Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The Out of Control Bot Example

I've come to learn that there is some kind of expert system or "bot" that pre-screens Huffpo comments. This system is out of control. It can censor comments that are perfectly acceptable. Here is one example that I found to be amazing because I actually figured out how to "beat the bot" and it seemed like such a ridiculous example. BTW, this comment is very pro-gun control but I don't mean to insult or put off any second amendment fans here. This site is about censorship and all are welcome and I want to encourage us not to get side tracked on specific issues. I'm including it because it is such a blatant example of how ridiculous the bot is. Note the words in bold.

=== Begin Comment ===
I lived in a VERY scary neighborhood for about a year. The Richmond neighborhood in the SF Bay area. It makes the worst areas of Oakland seem like gated communities. It was the only time I seriously considered buying a gun. But I was living with a wonderful but psychotic girl friend and I was afraid that one of us might at some point pick up the gun. Given that while I lived there she did things like throw her Mac laptop at me (and it still worked after, another testament to Apple) I'm glad I never did. Instead we got a wonderful rescue Rotweiller dog. He was one mean MoFo, to everyone else that is to us he was the sweetest thing in the world. After a while I felt perfectly fine taking him on walks at 2am. NO ONE would mess with me when he was there.
So for all you people living in fear, please get a dog and ditch your guns. Statistics (sorry yes this is that liberal science stuff) show unequivocally that a gun in the home is much more likely to be used against a friend or family than an intruder. But to my knowledge no one ever picked up their dog and shot someone in a fit of anger.
=== End Comment ===

The words in bold were the reason the bot rejected my comment. I resubmitted the comment without those words and the comment made it through.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.