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Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

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Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#111

Post by ineedasername »

enraged_camel wrote: post #45
Meekro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, "respected fact checkers" are anything but. The HN discussion you linked to actually mentions some interesting things that these fact checkers omitted. Factcheck.org claims: "there is no evidence that Hunter Biden was ever under investigation or that his father pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin on his behalf." However, the fired Ukranian prosecutor testified in court that "the truth is that I was force…

I can’t believe people on HN, of all places, are peddling conspiracy theories by corrupting the facts. Fact 1: Burisma was under investigation. Fact 2: Hunter Biden was on Burisma’s board. Fact 3: Hunter Biden himself was not under investigation. Not only that, there is no evidence that the investigation Burisma was under had any relevance to Hunter Biden. edit: downvoters better explain themselves. If you have evide…

You may just be getting down voted because, correct or not, you're furthering a somewhat divisive thread that is becoming increasingly off-topic.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#112

Post by gambler »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #30

The article concludes with: 1. Effective moderation can only come from others steeped in the particular cultural context they're part of. 2. Effort should be given to moderate to give communities the ability to moderate themselves at scale. With that in mind, it may be worth considering Reddit. Each subreddit has it's own moderation team from the community that is charged with enforcing sitewide guidelines like not d…

>With that in mind, it may be worth considering Reddit.

Or, you know, individual websites with forums that aren't tied into a giant superstructure and therefore is a constant target of efforts in manipulation and social engineering both from its owners and from third parties.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#113

Post by derefr »

Animats wrote: post #74

This is why moderation should stick to the "clear and present danger" standard established by US courts. There has to be a credible threat of violence directed at a specific individual . "Hate speech" is too hard to distinguish from political speech. Don't try to do it in advance. Prior restraint is bad. Banning people from being excessively annoying over a period of time is perhaps an option. That's after the fact,…

Or, you can go the other way, and just ban all political speech on your platform. That’s easy too! And makes perfect sense for some platforms (e.g. ones intended mainly for children.)

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#114

Post by KoftaBob »

Because it's not a high enough priority for them. As long as it's not significantly affecting their profits, they'll do the bare minimum moderation. Same idea goes for the weak cybersecurity companies seem to have. When it comes to their IP they'll spend the resources to protect it, but when it comes to their customers info leaking, they don't care.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#117

Post by jfengel »

Animats wrote: post #74

This is why moderation should stick to the "clear and present danger" standard established by US courts. There has to be a credible threat of violence directed at a specific individual . "Hate speech" is too hard to distinguish from political speech. Don't try to do it in advance. Prior restraint is bad. Banning people from being excessively annoying over a period of time is perhaps an option. That's after the fact,…

That may not be optimal for the site, though. Many users will leave a site before it reaches the level of violent threats.

The goal of moderators (on most sites) is neither to maximize speech nor to protect people's feelings. The goal is to keep people engaged with the site, and that of necessity means balancing the people who wish to be annoying with those who will leave when their annoyance gets too high. That gets the maximum engagement, which usually goes hand in hand with maximum revenue.

Even on sites whose goal is divorced from revenue, many will find that Gresham's Law of Comments applies: bad speech drives out good. Hate speech tends to drive away people from the topic at hand, because people respond to hate speech as if it were a threat, even if it isn't immediately physical violence. Responding to that dominates the conversation, and then people interested in the original conversation leave.

Good user controls can help, but ultimately a site must keep its eye on the bottom line. You may have a hard time distinguishing hate speech from valid political speech, but users know when they're not enjoying the site, and leave. It's up to the site's designers to pick their target audience and encourage them to stay. And if that target audience is "everybody, including people who want to engage in hate speech", they may find that "nobody, except people who want to engage in hate speech" is what they end up with. Which may well be what they want, but for those who don't, they need to recognize that and take steps.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#118

Post by otterley »

Animats wrote: post #74

This is why moderation should stick to the "clear and present danger" standard established by US courts. There has to be a credible threat of violence directed at a specific individual . "Hate speech" is too hard to distinguish from political speech. Don't try to do it in advance. Prior restraint is bad. Banning people from being excessively annoying over a period of time is perhaps an option. That's after the fact,…

Why should the bar be so high? These are private forums, after all. If I don't want someone who exhibits antisocial behavior in my community, I shouldn't have to allow it.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#119

Post by nlh »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #30

The article concludes with: 1. Effective moderation can only come from others steeped in the particular cultural context they're part of. 2. Effort should be given to moderate to give communities the ability to moderate themselves at scale. With that in mind, it may be worth considering Reddit. Each subreddit has it's own moderation team from the community that is charged with enforcing sitewide guidelines like not d…

Came here to say exactly the same thing. Look I know Reddit has its ups and downs and there are negative parts of it that I’m likely not experiencing, but I think they pretty much get it and it pretty much works.

The upvote/downvote system is fundamentally self-moderating (same thing as the comments and stories here on HN) and a light-to-medium touch by subreddit-specific moderators means that the good stuff generally rises to the top and the bad stuff generally falls to the bottom.

Is it perfect? By no means. But anecdotally, I find that I get a lot of positive and insightful content out of reddit, whereas Twitter just feels like the YouTube comment section of the world writ large.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#120

Post by ptah »

antipropaganda wrote: post #115

What also makes moderation hard is that it can be abused. For example, anyone who is influential and persuasive enough can be labelled a Nazi by political opponents and targeted campaigns can be run to get them deplatformed

it is pretty clear from actual postings whether or not someone is anti-immigrant and/or white supremacist
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