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A Framework for Moderation

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Re: A Framework for Moderation

#31

Post by fredley »

commandlinefan wrote: post #27
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 I’m old enough to remember when Judas Priest (the 80’s rock band) was accused of hiding subliminal messages in their songs convincing their listeners to commit suicide, after a kid did so while happening to be listening to Judas Priest. It seems absolutely ridiculous in hindsight, but people believed it, and it was taken completely seriously at the time: https://www.rollingstone.c…

Unlike the supposed subliminal messages, the egging on is literally on display, in plain English text.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#32

Post by dantheman25 »

I'm not sure that I agree with the author's stance that Cloudflare is more infrastructure than content platform. Cloudflare is part CDN and part security service. While both are useful in facilitating the distribution of content, the services that Cloudflare provides are not necessary to that distribution in the same way that access to the internet via an ISP is.

Whatever the controller of some botnet's likely course of action is in response to the distribution of content they don't like, it doesn't change the fact that Cloudflare is merely providing a content distribution service, a service that publishers could go elsewhere to obtain or even build for themselves.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#33

Post by abrahamepton »

commandlinefan wrote: post #28
abrahamepton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the notion is more like "the Internet enables a fundamentally different kind of communication than we've grown up with, and we should rethink our assumptions accordingly." It's just not like other kinds of human communication that we've had for our entire history as a species. Human psychological evolution is thousands of years behind the technical capabilities we've developed in the last few decades. A bit of th…

Even if I agreed with your premise that humans can’t be trusted to talk to one another, what makes you think that those same humans can then somehow be trusted to determine when other humans can safely talk to one another?

The premise is not, even remotely, "humans can't be trusted to talk to one another" but rather, "humans have spent our entire existence as a species talking to each other in a different way than we have begun to in the last two decades."

The alternative to trusting humans is not to just leave ourselves open to the vagaries of the winds, or whatever, but to allow malicious actors to take advantage of an unregulated medium to pursue their own interests. Not sure why anyone should think that's a better outcome.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#34

Post by stcredzero »

mrkstu wrote: post #30
islon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The printing press is heavily moderated.

Where and how exactly is traditional printing regulated? I can buy a high end typesetting laser printer and print anything I want on it- if it isn't child porn/top secret/libelous I can print anything I want that I've originated. Can I steal other's content and sell it, no, but I would call existing regulations almost non-existent for original content.

Where and how exactly is traditional printing regulated?

Publishers. There are documented cases of writers and genres being blacklisted and suppressed. (Though in fairness, you might find more than a few of them unsavory.)

I can buy a high end typesetting laser printer and print anything I want on it- if it isn't child porn/top secret/libelous I can print anything I want that I've originated.

Sure, but good luck with the promotion and distribution.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#35

Post by mindslight »

frereubu wrote: post #20
nickloewen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

... eventually Boris Johnson gave up and went home, never to be heard from again.

Neither viewpoint absolutely is true, but "As ever, if it can be abused, it will be abused" is the better heuristic. The people pushing the abusive laws are doing so as their day jobs, while their victims necessarily have other livelihoods that constrain their efforts. They don't simply propose the topic once, see that it has no support, and go home. Whomever they're working for has longstanding goals, and each win they get is a step normalizing a bit more of their desired regime.

This is why even when the Internet community strongly rebukes new Internet censorship laws (SOPA being a recent example), the same bullshit just comes back again - maybe tweaked to be a little less aggressive, maybe just using a better outrage-event as justifications. And every time it passes, it's a tooth in the ratchet - heads they win, tails we play again. Capitulating a round just accelerates the process.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#36

Post by stcredzero »

pmart123 wrote: post #25
swebs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an important consideration that often gets missed in these discussions in my opinion. The methods and means to organize a group of people against oppression often are the same ones to rally a group of people around hatred and violence.

As I note above, the entire difference, is whether or not the group gets past the cycle of outrage amplification and onto higher principles, or whether it merely pays lip service to principles, and it's actually outrage that's the "tail wagging the dog."

It's entirely analogous to the religion cult spectrum. The former is found beneficial by many and has much to do with community. The latter is really about exploitation and control. In 2019, we need to be skeptical of groups that use outrage to spread, much as we're skeptical of cults. (And this, despite how flowery or "good" their language sounds.)

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#37

Post by the_gastropod »

commandlinefan wrote: post #27
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 I’m old enough to remember when Judas Priest (the 80’s rock band) was accused of hiding subliminal messages in their songs convincing their listeners to commit suicide, after a kid did so while happening to be listening to Judas Priest. It seems absolutely ridiculous in hindsight, but people believed it, and it was taken completely seriously at the time: https://www.rollingstone.c…

Religious texts, advertisements, and tall tales have been "egging people on" to do things they otherwise would not for thousands of years. Judas Priest and Internet message boards are not new in this respect.

There is something unique, I think, about these message boards, though. I think most people would agree, the overwhelming majority of humans are reasonably decent—they're not going to murder others, are not overtly racist, etc. And throughout human history, these truly 1-in-a-million horrible people have been isolated, unable to find fellow horribles to befriend and egg each other on. The internet has changed that. No matter how unusual or awful your interests may be, it's trivial to find another group of people who share in these thoughts and interests. I don't know what the solution is, or if there even is one, but this does feel like something truly new.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#39

Post by mindslight »

the_gastropod wrote: post #37
commandlinefan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does this rub me the wrong way I’m old enough to remember when Judas Priest (the 80’s rock band) was accused of hiding subliminal messages in their songs convincing their listeners to commit suicide, after a kid did so while happening to be listening to Judas Priest. It seems absolutely ridiculous in hindsight, but people believed it, and it was taken completely seriously at the time: https://www.rollingstone.c…

Religious texts, advertisements, and tall tales have been "egging people on" to do things they otherwise would not for thousands of years. Judas Priest and Internet message boards are not new in this respect. There is something unique, I think, about these message boards, though. I think most people would agree, the overwhelming majority of humans are reasonably decent—they're not going to murder others, are not over…

This "egging on" has been going on throughout the centuries, and has mainly been getting more centralized. Nowadays most people seem reasonably decent, but when exposed to a repeated message of "social consensus" will still generally support going to war against a foreign country.

The novelty is that violence is now being mobilized against subcultures within larger society, rather than comfortably against foreign cultures in far off lands. What we're witnessing is the democratization of media-incited violence, from the general democratizing aspect of social media.

Previously, the privilege was reserved for large corporations that paid the traditional media big bucks to support their massive wars. Now individuals can invest sweat equity in a microcult to accomplish the same on a small scale. And the reason we keep hearing so much about it is that the incumbent gatekeepers are not happy about the competition!

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#40

Post by skybrian »

atoav wrote: post #29
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…

Sex and violence grab more attention than the cleverest intellectual remark and they usually take less space to be encoded. The design of our internet plattforms is such that these attention grabbers are extremely pushed while valuable statements are drowned. We on HN should know more than anybody that certain design decisions will nudge communications in certain directions (compare facebook to twitter to hacker news…

Yes, this is a design issue, but a very basic one. Simple amplifiers are enough to get bad results.

Easy resharing is, by itself, enough to make rumors go viral. Chain letters and all the other crap you see on Snopes depend on nothing more sophisticated than email forwarding.

Active content filtering (spam filters that work) is necessary, but the platforms that largely replace email don't have them.

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