Is content moderation a dead end?

Sounds like a network analysis problem to tackle.

IMHO this argument is potentially interesting philosophically, if someone has something new to say. It's an appeal to the logical extreme of post-modern relativism (and when we see logical extremes, I believe it's a good question to ask - is this a real problem or just philosophical). It also is misleading, IMHO, because it conflates morality, offensiveness, and power. Regardless, these kinds of philosophical arguments can be continued indefinitely, but so is the one that says the Internet is a figment of my imagination. I'm talking about reality.

In reality, the human mind doesn't need and very rarely uses the extreme of hard and fast algorithms; we are not computers. I can judge good from bad, constructive from destructive, etc. and it is easy to identify most of the problematic comments. When it's a forum with rules, it's easy to identify (again, a wild guess) 95% of them.

I think a clever mod will realize that they are not the Supreme Court. They are certainly not the best judge out there. Just clicking accounts and comments out of existence wont solve misinformation - it will just make the mod a tyrant. I know for a fact if i were moderating, there would be few safe users.

It's not a thought police firstly. It's a published statement police (pretty sure there are lots of laws like "disturbing the peace")

This will play out over time - call it 30 years - as we try to find out how to do lots of new things

- Handle mental health better. Partly we need medical breakthroughs, but social acceptance will be a huge improvement, as will standardised approaches, early years interventions and detection. It will take huge amounts of parent training - and the recognition that has genuine costs (how many start ups did not start because the parent decided to put their energy into supporting a child. And woe betide anyone suggesting that is another hurdle to be overcome with go getting attitude)

So we need huge investment in dealing with chronic mental health, not just medical, but social support, education etc.

- then sorting out acute. Look at any UK prison. It's basically young men with some mix of drug / mental health / abuse issues. Want to reduce the prison population - start 20 years ago. Don't define the police - simply introduce interventions so that in 20 years they won't need to do the social work job they do now

There is probably a dozen brilliant papers on this clearly showing what we should do and already modelled in a few enlightened communities globally. But it's going to take a decade of mistakes before those percolate up.

Let me know if you spot the me early.

After that it's social norms. We are trying to find a set of behaviours that are acceptable in the new online spaces. Public urination is frowned upon IRL - trolling is the online equivalent I guess. One can imagine things like loss of anonymity being the first part. Then slowly people develop tools to use humans inbuilt social mechanisms - so for example some asshat is intolerable, a record of their conversation is sent to the mother-in-law, 4 grandparents, all their wife's bridesmaids. (this may not work but you get the idea). We know this sort of thing works because every so often we all find that great viral thread where someone gets a comeuppance.

All of this does demand content moderation as ben says - and yes I do think all of this is too much. My take is social media will die back to manageable levels - if we are looking at a mass crowd situation, a swirling football crowd and asking, how can this crowd ever become a manageable city. Well crowds don't - crowds become cities, they disperse.

- There are too many forms of social media - each of us has one main form, and keep up with rest - just as we would have one friend in a crowd but interact with others. This will just die down. I mean how much value do we get from social media versus the constant worry / mind back that makes us check all the time. as humans develop social media innoculations this will die back

Secondly ad dollars will help die back social media - really it's amazing no one has noticed it's a scam and waste money f money.

At some point regulations and advertising will drive to a point where it is simply easier to dump the algorithm, stop driving for engagement and just supply the limited feed of friends posts, interspersed with billboard ads. Influencers will still influence, ads will still pop up, but as we are choosing who to follow we won't care. Just follow fewer people.

Agents - the other big silent one. I can run a refer over my emails but the facebook client won't let me. This is the other big change likely to occur - software agents acting in my best interest filtering shit for me.

Anyway bed time

I strongly disagree. Bad credit (sometimes even wrongly attributed) can block you from jobs, mobile plans, bank accounts, credit/debit cards, renting, etc. I'd rather be blocked from Facebook than be told I can't rent an apartment or be disqualified from a job.