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

Is content moderation a dead end?

ben-evans.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 309 posts

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#11

Post by anyfoo »

yesOkButt wrote: post #5
anyfoo wrote: post #4

Obviously not, since we’re discussing it on a site with content moderation right now that, in my opinion, works much better than sites without.

HN is hardly as diverse a site to moderate as YouTube and Reddit Should all forums rules conform to HN?

I personally don’t think your comment puts the effectiveness of moderation is in question, just the efficiency. So yes, I think places like YouTube and Reddit would greatly benefit from similar moderation (the rules don’t have to be exactly the same), but the difference in scale and, as you note, variability in the rules for different parts of those sites makes it so much harder to apply.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#12

Post by cryptoz »

tomcam wrote: post #7

We are lying to ourselves, and we are doing it through colonialization writ large, once again. People who use Twitter and Facebook seem to be completely unaware that thousands of content moderators in the Philippines are being subjected to images of utter depredation and cruelty by the minute because we refuse to take responsibility ourselves. History will not look well on what we did to these these heroic underpaid…

> In my view the only proper way to handle content moderation is that every user of these “free“ social media platforms over the age of 18 should should be required to moderate some proportion every month to understand what’s actually going on.

Does that mean no vetting at all of the moderators? Anybody can become a moderator? But then you have QAnon in large numbers moderating content on like the CNN Facebook page or something? I really, really, really don't think that is a "proper" or even tenable moderation solution.

There are too many people who would abuse the moderation power. Moderation should at least be a paid position, paid well in fact, and vetted before allowed to moderate. Otherwise it will be worse than before.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#13

Post by throwaway3699 »

cryptoz wrote: post #8
throwaway3699 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the costs of content moderation are not linear. You are not dealing with a few thousand trolls. You're dealing with bot farms impersonating possibly over a million accounts. Huge groups of networks operated by just a few dozen people. Automating that away is the only path to being on equal footing. If you introduce any human element, not only will it be a bottleneck, but the cost could be large enough…

> but the cost could be large enough to bankrupt even the largest companies. In my opinion, if you can't hire enough people to moderate without going bankrupt, then bankrupt you go! Would this mean we can't have social media? Maybe. Probably for the best. But you can't moderate then you go out of business. That's the way it should be. Probably then people would find a way to moderate and stay afloat.

That would apply to every website with a comments section, sadly.

I think the solution to this is smaller, more isolated groups -- with limited edges between. Back to email threads and Mumble servers, imo. The downside is we'll all be living in filter bubbles, but I think any shared community with a common value (like a video game) is better than some ginormous platform like Facebook.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#14

Post by yowlingcat »

anyfoo wrote: post #11
yesOkButt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is hardly as diverse a site to moderate as YouTube and Reddit Should all forums rules conform to HN?

I personally don’t think your comment puts the effectiveness of moderation is in question, just the efficiency. So yes, I think places like YouTube and Reddit would greatly benefit from similar moderation (the rules don’t have to be exactly the same), but the difference in scale and, as you note, variability in the rules for different parts of those sites makes it so much harder to apply.

It's worth noting that IMO, the scale is not just volume (depth) but also cultural heterogeneity (breadth). HN is for all intents and purposes a single community with a stated set of values. It's not a constellation of communities some of which are polar opposites of one another. The question of moderating Reddit always boils down to /which subreddit/ -- I don't even know where to start with YouTube.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#16

Post by mikepurvis »

endisneigh wrote: post #2

My response to the title is: "No, but it requires more resources than most are willing to admit or give." The crux of the issue is that there's no "cost" to be bad. If there was a "cost" then bad actors would go away for quickly. Any "cost" you impose will be diametrically opposed to popularity - but a low volume/unpopular site is unlikely to be abused to begin with.

Even with infinity resources available for manual human moderation, you eventually hit a wall where different sub-communities will simply have different standards for what is acceptable to them— what might be reasonable debate in one circle is gaslighting and triggering to people elsewhere. It's not really up to the platform to impose a global code of conduct, and attempting to do so (outside of banning the most obvious of bad behaviours or things that are actually illegal) never seems to go well for platforms.

So yeah, I agree with TFA in the sense that these are problems to be solved largely at the system level. For example, compared to Twitter (where anyone can reply-to, quote, RT, and @user anyone), Twitch and Tiktok seem to do well at permitting individual creators to have their own space with their own exclusive authority over what is and isn't okay in the space. And they have (or at least enable to exist) lots of tools for exerting that authority— witness things like "bye trolls" scripts on Twitch that do have to be set up in advance, but then can be used at the drop of a hat in response to brigading to immediately close the stream to new followers, and disallow posts from non-followers, plus delete chat posts from anyone who joined the stream in the last X minutes.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #10

Years ago, i suggested a algorithmic approach to moderation to a Open Source project i contribute too. They ultimately went another way (classic moderation), but the idea was pretty neat. You basically create a feudal vouching system, were highly engaged community members, vouch for others, who again vouch for others. If people in this "Dharma-tree" accumulate problematic behaviour points, the structure at first, bub…

[deleted]

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#18

Post by marcosdumay »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #10

Years ago, i suggested a algorithmic approach to moderation to a Open Source project i contribute too. They ultimately went another way (classic moderation), but the idea was pretty neat. You basically create a feudal vouching system, were highly engaged community members, vouch for others, who again vouch for others. If people in this "Dharma-tree" accumulate problematic behaviour points, the structure at first, bub…

> What if there exists a whole tree of bad apples vouching for another?

That's when you add top moderation, so the algorithm becomes a way to scale the moderators, not a full moderation solution.

You can't create an algorithm that solves moderation, unless you create a fully featured AI with a value system.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#19

Post by cortesoft »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #10

Years ago, i suggested a algorithmic approach to moderation to a Open Source project i contribute too. They ultimately went another way (classic moderation), but the idea was pretty neat. You basically create a feudal vouching system, were highly engaged community members, vouch for others, who again vouch for others. If people in this "Dharma-tree" accumulate problematic behaviour points, the structure at first, bub…

Also, if there is a severe penalty for vouching for bad people, but not much gain for vouching for someone, will you end up with no one wanting to vouch for anyone else?

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#20

Post by TrainedMonkey »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #10

Years ago, i suggested a algorithmic approach to moderation to a Open Source project i contribute too. They ultimately went another way (classic moderation), but the idea was pretty neat. You basically create a feudal vouching system, were highly engaged community members, vouch for others, who again vouch for others. If people in this "Dharma-tree" accumulate problematic behaviour points, the structure at first, bub…

That sounds like a pretty fantastic way to build an echo chamber.
Post reply on HN