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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?

#131

Post by codesushi42 »

tlb wrote: post #129
codesushi42 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. HN is a cesspool of misinformation. Whether it comes from people pushing an agenda, or just plain ignorance. I take everything said here with a grain of salt, and fact check everything . Because I have seen some very creative and convincing misinformation here, that when researched doesn't hold up under scrutiny. My point is that people casually browsing this place are going to be infected by the misinf…

I don't find this to be the case. Usually, when someone is wrong, they are quickly corrected. So when reading a thread, I rarely come away with an incorrect belief. Maybe some example would help me understand what you mean. Could you link to some clear misinformation on HN that wasn't convincingly refuted elsewhere in the thread?

Plenty examples here, even with people coming out of the woodwork to support eugenics under false pretenses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20542738

Look up some accounts (jlawson) and you will find they consistently post right wing BS here.

Or just search HN for eugenics and see all the crazy claims made...

Plenty other examples, but due to ignorance, like someone giving a long convincing explanation of the thermodynamics behind the efficiency of steam engines which sounded entirely convincing. But was complete utter horse shit once researched, and no one refuted it. But it was upvoted plenty.

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

#132

Post by KaiserPro »

quotemstr wrote: post #122
KaiserPro wrote: post #107

I think there are a few ways to better deploy moderation. With twitter and its shouty kin, splitting the userbase into "normies" and "broadcaster" (the top 10% with the most views/reach) Broadcasters have a disproportionate effect in terms of reach and tone. Spending time (and people) closely moderating in a very visible and transparent way will set the tone for everyone. Twitter is hamstrung because it's most famous…

> he literally threatened to bomb iran, When people talk about keeping violence off social networks, they mean keeping personal violent threats off social networks. Whether to make war or peace is a political question, one that's perfectly fair to discuss in public. You don't get to impose pacifist foreign policy on the president by conflating random threats of personal violence with the legitimate business of statec…

You are interpreting this as a political statement.

Threatening to bomb a country is threatening violence, this is against the terms of service: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules to quote:

> you may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people

Like the law, it either applies equally to everyone, or its does not apply.

> You don't get to impose pacifist foreign policy on the president by conflating random threats of personal violence with the legitimate business of statecraft.

Again, you are reading way more into this. Either the Terms of service apply to everyone, or they do not apply.

According to those terms of service, there is no different between me threatening to kill a group of people, and trump doing the same.

As I said, transparency and consistency is the only way it can be implemented effectively.

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

#133

Post by quotemstr »

KaiserPro wrote: post #132
quotemstr wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he literally threatened to bomb iran, When people talk about keeping violence off social networks, they mean keeping personal violent threats off social networks. Whether to make war or peace is a political question, one that's perfectly fair to discuss in public. You don't get to impose pacifist foreign policy on the president by conflating random threats of personal violence with the legitimate business of statec…

You are interpreting this as a political statement. Threatening to bomb a country is threatening violence, this is against the terms of service: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules to quote: > you may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people Like the law, it either applies equally to everyone, or its does not apply. > You don't get to impose pacifist foreign policy on…

Bombing another country is a legitimate act of the state. It's no more an endorsement of "violence" than wishing for the arrest of a notorious serial killer is an act of "kidnapping". Conflating legitimate acts of the state with extralegal personal criminality is a political statement.

If a site's terms of service prohibit endorsing legitimate acts of the state, that TOS is a political statement.

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

#134

Post by philipkglass »

ggggtez wrote: post #18
h2odragon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who believes (or says they do) that the earth is flat, has every right to do so. I agree with you, they're objectively wrong. I find it arrogant to say they have no right to speak because of that, and will not.

Ok, but now replace flat earthers with people advocating and organizing meetings for people interested in joining ISIS. Why do we want a world where platforms protect videos promoting and glorifying beheadings, exactly?

ISIS and other violent groups based outside the US were indeed the catalyst for the first big wave of content removal from American platforms, as I recall it. I noticed it particularly during the Syrian Civil War. For the first few years of the war you could view combat footage on YouTube and Twitter without difficulty. Later you started to see such videos rapidly removed, particularly if they were filmed from the POV of anti-government (often some Islamist faction) forces.

At the time, conservative media outlets seemed predominantly critical that American platforms weren't censoring enough content. Even if that content wasn't actually illegal to publish under US law.

Here's a 2014 article from the conservative site WorldNetDaily, for example:

"ISIS-branded merchandise sold on Amazon, Facebook"

https://www.wnd.com/2014/09/isis-branded-merchandise-sold-on...

Quotes from the article:

Dave Gaubatz, author of “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” contends Facebook and other social media sites have a responsibility to shut down the forums used to market radical Islam and mobilize Islamic youth.

“I am a defender of the U.S. Constitution but the Constitution was not designed for enemies of America,” said Gaubatz, a former U.S. Air Force investigator.

“We must stop jihad online because these groups target our children through social media,” he told Fox News.

...

“ISIS is more than likely not producing shirts but indirectly they are benefiting from it,” Scotty Neil, a former Green Beret who founded Operator, a clothing company geared toward special ops soldiers, told Fox News. “I don’t think that T-shirt company X is sending the Islamic State funds, but people wearing these shirts are making an outward statement and that often starts a dialogue and debate that furthers their message.”

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

#135

Post by wvenable »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #101
swebs wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a little site like HN loses nothing by banning offending IPs They would gain nothing either, since you get a new IP address every time you reset your router or connect to 4g.

No, something would be gained. It would increase the energy required to continue their campaign. There are many people who won't put forth that energy.

If you haven't experienced it yourself it can be difficult to grasp exactly how much energy people will put towards harassment. Coupled with infinite creativity and no shame even a single person can do a lot of damage.

My original point is the equation is actually the other way around; mitigations on attacks will ultimately require more energy than the attacks themselves. For you it's exhausting, for them it's exhilarating.

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

#136

Post by dang »

codesushi42 wrote: post #73
chr1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They couldn't ruin HN because of the system of voting, flagging, and high karma requirement for downvoting. And this applies in general, the only working way to moderate is distributing the effort between users who are interested in the final result. Ideally big sites would not have one single system for moderation, but multiple lists so that if two groups keep flagging each other they get separated and don't see oth…

I don't know. HN has plenty of misinformation posted on it constantly. Countless posts that are objectively wrong, and in many cases it is done intentionally. I have seen lies supporting eugenics, lies about how quantum computing is a fake conspiracy, etc etc. And yet the mods only jump in when you're impolite by referring to OP with "you" and "you're" because it is a "personal attack". They are optimizing on the wro…

We post thousands of moderation comments about things other personal attacks—though of course personal attacks are not ok on HN. I don't understand this reasoning where, if X is not ok, X must be the only thing moderators care about. Surely it is not so hard to understand that we have more than one rule.

It's not against the rules to be wrong, though. How could this be otherwise? We don't have a truth meter.

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

#137

Post by dang »

vonmoltke wrote: post #108
chr1 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your example if someone pointed out that quantum computers required some equations to hold with far greater precision than anything measured, so there is small but non-zero probability that it will turn out quantum computers can not work, would it be a lie that moderators should delete? I believe it's not moderators job to decide what is a lie and what is not, if you see a lie, write a truthful comment refuting it…

> I believe it's not moderators job to decide what is a lie and what is not codesushi42 didn't say it was. It said the system you describe still allows lies, myths, and misinformation to spread. The only mention of moderators was in the context of chastising the poster who calls the misinformation out. > if you see a lie, write a truthful comment refuting it, that way you can convince people instead of trying to sile…

> The only mention of moderators was in the context of chastising the poster who calls the misinformation out.

Obviously we don't chastise users for correcting misinformation. We chastise them for breaking the site guidelines. How could we do otherwise?

There's an important insight here. Correcting misinformation is when it's most critical to follow the site guidelines. That's not so easy, because misinformation can be irritating and even triggering. But if you react to it with name-calling, flamewar, personal attack or things like that, then you discredit your comment and—if your position is correct—you discredit the truth. Then you're not only making HN worse, you're making the world worse.

The thing to try to remember is that while you may not owe the other commenter any better, you owe the community better, and you owe the truth better. The one who knows more has more responsibility.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#138

Post by tlb »

codesushi42 wrote: post #131
tlb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find this to be the case. Usually, when someone is wrong, they are quickly corrected. So when reading a thread, I rarely come away with an incorrect belief. Maybe some example would help me understand what you mean. Could you link to some clear misinformation on HN that wasn't convincingly refuted elsewhere in the thread?

Plenty examples here, even with people coming out of the woodwork to support eugenics under false pretenses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20542738 Look up some accounts (jlawson) and you will find they consistently post right wing BS here. Or just search HN for eugenics and see all the crazy claims made... Plenty other examples, but due to ignorance, like someone giving a long convincing explanation of the th…

I looked in the places you suggested but none of them seem like cesspools of misinformation.

Political opinions from across the right-left spectrum, if presented in a civil and substantive way and without fake facts, are not against the rules here. Extreme opinions tend to get downvoted pretty quickly, though.

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

#139

Post by codesushi42 »

dang wrote: post #136
codesushi42 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. HN has plenty of misinformation posted on it constantly. Countless posts that are objectively wrong, and in many cases it is done intentionally. I have seen lies supporting eugenics, lies about how quantum computing is a fake conspiracy, etc etc. And yet the mods only jump in when you're impolite by referring to OP with "you" and "you're" because it is a "personal attack". They are optimizing on the wro…

We post thousands of moderation comments about things other personal attacks—though of course personal attacks are not ok on HN. I don't understand this reasoning where, if X is not ok, X must be the only thing moderators care about. Surely it is not so hard to understand that we have more than one rule. It's not against the rules to be wrong, though. How could this be otherwise? We don't have a truth meter.

I don't understand this reasoning where, if X is not ok, X must be the only thing moderators care about.

That is your reasoning, not mine.

It's not against the rules to be wrong, though. How could this be otherwise? Do you think we have a truth detector?

This smacks of the same kind of arrogant obliviousness that is insidious at Facebook and Twitter. Do you really think misinformation is not a problem there either?

You counter the problem with a reputation system that actually works. See Stack Exchange. Also with better moderation on your effort.

Maybe you should try searching HN for eugenics and see which gems you come across.

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

#140

Post by codesushi42 »

tlb wrote: post #138
codesushi42 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty examples here, even with people coming out of the woodwork to support eugenics under false pretenses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20542738 Look up some accounts (jlawson) and you will find they consistently post right wing BS here. Or just search HN for eugenics and see all the crazy claims made... Plenty other examples, but due to ignorance, like someone giving a long convincing explanation of the th…

I looked in the places you suggested but none of them seem like cesspools of misinformation. Political opinions from across the right-left spectrum, if presented in a civil and substantive way and without fake facts, are not against the rules here. Extreme opinions tend to get downvoted pretty quickly, though.

I guess you didn't look hard enough. Because the top comment is a lie:

If you outlaw this, people like me (who think inflicting stupidly and ill-health on their children by withholding these technologies is morally wrong) will just fly to Singapore. Even if you could enforce this, not every country will. 5+ standard deviation increases in many traits is on the table

Nope, 5+ std deviations is not on the table.

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