our ties to X and Meta. And not only demand this from others. Some major trade unions, the Federal Court of Justice and 60 universities in Germany are withdrawing from X. Surely every single user must be able to do what they can. X and Meta are not systemically relevant!

Mike

@jon NGL, pretty appalled by that 7%

Mike Rockwell

@jon do you think you should consider blocking access to Meta’s services in Vivaldi?

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@mike

No. I do not think we should do that. I do not see that as solving the problem.

Mike Rockwell

@jon you don’t think Vivaldi’s users should be protected from hate speech?

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@mike

I believe in regulation. I believe that is the only way to fix the problem we have with user profiling and algorithmic content.

In the meantime users will have to make the choice whether they want to use these services. Blocking that is not helpful.

Mike Rockwell

@jon haven’t you said that Meta should block hate speech, though? Why should they block it but Vivaldi shouldn’t?

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@mike

My focus is actually more on the fact that social media using content algorithms promotes hate speech, misinformation and the like.

The Internet has a lot of good and bad content, but certain services are unique in that they dig up the bad stuff and present it to more people. Part of that is the user profiling and use of that data for both advertising and content. Thus I believe that the real solution is banning the user profiling and content algorithms.