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Yoel Roth

@yoyoel.com

Internet sanitation enthusiast and full-time corgi wrangler.

834 Posts79490 Follower258 Folgt
Yoel Roth@yoyoel.com · 5mo ago

I asked Claude to generate a book jacket blurb for a novel inspired by Heated Rivalry and the Lumen database, and, umm…

NOTICE AND TAKEDOWN Every day, thousands of removal requests flow into the Lumen Database — the public archive where the internet's most powerful actors are forced to show their work. Most requests are routine. Some are weapons. When copyright attorney Marcus Vega files a takedown notice targeting Clearwire, a scrappy digital rights nonprofit, he expects the usual: compliance, a form letter, maybe a sternly worded reply. What he gets instead is Eli Marsh - Clearwire's counternotice specialist, former EFF researcher, and the most infuriating person Marcus has ever had the professional misfortune of opposing. Eli knows the law. He also knows Marcus - knows his firm's clients, his win rate, the pattern of industries he protects. What Eli can't account for is what happens when the two of them end up at the same internet governance conference in Geneva, arguing in bad faith over cocktails until they're not arguing at all.The notices keep coming. So do the counternotices. So do the emails that start as legal correspondence and become something neither of them can quite name. Marcus has spent his career making inconvenient things disappear. Eli has spent his making sure they can't. Between them sits every question the internet has failed to answer about who gets to control what's public, what's private, and who decides. Some things, it turns out, can't be taken down. For readers of Heated Rivalry, Better Than People, and anyone who has ever found themselves deeply, inconveniently attracted to someone who sends documents with tracked changes turned on.
Yoel Roth@yoyoel.com · 7mo ago

A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty: My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media. Huh? When did I say that?!

A passage from the book In Covid’s Wake, with a highlighted sentence reading: “Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, states that "the FBI went beyond strategic information sharing and made direct moderation demands," including demands involving domestic speech.”
Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 7mo ago

This is genuinely horrifying. Fact-free far-right agitprop given accolades by credible media across the political spectrum.

Daphne Keller@daphnek.bsky.social · last yr.

@yoyoel.com at TrustCon making the key point that big platforms can weather storms and absorb blows (litigation, regulatory churn) that kill their smaller rivals. The legal threat may look the same to an array of platforms, but the real question is who can survive it.

Yoel Roth@yoyoel.com · last yr.

This is an extraordinary and courageous piece of writing that wrestles with one of the great challenges of this moment: How do you decide whether to remain a part of broken institutions to try to fix them from within?

Alondra Nelson@alondra.bsky.social · last yr.

"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging." Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council. I wrote about my decision in TIME. time.com/7285045/resi...

David Sullivan@davidsullivan.bsky.social · last yr.

An article by @samlai.bsky.social @yoyoel.com @noupside.bsky.social @klonick.bsky.social @mallory.techpolicy.social.ap.brid.gy @evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy and @aaron.bsky.team?!?!?! Basically the Wu-Tang Clan of the fediverse right here... Well played, @carnegieendowment.org

New Paradigms in Trust and Safety: Navigating Defederation on Decentralized Social Media Platforms

Defederation on decentralized social media offers new possibilities for online governance. Experts consider how it can be used responsibly, in a way that balances speech and safety.

carnegieendowment.org

Yoel Roth@yoyoel.com · 2y ago

Genuinely baffled by the unempirical assertion that Community Notes “works.” Does it? How do Meta know? The best available research is pretty mixed on this point. And as they go all-in on an unproven concept, will Meta commit to publicly releasing data so people can actually study this?

We are now changing this approach. We will end the current third party fact checking program in the United States and instead begin moving to a Community Notes program. We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see. We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing – and one that’s less prone to bias.
Ryan J. Gallagher@ryanjgallag.com · 2y ago

Community Notes don't work by themselves. So many things don't get labeled because people don't reach "consensus" on them, which is really what Community Notes optimize for, not factuality What an utter failure. So disappointing

Brian Stelter@brianstelter.bsky.social · 2y ago

"We're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the U.S," Mark Zuckerberg announces He asserts that "the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the U.S."

Yoel Roth@yoyoel.com · 2y ago

One of the things we all really need from platform T&S teams — honest, authentic, human conversations about the impossible tradeoffs involved in this work — is made effectively impossible by the deranged ways a small number of people treat platform staff when they speak publicly. Ask me how I know.

rahaeli@rahaeli.bsky.social · 2y ago

this shit is literally fucking unhinged and it is a perfect example of why every single head of T&S of every single fucking site ever rapidly stops using the site

Yoel Roth@yoyoel.com · 2y ago

Oh no, the Signal icon very subtly changed colors and now it’s setting off my “what is weird right now” alarms every time I unlock my phone

John Sands@iohn.bsky.social · 2y ago

For recent migrants from other corners of the internet who might be wondering what makes Bluesky different (and imho better), I'm resurfacing this terrific conversation from earlier this year between @bsky.app CEO @jay.bsky.team, @mmasnick.bsky.social, and @yoyoel.com. 🫶

Protocols, Not Platforms: The Promise and Peril of Federated Social Media Networks – Informed 2024

In recent years, federated social media networks have begun to offer an alternative to the platforms that have grown over the last two decades. Three leaders in…

vimeo.com

Yoel Roth@yoyoel.com · 2y ago

Reminder for corporate folks: It’s oh-crap-I-haven’t-spent-my-annual-learning-stipend season — and most companies allow you to use your learning budget on newspaper/newsletter subscriptions. Good opportunity to support (and expand your access to) independent journalism.

Samantha Lai@samlai.bsky.social · 2y ago

Decentralized social media platforms offer the promise of alternative governance, but remain ill-equipped to address threats to online safety. How can we change that? Here’s the latest from @yoyoel.com and I: www.techpolicy.press/online-safet...

Online Safety and the “Great Decentralization” – The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media | TechPolicy.Press

If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write Samantha Lai and Yoel Roth.

techpolicy.press

Tech Policy Press@techpolicypress.bsky.social · 2y ago

If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write @samlai.bsky.social and @yoyoel.com.

Online Safety and the “Great Decentralization” – The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media | TechPolicy.Press

If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write Samantha Lai and Yoel Roth.

techpolicy.press

Mike Masnick@masnick.com · 2y ago

Should be a really interesting discussion. I'm moderating, but will have representatives from Bluesky, Threads & ActivityPub talking about decentralized moderation...

Samantha Lai@samlai.bsky.social · 2y ago

Very excited to attend the third annual Trust and Safety Research Conference hosted by the Stanford Internet Observatory, where I’ll be speaking on a panel about decentralized platforms and trust & safety with @evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy, @aaron.bsky.team, Liz Arcamona and @mmasnick.bsky.social!

rahaeli@rahaeli.bsky.social · 2y ago

a brief guide to terms used in profiles for new site admins: * professional blogger = spammer * digital marketer = spammer * SEO expert = spammer * professional reviewer = spammer * affiliate marketer = spammer * marketing enthusiast = spammer * passionate about blogging = spammer

Yoel Roth@yoyoel.com · 2y ago

And if you think this is fun, I dare you to find a way to report abuse originating from a Google Voice number. (Spoiler: It doesn't exist!)

Yoel Roth@yoyoel.com · 2y ago

Just spent half an hour digging around Google's support pages to see if there's a form for reporting abuse originating from a Gmail account. Turns out — there is! Submitted a report of the weirdo who sends me very sexually graphic abuse every day. Genuinely curious if Google will do anything.