While it's not as robust as static-typing, compile-time type checking for Erlang has come a long way. Eqwalizer works pretty well, though but I may be biased since my employer sponsors the project.
WhatsApp has a similar internal dashboard for moderation/managing abuse. WhatsApp is E2E encrypted, so it's entirely based on visible user-actions. I'm sure Snapchat, TikTok, Tumblr, YouTube, Pornhub end others that have any moderation tools are in the same boat. There is no smoking gun here, despite the breathlessness from some quarters (including Musk himself[1]). That "Show DMs" link did send chills down my spine though, sometimes I forget Twitter DMs are not E2E encrypted.
This has a lot in common with Mudge's whistle-blowing case: there is nothing tangible to those familiar with the arts, but it appears to be (or ends up being) red meat "Aha!" gotcha material for those who have never worked in similar environments.
1. Which begs the question: does he really think Twitter's mod tools are unusual, or is he feigning ignorance for some reason known to him?
Secretive moderation being common doesn't make it normal or right. It's certainly not widely known. For example, I was on a podcast from Aug. 24 this year talking about shadow moderation [2], and the host says around 27:50 that Twitter is not doing this, only excepting "the algorithm". His point, I believe, was that humans were not manipulating content, and I agreed that I was unaware if that was happening.
Plus, if the use of such secretive tooling were widely known, there would be no need to keep them secret.
The claim has always been that secretive moderation is used to deal with spam. Yet, spammers are the most likely to check the visibility of their content. So the net effect is that secretive censorship hurts genuine individuals the most.
> So the net effect is that secretive censorship hurts genuine individuals the most.
From first principles, the moderators would not consider shadow-banned individuals as 'genuine'.
Since you brought up the subject of spammers - whats your take on email spam transparency, and the use of spam folders? should MTAs (like GMail or Exchange server), in the interest of transparency, immediately reject messages categorized as spam rather than accepting and quietly placing them in the spam folder, never to be read by a human? This would absolutely solve the problem where emails from genuine users end up being blackholed in the spam folder.
Good question. No, I wouldn't support that. The current system works and there is still transparency. One of the two people in the conversation has a chance to review the content.
It may be that inboxes are different from public or open-ended conversations. What often happens in the moderation of public conversations on social media is that neither person is aware that any removal or demotion occurred. So, even the user(s) whose content was not removed does not have a chance to rescue the content from spam.
> people will be upset about this, very few will change their life plans over it
I am moving from Texas in the next few months, and I own a house here. Texas and Florida Republicans are in an insane game of red-meat one-upsmanship that's leading both states into a terrible place. They are not done yet, and Im not staying to find out how insane they can get.
I wish recent arrivers the best of luck! And hopefully one of y'all will buy my house with your bay area salaries.
Oh hell no. I'm glad that Whatsapp is being mostly left alone, or at least that's what I see as a user. They ship some improvements and extraneous stuff (Whatsapp Status) from time to time, but the core of the app stays as it is.
Most people don't look forward to every time their app is redesigned starting from the icon up. It mostly doesn't get better, it gets worse to satisfy a Product Manager's CV checkbox.
Says you. Lots of people like software that keeps working reliably over the years. I know I do. The only valuable updates to WhatsApp are when new emojis are added ;). For the rest it already works very well, why break it or redesign it?
There is actually something very cute and personal about WhatsApp.
I would go to Telegram to get movies or some restricted (conspiracy?) news feeds.
Spam, payment notes, etc. come via regular Messages/SMS.
But when something comes via WhatsApp... Dunno, it just feels more personal from me. As if, it's someone I personally know or care about / involved with.
I think some of this magic is preserved just because it does not add any other features that dilate the original use case and how it makes one feel.
In addition to 1-to-1 chats and group chats, telegram has channels, which are kind of similar to twitter timelines, 1-to-many communications.
There are a large number of channels that take advantage of the 2 gig filesize limit by uploading pirated media. It's actually more convenient than torrents for most things, but it's still a hassle compared to a good usenet setup.
You can find entire seasons of animes just by doing a global search for the name of the anime. Sometimes there's even a chat attached for discussing the anime!
The articles I can find with numbers show Whatsapp at about 2B users, ahead of WeChat and everything else. When I flew Southwest the other day the only apps the "free wifi messaging" bothered supporting were iMessage and Whatsapp.
1. https://github.com/WhatsApp/eqwalizer