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Is content moderation a dead end?

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Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#41

Post by natrius »

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…

The lazy solution to rivalry getting out of control is bicameralism. Make tree-based governance where most of the action is, but design another chamber that can veto it without the same rivalries involved.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#42

Post by [deleted] »

yowlingcat wrote: post #14
anyfoo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#43

Post by kingsuper20 »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #6
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.

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…

"You are not dealing with a few thousand trolls."

In my own experience, it's the trolls that are rather confounding.

Go to any twitter poster with even a slightly political bent. Look for the first shitty person. Look at their posting history. It'll nearly always be 100 post/day of shittiness telling you just what you need to hear. Unless the evil Russians are extremely clever, it all appears to be grassroots poor behavior.

I guess you can view social media as a giant laboratory showing the behavior of people when they are not nose-to-nose with you in a bar. It's all super disappointing.

Maybe there's a place for highly curated social media.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#44

Post by bjt2n3904 »

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…

> "we refuse to take responsibility ourselves"

I'm to be responsible for what someone else's views are?

Nonsense. This is the cry of the censorship apologist. This moderation draft you speak of... what guidelines will the draftees follow? Will they moderate out of the goodness of their hearts? Or will they follow some standard? (I'm sure many people would be extremely eager to author! You mean I get to decide what is permissible to discuss online? What a wonderful avenue to advance my political causes by force!)

The author is right. The solution is not to double down on moderation.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#45

Post by tqi »

Etheryte wrote: post #21
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?

Au contraire, I'd argue HN is a very diverse site but it's the moderation by both users and moderators that makes it seem orderly and uniform. There are many stories that get flagged a-la blogspam, low quality, clickbait etc, and same with comments. Those that don't have merit by the community don't reach the wider audience. I think the conception that HN is uniform is a somewhat common misunderstanding, as evidenced…

I think HN moderation works because it is relatively obscure and several orders of magnitude smaller than FB/Twitter/etc. I wonder long do it would take for HN to be completely overwhelmed if a large subreddit decided to come in and start trolling/spamming?

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#47

Post by ycombinete »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #39
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…

I was part of solving a content moderation problem for a tech company forum once. The most troublesome users were often the most prolific posters. The people who had a lot of free time on their hands to post every single day were often the most disgruntled, seizing every issue as a chance to stir up more controversy. It was tough enough to reel in difficult users when they had no power. Giving extra power to people w…

How did you go about solving the problem in the end?

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#48

Post by nullserver »

Etheryte wrote: post #21
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?

Au contraire, I'd argue HN is a very diverse site but it's the moderation by both users and moderators that makes it seem orderly and uniform. There are many stories that get flagged a-la blogspam, low quality, clickbait etc, and same with comments. Those that don't have merit by the community don't reach the wider audience. I think the conception that HN is uniform is a somewhat common misunderstanding, as evidenced…

HN is very heavy on Academics / Developers / Engineers.

Very different demographics then world at large.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#49

Post by morelisp »

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…

Everything old is new again.

https://www.levien.com/free/tmetric-HOWTO.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advogato

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#50

Post by crazygringo »

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…

Yes, I'm convinced at some point we're going to figure out an algorithm to solve content moderation with some version of crowdsourcing like this based on reputation, though I'd prefer a system based on building up trustworthiness through one's actions (consistently flagging similarly to already-trustworthy people).

But the challenge is still the same one you describe -- what do you do with competing "groups" or subcommunities that flag radically different things. What do you do when both supporters of each side of a civil war in a country consider the other side's social media posts to be misinformation and flags them? Or even just in a polarized political climate?

I still think (hope) there would have to be some kind of behavioral signal that could be used to handle this -- such as identifying users who are "broadly" trustworthy across a range of topics/contexts and rely primarily on their judgments, while identifying "rings" or communities that are internally consistent but not broadly representative, and so discount that "false trustworthiness".

But that means a quite sophisticated algorithm able to identify these rings/clusters and the probability that a given piece of content belongs to one, and I'm not aware of any algorithm anyone's come up with for that yet. (There are sites like HN which successfully detect small voting rings, but that's a far simpler task.)

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