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Just need someone to curate repository URLs.
If you want good content, you need to invite users who are known for insightful informative comments.
If a problematic user on Reddits r/news gets banned (spam or whatever), there are admin-level bans that can ban that user at a global level. Allowing unrelated moderators on one subreddit indirectly-help moderate on other subreddits.
Shared global identity across the network is key. We can't have sockpuppets spamming one subreddit (or USENET group), and then have to be individually dealt with group-by-group. These sorts of moderation efforts must be shared.
Mastodon's model is to have servers responsible for their users. I'm not convinced that this model scales well, especially into the future as servers grow less trusting of each other.
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IMO, what is needed is a DNS-like solution for identities, and proving your identity. Not a real identity mind you, but a pseudo-anonymous identity that has enough trust that people know you're not a spammer.
Yes, modern sockpuppets can pay a 3rd-world country to create innocuous accounts en masse and get around this, but we need to be at this level (or better). Without this level, we're back to just automated account creation bots spamming our servers with spam.
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This DNS-like identity management server needs moderation decisions to be shared. Not necessarily trusted mind you, but shared enough so that "Moderators over in X-location believe this identity to be spam". Or "Moderators over in Y-location believe this identity to be a troll".
EDIT: Other messages, like "Starting on June 2023, it appears that X-identity has been compromised and is now a spammer. Ban messages after this. Starting in July 2023, it appears X-identity has regained control of their identifier and we can stop banning their messages." Lots of useful moderation messages that need to be shared.
Maybe its up to individual communities whether or not "troll" or "spam" classifications of identities (or if the moderators at Y-server should be trusted at all: maybe a hostile group of moderators start putting up fake complaints about masses of users that they don't like). Etc. etc.
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But the overall goal is to create a mechanism where moderators are sharing effort and working together. Reddit accidentally provided that, and that's why it was better than USENET. That's probably the only incremental improvement that mattered in the long run.
Two years ago this is where someone would chime in with a blockchain-based solution, paying moderators with usenetcoin.
Unrelated to the root post, but I’m so glad that time is over. There was a ~1year period where it was nearly impossible to have a conversation about solving something that didn’t involve someone scheming about how to reframe the problem as an economic model, and then drown out everyone with some half-baked tokenomics concept as a way to “solve it all!”. It really felt like a step backwards in critical thinking for pe…
Two years ago this is where someone would chime in with a blockchain-based solution, paying moderators with usenetcoin.
Unrelated to the root post, but I’m so glad that time is over. There was a ~1year period where it was nearly impossible to have a conversation about solving something that didn’t involve someone scheming about how to reframe the problem as an economic model, and then drown out everyone with some half-baked tokenomics concept as a way to “solve it all!”. It really felt like a step backwards in critical thinking for pe…
Usenet thrived in a time where most of us trusted each other, traffic was an order of magnitude lighter, trolls were few, spam was unheard of, and moderation - if any - was cheap and painless. I honestly believe those times are past us. And I say that as someone that loved Usenet back in the day. What you're asking for, for free , isn't possible.
Except Reddit moderators deal with these spam issues all the time. Hacker News is run by herculean efforts by the moderation team here, and I appreciate it. I'm ignorant of what their tools are, but I don't think that scales either. Its good for our community, but Hacker News will never be Reddit or Twitter scale. Reddit's model is that moderators basically complain to the Admins that tools are insufficient, then adm…
Assuming moderation can be automated using the recent advancements in AI
The Fediverse is the closest thing we have now. It's not perfect but it's ours.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except Reddit moderators deal with these spam issues all the time. Hacker News is run by herculean efforts by the moderation team here, and I appreciate it. I'm ignorant of what their tools are, but I don't think that scales either. Its good for our community, but Hacker News will never be Reddit or Twitter scale. Reddit's model is that moderators basically complain to the Admins that tools are insufficient, then adm…
Basic tech needs to be redone. Assuming moderation can be automated using the recent advancements in AI
We can't just assume that hackers around the world have 80GB NVidia GPUs laying around to run high-end, usable LLMs. And we certainly can't expect people to pay Amazon Web Services for a rented GPU, those things cost significant amounts of money.
Sticking to basic automation tools we have for spam filtering and automated reading of messages and the like, lets start with Reddit-level tools of just banning, blocking, users. And a global effort that helps kill spam accounts and sockpuppets.
My nostalgia for the ancien internet is deep and abiding, but it does not extend to actually wanting to use Usenet again. Usenet was never a good solution, it was just the only solution for a long time. So, to the extent that the proposition is for something that is Usenet-like, my vote is no. If you're saying "should there be a better, decentralized Reddit that is not garbage like Usenet" the answer flips instantane…
By far much less monetization or ads so far less SEO spam (and so less need for moderation and/or spam filtering), minority of population so not much political campaigning aside from personal conversations about the topic, more technical people etc.
Two years ago this is where someone would chime in with a blockchain-based solution, paying moderators with usenetcoin.
Unrelated to the root post, but I’m so glad that time is over. There was a ~1year period where it was nearly impossible to have a conversation about solving something that didn’t involve someone scheming about how to reframe the problem as an economic model, and then drown out everyone with some half-baked tokenomics concept as a way to “solve it all!”. It really felt like a step backwards in critical thinking for pe…
Hugs are worth more than handshakes.