Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Tag: Technology

  • Waymo Way Easy

    What does a tech guy have to try in San Fran? A Waymo taxi of course. You need the app, but after that it’s like Uber or Lyft.

    The car pulls up.

    When you get in, you have to actually click a button on the car screen or your app to start the ride. Then the car pulls out and you get a safety talk.

    After that, it’s pretty normal.

    It drove fine. A bus started to drift into our lane and the Waymo honked at it. Just a regular drive.

  • Social Media Learning Curve

    This was written when Elon Musk first bought Twitter. It’s a great overview of why content moderation is so damn hard on the global web.

    It goes through (in detail) 20 phases that a social media site is likely to go through. The summary:

    Level One: “We’re the free speech platform! Anything goes!”
    Level Two: “We’re the free speech platform! But no CSAM!”
    Level Three: “We’re the free speech platform! But no CSAM and no infringement!”
    Level Four: “We’re the free speech platform without CSAM, infringement or hate speech!”
    Level Five: “We’re the free speech platform without CSAM, infringement, or hate speech, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Six: “We’re the free speech platform, without CSAM or hate speech, and who will take down infringing content, but not fair use content, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Seven: “We’re the free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, and infringement, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Eight: “We’re the free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement and spam, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Nine: “We’re the trustworthy free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement, and spam, and we follow all the laws!”
    Level Ten: “We’re the trustworthy free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement, and spam, and we follow laws of democratic countries.”

    Level Eleven: “We’re the trustworthy mostly free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement, spam, and genocide, and we’re working to hire more moderators to deal with foreign languages.”
    …
    Level Twenty: “Look, we’re just a freaking website. Can’t you people behave?”

    Read the whole thing, it’s good.