Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

I basically hate this thing. Sorry team. I know you are trying and you believe in your effort.

I know your intent is in the right place too.

But, here's the thing:

I value real conversation. It is the only conversation worth having.

This is a step toward Disneyland type conversation. And we don't live in Disneyland!

Profanity is a part of speech. There are ugly things, ideas and people in this world and that is what the profane gets at.

As for offending others... hoo boy!

Let us start with a hard to process reality: we all are as offended as we think we are.

What prevents others from abusing that reality to push an agenda, gain position in the rhetoric, and more?

Not much.

Worse, we do not control others. Many attempts at doing that fail. This one is extremely likely to fail too.

What do we control?

How we respond to offensive speech!

And we have options, but a person wouldn't know that because the number one response is righteous indignation!

There are so many other choices!

We can just ignore speech we don't like.

We can employ humor! When an ass gets called one by a clown, I laugh! It is laughable.

Same for the people blowing pages discussing who is the bigger asshole. I say they all deserve that conversation.

We can redirect by asking a direct question, or by making the subject of our response more germane to the topic at hand too.

There are many more options that make a hell of a lot more sense than blathering on with righteous indignation fueling it full on.

Now, here is another dynamic in the same vein:

Say I declare someone is a racist! Just full on judge them on the spot hard.

They are not gonna like that too much are they? Nope. And what is worse, if we are in a position to do some advocacy, the person so harshly judged won't hear any of it.

And being judged like that sticks. Say they stop being racist. They still gotta live with that crap for a long time.

Now, we could say, "are you sure you want to say that? It comes off racist to me."

The idea being you offer help or a way for them to see the harm, while also giving them an out so they are not judged harshly.

They could reconsider next time, or just stop and that is great! They won't have to fight down ugly exchanges.

I could go on for pages. I believe I said enough to make my point.

We can only control how we respond to speech we don't like.

Attempting to control others to the point where they simply cannot offend or cause grief means we also have sanitized our discourse to the point of being worthless.

No thanks.

I have a very thick skin. Others do too.

More of us can manage how we respond and if we put half the energy we put into trying to control others it would be much better.

I thought about making something like this prior to LLMs. This version is more sophisticated than what I had in mind.

I think its response to this comment could use some work:

> The Glock 19 is a great answer to this position.

It detects spam for off-topic product promotion, but gives it a toxicity score of zero even though it recognizes that a Glock 19 is a firearm. Suggesting that a weapon is a good answer to someone's position on a topic other than weapons should probably be interpreted as a threat.

I really love the tone you have for this product. I also vibecoded a thing (much more niche--https://peeps.biz/about) and felt the freedom to inject my own tone on it because it's personal. These apps/services are feeling more like zines or an indie band than a company seeking world domination or VC investment, and I think that's pretty neat.

>Should the model consider that more people consider one or the other to suck?

If it's teaching how to avoid logical fallacies, which includes appeals to the majority, the answer is an obvious 'no'.

Good idea, TERRIBLE implementation. After activating only filters for "Low Effort", and "Contain Logical Fallacies" I get:

> "Who cares if it is? It's a great movie nonetheless"

3/5 Published!

> "Who cares if it is? It's a terrible movie nonetheless"

2/5 Revision requested: Calling a movie 'terrible' dismisses the enjoyment others may find in it and directs negativity at both the film and those who appreciate it. Suggestion: "I personally don’t enjoy the movie, but I understand some people have different opinions about it."

So it's okay to generalize my opinion about it, but only if I liked it, otherwise I might hurt someone's feelings? Very double-plus-good vibe. I would never comment again on the site that uses this product.