wisprabbit

puzzle + interactive fiction bnuuy

hello! i make logic puzzles and interactive fiction games. i'm good and nice


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cofruitrigus
@cofruitrigus

The BBC has published an article researching abuse directed at UK members of parliament (MPs). They have also published more information in this Google doc. It looked at tweets from a six week period using Perspective, a tool from Google which uses machine learning to identify abusive and toxic comments.

Perspective alone probably should not be used to determine whether a comment is toxic, without being reviewed. On their website, they list three ideas for using their technology:

  • To highlight comments for review by moderators.
  • To give feedback to commentors that what they're saying isn't very nice, to make them reconsider saying it.
  • To be used by social media users to hide potentially offensive comments.

This methodology has been criticised by multiple different people for various reasons. Since Perspective allows you to check comments against it, it can be seen that it seems to rate most comments that use any swear words as toxic, regardless of context. In their own methodology section the authors also mention that this analysis does not discriminate between toxic tweets directed at an MP, and ones that mention them but are directed at someone else. The commentator Ash Sarkar, of left-wing media organisation Novara Media, has pointed out that the tool doesn't flag common racial slurs used in the UK, but using the word "Tory", which is very commonly used to refer to Conservative party politicians, even by respected journalists, does lead to a comment being found to be toxic. This makes it very odd that the authors conclude that ethnic minority MPs were not more likely to receive toxic tweets.

My own thoughts It says that former prime minister Boris Johnson alone received over 18000 toxic tweets, but he definitely didn't see most, if any, of them, and can we really say he didn't deserve it? In addition, calling someone a "liar" or a "hypocrite" isn't very nice, but it is often true.


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