Privacy Policy change 29 January 2020: Perspective API usage

Forums › Geekzone › Privacy Policy change 29 January 2020: Perspective API usage

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
80652 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 41044

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#265585 29-Jan-2020 14:36

This is a heads up that I have changed our Privacy Policy to include a paragraph about our usage of the Perspective service.

Perspective allows us to automatically assign a score to posts based on a model that evaluates toxicity of posts. If a post score is over a certain value, our moderators will receive an email notification and take appropriate action.

This service is currently applied to the Off Topic and Politics sub-forums. There's currently no automatic account suspension based on this - all decisions are still made by our moderators.

No personal information is sent to the service via this API. Only the text of the post is passed and a score is received back.

Moderators can see any user's past ten posts and an average for those.

Any questions, post below.

Referral links: Quic Broadband (free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE) | Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies

Support Geekzone by subscribing (browse ads-free), or making a one-off or recurring donation through PressPatron.

1 | 2

2199 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 294

Subscriber

#2409735 29-Jan-2020 15:16

A question on this, I read the Privacy statement:

"We do not disclose user's names, IP addresses, email or any other PII when using the API.".

Just wondering if you filter out information from posts, such as people using names?
What about when someone does a @ mention, is that filtered out?

Otherwise it's sending PII data.

Cheers!

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
80652 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 41044

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#2409736 29-Jan-2020 15:18

Good question - no we do not filter those out. I don't think a username is identifiable as a proper name.

The posts themselves are not linked to a specific user id, username or name. No other metadata is transferred at that time.

Referral links: Quic Broadband (free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE) | Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies

Support Geekzone by subscribing (browse ads-free), or making a one-off or recurring donation through PressPatron.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
80652 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 41044

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#2409745 29-Jan-2020 15:52

@timbosan I have added code to remove mentions using the same feature we use to replace mentions with links in the replies.

Referral links: Quic Broadband (free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE) | Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies

Support Geekzone by subscribing (browse ads-free), or making a one-off or recurring donation through PressPatron.

timbosan

2199 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 294

Subscriber

#2409748 29-Jan-2020 16:00

freitasm:

@timbosan I have added code to remove mentions using the same feature we use to replace mentions with links in the replies.

Thanks! That is an excellent change. Whilst I totally understand your need for this API, I am a bit anti-Google (or any of the big content aggregators) and dislike the amount of information they harvest from so many different sources. Appreciate you making this change :-)

ANglEAUT

altered-ego
2436 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 842

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2409799 29-Jan-2020 18:00

freitasm:

Good question - no we do not filter those out. I don't think a username is identifiable as a proper name.

The posts themselves are not linked to a specific user id, username or name. No other metadata is transferred at that time.

Do you also exclude the footer / signature?

Please keep this GZ community vibrant by contributing in a constructive & respectful manner.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
80652 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 41044

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#2409800 29-Jan-2020 18:01

Footer and signature are not part of the post record in our database.

Referral links: Quic Broadband (free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE) | Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies

Support Geekzone by subscribing (browse ads-free), or making a one-off or recurring donation through PressPatron.

Dyson

Shop now for Dyson appliances (affiliate link).

Fred99

13684 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 10018

#2410617 31-Jan-2020 11:26

The demonstration on the website failed my quick and very crude Turing test:

I note that the blog addresses a topic "The challenge of identifying subtle forms of toxicity online". IMO my example wasn't exactly subtle.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
80652 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 41044

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#2410620 31-Jan-2020 11:32

I think you missed the point where there's no automation in moderation and that I've coded notifications - which in our case means score above a certain threshold would be sent to moderators.

Seeing all the cases we tested were below 20 yours would be an outlier - and we would rely on other users reporting (or a moderator reading the post). As it is our threshold is a score of 50 because we have to start somewhere...

Referral links: Quic Broadband (free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE) | Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies

Support Geekzone by subscribing (browse ads-free), or making a one-off or recurring donation through PressPatron.

Fred99

13684 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 10018

#2410636 31-Jan-2020 11:51

freitasm:

I think you missed the point where there's no automation in moderation and that I've coded notifications - which in our case means score above a certain threshold would be sent to moderators.

Seeing all the cases we tested were below 20 yours would be an outlier - and we would rely on other users reporting (or a moderator reading the post). As it is our threshold is a score of 50 because we have to start somewhere...

No - I read that (about no auto-moderation).
I was just interested to see how "good" it was - and to be fair, experimented with wording to keep the rating low (0.23 in that example).

There are plugins : "Use our GuideLine builder tool to start giving commenters real-time feedback on your platform. Plugins are currently available for Wordpress and Disqus."

I'm skeptical about that on those sites - it seems almost like giving people a challenge and the tools to train them to (continue to) be as toxic as possible without triggering thresholds, there'd be a delay before reporting caught up, that's going to escalate false positives, and though wording of toxic comments might change - basic behaviour might not.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
80652 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 41044

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#2410640 31-Jan-2020 11:56

Over the last year we banned quite a few people who used dog whistle words and were just racist in plain view. Trying to stay under the radar is quite hard for some of these people. This is just another thing we use - like managing registrations from proxy IP, spam IP, spam emails etc. There is so much going on behind the scenes that I would like to talk to but reality is that, like you mention, it would give people a blueprint on how to bypass checks.

Referral links: Quic Broadband (free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE) | Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies

Support Geekzone by subscribing (browse ads-free), or making a one-off or recurring donation through PressPatron.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
80652 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 41044

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#2432303 4-Mar-2020 11:08

I have now changed this to test all messages posted in the forums. From testing we can see that some messages that we'd think are "mild" get flagged by the system, so I will be working the reporting threshold on this.

Referral links: Quic Broadband (free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE) | Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies

Support Geekzone by subscribing (browse ads-free), or making a one-off or recurring donation through PressPatron.

Dyson

Shop now for Dyson appliances (affiliate link).

MikeAqua

8024 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3818

#2432597 4-Mar-2020 16:47

Good idea.

Mike

muppet

2643 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1660

Trusted

#2432602 4-Mar-2020 16:54

THIS IS STUPID. I WANT TO PUNCH WHOEVER CAME UP WITH IT RIGHT IN THE HEAD AND EYEBALLS.

snnet

1413 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 556

#2443968 22-Mar-2020 17:51

muppet:

THIS IS STUPID. I WANT TO PUNCH WHOEVER CAME UP WITH IT RIGHT IN THE HEAD AND EYEBALLS.

bloody muppet 🤣

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
80652 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 41044

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#2495166 30-May-2020 16:05

I have now updated our settings and all forum posts will be scored (sorry, I have enabled it before but decided to revert to Off Topic and Politics only). Performance has been really good so extending this to all sub-forums).

Referral links: Quic Broadband (free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE) | Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies

Support Geekzone by subscribing (browse ads-free), or making a one-off or recurring donation through PressPatron.

1 | 2