
Perspective API – An API that makes it easier to host better conversations - flinner
http://www.perspectiveapi.com
======
StavrosK
I took the slider to the left end, and it was a lot of climate change denial.
I thought "ugh, is this going to opine on left vs right ideology? That seems
Orwellian", and dragged the slider to the right end, where, to my surprise,
all the comments were insulting/useless.

It's pleasing to know that it doesn't care about your opinion, just about how
eloquently it's expressed. Sounds very useful.

~~~
qznc
"The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that has
taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged today is of the
same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch.
How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus! ... We shall regain
our health only be eliminating the Jew." – Hitler

17% toxic.

~~~
qznc
If I use my full comment above (not just the part in quotation marks) it says
25% toxic.

I think it is mostly a profanity filter.

~~~
TillE
For anyone who's used Google Translate, it should be entirely unsurprising
that the best "AI" we can cook up appears to be doing little more than rating
individual words.

I admire the effort, but the tools seem to be so fundamentally lacking.

~~~
ilyaeck
Give it some time. ML improves with usage and training data.

~~~
mejari
While this is true, ML isn't a panacea that will solve all problems given time
and training data.

------
archgrove
It seems to really hate profanity. `I love it` is 1% toxic. `I bloody love
it.` 38%; `I f __king love it` 95%. In many circles, the more profane are more
congratulatory.

~~~
btown
Even when used positively, hyperbolic words like profanity indicate a level of
close-minded passion about one side or another of a discussion. The purpose of
Perspective seems to be to foster rational discussion between open-minded
individuals in a comment string. I'd be hard-pressed to find someone who moved
a conversation in a non-toxic direction by typing "I bloody respect your
opinion, but here's why assumption X is wrong."

~~~
kbenson
The implicit assumption you are making is that a comment can contain only one
thing. Something like the following would be both perfectly acceptable and
moving the conversation in a good direction, IMO:

 _So fucking awesome.

By the way, how do you do X? Whenever I've tried I always run into problem Y.
Also, I'm interested in your thoughts on Z._

The initial congratulatory statement used profanity for effect and to convey
emotion, but in a positive way. The following statement(s) are specifically
contributing to and flushing out the conversation. 85% toxic according to them
(but helpfully it did allow me to correct them, so maybe they'll get better).

------
iandanforth
"The author of the previous comment has a simian countenance which displays a
lineage rich in species diversity" \- 2% toxic. So insults are OK as long as
they are from Watterson. I approve!

------
startupdiscuss
Great tool, by the way. I think it might actually work!

I started off with a highly toxic comment (in the window on the tool, not in
"real life") and I tried to be just as insulting while lowering the toxicity
level.

It was informative that when I did this, the sentence sounded more educated,
more polished, but was just as rude.

If this spreads wide, I suspect it will usher in a new era of veiled insults
and implied disfavor, but that will be a vast improvement over what we have
today.

~~~
jkaptur
I think HN is basically already like this. It has its own set of problems, but
I agree that it's an improvement.

------
elcapitan
To me that creates the question why I would read the comments in the first
place. Because "filter to the left" contains not one post that would interest
me. It also doesn't give me a feeling on relevant discrepancies in opinion.

If I could filter I would love to filter out everybody in the "filter
completely to the left" as well as the "completely to the right" spectrum and
just have the ones in the middle. The ones on the left are insanely boring and
conformist, and the ones on the complete right are really just idiots.

------
jkaptur
Very interesting, though I'd love more details about the signals they're
using.

I hold out a slim hope that this discussion doesn't once again devolve into
"but how can we even define 'truth'??" This seems more analogous to spam
detectors - perfection is absolutely theoretically impossible, but low-error
implementations are incredibly useful in practice.

~~~
jerf
This seems to be a tone detector, not a truth detector.

------
mr_luc
I remember (from building a sentiment analysis irc bot[1] back in the day that
used the afinn wordlist) that sentiment analysis is effective because robots
can do mid-70%-accurate classification, but humans only agree around 80% of
the time on 'positive/negative' classification.

So I always wonder, if simple models like the afinn wordlist work at close-to-
human levels, how much total value is added by the more robust model. Still
very cool!

\---

[1] [https://github.com/mrluc/cku-irc-
bots/blob/master/feelio.cof...](https://github.com/mrluc/cku-irc-
bots/blob/master/feelio.coffee) \- included the following line of code, which
is a coffeescript crime but also a cute sentence:

    
    
        if i_feel_you then @maybe @occasionally, => say i_feel_you

------
elcapitan
"Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original
virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through
disobedience and through rebellion."

Oscar Wilde, being 14% "toxic".

\--

"Politeness , n. The most acceptable hypocrisy."

Ambrose Bierce, being 48% "toxic"

~~~
yestoallthat
Also 14% toxic:

> "If parental love is so distorted that it demands submission and dependence
> for its self-confirmation, social adjustment turns into a test of obedience
> and the child’s efforts to comply bring with them the loss of genuine
> feelings. The human being then becomes the true source of evil."

\-- Arno Gruen (though putting it in quotes knocks off a full 3% toxicity)

------
geocar
I tried two phrases:

    
    
        59% You're a potato.
    

and:

    
    
        60% You're a potato
    

Just losing the period makes it more toxic! Wow.

Now what can I do with this?

~~~
elcapitan
Putting your comment in quotes seems to makes it considerably less "toxic"
than the same sentence without quotes, apparently (unless very high rate in
the 90s).

"You're a potato."

35% toxic

~~~
ameister14
just <potato> is 19% toxic

------
ImTalking
You can have all the technology in the world but eventually what censorship
really means is someone else stopping you from speaking your mind, and that
person can be benign or malignant.

"host better conversations" is a nice little marketing jingle but what it
really means is "host conversations closer to what you consider 'better'". And
'better' is in the eye of the beholder.

------
underyx
I'm getting <10% toxicity ratings with sarcastic, mocking comments. Those ones
will be a bit hard to fight off, it seems.

~~~
roymurdock
This is how the team built its toxicity model:

 _What 's toxic?

This model was trained by asking people to rate internet comments on a scale
from "Very toxic" to "Very healthy" contribution. Toxic is defined as... "a
rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable comment that is likely to make you leave
a discussion._

I'm not sure if it will ever be possible for algorithms/sentiment analysis to
identify sarcasm as it is extremely situational and is often misread or
misunderstood even by humans.

Seems to me that sarcasm will keep human moderators employed for some time to
come.

~~~
eyeinthepyramid
it's seems easy to me, all they have to do is look for the /s! (/s)

~~~
kbenson
Lazy youngsters, can't even finish your pseudo-tags! In my day, it was
</sarcasm>.

</sarcasm>

------
RubyPinch
> We are also open sourcing experiments, models, and research data to explore
> the strengths and weaknesses (e.g. potential unintended biases) of using
> machine learning as a tool for online discussion.

Does that mean that practically everything to be able to run it on a server
without any google API is possible (once those things release)?

------
qznc
Context: NYT will use it [http://www.nytco.com/the-times-is-partnering-with-
jigsaw-to-...](http://www.nytco.com/the-times-is-partnering-with-jigsaw-to-
expand-comment-capabilities/)

------
EJTH
I just tried some different terms in the test bed on perspectiveapi.com and so
far I noticed that 'Podesta' is a very toxic term, the same as 'Pizzagate' and
'Skippy' for some reason.

Kind of strange. Seems like this is more a tool for shaping the narrative than
it is a tool for keeping a discussion sober.

~~~
grzm
Of the total number of discussions you've had or witnessed regarding
pizzagate, what percentage have been sober?

~~~
EJTH
Most of them have been sober, as sober as can be considering most threads I
have partaken in contained content from his instagram...

------
sciurus
This reminds me of the work Crystal is doing to coach you to write in the
style most appropriate for your audience.

[https://www.crystalknows.com/](https://www.crystalknows.com/)

------
spdustin
Seems like lemmatizing the text before it's rated by humans (during the
training of the model, that is) would get around a healthy portion of the
grammatically-induced scoring differences.

------
calpaterson
Detecting (and warning commenters) about toxicity seems like a really useful
idea. I would certainly like to browse many Brexit discussions with the top
40% of toxic comments cut out.

~~~
roymurdock
I think people often forget how much toxicity is filtered out of a
conversation by talking face-to-face with a real person. I like to reserve
conversations on political topics for emails, texts, calls, or real life
chats.

Internet anonymity enables a ton of toxicity.

~~~
MaxfordAndSons
I agree that anonymity increases the potential for toxicity. But you're
basically saying that because of that you're only willing to discuss politics
in private, which to my mind doesn't really count as engaging in politics in a
meaningful way. Given the proportion of public discourse that takes place on
the internet these days, it makes perfect sense to develop tools like these to
improve its quality.

Opting out to only engage in political discussion in private is in a way a
privilege, that many feel they can no longer afford.

------
elizabethanera
In addition to being a basic term match, it also would mark any conversation
about controversial subjects as toxic. Try saying something innocuous about
suicide or rape.

------
kakarot
This thing does not like exclamation points. I'm all for being less toxic and
more positive in my language, but sometimes I get really excited about it!!!

------
kornakiewicz
Sentiment analysis, basically?

------
dral
I wonder what the results are on HN comments.

------
bawana
'You have a nice behind' scores a lot differently than 'you have a nice ass'.
Hmmmm.

