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Is content moderation a dead end?

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Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#101

Post by michaelmrose »

dane-pgp wrote: post #73
karpierz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally the benefit of vouching for someone is that they join the community, and you personally want them to join the community.

Another reason to vouch for someone is that you trust their judgement and want them to have more power in the system to hide content that you personally don't want to see. It's true that this will lead to echo chambers, but by looking at vouching relationships rather than the contents of posts, it should be easier to detect the echo chambers and give people the opportunity to expand their horizons.

In a system that tends to reward closing your horizons with a sense of safety and belonging the trend wont be towards expanding horizons. Don't build systems that don't work like you want them to in practice because in theory people could use them better.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#102

Post by jfengel »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #34

Any ex-Usenet moderators out there? I don't remember this being such a huge deal, and there was always the alt groups.

A lot of the language we use for dealing with moderation was developed for Usenet and related systems: trolling, spam, flames, etc. The problem was bad enough that we developed names for it.

There was certainly less of it; all of Usenet fit in a box of magtapes. But it could still have some pretty big tempests in that teapot.

It never even got close to solving spam, which exploded after Eternal September. It took AI-esque systems (and enormous heaps of data to feed them) to reduce spam to a manageable level. Trolling is a harder problem than spam.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#103

Post by alex_g »

simmanian wrote: post #95
alex_g wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clubhouse is not a great example of a platform that handles abuse properly. Putting the moderation burden on people is also not a solution, it's duct tape.

>Putting the moderation burden on people I don't think GP is saying we should put the moderation burden on people. When you accept that there is no objective definition of right or wrong, you begin to see that perhaps there are ways for people to self-organize on the internet according to their values rather than being shoved into the same box like we often do today. Many people are looking for ways to efficiently an…

"Right or wrong" maybe not, but for well managed communities on the internet, there are objective definitions for appropriate and inappropriate, based on shared values and context.

If you leave it up to each individual to decide what is appropriate or inappropriate, and provide them with the tools to block content they consider inappropriate, that's a burden on them, because you're not taking care of it at the community level.

And if the community's strength comes from shared values, and you leave that up to each individual to decide, what's shared, and what sort of "community" is actually offered?

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#104

Post by motohagiography »

It's hard to separate content moderation from the problem of Evil. Low entropy evil is easy to automate out, high entropy and sophisticated evil can convince you it doesn't exist.

This is also the basic problem of growing communities, where you want to attract new people while still providing value to your core group, while still managing both attrition and predators. What content moderation problems have proven is that even with absolute omniscient control of an electronic platform, this is still Hard. It's also yields some information about what Evil is, which is that it seems to emerge as a consequence of incentives more than anything else.

In the hundreds of forums I've used over decades, the best ones were moderated by starting with a high'ish bar to entry. You have to be able to signal at least this level of "goodness," and it's on you to meet it, not the moderators to explain themselves. There is a "be excellent to each other" rule which gives very reasonable blanket principle powers to moderators, and it's pretty easy to check. It also helped to take a broken windows approach to penalizing laziness and other stupidity so that everyone sees examples of the rules.

Platform moderation is only hard relative to a standard of purity as well, and the value of the community is based not on its alignment, but on its mix. If you are trying to solve the optimization problem of "No Evil," you aren't indexed on the growth problem of "More Enjoyable." However, I don't worry too much about it because the communities in the former category won't grow and survive long enough to register.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#105

Post by michaelmrose »

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…

How about making people put down a bond of even a small amount say $10 and something tied to your actual ID. The registrar knows who you are but sites only know you are a verified person but not who you are.

If you are found to be a fake person you forfeit the bond. Now it costs $100,0000 to create 10k fake people and you can lose it all tomorrow.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#106

Post by bombcar »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #34

Any ex-Usenet moderators out there? I don't remember this being such a huge deal, and there was always the alt groups.

Usenet self-selected for (relatively) wealthy (usually) Americans who had the intelligence and know-how to get online at a time when it was costly and difficult.

And it fell to Eternal September.

The really only way to moderate a group is keep the group small.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#107

Post by groby_b »

simmanian wrote: post #95
alex_g wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clubhouse is not a great example of a platform that handles abuse properly. Putting the moderation burden on people is also not a solution, it's duct tape.

>Putting the moderation burden on people I don't think GP is saying we should put the moderation burden on people. When you accept that there is no objective definition of right or wrong, you begin to see that perhaps there are ways for people to self-organize on the internet according to their values rather than being shoved into the same box like we often do today. Many people are looking for ways to efficiently an…

And yet, HN operates on a (not "the") definition of right and wrong. Stepping outside the boundaries gets you a visit from the moderation fairy, and might end with you being ejected.

That means the burden is not on "people" in the sense of individuals. You can expect a certain content and tone coming to HN because the moderators ensure that. Yes, they're people too, but not in the sense PP and GP used it.

That was clearly an "each individual user should..." statement - and that's likely unsustainable for large user groups.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#108

Post by croutonwagon »

miki123211 wrote: post #80

I think we're looking at the issue in a completely wrong way. There's no objective definition of right or wrong in content moderation. Right and wrong is subjective, especially across cultures, and moderation should be subjective too. I believe end users should have the choice to adopt blocklists, Adblock style. Those lists could contain single posts, accounts, or even specific words. A lot of content (like flashing…

I think there a fine line between these and curated lists (which most would use) that create echo chambers and comfirmation bias (which many platforms have).

I like the methods this site uses over others quite frankly and that seems to be quite a bit of human moderation to get to it. But i think scale also has something to do with it. Reddit was much like this site in its earlier days.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#109

Post by weird-eye-issue »

michaelmrose wrote: post #99
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that you comment that on HN

Which has a single front page which shows the same headlines to everyone where people who disagree can all see each others posts and we can disagree with each other so long as we can avoid being jerks to one another. At worst you lose imaginary internet points if you say something that the group doesn't agree with.

Okay

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#110

Post by stevesimmons »

asciident wrote: post #71
proc0 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That will allow companies to black list you across the internet Thus giving full control of people to private entities that are increasingly not held accountable by anything or anyone. Why would we want a private entity, not elected by the people, to decide our morality? Enforcing morality is dangerous and arguably immoral since it uses force to align people's thinking, which treats everyone like children that are…

Like the credit bureaus? Seems like they've been doing this for decades already.

Credit bureaus are also highly regulated
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