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posted by janrinok on Sunday June 16 2019, @08:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the thinks-pot-should-be-legal? dept.

From reporting by The Daily Dot.

Conservative psychologist/alt-right guru Jordan Peterson officially announced that he is launching what he calls a "free speech platform" known as Thinkspot.

Peterson insists that Thinkspot will adhere to his principles of anti-censorship so strongly that the platform will only ban or remove users if it is ordered to do so by the U.S. court of law. Because there's no way that could go horribly wrong.

Peterson also mentioned that Thinkspot will have a minimum word count as opposed to a maximum. "If minimum comment length is 50 words, you're gonna have to put a little thought into it," Peterson said to the right-wing outlet NewsBusters. "Even if you're being a troll, you'll be a quasi-witty troll."

Thinkspot is being marketed as a creator-to-consumer payment processor such as Patreon while also serving as an alternative to services such as Twitter and YouTube.

Thinkspot has an intended release date of August 2019.


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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by stretch611 on Monday June 17 2019, @01:03AM (3 children)

    by stretch611 (6199) on Monday June 17 2019, @01:03AM (#856425)

    Peterson also mentioned that Thinkspot will have a minimum word count as opposed to a maximum. "If minimum comment length is 50 words, you're gonna have to put a little thought into it," Peterson said to the right-wing outlet NewsBusters. "Even if you're being a troll, you'll be a quasi-witty troll."

    Thinkspot is a good name for this because you do need to think in order to hit a 50 word minimum. /s
    Thinkspot is a good name for this because you do need to think in order to hit a 50 word minimum. /s
    Thinkspot is a good name for this because you do need to think in order to hit a 50 word minimum. /s
    He is so very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, smart that I bow to his vast and superior intellect for being able to stop trolls with a minimum word count. I do not see any way how this method can be bypassed at all regardless of how many times I attempt to do so.
    ...........................................................................................................
    Heck, even the troll above my comment did this without any obvious attempt to circumvent the minimum. (assuming no one posted since.)

    --
    Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Mer on Monday June 17 2019, @08:01AM (1 child)

    by Mer (8009) on Monday June 17 2019, @08:01AM (#856529)

    Wellit's pretty easy to filter out word padding with an algorythm. An order of magnitude easier and more accurate than filtering out copyright infringement or hate speech (whatever that is).
    But if they promised to not remove anything unless it's against US law... well they painted themselves into a corner.

    --
    Shut up!, he explained.
    • (Score: 3, Touché) by stretch611 on Tuesday June 18 2019, @09:52AM

      by stretch611 (6199) on Tuesday June 18 2019, @09:52AM (#856923)

      It sounds easy to remove extra words... and essentially it is; unless you need to account for cases that legitimately repeat words and phrases.

      Song lyrics and poetry often repeat phrases and sentences. Even during normal writing a person will occasionally repeat something in order to prove a point or provide emphasis. What about a far right commentor that hates Obama and repeatedly writes out his full name Barrack Hussein Obama in order to emphasize his middle name, even to the point of never using a pronoun. How do you tell a simple program that is a legitimate use of repetition when other cases of a dozen 3 word phrases may be spammy? There is no simple algorithm to accomplish this and even complex variations are liable to make multiple mistakes.

      As for the sentence that I repeat the word "Very" quite often, I will admit that is something that may be simple to avoid. However, how do you avoid the rest of the sentence that just runs on and on? Theoretically. you can run some type of grammar check on the sentence and require a minimal level of sentence structure and complexity, but as you set this minimum threshold higher, the fewer people that will be able to write any comments at all.

      How do you counteract the troll post above my original post? It easily surpasses the minimum word count without repetition.

      And here is another way to stop the minimum... Go here https://www.gutenberg.org/files/98/98-h/98-h.htm [gutenberg.org] , copy a random paragraph and append it to your comment. I doubt any simple algorithm would be an;e tp account for that. Just make sure to ignore the first paragraph and the last paragraph to avoid word repetition.

      It was the best of times,
      it was the worst of times,
      it was the age of wisdom,
      it was the age of foolishness,
      it was the epoch of belief,
      it was the epoch of incredulity,
      it was the season of Light,
      it was the season of Darkness,
      it was the spring of hope,
      it was the winter of despair,

      [...]

      “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

      Simply put, like spam in email, when we (as a human) look at it, we can almost immediately and accurately determine that it is spam... However, if it was simple to code an algorithm to do it for us, our spam problem would have been solved years ago.

      --
      Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday June 18 2019, @02:23AM

    by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday June 18 2019, @02:23AM (#856873) Homepage

    "50 words" was just a preliminary idea for how the site would work, but you amply demonstrate why one can't quantify insightfulness as a certain minimum of verbiage.

    In short, it's a dumb idea based on too much idealism with regard to how discussion sites work, but I'm sure that will become obvious about two seconds after the site opens to the public, or even to the first beta testers.

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.