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

A Framework for Moderation

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 78 posts

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#51

Post by the_snooze »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #9
snikeris wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 department stores. I don't think the internet is fundamentally different here. You could have made the same argument when the pri…

When a problem gets orders of magnitude bigger, it can be considered a fundamentally different thing. Requiring different solutions.

I feel this is something that technically-inclined people tend to downplay too easily. Scale matters. Scaling something up changes its very nature and implications. Just because we can enjoy party poppers doesn't mean we're cool with flashbangs exploding near us.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#52

Post by laughinghan »

arkh wrote: post #11
buildzr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

China's Great Firewall is run by the state. By law you're not supposed to circumvent it.

There is no law that says you have to use Cloudflare and if they ban you, you're not allowed to be on the Internet. It just costs you time and effort, possibly money, hopefully reach.

What leads you to believe that the person they're responding to doesn't simply wish more private entities would exercise their legal right to listen to their conscience on who is too hateful to do business with? That's not censorship of important information, that's the free market of ideas at work.

The Stratechery article explicitly discusses this phenomenon and endorses it. What leads you to believe that the person they're responding to disagrees with the article on this point?

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#53

Post by grawprog »

frereubu wrote: post #22
commandlinefan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 underlyi…

I sort of see where you're coming from, but surely there are a plethora of other places with light moderation and far less hate speech where people could go to discuss things? You seem to be making a slippery slope argument, but I don't really see the start of the slope. I'd also be interested to know what you think of this quote from the Cloudflare CEO: 'If this were a normal circumstance we would say "Yes, it’s rea…

I find the way 8chan's being grouped together as a cohesive whole in these discussions odd. 8chan couldn't be more chaotic and disparate in the kinds of people that were there. There were many different people with a huge range of beliefs. Most people that hung out there from what i could tell were just lonely and had made it their special club outside society. I never went on /pol/, but outside /pol/ plenty of people couldn't stand them. They'd spam other boards with their nonsense and i seen plenty of anons tell them to straight fuck off repeatedly. On the boards i used to use, there were far more threads that had nothing to do with politics or race than ones that were.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#54

Post by commandlinefan »

grawprog wrote: post #53
frereubu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sort of see where you're coming from, but surely there are a plethora of other places with light moderation and far less hate speech where people could go to discuss things? You seem to be making a slippery slope argument, but I don't really see the start of the slope. I'd also be interested to know what you think of this quote from the Cloudflare CEO: 'If this were a normal circumstance we would say "Yes, it’s rea…

I find the way 8chan's being grouped together as a cohesive whole in these discussions odd. 8chan couldn't be more chaotic and disparate in the kinds of people that were there. There were many different people with a huge range of beliefs. Most people that hung out there from what i could tell were just lonely and had made it their special club outside society. I never went on /pol/, but outside /pol/ plenty of peopl…

Yeah, exactly - "there are some bad people on 8chan, therefore it's 8chan's fault" is really fallacious reasoning, but it's pretty popular right now.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#55

Post by laughinghan »

umvi wrote: post #50
freen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a free speech absolutist at your own house party? Really? You'd allow a Nazi to spout propaganda at your family and guests? Why should anyone else have to host them on their private platforms?

> Why should anyone else have to host them on their private platforms? Because private platforms are the public now. It's like saying: "You are a Nazi I don't like your beliefs, you are not allowed to express them on my house" So the Nazi leaves and starts preaching on the sidewalk, but the HOA comes by and says "You are a Nazi, and we don't like your beliefs. We own and maintain these sidewalks, and we are kicking y…

I don't see a problem here. The more people think the Nazi's speech is harmful, the smaller the Nazi's reach is. This is exactly the incentive gradient we want. You're describing the free market of ideas working excellently.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#56

Post by laughinghan »

nailer wrote: post #17

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

In the same breath that the owner of 8chan made that claim (literally the same breath, he made the claim in a video), he also claimed that the gunman uploaded the manifesto to Instagram first. Instagram says that's false, the gunman's Instagram account hasn't been active for a year. I'm inclined to take Instagram's word over the owner of 8chan: https://www.cnet.com/news/8chan-owner-says-el-paso-shooter-d...

Also, that claim was by the owner, not founder, of 8chan. The founder of 8chan now disavows it and celebrated on Twitter when Cloudflare took it down.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#57

Post by jrochkind1 »

nailer wrote: post #17

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

IS the implication that this makes 8chan look better somehow? Or less like a place people egg each other on to commit mass murder? Not following it.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#58

Post by jrochkind1 »

Cory Doctorow's novella "Radicalized", in the recently released collection of the same name, is a story about internet forums where men egg each other on to commit mass murder... cause they're mad about healthcare in the U.S.... and I don't wanna spoil the ending, but it has something to say about whether this is an effective tactic...

> Radicalized is a story of a darkweb-enforced violent uprising against insurance companies told from the perspective of a man desperate to secure funding for an experimental drug that could cure his wife's terminal cancer.

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#59

Post by commandlinefan »

fredley wrote: post #31
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…

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

Not really, though. If somebody says "immigration is a danger to our country", that could just as easily mean "vote republican" as it could mean "shoot some random people".

Re: A Framework for Moderation

#60

Post by nailer »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #57
nailer wrote: post #17

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

IS the implication that this makes 8chan look better somehow? Or less like a place people egg each other on to commit mass murder? Not following it.

Just exactly what it says: that the assertion in the article is disputed by 8chan.
Post reply on HN