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Is content moderation a dead end?

ben-evans.com

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Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#141

Post by intended »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #113

>>> One could also think of big European cities before modern policing - 18th century London or Paris were awash with sin and prone to mob violence, because they were cities. Is the solution in the article? Do we simply need to recognise that as all society is online we now need online police? Online Community support officers (UK police adjuncts (think teaching assistants). I suspect there is an overlap with the "de…

Yes.

And that brings up the issue of how, exactly, are we supposed to allow a literal “thought police”.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#142

Post by andrew_v4 »

groby_b wrote: post #107
simmanian wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 cl…

Your HN example makes me think: if I'm talking to my spouse or close friends, we obviously don't have a moderation policy, we know each other well and share values well enough that any debates we may have are (almost always) focused on substance and not on conduct.

In political discourse, and in debates on big platforms like Twitter, it's the opposite- most of the discussion is about people's or groups' conduct and substance takes a back seat. Because a heterogeneous group with different values is involved.

So for social media and online forums, the question is, how big and diverse can the audience get while still supporting civil, substance focused discussion? HN does a pretty good job, and also has some obvious biases, scared cows, and weak spots. Online newspaper article comments probably have one of the lowest quality of discourse for a given participant size. What forum is best, I'm not sure, but its instructive to look at it this way, because it reflects politics generally, if we want to address real issues while maximizing participation.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#143

Post by intended »

dang wrote: post #75
proc0 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only under control, I think, because it's very specific in terms of content. The weakness many social networks have is that it's basically an open platform for any discussion, and that makes it harder to put boundaries around. It makes sense to heavily restrict subject matters on sites with specialized content but general social networks are still facing the issues mentioned in the article, IMHO.

I agree that being specific about content makes things easier, but HN is not so specific. Anything intellectually interesting is on topic ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ), and that makes for a lot of long, difficult explanations - e.g.: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Greater institutions have fallen; thats when we got the term Eternal September. It just takes the right influx of users to overcome the human moderators.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#144

Post by jasonfarnon »

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.

How do credit bureaus "enforce morality"? I think the point is that the effect of a bad credit rating is much more limited than a universal blackout on the internet. In fact strictly more limited, to the extent that many creditors rely on social media in making their decisions.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#145

Post by RobertRoberts »

wolverine876 wrote: post #140

People with moderating experience: Why not just delete [most] offending comments, immediately, no questions asked (and ban repeat offenders)? For maybe 95% (as a wild guess), there's no question - it's clear that the comment is inflammatory or disinformation or whatever. It surprises me that I see so many of them permitted in so many forums, even here on HN. Why tolerate them? One click and move on. Tell people about…

> "Why not just delete offending comments..."

How do you define offending? Some people are offended by a great many things. China is offended if you point out they have human rights abuses. The US is offended if you point out their interference in other country's affairs. Thailand literally makes it illegal (jail time) to offend some people that in the US is not only legal, but encouraged by our culture!

It's not so simple or easy.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#146

Post by intended »

No?

I’ll argue that the main product of reddit is not the community, its the content moderation. Maybe eventually the content moderation toolkit.

At this point reddit mods and users must have collectively built the largest collection of regexes to identify hate/harmful speech For a huge number of sub cultures.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#147

Post by jonnycomputer »

A system that limits the number of posts individuals can make on a per-article or per-diem basis would go a long way to silencing overly strident voices which, out of their sheer verbosity and pertinacity make it appear that their (often) extreme views are more prevalent and widely accepted than they in fact are.

An alternative is to generate an in-forum currency that can be spent on comments, either on a per-post or per-word basis. This currency could be earned based on reputation--but as we see here on HN, and many other places, upvotes does not always go to the most thoughtful and engaging comments--or some other metric (statistical distinguish-ability of posts from the corpus of posts? not sure).

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#148

Post by jonnycomputer »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #145
wolverine876 wrote: post #140

People with moderating experience: Why not just delete [most] offending comments, immediately, no questions asked (and ban repeat offenders)? For maybe 95% (as a wild guess), there's no question - it's clear that the comment is inflammatory or disinformation or whatever. It surprises me that I see so many of them permitted in so many forums, even here on HN. Why tolerate them? One click and move on. Tell people about…

> "Why not just delete offending comments..." How do you define offending? Some people are offended by a great many things. China is offended if you point out they have human rights abuses. The US is offended if you point out their interference in other country's affairs. Thailand literally makes it illegal (jail time) to offend some people that in the US is not only legal, but encouraged by our culture! It's not so…

No it is easy. You define offending as whatever the moderator finds offending. Like a strike in baseball.

But you can always moderate the moderators.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#149

Post by kartoshechka »

wolverine876 wrote: post #140

People with moderating experience: Why not just delete [most] offending comments, immediately, no questions asked (and ban repeat offenders)? For maybe 95% (as a wild guess), there's no question - it's clear that the comment is inflammatory or disinformation or whatever. It surprises me that I see so many of them permitted in so many forums, even here on HN. Why tolerate them? One click and move on. Tell people about…

Then people will get offended for getting censored out?

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#150

Post by jonnycomputer »

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 like this, a lot. Well, I don't like that it sounds like it will prevent outsiders from participating, those who have no-one who will vouch for them, and it does sound like it would encourage a mono-culture of thought. But I like the idea of socializing the costs of bad behavior. Indeed, those socialized costs would extend to the real world. I'm intrigued and perturbed at same time.
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