Trust in Online Content Moderation Depends on Moderator

See also previous note about this topic

Fairly obvious if the background of moderators is accurately provided. 

By Cornell Chronicle, November 3, 2022

A human and an artificial intelligence providing content moderation. 

Nearly 400 study participants were asked to log in at least twice a day for two days, and were randomly assigned to one of six experiment conditions, varying both the type of content moderation system and the type of harassment comment they saw.

Credit: Analytics India Magazine

An interdisciplinary research team at Cornell University found that an individual's trust in online content moderation systems and decisions depend on whether the moderator is human or artificial intelligence (AI) and the type of harassing content.

The study involved a custom social media site and a simulation engine that uses preprogrammed bots to mimic the behavior of other users.  Almost 400 participants were asked to beta test a new social media platform and randomly assigned to one of six experimental conditions that differed based on the type of content moderation system and harassing content.

With inherently ambiguous content, the researchers found that AI moderators were more likely to be questioned by users. However, trust in all types of moderation was about the same when clearly harassing comments were involved.

From Cornell Chronicle   View Full Article

Internet Law and Moderation Transparency

 Happened on the Stanford Cyberlaw Center, and notably Transparency laws.  Here an excerpt, which leads to more  ...  Had not taken a look there for some time.   Note the mention and criticism of Facebook's rules.   Worth covering.

The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is a leader in the study of the law and policy around the Internet and other emerging technologies.

State abuse of Transparency Laws and How to Stop it  By Daphne Keller on September 19, 2022 at 3:49 pm

Around the world, new laws are requiring improved transparency from major Internet platforms about their content moderation. This is generally a very positive development. But it also raises important questions about what kinds of disclosures we expect from platforms -- and what kinds of enforcement we expect from governments. This post uses five concrete examples to illustrate the complexity of these disclosures. The examples also illustrate what I think is a very real risk: that state enforcers may abuse transparency laws, using them to reshape platforms’ actual policies. That is a threat not only to platforms’ editorial and speech rights, but to the rights of all their users. I think it should be possible to mitigate this risk. But we can only do so if we recognize it.  

I have written before about the complexity of counting content moderation actions for aggregate transparency reports. This post addresses the seemingly simpler task of describing speech policies or enforcement decisions. This is also complicated, in ways that should come as no surprise to lawyers, parents of young children, or anyone else who has tried to explain and apply rules to disputatious parties. The degree of detail that platforms could include in their explanations is vast -- perhaps not as infinite as the diversity of human misbehavior on the Internet, but the two are certainly correlated. Facebook’s rules, for example, run to over a hundred pages   , but are widely criticized as insufficiently clear or detailed.  ... ' 

Embedding things in the Blockchain

Note this article. also notable are the related comments.   Information can be embedded in a blockchain that is not related to its primary use.   A security issue.   Schneier writes, and further comments:

" ... To be fair, not absolutely everyone who uses a blockchain holds a copy of the entire ledger. Many who buy cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum don’t bother using the ledger to verify their purchase. Many don’t actually hold the currency outright, and instead trust an exchange to do the transactions and hold the coins. But people need to continually verify the blockchain’s history on the ledger for the system to be secure. If they stopped, then it would be trivial to forge coins. That’s how the system works.

Some years ago, people started noticing all sorts of things embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain. There are digital images, including one of Nelson Mandela. There’s the Bitcoin logo, and the original paper describing Bitcoin by its alleged founder, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. There are advertisements, and several prayers. There’s even illegal pornography and leaked classified documents. All of these were put in by anonymous Bitcoin users. But none of this, so far, appears to seriously threaten those in power in governments and corporations. Once someone adds something to the Bitcoin ledger, it becomes sacrosanct. Removing something requires a fork of the blockchain, in which Bitcoin fragments into multiple parallel cryptocurrencies (and associated blockchains). Forks happen, rarely, but never yet because of legal coercion. And repeated forking would destroy Bitcoin’s stature as a stable(ish) currency. ... "

Also published in Wired.   

Atypon: Technology for publishing Important content

Brought to my attention:   Atypon

Atypon:  Technology for publishing the world’s most important content.  Atypon helps online publishers deliver mission-critical content to practitioners and researchers in every field.

Necessity and invention

Atypon was founded in 1996, driven by its founder’s desire to democratize scientific research by expanding its availability, which meant giving scholarly publishers the software that they needed to excel in a new—and often intimidating—digital environment.

Atypon’s initial development efforts resulted in Literatum, our online publishing and website development platform, first released in 1999. What was a five-person technology startup in Silicon Valley, is now an influential global organization, with a team of more than 480 in nine offices across the United States, the UK, Jordan, the Czech Republic, and Georgios’s native Greece.

Technology specifically for publishers

Over the 20-plus years that Literatum has been in continuous development, we’ve developed a deep understanding of what it takes to power a successful online publishing business. Our product development is driven in part by our clients’ requirements for their own businesses. New features are regularly added to meet the design, editorial, and marketing needs of our expanding client base.

A fast-growing technology company

Today Atypon has over 200 clients, including some of the world’s largest publishers; several date back to our first years in business. Literatum is home to nearly 100,000 individual publications in over a dozen languages and more than 900 publication websites. The platform logs over 3.2 billion user sessions annually.

We rival larger Silicon Valley companies in our aggressive pursuit of new technologies: engineers comprise more than two-thirds of our staff, and our ongoing, award-winning R&D team is applying machine learning and AI-based technologies that keep our customers at the forefront of online publishing. Atypon’s recent acquisitions include Inera, RedLink, Authorea, and Manuscripts.  ... ' 

Original Content Generation for Assistants, Collaboration

Can content write itself in a useful way?  Note this neural method is research,  technical and apparently incomplete. Yet still points to some useful directions.  Ultimately this could lead to a method that would answer questions from a corpus of information, ultimately what you want to get from an assistant,  or as an agent that is working in collaboration with humans to answer support questions.   Imagine such a method using a collection of FAQs or 'solved'  inquiries to create new solutions.  This might also be a way to create 'Content Based Reasoning' solutions based with new and old resources.

Google’s New Algorithm Creates Original Articles From Your Content  in Search Engine Journal

Google has published research of a new algorithm that can take yours and your competitor’s webpages and generate “coherent” articles. By creating original content, Google’s new algorithm can answer a user’s question without having to send them to another webpage.

How Does the Paraphrasing Algo Work?

Google’s new algorithm works by summarizing web content using an algorithm that “extracts” your content then tosses out the irrelevant parts. This is similar to the algorithms used to generate featured snippets.

These are called “extractive summaries” because they extract content from webpages. Extractive Summaries are like a reduction of the original text to the most important sentences.

Afterwards, this algorithm then uses another kind of algorithm called an Abstractive Summary. Abstractive summaries are a form of paraphrasing.

A downside of artificial paraphrasing (abstractive summaries) is that almost a third of the summaries contain fake facts.

Here is more information about extractive summaries, Faithful to the Original: Fact Aware Neural Abstractive Summarization

Google’s new research has discovered a way to join the best of both approaches. They use “extractive summaries” to extract the important facts from web documents and then apply the “abstractive” approach to paraphrase the content. This approach creates a new document based on the information found on the web, creating Google’s own version of Wikipedia.

Google’s new algorithm is described in a research paper titled, Generating Wikipedia by Summarizing Long Sequences  ... "    

Managing Data and Video Content

I just reexamined their online presence.  Join in ....

Jambaar

Easily Manage the Entire Lifecycle of all your Data and Video Content from a Single Platform 

The Intelligent Video & Data Logistics Platform B2B

Middle Market Brands to Create Smarter, Powerful, Premium Content with Ease

Our Clients’ Four Core Experiences .... " 

Google Slides Pull in Content

Google Slides add-ons pull in content from around the web
You can also add your Keep notes to your slide deck.

Google Slides is about to make it easier if you want to whip together a polished presentation in a hurry. The productivity tool now supports add-ons that let you quickly drop in content without having to hunt for it in a separate website.  .... 

By Jon Fingas, @jonfingas in Engadget

Facebook Scours Posts and Comments

Facebook Tests Letting Marketers Scour Posts and Comments   in Adage.

By Garett Sloane. 

Facebook is experimenting with letting brands study people's posts and comments on the network in an effort to better inform their marketing.

The beta test, an extension of Facebook's Audience Insights API marketing tech platform, isn't expected to be widely available until next year, according to people familiar with the offering who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss something Facebook hasn't announced yet. Early ad partners, which include top agencies and media companies, are searching Facebook's vast history of public posts to see what topics, themes, brands and products are being discussed. Users' identities are withheld.  ....  "  

Content Marketing in the Era of Voice-Controlled Devices

A number of interesting retail marketing examples are shown in this medium.

Content Marketing in the Era of Voice-Controlled Devices  in Flipboard
By Dawn Papandrea/Aug 9, 2017
Via John Frazier   BBA News - BizBuzz America

Voice-controlled devices are today’s hottest technology. 
Amazon Alexa now has more than 15,000 skills (which can range from basic functions to more robust experiences, akin to apps.) And each day, we’re hearing about new capabilities or big announcements for similar devices. Apple, for one, will release a Siri-based HomePod this fall. 

As a content marketer, you should be keeping your ears (and eyes) open to these new audio channels to ensure that your brand voice is heard. 

“If a brand doesn’t have a presence on voice platforms, then they are literally silent when a consumer asks to engage with them,” says Bret Kinsella, Editor and Publisher of Voicebot.ai, a publication about the voice and AI revolution.  

Are you ready to be an early adopter and develop audio content to expand your reach? If so, listen up: Here’s what you need to know about the voice-controlled device space.  .... "

A Beginners Guide and Tutorial for GANs

Via O'Reilly, supported by Google. A Simplified Tutorial.  Instructive, not the idea of a network generating content.

Beginner's guide to GANs

This tutorial will show you how to build a generative adversarial network that learns to generate handwritten digits—essentially you'll teach a neural network how to write. You can download and modify the code from this tutorial on GitHub.

Generative Adversarial Networks for Beginners
Build a neural network that learns to generate handwritten digits.

By Jon Bruner,  Adit Deshpande  

Practical Generative Adversarial Networks for Beginners

You can download and modify the code from this tutorial on GitHub ... 

According to Yann LeCun, “adversarial training is the coolest thing since sliced bread.” Sliced bread certainly never created this much excitement within the deep learning community. Generative adversarial networks—or GANs, for short—have dramatically sharpened the possibility of AI-generated content, and have drawn active research efforts since they were first described by Ian Goodfellow et al. in 2014.

GANs are neural networks that learn to create synthetic data similar to some known input data. For instance, researchers have generated convincing images from photographs of everything from bedrooms to album covers, and they display a remarkable ability to reflect higher-order semantic logic.   .... " 

Tips for VR Content

In Think with Google: 
 " ... It's one thing to make your VR content accessible. But how can you ensure that your audience engages? Our recent research identified three key insights for "sticky" VR content that you can carry into your highly non-virtual media plan ... 

We recently shared some tips for how to make VR content accessible to more users, based on takeaways from a YouTube Red Originals campaign. One of the biggest upshots was that VR content doesn't need to have sky-high production values to be immersive and compelling. That got us thinking about other traits of winning VR content. .... " 

Red 212 Content Strategy Agency

Brought to my attention:  Red212:  A Content Strategy Agency

" ... Red212 was founded on the idea that business can be a powerful force for change. We are a full service, integrated marketing agency offering digital, traditional and cultural solutions that take brands to their boiling point.

The more successful your business is, the more you can do for our world. That’s why our mission, our passion, is creating measurable marketing campaigns so that your business can thrive.

At 211 degrees Fahrenheit water is merely hot. But by raising the temperature just one degree, to 212, change happens. Water boils. Steam is created with a force so powerful it can hurtle a locomotive across a continent.

That one degree that makes all the difference. And so we are …

RED212. An independent content strategy agency.

Red212 creates loyalty, market share and social impact by connecting like-minded consumers & fueling the conversation around your brand.

To truly engage today’s consumer, it takes an understanding of what motivates and speaks to them on a human level. Today’s media environment requires knowledge that informs the right message, for the right audience, at precisely the right time. It is at the intersection of data, consumer understanding, and creativity where engagement occurs and relationships are cultivated to inspire action.  .... " 

KM World

Was recently re-introduced.  http://www.kmworld.com/  Had read it for years, but not recently.

KMWorld is the leading publisher, conference organizer, and information provider serving the knowledge management, content management, and document management markets. We inform more than 21,000 print subscribers about the components and processes — and related success stories — that together offer solutions for improving your business performance.  With access to many of the most knowledgeable writers and analysts in the industry, KMWorld also offers a number of special publications, including: the KMWorld Best Practices White Papers series — delivering high-value, educational content from industry-leading solutions providers, free from marketing hype and distraction, and the KMWorld Buyer's Guide — a print and electronic resource that will shorten your search for a vendor or simply help identify sources for KM tools.

KMWorld Magazine is free to qualified subscribers and is published monthly, with combined issues July/August and November/December. Subscribe today for free! Our newsletter, KMWorld Newslinks is also available free to qualified subscribers.  .... 

KMWorld Magazine is free to qualified subscribers and is published monthly, with combined issues July/August and November/December. Subscribe today for free! Our newsletter, KMWorld Newslinks is also available free to qualified subscribers.

KMWorld has an ongoing series of web events on the latest trends and best practices in knowledge management.

http://www.kmworld.com/Search?query=cognitive

Staying Ahead of Smart Machines

A look at content generation using smart machines.  A newly discovered philosophical blog.   Lots of companies are considering the implications of AI today.

Staying Ahead of Smart Machines

A look at content generation using smart machines.  A newly discovered philosophical blog.   Lots of companies are considering the implications of AI today.

Telling Stories with Data

 I like the combination of story and lifecycle.  Lifecycle implies a story.

6 Ways to Tell Stories with Data Throughout the Customer Lifecycle
by Alexandra Samuel

Data-driven storytelling is poised to be the next big trend in content marketing. Indeed, companies are already harnessing its power at every stage in the customer relationship lifecycle—from building up-front brand awareness to reminding customers of their success. Here’s how to use data at each step in the marketing journey:  .... "

Linkedin Elevate for Enterprise Content Sharing

Interesting play.  Talked to them about this when in the enterprise.  My own experience with Linkedin, primarily with Groups and Mail, is that Linkedin has an awkward information management methodology, especially with media like images, Web and video resources.   Please fix this, Linkedin is so universal, it needs to be good.   They have much improved mobile sharing experience,  but still very different experiences on different devices.

See also announcement in the Linkedin blog.  Will take a closer look.

In Adage:  LinkedIn Rolls Out Elevate Content-Sharing Platform

Companies Including Visa, Unilever and CEB Are Early Customers

LinkedIn today is rolling out Elevate, a content curation and social sharing platform, designed to help enterprises turn their employees into brand advocates. .... LinkedIn first announced Elevate in April, and its early customers have included Visa, Unilever and CEB.  .... "Elevate enables employee advocacy at scale," he added. "Now employers have an entire employee base to be activated so they can share content across their social and professional networks." .... 

The subscription-based service is aimed at companies with 2,000 or more employees, and is available on desktop or via mobile app. It provides a platform that lets companies curate content from internal and external sources on the web, categorize content, set up guidelines about social sharing, give employees access to content, and measure the impact of content sharing on various metrics, from profile views to company page views. .... " 

Rule of Three for Engagement

In Copyblogger:  Using rule of three to create engaging content.

" .... It’s no accident that the number three is pervasive throughout some of our greatest stories, fairy tales, and myths.

It’s also no coincidence that some of the most famous quotes from throughout history are structured in three parts, nor is it surprising that the Rule of Three also works wonders in the world of comedy. It all comes down to the way we humans process information. We have become proficient at pattern recognition by necessity, and three is the smallest number of elements required to create a pattern.

This combination of pattern and brevity results in memorable content, and that’s why the Rule of Three will make you a more engaging writer.  .... " 

Recycling Online Content

This came up recently as I searched for years-old mention of  technology in email posts.  Some good thoughts on the process.

Content Engineering and AI

Short piece by Omri Astel made me think about how ad content can be engineered based upon the audience.  Early steps have been taken in this direction.  For example, with Watson User Modeling. See this Description/Documentation.    And also some demonstrations.   We experimented with similar methods in the late 80s, managing the interactions of our brand equity.  Based on those early experiences, considerable progress has been made, but not yet to the level of what we would call intelligence.