A Framework for Moderation • Hacker News Board

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#11

Post by arkh » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

buildzr wrote: post #8

bdhess wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not implying that many or most people are idiots or untrustworthy. But that there are extreme outliers at the fringes. Before the internet, they’d mostly be unable to find each other. With the internet, they can build self-reinforcing “communities” on the basis of hate, intolerance, or really anything. If they just stayed in that bubble it’d be fine, but unfortunately sometimes they bring machine guns to departm…

Considering now that many 8chan users have moved to ZeroNet and Tor based sites, what would shuttering such things mean? I worry that it sets an extremely dangerous precedent, I don't want a Chinese-style great firewall, blocking all peer to peer and anonymization services just to keep out some channers, the vast majority of whom are relatively harmless. I think attacking this from the access to guns angle seems far…

> I don't want a Chinese-style great firewall

But the person you're responding to does. They may not admit it to themselves but that's what they want.

When I see this kind of discussion and how "Internet helps terrorists" I imagine them in a military uniform doing the same speech about the Résistance.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#12

Post by swebs » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

bdhess wrote: post #3

snikeris wrote: post #2

> Stand on the street corner all you like, at least your terrible ideas will be limited by the physical world. The Internet, though, with its inherent ability to broadcast and congregate globally, is a fundamentally more dangerous medium. The notion behind this seems to be: "We must protect the idiots of the world from terrible ideas." Why does this rub me the wrong way so much? I guess it's such a depressing view of…

It’s not implying that many or most people are idiots or untrustworthy. But that there are extreme outliers at the fringes. Before the internet, they’d mostly be unable to find each other. With the internet, they can build self-reinforcing “communities” on the basis of hate, intolerance, or really anything. If they just stayed in that bubble it’d be fine, but unfortunately sometimes they bring machine guns to departm…

There are so many counterpoints to that statement that it's ridiculous. The American revolution, the Russian revolution, the Ides of March, every single coup throughout human history, every single cult, religion, or terrorist organization throughout human history. The only thing the internet changed is the fact that now the NSA has the entire log of all their conversations.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#13

Post by swebs » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

snikeris wrote: post #2

> Stand on the street corner all you like, at least your terrible ideas will be limited by the physical world. The Internet, though, with its inherent ability to broadcast and congregate globally, is a fundamentally more dangerous medium. The notion behind this seems to be: "We must protect the idiots of the world from terrible ideas." Why does this rub me the wrong way so much? I guess it's such a depressing view of…

>Why does this rub me the wrong way so much?

Because you at least subconsciously understand the real intent behind the message. "We must stamp out wrongthink by eroding your rights"

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#14

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

bdhess wrote: post #3

snikeris wrote: post #2

> Stand on the street corner all you like, at least your terrible ideas will be limited by the physical world. The Internet, though, with its inherent ability to broadcast and congregate globally, is a fundamentally more dangerous medium. The notion behind this seems to be: "We must protect the idiots of the world from terrible ideas." Why does this rub me the wrong way so much? I guess it's such a depressing view of…

It’s not implying that many or most people are idiots or untrustworthy. But that there are extreme outliers at the fringes. Before the internet, they’d mostly be unable to find each other. With the internet, they can build self-reinforcing “communities” on the basis of hate, intolerance, or really anything. If they just stayed in that bubble it’d be fine, but unfortunately sometimes they bring machine guns to departm…

With the internet, they can build self-reinforcing “communities” on the basis of hate, intolerance, or really anything.

As you say, such "communities" existed before the Internet. It's just that now, they can better organize to affect the real world. I think Forrest Gump's observation applies here. Even 8chan had some sort of ideology justifying what they said and did. Even the worst scoundrels of history used words like "love" and justice." (And yes, Godwin's Law comes into play if we go down that rabbit hole! So let's not.) If we are to gauge how toxic a group is, I think we need to go to first principles and measure how driven by viral outrage an online group is.

It's natural for people to come together because they are outraged. However, when continuing the cycle of outrage, driving more attention, driving group membership, driving more outrage continues for its own sake, there is a problem. It shouldn't be outrage and attention driving a group. It should be higher principles.

Unfortunately, outrage is a fundamental fuel of virality in 2019. Today, we need to be skeptical of actors who lean too heavily on the cycle of outrage, whether they're openly reprehensible, or if they merely dress their movement in high language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

In 2019, the world has long known to be skeptical of religions gone wrong, which we call cults. We need to develop the same kind of skepticism to groups actually ruled by outrage, not principle.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#15

Post by nickloewen » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

mrec wrote: post #7

bdhess wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not implying that many or most people are idiots or untrustworthy. But that there are extreme outliers at the fringes. Before the internet, they’d mostly be unable to find each other. With the internet, they can build self-reinforcing “communities” on the basis of hate, intolerance, or really anything. If they just stayed in that bubble it’d be fine, but unfortunately sometimes they bring machine guns to departm…

Counterpoint: BoingBoing recently reported on French politicians trying to get "stigmatizing agricultural activities" covered by their proposed hate speech laws. As ever, if it can be abused, it will be abused. https://boingboing.net/2019/07/10/hateful-content.html

Thanks for the reference. But as far as I can tell, this didn’t pass. And I disagree with your conclusion—showing that people may seek to abuse anti hate speech legislation isn’t sufficient to prove, I don’t think, that the legislation will be abused.

Edit: removed comments on US “ag gag” laws cited in the linked article, after I read a little more and learned that they may not be so similar as was implied in this piece.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#16

Post by zdmc » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:40 PM UTC

I take the slippery slope argument seriously, however, maybe there is a compromise: we could (at least attempt to) come up with a measurement of content risk and (at least attempt to) agree upon some threshold of what constitutes "extreme" beyond a reasonable doubt. This way we continue to preserve fringe views while also properly suppressing harmful outliers.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#17

Post by nailer » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:50 PM UTC

Just a heads up: according to the founder of 8chan, the gunman did not post the manifesto on 8chan. Someone else did afterwards.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#18

Post by frereubu » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

bdhess wrote: post #3

snikeris wrote: post #2

> Stand on the street corner all you like, at least your terrible ideas will be limited by the physical world. The Internet, though, with its inherent ability to broadcast and congregate globally, is a fundamentally more dangerous medium. The notion behind this seems to be: "We must protect the idiots of the world from terrible ideas." Why does this rub me the wrong way so much? I guess it's such a depressing view of…

It’s not implying that many or most people are idiots or untrustworthy. But that there are extreme outliers at the fringes. Before the internet, they’d mostly be unable to find each other. With the internet, they can build self-reinforcing “communities” on the basis of hate, intolerance, or really anything. If they just stayed in that bubble it’d be fine, but unfortunately sometimes they bring machine guns to departm…

I used to know the person who ran the Teens website on the BBC around 15 years ago. She was at a conference about protecting children online and spoke to someone from the section of the police who dealt with tracking and apprehending paedophiles who met online. Even back then he had seen online meeting points for paedophiles where the fact that they could speak to each other openly about what they wanted to do normalised what they were talking about, and that had lead to real-world consequences. I think about this often when reflecting on how this kind of depersonalised (in the sense of not being present) hate speech seems to be growing and what it might lead to.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#19

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

bdhess wrote: post #3

snikeris wrote: post #2

> Stand on the street corner all you like, at least your terrible ideas will be limited by the physical world. The Internet, though, with its inherent ability to broadcast and congregate globally, is a fundamentally more dangerous medium. The notion behind this seems to be: "We must protect the idiots of the world from terrible ideas." Why does this rub me the wrong way so much? I guess it's such a depressing view of…

It’s not implying that many or most people are idiots or untrustworthy. But that there are extreme outliers at the fringes. Before the internet, they’d mostly be unable to find each other. With the internet, they can build self-reinforcing “communities” on the basis of hate, intolerance, or really anything. If they just stayed in that bubble it’d be fine, but unfortunately sometimes they bring machine guns to departm…

I’m seeing this sort of implicit dialogue in all of this that goes like: “How much moderation/censorship would have been required to have prevented the El Paso shooter? However much that is, is how much we need”. This line of reasoning ought to scare the hell out of people, since we don’t actually have the slightest clue what actually set him off (he was on 8chan?) Even if I could bring myself to believe the underlying premise: that, if not for 8chan, this guy would have gone on to be an ordinary, law-abiding, productive member of society, but that 8chan itself brainwashed him into becoming a mass murderer, I would _still_ be opposed to shutting it down (and then shutting down the next thing that replaces it, and the next thing that replaces that…) because we’re losing everything else that goes along with it.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#20

Post by frereubu » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

nickloewen wrote: post #15

mrec wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: BoingBoing recently reported on French politicians trying to get "stigmatizing agricultural activities" covered by their proposed hate speech laws. As ever, if it can be abused, it will be abused. https://boingboing.net/2019/07/10/hateful-content.html

Thanks for the reference. But as far as I can tell, this didn’t pass. And I disagree with your conclusion—showing that people may seek to abuse anti hate speech legislation isn’t sufficient to prove, I don’t think, that the legislation will be abused. Edit: removed comments on US “ag gag” laws cited in the linked article, after I read a little more and learned that they may not be so similar as was implied in this pi…

This kind of context is incredible important. Boris Johnson spent a decade in Brussels writing up as many stupid suggestions from fringe EU politicians as he could, all of which failed if they got anywhere near a vote (which most didn't), and managed to create the impression that most EU laws were like this. It even got the point where in the recent Conservative leadership election he told a bare-faced lie about EU regulation (to do with smoked fish of all things) and got away with it. Just because someone suggests something doesn't mean 99% of their colleagues don't just roll their eyes and say "anyway, as we were saying..."