Google Cousin Develops Technology to Flag Toxic Online Comments – The New York Times (Feb 23, 2017)
I love the term “Google cousin” to describe the non-Google companies under the Alphabet umbrella (though confusingly Jigsaw’s website makes it seem as if it’s actually part of Google despite no longer being called Google Ideas). The bigger point here is that this is a clever use of machine learning to solve a real problem, which I’m always a big fan of. Online comments can be horrible and very time consuming to moderate, and this API can be used by publishers to filter out the most “toxic” of those moments. Having said that, the sample comments Jigsaw shows to demonstrate the tool highlight just how inane most online comments are regardless of whether they’re actually toxic, calling into question for me at least whether they’re worth having at all. But this Perspective tool seems to be part of a broader push around technologies for increasing “safety” in various scenarios – that’s definitely the message you get at the Jigsaw website.
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