51–60 of 154 posts
Those would also correlate "telling why content was removed" with "reduced future issues". But the causality goes the other way. Users that are likely to participate better in the future are more likely to get explanations, while spammers get nothing.
One thing that seems to be an assumption is that the "company" needs to provide the explanation. I think it is even better if the user provides the explanation. The assumption a user can't provide it is probably because we've all seen Terms of Service agreements that are totally opaque.
Back in the day when I was doing a bit of admin work, I decided to simplify our TOS, and then when I had to block someone, I just kicked the ball back into their court: "If you would like your account restored, please point out in the TOS what rule you violated." It worked better than expected. People that cared enough about their access to the system usually figured it out pretty quickly, and we got the knowledge that they actually read the TOS to some degree. They got their account restored and that was the end of it. Repeat offenders at that point were willfully causing problems, so we just left them blocked.
Obviously this only works if a human can understand your TOS. Another interesting line of questioning might be "at what complexity level is your TOS useful in shaping behavior and where does it just become a legal shield."
Study title: "Does Transparency in Moderation Really Matter?: User Behavior After Content Removal Explanations on Reddit". Abstract: > When posts are removed on a social media platform, users may or may not receive an explanation. What kinds of explanations are provided? Do those explanations matter? Using a sample of 32 million Reddit posts, we characterize the removal explanations that are provided to Redditors, an…
Most people don't want their posts removed. Informing them of what rules they broke will help them about breaking those rules again, assuming they wish to not break rules, which it appears is generally the case.
I've had posts removed on subs for breaking some arcane rule before. On some subs it wasn't clear why, so I just never posted again. Others told me why, and even gave directions on how to avoid it again (usually flair related rules). It was easy to successfully post going forward on those subs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, what often happens is that telling them the reason often results in a repeat of the same behavior, but modified only minimally in an attempt to avoid violating the letter of the rules, but not necessarily the spirit of them. This leads to a constant back and forth and is exhausting to the community and moderators. Sometimes you just have to show boorish guests the door.
Well, you sorta posted this on a submission about a paper that indicates the opposite; telling people why something was removed leads to less content being removed and other issues, so I think that might be more of a perceptual bias rather than reality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
This is why I don't rely on Google anymore. I do have a Youtube account separate from the Gmail account I used to use, but I don't trust Google to not figure out its the same person and simply terminate both if the Youtube account does something they don't like. It really is amazing how much power they have. In 19th century terms, if you're an ass to people at the tavern they can raid your home and burn all your pers…
I think the lesson is when you rely on hosted services, you’re denying yourself the final say on who has access to your stuff and giving that say to someone else. Make sure you trust that entity.
The forums were notable because they were VERY strict, but also every single removed post, suspension or ban all got cross posted into a specific forum for all to read. For users who weren't trying to offend this served the same lesson the Paper here makes: how to not do it again, for everyone else it served as entertainment while the mods hammered down trolls.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I don't rely on Google anymore. I do have a Youtube account separate from the Gmail account I used to use, but I don't trust Google to not figure out its the same person and simply terminate both if the Youtube account does something they don't like. It really is amazing how much power they have. In 19th century terms, if you're an ass to people at the tavern they can raid your home and burn all your pers…
I think a better 19th century analogy would be: You chose to keep all your personal documents and correspondences in the basement of the town tavern. Then some time later you have a disagreement with the tavern owner and he bans you from entering, preventing you from accessing your stuff. I think the lesson is when you rely on hosted services, you’re denying yourself the final say on who has access to your stuff and…
I can’t imagine what it’s like to moderate large sites like HN. I read it with Show Dead turned on and I’m amazed at how many people have been shadow banned with no clue they’ve been posting frequently for years with no idea 99% of people will never see what they wrote. In most cases it looks like dang does give them a reason when they’re banned but I don’t think many of them read it.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
(Just like every other group: self-serving.)