Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

anildash.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 120 posts

Re: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

#71

Post by braythwayt »

malvosenior wrote: post #64
braythwayt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether I agree or disagree with your characterization of him, what does that have to do with whether people who run online communities should be responsible for moderating them? It isn't on topic, unless you want to say, "Since Dash is an asshole, that is proof that there exists at least one asshole on the internet, which supports part of the argument he makes." The premise of the argument is that moderation is a mo…

It matters because his calls for centralizing control of the discussion on a site through strong moderation gives him a lever to pull through social media outrage. Without all of the moderation tools he suggests in this post, he could try to shame the site owners to silence a point of view he doesn't like (which he does regularly) and they wouldn't technically be able to do anything about it. The more moderation tool…

That is a reasonable argument to make, but it is made better by leaving him out of it.

Simply state, "The problem with moderation is that it can be used as a hammer to ban dissent, &c. &c."

Put like that, there is no ad hominem, and it can be debated on its merits. By the way, the most amusing thing about that argument is that we would be debating it on a moderated platform, that we both use precisely because it is moderated.

If HN was unmoderated, it would cease to be valuable to the people currently using HN.

Re: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

#72

Post by makomk »

braythwayt wrote: post #34
malvosenior wrote: post #16

I feel like Anil Dash is pretty much the last person who should be talking about internet “assholes”. He’s very often on the front lines of Twitter mobs and is generally extremely caustic. He should reflect on his own behavior online before preaching to anyone else.

This is a fairly classic ad hominem comment. What difference does it make who makes this argument, if the argument itself is sound? On the other hand, if the man is 50% saint, 50% angel, and 50% genius, what difference would that make, if the argument itself was terrible? Comments suggesting that he shouldn't make this argument do not actually address the argument itself. In the best case, they are a distraction from…

It makes all the difference in the world who's making this argument. He relies heavily on the idea that there's some universal category of "assholes" that websites should ban, and that if any website doesn't it's their fault and everyone should pressure them to fall in line. There is no such universal category that everyone agrees on. So what he's really arguing is that people who he considers assholes should be banned by every decent website that wants to receive advertising money, and it's impossible to seperate that argument from his specific moral values and actions.

Re: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

#73

Post by goldcd »

RugnirViking wrote: post #43
goldcd wrote: post #25

I think it depends on the website you're wanting to run.. I was part of a now-dead "threaded message board", which had a somewhat cliquey view of what should/shouldn't be posted. In the evening when the moderators were away, the discussion became more interesting as it strayed off-topic. Eventually the community wanted 'to fork' so I decided to build something myself. I'm not IT trained, so first version was PL/SQL o…

I love these kinds of sites, and they always leave an impression on me, even when I only spend a day or two lurking the recent posts. Especially ones designed for niche interests such as old and long-dead games. I genuinely think you should feel proud for making the world just a little bit better and more like it's ideal self

This is a 'full on brag' (not some humble-brag) - I'm really proud of the site.

Every f'in part of it I built from scratch. It's me, for better or for worse.

More pragmatically, it helped shape what I like doing for my job (I'm currently a Product Owner - a job I think fits me)

Re: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

#74

Post by malvosenior »

braythwayt wrote: post #71
malvosenior wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters because his calls for centralizing control of the discussion on a site through strong moderation gives him a lever to pull through social media outrage. Without all of the moderation tools he suggests in this post, he could try to shame the site owners to silence a point of view he doesn't like (which he does regularly) and they wouldn't technically be able to do anything about it. The more moderation tool…

That is a reasonable argument to make, but it is made better by leaving him out of it. Simply state, "The problem with moderation is that it can be used as a hammer to ban dissent, &c. &c." Put like that, there is no ad hominem, and it can be debated on its merits. By the way, the most amusing thing about that argument is that we would be debating it on a moderated platform, that we both use precisely because it is m…

I have to admit that when I first commented it was just on my gut telling me "this is awful and I know Dash's history and this bugs me". Through this discussion I actually narrowed in on why it was bothering me, so I probably should have made this point up front (but it wasn't cogent then).

> that we both use precisely because it is moderated.

That's not true, I'd prefer if HN was unmoderated.

Re: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

#75

Post by codinghorror »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #59
codinghorror wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see this: a random jury of your online peers https://www.minds.com/minds/blog/power-to-the-people-the-min... I support this kind of stuff in theory but it is incredibly difficult to get to scenarios where this actually happens. You need to be massive scale for it to occur with any regularity.

Yes, - and a lot of online communities on the internet has reached that scale. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit... In case of reddit, the problem is even more interesting. There are subreddits, so it is naturally segregated, and moderators and community are local. The communities can use downvotes to 'stone' an offender, and local elected moderators can enforce a ban. In case moderator or community mishandles the…

I deleted my Reddit account long ago. Opinion based downvoting is so toxic on small subreddits, and cannot be disabled in any meaningful way.

Re: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

#76

Post by asfarley »

braythwayt wrote: post #42
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does make a difference when you believe that the reason Dash is making this kind of argument is because of his life experiences (or lack thereof). The general point Dash is trying to make about moderating communities is fine. But it's easy to preach about not allowing assholes when you don't consider yourself to be one. The day the zeitgeist shifts considerably in the favor of assessing him as an asshole, I suspec…

The comment said he shouldn't make the argument. That's one kind of ad hominem, a tu quoque You're (possibly unwittingly) making another, an ad hominem circumstantial, by questioning his motives. It's always best to just debate the argument itself and leave the author's character and motives and misconceptions out of it. Otherwise we end up spending a lot of time discussing Mr. Dash, instead of discussing moderation…

Social policies are usually not as rigorously-defined as things like programming rules.

Thus, it is important to consider the motives of people who may end up enforcing them, because there's potentially a large difference between the law-as-intended and the law-as-enforced.

If the difference is large enough, it's worthwhile to examine how the personality of the enforcer may bias the outcome.

I think your argument might be valid in extremely rigorous fields like quantum mechanics - who cares who submitted the proof? But when we're talking about enforcing free speech, the person who is enforcing it has a big effect on the outcome.

Re: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

#77

Post by Deimorz »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #55

>>> Advertisers, hold sites accountable if your advertising appears next to this hateful stuff. This. One thing that could be very effective is screenshotting genuine brand ad next to vile screed. How long would it take for a 'bot to look like a white sheet wearing moron to YouTube, and then a little bit of sentiment analysis and you could automate this. Just publish the "daily worst brand fuck" on FB or YouTube. (Al…

It's not quite that simple either, and going through the advertisers can cause other negative side effects.

This just happened recently on YouTube: there was a big uproar about sexual-ish comments being posted on videos of children, such as linking to timestamps with upskirt glimpses or similar. Advertisers got contacted about it, and some of them said they would stop doing any advertising on YouTube until it was addressed somehow.

In response, YouTube completely disabled all comments on videos featuring children, and deleted all existing comments. Now there are legitimate channels related to children that had completely reasonable comments (which they moderated) that no longer have any ability to have discussions on their videos. Their ability to interact with their viewers/communities was destroyed because YouTube decided to go scorched-earth to make sure they'd satisfy the advertisers.

Re: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

#78

Post by braythwayt »

makomk wrote: post #72
braythwayt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fairly classic ad hominem comment. What difference does it make who makes this argument, if the argument itself is sound? On the other hand, if the man is 50% saint, 50% angel, and 50% genius, what difference would that make, if the argument itself was terrible? Comments suggesting that he shouldn't make this argument do not actually address the argument itself. In the best case, they are a distraction from…

It makes all the difference in the world who's making this argument. He relies heavily on the idea that there's some universal category of "assholes" that websites should ban, and that if any website doesn't it's their fault and everyone should pressure them to fall in line. There is no such universal category that everyone agrees on. So what he's really arguing is that people who he considers assholes should be bann…

In my opinion, your comment is stronger if you simply state:

[This argument] relies heavily on the idea that there's some universal category of "assholes" that websites should ban, and that if any website doesn't it's their fault and everyone should pressure them to fall in line. [However,] there is no such universal category that everyone agrees on.

That is simple, direct, and leaves him out of it. And I believe it is better without dragging his character and motives into it.

Re: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

#79

Post by dahart »

JasonFruit wrote: post #69
dahart wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those two things are related. The warning messages are what happens before the account gets shadow-banned. Sometimes you can walk back in a dead commenter’s history to see what caused the problem and it’s obvious. Sometimes it’s not apparent because it can happen for multiple reasons. Personally, I’d rather have the constant out-of-bounds reminders than not. I’ve never seen one of those warning messages on a comment…

Like I said, it's why this site works and others don't. I'm not aware of a better solution. Facetiously, I suppose you could take the approach of the app 'Yo': constrain the possible messages to exclude anything potentially offensive.

I used to work for Disney and we were tasked with constraining the possible messages to exclude potentially offensive material. It does keep out the obvious no-effort messages with swear words, and it does tend to reduce negative messages. But it was interesting and sometimes fun to see the creative ways people would write bad words or sexually suggestive materials or tell each other off. It’s not possible to stop all offensive content with constraints or technology. Not yet anyway.

Re: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011)

#80

Post by goldcd »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #41
goldcd wrote: post #25

I think it depends on the website you're wanting to run.. I was part of a now-dead "threaded message board", which had a somewhat cliquey view of what should/shouldn't be posted. In the evening when the moderators were away, the discussion became more interesting as it strayed off-topic. Eventually the community wanted 'to fork' so I decided to build something myself. I'm not IT trained, so first version was PL/SQL o…

You're not IT trained but you knew Oracle PL/SQL? Edit: I know it's gauche to complain about downvotes, so I'll explain my question further. I find his situation extremely interesting as I associate Oracle with the "IT-iest" of "IT" things.

I've no idea why you'd get a down-vote either - whoever that was, "Hang your head in shame and reverse that click"
Post reply on HN