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Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

shagunjhaver.com

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Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#11

Post by nm2259 »

It's an interesting paper, for sure. I think this only works in reality if 1) there's a clear reason the content was removed that a user could take steps to avoid in the future, and 2) you're willing to admit that reason to the user.

With so much content moderation these days coming from machine learning (violates #1), personal vendettas from human moderators (violates #1 and #2) and quasi-legal threats from third parties (violates #1 and #2), there's not much room for user education left.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#12

Post by rpmisms »

Experiencing this now. I produced an instructional video for the non-profit I work for, and youtube took it down as "spam", won't explain why, and has terminated our account with no strikes. Why wouldn't I try to get around that ridiculous ban?

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#13

Post by jeltz »

saagarjha wrote: post #10
Ididntdothis wrote: post #7

There seems to be a general trend to avoid explanations in a lot of areas. For example, you often get no feedback after job interviews. Google just canceled my Drive subscription after 10 years without telling why but they offered me to sign up again. No idea why and support wouldn’t tell. How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong?

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

I am skeptical. Because I see this issue in my country too where opening yourself to liability is not an issue. Maybe one could argue that it is due to cultural influences from the US which are copied without the original context, but ... eh, I feel it is pretty weak.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#14

Post by Arnt »

woliveirajr wrote: post #2

It seems so obvious that it's a pitty it wasn't studied before. It doesn't work just online: ask a children to solve some problem in a blackboard and then erase it without telling a thing, while leaving answers from other kids on it. You'll see that nobody likes to be "corrected" without an explanation.

Noone likes to be corrected without an explanation. That part is fine. But explaining takes time for the moderators as well as providing value to the user, and some users try to get past moderation by overwhelming the moderators. Spamming.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#15

Post by jeltz »

kevingadd wrote: post #8
post_break wrote: post #5

Moderator of a large sub here. I hate removing content that violates our rules because of the pitch forks coming out. But it's like baseball and you're the ump. These are the rules, you broke the posted rules (and it's not wishy washy rules like /r/politics or /r/videos), and here's the rule you broke. Most of the time you don't have to eject anyone, but sometimes you do.

Clearly pointing to rules violations also helps other users understand what to avoid doing. It hurts when people are trying to toe the line and get away with violating the spirit of the rules, but the large-scale impact of just consistently going 'deleted because of rule 3 violation: xxx' works pretty well and has been proven on ancient forums like Something Awful where bans and suspensions and post deletions all hav…

Yeah, most forums I use to be active in were very transparent about why stuff was deleted while e.g. most sub-Reddits are not. I vastly preferred the transparency of forum moderators.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#16

Post by otterley »

haunter wrote: post #6

Otoh reddit mods has 0 accountability, "if you don't like them make your own sub" basically that's the official stance

Sounds reasonable to me. Reddit is not and never was a democracy; at best it’s a benevolent dictatorship - just like every other social media platform.

It costs nothing to start a new subreddit if you want different rules. And if lots of Redditors agree with you, they’ll happily follow you.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#17

Post by jeltz »

Arnt wrote: post #14
woliveirajr wrote: post #2

It seems so obvious that it's a pitty it wasn't studied before. It doesn't work just online: ask a children to solve some problem in a blackboard and then erase it without telling a thing, while leaving answers from other kids on it. You'll see that nobody likes to be "corrected" without an explanation.

Noone likes to be corrected without an explanation. That part is fine. But explaining takes time for the moderators as well as providing value to the user, and some users try to get past moderation by overwhelming the moderators. Spamming.

Obviously the rules need some flexibility to solve special cases. I do not think anyone has suggested that you need to provide a unique hand written explanation for the 100th repeat offense. At that point just delete the spam and ban them.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#18

Post by Ididntdothis »

saagarjha wrote: post #10
Ididntdothis wrote: post #7

There seems to be a general trend to avoid explanations in a lot of areas. For example, you often get no feedback after job interviews. Google just canceled my Drive subscription after 10 years without telling why but they offered me to sign up again. No idea why and support wouldn’t tell. How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong?

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

I am not so sure it’s only about liability. Maybe with job interviews but in other areas it’s just cheaper to have automated systems that do the rejections and cancellations. Having support staff that can explain and even override decisions costs money This is undesirable so it’s better to lose a few customers.

I think we’re at risk of building up the ultimate faceless and inhumane bureaucracy that works well in most cases but if you have bad luck then you have no way to clarify things unless you have a lot of money for lawyers or can raise a stink on social media.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#19

Post by stronglikedan »

otterley wrote: post #16
haunter wrote: post #6

Otoh reddit mods has 0 accountability, "if you don't like them make your own sub" basically that's the official stance

Sounds reasonable to me. Reddit is not and never was a democracy; at best it’s a benevolent dictatorship - just like every other social media platform. It costs nothing to start a new subreddit if you want different rules. And if lots of Redditors agree with you, they’ll happily follow you.

> benevolent dictatorship

Regardless, it's still frustrating. Especially when they cannot tell you which "rule" you broke, so they resort to telling you they can use their discretion to ban you for any reason (which is usually some sort of agenda that becomes apparent after you've tried to have a civil discussion about why you were banned). It's what drove me away from that platform, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, so I guess not telling users also prevents future issues, in a way.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#20

Post by PhasmaFelis »

saagarjha wrote: post #10
Ididntdothis wrote: post #7

There seems to be a general trend to avoid explanations in a lot of areas. For example, you often get no feedback after job interviews. Google just canceled my Drive subscription after 10 years without telling why but they offered me to sign up again. No idea why and support wouldn’t tell. How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong?

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

> I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability.

Google has no legal obligation to provide you with Drive services, though. I believe they specifically disclaim any obligation in the EULA you agree to.

Google in particular seems to have a broad and well-established policy of refusing to talk to individual users, whether for bans or simple support, outside of a few specific categories. Someone did the math and decided that the cost of maintaining a review process and a customer service department was greater than the cost of the bad press from accidentally screwing over a few customers.

A few days ago there was a thing where someone had their Google account deleted without warning or recourse--including their Gmail--because they spammed emotes in someone's YouTube stream.

That's intolerable. I need to look into a convenient way to maintain a live local backup of my Google accounts; I've trusted Google for years to keep my data safe, and it seems like I've been naive.

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