[HN Gopher] Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation ___________________________________________________________________ Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation Author : kenferry Score : 580 points Date : 2022-11-03 12:07 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | pphysch wrote: | Musk is betting on the $8 membership being a big hit, which | immediately addresses a lot of the moderation issues. | | It's gonna be a completely different paradigm than reddit. | Herding cats into a box painted onto the ground vs. herding cats | into a 8' high cage. | eachro wrote: | Reddit had the benefit of subreddit moderators policing their | own. Twitter has no such thing. Maybe if you squint enough, big | accounts block/muting bad actors in their replies can sort of | count as self-policing but that does not prevent the bad actor | from being a troll in someone else's replies. | danuker wrote: | > Spam is typically easily identified due to the repetitious | nature of the posting frequency, and simplistic nature of the | content (low symbol pattern complexity). | | Now that we have cheap language models, you could create endless | variations of the same idea. It's an arms race. | dbrueck wrote: | At least one missing element is that of _reputation_. I don 't | think it should work exactly like it does in the real world, but | the absence of it seems to always lead to major problems. | | The cost of being a jerk online is too low - it's almost entirely | free of any consequences. | | Put another way, not everyone deserves a megaphone. Not everyone | deserves to chime in on any conversation they want. The promise | of online discussion is that everyone should have the _potential_ | to rise to that, but just granting them that privilege from the | outset and hardly ever revoking it doesn 't work. | | Rather than having an overt moderation system, I'd much rather | see where the reach/visibility/weight of your messages is driven | by things like your time in the given community, your track | record of insightful, levelheaded conversation, etc. | 22c wrote: | > The cost of being a jerk online is too low - it's almost | entirely free of any consequences. | | Couldn't agree more here. | | Going back to the "US Postal service allows spam" comment made | by Yishan, well yes, the US postal service will deliver mail | that someone has PAID to have delivered, they've also paid to | have it printed. There's not a zero cost here and most | businesses will not send physical spam if there weren't at | least some return on investment. | | One big problem not even touched by Yishan is vote | manipulation, or to put it in your terms, artificially boosted | reputation. I consider those to be problems with the platform. | Unfortunately, I haven't yet seen a platform that can solve the | problem of "you, as an individual, have ONE voice". It's too | easy for users to make multiple accounts, get banned, create a | new one, etc. | | At the same time, nobody who's creating a platform for users | will want to make it HARDER for users to sign up. Recently | Blizzard tried to address this (in spirit) by forcing users to | use a phone number and not allowing "burner numbers" (foolishly | determined by "if your phone number is pre-paid"). It | completely backfired for being too exclusionary. I personally | hate the idea of Blizzard knowing and storing my phone number. | However, the idea that it should be more and more difficult or | costly for toxic users to participate in the platform after | they've been banned is not, on its own, a silly idea. | ledauphin wrote: | I agree with the basic idea that we want reputation, but the | classic concept of reputation as a single number in the range | (-inf, inf) is useless for solving real-world problems the way | we solve them in the real world. | | Why? Because my reputation in meatspace is precisely 0 with | 99.9% of the world's population. They haven't heard of me, and | they haven't heard of anyone who has heard of me. Meanwhile, my | reputation with my selected set of friends and relatives is | fairly high, and undoubtedly my reputation with some small set | of people who are my enemies is fairly low. And this is all | good, because no human being can operate in a world where | everyone has an opinion about them all the time. | | Global reputation is bad, and giving anyone a megaphone so they | can chime into any conversation they want is bad, full stop. | Megaphone-usage should not be a democratic thing where a simple | majority either affirms or denies your ability to suddenly make | everyone else listen to you. People have always been able to | speak to their tribes/affinity groups/whatever you want to call | them without speaking to the entire state/country/world, and if | we want to build systems that will be resilient then we need to | mimic that instead of pretending that reputation is a zero-sum | global game. | jacobr1 wrote: | Social reputation IRL also has transitive properties - | vouching from other high-rep people, or group affiliations. | Primitive forms of social-graph connectedness have been | exposed in social networks but it doesn't seem like they've | seen much investment in the past decade. | paul7986 wrote: | The Internet needs to have a verified public identity / | reputation system especially with deep fakes becoming more and | more pervasive/easier to create. Trolls can troll all they want | but if they want to be serious with their words then back it up | with his or her online verified public Internet /reputation ID. | | If this is one of Musk's goals with Twitter he didn't overpay. | The Internet definitely needs such a system..has for awhile | now! | | He might connect Twitter into the crypto ecosystem and that | along with a verified public Internet / Reputation ID system i | think could be powerful. | pixl97 wrote: | How does this system work worldwide across multiple | governments, is resistant to identity theft, and prevents | things like dictatorships from knowing exactly who you are? | jonny_eh wrote: | Remember keybase.io? They still exist, but not as a cross- | platform identity system anymore. | runako wrote: | It's worth noting that Twitter gets a lot of flak for | permanently banning people, but that those people were all | there under their real names. Regardless of your opinion on | the bans, verifying that they were indeed banning e.g. Steve | Bannon would not have helped the decision making process | around his ban any easier. | runako wrote: | This is a good idea, except that it assumes _reputation_ has | some directional value upon which everyone agrees. | | For example, suppose a very famous TV star joins Twitter and | amasses a huge following due to his real-world popularity | independent of Twitter. (Whoever you have in mind at this | point, you are likely wrong.) His differentiator is he's a | total jerk all the time, in person, on TV, etc. He is popular | because he treats everyone around him like garbage. People love | to watch him do it, love the thrill of watching accomplished | people debase themselves in attempts to stay in his good | graces. He has a reputation for being a popular jerk, but | people obviously like to hear what he has to say. | | Everyone would expect his followers to see his posts, and in | fact it is reasonable to expect those posts to be more | prominent than those of lesser-famous people. Now imagine that | famous TV star stays in character on the platform and so is | also total jerk there: spewing hate, abuse, etc. | | Do you censor this person or not? Remember that you make more | money when you can keep famous people on the site creating more | engagement. | | The things that make for a good online community are not | necessarily congruent with those that drive reputation in real | life. Twitter is in the unfortunate position of bridging the | two. | dbrueck wrote: | I posted some additional ideas in a reply to another comment | that I think addresses some of your points, but actually I | think you bring up a good point of another thing that is | broken with both offline and online communities: reputation | is transferrable across communities far more than it should | be. | | You see this anytime e.g. a high profile athlete "weighs in" | on complicated geopolitical matters, when in reality their | opinion on that matter should count next to nothing in most | cases, unless in addition to being a great athlete they have | also established a track record (reputation) of being expert | or insightful in international affairs. | | A free-for-all community like Twitter could continue to | exist, where there are basically no waiting periods before | posting and your reputation from other areas counts a lot. | But then other communities could set their own standards that | say you can't post for N days and that your incoming | reputation factor is 0.001 or something like that. | | So the person could stay in character but they couldn't post | for awhile, and even when they did, their posts would | initially have very low visibility because their reputation | in this new community would be abysmally low. Only by really | engaging in the community over time would their reputation | rise to the point of their posts having much visibility, and | even if they were playing the long game and faking being good | for a long time and then decided to go rogue, their | reputation would drop quickly so that the damage they could | do would be pretty limited in that one community, while also | potentially harming their overall reputation in other | communities too. | | As noted in the other post, there is lots of vagueness here | because it's just thinking out loud, but I believe the | concepts are worth exploring. | runako wrote: | These are good ideas that might help manage an online | community! On the other hand, they would be bad for | business! When a high-profile athlete weighs in on a | complicated geopolitical matter and then (say) gets the | continent wrong, that will generate tons of engagement | (money) for the platform. Plus there's no harm done. A | platform probably wants that kind of content. | | And the whole reason the platform wants the athlete to post | in the first place is because the platform wants that | person's real-world reputation to transfer over. I believe | it is a property of people that they are prone to more | heavily weigh an opinion from a well-known/well-liked/rich | person, even if there is no real reason for that person to | have a smart opinion on a given topic. This likely is not | something that can be "fixed" by online community | governance. | sydd wrote: | But the how would you address "reputable" people spreading | idiotic things or fake news? How would you prevent Joe Rogan | spreading COVID conspiracy theories? Or Kanye's antisemitic | comments? Or a celebrity hyping up some NFT for a quick cash | grab? Or Elon Musk falling for some fake news and spreading it? | brookst wrote: | Maybe? Reputation systems can devolve into rewarding | groupthink. It's a classic "you get what you measure" | conundrum, where once it becomes clear that an opinion / phrase | / meme is popular, it's easy to farm reputation by repeating | it. | | I like your comment about "track record of insightful, | levelheaded conversation", but that introduces another | abstraction. Who measures insight or levelheadedness, and how | to avoid that being gamed? | | I general I agree that reputation is an interesting and | potentially important signal, I'm just not sure I've ever seen | an implementation that doesn't cause a lot of the problems it's | trying to solve. Any good examples? | dbrueck wrote: | Yeah, definitely potential for problems and downsides. And I | don't know of any implementations that have gotten it right. | And to some degree, I imagine all such systems (online or | not) can be gamed, so it's also important for the designers | of such a system to not try to solve every problem either. | | And maybe you do have some form of moderation, but not in the | sense of moderation of your agreement/disagreement with ideas | but moderation of behavior - like a debate moderator - based | on the rules of the community. Your participation in a | community would involve reading, posting as desired once | you've been in a community for a certain amount of time, | taking a turn at evaluating N comments that have been | flagged, and taking a turn at evaluating disputes about | evaluations, with the latter 2 being spread around so as to | not take up a lot of time (though, having those duties could | also reinforce your investment in a community). The | reach/visibility of your posts would be driven off your | reputation in that community, though people reading could | also control how much they see too - maybe I only care about | hearing from more established leaders while you are more open | to hearing from newer / lower reputation voices too. An | endorsement from someone with a higher reputation counts more | than an endorsement from someone who just recently joined, | though not so huge of a difference that it's impossible for | new ideas to break through. | | As far as who measures, it's your peers - the other members | of the community, although there needs to be a ripple effect | of some sort - if you endorse bad behavior, then that | negatively effects your reputation. If someone does a good | job of articulating a point, but you ding them simply because | you disagree with that point, then someone else can ding you. | If you consistently participate in the community duties well, | it helps your reputation. | | The above is of course super hand-wavy and incomplete, but | something along those lines has IMO a good shot of at least | being a better alternative to some of what we have today and, | who knows, could be quite good. | brookst wrote: | > Your participation in a community would involve reading, | posting as desired once you've been in a community for a | certain amount of time, taking a turn at evaluating N | comments that have been flagged, and taking a turn at | evaluating disputes about evaluations, with the latter 2 | being spread around so as to not take up a lot of time | (though, having those duties could also reinforce your | investment in a community). | | This is an interesting idea, and I'm not sure it even needs | to be that rigorous. Active evaluations are almost a chore | that will invite self-selection bias. Maybe we use | sentiment analysis/etc to passively evaluate how people | present and react to posts? | | It'll be imperfect in any small sample, but across a larger | body of content, it should be possible to derive metrics | like "how often does this person compliment a comment that | they also disagree with" or "relative to other people, how | often do this person's posts generate angry replies", or | even "how often does this person end up going back and | forth with one other person in an increasingly | angry/insulting style"? | | It still feels game-able, but maybe that's not bad? Like, I | am going to get such a great bogus reputation by writing | respectful, substantive replies and disregarding bait like | ad hominems! That kind of gaming is maybe a good thing. | | One fun thing is this could be implemented over the top of | existing communities like Reddit. Train the models, | maintain a reputation score externally, offer an API to | retrieve, let clients/extensions decide if/how to re-order | or filter content. | mjjjjjjj wrote: | This is pure hypothetical, but I bet Reddit could derive an | internal reputational number that is a combination of both | karma (free and potentially farmable) and awards (that people | actually pay for or that are scarce and shows what they | value) that would be a better signal to noise ratio than just | karma alone. | pixl97 wrote: | So a wealthy bot farmer rules this system? | fblp wrote: | Google search is an example of ude of site reputation (search | ranking) driven by where backlinks and various other site | quality metrics. | | I would also say the Facebook feed also ranks based on the | reputation and relevance of the poster of the content. | pixl97 wrote: | Is google supposed to be a positive or negative example | here, that is with all the recent complaints about SEO spam | and search quality dropping? | jonny_eh wrote: | Soon reputation will cost only $8 a month. | VonGallifrey wrote: | I don't know why this meme is being repeated so much. I see | it everywhere. | | Twitter Verification is only verifying that the account is | "authentic, notable, and active". | | Nothing about the Verification Process changed. At least I | have not heard about any changes other then the price change | from free to $8. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Twitter Verification is only verifying that the account | is "authentic, notable, and active". | | Musk has been very clear that it will be open to anyone who | pays the (increased) cost for Twitter's Blue (which also | will get other new features), and thus no longer be tier to | "notable" or "active". | | > At least I have not heard about any changes other then | the price change from free to $8. | | Its not a price change from free to $8 for Twitter | Verification. It is a _discontinuation_ of Twitter | Verification as a separate thing, but moving the (revised) | process and resulting checkmark to be an open-to-anyone- | who-pays component of Blue, which increases in cost to $8 | /mo (currently $4.99/mo). | billiam wrote: | The best part of his engrossing Twitter thread is that he inserts | a multitweet interstitial "ad" for his passion project promoting | reforestation right in the middle of his spiel. | baby wrote: | that's the best approach to growth: | | 1. find what's trendy | | 2. talk about what's trendy | | 3. in the middle or at the end of that, talk about how that | relates to you and your work | anigbrowl wrote: | I'm sure it works across the population at large but I avoid | doing business with people who engage in that kind of | manipulation. They're fundamentally untrustworthy in my | experience. | CamperBob2 wrote: | It's the best approach for flipping your bozo bit in the | minds of most of your readers, but I don't see how that leads | to "growth." | EarlKing wrote: | Yes... the irony of discussing signal-to-noise ratio issues | (i.e. spam) and then spamming up your own thread. This post | sponsored by Irony. | SilasX wrote: | Maybe it's as some kind of reinforcement of his point about | policing the lines between spam and non spam? | dang wrote: | I know, but: | | " _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an article | or post to complain about in the thread. Find something | interesting to respond to instead._" | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | choppaface wrote: | I find it interesting that dang's post about not just HN | rules but also his personal feelings about yishan's thread: * | appear in the same post--- there clearly is no personal | boundary with dang * direct replies to dang's post, now the | top of the comments section, are disabled | | whenever dang tries to "correct the record" or otherwise | engage in frivolous squabbles with other HN commenters, I | really hope this article pops up in the linked material. some | may argue that yishan here is doing inapropriate self- | promotion and that might undermine trust in his message. i | hope HN readers notice how partial dang is, how he's used HN | technical features ti give his own personal feelings | privilege, and the financial conflicts of interest here. | onetimeusename wrote: | free speech might be self regulating. A place that gets excessive | spam attracts no one and then there wouldn't be much motivation | to spam it anymore. | | I don't recall spam restrictions on old IRC. A moderator could | boot you off. My own theory is having an exponential cool off | timer on posts could be the only thing needed that still is | technically 100% free speech. | bombcar wrote: | IRC had tons of independent little servers doing their own | thing. | | We have huge companies spanning the entire globe; if you get | banned from one you're out world-wide. | | This is where federation can help, IF it truly is a bunch of | smaller servers rather than ending up one large one. | aksjdhmkjasdof wrote: | I have actually worked in this area. I like a lot of Yishan's | other writing but I find this thread mostly a jumbled mess | without much insight. Here are a couple assorted points: | | >In fact, once again, I challenge you to think about it this way: | could you make your content moderation decisions even if you | didn`t understand the language they were being spoken in? | | I'm not sure what the big point is here but there are a couple | parts to how this works in the real world: | | 1) Some types of content removal do not need you to understand | the language: visual content (images/videos), legal takedowns | (DMCA). | | 2) Big social platforms contract with people around the world in | order to get coverage of various popular languages. | | 3) You can use Google Translate (or other machine translation) to | review content in some languages that nobody working in content | moderation understands. | | But some content that violates the site's policies can easily | slip through the cracks if it's in the right less-spoken | language. That's just a cost of doing business. The fact that the | language is less popular will limit the potential harm but it's | certainly not perfect. | | >Here`s the answer everyone knows: there IS no principled reason | for banning spam. We ban spam for purely outcome-based reasons: > | >It affects the quality of experience for users we care about, | and users having a good time on the platform makes it successful. | | Well, that's the same principle that underlies all content | moderation: "allowing this content is more harmful to the | platform than banning it". You can go into all the different | reasons why it might be harmful but that's the basic idea and | it's not unprincipled at all. And not all spam is banned from all | platforms--it could just have its distribution killed or even be | left totally alone, depending on the specific cost/benefit | analysis at play. | | You can apply the same reasoning to every other moderation | decision or policy. | | The main thrust of the thread seems to be that content moderation | is broadly intended to ban negative behavior (abusive language | and so on) rather than to censor particular political topics. To | that I say, yeah, of course. | | FWIW I do think that the big platforms have taken a totally wrong | turn in the last few years by expanding into trying to fight | "disinformation" and that's led to some specific policies that | are easily seen as political (eg policies about election fraud | claims or covid denialism). If we're just talking about staying | out of this business then sure, give it a go. High-level | blabbering about "muh censorship!!!" without discussion of | specific policies, is what you get from people like Musk or | Sacks, though, and that's best met with an eye roll. | Waterluvian wrote: | If I wanted quality content, I would just do the Something Awful | approach and charge $x per account. | | If I wanted lots of eyeballs (whether real or fake) to sell ads, | I would just pay lip service to moderation issues, while focusing | on only moderating anything that affects my ability to attract | advertisers. | | But what I want, above all, because I think it would be hilarious | to watch, is for Elon to activate Robot9000 on all of Twitter. | onetimeusename wrote: | Robot9000 really didn't improve quality in the places it was | deployed though and people just game it. | | edit: that said I think Something Awful arguably has the best | approach to this does it not? The site is over 20 years old at | this point. That is absolutely ancient compared to all the | public message forums that exist. | Waterluvian wrote: | I agree. I think the SA approach is the best I've ever seen. | But as I'm flippantly pointing out: it only works if you | really only care about fostering quality social interaction. | | The mistake SA is making is not fixating on revenue as the | chief KPI. ;) | idiotsecant wrote: | SA is also not the font of internet culture that it once was, | either, so clearly the price of admission is not sufficient | to make it successful. It seems to me it was, at most, a | partial contributor. | onetimeusename wrote: | I think it's an interesting argument about what SA is now. | I hear membership is growing again. It has a dedicated | group there. I think that's what's most interesting. That's | really not much different than a Reddit board in theory. | But Reddit boards seem to come and go constantly and suffer | from all sorts of problems. I am not a redditor but SA | seems like a better board than a specific sub reddit. | | My point is that maybe what SA is now is the best you can | hope for on the internet, and it's going strong(?). | Apocryphon wrote: | Also, SA has "underperformed" as an internet platform- | Lowtax notoriously failed to capitalize on the community | and grow it into something bigger (and more lucrative). So | it remains a large old-school vBulletin-style internet | forum instead of a potential Reddit or even greater, albeit | with its culture and soul intact. | Waterluvian wrote: | Not suggesting you meant it this way, but there's an | amusing "money person with blinders on" angle to the | statement. It's the "what's the point of anything if | you're not making money?!" | anonymid wrote: | Isn't it inconsistent to both say "moderation decisions are about | behavior, not content", and "platforms can't justify moderation | decisions because of privacy reasons". | | It seems like you wouldn't need to reveal any details about the | content of the behavior, but just say "look, this person posted X | times, or was reported Y times", etc... I find the author to be | really hand-wavy around why this part is difficult. | | I work with confidential data, and we track personal information | through our system and scrub it at the boundaries (say, when | porting it from our primary DB to our systems for monitoring or | analysis). I know many other industries (healthcare, education, | government, payments) face very similar issues... | | So why don't any social network companies already do this? | ranger207 wrote: | For one, giving specific examples gives censured users an | excuse to do point-by-point rebuttals. In my experience, point- | by-point rebuttals are one of the behaviors that should be | considered bad behavior and moderated against because they | encourage the participant to think only of each point | individually and ignore the superlinear effect of every point | taken together. For another, the user can latch on specific | examples that seem innocuous out of context and allow them to | complain that their censorship was obviously heavy handed, and | if the user is remotely well known then it's famous person's | word versus random other commenters trying to add context. The | ultimate result is that people see supposed problems with | moderation far more than anyone ever says "man I sure am glad | that user's gone" so there's a general air of resentment | against the moderation and belief in its ineffectiveness | mikkergp wrote: | I would guess part of the problem is the the more specific the | social media company gets, the more nit picky the users get. | ptero wrote: | This topic was adjacent to the sugar and L-isomer comments. Which | probably influenced my viewpoint: | | Yishan is saying that Twitter (and other social networks) | moderate bad behavior, not bad content. They just strive for | higher SNR. It is just that specific types of content seems to be | disproportionately responsible for starting bad behavior in | discussions; and thus get banned. Sounds rational and while | potentially slightly unfair looks totally reasonable for a | private company. | | But what I think is happening is that this specific moderation on | social networks in general and Twitter in particular has pushed | them along the R- (or L-) isomer path to an extent that a lot of | content, however well presented and rationally argued, just | cannot be digested. Not because it is objectively worse or leads | into a nastier state, but simply because deep inside some | structure is pointing in the wrong direction. | | Which, to me, is very bad. Once you reach this state of mental R- | and L- incompatibility, no middle ground is possible and the | outcome is decided by an outright war. Which is not fun and | brings a lot of causalties. My 2c. | wwweston wrote: | > a lot of content, however well presented and rationally | argued, just cannot be digested. | | Can you name the topic areas where even cautious presentation | will not be sustained on twitter? | vanjajaja1 wrote: | This was my takeaway as well. Yishan is arguing that social | media companies aren't picking sides they're just aiming for a | happy community, but the end result of that is that the loudest | and angriest group(s) end up emotionally bullying the | moderation algorithm into conforming. This is precisely the | problem that Elon seems to be tackling. | RickJWagner wrote: | Reddit is a sewer. I don't think the Ex-CEO has demonstrated any | moderation skills. | LegitShady wrote: | He was CEO of a company that has volunteer moderators, what he | knows about handling moderation is tainted by the way reddit is | structured. Also, reddit's moderation is either heavy handed or | totally ineffective depending on the case so not sure he's the | right person to talk to. | | Also, I stopped reading when he did an ad break on a twitter | thread. Who needs ads in twitter threads? It makes him seem | desperate and out of touch. Nobody needs his opinion, and they | need his opinion with ad breaks even less. | protoman3000 wrote: | I like the idea that you don't want to moderate content, but | behavior. And it let me to these thoughts. I'm curious about your | additions to these thoughts. | | Supply moderation of psychoactive agents never worked. People | have a demand to alter the state of their consciousness, and we | should try to moderate demand in effective ways. The problem is | not the use of psychoactive agents, it is the abuse. And the same | applies to social media interaction which is a very strong | psychoactive agent [1]. Nevertheless it can be useful. Therefore | we want to fight abuse, not use. | | I would like to put up to discussion the usage and extension of | techniques for demand moderation in the context of social media | interactions which we know to somewhat work already in other | psychoactive agents. Think something like drugs education in | schools, fasting rituals, warning labels on cigarettes, limited | selling hours for alcohol, trading food stamps for drug addicts | etc. | | For example, assuming the platform could somehow identify abusive | patterns in the user, it could | | - show up warning labels that their behavior might be abusive in | the sense of social media interaction abuse | | - give them mandatory cool-down periods | | - trick the allostasis principle of their dopamine reward system | by doing things intermittently, e.g. by only randomly letting | their posts to go through to other users, or only randomly allow | them to continue reading the conversation (maybe only for some | time), or only randomly shadow ban some posts | | - make them read documents about harmful social media interaction | abuse | | - hint to them how abusive patterns in other people look like | | - give limited reading or posting credits (e.g. "Should I | continue posting in this flamewar thread and then not post | somewhere else where I find it more meaningful at another time?") | | - etc. | | I would like to hear your opinions about this in a sensible | discussion. | | _________ | | [1] Yes, social media interaction is a psychoactive and addictive | agent, just like any other drug or your common addiction like | overworking yourself, but I digress. People use social media | interactions to among others raise their anger, to feed their | addiction to complaining, to feel a high of "being right"/owning | it up to the libs/nazis/bigots/idiots etc., to feel like they | learned something useful, to entertain themselves, to escape from | reality etc. Many people suffer from compulsively or at least | habitual abuse of social media interactions, which has been shown | by numerous studies (Sorry, to lazy to find a paper now to cite). | Moreover the societal effects of abuse of social media | interactions and their dynamics and influence on democratic | politics are obviously detrimental. | idiotsecant wrote: | Maybe this works on a long enough timeline, but by your analogy | entire generations of our population are now hopelessly | addicted to this particular psychoactive agent. We might be | able to make a new generation that is immune to it, but in the | mean time these people are strongly influencing policy, | culture, and society in ways that are directly based on that | addiction. This is a 'planting trees I know I will never feel | the shade of' situation. | carapace wrote: | > working on climate: removing CO2 from the atmosphere is | critical to overcoming the climate crisis, and the restoration of | forests is one of the BEST ways to do that. | | As a tangent, Akira Miyawaki has developed a method for | 'reconstitution of "indigenous forests by indigenous trees"' | which "produces rich, dense and efficient protective pioneer | forests in 20 to 30 years" | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Miyawaki#Method_and_cond... | | It's worth quoting in full: | | > Rigorous initial site survey and research of potential natural | vegetation | | > Identification and collection of a large number of various | native seeds, locally or nearby and in a comparable geo-climatic | context | | > Germination in a nursery (which requires additional maintenance | for some species; for example, those that germinate only after | passing through the digestive tract of a certain animal, need a | particular symbiotic fungus, or a cold induced dorming phase) | | > Preparation of the substrate if it is very degraded, such as | the addition of organic matter or mulch, and, in areas with heavy | or torrential rainfall, planting mounds for taproot species that | require a well-drained soil surface. Hill slopes can be planted | with more ubiquitous surface roots species, such as cedar, | Japanese cypress, and pine. | | > Plantations respecting biodiversity inspired by the model of | the natural forest. A dense plantation of very young seedlings | (but with an already mature root system: with symbiotic bacteria | and fungi present) is recommended. Density aims at stirring | competition between species and the onset of phytosociological | relations close to what would happen in nature (three to five | plants per square metre in the temperate zone, up to five or ten | seedlings per square metre in Borneo). | | > Plantations randomly distributed in space in the way plants are | distributed in a clearing or at the edge of the natural forest, | not in rows or staggered. | atchoo wrote: | I think you have to be quite credulous to engage in this topic of | "twitter moderation" as if it's in good faith. It's not about | about creating a good experience for users, constructive debate | or even money. It's ALL about political influence. | | > I`m heartened to know that @DavidSacks is involved. | | I'm not. I doubt he is there because Twitter is like Zenefits, | it's because his preoccupation over the last few years has been | politics as part of the "New Right" Thiel, Master, Vance etc. | running fund raisers for DeSantis and endorsing Musk's pro- | Russian nonsense on Ukraine. | | https://newrepublic.com/article/168125/david-sacks-elon-musk... | drewbeck wrote: | Very helpful and unfortunate context, thanks | mikkergp wrote: | Yeah, I saw David Sacks tweet: | | " The entitled elite is not mad that they have to pay $8/month. | They're mad that anyone can pay $8/month." | | There must be quite a few people in here who are well versed in | customer relations, at least in the context of a startup, can | anyone explain to me why Musk and Sacks seem to have developed | the strategy of insulting their customers and potential | customers? | | I can think of two reasons | | 1. They think twitter has a big enough most of obsessed people | that they can het away with whatever they want. | | 2. They think that there really is a massive group of angry | "normies" they can rile up to pay $8 a month for twitter blue, | but isn't ironically the goal of twitter blue to get priority | access to the "anointed elite"? For sure I'm not paying $8 a | month to get access to the feeds of my friends and business | associates. | | David Sacks' tweet does feel very Trumpian in a way though, | which supports the notion of bringing trump back and starting | the free speech social network. | atchoo wrote: | I think their general plan will be to discourage/silence | influential left-wing voices with enough cover to keep the | majority of the audience for an emboldened right-wing. | | If thinking imaginatively, then the proposal framed as "$8/mo | or have your tweets deranked" is a deal they actively don't | want left-wingers to take. They want to be able to derank | their tweets with a cover of legitimacy. | | The more they can turn this fee into a controversial "I | support Musk" loyalty test, the more they can discourage | left-wing / anti-Musk subscribers while encouraging right- | wing / pro-Musk subscribers who will all have their tweets | boosted. | | Feels conspiratorial but it's a fee that mostly upsets | existing blue tick celebrities which _should_ be the last | group Twitter The Business would want to annoy but they are | the influential left-wingers. If you look at who Musk picked | fights with about it e.g. AOC and Stephen King, then that is | even more suggestive of deliberate provocation. | | Whether planned or not, I suspect that this is how it play | out. | MetaWhirledPeas wrote: | > _can anyone explain to me why Musk and Sacks seem to have | developed the strategy of insulting their customers and | potential customers?_ | | I find it fascinating that so many people are whip-crack | quick to loudly criticize the $8 checkmark move. | | How many of these critics even use Twitter? | | And of those who do use Twitter, how can any of them know the | outcome of such a move? Why not just wait and observe? | mikkergp wrote: | I think because Elon and Co. are acting so dismissive and | entitled. They're acting frickin weird. Admittedly I think | who you think sounds more entitled depends on your | worldview. I do think the journalist reactions are strange, | but probably just because they're acting to something so | strange. | | Elon is hardly describing a vision for this new version of | twitter that people might be inspired to spend $8 for, yes | something vague about plebs vs nobility, and half has many | ads, but his biggest call to action has been "Hey we need | the money". They're acting so shitty to everyone it's | hardly a surprise people aren't fawning in confidence back. | Plus I can't help but feel that these people are really | just echoing what everyone else is thinking. Why am I | paying $8 a month for Twitter? | dragonwriter wrote: | > Elon is hardly describing a vision for this new version | of twitter that people might be inspired to spend $8 for, | yes something vague about plebs vs nobility, | | Yeah, Elon calls the status quo a "lords & peasants | system" and says that to get out of that model Twitter | should have a two-tier model where the paid users get | special visual flair, algorithmic boosts in their tweets | prominence and reach, and a reduced-ads feed experience | compared to free users. | | And somehow doesn't see the irony. | ZeroGravitas wrote: | Aside from the weird elite baiting rhetoric, does this mean | that blue checkmark no longer means "yes, this is that famous | person/thing you've heard of, not an impersonator" but now | just means "this person gave us 8 dollars?" | mikkergp wrote: | I don't know if this has been clear yet. Or less than | famous person/thing, do you have to submit ID / use real | name to get verified. | lazyeye wrote: | I think they are arguing its about removing political influence | and restoring balance. | | This will be seen as an "attack on the left" because Twitter | has been controlled by the left till now. | boredhedgehog wrote: | You are showcasing exactly the behavior he blames for the | degeneration of dialogue: take any kind of question and turn it | into a political us vs them. | atchoo wrote: | When the context of the discussion is twitter moderation in | the wake of Musk's takeover and who his team is, it's already | political. For Yishan to pump up Sacks and his confidence in | him to fix moderation, without acknowledging that today he is | a political operator, is close to dishonest. Contributing | this information is hopefully helpful. | gort19 wrote: | Isn't that what Sacks is doing when he talks about the | 'entitled elite' being 'mad'? | deckard1 wrote: | I did not see any mention of structure. | | Reddit has a different structure than Twitter. In fact, go back | to before Slashdot and Digg and the common (HN, Reddit) format of | drive-by commenting was simply not a thing. Usenet conversations | would take place over the course of days, weeks, or even months. | | Business rules. Twitter is driven by engagement. Twitter is | practically the birthplace of the "hot take". It's what drives a | lot of users to the site and keeps them there. How do you control | the temper of a site when your _goal_ is inflammatory to begin | with? | | Trust and Good Faith. When you enter into a legal contract, both | you and the party you are forming a contract with are expected to | operate in _good faith_. You are signaling your intent is to be | fair and honest and to uphold the terms of the contract. Now, the | elephant in the room here is what happens when the CEO, Elon | Musk, could arguably (Matt Levine has done so, wonderfully) not | even demonstrate good faith during the purchase of Twitter, | itself. Or has been a known bully to Bill Gates regarding his | weight or sex appeal, or simply enjoys trolling with conspiracy | theories. What does a moderation system even mean in the context | of a private corporation owned by such a person? Will moderation | apply to Elon? If not, then how is trust established? | | There is a lot to talk about on that last point. In the late '90s | a site called Advogato[1] was created to explore trust metrics. | It was not terribly successful, but it was an interesting time in | moderation. Slashdot was also doing what they could. But then it | all stopped with the rise of corporate forums. Corporate forums, | such as Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook, seem to have no interest in | these sorts of things. Their interest is in conflict: they need | to onboard as many eyeballs as possible, as quickly as possible, | and with as little user friction as possible. They also serve | advertisers, who, you could argue, are the _real_ arbiters of | what can be said on a site. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advogato | jmyeet wrote: | This is a good post. | | I'm one of those who likes to bring out the "fire in a theater" | or doxxing as the counterexample to disprove literally nobody is | a free speech absolutist. This on top of it not being a 1A issue | anyway because the first five words are "Congress shall pass no | law". | | But spam is a better way to approach this and show it really | isn't a content problem but a user behaviour problem. Because | that's really it. | | Another way to put this is that the _total experience_ matters, | meaning the experience of all users: content creators, lurkers | _and advertisers_. Someone could go into an AA meeting and not | shut up about scientology or coal power and you 'll get kicked | out. Not because your free speech is being violated but because | you're annoying and you're worsening the experience of everyone | else you come in contact with. | | Let me put it another way: just because you have a "right" to say | something doesn't mean other people should be forced to hear it. | That platform has a greater responsibility that your personal | interests and that's about behaviour (as the article notes), not | content. | | As this thread notes, this is results-oriented. | spaceman_2020 wrote: | At how many tweets in the thread do you just go "maybe I should | just write this as a blog post?" | [deleted] | whatshisface wrote: | He says there is no principled reason to ban spam, but there's an | obvious one, it isn't really speech. The same goes for someone | who posts the same opinion everywhere with no sense of contextual | relevance. That's not real speech, it's just posting. | ch4s3 wrote: | It's basically just public nuisance, like driving up and down a | street blaring your favorite club banger at 3AM. More | uncharitably its a lot like littering, public urination, or | graffiti. | mr_toad wrote: | Spammers are also using a public space for their own selfish | gain, which makes them freeloaders. | ch4s3 wrote: | That's sort of what I mean. It's like putting up a | billboard on someone else's property. Taking down the | billboard isn't about the content of the billboard but | rather the non-permitted use of the space. | puffoflogic wrote: | TL;DR: Run your platform to confirm to the desires of the loudest | users. Declare anything your loudest users don't want to see to | be "flamewar" content and remove it. | | My take: "Flamebait" _is_ a completely accurate label for the | content your loudest users don 't want to see, but it's by | definition your loudest users who are actually doing the flaming, | and by definition they disagree with the things they're flaming. | So all this does is reward people for flamewars, while the | moderators effectively crusade on behalf of the flamers. But it's | "okay" because, by definition, the moderators are going to be | people who agree with the political views of the loudest viewers | (if they weren't they'd get heckled off), so the mods you | actually get will be perfectly happy with this situation. Neither | the mods nor the loudest users have any reason to dislike or see | any problem with this arrangement. So why is it a problem? | Because it leads to what I'll call a flameocracy: whoever flames | loudest gets their way as the platform will align with their | desires (in order to reduce how often they flame). The mods and | the platform are held hostage by these users but are suffering | literal Stockholm Syndrome as they fear setting off their abusers | (the flamers). | kalekold wrote: | I wish we could all go back to phpBB forums. Small, dedicated, | online communities were great. I can't remember massive problems | like this back then. | sciencemadness wrote: | The bad actors were much less prevalent back in the heyday of | small phpBB style forums. I have run a forum of this type for | 20 years now, since 2002. Around 2011 was when link spam got | bad enough that I had to start writing my own bolt-on spam | classifier and moderation tools instead of manually deleting | spammer accounts. Captchas didn't help because most of the spam | was posted by actual humans, not autonomous bots. | | In the past 2 years fighting spam became too exhausting and I | gave up on allowing new signups through software entirely. Now | you have to email me explaining why you want an account and | I'll manually create one for the approved requests. The world's | internet users are now more numerous and less homogeneous than | they were back when small forums dominated, and the worst 0.01% | will ruin your site for the other 99.99% unless you invest a | lot of effort into prevention. | pixl97 wrote: | Yep, if you're on the internet long enough you'll remember | the days before you were portscanned constantly. You'll | remember the days before legions of bots hammered at your | HTTP server. You'd remember it was rare to have some kiddie | DDOS your server off the internet and you had to hide behind | a 3rd party provider like cloudflare. | | That internet is long dead, hence discussions like Dead | Internet Theory. | carapace wrote: | My mom still has a land-line. She gets multiple calls a | day, robots trying to steal an old lady's money. For this | we invented the telephone? the transistor? | pixl97 wrote: | Honestly the internet has a lot to do with this problem | too, stealing VOIP accounts and spoofing caller ID has | enabled a lot of this. | joshstrange wrote: | That's because they were small and often has strict rules | (written or not), aka moderation, about how to behave. You | don't remember massive problems because the bad actors were | kicked off. It falls apart at scale and when everyone | can't/won't agree on "good behavior" or "the rules" is/are. | root_axis wrote: | phpBB forums have always been notorious for capricious bans | based on the whims of mods and admins, it's just that getting | banned from a website wasn't newsworthy 10 years ago. | PathOfEclipse wrote: | Re: "Here`s the answer everyone knows: there IS no principled | reason for banning spam." | | The author is making the mistake that "free speech" has been | about saying whatever you want and whenever you want. This was | never the case, including at the time of the _founding_ of the | U.S. constitution. There has always been a tolerance window which | defines what you can say and what you can 't say without | repercussions, often and usually enforced by society and societal | norms. | | The 1st amendment was always about limiting what the government | can do to curtail speech, but, as we know, there are plenty of | other actors in the system that have and continue to moderate | communications. The problem with society today is that those in | power have gotten really bad at defining a reasonable tolerance | window, and in fact, political actors have worked hard to _shift_ | the tolerance window to benefit them and harm their opponents. | | So, he makes this mistake and then builds on it by claiming that | censoring spam violates free speech principles, but that's not | really true. And then he tries to equate controversy with spam, | saying it's not so much about the content itself but how it | affects users. And that, I think leads into another major problem | in society. | | There has always been a tension between someone getting | reasonably versus unreasonably offended by something. However, in | today's society, thanks in part to certain identitarian | ideologies, along with a culture shift towards the worship or | idolization of victimhood, we've given _tremendous_ power to a | few people to shut down speech by being offended, and vastly | broadened what we consider reasonable offense versus unreasonable | offense. | | Both of these issues are ultimately cultural, but, at the same | time, social media platforms have enough power to influence | culture. If the new Twitter can define a less insane tolerance | window and give more leeway for people to speak even if a small | but loud or politically motivated minority of people get | offended, then they will have succeeded in improving the culture | and in improving content moderation. | | And, of course, there is a third, and major elephant in the room. | The government has been caught collaborating with tech companies | to censor speech indirectly. This is a concrete violation of the | first amendment, and, assuming Republicans gain power this | election cycle, I hope we see government officials prosecuted in | court over it. | slowmovintarget wrote: | I think that's a mischaracterization of what was written about | spam. | | The author wrote that most people don't consider banning spam | to be free speech infringement because the act of moderating | spam has nothing to do with the content and everything to do | with the posting behavior in the communication medium. | | The author then uses that point to draw logical conclusions | about other moderation activity. | | Leading with a strawman weakens your argument, I think. | PathOfEclipse wrote: | Fortunately it's not a strawman. From the article: | | ===== | | Moderating spam is very interesting: it is almost universally | regarded as okay to ban (i.e. CENSORSHIP) but spam is in no | way illegal. | | Spam actually passes the test of "allow any legal speech" | with flying colors. Hell, the US Postal Service delivers spam | to your mailbox. When 1A discussions talk about free speech | on private platforms mirroring free speech laws, the | exceptions cited are typically "fire in a crowded theater" or | maybe "threatening imminent bodily harm." Spam is nothing | close to either of those, yet everyone agrees: yes, it`s okay | to moderate (censor) spam. | | ===== | | He's saying directly that censoring spam is not supported by | any free speech principle, at least as he sees it, and in | fact our free speech laws allow spam. He also refers to the | idea of "allow any legal speech" as the "free-speech"-based | litmus test for content moderation, and chooses spam to show | how this litmus test is insufficient. | | What about my framing of his argument is a strawman? it looks | like a flesh-and-blood man! I am saying that his litmus test | is an invalid or inaccurate framing, of what a platform that | supports free speech should be about. Even if the government | is supposed to allow you to say pretty close to whatever you | want whenever you want, it's never been an expectation that | private citizens have to provide the same support. | Individuals, institutions, and organizations have always | limited speech beyond what the government could enforce. | Therefore, "free speech" has never meant that you could say | whatever is legal and everyone else will just go along with | it. | | On the other hand, Elon Musk's simple remark of saying that | he knows he's doing a good job if both political extremes are | equally offended shows to me that he seems to understand free | speech in practice better than this ex-Reddit CEO does! | (https://www.quora.com/Elon-Musk-A-social-media-platform-s- | po...) | slowmovintarget wrote: | For the record, I agree with your points in your original | post regarding the nature of free speech and with regard to | the Overton window for tolerable speech (if there is such a | thing). | | I disagree with the notion that Yishan made a mistake in | how he wrote about spam. You used that as a basis for | disclaiming his conclusions. | | Yishan was not making a point about free speech, he was | making the point that effective moderation is not about | free speech at all. | PathOfEclipse wrote: | That's a fair point. At the same time: | | A) saying moderation is not about free speech is, I | think, making a point about free speech. Saying one thing | is unrelated to another is making a point about both | things. | | B) Even framed this way, I think Yishan is either wrong | or is missing the point. If you want to do content | moderation that better supports free speech, what does | that look like? I think Yishan either doesn't answer that | question at all, or else implies that it's not solvable | by saying the two are unrelated. I don't think that's the | case, and I also think his approach of focusing less on | the content and more on the supposed user impact just | gives more power to activists who know how to use outrage | as a weapon. If you want your platform to better support | free speech, then I think the content itself should | matter as much or more than peoples' reaction to it, even | if moderating by content is more difficult. Otherwise, | content moderation can just be gamed by generating the | appropriate reaction to content you want censored. | digitalsushi wrote: | I can speak only at a Star Trek technobabble level on this, but | I'd like it if I could mark other random accounts as "friends" or | "trusted". Anything they upvote or downvote becomes a factor in | whether I see a post or not. I'd also be upvoting/downvoting | things, and being a possible friend/trusted. | | I'd like a little metadata with my posts, such as how | controversial my network voted it. The ones that are out of | calibration, I can view, see their responses, and then I could | see if my network has changed. It would be nice to click on a | friend and get a report across months of how similar we vote. If | we started drift, I can easily cull them and get my feed cleaned | up. | cauthon wrote: | Unfortunately this is antithetical to the advertising-based | revenue model these sites operate on. There's no incentive for | the site to relinquish their control over what you see and | return it to the user. | | On an anecdotal level, the fraction of tweets in my feed that | are "recommended topics" or "liked by people I follow" or | simply "promoted" has risen astronomically over the past few | months. I have a pretty curated list of follows (~100), I had | the "show me tweets in chronological order" box checked back | when that was an option, and the signal to noise ratio has | still become overwhelmingly unusable. | billyjobob wrote: | Slashdot started introducing features like this 20 years ago. | We thought "web of trust" would be the future of content | moderation, but subsequent forums have moved further and | further away from empowering users to choose what they want to | see and towards simple top down censorship. | guelo wrote: | It's not censorship, it's about optimizing for advertisers | instead of users. Which means users can't have too much | control. But since users won't pay advertising is the only | business model that works. | rdtwo wrote: | True you don't want to advertise on anti China stuff (even | if true) | rewgs wrote: | I wish we'd just stopped at "users won't pay" and realized | that, if people aren't willing to pay for it, maybe it's | not a product worth building. | bombcar wrote: | Web of trust works _too well_ and unfortunate ideas can be | entertained by someone you trust, which is a no-no once you | have top-down ideas. | | Almost everyone has someone they trust so much that even the | most insane conspiracy theory would be entertained at least | for awhile if that trusted person brought it up. | rdtwo wrote: | I mean remember when the wuhan lab thing was a total | conspiracy theory. Or when masks were supposedly (not | airborne) not needed and you just had to wash your hands | more. All sorts of fringe stuff sometimes turns out to be | true. But you know sometimes you get pizzagate but it's the | price we pay. | TMWNN wrote: | >Almost everyone has someone they trust so much that even | the most insane conspiracy theory would be entertained at | least for awhile if that trusted person brought it up. | | What's wrong with that? | | If someone you trust brings up a crazy idea, it _should_ be | considered. Maybe for a day, maybe for an hour, maybe for a | half second, but it shouldn 't be dismissed immediately no | matter what. | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | Can't have people being exposed to diversity of thought! | Not by people they like, what if someone is wrong! | | ... I'm all about low hanging fruit in moderation, and not | trying to fix human behavior. I'll keep waiting to see when | that is back in vogue. | Melatonic wrote: | Very interesting idea and I think this could definitely be | useful. Then again users could just create new accounts. | robocat wrote: | I would frame it more the opposite: I can easily see comments | that are worthless to me, and I want to automatically downvote | any comments by the same user (perhaps needs tags: there are | users whose technical opinions are great, but I'm not | interested at all in their jokes or politics). | | One problem with your idea is that moderation votes are | anonymous, but ranking up positively or negatively depending on | another users votes would allow their votes to be deanonymised. | | Perhaps adding in deterministic noise would be enough to offset | that? Or to prevent deanonimisation you need a minimum number | of posting friends? | | In fact I would love to see more noise added to the HN comments | and a factor to offset early voting. Late comments get few | votes because they have low visibility, which means many great | comments don't bubble to the top. | mjamesaustin wrote: | In this thread, Yishan promotes an app called Block Party | that lets you block anyone, or even all accounts that liked | or retweeted something. | | https://twitter.com/blockpartyapp_ | bombcar wrote: | BlockParty is almost the definition of echo chamber | construction. | wormslayer666 wrote: | I got my first experience in running a small-medium sized (~1000 | user) game community over the past couple years. This is mostly | commentary on running such a community in general. | | Top-level moderation of any sufficiently cliquey group (i.e. all | large groups) devolves into something resembling feudalism. As | the king of the land, you're in charge of being just and meting | out appropriate punishment/censorship/other enforcement of rules, | as well as updating those rules themselves. Your goal at the end | of the day is continuing to provide support for your product, | administration/upkeep for your gaming community, or whatever else | it was that you wanted to do when you created the platform in | question. However, the cliques (whether they be friend groups, | opinionated but honest users, actual political camps, or any | other tribal construct) will always view your actions through a | cliquey lens. This will happen no matter how clear or consistent | your reasoning is, unless you fully automate moderation (which | never works and would probably be accused of bias by design | anyways). | | The reason why this looks feudal is because you still must curry | favor with those cliques, lest the greater userbase eventually | buys into their reasoning about favoritism, ideological bias, or | whatever else we choose to call it. At the end of the day, the | dedicated users have _much_ more time and energy to argue, or | propagandize, or skirt rules than any moderation team has to | counteract it. If you 're moderating users of a commercial | product, it hurts your public image (with some nebulous impact on | sales/marketing). If you're moderating a community for a game or | software project, it hurts the reputation of the community and | makes your moderators/developers/donators uneasy. | | The only approach I've decided unambiguously works is one that | doesn't scale well at all, and that's the veil of secrecy or | "council of elders" approach which Yishan discusses. The king | stays behind the veil, and makes as few public statements as | possible. Reasoning is only given insofar as is needed to explain | decisions, only responding directly to criticism as needed to | justify actions taken anyways. Trusted elites from the userbase | are taken into confidence, and the assumption is that they give a | marginally more transparent look into how decisions are made, and | that they pacify their cliques. | | Above all, the most important fact I've had to keep in mind is | that the outspoken users, both those legitimately passionate as | well as those simply trying to start shit, are a tiny minority of | users. Most people are rational and recognize that | platforms/communities exist for a reason, and they're fine with | respecting that since it's what they're there for. When | moderating, the outspoken group is nearly all you'll ever see. | Catering to passionate, involved users is justifiable, but must | still be balanced with what the majority wants, or is at least | able to tolerate (the "silent majority" which every demagogue | claims to represent). That catering must also be done carefully, | because "bad actors" who seek action/change/debate for the sake | of stoking conflict or their own benefit will do their best to | appear legitimate. | | For some of this (e.g. spam), you can filter it comfortably as | Yishan discusses without interacting with the content. However, | more developed bad actor behavior is really quite good at | blending in with legitimate discussion. If you as king recognize | that there's an inorganic flamewar, or abuse directed at a user, | or spam, or complaint about a previous decision, you have no | choice but to choose a cudgel (bans, filters, changes to rules, | etc) and use it decisively. It is only when the king appears weak | or indecisive (or worse, absent) that a platform goes off the | rails, and at that point it takes immense effort to recover it | (e.g. your C-level being cleared as part of a takeover, or a | seemingly universally unpopular crackdown by moderation). As a | lazy comparison, Hacker News is about as old as Twitter, and any | daily user can see the intensive moderation which keeps it going | despite the obvious interest groups at play. This is in spite of | the fact that HN has _less_ overhead to make an account and begin | posting, and seemingly _more_ ROI on influencing discussion (lots | of rich /smart/fancy people _post_ here regularly, let alone | read). | | Due to the need for privacy, moderation fundamentally cannot be | democratic or open. Pretty much anyone contending otherwise is | just upset at a recent decision or is trying to cause trouble for | administration. Aspirationally, we would like the general | _direction_ of the platform to be determined democratically, but | the line between these two is frequently blurry at best. To avoid | extra drama, I usually aim to do as much discussion with users as | possible, but ultimately perform all decisionmaking behind closed | doors -- this is more or less the "giant faceless corporation" | approach. Nobody knows how much I (or Elon, or Zuck, or the guys | running the infinitely many medium-large discord servers) | actually take into account user feedback. | | I started writing this as a reply to paradite, but decided | against that after going far out of scope. | blfr wrote: | > Because it is not TOPICS that are censored. It is BEHAVIOR. | | > (This is why people on the left and people on the right both | think they are being targeted) | | An enticing idea but simply not the case for any popular existing | social network. And it's triply not true on yishan's reddit which | both through administrative measures and moderation culture | targets any and all communities that do not share the favoured | new-left politics. | gambler wrote: | He is half-correct, but not in a good way. When people on the | left say something that goes against new-left agenda, they get | suppressed too. That is not a redeeming quality of the system | or an indicator of fairness. It simply shows that the ideology | driving moderation is even more narrow-minded and intolerant of | dissent than most observers assume at first sight. | | At the same time, it's trivial to demonstrate that YouTube and | Twitter (easy examples) primarily target conservatives with | their "moderation". Just look at who primarily uses major | alternative platforms. | AhmedF wrote: | > it's trivial to demonstrate that YouTube and Twitter (easy | examples) primarily target conservatives with their | "moderation". | | Terrible take. | | Actual data analysis shows that at _worst_ conservatives are | moderated equally, and at best, less than non-conservatives. | | Here's something to chew on: https://forward.com/fast- | forward/423238/twitter-white-nation... | archagon wrote: | Or consider that perhaps the right in particular tends to | harbor and support people who lean more towards | disinformation, hate speech, and incitement to violence. | [deleted] | [deleted] | pj_mukh wrote: | I mean that's the claim, the counter-claim would require a | social network banning _topics_ and not behavior. Note: As a | user you can see topics, you can 't see behavior. The fact that | some users flood other users' DM's is not visible to all users. | So how do you know? | | "I don't trust left-y CEO's", is a fair enough answer, but | really that's where the counter-claim seems to end. Now that we | have a right-wing CEO, looks like the shoe is on the other | foot[1] | | [1] | https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1588174959817658368?s=20&t=F9... | luckylion wrote: | > As a user you can see topics, you can't see behavior. | | True, but not really a good argument for the "trust us, this | person needed banning, no we will not give any details"-style | of moderation that most companies have applied so far. And | you can see topics, so you'll generally notice when topic are | being banned, not behavior, because they usually don't align | perfectly. | jtolmar wrote: | All the communist subreddits are in constant hot water with the | admins. They banned ChapoTrapHouse when it was one of the | biggest subreddits. When a bunch of moderators tried to protest | against reddit hosting antivax content, the admins took control | over those subreddits. | | So no, you're just factually wrong here. | throw_m239339 wrote: | > All the communist subreddits are in constant hot water with | the admins. | | Yet, the biggest communist sub of all, r/politics is doing | perfectly fine. | | "moderating behavior"? Bullshit, when unhinged redditors are | constantly accusing conservatives of being "traitors", | "nazis", there is so much unhinged comments on these subs | that it clearly demonstrate a general left wing bias when it | comes to moderation, in favor of the most extreme left. | | Chapotraphouse was only banned because they harassed the | wrong sub, but when it was about harassing people on subs | deemed not progressives, reddit admins didn't care a bit. | archagon wrote: | r/politics is "communist"? That's... just a really dumb | take. If there is a far-left presence on Reddit, it is not | prominent. r/politics is left-leaning and angry, but, | objectively speaking, not really all that extreme. | | And, for what it's worth, it seems perfectly reasonable to | label those who tried to overthrow our democratic | government "traitors". | throw_m239339 wrote: | > r/politics is "communist"? That's... just a really dumb | take. If there is a far-left presence on Reddit, it is | not prominent. r/politics is left-leaning and angry, but, | objectively speaking, not really all that extreme. | | Obviously, none of the affluent idiots from chapo or at | hexbear controlling r/politics r/news or r/worldnews are | really communists, they are just rich asshats that just | pretend to be, my point still stands. They are still | spouting marxist non sense, violent speech, and their | behavior isn't moderated, as long as they don't target | "the wrong people". | ineptech wrote: | This kind of sentiment always shows up in this kind of | thread; I think a lot of people don't really grok that | being far enough to one side causes an unbiased forum to | appear biased against you. If you hate X enough, Reddit | and Twitter are going to seem pro-X, regardless of what X | is. | | (And, separately, almost no one who argues about anything | being "communist" is using the same definition of that | word as the person they're arguing with, but that's a | different problem entirely) | jonwithoutanh wrote: | ... you ever try and post anything in /r/conservative? you | get banned. Doesn't matter if you are quoting something | president Trump had said 1000 times before. You get banned. | You can't even quote them back to themselves, or ask them a | question. You get banned. | | Persecution fetish much buddy? | throw_m239339 wrote: | > Persecution fetish much buddy? | | It seems that some people here can't help making | everything about their sick sexual thrills. And I'm not | your buddy. | AhmedF wrote: | Well at least you're mask-off in regards to being bad | faith. | throw_m239339 wrote: | > Well at least you're mask-off in regards to being bad | faith. | | And you have no arguments, so you resort to personal | attacks. That makes you a troll. | Natsu wrote: | Yeah, the "there's no principled reason to ban spam" is just | silly. The recipients don't want to see it whereas people cry | censorship when messages they want to see are blocked. | | It's literally the difference between your feed being filtered | by your choices & preferences and someone else imposing theirs | upon you. | archagon wrote: | I see many more people crying censorship when messages that | they want _others_ to see are blocked. | Natsu wrote: | You must hang out in a very different place, then. I see | much more outcry when 3rd parties come between willing | speakers and recipients, with most of the rest being people | misrepresenting censorship as moderation because it allows | them to justify it. | | In that vein, this went up on HN the other day: | https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moderation-is- | differen... | kodt wrote: | There are plenty of right wing / politically conservative subs. | Fervicus wrote: | Funny that you never see them on the front page. | bnralt wrote: | Indeed, I've seen several subs put in new rules where certain | topics aren't allowed to be discussed at all, because the | administrators told them that the sub would get banned if the | users went against the beliefs held by the admins (even if the | admins had a minority opinion when it came to the country as a | whole). | | Then there is just arbitrary or malicious enforcement of the | rules. /r/Star_Trek was told by admins they would be banned if | they talked about /r/StarTrek at all, so now that's a topic | that's no longer allowed in that sub. But there are tons of | subs set up specifically to talk about other subs, where just | about all posts are about other subs (such as | /r/subredditdrama), and the admins never bother them. | | I don't think we can have a conversation about moderation when | people are pretending that the current situation doesn't exist, | and that moderation is only ever done for altruistic reasons. | It's like talking about police reform but pretending that no | police officer has ever done anything wrong and not one of them | could ever be part of a problem. | thepasswordis wrote: | /r/srd and /r/againsthatesubreddits exist with the _explicit_ | purpose of brigading other subs, and yet they are not banned. | UncleMeat wrote: | SRD has an explicit "no brigading other subs" rule. How is | their explicit purpose brigading other subs? | Manuel_D wrote: | Kiwifarms has an explicit "don't interact with the | subjects" rule. Does that mean it never happens? | UncleMeat wrote: | Brigading absolutely happens in SRD. We can talk about | whether this style of content should exist, but it does | not "exist with the explicit purpose of brigading other | subs." | Manuel_D wrote: | Right, it exists with the tacit purpose of brigading | other subs. But like Kiwifarms, blurbs in the site rules | mean nothing given the context of the community. | thepasswordis wrote: | "Hey guys no brigading okay? ;-)" followed by a page | which directly links to threads for people to brigade. | | They don't even bother to use the np.reddit "no | participation" domain. Most other subs don't even allow | you to _link_ outside the sub, because they 've been | warned by admins about brigading. | | Their rules barely even mention brigading: | https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditdrama/wiki/rules, and | you have to go to the expanded version of the rules to | find even _this_ , which just says not to _vote_ in | linked threads. | | Literally the entire purpose of this sub is to brigade | and harass other subs. Their politics align with those of | the admins, though, so it's allowed. It is _blatant_ | bullying at the tacit encouragement of the people running | the site. | UncleMeat wrote: | IIRC, np was the norm for many years and it just didn't | actually change anything. Oodles of people do get banned | from SRD for commenting in linked threads. The easiest | way to see this is when month+ old threads get linked. | Only the admins can see downvoting patterns. | | Is simply linking to other threads on reddit sufficient | for you to consider something promoting brigading? | bnralt wrote: | > Is simply linking to other threads on reddit sufficient | for you to consider something promoting brigading? | | As I mentioned previously, linking to other subs, or even | simply _talking_ about /r/StarTrek, was enough for admins | to accuse /r/Star_Trek of brigading. They threatened to | shut them down unless they stopped members from doing | that, and so you're not allowed to do it in the sub | anymore. | | Whether you think that linking to other subs is brigading | or not, it's clear that admins call it brigading when | they want to shut down subs, yet then let continue on | much larger subs dedicated to the act as long as the | admins like the sub. | | Edit: For example, here's a highly upvoted SRD post | talking about the admins threatening /r/Star_Trek if they | mention /r/StarTrek[1]. They call /r/Star_Trek linking to | /r/StarTrek posts to complain about them "brigading," in | the same post that they themselves are linking to a | /r/Star_Trek post in order to complain about it. | | [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/tuem | 1m/the_... | bombcar wrote: | The big difference with Reddit is if _posters_ get | banned, or if the subreddit gets banned. | | The "good" subreddits will get posters banned left and | right, but accounts are cheap and they return. | | The "bad" subreddits get banned. | KarlKode wrote: | What I got from similar subreddits (e.g. | /r/bestoflegaladvice) is that you'll get (shaddow)banned | really fast if you click a link in the subreddit and | coment on the linked post. | | Just mentioning this because I agree with the point you | make (in general). | Zak wrote: | > _Most other subs don 't even allow you to link outside | the sub, because they've been warned by admins about | brigading._ | | I joined reddit in 2005 and have moderated several | subreddits. The admins have never imposed anything | resembling that on any subreddit I have moderated. I have | a suspicion they impose it when they see a large amount | of brigading behavior. | | Perhaps it's not applied in an entirely fair or even | manner, but I suspect it's only applied when there's an | actual problem. | shafoshaf wrote: | I'm not sure we could tell the difference. As Yishan states, | the proof of the behavior isn't being made public because of | the exposure to creating new issues. Without that, you would | never know. | | As for specific platforms, aka Reddit, how can one be sure that | right wingers on that platform aren't in fact more likely to | engage in bad behavior that left wingers? It might be because | they are being targeted, but it could also be that that group | of people on that platform tend to act more aggressively. | | I am NOT saying that I know if Reddit is fair in its | moderation, I just don't know. | realgeniushere wrote: | oneneptune wrote: | Can you elaborate with an example? I'm unfamiliar with reddit | and it's content management. I'm unsure if the premise of "AI" | moderation is true, how it could moderate beyond a pattern or | behavior since it can't reasonably be scanning every post and | comment for political affiliation? | urbandw311er wrote: | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1586955288061452289.html | wasmitnetzen wrote: | As once famously said by Mark Twain: "I didn't have time to write | a short Twitter thread, so I wrote a long one instead." | marban wrote: | Make that "I didn't have time to write a tweet, so I wrote a | Twitter thread instead." | wasmitnetzen wrote: | I thought about that phrasing, but it was too far from the | original quote for me. But yes, it also works and is the | better joke as well. | gryBrd1987 wrote: | Twitter is text based. Video games have had text based profanity | filters for online games for years. | | Make it easy for users to define a regex list saved locally. On | the backend train a model that filters images of gore and | genitals. Aim users who opt in to that experience at that | filtered stream. | | This problem does not require a long winded thesis. | crummy wrote: | why do you think nobody else has tried this / had any success | with this approach? | gryBrd1987 wrote: | Because we focus on abstract problem statements, coded | appeals to authority (as if ex-Reddit CEO is that special; | there are a few), rather than concrete engineering? | | User demand to control what they see is there. It's why TV | was successful; don't like what's on History? Check out | Animal Planet. | | Tech CEOs need their genius validated and refuse to concede | anyone else knows what's best for themselves. What everyone | else sees is a problem for a smurt CEO to micromanage to | death, of course. | thrwaway349213 wrote: | What yishan is missing is that the point of a council of experts | isn't to effectively moderate a product. The purpose is to | deflect blame from the company. | | It's also hilarious that he says "you can`t solve it by making | them anonymous" because a horde of anonymous mods is precisely | how subreddits are moderated. | [deleted] | StanislavPetrov wrote: | >Why is this? Because it has no value? Because it`s sometimes | false? Certainly it`s not causing offline harm. | | >No, no, and no. | | Fundamentally disagree with his take on spam. Not only does spam | have no value, it has negative value. The content of the spam | itself is irrelevant when the same message is being pushed out a | million times and obscuring all other messages. Reducing spam | through rate-limiting is certainly the easiest and most impactful | form of moderation. | linuxftw wrote: | What a bunch of long-winded babble. Incredulously, he's shilling | an app at the end of this. | | I don't agree that this is an interesting submission, and IMO | there's no new information here. | gist wrote: | > No, you can`t solve it by making them anonymous, because then | you will be accused of having an unaccountable Star Chamber of | secret elites (especially if, I dunno, you just took the company | private too). No, no, they have to be public and "accountable!" | | This is bulls... Sorry. | | Who cares what you are accused of doing? | | Why does it matter if people perceive that there is a star | chamber. Even that reference. Sure the press cares and will make | it an issue and tech types will care because well they have to | make a fuss about everything and anything to remain relevant. | | After all what are grand juries? (They are secret). Does the fact | that people might think they are star chambers matters at all? | | You see this is exactly the problem. Nobody wants to take any | 'heat'. Sometimes you just have to do what you need to do and let | the chips fall where they fall. | | The number of people who might use twitter or might want to use | twitter that would think anything at all about this issue is | infinitesimal. | blantonl wrote: | This really was an outstanding read and take on Elon, Twitter, | and what's coming up. | | But it literally could not have been posted in a worse medium for | communicating this message. I felt like I had to pat my head and | rub my tummy at the same time reading through all this, and to | share it succinctly with colleagues resulted in me spending a | good 15 minutes cutting and pasting the content. | | I've never understood people posting entire blog type posts | to.... Twitter. | threeseed wrote: | It was incoherent rambling and none of really works for | Twitter. | | Twitter is ultimately at the behest of its advertisers who are | constantly on a knife edge about whether to bother using it or | not. We have already seen GM and L'Oreal pull ad spend and many | more will follow if their moderation policies are not in-line | with community standards. | | If Musk wants to make Twitter unprofitable then sure relax the | moderation otherwise might want to keep it the same. | filoleg wrote: | L'Oreal didn't pull their twitter ad spend[0]. | | 0. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/loral- | suspe... | threeseed wrote: | FT disagrees: https://www.ft.com/content/17281b81-b801-4a8f | -8065-76d3ffb40... | 0xbadcafebee wrote: | It seemed interesting but after the 400th tweet I lost interest | and went to do something productive | dariusj18 wrote: | Does anyone else think it's brilliant that he put advertisements | inside his own thread? | drewbeck wrote: | If it was for some random app or gadget I'd be mad but it's | literally trying to save humanity so I give it a pass. We need | to be talking about mitigating and surviving catastrophic | climate change more, not less. | LegitShady wrote: | more like "oh never click on yishan threads ever again, this | guy wants to put ads in twitter threads, who has time and | patience for that? not me." | | Brilliant? For immediately getting large amounts of readers to | click away and discrediting himself into the future, sure that | might be brilliant I guess. | | It makes him seem desperate for attention and clueless. | luuuzeta wrote: | >brilliant | | More like weird and unexpected | klyrs wrote: | I found it to be an interesting exercise of "spam is protected | speech." I mean, I hated it, but it really did drive the point | home. | TheCapeGreek wrote: | I like yishan's content and his climate focus, but this "we | interrupt your tweet thread for sponsored content" style tangent | is a bit annoying - not directly for doing it or its content, but | because I can see other thread writers picking this up and we end | up the same as Youtube with sponsored sections of content that | you can't ad block _. | | _ FWIW With YT you can block them with Sponsorblock, which works | with user submitted timestamps of sponsored sections in videos. | If this tweet technique takes off I'd imagine a similar idea for | tweets. | syncmaster913n wrote: | > but this "we interrupt your tweet thread for sponsored | content" style tangent is a bit annoying | | I found this hilarious. I don't use Twitter and so was unaware | that these annoying tangents are common on the platform. As a | result, I thought Yishan was using them to illustrate how it's | not necessarily the content (his climate initiative) but a | specific pattern of behavior (saying the 'right' thing at the | wrong time, in this case) that should be the target of | moderation. | | In real life we say: "it's not what you said, it's just the | _way_ you said it! " Perhaps the digital equivalent of that | could be: "it's not what you said, it's just _when_ you said | it. " | bombcar wrote: | And it's funny because if you could "downvote/upvote" | individual tweets in that tweet storm, his "off topic" tweets | would be downvoted into oblivion. | | I think the _fundamental problem_ with the internet today is | that _by definition_ almost, ads are unwanted content and | have to be forced on the user. | kybernetyk wrote: | While many YouTube videos provide very interesting content most | twitter ,,threads" are just inane ramblings by some blue | checkmark. So for yt videos I go the extra steps to install an | extension. For twitter though? I just close the tab and never | return. | | How can people who are not totally dopamine deprived zombies | find twitter and this terrible ,,thread" format acceptable? | Just write a coherent blog post pls. | klodolph wrote: | Dopamine-deprived zombies? | | I don't find threads hard to read. There's some extra | scrolling, but it's still in linear order. | | People post on Twitter because it reaches people, obviously. | tkk23 wrote: | >, but this "we interrupt your tweet thread for sponsored | content" style tangent is a bit annoying | | It is annoying but it can be seen as part of his argument. How | can spam be moderated if even trustworthy creators create spam? | | According to him, it's not spam because it doesn't fulfill the | typical patterns of spam, which shows that identifying noise | does require knowledge of the language. | | It could be interesting to turn his argument around. Instead of | trying to remove all spam, a platform could offer the tools to | handle all forms of spam and let its users come up with clever | ways to use those tools. | Fervicus wrote: | > Our current climate of political polarization makes it easy to | think... | | Stopped reading there. Reddit I think is one of the biggest | offenders of purposely cultivating a climate of political | polarization. | crummy wrote: | how come you stopped reading there? | Fervicus wrote: | My second statement answers that question. I don't want | moderation advice from someone who was involved in a platform | that purposely sets moderation policies to create political | polarization. A comment by someone below sums it up nicely. | | > ...and it's triply not true on yishan's reddit which both | through administrative measures and moderation culture | targets any and all communities that do not share the | favoured new-left politics. | | In yishan's defense however, I am not sure if those problems | with reddit started before or after he left. | hackerlight wrote: | > favoured new-left politics. | | Citation needed. r/ChapoTrapHouse was banned, and there's | many large alt-right subreddits in existence right now that | haven't been banned (like r/tucker_carlson). | csours wrote: | Is there a better name than "rational jail" for the following | phenomenon: | | We are having a rational, non-controversial, shared-fact based | discussion. Suddenly the first party in the conversation goes off | on a tangent and starts saying values or emotions based | statements instead of facts. The other party then gets angry and | or confused. The first party then gets angry and or confused. | | The first party did not realize they had broken out of the | rational jail that the conversation was taking place in; they | thought they were still being rational. The second party detected | some idea that did not fit with their rational dataset, and | detected a jailbreak, and this upset them. | cansirin wrote: | trying out. | UI_at_80x24 wrote: | I've always thought that slashdot handled comment moderation the | best. (And even that still had problems.) | | In addition to that these tools would help: | | (1)Client-side: Being able to block all content from specific | users and the replies to specific users. | | (2)Server-side: If userA always 'up votes' comments from userB | apply a negative weighting to that upvote (so it only counts as | 0.01 of a vote). Likewise, with 'group-voting'; if userA, userB, | and userC always vote identically down-weight those votes. (this | will slow the 'echo chamber' effect) | | (3)Account age/contribution scale: if userZ has been a member of | the site since it's inception, AND has a majority of their posts | up-voted, AND contributes regularly, then give their votes a | higher weighted value. | | Of course these wouldn't solve everything, as nothing ever will | address every scenerio; but I've often thought that these things | combined with how slashdot allowed you to score between -1 to 5, | AND let you set the 'post value' to 2+, 3+, or 4+ would help | eliminate most of the bad actors. | | Side note: Bad Actors, and "folks you don't agree with" should | not be confused with each other. | sbarre wrote: | One thing that's easy to forget is that super-complex weighted | moderation/voting systems can get computationally expensive at | the scale of something like Twitter or Facebook etc.. | | Slashdot had a tiny population, relatively speaking, so could | afford to do all that work. | | But when you're processing literally millions of posts a | minute, it's a different order of magnitude I think. | qsort wrote: | > Slashdot had a tiny population... | | Tiny, specific, non-generalist population. As soon as that | changed, /. went down the drain like everything else. I still | like /.'s moderation system better than most, but the | specifics of how the system works are a second order concern | at best. | bombcar wrote: | The real problem with ALL moderation systems is Eternal | September. | | Once the group grows faster than some amount, the new | people never get assimilated into the group, and the group | dies. | | "Nobody goes there, it's too popular." | haroldp wrote: | > I've always thought that slashdot handled comment moderation | the best. | | A limited number of daily moderation "points". A short list of | moderation reasons. Meta-moderation. | com2kid wrote: | > Server-side: If userA always 'up votes' comments from userB | apply a negative weighting to that upvote | | This falls down, hard, in expert communities. There are a few | users who are extremely knowledgeable that are always going to | get upvoted by long term community members who acknowledge that | expert's significant contributions. | | > Being able to block all content from specific users and the | replies to specific users. | | This is doable now client side, but when /. was big, it had to | be done server side, which is where I imagine all the limits | around friend/foes came from! | | The problem here is, trolls can create gobs of accounts easily, | and malevolent users group together to create accounts and | upvote them, so they have plenty of spare accounts to go | through. | joemi wrote: | I wonder about your (2) idea... If the goal is to reduce the | effect of bots that vote exactly the same, then ok, sure. | (Though if it became common, I'm sure vote bots wouldn't have a | hard time being altered to add a little randomness to their | voting.) But I'm not sure how much it would help beyond that, | since if it's not just identifying _exact_ same voting, then | you're going to need to fine tune some percentage-the-same or | something like that. And I'm not sure the same fine-tuned | percentage is going to work well everywhere, or even across | different threads or subforums on the same site. I also feel | like (ignoring the site-to-site or subforum-to-subforum | differences) that it would be tricky to fine tune correctly to | a point where upvotes still matter. (Admittedly I have nothing | solid to base this on other than just a gut feeling about it.) | | It's an interesting idea, and I wonder what results people get | when trying it. | hunglee2 wrote: | "there will be NO relation between the topic of the content and | whether you moderate it, because it`s the specific posting | behavior that`s a problem" | | some interesting thoughts from Yishan, a novel way to look at the | problem. | mikkergp wrote: | I thought this point was overstated, twitter certainly has some | controversial content related rules and while as the CEO of | Reddit he may have been mostly fighting macro battles, there | are certainly content related things that both networks censor. | bink wrote: | Reddit's content policy has also changed a LOT since he was | CEO. While the policy back then may not have been as loose as | "is it illegal?" it was still far looser than what Reddit has | had to implement to gain advertisers. | hunglee2 wrote: | I think the unstated caveat would be 'anything illegal' but | yes, the point was _overstated_ , though, I think, still | stands | greenie_beans wrote: | that digression into plugging his start-up was gross! | quadcore wrote: | I think tiktok is doing incredibly well in this regards and in | almost every social network aspect. Call me crazy but I now | prefer the discussions there as HN's most of the time. I find | high-quality comments (and there is still good jokes in the | middle). The other day I felt upon a video about physics which | had the most incredibly deep and knowlegeable comments Ive ever | seen ( _edit: found the video, it is not as good as I remembered | but still close to HN level imo_ ). It's jaw dropping how well it | works. | | There is classical content moderation (the platform follows local | laws) but mostly it kind of understand you so well that it put | you right in the middle of like minded people. At least it feels | that way. | | I dont have insider hinsights on how it trully works I can only | guess but the algorithm feels like a league or two above | everything I have seen so far. It feels like it understand people | so well that it prompted deep thought experiments on my end. Like | let say I want to know someone I could simple ask "show me your | tiktok". It's just a thought experiments but it feels like tiktok | could tell how good of a person you are or more precisely what is | your level of personal development. Namely, it could tell if | youre racist, it could tell if youre a bully, a manipulator or | easily manipulated, it could tell if youre smart (in the sense of | high IQ), if you have fine taste, if you are a leader or a | loner... And on and on. | | Anyway, this is the ultimate moderation: follow the law and | direct the user to like minded people. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | >mostly it kind of understand you so well that it put you right | in the middle of like minded people | | Doesn't this build echo chambers where beliefs get more and | more extreme? Good from a business perspective (nobody gets | pissed off and leaves because they don't see much that they | object to). But perhaps bad from a maintaining-democracy | perspective? | [deleted] | motohagiography wrote: | I've had to give this some thought for other reasons, and after a | couple decades solving analogous problems to moderation in | security, I agree with yishan about signal to noise over the | specific content, but what I have effectively spent a career | studying and detecting with data is a single factor: malice. | | It's something every person is capable of, and it takes a lot of | exercise and practice with higher values to reach for something | else when your expectations are challenged, and often it's an | active choice to recognize the urge and act differently. If there | were a rule or razor I would make on a forum or platform, it's | that all content has to pass the bar of being without malice. | It's not "assume good intent," it's recognizing that there are | ways of having very difficult opinions without malice, and one | can have conventional views that are malicious, and | unconventional ones that are not. If you have ever dealt with a | prosecutor or been on the wrong side of a legal dispute, these | are people fundamentally actuated by malice, and the similar | prosecution of ideas and opinions (and ultimately people) is what | wrecks a forum. | | It's not about being polite or civil, avoiding conflict, or even | avoiding mockery and some very funny and unexpected smackdowns | either. It's a quality that in being universally capable of it, I | think we're also able to know it when we see it. "Hate," is a | weak substitute because it is so vague we can apply it to | anything, but malice is ancient and essential. Of course someone | malicious can just redefine malice the way they have done other | things and use it as an accusation because words have no meaning | other than as a means in struggle, but really, you can see when | someone is actuated by it. | | I think there is a point where a person decides, consciously or | not, that they will relate to the world around them with malice, | and the first casulty of that is an alignment to honesty and | truth. What makes it useful is that you can address malice | directly and restore an equillibrium in the discourse, whereas | accusations of hate and others are irrevocable judgments. I'd | wonder if given it's applicability, this may be the tool. | creeble wrote: | I think it's two things: the power of malice, and popularity | measurement. Malice and fame. | | Social networks are devices for measuring popularity; if you | took the up/down arrows off, no one would be interested in | playing. And we have proven once again that nothing gets up | arrows like being mean. | | HN has the unusual property that you can't (readily) see | others' score, just your own. That doesn't really make it any | less about fame, but maybe it helps. | | When advertising can fund these devices to scale to billions, | it's tough to be optimistic about how it reflects human nature. | dang wrote: | I might be misunderstanding what you mean by malice, but in | that case it's probably not the best word for what you're | describing. I'd be interested in a different description if you | want to write one. I definitely don't think that malice is | something you can just-see and make accurate judgments about, | let alone detect with data. | | For me, malice relates to intent. Intent isn't observable. When | person X makes a claim about Y's intent, they're almost always | filling in invisible gaps using their imagination. You can't | moderate on that basis. We have to go by effects, not intent (h | ttps://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) | . | | It took me a long time to (partially) learn that if I tell a | user "you were being $foo" where $foo relates to their intent, | then (1) they can simply deny it and no one can prove | otherwise, making the moderation position a weak one; and (2) | mostly they will deny it sincerely because they never had such | an intent, not consciously at least. Now you've given them a | reason to feel entirely in the right, and if you moderate them | anyway, they will feel treated unjustly. This is a way to | generate bad blood, make enemies, and lose the high ground. | | The reverse strategy is much better: describe the _effects_ of | someone 's posts and explain why they are bad. When inevitably | they respond with "but my intent was ABC", the answer is "I | believe you [what else can you say about something only that | person could know?], but nonetheless the effects were XYZ and | we have to moderate based on effects. Intent doesn't | communicate itself--the burden is on the commenter to | disambiguate it." (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0 | &prefix=true&que...) | | Often when people get moderated in this way, they respond by | writing the comment they originally had in their head, as a | sort of defense of what they actually meant. It's astonishing | what a gap there often is between the two. Then you can respond | that if they had posted that in the first place, it would have | been fine, and that while they know what they have in their | head when posting, the rest of us have no access to that--it | needs to be spelled out explicitly. | | Being able to tell someone "if you had posted that in the first | place, it would have been fine" is an _extremely_ strong | moderation position, because it takes off the table the idea | "you're only moderating me because you dislike my opinions", | which is otherwise practically ubiquitous. | japhyr wrote: | Kate Manne, in Down Girl, writes about the problems with | using intent as the basis for measuring misogyny. Intent is | almost always internal; if we focus on something internal, we | can rarely positively identify it. The only real way to | identify it is capturing external expressions of intent: | manifestos, public statements, postings, and sometimes things | that were said to others. | | If you instead focus on external effects, you can start to | enforce policies. It doesn't matter about a person's intent | if their words and actions disproportionately impact women. | The same goes for many -isms and prejudice-based issues. | | A moderator who understands this will almost certainly be | more effective than one who gets mired in back-and-forths | about intent. | | https://bookshop.org/p/books/down-girl-the-logic-of- | misogyny... | motohagiography wrote: | This aspect of people writing what they meant again after | being challenged and it being different - I'd assert that | when there _is_ malice (or another intent) present, they | double down or use other tactics toward a specific end other | than improving the forum or relationship they are | contributing to. When there is none, you get that different | or broader answer, which is really often worth it. However, | yes it is intent, as you identify. | | I have heard the view that intent is not observable, and I | agree with the link examples that the effect of a comment is | the best available heuristic. It is also consistent with a | lot of other necessary and altruistic principles to say it's | not knowable. On detecting malice from data, however, the | security business is predicated on detecting intent from | network data, so while it's not perfect, there are precedents | for (more-) structured data. | | I might refine it to say that intent is not _passively_ | observable in a reliable way, as if you interrogate the | source, we get revealed intent. On the intent taking place in | the imagination of the observer, that 's a deep question. | | I think I have reasonably been called out on some of my views | being the artifacts of the logic of underlying ideas that may | not have been apparent to me. I've also challenged authors | with the same criticism, where I think there are ideas that | are sincere, and ones that are artifacts of exogenous intent | and the logic of other ideas, and that there is a way of | telling the difference by interrogating the idea (via the | person.) | | I even agree with the principle of not assuming malice, but | professionally, my job has been to assess it from indirect | structured data (a hawkish, is this an attack?) - whereas I | interpret the moderator role as assessing intent directly by | its effects, but from unstructured data (is this | comment/person causing harm?). | | Malice is the example I used because I think it has persisted | in roughly its same meaning since the earliest writing, and | if that subset of effectively 'evil' intent only existed in | the imaginations of its observers, there's a continuity of | imagination and false consciousness about their relationship | to the world that would be pretty radical. I think it's right | to not assume malice, but fatal to deny it. | | Perhaps there is a more concrete path to take than my | conflating it with the problem of evil, even if on these | discussions of global platform rules, it seems like a useful | source of prior art? | bombcar wrote: | I would attribute to malice things like active attempts to | destroy the very forum - spamming is a form of "malice of the | commons". | | You will know when you encounter malice because nothing will | de-malice the poster. | | But if it is not malice; you can even take what they said and | _rewrite_ it for them in a way that would pass muster. In | debate this is called steelmanning - and it 's a very | powerful persuasion method. | Zak wrote: | Spamming is an attempt to promote something. Destroying the | forum is a side effect. | | It's fair to describe indifference to negative effects of | one's behavior as malicious, and it is, indeed almost never | possible to transform a spammer into a productive member of | a community. | bombcar wrote: | Yeah, most people take the promotion spamming as the main | one, but you can also refer to some forms of shitposting | as spamming (join any twitch chat and watch whatever the | current spam emoji is flood by) - but the second is more | almost a form of cheering perhaps. | | If you wanted to divide it further I guess you could | discuss "in-group spamming" and "out-group spamming" | where almost all of the promotional stuff falls in the | second but there are still some in the first group. | Zak wrote: | I guess I'd describe repeatedly posting the same emoji to | a chat as flooding rather than spamming. Even then, your | mention of _cheering_ further divides it into two | categories of behavior: | | 1. Cheering. That's as good a description as any. This is | intended to express excitement or approval and rally the | in-group. It temporarily makes the chat useless for | anything else, but that isn't its purpose. | | 2. Flooding. This is an intentional denial of service | attack intended to make the chat useless for as long as | possible, or until some demand made by the attacker is | met. | kashyapc wrote: | Hi, dang! I wonder if it makes sense to add a summarized | version of your critical point on "effects, not intent" to | the HN guidelines. Though, I fear there might be undesirable | _ill effects_ of spelling it out that way. | | Thanks (an understatement!) for this enlightening | explanation. | dang wrote: | There are so many heuristics like that, and I fear making | the guidelines so long that no one will read them. | | I want to compound a bunch of those explanations into a | sort of concordance or whatever the right bibliographic | word is for explaining and adding to what's written else | where (so, not concordance!) | kashyapc wrote: | Fair enough. Yeah your plans of "compounding" and | "bibliographic concordance" (thanks for the new word) | sound good. | | I was going to suggest this (but scratch it, your above | idea is better): A small section called "a note on | moderation" (or whatever) with hyperlinks to "some | examples that give a concrete sense of how moderation | happens here". There are many _excellent_ explanations | buried deep in the the search links that you post here. | Many of them are a valuable riffing on [internet] human | nature. | | As a quick example, I love your lively analogy[1] of a | "boxer showing up at a dance/concert/lecture" for | resisting flammable language here. It's funny and a | cutting example that is impossible to misunderstand. It | (and your other comment[2] from the same thread) makes so | many valuable _reminders_ (it 's easy to forget!). An | incomplete list for others reading: | | - how to avoid the "scorched earth" fate here; | | - how "raw self-interest is fine" (if it gets you to | curiosity); | | - why you can't "flamebait others into curiosity"; | | - why the "medium" [of the "optionally anonymous internet | forum"] matters; | | - why it's not practical to replicate the psychology of | "small, cohesive groups" here; | | - how the "burden is on the commenter"; | | - "expected value of a comment" on HN; and much more | | It's a real shame that these useful heuristics are buried | so deep in the comment history. Sure, you do link to them | via searches whenever you can; that's how I discovered | 'em. But it's hard to stumble upon otherwise. Making a | sampling of these easily accessible can be valuable. | | [1] 3rd paragraph here: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27166919 | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162386 | bombcar wrote: | Commentary or gloss on the text, I believe, is sometimes | used. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | But the difference between the original post and the revised | post often _is_ malice (or so I suspect). The ideas are the | same, though they may be developed a bit more in the second | post. The difference is the anger /hostility/bitterness | coloring the first post, that got filtered out to make the | second post. | | I think that maybe the observable "bad effects" and the | unobservable "malice" may be almost exactly the same thing. | Eliezer wrote: | This exchange ought to be a post in its own right. It seems | to me that malice, hate, Warp contamination, whatever you | want to call it, _is_ very much a large part of the modern | problem; and also it 's a true and deep statement that you | should moderate based on effects and not tell anyone what | their inner intentions were, because you aren't sure of those | and most users won't know them either. | nostrebored wrote: | I find most forums that advocate against behavior they view as | malicious wind up becoming hugboxes as people skirt this | arbitrary boundary. I will never, never come back to platforms | or groups after I get this feeling. | | Hugbox environments wind up having a loose relationship with | the truth and a strong emphasis on emotional well-being. | | Setting your moderation boundaries determines the values of | your platform. I'd much rather talk to someone who wants to | hurt my feelings than someone who is detached from reality or | saying what they think. | danans wrote: | > "Hate," is a weak substitute because it is so vague we can | apply it to anything | | That is a big stretch. Hate can't be applied to many things, | including disagreements like this comment. | | But it can be pretty clearly applied to statements that, if | carried out in life, would deny another person or peoples' | human rights. Another is denigration or mocking someone on the | basis of things that can't or shouldn't have to change about | themselves, like their race or religion. There is a pretty | bright line there. | | Malice (per the conventional meaning of something bad intended, | but not necessarily revealed or acted out) is a much lower bar | that includes outright hate speech. | | > but really, you can see when someone is actuated by it. | | How can you identify this systematically (vs it being just your | opinion), but not identify hate speech? | Manuel_D wrote: | Hate absolutely can, and is, applied to disagreements: Plenty | of people consider disagreement around allowing natal males | in women's sport is hateful. Plenty of people consider | opposition to the abolishment of police is hateful. Plenty of | people immigration enforcement hateful. I could go on... | bombcar wrote: | Any disagreement is classified as _hate_ now; the word is | empty and worthless. | | We cannot regulate the internal forum, only the actions we | perceive. | danans wrote: | > Plenty of people consider disagreement around allowing | natal males in women's sport is hateful. Plenty of people | consider opposition to the abolishment of police is | hateful. Plenty of people immigration enforcement hateful. | | Those things aren't deemed hate speech, but they might be | disagreed with and downvoted on some forums (i.e. HN), and | championed on others (i.e. Parler) but that has nothing to | do with them being hate speech. They are just unpopular | opinions in some places, and I can understand how it might | bother you if those are your beliefs and you get downvoted. | | Actual hate speech based on your examples is: promoting | violence/harassment against non-cisgender people, promoting | violence/harassment by police, and promoting | violence/harassment by immigration authorities against | migrants. | | Promoting violence and harassment is a fundamentally | different type of speech than disagreeing with the | prevailing local opinion on a controversial subject that | has many shades of gray (that your examples intentionally | lack). | antod wrote: | For some reason, this makes me wonder how Slashdot's moderation | would work in the current age. Too nerdy? Would it get | overwhelmed by today's shit posters? | bombcar wrote: | People don't care enough about the "community" anymore. It | might work on a smallish-scale but the reality is everything is | shitposting, even here. | | Even in Slashdot's heyday the number of metamoderators was | vanishingly small. The best thing it had was the ability to | filter anonymous cowards and the ability to browse from -5 to | +5 if you wanted to. | nkotov wrote: | Is anyone else having a hard time following along? Can someone | provide a tl;dr? | Consultant32452 wrote: | The public thinks about moderation in terms of content. Large | social networks think in terms of behavior. Like let's say I | get a chip on my shoulder about... the Ukraine war, one | direction or another. And I start finding a way to insert my | opinion on every thread. My opinion on the Ukraine war is fine. | Any individual post I might make is fine and contextual to the | convo. But I'm bringing down the over-all quality of discussion | by basically spamming every convo with my personal grievance. | | Some kinds of content also gets banned, like child abuse | material and other obvious things. But the hard part is the | "behavior" type bans. | oceanplexian wrote: | > Any individual post I might make is fine and contextual to | the convo. But I'm bringing down the over-all quality of | discussion by basically spamming every convo with my personal | grievance. | | Isn't this how a healthy society functions? | | Political protests are "spam" under your definition. When | people are having a protest in the street, it's inconvenient, | people don't consent to it, it brings down the quality of the | discussion (Protestors are rarely out to have a nuanced | conversation). Social Media is the public square in the 21st | century, and people in the public square should have a right | to protest. | jchw wrote: | The commentary is interesting, but it does unfortunately gloss | over the very real issue of actually controversial topics. Most | platforms don't typically set out to ban controversial stuff from | what I can tell, but the forces that be (advertisers, government | regulators, payment processors, service providers, etc.) tend to | be quite a bit more invested in such topics. Naughty language on | YouTube and porn on Twitter are some decent examples; these are | _not_ and never have been signal to noise ratio problems. While | the media may be primarily interested in the problem of content | moderation as it impacts political speech, I 'd literally filter | all vaguely politically charged speech (even at the cost of | missing plenty of stuff I'd rather see) if given the option. | | I think that the viewpoints re: moderation are very accurate and | insightful, but I honestly have always felt that it's been more | of a red herring for the actual scary censorship creep happening | in the background. Go find the forum threads and IRC logs you | have from the 2000s and think about them for a little while. I | think that there are many ways in which I'd happily admit the | internet has improved, but looking back, I think that a lot of | what was discussed and how it was discussed would not be | tolerated on many of the most popular avenues for discourse today | --even though there's really nothing particularly egregious about | them. | | I think this is the PoV that one has as a platform owner, but | unfortunately it's not the part that I think is interesting. The | really interesting parts are always off on the fringes. | wwweston wrote: | It's hard for me to imagine what "scary actual censorship" is | happening -- that is, to identify topics or perspectives that | cannot be represented in net forums. If such | topics/perspectives exist, then the effectiveness must be near | total to the point where I'm entirely unaware of them, which I | guess would be scary if people could provide examples. But | usually when I ask, I'm supplied with topics which I have | indeed seen discussed on Twitter, Reddit, and often even HN, | so... | cvwright wrote: | Nobody wants to answer this, because to mention a | controversial topic is to risk being accused of supporting | it. | | You could look at what famous people have gotten into trouble | over. Alex Jones or Kanye West. I assume there have been | others, but those two were in the news recently. | jchw wrote: | The problem is that it's not really about censorship the way | that people think about it; it's not about blanket banning | the discussion of a topic. You can clearly have a discussion | about extremely heated debate topics like abortion, | pedophilia, genocide, whatever. However, in some of these | topics there are pretty harsh chilling effects that prevent | people from having very open and honest discussion about | them. The reason why I'm being non-specific is twofold: one | is because I am also impacted by these chilling effects, and | another is because making it specific makes it seem like it's | about a singular topic when it is about a recurring pattern | of behaviors that shift topics over time. | | If you really don't think there have been chilling effects, I | put forth two potential theories: one is that you possibly | see this as normal "consequences for actions" (I do not | believe this: I am strictly discussing ideas and opinions | that are controversial even in a vacuum.) OR: perhaps you | genuinely haven't really seen the fringes very much, and | doubt their existence. I don't really want to get into it, | because it would force me to pick specific examples that | would inextricably paint me into those arguments, but I guess | maybe it's worth it if it makes the point. | wwweston wrote: | > The problem is that it's not really about censorship the | way that people think about it; it's not about blanket | banning the discussion of a topic. | | Then we're far away enough from the topic of censorship | that we should be using different language for what we're | discussing. It's bad enough that people use the term | "censorship" colloquially when discussing private refusal | to carry content vs state criminalization. It's definitely | not applicable by the time we get to soft stakes. | | As someone whose life & social circle is deeply embedded in | a religious institution which makes some claims and | teachings I find objectionable, I'm pretty familiar with | chilling effects and other ways in which social stakes are | held hostage over what topics can be addressed and how. And | yet I've found these things: | | (1) It's taught me a lot about civil disagreement and | debate, including the fact that more often than not, there | are ways to address _even literally sacred topics_ without | losing the stakes. It takes work and wit, but it 's | possible. Those lessons have been borne out later when I've | chosen to do things like try to illuminate merits in pro- | life positions while in overwhelmingly pro-choice forums. | | (2) It's made me appreciate the value of what the courts | have called time/place/manner restrictions. Not every venue | is or should be treated the same. Church services are the | last time/place to object to church positions, and when one | _does_ choose that it 's best to take on the most | obligation in terms of manner, making your case in the | terms of the language, metaphors, and values of the church. | | (3) Sometimes you have to risk the stakes, and the only | world in which it would actually be possible for there NOT | to be such stakes would be one in which people have no | values at all | ramblerman wrote: | Did he begin answering the question, drop some big philosophical | terms, and then just drift off into here is what I think we | should do about climate change in 4 steps...? | cwkoss wrote: | I find it surprising and a bit disappointing that so many HN | readers find the manic meandering of yishans thread persuasive | jefftk wrote: | He goes back to the main topic after a few tweets on his | current climate work. It's actually a super long thread: | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1586955288061452289.html | | (But I agree this is weird) | permo-w wrote: | he does come back to the point after his little side-piece | about trees, but after a while I didn't feel he was actually | providing any valuable information, so I stopped reading | dahfizz wrote: | Its a Twitter thread. Emotional, incoherent ramblings is the | standard. | snowwrestler wrote: | Yes, he is leveraging his audience. This like going to a | conference with a big-name keynote, but the lunch sponsor gets | up and speaks for 5 minutes first. | | We're on the thread to read about content moderation. But since | we're there, he's going to inject a few promos about what he is | working on now. Just like other ads, I skimmed past them until | he got back on track with the main topic. | teddyh wrote: | So what I'm hearing is that ads are moderated spam. Yeah, I can | see that. | matai_kolila wrote: | Yeah well, Yishan failed miserably at topic moderation on Reddit, | and generally speaking Reddit has notoriously awful moderation | policies that end up allowing users to run their own little | fiefdoms just because they name-squatted earliest on a given | topic. Additionally, Reddit (also notoriously) allowed some | horrendously toxic behavior to continue on its site (jailbait, | fatpeoplehate, the_donald, conservative currently) for literal | years before taking action, so even when it comes to basic admin | activity I doubt he's the guy we should all be listening to. | | I think the fact that this is absurdly long and wanders at least | twice into environmental stuff (which _is_ super interesting btw, | definitely read those tangents) kind of illustrates just how not- | the-best Yishan is as a source of wisdom on this topic. | | _Very_ steeped in typical SV "this problem is super hard so | you're not allowed to judge failure or try anything simple" talk. | Also it's basically an ad for Block Party by the end (if you make | it that far), so... yeah. | ranger207 wrote: | Yeah, it's interesting how much reddit's content moderation at | a site-wide level is basically the opposite of what he said in | this thread. Yeah, good content moderation should be about | policing behavior... so why weren't notorious brigading subs | banned? | pixl97 wrote: | Do you have any arguments addressing what he actually said, or | is this just a reverse argument to authority? | matai_kolila wrote: | Mostly just a reverse argument to authority, which isn't the | fallacy an argument to authority is, AFAIK. | [deleted] | fazfq wrote: | When people ask you why you hate twitter threads, show them this | hodgepodge of short sentences with sandwiched CO2 removal | advertisements. | kodon wrote: | Too bad he didn't post this on Reddit | luuuzeta wrote: | >this hodgepodge of short sentences with sandwiched CO2 removal | advertisements | | I had to stop after the tree myths. Was it related to content | moderation at all? | halfmatthalfcat wrote: | No it wasn't, pure shilling | RockyMcNuts wrote: | see also - | | Hey Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run The Content Moderation | Learning Curve | | https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you... | hourago wrote: | > Our current climate of political polarization makes it easy to | think it`s about the content of the speech, or hate speech, or | misinformation, or censorship, or etc etc. | | Are we sure that it is not the other way around? Didn't social | platforms created or increased polarization? | | I always see this comments from social platforms that take as | fact that society is polarized and they work hard to fix it, when | I believe that it is the other way around. Social media has | created the opportunity to increase polarization and they are not | able to stop it for technical, social or economic reasons. | throw0101a wrote: | > _Are we sure that it is not the other way around? Didn 't | social platforms created or increased polarization?_ | | The process of polarization (in the US) started decades ago: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized | | In fact it seems that people were always polarized, it's just | that the political parties (R & D in the US) didn't really | bother sorting themselves on topics until the 1960s: even in | the 1970s and early 1980s it was somewhat common to vote for | (e.g.) an R president but a D representative (or vice versa). | Straight-through one-party voting didn't really become the | majority until the late-1980s and 1990s. | | There's a chapter or two in the above book describing | psychology studies showing that humans form tribes | 'spontaneously' for the most arbitrary of reasons. "Us versus | them" seems to be baked into the structure of humans. | somenameforme wrote: | It's quite interesting that the USSR collapsed in 1991, which | removed the biggest external "us vs them" actor. | | But on the other hand there are also countless other factors | that are going to affect society at scale: rise internet, | rise of pharmaceutical psychotropics, surge in obesity, surge | in autism, declines in testosterone, apparent reversal of | Flynn effect, and more. | | With so many things happening it all feels like a Rorschach | test when trying to piece together anything like a meaningful | hypothesis. | raxxorraxor wrote: | I think political parties only later began astroturfing on | social media and split users in camps. Formerly content on | reddit in default subreddits often had low quality, but you | still got some nice topics here and there. Now it is a | propaganda hellhole that is completely in the hands of pretty | polarized users. | | > "Us versus them" seems to be baked into the structure of | humans. | | Not quite, but one of the most effective temptations one can | offer is giving people a moral excuse to hate others. Best | when see as those as responsible for all evil in the world. | It feels good to judge, it distracts from your own faults, | flaws, insecurities, fears and problems. This is pretty | blatant and has become far, far worse than the formerly | perhaps populist content on reddit. We especially see this on | political topics, but also the pandemic as an example. | throw0101a wrote: | > _I think political parties only later began astroturfing | on social media and split users in camps._ | | The splitting into camps (in the US) based on particular | topics started much earlier than social media: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy | | > _Not quite, but one of the most effective temptations one | can offer is giving people a moral excuse to hate others._ | | The psychology studies referenced in the book show us- | versus-them / in/out-group mentality without getting in | moral questions or political topics. | r721 wrote: | Scott Alexander's review is worth reading to get a summary of | this book: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review- | why-were-p... | cafard wrote: | I think that you should look into the history of talk radio, or | maybe just radio in general. Then maybe a history of American | journalism, from Robert McCormick's Chicago Tribune back to the | the party newspapers set up in the first years of the republic. | Spivak wrote: | Yepp, same message different medium. Having someone in your | family who "listens to talk radio" was the "they went down | the far right YouTube rabbit hole" of old. | | I mean the big names in talk radio are still clucking if you | want to listen to them today. | nradov wrote: | Real society is not that polarized. If you talk to real people | they mostly have moderate political opinions. But they don't | tweet about politics. | | Twitter is not a real place. | toqy wrote: | I used to think this until several instances of various | neighbors getting drunk enough to shed the veil of souther | hospitality and reveal how racist they are. | | Plenty of people have radical thoughts and opinions, but are | smart enough to keep it to themselves IRL | Spivak wrote: | But unfortunately real people are influenced and impacted by | the fiction. | | If far right political bullshit would stay online and out of | my state's general assembly that would be such a positive | change. | count wrote: | Society is a closed system, twitter is not outside of | society. | | The people on twitter are real people (well, mostly, | probably), and have real political opinions. | | If you talk to people, by and large they'll profess moderate | opinions, because _in person discussions still trigger | politeness and non-confrontational emotions_ in most people, | so the default 'safe' thing to say is the moderate choice, | no matter what their true opinion happens to be. | | The internet allows people to take the proverbial mask off. | SXX wrote: | I would disagree about proverbial masks. Majority of people | in the world including US are simply too preoccupied with | their everyday routine, problems and work to end up with | extreme political views. | | What Internet does have is ease of changing masks and | joining diverse groups. Trying something unusual without | reprecussions appeal to a lot of people who usually simply | dont have time to join such groups offline. | | The real problem is that unfortunately propoganda has | evolved too with all new research about human phychology, | behaviors and fallacies. Abusing weaknesses of monkey brain | on scale is relatively easy and profitable. | nradov wrote: | Nah. Even those few accounts on Twitter that are actually | run by real people (not bots) are mostly trolling to some | extent. It's all a big joke. | count wrote: | I thought that as well, until about Nov 2016... | bombcar wrote: | That was the biggest joke of all! | | So far ... | r721 wrote: | Yeah, there were some good articles about this: | | >The Making of a YouTube Radical | | >I visited Mr. Cain in West Virginia after seeing his YouTube | video denouncing the far right. We spent hours discussing his | radicalization. To back up his recollections, he downloaded and | sent me his entire YouTube history, a log of more than 12,000 | videos and more than 2,500 search queries dating to 2015. | | https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/yo... | (2019) | belorn wrote: | > Moderating spam is very interesting: it is almost universally | regarded as okay to ban (i.e. CENSORSHIP) but spam is in no way | illegal. | | Interesting, in my country spam is very much illegal and I would | hazard a guess that it is also illegal in the US, similar to how | littering, putting up posters on peoples buildings/cars/walls, | graffiti (a form of spam), and so on is also illegal. If I | received the amount of spam I get in email as phone calls I would | go as far as calling it harassment, and of course robot phone | calls are also illegal. Unsolicited email spam is also again the | law. | | And if spam is against the service agreement on twitter then that | could be a computer crime. If the advertisement is fraudulent (as | is most spam), it is fraud. Countries also have laws about | advertisement, which most spam are unlikely to honor. | | So I would make the claim that there is plenty of principled | reasons for banning spam, all backed up by laws of the countries | that the users and the operators live in. | snowwrestler wrote: | Nudity and porn are other examples of legal speech that have | broad acceptance among the public (at least the U.S. public) to | moderate or ban on social media platforms. | | Yishan's point is, most people's opinions on how well a | platform delivers free speech vs censorship will index more to | the content of the speech, rather than the pattern of behavior | around it. | thesuitonym wrote: | Unsolicited phone calls are somewhat illegal, but it's | dependent on circumstances. It's the same with email spam and | mail spam. One person's spam is another person's cold call. | Where do you draw the line? Is mailing a flier with coupons | spam? Technically yes, but some people find value in it. | | In the US, spam is protected speech, but as always, no company | is required to give anybody a platform. | myself248 wrote: | > In the US, spam is protected speech | | [citation needed] | | Doesn't the CAN-SPAM act explicitly declare otherwise? | toqy wrote: | I was under the impression that CAN-SPAM applies to email, | not user generated content on the internet at large | belorn wrote: | It is both yes, and no. CAN-SPAM do only apply to | electronic mail messages, usually shorten down to email. | However... | | In late March, a federal court in California held that | Facebook postings fit within the definition of | "commercial electronic mail message" under the | Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and | Marketing Act ("CAN-SPAM Act;" 15 U.S.C. SS 7701, et | seq.). Facebook, Inc. v. MAXBOUNTY, Inc., Case No. | CV-10-4712-JF (N.D. Cal. March 28, 2011). | | There is also two other court cases: MySpace v. The | Globe.com and MySpace v. Wallace. | | In the later, the court concluded that "[t]o interpret | the Act in the limited manner as advocated by [d]efendant | would conflict with the express language of the Act and | would undercut the purpose for which it was passed." Id. | This Court agrees that the Act should be interpreted | expansively and in accordance with its broad legislative | purpose. | | The court defined "electronic mail address" as meaning | nothing more specific than "a destination . . . to which | an electronic mail message can be sent, and the | references to local part and domain part and all other | descriptors set off in the statute by commas represent | only one possible way in which a destination can be | expressed. | | Basically, in order to follow the spirit of the law the | definition of "email" expanded, with traditional email | like user@example.invalid being just one example of many | forms of "email". | null0ranje wrote: | > In the US, spam is protected speech, but as always, no | company is required to give anybody a platform. | | Commercial speech in the US is not protected speech and may | be subject to a host of government regulation [0]. The | government has broad powers to regulate the time, place, and | content of commercial speech in ways that it does not for | ordinary speech. | | [0] See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commercial_speech | gorbachev wrote: | Not all spam is commercial. | | In fact, US legislators specifically made political spam | legal in the CAN-SPAM bill. | belorn wrote: | It is dependent on circumstances, and the people who would | draw the line in the end would be the government followed by | the court. | | Not all speech is protected speech. Graffiti is speech, and | the words being spoken could be argued as protected, but the | act of spraying other people properties with it is not | protected. Free speech rights does not overwrite other | rights. As a defense in a court I would not bet my money on | free speech in order to get away with crimes that happens to | involves speech. | | Historically the US court has defined speech into multiple | different categories. One of those are called fraudulent | speech which is not protected by free speech rights. An other | category is illustrated with the anti-spam law in Washington | State, which was found to not be in violation of First | Amendment rights because it prevent misleading emails. | Washington's statue regulate deceptive _commercial speech_ | and thus passed the constitutional test. An other court | ruling, this one in Maryland, confirmed that commercial | speech was less protected than other forms of speech and that | commercial speech had no protection when it was demonstrably | false. | | In theory a spammer could make non-commercial, non- | misleading, non-fraudulent speech, and a site like twitter | would then actually have to think about questions like first- | amendment. I can't say I have ever received or seen spam like | that. | buzer wrote: | > In theory a spammer could make non-commercial, non- | misleading, non-fraudulent speech, and a site like twitter | would then actually have to think about questions like | first-amendment. I can't say I have ever received or seen | spam like that. | | While I don't think I have seen it on Twitter (then again I | only read it when it's linked) I have seen plenty of it in | some older forums & IRC. Generally it's just nonsense like | "jqrfefafasok" or ":DDDDDD" being posted lots of times in | quick succession, often to either flood out other things, | to draw attention to poster or to show annoyance about | something (like being banned previously). | belorn wrote: | You got a point. Demonstration as a form of free speech | is an interesting dilemma. Review spam/bombing for | example can be non-commercial, non-misleading, non- | fraudulent, while still being a bit of a grey-zone. | Removing them is also fairly controversial. Outside the | web we have a similar problem when demonstrations and | strikes are causing disruption in society. Obviously | demonstration and strikes should be legal and are | protected by free speech, but at the same time there are | exceptions when they are not. | | I am unsure if one would construct a objective fair model | for how to moderate such activity. | thesuitonym wrote: | >a site like twitter would then actually have to think | about questions like first-amendment. | | I wish people understood that the first amendment does not | have anything to do with social media sites allowing people | to say anything. Twitter is not a public square, no matter | how much you want it to be. | asddubs wrote: | i love that, this fucking twitter thread has a commercial break | in the middle of it. | | edit: it has multiple commercial breaks! | mmastrac wrote: | Unrolled thread: https://mem.ai/p/D0AfFRGYoKkyW5aQQ1En | top_sigrid wrote: | Wait what? | | If you want a decend unroll, one example would be | threadreaderapp: | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1586955288061452289.html | datan3rd wrote: | I think email might be a good system to model this on. In | addition to an inbox, almost all providers provide a Spam folder, | and others like Gmail separate items into 'Promotions' and | 'Social' folders/labels. I imagine almost nobody objects to this. | | Why can't social media follow a similar methodology? There is no | requirement that FB/Twitter/Insta/etc feeds be a single "unit". | The primary experience would be a main feed (uncontroversial), | but additional feeds/labels would be available to view platform- | labeled content. A "Spam Feed" and a "Controversial Feed" and a | "This Might Be Misinformation Feed". | | Rather than censoring content, it segregates it. Users are free | to seek/view that content, but must implicitly acknowledge the | platform's opinion by clicking into that content. Just like you | know you are looking at "something else" when you go to your | email Spam folder, you would be aware that you are venturing off | the beaten path when going to the "Potential State-Sponsored | Propaganda Feed". There must be some implicit trust in a singular | feed which is why current removal/censorship schemas cause such | "passionate" responses. | wcerfgba wrote: | I like Yishan's reframing of content moderation as a 'signal-to- | noise ratio problem' instead of a 'content problem', but there is | another reframing which follows from that: moderation is also an | _outsourcing problem_ , in that moderation is about users | outsourcing the filtering of content to moderators (be they all | other users through voting mechanisms, a subset of privileged | users through mod powers, or an algorithm). | | Yishan doesn't define what the 'signal' is, or what 'spam' is, | and there will probably be an element of subjectivity to these | which varies between each platform and each user on each | platform. Thus successful moderation happens when moderators know | what users want, i.e. what the users consider to be 'good | content' or 'signal'. This reveals a couple of things about why | moderation is so hard. | | First, this means that moderation actually _is_ a content | problem. For example, posts about political news are regularly | removed from Hacker News because they are off-topic for the | community, i.e. we don 't consider that content to be the | 'signal' that we go to HN for. | | Second, moderation can only be successful when there is a shared | understanding between users and moderators about what 'signal' | is. It's when this agreement breaks down that moderation becomes | difficult or fails. | | Others have posted about the need to provide users with the tools | to do their own moderation in a decentralised way. Since the | 'traditional'/centralised approach creates a fragile power | dynamic which requires this shared understanding of signal, I | completely understand and agree with this: as users we should | have the power to filter out content we don't like to see. | | However, we have to distinguish between general and topical | spaces, and to determine which communities live in a given space | and what binds different individuals into collectives. Is there a | need for a collective understanding of what's on-topic? HN is not | Twitter, it's designed as a space for particular types of people | to share particular types of content. Replacing 'traditional' or | centralised moderation with fully decentralised moderation risks | disrupting the topicality of the space and the communities which | inhabit it. | | I think what we want instead is a 'democratised' moderation, some | way of moderating that removes a reliance on a 'chosen few', is | more deliberate about what kinds of moderation need to be | 'outsourced', and which allows users to participate in a shared | construction of what they mean by 'signal' or 'on-topic' for | their community. Perhaps the humble upvote is a good example and | starting point for this? | | Finally in the interest of technocratic solutions, particularly | around spam (which I would define as repetitive content), has | anyone thought about rate limits? Like, yeah if each person can | only post 5 comments/tweets/whatever a day then you put a cap on | how much total content can be created, and incentivise users to | produce more meaningful content. But I guess that wouldn't allow | for all the _sick massive engagement_ that these attention | economy walled garden platforms need for selling ads... | [deleted] | bravura wrote: | Yishan's points are great, but there is a more general and | fundamental question to discuss... | | Moderation is the act removing content. i.e. of assigning a score | of 1 or 0 to content. | | If we generalize, we can assign a score from 1 to 0 to all | content. Perhaps this score is personalized. Now we have a user's | priority feed. | | How should Twitter score content using personalization? Filter | bubble? Expose people to a diversity of opinions? etc. Moderation | is just a special case of this. | panarky wrote: | One size does not fit all. | | Some people want to escape the filter bubble, to expose their | ideas to criticism, to strengthen their thinking and arguments | through conflict. | | Other people want a community of like-minded people to share | and improve ideas and actions collectively, without trolls | burning everything down all the time. | | Some people want each of those types of community depending on | the topic and depending on their mood at the time. | | A better platform would let each community decide, and make it | easy to fork off new communities with different rules when a | subgroup or individual decides the existing rules aren't | working for them. | rongopo wrote: | Imagine there would be many shades of up and down voting in HN, | according to your earned karma points, and to your interactions | outside of your regular opinion echo Chambers. | lawrenceyan wrote: | You can tell this guy is a genius at marketing. | | Smart to comment on his current pursuits in environmental | terraforming knowing he's going to get eyeballs on any thread he | writes. | yamazakiwi wrote: | I commented on another comment discussing this and they thought | the opposite. I also thought it was relatively a good idea, | albeit distracting. | DelightOne wrote: | Can there be a moderation bot that detects flamewars and steps | in? It could enforce civility by limiting discussion to only go | through the bot and by employing protocols like "each side | summarize issues", "is this really important here", or "do you | enjoy this". | | Engaging with the bot is supposed to be a rational barrier, a | tool to put unproductive discussions back on track. | e40 wrote: | Easier to read this: | | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1586955288061452289.html | wackget wrote: | Anyone got a TL;DR? I don't feel like trudging through 100 | sentences of verbal diarrhea. | goatcode wrote: | > you`ll end up with a council of third-rate minds and | politically-motivated hacks, and the situation will be worse than | how you started. | | Wow, surprising honesty from someone affiliated with Reddit. I'm | sad that I wasn't on the site during the time of the old guard. | commandlinefan wrote: | > I'm sad that I wasn't on the site during the time of the old | guard. | | It really was great - I probably wouldn't care how horrible | it's become if not for the fact that I remember how it used to | be. | anigbrowl wrote: | Reposting this paper yet again, to rub in the point that social | media platforms play host to _communities_ and communities are | often very good at detecting interlopers and saboteurs and | pushing them back out. And it turns out the most effective | approach is to let people give bad actors a hard time. Moderation | policies that require everyone to adhere to high standards of | politeness in all circumstances are trying to reproduce the | dynamics of kindergartens, and are not effective because the | moderators are easily gamed. | | https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.03697.pdf | | Also, if you're running or working for a platform and dealing | with insurgencies, you will lose if you try to build any kind of | policy around content analysis. Automated context analysis is | generally crap because of semantic overloading (irony, satire, | contextual humor), and manual context analysis is labor-intensive | and immiserating, to the point that larger platforms like | Facebook are legitimately accused of abusing their moderation | staff by paying them peanuts to wade through toxic sludge and | then dumping them as soon as they complain or ask for any kind of | support from HR. | | To get anywhere you need to look at patterns of behavior and to | scale you need to do feature/motif detection on dynamic systems | rather than static relationships like friend/follower selections. | However, this kind of approach is fundamentally at odds with many | platforms' goal of maximizing engagement as means to the end of | selling ad space. | aerovistae wrote: | These random detours into climate-related topics are insanely | disruptive of an otherwise interesting essay. I absolutely hate | this pattern. I see what he's trying to do - you don't want to | read about climate change but you want to read this other thing | so I'm going to mix them together so you can't avoid the one if | you want the other - but it's an awful dark pattern and makes for | a frustrating and confusing reading experience. I kept thinking | he was making an analogy before realizing he was just changing | topics at random again. It certainly isn't making me more | interested in his trees project. If anything I'm less interested | now. | IncRnd wrote: | Since the argument was so well-structured, the interim detour | to climate related topics was odd. The very argument was that | spam can be detected by posting behaviors, yet the author | engaged in those for his favored topic. | incomingpain wrote: | This CEO did the same thread 6 months ago and was blasted off the | internet. You can see his thread here: | https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440 | | edit/ Guess it is working now? | | The most important post in his older thread: | https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514939100444311560 | | He never ever justifies this point. The world absolutely has not | changed in the context of censorship. Censorship apologetics | notwithstanding. | | The realization is the world changed is a reveal. He as CEO | learnt about where the censorship is coming from. | Spivak wrote: | What's wrong with this thread? It seems really level headed and | exactly accurate to the people I know IRL who are insane-but- | left and insane-but-right who won't shut up about censorship | while if you look at their posts it's just "unhinged person | picks fights with and yells at strangers." | | HN in general is convinced that social media is censoring right | ideas because it skews counterculture and "grey tribe" and | there have been a lot of high profile groups who claim right | views while doing the most vile depraved shit like actively | trying to harass people into suicide and celebrating it or | directing massive internet mobs at largely defenseless not | public figures for clout. | mikkergp wrote: | > The world absolutely has not changed in the context of | censorship. | | Citation needed | incomingpain wrote: | >Citation needed | | As I said in my post, he never justifies this point. To then | turn it upon me to prove a negative? | | Devils advocating against myself: I do believe the parler | deplatforming is the proof for what he says. The world has | indeed changed, but anyone who knows the details sure isn't | saying why. Why? Because revealing how the world has changed, | in the usa, would have some pretty serious consequences. | | I don't know. I wish I could have a closed door, off record, | tell me everything, conversation with yishan to have him tell | me why he believes the world changed, in the context of | social media censorship. | | In terms of public verified knowledge, nothing at all has | changed in the context of censorship. I stand by the point. | Elon obviously stands by this as well. Though elon's sudden | multiweek delays on unbanning... im expecting he suddenly | knows as well. | | >You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks. | | Guess I'm not allowed to reply again today. No discussion | allowed on HN. | | I do find it funny they say 'you're posting too fast' but I | haven't been able to post on HN or reply to you for an hour. | How "fast" am I really going. I expect it will be a couple | more hours before I am allowed to post again. How dare I | discuss a forbidden subject. | lrm242 wrote: | Huh? What do you mean unavailable? I see it just fine. | r721 wrote: | I can confirm - I saw "this tweet is unavailable" message or | something similarly worded on first click too. Reloading | fixed that. | kmeisthax wrote: | This is a very good way to pitch your afforestation startup | accelerator in the guise of a talk on platform moderation. /s | | I'm pretty sure I've got some bones to pick with yishan from his | tenure on Reddit, but everything he's said here is pretty | understandable. | | Actually, I would like to develop his point about "censoring | spam" a bit further. It's often said that the Internet "detects | censorship as damage and routes around it". This is propaganda, | of course; a fully censorship-resistant Internet is entirely | unusable. In fact, the easiest way to censor someone online is | through harassment, or DDoS attacks - i.e. have a bunch of people | shout at you until you shut up. Second easiest is through doxing | - i.e. make the user feel unsafe until they jump off platform and | stop speaking. Neither of these require content removal | capability, but they still achieve the goal of censorship. | | The point about old media demonizing moderation is something I | didn't expect, but it makes sense. This _is_ the same old media | that gave us cable news, after all. Their goal is not to inform, | but to allure. In fact, I kinda wish we had a platform that | explicitly refused to give them the time of day, but I 'm pretty | sure it's illegal to do that now[0], and even back a decade ago | it would be financial suicide to make a platform only catering to | individual creators. | | [0] For various reasons: | | - The EU Copyright Directive imposes an upload filtering | requirement on video platforms that needs cooperation with old | media companies in order to implement. The US is also threatening | similar requirements. | | - Canada Bill C-11 makes Canadian content (CanCon) must-carry for | all Internet platforms, including ones that take user-generated | content. In practice, it is easier for old media to qualify as | CanCon than actual Canadian individuals. | nullc wrote: | I've often pointed out that the concept of censorship as being | only or primarily through removal of speech is an antiquated | concept from a time before pervasive communications networks | had almost effortlessly connected most of the world. | | Censorship in the traditional sense is close to impossible | online today. | | Today censorship is often and most effectively about | suppressing your ability to be heard, often by flooding out the | good communications with nonsense, spam, abuse, or discrediting | it by association (e.g. fill the forums of a political | opponents with apparent racists). This turns the neigh | uncensorability of modern communications methods on its head | and makes it into a censorship tool. | | And, ironically, anyone trying to use moderation to curb this | sort of censorious abuse is easily accused of 'censorship' | themselves. | | I remain convinced that the best tool we have is topicality: | When a venue has a defined topic you can moderate just to stay | onto the topic without a lot of debatable value judgements (or | bruised egos-- no reason to feel too bad about a post being | moved or removed for being offtopic). Unfortunately, the | structure of twitter pretty much abandons this critical tool. | | (and with reddit increasingly usurping moderation from | subreddit moderators, it's been diminished there) | | Topicality doesn't solve all moderation issues, but once an | issue has become too acrimonious it will inherently go off- | topic: e.g. if your topic is some video game well participants | calling each other nasty names is clearly off-topic. Topicality | also reduces the incidence of trouble coming in from divisive | issues that some participants just aren't interested in | discussing-- If I'm on a forum for a video game I probably | don't really want to debate abortion with people. | | In this thread we see good use of topicality at the top with | Dang explicitly marking complaints about long form twitter | offtopic. | | When it comes to spam scaling considerations mean that you need | to be able to deal with much of it without necessarily | understanding the content. I don't think this should be | confused with content blindness being desirable in and of | itself. Abusive/unwelcoming interactions can occur both in the | form (e.g. someone stalking some around from thread to thread | or repeating an argument endlessly) and and in the content | (continually re-litigating divisive/flame-bate issues that no | one else wants to talk about, vile threatening messages, etc.) | | Related to topicality is that some users just don't want to | interact with each other. We don't have to make a value | judgement about one vs the other if we can provide space so | that they don't need to interact. Twitter's structure isn't | great for this either, but more the nature of near-monopoly | mega platforms isn't great for it. Worse, twitter actively make | it hard-- e.g. if you've not followed someone who is network- | connected to other people you follow twitter continually | recommends their tweets (as a friend said: "No twitter, there | is a reason I'm not following them") and because blocking is | visible using it often creates drama. | | There are some subjects on HN where I might otherwise comment | but I don't because I'd prefer to avoid interacting with a Top | Poster who will inevitably be active in those subjects. | Fortunately, there are plenty of other places where I can | discuss those things where that poster isn't active. | | Even a relatively 'small' forum can easily have as many users | as many US states populations at the founding of the country. I | don't think that we really need to have mega platforms with | literally everyone on them and I see a fair amount of harm from | it (including the effects of monoculture moderation gone | wrong). | | In general, I think the less topic constrained you can make a | venue the smaller it needs to be-- a completely topic-less | social venue probably should have no more than a few dozen | people. Twitter is both mega-topicless and ultra-massive-- an | explosive mixture which will inevitably disappoint. | | Another tool I think many people have missed the value of is | procedural norms including decorum. I don't believe that using | polite language actually makes someone polite (in fact, the | nastiest and most threatening remarks I've ever received were | made with perfectly polite language)-- but some people are just | unable to regulate their own behavior. When there is an easily | followed set of standards for conduct you gain a bright line | criteria that makes it easier to eject people who are too | unable to control themselves. Unfortunately, I think the value | of a otherwise pointless procedural conformity test is often | lost on people today, though they appear common in historical | institutions. (Maybe a sign of the ages of the creators of | these things: As a younger person I certainly grated against | 'pointless' conformity requirements, as an older person I see | more ways that their value can pay for their costs: I'd rather | not waste my time on someone who can't even manage to go | through the motions to meet the venue's standards) | | Early on in Wikipedia I think we got a lot of mileage out of | this: the nature of the site essentially hands every user a | loaded gun (ability to edit almost everything, including | elements on the site UI) and then tells them not to do use it | abusively rather than trying to technically prevent them from | using it abusively. Some people can't resist and are quickly | kicked out without too much drama. Had those same people been | technically prevented they would have hung around longer and | created trouble that was harder to kick them out over (and I | think as the site added more restrictions on new/casual users | the number of issues from poorly behaved users increased). | mountainriver wrote: | I love that he's for flame wars, go figure that's all Reddit is | saurik wrote: | > there will be NO relation between the topic of the content and | whether you moderate it, because it`s the specific posting | behavior that`s a problem | | I get why Yishan wants to believe this, but I also feel like the | entire premise of this argument is then in some way against a | straw man version of the problem people are trying to point to | when they claim moderation is content-aware. | | The issue, truly, isn't about what the platform moderates so much | as the bias between when it bothers to moderate and when it | doesn't. | | If you have a platform that bothers to filter messages that "hate | on" famous people but doesn't even notice messages that "hate on" | normal people--even if the reason is just that almost no one sees | the latter messages and so they don't have much impact and your | filters don't catch it--you have a (brutal) class bias. | | If you have a platform that bothers to filter people who are | "repetitively" anti large classic tech companies for the evil | things they do trying to amass money and yet doesn't filter | people who are "repetitively" anti crypto companies for the evil | things _they_ do trying to amass money--even if it feels to you | as the moderator that the person seems to have a point ;P--that | is another bias. | | The problem you see in moderation--and I've spent a LONG time | both myself being a moderator and working with people who have | spent their lives being moderators, both for forums and for live | chat--is that moderation and verification of everything not only | feels awkward but simply _doesn 't scale_, and so you try to | build mechanisms to moderate _enough_ that the forum seems to | have a high _enough_ signal-to-noise ratio that people are happy | and generally stay. | | But the way you get that scale is by automating and triaging: you | build mechanisms involving keyword filters and AI that attempt to | find and flag low signal comments, and you rely on reports from | users to direct later attention. The problem, though, is that | these mechanisms inherently have biases, and those biases | absolutely end up being inclusive of biases that are related to | the content. | | Yishan seems to be arguing that perfectly-unbiased moderation | might seem biased to some people, but he isn't bothering to look | at where or why moderation often isn't perfect to ensure that | moderation actually works the way he claims it should, and I'm | telling you: it never does, because moderation isn't omnipresent | and cannot be equally applied to all relevant circumstances. He | pays lip service to it in one place (throwing Facebook under the | bus near the end of the thread), and yet fails to then realize | _this is the argument_. | | At the end of the day, real world moderation is certainly biased. | _And maybe that 's OK!_ But we shouldn't pretend it isn't biased | (as Yishan does here) or even that that bias is always in the | public interest (as many others do). That bias may, in fact, be | an important part of moderating... and yet, it can also be | extremely evil and difficult to discern from "I was busy" or "we | all make mistakes" as it is often subconscious or with the best | of intentions. | karaterobot wrote: | There were indeed some intelligent, thoughtful, novel insights | about moderation in that thread. There were also... two | commercial breaks to discuss his new venture? Eww. While | discussing how spam is the least controversial type of noise you | want to filter out? I appreciate the good content, I'm just not | used to seeing product placement wedged in like that. | yamazakiwi wrote: | I thought it was simultaneously annoying and interesting so it | sort of cancelled itself out. | zcombynator wrote: | Spam is unwelcommed for a simple reason: there is no real person | behind it. | kodt wrote: | Not always true. In fact often spam is simply self-promotion by | the person posting it. | bombcar wrote: | In fact that type of spam is more annoying than the BUY @#$@$ | NOW generic bot-spam, as it is way more insidious. | hackerlight wrote: | If I was behind the exact same spam, would it be welcomed? Come | on. | mcguire wrote: | Correct me if I'm wrong, but this sounds very much like what dang | does here. | dang wrote: | All: this is an interesting submission--it contains some of the | most interesting writing about moderation that I've seen in a | long time*. If you're going to comment, please make sure you've | read and understand his argument and are engaging with it. | | If you dislike long-form Twitter, here you go: | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1586955288061452289.html - and | please _don 't_ comment about that here. I know it can be | annoying, but so is having the same offtopic complaints upvoted | to the top of every such thread. This is why we added the site | guideline: " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances | --e.g. article or website formats_" (and yes, this comment is | also doing this. Sorry.) | | Similarly, please resist being baited by the sales interludes in | the OP. They're also offtopic and, yes, annoying, but this is why | we added the site guideline " _Please don 't pick the most | provocative thing in an article to complain about--find something | interesting to respond to instead._" | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | * even more so than | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33446064, which was also | above the median for this topic. | rglover wrote: | A fun idea that I'm certain no one has considered with any level | of seriousness: don't moderate anything. | | Build the features to allow readers to self-moderate and make it | "expensive" to create or run bots (e.g., make it so API access is | limited without an excessive fee, limit screen scrapers, etc). | The "pay to play" idea will eliminate an insane amount of the | junk, too. Any free network is inherently going to have problems | of chaos. Make it so you can only follow X people with a free | account, but upgrade to follow more. Limit tweets/replies/etc | based on this. Not only will it work, but it will remove the need | for all of the moderation and arguments around bias. | | As for advertisers (why any moderation is necessary in the first | place beyond totalitarian thought control): have different tiers | of quality. If you want a higher quality audience, pay more. If | you're more concerned about broad reach (even if that means | getting junk users), pay less. Beyond that, advertisers/brands | should set their expectations closer to reality: randomly | appearing alongside some tasteless stuff on Twitter does not mean | you're _vouching_ for those ideas. | munificent wrote: | _> Build the features to allow readers to self-moderate_ | | This is effectively impossible because of the bullshit | asymmetry principle[1]. It's easier to create content that | needs moderation than it is to moderate it. In general, there | is a fundamental asymmetry to life that it takes less effort to | destroy than it does to create, less work to harm than heal. | With a slightly sharpened piece of metal and about a newton of | force, you can end a life. No amount of effort can resurrect | it. | | It simply doesn't scale to let bad actors cause all the harm | they want and rely on good actors to clean up their messes | after the fact. The harm must be prevented before it does | damage. | | _> make it "expensive" to create or run bots (e.g., make it | so API access is limited without an excessive fee, limit screen | scrapers, etc)._ | | The simplest approach would be no API at all, but that won't | stop scammers and bad actors. It's effectively impossible to | prohibit screen scrapers. | | _> Make it so you can only follow X people with a free | account, but upgrade to follow more. Limit tweets /replies/etc | based on this. Not only will it work, but it will remove the | need for all of the moderation and arguments around bias._ | | This is, I think, the best idea. If having an identity and | sharing content costs actual money, you can at least make | spamming not be cost effective. But that still doesn't | eliminate human bad actors griefing others. Some are happy to | pay to cause mayhem. | | There is no simple technical solution here. Fundamentally, the | value proposition of a community is the other good people you | get to connect to. But some people are harmful. They may not | always be harmful, or may be harmful only to some people. For a | community to thrive, you've got to encourage the good behaviors | and police the bad ones. That takes work and human judgement. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law | rglover wrote: | > But some people are harmful. They may not always be | harmful, or may be harmful only to some people. | | This is a fundamental reality of life that cannot be avoided. | There is no magical solution (technical or otherwise) to | prevent this. At best, you can put in some basic safeguards | (like what you/I have stated above) but ultimately people | need to learn to accept that you can't make everything 100% | safe. | | Also, things like muting/blocking work but the ugly truth is | that people love the negative excitement of fighting online | (it's an outlet for life's pressure/disappointments). | Accepting _that_ reality would do a lot of people a lot of | good. A staggering amount of the negativity one encounters on | social media is self-inflicted by either provoking or | engaging with being provoked. | etchalon wrote: | 1. There are plenty of places online that "don't moderate | anything". In fact, nearly all of the social networks started | off that way. | | The end result is ... well, 4Chan. | | 2. "Self-moderation" doesn't work, because it's work. User's | don't want to have constantly police their feeds and block | people, topics, sites, etc. It's also work that never ends. Bad | actors jump from one identity to the next. There are no | "static" identifiers that are reliable enough for a user to | trust. | | 3. Advertisers aren't going to just "accept" that their money | is supporting content they don't want to be associated with. | And they're also not interested in spending time white-listing | specific accounts they "know" are good. | rglover wrote: | > The end result is ... well, 4Chan. | | And? Your opinion of whether that's bad is subjective, yet | the people there are happy with the result (presumably, as | they keep using/visiting it). | | > Self-moderation" doesn't work, because it's work. | | So in other words: "I'm too lazy to curate a non-threatening | experience for myself which is my responsibility because the | offense being taken is my own." Whether or not you're willing | to filter things out that upset you is a personal problem, | not a platform problem. | | > Advertisers aren't going to just "accept" that their money | is supporting content they don't want to be associated with. | | It's not. Twitter isn't creating the content nor are they | financing the content (e.g. like a Netflix type model). It's | user-generated which is completely random and subject to | chaos. If they can't handle that, they shouldn't advertise | there (hence why a pay-to-play option is best as it prevents | a revenue collapse for Twitter). E.g., if I I'm selling | crucifixes, I'm not going to advertise on slutmania.com | | --- | | Ultimately, people need to quit acting like everything they | come into contact with needs to be respectful of every | possible issue or disagreement they have with it. It's | irrational, entitled, and childish. | etchalon wrote: | 1. I didn't imply whether it was good or bad, just that the | product you're describing already exists. | | 2. It's a platform problem. If you make users do work they | don't want to do in order to make the platform pleasant to | use, they won't do the work, the platform will not be | pleasant to use, and they'll use a different platform that | doesn't make them do that work. | | 3. "If they can't handle it, they shouldn't advertise | there." Correct! They won't advertise there. That's the | point. | | There are already unmoderated, "you do the work, not us", | "advertisers have to know what they're getting into" | platforms, and those platforms are niche, with small | audiences, filled with low-tier/scam ads and are generally | not profitable. | lambic wrote: | It's a problem of scale. | | Usenet and IRC used to be self-moderated. The mods in each | group or channel would moderate their own userbase, ban people | who were causing problems, step in if things were getting too | heated. At a broader level net admins dealt with the spam | problem system wide, coordinating in groups in the news.admin | hierarchy or similar channels in IRC. | | This worked fine for many years, but then the internet got big. | Those volunteer moderators and administrators could no longer | keep up with the flood of content. Usenet died (yes, it's still | around, but it's dead as any kind of discussion forum) and IRC | is a shell of its former self. | rglover wrote: | Right, which is solved by the pay to play limits. This would | essentially cut the problem off immediately and it would be | of benefit to everyone. If it actually cost people to "do bad | stuff" (post spam, vitriol, etc), they're far less-likely to | do it as the incentives drop off. | | The dragon folks seem to be chasing is that Twitter should be | free but perfect (which is a have your cake and eat it too | problem). That will never happen and it only invites more | unnecessary strife between sociopolitical and socioeconomic | factions as they battle for narrative control. | invalidusernam3 wrote: | Just add a dislike button and put controversial tweets collapsed | at the bottom. It works well for reddit. Let the community | moderate themselves. | threeseed wrote: | Reddit tried to just let communities moderate themselves. | | It resulted in rampant child pornography, doxxing, death | threats, gory violence etc. It epitomised the worst of | humanity. | | Now the Reddit admins keep a watch on moderators and if their | subreddits do not meet site-wide standards they are replaced. | pessimizer wrote: | > It resulted in rampant child pornography, doxxing, death | threats, gory violence etc. It epitomised the worst of | humanity. | | It resulted in reddit. That style of moderation is how reddit | became reddit; so it should also get credit for whatever you | think is good about reddit. The new (half-decade old) reddit | moderation regime was a new venture that was hoping to retain | users who were initially attracted by the old moderation | regime. | threeseed wrote: | This is revisionist history. | | My Reddit account is 16 years old. I was there in the very | early days of the site well before the Digg invasion and | well before it gained widespread popularity. | | It was never because it allowed anything. It was because it | was a much more accessible version of Slashdot. And it was | because Digg did their redesign and it ended up with a | critical mass of users. Then they started opening up the | subreddits and it exploded from there. | | The fact that Reddit is growing without that content shows | that it wasn't that important to begin with. | pixl97 wrote: | You mean it resulted in the place that couldn't pay the | bills and goes around asking for VC money to keep the | servers on? | | Unmoderated hell holes tend to have to survive on | questionable funding and rarely grow to any size. | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | If there is one thing I know about tech companies in the | last 20 years, it's that they never want VC money unless | they are in trouble... right? | thrown_22 wrote: | It resulted in people _saying_ all those things happened, but | never did. | threeseed wrote: | You mean like this list of banned subreddits: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communit | i... | | "The community (Beatingwomen), which featured graphic | depictions of violence against women, was banned after its | moderators were found to be sharing users' personal | information online" | | "According to Reddit administrators, photos of gymnast | McKayla Maroney and MTV actress Liz Lee, shared to 130,000 | people on popular forum r/TheFappening, constitute child | pornography" | thrown_22 wrote: | You mean like the people who are telling us that happened | also said: | | > CNN is not publishing "HanA*holeSolo's" name because he | is a private citizen who has issued an extensive | statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has | taken down all his offending posts, and because he said | he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social | media again. In addition, he said his statement could | serve as an example to others not to do the same. | | >CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should | any of that change. | | https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/04/politics/kfile-reddit- | use... | | Yeah, I totally trust these people to not lie. | tick_tock_tick wrote: | And Reddit was still a better site back then. | | Their anything goes policy is also a huge part of what made | them successful back in the day. | P_I_Staker wrote: | I think it's sad that this seems to be getting so many | downvotes. You don't have to agree, but this was helpful | commentary. | | Reddit definitely had all of these issues, and they were | handled horribly. | rchaud wrote: | Digg handled things horribly. Reddit seems to have done | just fine. | dncornholio wrote: | So instead of moderating users, you moderate moderators, | still seems like a net win. | [deleted] | tjoff wrote: | > _Machine learning algorithms are able to accurate identify | spam_ | | Nope. Not even close. | | > _and it`s not because they are able to tell it`s about Viagra | or mortgage refinancing_ | | Funny, because they can't even tell that. | | Which is why mail is being ruined by google and microsoft. Yes | you could argue that they have incentives to do just that. But | that doesn't change the fact that they can't identify spam. | sbarre wrote: | Do you have more info on why you believe this? | | My experience has been that Google successfully filters spam | from my Inbox, consistently. | | I get (just looked) 30-40 spam messages a day. I've been on | Gmail since the invite-only days, so I'm in a lot of lists I | guess.. | | Very Very rarely do they get through the filter. | | I also check it every couple of days to look for false- | positives, and maybe once a month or less I find a newsletter | or automated promo email in there for something I was actually | signed up for, but never anything critical. | [deleted] | tjoff wrote: | Just see what gets through and more importantly which valid | mails are being marked as spam. It is evident that they | haven't got a clue. | | So, how do they "solve" it? By using the "reputation" of your | IP addresses and trust that more than the content of the | email. | zimpenfish wrote: | I've got 6 mails in my gmail spam (in the last month) - 2 | of them are not spam which is about normal for what I see | (30-40% non-spam.) | tjoff wrote: | Yet most people don't seem to ever look in their spam | folder. Conclusion: gmail has a great spam-filter! :( | ketzo wrote: | You're talking way too hyperbolically to take seriously. | | Yes, GMail does, in fact, "have a clue." They do pretty | well. They're not perfect, and I have specific complaints, | but to pretend they're totally clueless and inept | discredits anything else you're saying. | tjoff wrote: | Just as saying that machine learning can identify spam | discredits anything else ex-reddit CEO says. | | I'm sure gmail have a clue from their point of view, but | those doesn't align with mine (nor, I'd argue, most of | their users). Their view also as a coincidence happens to | strengthen their hold on the market but who cares? | fulafel wrote: | There seem to be no mention of (de)centralization or use of | reputation in the comments here or in the twitter thread. | | Everyone is discussing a failure mode of a centralized and | centrally moderated system and aren't questioning those | properties, but it's really counter to traditional internet based | communication platforms like email, usenet, irc etc. | excite1997 wrote: | He frames this as a behavior problem, not content problem. The | claim is that your objective as a moderator should to get rid of | users or behaviors that are bad for your platform, in the sense | that they may drive users away or make them less happy. And that | if you do that, you supposedly end up with a fundamentally robust | and apolitical approach to moderation. He then proceeds to blame | others for misunderstanding this model when the outcomes appear | politicized. | | I think there is a gaping flaw in this reasoning. Sometimes, what | drives your users away or makes them less happy _is_ challenging | the cultural dogma of a particular community, and at that point, | the utilitarian argument breaks down. If you 're on Reddit, go to | /r/communism and post a good-faith critique of communism... or go | to /r/gunsarecool and ask a pro-gun-tinged question about self- | defense. You will get banned without any warning. But that ban | passes the test outlined by the OP: the community does not want | to talk about it precisely because it would anger and frustrate | people, and they have no way of telling you apart from dozens of | concern trolls who show up every week. So they proactively | suppress dissent because they can predict the ultimate outcome. | They're not wrong. | | And that happens everywhere; Twitter has scientifically-sounding | and seemingly objective moderation criteria, but they don't lead | to uniform political outcomes. | | Once you move past the basics - getting rid of patently malicious | / inauthentic engagement - moderation becomes politics. There's | no point in pretending otherwise. And if you run a platform like | Twitter, you will be asked to do that kind of moderation - by | your advertisers, by your users, by your employees. | Atheros wrote: | > Challenging the cultural dogma [doesn't work] | | That is a byproduct of Reddit specifically. With 90s style | forums, this kind of discussion happens just fine because it | ends up being limited to a few threads. On Reddit, all | community members _must_ interact in the threads posted in the | last day or two. After two days they are gone and all previous | discussion is effectively lost. So maybe this can be fixed by | having sub-reddits sort topics by continuing engagement rather | than just by age and upvotes. | | A good feature would be for Reddit moderators to be able to set | the desired newness for their subreddit. /r/aww should strive | for one or two days of newness (today's status quo). But | /r/communism can have one year of newness. That way the | concerned people and concern trolls can be relegated to the | yearly threads full of good-faith critiques of communism and | the good-faith responses and everyone else can read the highly | upvoted discussion. Everything else could fall in-between. | /r/woodworking, which is now just people posting pictures of | their creations, could split: set the newness to four months | and be full of useful advice; set the newness for | /woodworking_pics to two days to experience the subreddit like | it is now. I feel like that would solve a lot of issues. | bombcar wrote: | The whole idea of "containment threads" is a powerful one | that works very well in older-style forums, but not nearly as | well on Reddit. "containment subs" isn't the same thing at | all, and the subs that try to run subsubs dedicated to the | containment issues usually find they die out. | rootusrootus wrote: | Having read everything he wrote, it makes it interesting to see | how the discussion on HN matches. | cwkoss wrote: | Yishan could really benefit from some self editing. There are | like 5 tweets worth of interesting content in this hundred tweet | meandering thread. | bruce343434 wrote: | It might just be an effect of the medium. | bombcar wrote: | I mean it's clearly obviously designed to get people to read | the ads he has in it. | [deleted] | MichaelZuo wrote: | There are some neat ideas raised by Yishan. | | One is 'put up or shutup' for appeals of moderator decisions. | | That is anyone who wishes to appeal needs to also consent to have | all their activities on the platform, relevant to the decision, | revealed publicly. | | It definitely could prevent later accusations of secretiveness or | arbitrariness. And it probably would also make users think more | in marginal cases before submitting. | wyldberry wrote: | This also used to be relatively popular in the early days of | League of Legends, people requesting a "Lyte Smite". Players | would make inflammatory posts on the forums saying they were | banned wrongly, and Lyte would come in with the chatlogs, | sometimes escalating to perma-ban. I did always admire this | system and thought it could be improved. | | There's also a lot of drama around Lyte in his personal life, | should you choose to go looking into that. | cloverich wrote: | It is expensive to do, because you have to ensure the content | being made public doesn't dox / hurt someone other than the | poster. But I think you could add two things to the recipe. 1 - | real user validation. So the banned user can't easily make | another account. Obviously not easy and perhaps not even | possible, but essential. 2 - increased stake. Protest a short | ban, and if you lose, you get an even longer ban. | TulliusCicero wrote: | I've never understood that idea that PM's on a platform must be | held purely private by the platform even in cases where: | | * There's some moderation dispute that involves the PM's | | * At least one of the parties involved consents to release the | PM's | | The latter is the critical bit, to me. When you send someone a | chat message, or an email, obviously there's nothing actually | stopping them from sharing the content of the message with | others if they feel that way, either legally or technically. If | an aggrieved party wants to share a PM, everyone knows they can | do so -- the only question mark is that they may have faked it. | | To me the answer here seems obvious: allow users to mark a | PM/thread as publicly visible. This doesn't make it more public | than it otherwise could be, it just lets other people verify | the authenticity, that they're not making shit up. | whitexn--g28h wrote: | This is something that occurs on twitch streams sometimes. | While it can be educational for users to see why they were | banned, some appeals are just attention seeking. Occasionally | though it exposes the banned user's or worse a victim users | personal information, (eg mental health issues, age, location) | and can lead to both users being targeted and bad behaviour by | the audience. For example Bob is banned for bad behaviour | towards Alice (threats, doxxing), by making that public you are | not just impacting Bob, but could also put Alice at risk. | etchalon wrote: | I think this idea rests on the foundation of "shame." | | But there are entire groups of users that not only don't feel | shame about their activities, but are proud of them. | codemonkey-zeta wrote: | But those users would be left alone in their pride in the | put-up-or-shut-up model, because everybody else would see the | mistakes of that user and abandon them. So the shame doesn't | have to be effective for the individual, it just has to | convince the majority that the user is in the wrong. | kelnos wrote: | Right. To put it another way, this "put up or shut up" | system, in my mind, isn't even really there to convince the | person who got moderated that they were in the wrong. It's | to convince the rest of the community that the moderation | decision was unbiased and correct. | | These news articles about "platform X censors people with | political views Y" are about generating mass outrage from a | comparatively small number of moderation decisions. While | sure, it would be good for the people who are targeted by | those moderation decisions to realize "yeah, ok, you're | right, I was being a butthole", I think it's much more | important to try to show the reactionary angry mob that | things are aboveboard. | etchalon wrote: | The most high profile, and controversial, "moderation" | decisions made by large platforms recently have generally | been for obvious, and very public, reasons. | shashanoid wrote: | kahrl wrote: | Yishan Wong is an American engineer and entrepreneur who was | CEO of Reddit from March 2012 until his resignation in November | 2014. | | Did you need help looking that up? Or were you just being edgy? | ilyt wrote: | It's kinda funny that many of the problems he's mentioning is | exactly how moderation on reddit currently works. | | Hell, newly revamped "block user" mode got extra gaslighting as a | feature, now person blocked can't reply to _anyone_ under the | comment of person that blocked them, not just the person that | blocked them so anyone that doesn 't like people discussing how | they are wrong can just ban the people that disagree with them | and they will not be able to answer to any of their comments. | Ztynovovk wrote: | Seems reasonable to me. IRL I can walk away from a voluntary | discussion when I want. If people want to continue talking | after I've left they can form their own discussion group and | continue with the topic. | | Think this is good because it usually stops a discussion from | dissolving into a meaningless flame war. | | It allows the power of moderation to stay within the power of | those in the discussion. | scraptor wrote: | Now imagine if some random other people in the group who | happen to have posts higher in the tree were able to silently | remove you without anyone knowing. | Ztynovovk wrote: | Meh, it's the most reasonable bad solution imo. I've had | some pretty heated convos on reddit and have only ever been | blocked once. | chinchilla2020 wrote: | The tweetstorm format is such a horrible way to consume articles. | I cannot wait for twitter to collapse so I never have to read | another essay composed of 144-word paragraphs. | swarnie wrote: | Twitter has to be the worst possible medium for reading an essay. | joemi wrote: | You're far from the only person who thinks this, but please see | dang's stickied comment at the top of the thread. | ItsBob wrote: | Here's a radical idea: let me moderate my own shit! | | Twitter is a subscription-based system (by this, I mean that I | have to subscribe to someone's content) so if I subscribe to | someone and don't like what they say then buh-bye! | | Let me right click on a comment/tweet (I don't use social media | so not sure of the exact terminology the kids use these days) | with the options of: | | - Hide this comment | | - Hide all comments in this thread from <name> | | - Block all comments in future from <name> (you can undo this in | settings). | | That would work for me. | threeseed wrote: | You're not Twitter's customer. Advertisers are. | | And they don't want their brands to be associated with | unpleasant content. | q1w2 wrote: | To quote the article... | | > MAYBE sometimes an advertiser will get mad, but a backroom | sales conversation will usually get them back once the whole | thing blows over. | lettergram wrote: | People producing products don't actually care. I'd love to | see stats on this made public (I've seen internal metrics). | Facebook and Twitter don't even show you what your ad is | near. You fundamentally just have to "trust" them. | | If you have a billboard with someone being raped beneath it | and a photo goes viral, no one would blame the company | advertising on the billboard. Frankly, no one will associate | the two to change their purchasing habits. | | The reason corporations care are the ESG scores and activist | employees. | | Also these brands still advertise in places where public | executions will happen (Saudi Arabia). No one is complaining | there. | pfisch wrote: | People do care. If you openly associate your brand with | strong support for a pro pedophile or pro rape position | customers will care about that. | | The idea that they won't seems pretty ridiculous. | threeseed wrote: | > Facebook and Twitter don't even show you what your ad is | near | | But their customers complain about it, media picks it up | and it becomes an outrage story. | | That's what brands are scared of. | Spivak wrote: | Like I can't believe that this reasoning doesn't resonate | with people even outside of advertisers. Who wants to be on a | social network where if one of your posts breaks containment | you spend the next few weeks getting harassed by people who | just hurl slurs and insults at you. This is already right now | a problem on Twitter and opening the floodgates is the | opposite of helping. | etchalon wrote: | This reasoning is generally lost on people whom are | generally not a target for slurs and harassment. | tick_tock_tick wrote: | > few weeks getting harassed by people who just hurl slurs | and insults at you | | Just ignore it or block them. The only time it's an issue | is when you engage. Seriously the only people with this | issue can't let shit go. | fzeroracer wrote: | I feel like you don't understand the issue here at all. | | Blocking them requires first engaging with their content. | This is what people always miss in the discussion. To | know if you need to block someone or not involves parsing | their comment and then throwing it in the bin. | | The same goes for ignoring it. And eventually people get | tired of the barrage of slurs and just leave because the | brainpower required to sift through garbage isn't worth | it anymore. That's how you end up with places like Voat. | tick_tock_tick wrote: | Most customers don't care the only reason it's a real issue | is Twitter users run the marketing department at a lot of | companies and they are incorrectly convinced people care. | spaced-out wrote: | >Most customers don't care | | How much is "most"? What data do you have? Plus, even if | ~20% of customers care and only half will boycott, that's | still going to have an impact on the company's bottom line. | threeseed wrote: | > Twitter users run the marketing department | | If that were the case why is Twitter ad spend in the low | single digits for most companies. | dbbk wrote: | This exists. | spaced-out wrote: | Maybe you might like that, but I personally don't want to wade | through dozens of "MAKE BIG $$$$ WORKING FROM HOME!!!" every | morning on my feed. | int_19h wrote: | This is solved by allowing people to "hire" others as their | moderators. | tedunangst wrote: | Why can't I "hire" (join) a social network that | preemptively mods according to my preferences? | int_19h wrote: | Because there are too few, due to market dominance of | existing players? | AhmedF wrote: | Try moderating 100+ hateful messages an hour. | AceJohnny2 wrote: | You've never been targeted for harassment, obviously. | | Blocking a comment, or even blocking a user for a comment is | useless on platforms that allow free and endless user accounts. | | Mail spam/scam folders of everyone's email accounts are proof | that "let me moderate it myself" does not work for the majority | of people. | | And remember "It is harder to police bad behavior than it is to | automate it." | commandlinefan wrote: | > let me moderate it myself | | More like "let us moderate it ourselves". Reddit users | already do this - there are extensions you can install that | allow you to subscribe to another group of user's ban list. | So you find a "hivemind" that you mostly agree with, join | their collective moderation, and allow that to customize the | content you like. The beauty is that _you_ get to pick the | group you find most reasonable. | pjc50 wrote: | > - Block all comments in future from <name> (you can undo this | in settings). | | This is what the existing block feature does? | dimva wrote: | His argument makes no sense. If this is indeed why they are | banning people, why keep the reasoning a secret? Honestly, every | ban should come with a public explanation from the network, in | order to deter similar behavior. The way things are right now, | it's unclear if, when, and for what reason someone will be | banned. People get banned all the time with little explanation or | explanations that make no sense or are inconsistent. There is no | guidance from Twitter on what behavior or content or whatever | will get you banned. Why is some rando who never worked at | Twitter explaining why Twitter bans users? | | And how does Yishan know why Twitter bans people? And why should | we trust that he knows? As far as I can tell, bans are almost | completely random because they are enacted by random low-wage | contract workers in a foreign country with a weak grasp of | English and a poor understanding of Twitter's content policy (if | there even is one). | | Unlike what Yishan claims, it doesn't seem to me like Twitter | cares at all about how pleasant an experience using Twitter is, | only that its users remain addicted to outrage and calling-out | others, which is why most Twitter power-users refer to it as a | "hellsite". | sangnoir wrote: | > Honestly, every ban should come with a public explanation | from the network, in order to deter similar behavior | | This only works on non-adversarial systems. Anywhere else, it | will be like handing over to bad actors (i.e. people whose | interests will _never_ align with operator 's) a list of | blindspots | noasaservice wrote: | "You have been found guilty of crimes in $State. Please | submit yourself to $state_prison on the beginning of the next | month. We're sorry, but we cannot tell you what you are | guilty of." | vkou wrote: | "Look, I'd like you to stop being a guest in my house, | you're being an asshole." | | "PLEASE ENUMERATE WHICH EXACT RULES I HAVE BROKEN AND | PROVIDE ME WITH AN IMPARTIAL AVENUE FOR APPEAL." | | --- | | When you're on a platform, you are a guest. When you live | in society, you don't have a choice about following the | rules. That's why most legal systems provide you with clear | avenues for redress and appeal in the latter, but most | private property does not. | 10000truths wrote: | Imagine for a moment what would happen if this rationale were | extended to the criminal justice system. Due process is | sanctified in law for a good reason. Incontestable | assumptions of adversarial intent are the slow but sure path | to the degradation of any community. | | There will _always_ be blind spots and malicious actors, no | matter how you structure your policies on content moderation. | Maintaining a thriving and productive community requires | active, human effort. Automated systems can be used to | counteract automated abuses, but at the end of the day, you | need _human_ discretion /judgement to fill those blind spots, | adjust moderation policies, proactively identify | troublemakers, and keep an eye on people toeing the line. | Spivak wrote: | Being cagey about the reasons for bans is | | 1. To keep people from cozying up to the electric fence. If | you don't know where the fence is you'll probably not risk | a shock trying to find it. There are other ways one can | accomplish this like bringing the banhammer down on | everyone near the fence every so often very publicly but | point 2 kinda makes that suck. | | 2. To not make every single ban a dog and pony show when | it's circulated around the blogspam sites. | | I'm not gonna pass judgement as to whether it's a good | thing or not but it's not at all surprising that companies | plead the 5th in the court of public opinion. | bink wrote: | Sorta related to (1) but not really: there are also more | "advanced" detection techniques that most sites use to | identify things like ban evasion and harassment using | multiple accounts. If they say "we identified that you | are the same person using this other account and have | reason to believe you've created this new account solely | to evade that ban" then people will start to learn what | techniques are being used to identify multiple accounts | and get better at evading detection. | sangnoir wrote: | > Imagine for a moment what would happen if this rationale | were extended to the criminal justice system. | | It already is! | | The criminal justice system is a perfect example of why | total information transparency is a terrible idea: _never | talk to the cops_ even if they just want to "get one thing | cleared up" - your intentions don't matter, you're being | given more rope to hang yourself with. | | It's an adversarial system where transparency gets you | little, but gains your adversary a whole lot. You should | not ever explain your every action and reasoning to the | cops without your lawyer telling you when to STFU. | | Due process is sanctified, but the criminal justice system | is self-aware enough to recognize that self-incrimination | is a hazard, and rightly does not place the burden on the | investigated/accused, why should other adversarial system | do less? | ascv wrote: | Honestly it seems like you didn't read the thread. He's not | talking about how Twitter itself works but about problems in | moderation more generally based on his experience at Reddit. | Also, he specifically advocates public disclosure on ban | justifications (though acknowledges it is a lot of work). | dang wrote: | He also makes an important and little-understood point about | asymmetry: the person who posts complaints about being | treated unfairly can say whatever they want about how they | feel they were treated, whereas the moderation side usually | can't disclose everything that happened, even when it would | disprove what that user is saying, because it's operating | under different constraints (e.g. privacy concerns). | Ironically, sometimes those constraints are there to protect | the very person who is making false and dramatic claims. It | sucks to be on that side of the equation but it's how the | game is played and the only thing you can really do is learn | how to take a punch. | roblabla wrote: | From my understanding, he's not claiming this is how twitter | currently works. He's offering advice about how to solve | content moderation on twitter. | dontknowwhyihn wrote: | He's offering advice that differs from what Reddit does in | practice. They absolutely ban content rather than behavior. | Try questioning "the science" and it doesn't matter how | considerate you are, you will be banned. | CountHackulus wrote: | He covers that further down in the tweets, near the end of | the thread. He doesn't necessarily agree with the Reddit | way of doing things, but it has interesting compromises wrt | privacy. | pixl97 wrote: | Because no one has developed a moderation framework based | on behavior. Content is (somewhat) easy, a simple regex can | capture that. Behavior is far more complicated and even | more subject to our biases. | bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: | He's specifically referring to Reddit's content moderation | which actually has two levels of bans. Bans by mods from a | specific subreddit are done by mods from that specific | subreddit and having an explanation isn't required but is | sometimes given - these bans apply to just the subreddit and | are more akin to a block by the community. Bans by admins | happen to people that have been breaking a site rule, not a | subreddit rule. | | Both types of bans have privacy issues that result in lack of | transparency with bans. | matchagaucho wrote: | tldr; Many posts on social media are "spam". Nobody objects to | spam filters. | | Therefore, treat certain types of content as spam (based on | metadata, not moderators). | ufo wrote: | In the US, where Twitter & Facebook are dominant, the current | consensus in the public mind is that political polarization and | radicalization are driven by the social media algorithms. | However, I have always felt that this explanation was lacking. | Here in Brazil we have many of the same problems but the dominant | social media are Whatsapp group chats, which have no algorithms | whatsoever (other than invisible spam filters). I think Yishan is | hitting the nail on the head by focusing the discussion on user | behavior instead of on the content itself. | MikePlacid wrote: | > I think Yishan is nailing the nail on the head by focusing | the discussion on user behavior instead of on the content | itself. | | But user behavior problem can be solved cheaply, easily and in | a scalable way: | | Give each user an ability to form the personal filter. | Basically, all what I need is: | | 1. I want to read what person A writes - always. | | 2. I want to read what person B writes - always, except when | talking to person C. | | 3. I want to peek through a filter of the person I like - to | discover more interesting to me persons. | | 4. Show me random people posts like 3-4 (configurable) times | per day. | | This is basically how my spinal brain worked in unmoderated | Fido-over-Usenet groups. Some server help will be great, sure, | but there is nothing here that is expensive or not scalable. | PS: centralized filtering is needed only when you are going | after some content, not noise. | ufo wrote: | I disagree, we can't frame this discussion on only the | content. My whatsapp "feed" is doing just fine. The problem | are all the other whatsapp groups that I'm not in, which are | filled with hateful politics. It hurts to when you meet in | real life a friend that you haven't met in a while, and then | find out that they've been radicalized. | | The radical Bolsonaro whatsapp groups are a mix of top down | and grass roots content. On one end there is the central | "propaganda office", or other top political articulators. On | the bottom are the grassroots group chats: neightborhoods, | churches, biker communities, office mates, etc. Memes and | viral content flow in both directions. The contents and | messages that ressonate in the lower levels get distributed | by the central articulators, which have a hierarchy of group | chats to circulate new propaganda as widely as possible. You | can see this happen in real time when a political conundrum | happens,e.g a corruption scandal. The central office will A-B | test various messages in their group chats and then the one | that resonates better with their base gets amplified and | suddenly they manage to "change the topic" on the news. The | end result is that we just had 4 years of political chaos, | where the modus operandi of the goverment was to put out | fires by deflecting the public discourse whenever a new | crisis emerged. It's not a problem of content itself, that | could be solved by a better filtration algorithm. It's a | deeper issue having to do with how quickly memetic ideas can | spread in this new world of social media. | originalvichy wrote: | I actually went into a deep dive of any statistical efforts | that showed bans on twitter based on American political | leanings. | | Apparently in both studies I found the most statistically | significant user behavior for bans was if the user had a | tendency to post articles from low quality online "news" sites. | | So essentially even the political controversy around moderation | boils down to the fact that one side, the right, is happily | posting low quality news/fake news that they either get banned | for disinformation or other rule-breaking behavior. | | https://psyarxiv.com/ay9q5 | leereeves wrote: | The first concern is identifying "fake news". | | One of the biggest political news stories of 2020, Hunter | Biden's laptop, was falsely declared misinformation, and the | NY Post was accused of being a low quality site. Now we know | it's true. | | On the other hand, the Steele Dossier was considered | legitimate news at the time and "many of the dossier's most | explosive claims...have never materialized or have been | proved false."[1]. | | So I'd like to know exactly what the study's authors | considered low-quality news, but unfortunately I couldn't | find a list in the paper you linked. In my experience, most | people tend to declare sources "high-quality" or "low- | quality" based on whether they share the same worldview. | | 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked- | pr... | haberman wrote: | I had the same skepticism as you, but the study authors did | attempt to be fair by letting a set of politically balanced | laypeople (equal number Democrat and Republican) adjudicate | the trustworthiness of sites. They also had journalists | rate the sites, but they present the results of both | results (layperson-rated and journalist-rated). | | I wish they had included the list so we could see for | ourselves. It's still possible that there are flaws in the | study. But the it appears to take the concern of fairness | more seriously than most. | nfgivivu wrote: | lifeisstillgood wrote: | This to me is a vital point. | | One of the things rarely touched on about Twitter / FB et al | are that they are transmission platforms and then a discovery / | recommendation layer on top. | | The "algorithm" is this layer on top and it is assumed that | this actively sorts people into their bubbles and people | passively follow - there is much discussion about splitting the | companies AT&T style to improve matters. | | But countries where much of the discourse is on WhatsApp do not | have WhatsApp to do this recommendation - it is done IRL | (organically) - and people actively sort themselves. | | The problem is not (just) the social media companies. It lies | in us. | | The solution if we are all mired in the gutter of social media, | is to look up and reach for the stars. | monksy wrote: | > No, what`s really going to happen is that everyone on council | of wise elders will get tons of death threats, eventually quit... | | Yep if you can't stand being called an n* (or other racial slurs) | don't be a reddit moderator. Also I've been called a hillary boot | licker and a trump one. | | Being a reddit moderator isn't for the thin of skinned.I hosted | social meetups so this could have run out in the real | world..Luckily I had a strong social support in the group where | that would have been taken care of real quick. I've only had one | guy that tried to threaten to come and be disruptive at one of | the meetups. He did come out. He did meet me. | | ---- | | > even outright flamewars are typically beneficial for a small | social network: | | He's absolutely correct. It also helps to define community | boundries and avoid extremism. A lot of this "don't be mean" | culture only endorses moderators stepping in and dictating how a | community talks and how people who disagree are officially | bullied. | fuckHNtho wrote: | tldr tangential babbling that HN protects and wants us to | admire...because reddit YC darlings. it almost makes me feel | nostalgic. | | Why are we to take yishan as an authority on content moderation, | have you BEEN to reddit?! the kind of moderation of repetitive | content he's referring to is clearly not done AT ALL. | | He does not put forth any constructive advice. be "operationally | excellent". ok, thanks. you're wrong about spam. you're wrong | about content moderation. ok, thanks. who is his audience? he's | condescending the people who are dialed into online discourse | inbetween finding new fun ways to plant trees and design an | indulgent hawaiian palace. i expected more insight, to be honest. | but time and time again we find the people at the top of internet | companies are disappointingly common in their perspective on the | world. they just happened to build something great once and it | earned them a lifetime soapbox ticket. | | ok, thanks. | P_I_Staker wrote: | Key word here: ex (joking)... but seriously I'm absolutely | baffled why someone would look to a former reddit exec for advice | on moderation. | | I guess you could say that they have experience, having made all | the mistakes, and figured it out through trial and error! This | seems to be his angle. | | What I got from the whole reddit saga is how horrible the | decision making was, and won't be looking to them for sage | advice. These people are an absolute joke. | mikkergp wrote: | Who is doing a good job at scale? Is there really anyone we can | look to other than people who "have experience, having made all | the mistakes, and figured it out through trial and error"? | P_I_Staker wrote: | Sorry if this wasn't clear, but that's just his perspective. | Mine is that they're a bunch of clowns with little to offer | anyone. Who cares what this person thinks more than you, I, | or a player for the Miami Dolphins. | | Twitter is going to have to moderate at least exploitative | and a ton of abusive content, eventually. I don't understand | how this rant is helpful in the slightest. Seemed like a | bunch of mumbo jumbo. | | You do have a good point about there not being very many good | actors, if any. | dbbk wrote: | Who cares what this person thinks? They actually have | experience tackling the problem. You or I have never been | in a position of tackling the problem. Of course I am | interested in the experience of someone who has seen this | problem inside and out. | armchairhacker wrote: | I wonder if the problems the author describes can be solved by | artifically downvoting and not showing spam and flamewar content, | not banning people. | | - Spam: don't show it to anyone, since nobody wants to see it. | Repeatedly saying the same thing will get your posts heavily | downvoted or just coalesced into a single post. | | - Flamewars: again, artifically downvote them so that your | average viewer doesn't even see them (if they aren't naturally | downvoted). And also discourage people from participating, maybe | by explicitly adding the text "this seems like a stupid thing to | argue about" onto the thread and next to the reply button. The | users who persist in flaming each other and then get upset, at | that point you don't really want them on your platform anyways | | - Insults, threats, etc: again, hide and reword them. If it | detects someone is sending an insult or threat, collapse it into | "<insult>" or "<threat>" so that people know the content of | what's being sent but not the emotion (though honestly, you | probably should ban threats altogether). You can actually do this | for all kinds of vitriolic, provocative language. If someone | wants to hear it, they can expand the "<insult>" bubble, the | point is that most people probably don't. | | It's an interesting idea for a social network. Essentially, | instead of banning people and posts outright, down-regulate them | and collapse what they are saying while remaining the content. So | their "free speech" is preserved, but they are not bothering | anyone. If they complain about "censorship", you can point out | that the First Amendment doesn't require anyone to hear you, and | people _can_ hear you if they want to, but the people have | specified and algorithm detects that they don 't. | | EDIT: Should also add that Reddit actually used to be like this, | where subreddits had moderators but admins were very hands-off | (actually just read about this yesterday). And it resulted in | jailbait and hate subs (and though this didn't happen, could have | resulted in dangerous subs like KiwiFarms). I want to make clear | that I still think that content should be banned. But that | content isn't what the author is discussing here: he is | discussing situations where "behavior" gets people banned and | then they complain that their (tame) content is being censored. | Those are the people who should be down-regulated and text | collapsed instead of banned. | pluc wrote: | Reddit uses an army of free labour to moderate. | ConanRus wrote: | jamisteven wrote: | How about, dont moderate it? Just, let it be. | jameskilton wrote: | Every single social media platform that has ever existed makes | the same fundamental mistake. They believe that they just have to | remove or block the bad actors and bad content and that will make | the platform good. | | The reality is _everyone_ , myself included, can be and will be a | bad actor. | | How do you build and run a "social media" product when the very | act of letting anyone respond to anyone with anything is itself | the fundamental problem? | [deleted] | onion2k wrote: | _The reality is everyone, myself included, can be and will be a | bad actor._ | | Based on this premise we can conclude that the best way to | improve Reddit and Twitter is to block everyone. | madeofpalk wrote: | To be honest, I would not disagree with that. Very 'the only | winning move is not to play'. | PM_me_your_math wrote: | To be honest, and maybe this will be panned, but the real | answer is for people to grow thicker skin and stop putting | one's feelings on a pedestal above all. | mikkergp wrote: | Interesting, that wasn't my interpretation of the twitter | thread, it was more that spam and not hurtful content was | the real tricky thing about moderating social media. | chipotle_coyote wrote: | Spam was more of an example than the point, I think -- | the argument Yishan is making is that moderation isn't | for _content,_ it 's for _behavior._ The problem is that | if bad behavior is tied to partisan and /or controversial | content, which it often is, people react as if the | moderation is about the content. | pwinnski wrote: | When _I_ make comments about _other_ people, they need to | grow thicker skin. | | When _other_ people attack _me_ personally, it 's a deep | and dangerous violation of social norms. | madeofpalk wrote: | I don't block people because they hurt my feelings, i | block people because im just not interested in seeing | bird watching content on my timeline. No one deserves my | eyeballs. | dang wrote: | That's asking human nature to change, or at least asking | almost everyone to work on their trauma until they don't | get so activated. Neither will happen soon, so this can't | be the real answer. | horsawlarway wrote: | Look - I don't even particularly disagree with you, but I | want to point out a problem with this approach. | | I'm 33. I grew up playing multiplayer video games | (including having to run a db9 COM cable across the house | from one machine to another to play warcraft 2 | multiplayer, back when you had to explicitly pick the | protocol for the networking in the game menu) | | My family worked with computers, so I had DSL since I | have memories. I played a ton of online games. The | communities are _BRUTAL_. They are insulting, abusive, | misogynistic, racist, etc... the spectrum of unmonitored | teenage angst, in all it 's ugly forms (and to be fair, | some truly awesome folks and places). | | As a result - I have a really thick skin about basically | everything said online. But a key difference between the | late 90s and today, is that if I wanted it to stop, all I | had to do was close the game I was playing. Done. | | Most social activities were in person, not online. I | could walk to my friend's houses. I could essentially | tune out all the bullshit by turning off my computer, and | there was plenty of other stuff to go do where the | computer wasn't involved at all. | | I'm not convinced that's enough anymore. The computer is | in your pocket. It's always on. Your social life is | probably half online, half in person. Your school work is | online. Your family is online. your reputation is online | (as evidenced by those fucking blue checkmarks). The | abuse is now on a highway into your life, even if you | want to turn it off. | | It's like the school bully is now waiting for you | everywhere. He's not waiting at school - he's stepping | into the private conversations you're having online. He's | talking to your friends. He's hurling abuse at you when | you look at your family photos. He's _in_ your life in a | way that just wasn 't possible before. | | I don't think it's fair to say "Just grow a thicker skin" | in response to that. I think growing a thicker skin is | desperately needed, but I don't think it's sufficient. | The problem is deeper. | | We have a concept for people who do the things these | users are doing on twitter in person - They're called | fighting words, and most times, legally (even in the US) | there is _zero_ assumption of protected speech here. You | say bad shit about someone with the goal of riling them | up and no other value? You have no right of free speech, | because you aren 't "speaking" - you're trying to start a | fight. | | I'm not protecting your ability to bully someone. Full | stop. If you want to do that, do it with the clear | understanding that you're on your own, and regardless of | how thick my skin is - I think you need a good slap | upside the head. I'd cheer it on. | | In person - this resolves itself because the fuckwads who | do this literally get physically beaten. Not always - but | often enough we have a modicum of civil discussion we | accept, and a point where no one is going to defend you | because you were a right little cunt, and the beating was | well deserved. | | I don't know how you simulate the same constraint online. | I'm not entirely sure you can, but I think the answer | isn't to just stop trying. | ryandrake wrote: | > The computer is in your pocket. It's always on. Your | social life is probably half online, half in person. Your | school work is online. Your family is online. your | reputation is online (as evidenced by those fucking blue | checkmarks). The abuse is now on a highway into your | life, even if you want to turn it off. | | It is still a choice to participate online. I'm not on | Twitter or Facebook or anything like that. It doesn't | affect my life in the slightest. Someone could be on | there right this minute calling me names, and it can't | bother me because I don't see it, and I don't let it into | my life. This is not a superpower, it's a choice to not | engage with social media and all the ills it brings. | | Have I occasionally gotten hate mail from an HN post? | Sure. I even got a physical threat over E-mail (LOL good | luck, guy). If HN ever became as toxic as social media | can be, I could just stop posting and reading. Problem | solved. Online is not real if you just ignore it. | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | The attitude of "If you don't like it, leave!" is | allowing the bullies to win. | | Minorities, both racial and gender, should be able to use | social media without having vitriol spewed at them | because they're guilty of being a minority. | pjc50 wrote: | Paul Pelosi's skin wasn't thick enough to deflect | hammers. | | (OK, that wasn't a twitter problem, but the attack on him | was 100% a product of unmoderated media in general) | PM_me_your_math wrote: | I respectfully disagree. Beyond the reason that there is | no way you can be 100% certain 'unmoderated media' was | the primary motivator. Nobody can presume to know his | motivations or inner dialogue. A look at that mans | history shows clear mental health issues and self- | destructive behavior so we can infer some things but | never truly know. | | Violence exists outside of mean tweets and political | rhetoric. People, even crazy ones, almost always have | their own agency even if it runs contrary to what most | consider to be normal thoughts and behavior. They choose | to act, regardless of others and mostly without concern | or conscious. There are crazy people out there and | censoring others wont ever stop bad people from doing bad | things. If so, then how do we account for the evils done | by those prior to our inter-connected world? | krtzulo wrote: | We really don't know much. The attacker used drugs, his | ex partner said the he went away for year and came back a | changed person. | | He lived in a community with BLM signs and a rainbow | flag. He did hemp jewellry. | | He registered a website three months ago and only | recently filled it with standard extreme right garbage. | | This is all so odd that for all we know someone else | radicalized him offline, the old fashioned way. | rchaud wrote: | You hit the nail on the head, but maybe the other way around. | | "Block" and "Mute" are the Twitter user's best friends. They | keep the timeline free of spam, be it advertisers, or the | growth hackers creating useless threads of Beginner 101 info | and racking up thousands of likes. | gorbachev wrote: | After using several communications tools over the past | couple of decades (BBSes, IRC, Usenet, AIM, plus the ones | kids these days like), I'm convinced blocking and/or muting | is required for any digital mass communication tool anyone | other than sociopaths would use. | MichaelZuo wrote: | Doesn't Twitter give the option of a whitelist (Just who you | follow + their retweets) already? | mikkergp wrote: | Not really, even the it still does recommended tweets and I | don't want to see retweets or likes and you have to turn | that off per person. | fknorangesite wrote: | Yes, really. I never see 'recommended' or 'so-and-so | liked...' in my feed. | the_only_law wrote: | I had to create a new account after losing mine, and | without following many people it seems like easily 30-50% | of my feed is recommended content. | fknorangesite wrote: | There are "home" and "newest" feeds. I agree it's shitty | that the default shows this stuff, but you just have to | switch it over to "newest." | leephillips wrote: | Yes really: you can get this experience with Twitter: | https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/ | mikkergp wrote: | Edit: I apologize that my original post was dismissive of | your effort to help people use twitter. | leephillips wrote: | Don't worry about it. I didn't exactly understand your | original comment, but I don't have a problem with people | having opinions. | MichaelZuo wrote: | That's unnecessarily dismissive of someone trying their | best to share some tips. It's not like they charged you | to read it. | mikkergp wrote: | Fair enough it wasn't meant to be a commentary on them, | but I will edit with an apology | thrown_22 wrote: | Invictus0 wrote: | I'm not a bad actor, I only have 3 tweets and they're all | reasonable IMO. So your premise is wrong. | phillipcarter wrote: | > The reality is everyone, myself included, can be and will be | a bad actor. | | But you likely aren't, and most people likely aren't either. | That's the entire premise behind removing bad actors and spaces | that allow bad actors to grow. | pessimizer wrote: | > But you likely aren't, and most people likely aren't | either. | | Is there any evidence of this? 1% bad content can mean that | 1% of your users are bad actors, or it can mean that 100% of | your users are bad actors 1% of the time (or anything in | between.) | munificent wrote: | I assume all of us have evidence of this in our daily | lives. | | Even the best people we know have bad days. But you have | probably also encountered people in your life who have | consistent patterns of being selfish, destructive, toxic, | or harmful. | pessimizer wrote: | > you have probably also encountered people in your life | who have consistent patterns of being selfish, | destructive, toxic, or harmful. | | This is not evidence that most bad acts are done by bad | people. This is evidence that I've met people who've | annoyed or harmed me at one or more points, and projected | my personal annoyance into my fantasies of their internal | states or of their _essence._ Their "badness" could | literally have only consisted of the things that bothered | me, and during the remaining 80% of the time (that I | wasn't concerned with) they were tutoring orphans in | math. | | Somebody who is "bad" 100% of the time on twitter could | be bad 0% of the time off twitter, and vice-versa. Other | people's personalities aren't reactions to our values and | feelings; they're as complex as you are. | | As the OP says: our definitions of "badness" in this | context are of _commercial_ badness. Are they annoying | our profitable users? | | edit: and to add a bit - if you have a diverse userbase, | you should expect them to annoy each other at a pretty | high rate with absolutely no malice. | simple-thoughts wrote: | Your logic makes sense but is not how these moderation | services actually work. When I used my own phone number to | create a Twitter, I was immediately banned. So instead I | purchased an account from a service with no issues. It's | become impossible for me at least to use large platforms | without assistance from an expert who runs bot farms to build | accounts that navigate the secret rules that govern bans. | cwkoss wrote: | Spam is a behavior, not a fundamental trait of the actor. | | Would be interesting to make a service where spammers have to | do recaptcha-like spam flagging to get their account | unlocked. | fragmede wrote: | Which definition of spam are you operating under? I think | it _is_ a fundamental trait of the actor. | pessimizer wrote: | So you would expect a spammer to only ever post spam, | even on their own personal account? Or a spam emailer to | never send a personal email? | fragmede wrote: | I know sales bros who live their live by their ABCs - | always be closing, but that's besides the point. if the | person behind the spam bot one day wakes up and decides | to do turn over a new leaf and something else with their | life, they're not going to use the buyC1alis@vixagra.com | email address they use for sending spam as the basis for | their new persona. thus sending spam is inherit to the | buyC1alis@vixagra.com identity that we see - of course | there's a human being behind it, but as we'll never know | them in ant other context, that is who they are to us. | stouset wrote: | > and spaces that allow bad actors to grow | | I believe that's GP's point! Any of us has the potential to | be the bad actor in some discussion that gets us irrationally | worked up. Maybe that chance is low for you or I, but it's | never totally zero. | | And _even if_ the chance is zero for you or I specifically, | there 's no way for the site operators to a priori know that | fact or to be able to predict which users will suddenly | become bad actors and which discussions will trigger it. | pixl97 wrote: | I think the point is that anyone and/or everyone can be a bad | actor in the right circumstances, and moderations job is to | prevent those circumstances. | edgyquant wrote: | We have laws around mobs and peaceful protest for a reason. | Even the best people can become irrational as a group. The | groupmind is what we need controls for: not good and bad | people. | dgant wrote: | This is something Riot Games has spoken on, the observation | that ordinary participants can have a bad day here or there, | and that forgiving corrections can preserve their participation | while reducing future incidents. | synu wrote: | Did Riot eventually sort out the toxic community? If so that | would be amazing, and definitely relevant. I stopped playing | when it was still there, and it was a big part of the reason | I stopped. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | The only success I've seen in sorting out random vitriol is | cutting chat off entirely and minimizing methods of passive | aggressive communication. But Nintendo's online services | haven't exactly scaled to the typical MOBA size to see how | it actually works out | ketzo wrote: | Anecdotally: outright flame / chat hate is a bit better | than it used to be, but not much. | zahrc wrote: | I've been playing very very active from 2010 to 2014 and | since then on-off, sometimes skipping a season. | | Recently picked it up again and I noticed that I didn't had | to use /mute all anymore. I've got all-chat disabled by | default so I've got no experience there, but overall I'd | say it has come a long way. | | But I'd also say it depends which mode and MMR you are in. | I mostly play draft pick normals or ARAMs in which I both | have a lot of games played - I heard from a mate that chat | is unbearable in low level games. | gambler wrote: | It's not a mistake. It's a PR strategy. Social media companies | are training people to blame content and each other for the | effects that are produced by design, algorithms and moderation. | This reassigns blame away from things that those companies | control (but don't want to change) to things that aren't | considered "their fault". | stcredzero wrote: | The original post is paradoxical in the very way it talks about | social media being paradoxical. | | He observes that social media moderation is about signal to | noise. Then he goes on about introducing off-topic noise. Then, | he comes to conclusions that seem to ignore his original | conclusion about it being a S/N problem. | | Chiefly, he doesn't show how a "council of elders" is necessary | to solve S/N problems. | | Strangely enough, Slashdot seems to have a system which worked | pretty well back in the day. | bombcar wrote: | I think the key is that no moderation can withstand _outside_ | pressure. A community can be entirely consistent and happy | but the moment outside pressure is applied it folds or falls. | stcredzero wrote: | Slashdot moderation is largely done by the users | themselves, acting anonymously as "meta-moderators." I | think they were inspired by Plato's ideas around partially | amnesiac legislators who forget who they are while | legislating. | paul7986 wrote: | Having a a verified public Internet /Reputation ID system for | those who want to be bad or good publicly is one way! | | All others are just trolls not backed up by their verified | public Internet / Reputation ID. | P_I_Staker wrote: | At the very least you could be susceptible overreacting because | of an emotionally charged issue. Eg. Reddit's boston marathon | bomber disaster, when they started trying to round up brown | people (actual perp "looked white") | | Maybe that wouldn't be your crusade and maybe you would think | you were standing up for an oppressed minority. You get overly | emotional, and you could be prone to making some bad decisions. | | People act substantially differently on reddit vs. hackernews; | honestly I have to admit to being guilty of it. Some of the | cool heads here are probably simultaneously engaged in | flamewars on reddit/twitter. | esotericimpl wrote: | Charge them $10 to create an account (anonymous, real, parody | whatever), then if they break a rule give them a warning, 2 | rule breaks, a 24 hour posting suspension, 3 strikes and | permanently ban the account. | | Let them reregister for $10. | | Congrats, i just solved spam, bots, assholes and permanent line | steppers. | etchalon wrote: | You solved bots, but destroyed the product. | lancesells wrote: | I don't even know if it solved bots. Rich countries, rich | organizations, rich people could do a lot. $100M would buy | you 10M bots. | cvwright wrote: | I think the idea is that it shifts the incentives. Sure, | a rich nation state could buy tons of bot accounts at $10 | a pop. But is that still the most rational path to their | goal? Probably not, because there are lots of other | things you can do for $100M. | trynewideas wrote: | I mean, who here remembers app.net? Love the Garry Tan | endorsement! https://web.archive.org/web/20120903182620/htt | ps://join.app.... | | EDIT: Lol Dalton's PART of YC now. Hey dude, why not pitch | it then | DeanWormer wrote: | This was the strategy at the SomethingAwful forums. They | seemed pretty well moderated, but definitely never hit the | scale of Reddit or Twitter. | v64 wrote: | Having posted there in its heyday, it made for an | interesting self-moderation dynamic for sure. Before I | posted something totally offbase that I knew I'd be | punished for, I had to think "is saying this stupid shit | really worth $10 to me?". Many times that was enough to get | me to pause (but sometimes you also can't help yourself and | it's well worth the price). | pfortuny wrote: | The problem is _the meaning of those rules_. Any rule looks | reasonable when it is written down. And after some time it | becomes a weapon. | | For instance, the three deletions (forget the exact term) | rule in wikipedia. It is now a tool used by "the first to | write"... | dwater wrote: | This is how the SomethingAwful forums operated when they | started charging for accounts. Unfortunately it probably | wouldn't be useful as a test case because it was/is, at it's | core, a shitposting site. | rsync wrote: | I think metafilter still does this ? | nebqr wrote: | And twitter isn't? | pixl97 wrote: | Unless you generate more than $10 from the account. For | example in presidential election years in the US billions is | spent in advertising the elections. A few PACs would gladly | throw cash at astroturf movements on social media even at the | risk of being banned. | pessimizer wrote: | Sounds good to me. That would mean that your energy in | moderation would directly result in income. If superpacs | are willing to pay $3.33 a message, that's a money-spinner. | pclmulqdq wrote: | This kind of thing worked for a few forums that tried it | before FB/Twitter came around. | Covzire wrote: | Give the user exclusive control over what content they can see. | The platform should enforce legal actions against users only, | as far as bans are concerned. | | Everything else, like being allowed to spam or post too | quickly, is a bug, and bugs should be addressed in the open. | visarga wrote: | > The reality is everyone, myself included, can be and will be | a bad actor. | | Customised filters for anyone, but I am talking about filters | completely under the control of the user. Maybe running | locally. We can wrap ourselves in a bubble but better that than | having a bubble designed by others. | | I think AI will make spam irrelevant over the next decade by | switching from searching and reading to prompting the bot. You | don't ever need to interface with the filth, you can have your | polite bot present the results however you please. It can be | your conversation partner and you get to control its biases as | well. | | Internet <-> AI agent <-> Human | | (the web browser of the future, the actual web browser runs in | a sandbox under the AI) | swayvil wrote: | I'll raise you a forum-trained AI spambot to defeat the AI | spamfilter. It'll be an entirely automated arms race. | Melatonic wrote: | Not true at all - everyone has the capacity for bad behaviour | in the right circumstances but most people are not, in my | opinion, there intentionally to be trolls. | | There are the minority who love to be trolls and get any big | reaction out of people (positive or negative). Those people are | the problem. But they are also often very good at evading | moderation or laying in wait and toeing the line between | bannable offences and just every so slightly controversial | comments. | bnralt wrote: | Some people are much more likely to engage in bad behavior than | others. The thing is, people who engage in bad behavior are | also much more likely to be "whales," excessive turboposters | who have no life and spend all day on these sites. | | Someone who has a balanced life, who spends time at work, with | family, in nature, only occasionally goes online, uses most of | their online time for edification, spends 30 minutes writing a | reply if they decide one is warranted - that type of person is | going to have a minuscule output compared to the whales. The | whales are always online, thoughtlessly writing responses and | upvoting without reading articles or comments. They have a | constant firehouse of output that dwarfs other users. | | Worth reading "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written | by Insane People"[1]. | | If you actually saw these people in real life, chances are | you'd avoid interacting with them. People seeing a short | interview with the top mod of antiwork almost destroyed that | sub (and lead to the mod stepping down). People say the | internet is a bad place because people act badly when they're | not face to face. That might be true to some extent, but we're | given online spaces where it's hard to avoid "bad actors" (or | people that engage in excessive bad behavior) the same way we | would in person. | | And these sites need the whales, because they rely on a | constant stream of low quality content to keep people engaged. | There are simple fixes that could be done, like post limits and | vote limits, but sites aren't going to implement them. It's | easier to try to convince people that humanity is naturally | terrible than to admit they've created an environment that | enables - and even relies on - some of the most unbalanced | individuals. | | [1] | https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most... | ajmurmann wrote: | It sounds like a insurmountable problem. What makes this even | more interesting to me is that HN seems to have this working | pretty well. I wonder how much of it has to do with clear | guidelines of what should be valued and what shouldn't and | having a community that buys in to that. For example one learns | quickly that Reddit-style humor comments are frowned upon | because the community enforces it with downvotes and frequently | explanations of etiquette. | etchalon wrote: | I suspect HN succeeds due to heavy moderation, explicit | community guidelines and a narrow topic set. | blep_ wrote: | Some areas of reddit do similar things with similar | results. AskHistorians and AskScience are the first two to | come to mind. | | This may be a lot easier in places where there's an | explicit _point_ to discussion beyond the discussion itself | - StackOverflow is another non-Reddit example. It 's easier | to tell people their behavior is unconstructive when it's | clearly not contributing to the goal. HN's thing may just | be to declare a particular type of conversation to be the | goal. | vkou wrote: | HN works very well, because it's about as far from free | speech as you can get on the internet, short of dang | personally approving every post. | swayvil wrote: | It's proof of the old adage : the best possible government | is a benign dictator. | theGnuMe wrote: | I think most posts are short lived so they drop off quickly | and people move on to new content. I think a lot of folks | miss a lot of activity that way. I know I miss a bunch. And | if you miss the zeitgeist it doesn't matter what you say | cause nobody will reply. | | The twitter retweet constantly amplifies and the tweets are | centered around an account vs a post. | | Reddit should behave similarly but I think subreddit topics | stick longer. | luckylion wrote: | Very good point about the "fog of war". If HN had a | reply-notification feature, it would probably look | differently. Every now and then someone builds a | notification feature as an external service. I wonder if | you can measure change in the behavior of people before | and after they've started using it? | | Of course, that also soft-forces everyone to move on. | Once a thread is a day or two old, you can still reply, | but the person you've replied to will probably not read | it. | rjbwork wrote: | There's also the fact that there's no alerts about people | replying to you or commenting on your posts. You have to | explicitly go into your profile, click comments, and | _then_ you can see _if_ anyone has said anything to you. | | This drastically increases time between messages on a | topic, lets people cool off, and lets a topic naturally | die down. | prox wrote: | What kind of free speech is not allowed? What can't you say | right now that you feel should? | ajmurmann wrote: | Category 1 from Yishan's thread, spam, obviously isn't | allowed. But also thinking about house general framework | of it all coming down to signal vs noise, most "noise" | gets heavily punished on here. Reddit-style jokes | frequently end in the light greys or even dead. I had my | account shadow-banned over a decade ago because I made a | penis joke and thought people didn't get the joke. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | Free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever, wherever, | without any repercussions. It solely means the government | can't restrict your expression. On a private platform you | abide their rules. | michaelt wrote: | Where are the people arguing about Donald Trump? Where | are the people promoting dodgy cryptocurrencies? Where | are the people arguing about fighting duck-sized horses? | Where's the Ask HN asking for TV show recommendations? | slg wrote: | If we follow the logic of Yishan's thread, HN frowns upon and | largely doesn't allow discussion that would fall into group 3 | which removes most of the grounds for accusations of | political and other biases in the moderation. As Yishan says, | no one really cares about banning groups 1 and 2, so no one | objects to when that is done here. | | Plus scale is a huge factor. Automated moderation can have | its problems. Human moderation is expensive and hard to keep | consistent if there are large teams of individuals that can't | coordinate on everything. HN's size and its lack of desire | for profit allow for a very small human moderation team that | leads to consistency because it is always the same people | making the decisions. | rsync wrote: | I have a suspicion that the medium is the message at HN: | | No pictures and no avatars. | | I wonder how much bad behavior is weeded out by the interface | itself ? | | A lot, I suspect ... | jdp23 wrote: | Nope. There's been abuse in text-only environments online | since forever. And lots of people have left (or rarely post | on) HN because of complaints about the enviroment here. | ChainOfFools wrote: | > No pictures and no avatars | | This is essentially moderation rule #0. it is unwritten, | enforced before violation can occur, and generates zero | complaints because it filters complainers out of the user | pool from the start. | luckylion wrote: | The no-avatars rule also takes away some of the | personalization aspect. If you set your account up with | your nickname, your fancy unique profile picture and your | favorite quote in the signature, and someone says you're | wrong, you're much more invested because you've tied some | of your identity to the account. | | If you've just arrived on the site, have been given a | random name and someone says you're wrong, what do you | care? You're not attached to that account at all, it's | not "you", it's just a random account on a random | website. | | I thought that was an interesting point on 4chan (and | probably other sites before them), that your identity was | set per thread (iirc they only later introduced the | ability to have permanent accounts). That removes the | possibility of you becoming attached to the random name. | dfxm12 wrote: | _How do you build and run a "social media" product when the | very act of letting anyone respond to anyone with anything is | itself the fundamental problem?_ | | This isn't the problem as much as giving bad actors tools to | enhance their reach. Bad actors can pay to get a wider reach or | get/abuse a mark of authority, like a special tag on their | handle, getting highlighted in a special place within the app, | gaming the algorithm that promotes some content, etc. Most of | these tools are built into the platform. Some though, like sock | puppets, can be detected but aren't necessarily built in | functionality. | bambax wrote: | You're confusing _bad actors_ with _bad behavior_. Bad behavior | is something good people do from time to time because they get | really worked up about a specific topic or two. Bad actors are | people who act bad all the time. There may be some of those but | they 're not the majority by far (and yes, sometimes normal | people turn into bad actors because they get upset about a | given thing that they can't talk about anything else anymore). | | OP's argument is that you can moderate content based on | behavior, in order to bring the heat down, and the signal to | noise ratio up. I think it's an interesting point: it's neither | the tools that need moderating, nor the people, but | _conversations_ (one by one). | rlucas wrote: | ++ | | A giant amount of social quandaries melt away when you | realize: | | "Good guys" and "Bad guys" is not a matter of identity, it's | a matter of activity. | | You aren't a "Good guy" because of _who you are_ , but | because of _what you do_. | | There are vanishingly few people who as a matter of identity | are reliably and permanently one way or another. | dang wrote: | I think that's right. One benefit this has: if you can make | the moderation about behavior (I prefer the word effects [1]) | rather than about the person, then you have a chance to | persuade them to behave differently. Some people, maybe even | most, adjust their behavior in response to feedback. Over | time, this can compound into community-level effects (culture | etc.) - that's the hope, anyhow. I _think_ I 've seen such | changes on HN but the community/culture changes so slowly | that one can easily deceive oneself. There's no question it | happens at the individual user level, at least some of the | time. | | Conversely, if you make the moderation about the person | (being a bad actor etc.) then the only way they can agree | with you is by regarding themselves badly. That's a weak | position for persuasion! It almost compels them to resist | you. | | I try to use depersonalized language for this reason. Instead | of saying " _you_ " did this (yeah that's right, YOU), I'll | tell someone that their _account_ is doing something, or that | their _comment_ is a certain way. This creates distance | between their account or their comment and _them_ , which | leaves them freer to be receptive and to change. | | Someone will point out or link to cases where I did the exact | opposite of this, and they'll be right. It's hard to do | consistently. Our emotional programming points the other way, | which is what makes this stuff hard and so dependent on self- | awareness, which is the scarcest thing and not easily added | to [2]. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33454968 | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33448079 | bombcar wrote: | The other tricky thing is a bad actor will work to stay | just this side of the rules while still causing damage and | destruction to the forum itself. | dang wrote: | Yes. But in our experience to date, this is less common | than people say it is, and there are strategies for | dealing with it. One such strategy is https://hn.algolia. | com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... (sorry I | don't have time to explain this, as I'm about to go | offline - but the key word is 'primarily'.) No strategy | works in all cases though. | jimkleiber wrote: | > I try to use depersonalized language for this reason. | Instead of saying "you" did this (yeah that's right, YOU), | I'll tell someone that their account is doing something, or | that their comment is a certain way. This creates distance | between their account or their comment and them, which | leaves them freer to be receptive and to change. | | I feel quite excited to read that you, dang, moderating HN, | use a similar technique that I use for myself and try to | teach others. Someone told my good friend the other day | that he wasn't being a very good friend to me, and I told | him that he may do things that piss me off, annoy me, | confuse me, or whatever, but he will always be a good | friend to me. I once told an Uber driver who told me he | just got out of jail and was a bad man, I said, "No, you're | a good man who probably did a bad thing." | | Thank you for your write-up. | user3939382 wrote: | > persuade the user to behave differently | | That scares me. Today's norms are tomorrow's taboos. The | dangers of conforming and shaping everyone into the least | controversial opinions and topics are self evident. It's an | issue on this very forum. "Go elsewhere" doesn't solve the | problem because that policy still contributes to a self- | perpetuating feedback loop that amplifies norms, which | often happen to be corrupt and related to the interests of | big (corrupt) commercial and political powers. | dang wrote: | I don't mean persuade them out of their opinions on | $topic! I mean persuade them to express their opinions in | a thoughtful, curious way that doesn't break the site | guidelines - | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. | user3939382 wrote: | Sufficiently controversial opinions are flagged, | downvoted til dead/hidden, or associated users shadow | banned. HN's policies and voting system, both de facto | and de jure, discourage controversial opinions and reward | popular, conformist opinions. | | That's not to pick on HN, since this is a common problem. | Neither do I have a silver bullet solution, but the issue | remains, and it's a huge issue. Evolution of norms, for | better or worse, is suppressed to the extent that big | communication platforms suppress controversy. The whole | concept of post and comment votes does this by | definition. | dang wrote: | That's true to an extent (and so is what ativzzz says, so | you're both right). But the reasons for what you're | talking about are much misunderstood. Yishan does a good | job of going into some of them in the OP, by the way. | | People always reach immediately for the conclusion that | their controversial-opinion comments are getting | moderated because people dislike their controversial | opinion--either because of groupthink in the community or | because the admins are hostile to their views. Most of | the time, though, they've larded their comments pre- | emptively with some sort of hostility, snark, name- | calling, or other aggression--no doubt because they | expect to be opposed and want to make it clear they | already know that, don't care what the sheeple think, and | so on. | | The way the group and/or the admins respond to those | comments is often a product of those secondary mixins. | Forgive the gross analogy, but it's as if someone serves | a shit milkshake and when it's rejected, say, "you just | hate dairy products" or "this community is so biased | against milkshakes". | | If you start instead from the principle that the value of | a comment is the expected value of the subthread it forms | the root of [1], then a commenter is responsible for the | effects of their comments [2] - at least the predictable | ones. From that it follows that there's a greater burden | on the commenter who's expressing a contrarian view [3]. | The more contrarian the view--the further it falls | outside the community's tolerance--the more | responsibility that commenter has for not triggering | degenerative effects like flamewars. | | This may be counterintuitive, because we're used to | thinking in terms of atomic individual responsibility, | but it's a model that actually works. Threads are | molecules, not atoms--they're a cocreation, like one of | those drawing games where each person fills in part of a | shared picture [4], or like a dance--people respond to | the other's movements. A good dancer takes the others | into account. | | It may be unfair that the one with a contrarian view is | more responsible for what happens--especially because | they're already under greater pressure than the one whose | views agree with the surround. But fair or not, it's the | way communication works. If you're trying to deliver | challenging information to someone, you have to take that | person into account--you have to regulate what you say by | what the listener is capable to hear and to tolerate. | Otherwise you're predictably going to dysregulate them | and ruin the conversation. | | Contrarian commenters usually do the opposite of this-- | they express their contrarian opinion in a deliberately | aggressive and uncompromising way, probably because (I'm | repeating myself sorry) they expect to be rejected | anyhow, and it's safer to be inside the armor of "you | people can't handle the truth!" than it is to really | communicate, i.e. to connect and relate. | | This model is the last thing that most contrarian-opinion | commenters want to adopt, because it's hard and risky, | and because usually they have pre-existing hurt feelings | from being battered repeatedly with majoritarian opinions | already (especially the case when identity is at issue, | such as being from a minority population along whatever | axis). But it's a model that actually works and it's by | far the best solution I know of to the problem of | unconventional opinions in forums. | | Are there some opinions which are so far beyond the | community's tolerance that any mention in any form will | immediately blow up the thread, making the above model | impossible? Yes. | | [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=t | rue&sor... | | [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=t | rue&sor... | | [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=t | rue&que... | | [4[ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226 | ativzzz wrote: | Completely disagree about HN. Controversial topics that | are thought out, well formed, and argued with good intent | are generally good sources of discussion. | | Most of the time though, people arguing controversial | topics phrase them so poorly or include heavy handed | emotions so that their arguments have no shot of being | fairly interpreted by anyone else. | pbhjpbhj wrote: | You're doing a good job dang. | | ... kinda wondering if this is the sort of OT post we're | supposed to avoid, it would be class if you chastised me | for it. But anyway, glad you're here to keep us in check | and steer the community so well. | dang wrote: | For stuff like that I go by what pg wrote many years ago: | https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html | | _Empty comments can be ok if they 're positive. There's | nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just | "Thanks." What we especially discourage are comments that | are empty and negative--comments that are mere name- | calling._ | | It's true that empty positive comments don't add much | information but they have a different healthy role | (assuming they aren't promotional) | ar_lan wrote: | You definitely hit the nail on the head. | | If someone points out a specific action I did that | can/should be improved upon (and especially if they can | tell me why it was "bad" in the first place), I'm far more | likely to accept that, attempt to learn from it, and move | on. As in real life, I might still be heated in the moment, | but I'll usually remember that when similar cues strike | again. | | But if moderation hints at something being wrong with my | identity or just me fundamentally, then that points to | something that _can't be changed_. If that's the case, I | _know they are wrong_ and simply won't respect that they | know how to moderate anything at all, because their | judgment is objectively incorrect. | | Practically at work, this has actually been a good policy | you described when I think about bugs and code reviews. | | > "@ar_lan broke `main` with this CLN. Reverting." | | is a pretty sure-fire way to make me defend my change and | believe you are wrong. My inclination, for better or worse, | will be to dispute the accusation directly and clear my | name (probably some irrational fear that creating a bug | will go on a list of reasons to fire me). | | But when I'm approached with: | | > "Hey, @ar_lan. It looks like pipeline X failed this test | after this CLN. We've automatically reverted the commit. | Could you please take a second look and re-submit with a | verification of the test passing?" | | I'm almost never defensive about it, and I almost always go | right ahead to reproducing the failure and working on the | fix. | | The first message conveys to me that I (personally) am the | reason `main` is broken. The second conveys that it was my | CLN that was problematic, but fixable. | | Both messages are taken directly from my companies Slack | (ommitting some minor details, of course), for reference. | camgunz wrote: | I think your moderation has made me better at HN, and | consequently I'm better in real life. Actively thinking | about how to better communicate and create environments | where everyone is getting something positive out of the | interaction is something I maybe started at HN, and then | took into the real world. I think community has a lot to do | with it, like "be the change you want to see". | | But to your point, yeah my current company has feedback | guidelines that are pretty similar: criticize the work, not | the worker, and it super works. You realize that action | isn't aligned with who you want to be or think you are, and | you stop behaving that way. I mean, it's worked on me and | I've seen it work on others, for sure. | mypalmike wrote: | I can "behave well" and still be a bad actor in that I'm | constantly spreading dangerous disinformation. That | disinformation looks like signal by any metadata analysis. | bambax wrote: | Yes, that's probably the limit of the pure behavioral | analysis, esp. if one is sincere. If they're insincere it | will probably look like spam; but if somebody truly | believes crazy theories and is casually pushing them (vs | promoting them aggressively and exclusively), that's | probably harder to spot. | afiori wrote: | I think you agree with the parent. | | They pointed out that everybody can be a bad actor and you | will not find a way to get better users. | whoopdedo wrote: | And bad behavior gets rewarded with engagement. We learned | this from "reality television" where the more conflict there | was among a group of people the more popular that show was. | (Leading to producers abandoning the purity of being | unscripted in the pursuit of better ratings.) A popular | pastime on Reddit is posting someone behaving badly (whether | on another site, a subreddit, or in a live video) for the | purpose of mocking them. | | When the organizational goal is to increase engagement, which | will be the case wherever there are advertisers, inevitably | bad behavior will grow more frequent than good behavior. | Attempts to moderate toward good behavior will be abandoned | in favor of better metrics. Or the site will stagnate under | the weight of the new rules. | | In this I'm in disagreement with Yishan because in those | posts I read that engagement feedback is a characteristic of | old media (newspapers, television) and social media tries to | avoid that. The OP seems to be saying that online moderation | is an attempt to minimize controversial engagement because | platforms don't like that. I don't believe it. I think social | media loves controversial engagement just as much as the old- | school "if it bleeds, it leads" journalists from television | and newspapers. What they don't want is the (quote/unquote) | wrong kind of controversies. Which is to say, what defines | bad behavior is not universally agreed upon. The threshold | for what constitutes bad behavior will be different depending | on who's doing the moderating. As a result the content seen | will be influenced by the moderation, even if said moderation | is being done in a content-neutral way. | | And I just now realize that I've taken a long trip around to | come to the conclusion that the medium is the message. I | guess we can now say the moderation is the message. | jonny_eh wrote: | > Bad actors are people who act bad all the time | | I'd argue that bad actors are people that behave badly "on | purpose". Their _goals_ are different than the normal actor. | Bad actors want to upset or scare people. Normal actors want | to connect with, learn from, or persuade others. | paradite wrote: | I recently started my own Discord server and had my first | experience in content moderation. The demographics is mostly | teenagers. Some have mental health issues. | | It was the hardest thing ever. | | In first incident I chose to ignore a certain user being targeted | by others for posting repeated messages. The person left a very | angry message and left. | | Comes the second incident, I thought I learnt my lesson. Once a | user is targeted, I tried to stop others from targeting the | person. But this time the people who targeted the person wrote | angry messages and left. | | Someone asked a dumb question, I replied in good faith. The | conversation goes on and on and becomes weirder and weirder, | until the person said "You shouldn't have replied me.", and left. | | Honestly I am just counting on luck at this time that I can keep | it running. | derefr wrote: | > In first incident I chose to ignore a certain user being | targeted by others for posting repeated messages. The person | left a very angry message and left. | | > Comes the second incident, I thought I learnt my lesson. Once | a user is targeted, I tried to stop others from targeting the | person. But this time the people who targeted the person wrote | angry messages and left. | | Makes me think that moderators should have the arbitrational | power to take two people or groups, and (explicitly, with | notice to both people/groups) make each person/group's public | posts invisible to the other person/group. Like a cross between | the old Usenet ignore lists, and restraining orders, but | externally-imposed without either party actively seeking it | out. | watwut wrote: | Imo, some people leaving is not necessary bad thing. Like, some | people are looking for someone to bully. Either you allow them | bully or they leave. The choice determines overall culture of | you community. | | And sometimes people are looking for a fight and will search it | until they find it ... and then leave. | Goronmon wrote: | _And sometimes people are looking for a fight and will search | it until they find it ... and then leave._ | | I've found the more likely result is that people looking for | a fight will find it, and then stay because they've found a | target and an audience. Even if the audience is against them | (and especially so if moderators are against them), for some | people that just feeds their needs even more. | thepasswordis wrote: | How old are you? An adult running a discord server for mentally | ill teenagers seems like a cautionary tale from the 1990s about | chatrooms. | paradite wrote: | I'm afraid I'm too young to understand that reference or | context around chatrooms. | | Anyway, the Discord server is purely for business and | professional purposes. And I use the same username everywhere | including Discord, so it's pretty easy to verify my identity. | Tenal wrote: | drekipus wrote: | Its in vogue today. | skissane wrote: | > An adult running a discord server for mentally ill | teenagers seems like a cautionary tale from the 1990s about | chatrooms | | It sounds like a potential setup for exploitation, grooming, | cult recruitment, etc. (Not saying the grandparent is doing | this, for all I know their intentions are entirely above | board-but other people out there likely are doing it for | these kinds of reasons.) | [deleted] | peruvian wrote: | Discord is already considered a groomer hotspot, at least | in joking. You can join servers based on interests alone | and find yourself in a server with very young people. | TulliusCicero wrote: | I doubt it's explicitly for mentally ill teenagers. It could | be, say, a video game discord, and so the demographics are | mostly teens who play the game, and obviously some subset | will be mentally ill. | strken wrote: | It's probably something like this. I'm interested in a | specific videogame and have bounced around a lot of | discords trying to find one where most of the members are | older. We still have some under-18s (including one guy's | son), but they're in the minority, and that makes | everything easier to moderate. We can just ban (or temp- | ban) anyone who's bringing the vibe down and know that the | rest will understand and keep the peace. | | Teens don't have as much experience with communities going | to shit, or with spaces like the workplace where you're | collectively responsible for the smooth running of the | group. They're hot-headed and can cause one bad experience | to snowball where an adult might forgive and forget. | | About the only thing that makes mentally healthy adults | hard to moderate is when they get drunk or high and do | stupid stuff because they've stopped worrying about | consequences. | MichaelCollins wrote: | > _Teens don 't have as much experience with communities | going to shit, or with spaces like the workplace where | you're collectively responsible for the smooth running of | the group. They're hot-headed and can cause one bad | experience to snowball where an adult might forgive and | forget._ | | Some people, not just teens of course, feel utterly | compelled to go tit-for-tat, to retaliate in kind. Even | if you can get them to cool down and back off for a | while, and have a civil conversation with you about | disengaging, they may tell you that they're going to | retaliate against the other person anyway at a later | date, in cold blooded revenge, because they _have to_. | That necessity seems to be an inescapable reality for | such people. They feel they have _no choice_ but to | retaliate. | | When two such people encounter each other and an accident | is mispercieved as an offense, what follows is | essentially a blood feud. An unbreakable cycle of | retaliation after retaliation. Even if you can get to the | bottom of the original conflict, they'll continue | retaliating against each other for the later acts of | retaliation. The only way to stop it is to ban one if not | both of them. Moderation sucks, never let somebody talk | you into it. | pr0zac wrote: | My interpretation was he ran a discord server for a topic | who's demographics happened to include a large number of | teenagers and folks with mental illness thus unintentionally | resulting in a discord containing a lot of them, not that he | was specifically running a discord server targeting mentally | ill teens. | bmitc wrote: | I think all this just revolves around humans being generally | insane and emotionally unstable. Technology just taps into | this, exposes it, and connects it to others. | themitigating wrote: | Wow, and now we all learned that nothing should be censored | thanks to this definitely real situation where the same outcome | occurred when you censored both the victim and perpetrator | DoItToMe81 wrote: | Mental illness or not, your interactions with users in a | service with a block button are all voluntary. Unless someone | is going out of their own way to drag drama out of Discord, or | god forbid, into real life, it tends to be best to just let it | happen, as they are entirely willingly participating in it and | the escape is just a button away. | watwut wrote: | Community defined by the most aggressive people that come in | tend to be the one where everyone else voluntarily leaves, | cause leaving is much better for them. | TulliusCicero wrote: | I see this a fair amount, and yeah, "just let people block | others" is really terrible moderation advice. | | Besides the very reasonable expectation almost everyone has | that assholes will be banned, the inevitable result of not | banning assholes is that you get more and more assholes, | because their behavior will chase away regular users. Even | some regular users may start acting more like assholes, | because what do you do when someone is super combative, aside | from possibly leaving? You become combative right back, to | fight back. | beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: | IME, places (or forums, or social networks, etc.) with good | moderation tend to fall into 2 camps of putting that into play: | | 1. The very hands-off approach style that relies on the subject | matter of the discussion/topic of interest naturally weeding | out "normies" and "trolls" with moderation happening "behind | the curtain"; | | 2. The very hands-on approach that relies on explicit clear | rules and no qualms about acting on those rules, so moderation | actions are referred directly back to the specific rule broken | and in plain sight. | | Camp 1 begins to degrade as more people use your venue; camp 2 | degrades as the venue turns over to debate about the rules | themselves rather than the topic of interest that was the whole | point of the venue itself (for example, this is very common in | a number of subreddits where break-off subreddits usually form | in direct response to a certain rule or the enforcement of a | particular rule). | derefr wrote: | Camp 2 works fine in perpetuity _if_ the community is built | as a cult of personality around a central authority figure; | where the authority figure is also the moderator (or, if | there are other moderators, their authority is delegated to | them by the authority figure, and they can always refer | arbitration back to the authority figure); where the clear | rules are understood to be _descriptive_ of the authority 's | decision-tree, rather than _prescriptive_ of it -- i.e. | "this is how I make a decision; if I make a decision that | doesn't cleanly fit this workflow, I won't be constrained by | the workflow, but I will try to change the workflow such that | it has a case for what I decided." | wwweston wrote: | Is people leaving and founding a different forum with | different rules really a failure/degradation? | cloverich wrote: | It would be cool if such forks were transparent on the | original forum / subreddit, and if they also forked on | specific rules. I.e. like a diff with rule 5 crossed out / | changed / new rule added, etc. | wutbrodo wrote: | I've seen an example of this. The fork is less active | than the original, but I wouldn't call it a failure. | Rather, it was a successful experiment with a negative | result. The original forum was the most high-quality | discussion forum I've ever experienced in my life, so | this wasn't quite a generalizable experiment. | krippe wrote: | Someone asked a dumb question, I replied in good faith. The | conversation goes on and on and becomes weirder and weirder, | until the person said "You shouldn't have replied me.", and | left. | | Haha wtf, why would they do that? | TulliusCicero wrote: | I'm confused, do you think some individual leaving is a failure | state? Realistically I don't think you can avoid banning or | pissing some people off as a moderator, at least in most cases. | | There's a lot of people whose behavior on internet message | boards/chat groups can be succinctly summarized as, "they're an | asshole." Now maybe IRL they're a perfectly fine person, but | for whatever reason they just engage like an disingenuous jerk | on the internet, and the latter case is what's relevant to you | as a moderator. In some cases a warning or talking-to will | suffice for people to change how they engage, but often times | it won't, they're just dead set on some toxic behavior. | shepherdjerred wrote: | > I'm confused, do you think some individual leaving is a | failure state? | | When you are trying to grow something, them leaving is a | failure. | | I ran a Minecraft server for many years when I was in high | school. It's very hard to strike a balance of: | | 1. Having players | | 2. Giving those players a positive experience (banning | abusers) | | 3. Stepping in only when necessary | | Every player that I banned meant I lost some of my player | base. Some players in particular would cause an entire group | to leave. Of course, plenty of players have alternate | accounts and would just log onto one of those. | TulliusCicero wrote: | I think it _can_ be a failure state, certainly, but | sometimes it 's unavoidable, and banning someone can also | mean more people in the community, rather than less. | | Would HN be bigger if it had always had looser moderation | that involved less banning of people? I'm guessing not. | | edit: I guess what I was thinking was that often in a | community conflict where one party is 'targeted' by another | party, banning one of those parties is inevitable. Not | always, but often people just cannot be turned away from | doing some toxic thing, they feel that they're justified in | some way and would rather leave/get banned than stop. | whatshisface wrote: | The person leaving is the least bad part of what happened in | the OP's example, try reading this again?: | | > _In first incident I chose to ignore a certain user being | targeted by others for posting repeated messages. The person | left a very angry message and left._ | TulliusCicero wrote: | They have three examples, and all of them ended with the | person leaving; it just sounded to me like they were | implying that the person leaving represented a failure on | their part as a moderator. That, had they moderated better, | they could've prevented people leaving. | whatshisface wrote: | Each of the examples had something bad happen in the | lead-up to the person leaving. | TulliusCicero wrote: | Yes, and? I honestly can't tell what you're getting at | here. | whatshisface wrote: | That the bad thing they were talking about was the bad | stuff leading up to the person leaving. | TulliusCicero wrote: | That was bad yes, but it sounds like they feel that the | outcome each time of someone leaving (and possibly with | an angry message) was also bad, and indicative that they | handled the situation incorrectly. | lovehashbrowns wrote: | Discord is particularly tough, depending on the type of | community. I very briefly moderated a smaller community for a | video game, and goodness was that awful. There was some | exceptionally egregious behavior, which ultimately made me | quit, but even things like small cliques. Any action, perceived | or otherwise, taken against a "popular" member of that clique | would immediately cause chaos as people would begin taking | sides and forming even stronger cliques. | | One of the exceptionally egregious things that made me quit | happened in a voice call where someone was screensharing | something deplorable (sexually explicit content with someone | that wasn't consenting to the screensharing). I wouldn't have | even known it happened except that someone in the voice call | wasn't using their microphone, so I was able to piece together | what happened from them typing in the voice chat text channel. | I can't imagine the horror of moderating a larger community | where various voice calls are happening at all times of the | day. | ChainOfFools wrote: | flamebait directed at specific groups: cliquebait | | /s | [deleted] | ojosilva wrote: | There are so many tangible vectors in content! It makes me feel | like moderation is a doable, albeit hard to automate, task: | | - substantiated / unsubstantiated - extreme / moderate - | controversial / anodyne - fact / fun / fiction - legal / unlawful | - mainstream / niche - commercial / free - individual / | collective - safe / unsafe - science / belief - vicious / humane | - blunt / tactful - etc. etc. | | Maybe I'm too techno-utopic, but can't we model AI to detect how | these vectors combine to configure moderation? | | Ex: Ten years ago masks were _niche_ , therefore | _unsubstantiated_ news on the drawbacks of wearing masks were | still considered _safe_ because very few people were paying | attention and /or could harm themselves, so that it was not | _controversial_ and did not require moderation. Post-covid, the | vector values changed, questionable content about masks could be | flagged for moderation with some intensity indexes, user- | discretion-advised messages and /or links to rebuttals if | applicable. | | Let the model and results be transparent and reviewable, and, | most important, editorial. I think the greatest mistake of | moderated social networks is that many people (and the network | themselves) think that these internet businesses are not | "editorial", but they are not very different from regular news | sources when it comes to editorial lines. | raxxorraxor wrote: | Not a good idea. Your example already has flaws. An AI could | perform on a larger scale, but the result would be worse. | Probably far worse. | | I specifically don't want any editor for online content. Just | don't make it boring or worse turn everything into | astroturfing. Masks are a good example already. | pixl97 wrote: | >Maybe I'm too techno-utopic, | | https://xkcd.com/1425/ | | I personally believe this won't be a solvable problem, or at | least the problem will grow a long tail. One example would be | hate groups co-opting the language of the victim group in an | intentional manner. Then as the hate group is moderated for | their behaviors, the victim group is caught up in the action by | intentional user reporting for similar language. | | It's a difficult problem to deal with as at least some portion | of your userbase will be adversarial and use external signaling | and crowd sourced information to cause issues with your | moderation system. | fleddr wrote: | In the real world, when you're unhinged, annoying, | intrusive...you face almost immediate negative consequences. On | social media, you're rewarded with engagement. Social media | owners "moderate" behavior that maximizes the engagement they | depend on, which makes it somewhat of a paradox. | | It would be similar to a newspaper "moderating" their journalists | to bring news that is balanced, accurate, fact-checked, as | neutral as possible, with no bias to the positive or negative. | This wouldn't sell any actual news papers. | | Similarly, nobody would watch a movie where the characters are | perfectly happy. Even cartoons need villains. | | All these types of media have exploited our psychological draw to | the unusual, which is typically the negative. This attention hack | is a skill evolved to survive, but now triggered all day long for | clicks. | | Can't be solved? More like unwilling to solve. Allow me to clean | up Twitter: | | - Close the API for posting replies. You can have your weather | bot post updates to your weather account, but you shouldn't be | able to instant-post a reply to another account's tweet. | | - Remove the retweet and quote tweet buttons. This is how things | escalate. If you think that's too radical, there's plenty of | variations: a cap on retweets per day. A dampening of how often a | tweet can be retweeted in a period of time to slow the network | effect. | | - Put a cap on max tweets per day. | | - When you go into a polarized thread and rapidly like a hundred | replies that are on your "side", you are part of the problem and | don't know how to use the like button. Hence, a cap on max likes | per day or max likes per thread. So that they become quality | likes that require thought. Alternatively, make shadow-likes. | Likes that don't do anything. | | - When you're a small account spamming low effort replies and the | same damn memes on big accounts, you're hitchhiking. You should | be shadow-banned for that specific big account only. People would | stop seeing your replies only in that context. | | - Mob culling. When an account or tweet is mass reported in a | short time frame and it turns out that it was well within | guidelines, punish every single user making those reports. Strong | warning, after repeated abuse a full ban or taking away the | ability to report. | | - DM culling. It's not normal for an account to suddenly receive | hundreds or thousands of DMs. Where a pile-on in replies can be | cruel, a pile-on in DMs is almost always harassment. Quite a few | people are OK with it if only the target is your (political) | enemy, but we should reject it by principle. People joining such | campaigns aren't good people, they are sadists. Hence they should | be flagged as potentially harmful. The moderation action here is | not straightforward, but surely something can be done. | | - Influencer moderation. Every time period, comb through new | influencers manually, for example those breaking 100K followers. | For each, inspect how they came to power. Valuable, widely loved | content? Or toxic engagement games? If it's the latter, dampen | the effect, tune the alghoritm, etc. | | - Topic spam. Twitter has "topics", great way to engage in a | niche. But they're all engagement farmed. Go through these topics | manually every once in a while and use human judgement to tackle | the worst offenders (and behaviors) | | - Allow for negative feedback (dislike) but with a cap. In case | of a dislike mob, take away their ability to dislike or cap it. | | Note how none of these potential measures address what it is that | you said, it addresses behavior: the very obvious misuse/abuse of | the system. In that sense I agree with the author. Also, it | doesn't require AI. The patterns are incredibly obvious. | | All of this said, the above would probably make Twitter quite an | empty place. Because escalated outrage is the product. | lm28469 wrote: | Reading these threads on twitter is like listening to a friend | having a bad mdma trip replaying his whole emotional life to you | in a semi incoherent diarrhea like stream of thoughts | | Please write a book, or at the very least an article... posting | on twitter is like writing something on a piece of paper, showing | it to your best friend and worst enemy before throwing it in the | trash | Canada wrote: | If only there was some site that was good for posting longer | text, with a really good comment system to discuss it... | mbesto wrote: | And hilariously he starts with "How do you solve the content | moderation problems on Twitter?" and never actually answer it. | Just rambles on about a dissection of the problem. Guess we | know now why content moderation was never "solved" at Reddit, | nor will it ever be. | ilyt wrote: | He kinda did in roundabout way; the "perfect" moderation, | even if possible, will turn it into nice and cultured place | to have discussion and _that doesn 't bring controversy and | sell ads_. | | You would have way less media "journalists" making a fuss | about what someone said on that social network and would have | problems just getting it to be popular, let alone displace | any of the big ones. It would maybe be possible with existing | one but that's a ton of work and someone needs to pay for | that work. | | And it's entirely possible for smaller community to have | that, but the advantage with this is small community about X | will also have moderators that care about X so | | * any on-topic bollocks can be spotted by mods and it is no | longer "unknown language" | | * any off-topic bollocks can be just dismissed with "this is | a forum about X, if you don't like it go somewhere else | mbesto wrote: | > the "perfect" moderation, even if possible, will turn it | into nice and cultured place to have discussion and that | doesn't bring controversy and sell ads. | | That's not a solution though since every for profit | business is generally seeking to maximize profit, and | furthermore we already knew this to be the case - nothing | he is saying is novel. I guess that's where I'm confused. | drewbeck wrote: | There's a study to be done on the polarization around twitter | threads. I have zero problem with them and find overall that | lots of great ideas are posted in threads, and the best folks | doing it end up with super cogent and well written pieces. I | find it baffling how many folks are triggered by them and | really hate them! | rchaud wrote: | This is likely because threads are a "high engagement" signal | for Twitter and therefore prone to being gamed. | | There are courses teaching people how to game the Twitter | algo. One of those took off significantly in the past 18 | months. You can tell by the number of amateurs creating | threads on topics far beyond their reach. The purpose of | these threads is for it to show up on people's feeds under | the "Topic" section. | | For example, I often see see random posts from "topics" | Twitter thinks I like (webdev, UI/UX, cats, old newspaper | headlines). I had to unsubscribe from 'webdev' and "UI/UX" | because the recommended posts were all growth hackers. It | wasn't always that way. | | I'm not the only one, others have commented on it as well, | including a well known JS developer: | | https://twitter.com/wesbos/status/1587071684539973633 | drewbeck wrote: | > This is likely because threads are a "high engagement" | signal for Twitter and therefore prone to being gamed. | | You mean this is the reason folks respond differently to | the form of twitter thread? This is one that is definitely | not from a growth hacker but folks here still seem to hate | it. | peruvian wrote: | Thing is no one's going to read a blog post that he would've | linked to. As bad as they are, Twitter threads guarantee a way | larger audience. | pc86 wrote: | These things seem to be fine when it's 5-6 tweets in a coherent | thread. There's even that guy who regularly multi-thousand-word | threads that are almost always a good read. | | This thread in particular is really bad. | heed wrote: | What got me was him weaving in (2-3 times) self promotion | tweets of some tree planting company he funds/founded(?). He | basically personally embedded ads into his thread, which is | actually kind of smart I suppose, but very confusing as a | reader. | pjc50 wrote: | Kind of genius to put it in the middle. Most normal people | write a tweet that blows up and then have to append "Check | out my soundcloud!" on the end. Or an advert for the nightsky | lamp. | rchaud wrote: | That was the middle? I stopped reading once it got to | 'here's my exciting new gig about trees' bit. | adharmad wrote: | There is one at the end too (if you reach that far) | shilling for another company where he is an investor - | Block Party. | mikeryan wrote: | I didn't even know he circled around back to the topic. I | split when I got to "TREES!" and wondering "that's it?" | | After this comment I went back to read the rest. | toss1 wrote: | At the same time (as much as I strongly support climate | efforts, and am impressed by his approach, so give him a pass | in this instance), that 'genius move' sort of needs to be | flagged as his [Category #1 - Spam], which should be | moderated. It really is inserting off-topic info into another | thread. | | The saving grace may be that both small enough volume and | sufficiently interesting to his audience to be just below the | threshold. | slowmovintarget wrote: | Was he perhaps trying for a Q.E.D. there? | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | > Please don't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g. | article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button | breakage. They're too common to be interesting. | IshKebab wrote: | It's not really a tangential annoyance. I literally couldn't | read the post because of the insane format. | miiiiiike wrote: | It was a massive stream of tweets, with two long digressions, | and several embeds. The only thing that would have made it | worse is if every tweet faded in on scroll. | | If we're going to pedantically point out rules, why don't we | add one that says "No unrolled Twitter threads."? | Karunamon wrote: | It is not pedantic, it is people derailing possibly | interesting discussion of the content with completely off- | topic noise discussion of the presentation. If you do not | like the presentation there are ways to change it. | drewbeck wrote: | If we're going to pedantically point out rules why don't we | cook hamburgers on the roof of parliament? Or something | else that isn't pedantically point out rules? | Karawebnetwork wrote: | Imagine it is a text and you can mark any paragraph. You can | save that paragraph, like it, or even reply to it. So the | interaction can grow like tentacles (edit: or rather like a | tree). | | Right now, I could make a comment on either your first or | second paragraph, or on your entire comment. However, there is | no way to determine which category my reply falls into until | you have read it entirely. On a platform like Twitter, where | there can be up to 100,000 comments on a given piece of | content, this is very useful. | | Better yet, it allows the author himself to dig down into | tangent. In theory, someone could create an account and then | have all of their interactions stay on the same tree without | ever cutting off. Essentially turning their account into an | interconnected "wiki" where everyone can add information. | | With enough time your brain no longer registers the metadata | around the tweet. If you ignore it and read it as an entire | text it is not very different from a regular article or long | form comment: | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1586955288061452289.html | dingaling wrote: | I am imaging a normal long-form blog format but with comments | collapsed after each paragraph as a compromise between the | two current options. | rakoo wrote: | > Right now, I could make a comment on either your first or | second paragraph, or on your entire comment. However, there | is no way to determine which category my reply falls into | until you have read it entirely | | That is _exactly_ what quoting does, and is older than the | web itself. | ilyt wrote: | The less inept sites also allow you to just select text and | click reply to get that quote and your cursor set below, | ready for reply | rcarr wrote: | This is brilliant, I had never thought about it like this | before. I'd maybe say grow like a tree rather than tentacles | although you might have a point in that if you're speaking | with the wrong person it could be pretty cthulonic. | lm28469 wrote: | What you're saying is that we should optimise the way we | debate things to please the algorithm and maximise user | engagement instead of maximising quality content and | encouraging deep reflexions | | The truth is people can't focus for more than 15 seconds so | instead of reading a well researched and deep article or book | that might offer sources, nuances, &c. they'll click "like" | and "retweet" whoever vomited something that remotely goes | their way while ignoring the rest | | > If you ignore it and read it as an entire text it is not | very different from a regular article or long form comment | | It is extremely different as each piece is written as a | independent 10s thought ready to be consumed and retweeted. | Reading it on threadreaderapp makes it even more obvious, | your brain need to work 300% harder to process the semi | incoherent flow, some blogs written by 15 years old are more | coherent and pleasant to read than this | | btw this is what I see on your link, more ads: | https://i.imgur.com/rhaXStj.png | Karawebnetwork wrote: | > What you're saying is that we should optimise the way we | debate things to please the algorithm and maximise user | engagement instead of maximising quality content and | encouraging deep reflexions | | Not at all, in my opinion being able to interact with every | piece of an exchange allows to dig down into specific | points of a debate. | | There is a soft stop at the end of every tweet because it's | a conversation and not a presentation. It's an interactive | piece of information and not a printed newspaper. You can | interact during the thread and it might change its outcome. | | When you are the person interacting, it's similar to a real | life conversation. You can cut someone and talk about | something else at any time. The focus conversation will | shift for a short moment and then come back to the main | topic. | | For someone arriving after the fact, you have a time | machine of the entire conversation. | | --- | | About the link, it is only the first result on Google | because I don't use those services and not me vetting for | this specific one. I also use ad blockers at all levels | (from pi-hole to browser extension to VPN level blocking), | so I don't see ads online. | | If I go meta for a second, this is the perfect example of | how breaking ideas into different tweets can be useful. | | Were I to share your comment on its own, it contains that | information about a link that is not useful to anyone but | you and I. | | For someone reading our comments, they have to go through | this interaction on the ads and this product. If instead | this were two tweets it would have allowed us to comment on | this in parallel. If it was HN, imagine if you had made two | replies under my comments and we could have commented under | each. However, that's the wrong way on this platform. | ilyt wrote: | > Right now, I could make a comment on either your first or | second paragraph, or on your entire comment. However, there | is no way to determine which category my reply falls into | until you have read it entirely. On a platform like Twitter, | where there can be up to 100,000 comments on a given piece of | content, this is very useful. | | Oh, look, I have managed to reply to your second paragraph | without having to use twatter, how quaint! | Karawebnetwork wrote: | There would be a lot of noise if everyone left 5 comments | under every comments. This is not the way HN is built. | Commenting too quickly even blocks you from interacting. | polytely wrote: | I've never understood this, it's just reading: you start at the | beginning of tweet, you read it, then go to the next tweet and | read it. How is that different from reading paragraphs? | lm28469 wrote: | idk man | | Maybe | | we could put more | | Words in a single | | Please visit my new website and subscribe to my podcast | | Line so it would be | | More readable | | random user comment: yes you're right mark that would be | better | | and much more user friendly | | _ insert latest Musk schizophrenic rant_ | | Ah and I forgot the "sign up to read the rest" pop up that | seemingly appears at random interval | mikkergp wrote: | This is great! It's like modern poetry. I think the | research suggests less words per line make it faster | reading too. | adharmad wrote: | Like re-inventing Bukowski's writing style with terrible UX | polytely wrote: | are you reading on the computer? maybe thats the | disconnect. for me each tweet has around 4 lines of text. | | so it reads more like the post you are reading now. where | each tweet is a decent chunk of text. | | making the reading experience only marginally worse than | reading something on hacker news. | aniforprez wrote: | The amount of UI noise around each tweet and how much you | have to scroll, coupled with the need to trigger new | loads once Twitter has truncated the number of replies | and also HOW MUCH YOU HAVE TO SCROLL makes this a | _terrible_ experience | | I understand why people tweet rather than write blogs. | Twitter gives more visibility and is a far lower barrier | of entry than sitting down and writing an article or a | blog. That Twitter hasn't solved this problem after years | of people making long threads and this being a big way | that people consume content on the platform is a failure | on their part. Things like ThreadReader should be in- | built and much easier to use. I think they acquired one | of these thread reader apps too | j33zusjuice wrote: | abetusk wrote: | I think this is important enough to highlight. Tweets are | very different from other forms of communication on the | internet. You can see it even here on HN in the comments | section. | | Twitter railroads the discussion into a particular type by | the form of discourse. Each tweet, whether it's meant to or | not, is more akin to a self contained atomic statement then a | paragraph relating to a whole. This steers tweets into short | statements of opinion masquerading as humble, genuine | statements of fact. Often times each tweet is a simple idea | that's given more weight because it's presented in tweet | form. An extreme example is the joke thread of listing out | each letter of the alphabet [0] [1]. | | When tweets are responding to another tweet, it comes off as | one of the two extreme choices of being a shallow affirmation | or a combative "hot take". | | Compare this with the comments section here. Responses are, | for the most part, respectful. Comments tend to address | multiple points at once, often interweaving them together. | When text is quoted, it's not meant as a hot take but a | refresher on the specific point that they're addressing. | | The HN comments section has its problems but, to me, it's | night and day from Twitter. | | I basically completely avoid responding to most everything on | Twitter for this reason. Anything other than a superficial | "good job" or "wow" is taken as a challenge and usually gets | a nasty response. I also have to actively ignore many tweets, | even from people I like and respect, because the format over | emphasizes trivial observations or opinions. | | [0] | https://twitter.com/dancerghoul/status/1327361236686811143 | | [1] | https://twitter.com/ChaikaGaming/status/1270330453053132800 | P_I_Staker wrote: | You gotta understand their angle... | | ... in the early days of the internet ... | | ... comments could be very, very long; the user was given a | virtual unbounded battleground to fight their ideological | battles ... | | ... The public, the rabble, couldn't stop.. The words kept | coming; a torrent of consonants and vowels descending upon | our eye ba ... (limit exceeded) | | ... lls like an avalanche of ideas ... | | ... it was too much and twitter was borne ... | | ... the people keep their ideas small, like their tiny | brains, and non-existent attention spans ... | | P.S. I was gonna write this as a comment chain, but | HackerNews, in all their wisdom, limits self-replies to only | one | [deleted] | rchaud wrote: | If you want to talk diarrhea, look no further than those "save | to Readwise / Notion / Pocket" comments that pollute most of | these long threads. | rideontime wrote: | But the twitter thread makes it much easier to pivot into | talking about his latest startup that's totally unrelated! | dariusj18 wrote: | It seems apt that the most engaged comment in the thread is a | meta comment which derails any conversation about the content | of the post itself. | rakoo wrote: | The post says that moderation is first and foremost a signal- | to-noise curation. Writing long form content in a Twitter | thread greatly reduces the signal-to-noise ratio. | hypertele-Xii wrote: | The medium is the message. | dariusj18 wrote: | But also an example of how moderation or lack therein would | help to serve a particular end goal. ex. HackerNews is a | pretty well moderated forum, however sometimes the content | (PC being related to technology) is within the rules, but | the behavior it elicited in the other users is detrimental | to the overall experience. | bongobingo1 wrote: | nitter.net has a vaguely more readable view, not good but | better. | | https://nitter.net/yishan/status/1586955288061452289 | dynm wrote: | Just realized there are extensions that will auto-redirect | all twitter links to nitter. Why didn't I do this year ago!? | foobarbecue wrote: | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1586955288061452289.html | | Agreed, though, Twitter threads are a really poor | communications medium. | madsmith wrote: | This thread was a delightful read. | | Just NOT in twitter. I gave up on twitter and signed out of | it years ago and refuse to sign back in. | | I spent a good hour of my life looking for ways to read this | thread. I personally know Yishan and value the opinions he | cares to share so I new this would be interesting if I could | just manage to read it. | | Replacing the url to nitter.net helped but honestly it was | most cohesive in threadreaderapp although it missed some of | the referenced sidebar discussions (like the appeal to Elon | to not waste his mental energy on things that aren't real | atom problems). | throw7 wrote: | agreed, but you can go here as a workaround: | | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1586955288061452289.html | PM_me_your_math wrote: | It is painful. I got about 11 posts in before giving up. You | described it perfectly. | awb wrote: | What's funny is he's arguing that moderation should be based on | behavior, not content. And that you could identify spam if it | was written in Loren Ipsum. | | If this thread and self-referential Tweeting was written in | Loren Ipsum, it would definitely look like spam to me. | | So I guess I disagree with one of the main points. For me, the | content matters much more than the behavior. Pretty sure that's | how the Supreme Court interprets 1A rights as well. The | frequency and intensity of the speech hasn't played a part in | any 1A cases that I can remember, it's exclusively if the | content of the speech violates someone's rights and then | deciding which outcome leads to bigger problems, allowing the | speech or not. | dubeye wrote: | You do sound a bit like my dad complaining about youngsters | reading kindle. | | I read long twitter threads often, you get used to it | lm28469 wrote: | People also can get used to a diet of stale bread and bad | soup, it doesn't mean I'm striving for a stale bread and bad | soup diet | gort19 wrote: | I've heard you get used to jail too. | pjc50 wrote: | The core is really: | | > https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1586956650455265281 | | "Here`s the answer everyone knows: there IS no principled | reason for banning spam. We ban spam for purely outcome-based | reasons: | | It affects the quality of experience for users we care about, | and users having a good time on the platform makes it | successful." | | And also this Chinese Room argument: "once again, I challenge | you to think about it this way: could you make your content | moderation decisions even if you didn`t understand the language | they were being spoken in?"" | | In other words, there are certain kinds of post which trigger | escalating pathological behavior - more posts - which destroy | the usability platform for _bystanders_ by flooding it. He | argues that it doesn 't matter what these posts _mean_ or whose | responsibility is it for the escalation, just the simple | physics of "if you don't remove these posts and stop more | arriving, your forum will die". | bitshiftfaced wrote: | I would argue that the signal-to-noise ratio outcome-based | reason _is_ the principle: it 's off-topic. You could also | argue another principle: you're censoring a bot, not a human. | danwee wrote: | I gave up after the 3rd tweet in the thread. I can't understand | why Twitter threads are a thing. | nfin wrote: | my guess is that people can like () individual posts. | | The positive of that is: | | a) possibility to like () just one post, or 2, 3... depending | of who good the thread is | | b) the fine granular way to like () gives the algorithm way | better possibilities to whom to show a thread and even | better, to first show just one intereting post out of that | thread (also people can mores easily quote or retweet | individual parts of a thread) | Akronymus wrote: | Why are you adding () after "like"? Havent seen that | convention before, so I am unaware of the meaning. | KMnO4 wrote: | There may have been an emoji or Unicode character between | the parens that was stripped by HN. | Akronymus wrote: | That does make quite a lot of sense. | darrenf wrote: | I was assuming there's a trademark symbol (tm) that had | been stripped by HN. But since I've managed to post one, | I'm apparently wrong! | fknorangesite wrote: | _Or retweet_ individual posts. It makes each one a possible | pull-quote. | jjulius wrote: | Yep; everything's a soundbite. | fknorangesite wrote: | At this point, posting this sentiment on HN is more boring and | irritating than the tweet-thread format could ever be. | bee_rider wrote: | It is also specifically called out in the guidelines as not | helpful. | sorum wrote: | He inadvertently invented the Twitter mid-roll ad and we're all | doomed now because of it | shkkmo wrote: | Let's take the core points at the end in reverse order: | | > 3: Could you still moderate if you can`t read the language? | | Except, moderators do read the language. If think it is pretty | self-serving to say that users views of moderation decisions are | biased by content but moderators views are not. | | > 2: Freedom of speech was NEVER the issue (c.f. spam) | | Spam isn't considered a free speech issue because we generally | accept that spam moderation is done based on behavior in a | content-blind way. | | This doesn't magically mean that any given moderation team isn't | impinging free speech. Especially when there are misinformation | policies in place which are explicitly content-based. | | > 1: It is a signal-to-noise management issue | | Signal-to-noise management is part of why moderation can be good, | but it doesn't even justify the examples from the twitter thread. | Moderation is about creating positive experiences on the platform | and signal-to-noise is just part of that. | | The | modeless wrote: | It seems like he's arguing that people claiming moderation is | censoring them are wrong, because moderation of large platforms | is dispassionate and focused on limiting behavior no one likes, | rather than specific topics. | | I have no problem believing this is true for the vast majority of | moderation decisions. But I think the argument fails because it | only takes a few exceptions or a little bit of bias in this | process to have a large effect. | | On a huge platform it can simultaneously be true that platform | moderation is _almost_ always focused on behavior instead of | content, and a subset of people and topics _are_ being censored. | mr_toad wrote: | Rules against hate speech will disproportionately affect males. | Does that mean they're biased against men? If so, is that even | a bad thing? | hackerlight wrote: | > On a huge platform it can simultaneously be true that | platform moderation is almost always focused on behavior | instead of content, and a subset of people and topics are being | censored. | | He made this exact point in a previous post. Some topics look | like they're being censored only because they tend to attract | such a high concentration of bad actors who simultaneously | engage in bullying type behavior. They get kicked off for that | behavior and it looks like topic $X is being censored when it | mostly isn't. | modeless wrote: | That's not the same point. Again, I have no problem believing | that what you say happens, even often. Even still, some | topics may _really_ be censored. They may even be the same | topics; just because there 's an angry mob on one side of a | topic doesn't mean that everyone on that side of the topic is | wrong, and that's the hardest situation to moderate | dispassionately. Maybe even impossible. Which is when I can | imagine platforms getting frustrated and resorting to topic | censorship. | rootusrootus wrote: | Could also be that some objectionable behavior patterns are | much more common in some ideological groups than others, which | makes it appear as if the moderation is biased against them. It | is, just not in the way they think. | ethotool wrote: | Nobody has the answers. Social media is an experiment gone wrong. | Just like dating apps and other pieces of software that exist | that are trying to replace normal human interaction. These first | generation prototypes have a basic level of complexity and I | expect by 2030 technology should evolve to the point where better | solutions exist. | dna_polymerase wrote: | And when, ever in human history, did something improve without | intelligent people trying to solve these issues? | sweetheart wrote: | I'm amazed at the number of people in this thread who are annoyed | that someone would insert mention of a carbon capture initiative | into an unrelated discussion. The author is clearly tired of | answering the same question, as stated in the first tweet, and is | desperately trying to get people to think more critically about | the climate crisis that is currently causing the sixth mass | extinction event in the history of the planet. | | Being annoyed that someone "duped" you into reading about the | climate crisis is incredibly frustrating to activists because | it's SO important to be thinking about and working on, and yet | getting folks to put energy into even considering climate crisis | is like pulling teeth. | | I wonder if any of the folks complaining about the structure of | the tweets has stopped to think about why the author feels | compelled to "trick" us into reading about carbon capture. | Mezzie wrote: | To add another perspective (albeit with politics rather than | climate change): | | I worked in political communications for a while. Part of the | reason it was so toxic to my mental health and I burnt out was | that it was nearly impossible to avoid politics online even in | completely unrelated spaces. So I'd work 40 hours trying to | improve the situation, log in to discuss stupid media/fan shit, | and have to wade through a bunch of stuff that reminded me how | little difference I was making, stuff assuming I wasn't | involved/listening, etc. It was INFURIATING. Yes, I had the | option to not go online, but I'm a nerd living in a small city. | There isn't enough people here that share my interests to go | completely offline. | | Staying on topic helps people who are already involved in | important causes to step away and preserve their mental health, | which in turn makes them more effective. | rchaud wrote: | The simple fact of the matter is that too many people are | either resigned to a Hobbesian future of resource wars, or | profiting too much from the status quo to go beyond a | perfunctory level of concern. | | $44bn of real-world cash was just spent on Twitter, and HN | users alone have generated tens of thousands of comments on the | matter. | | How many climate tech related stories will have the same level | of interest? | gambler wrote: | _> No one argues that speech must have value to be allowed (c.f. | shitposting)._ | | _> Here`s the answer everyone knows: there IS no principled | reason for banning spam._ | | The whole threads seems like it revolves around this line of | reasoning, which strawmans what free speech advocates are | actually arguing for. I've never heard of any of them, no matter | how principled, fighting for the "right" of spammers to spam. | | There is an obvious difference between spam moderation and | content suppression. No recipient of spam wants to receive spam. | On the other hand, labels like "harmful content" are most often | used to stop communication between willing participants by a 3d | party who doesn't like the conversation. They are fundamentally | different scenarios, regardless of how much you agree or disagree | with specific moderation decisions. | | By ignoring the fact that communication always has two parties | you construct a broken mental model of the whole problem space. | The model will then lead you stray in analyzing a variety of | scenarios. | | In fact, this is a very old trick of pro-censorship activists. | Focus on the speaker, ignore the listeners. This way when you | ban, say, someone with millions of subscribers on YouTube you can | disingenuously pretend that it's an action affecting only one | person. You can then draw false equivalency between someone who | actually has a million subscribers and a spammer who sent a | message to million email addresses. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-03 23:00 UTC)