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Is content moderation a dead end?

ben-evans.com

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Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#171

Post by aaroninsf »

Some intertwined problems, which we mostly try to nervously look away from in this forum/industry/epoch:

- (effectively all) humans are first of all impulsive, driven by emotion and tribal identity, and most of all, subject to cognitive errors and for that reason and others, predictably effective manipulation

- the tools/practices for such manipulation, which many on HN are actively advancing because yaaay $$$, are now so powerful as to in aggregate overwhelm all current defenses (including good intentions, individual discernment, and various technical solutions ITT)

- the financial/power incentives to abuse such tools and short circuit, bypass, block, subvert, etc., attempts to defend against these tools are overwhelming

Look at the news cycle, for the 99th time the intersection of Facebook's utter sociopathology and the utter toothlessness of its sham oversight board and nominal internal protocols and standards is headline news.

I got 99 problems, and stochastic mind control is one of em

The only thing remotely effective is total deplatforming, and yeah, that's not the sharpest or most popular tool.

Left hook climate change Right hook surveillance capitalism

DOWN WE ALLLLL GOOOOOOOO

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#172

Post by _carbyau_ »

sigstoat wrote: post #127
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…

> Why would we want a private entity, not elected by the people, to decide our morality? i got the impression from the separation of church and state that we don't generally want elected officials deciding what is or is not moral. merely what is legal.

The separation of church and state is precisely because we DO want state laws to enforce morals.

We also want that enforcement to apply no matter what religion you have.

At least, I do.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#173

Post by _carbyau_ »

justbored123 wrote: post #62

This is extremely short sighted. The complete opposite is more likely to be true. Privacy is almost dead and soon it will be almost impossible to hide your real identity on the internet and thus avoid consequences for your actions. That will allow companies to black list you across the internet, so if you are an a-hole in lets say Facebook by harassing people, doxing them, do child grooming, scams/fake advertisement,…

This is pretty much the tech capitalist way of arriving at China's Social Credit system.

And a nightmare.

Can you imagine the social cooling if this was in place?

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#174

Post by incompatible »

paxys wrote: post #3

Agree with the author that moderating every interaction on a social network is a fool's errand. I'd go a step further and say that the future isn't simply restricting some features like links and replies, but rather more closed networks where entry is guarded (think PC software downloads -> app stores) and only a very limited set of specialized actions and interactions is allowed (think app sandboxing).

There are already platforms where you can set up closed groups, if you want one. Banning links or replies seems a lot more heavy-handed than content moderation.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#175

Post by dan-robertson »

I wonder how well somethingawful-style signup fees solve this problem: pay $10 to sign up and if the platform doesn’t like your behaviour they can ban you or set you back to the pre-payment stage.

This then somewhat disincentivises bad behaviour and, in particular, repeated or automated bad behaviour. Surely this would harm growth and it doesn’t feel like you’d have success charging a smaller fee in poorer countries. It could also be a recipient for being very unpopular with your users whenever they get punished. And I would worry that it would just incentivise spammers to steal credentials.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#176

Post by _carbyau_ »

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…

Why do you have to give people "unlimited" posts? Why not 5 per day?

More posts if people rate your posts highly, to some useful maximum.

Less posts if they rate your posts poorly, down to a set minimum that every starts at.

Then all the fancy IP detecting, fingerprinting etc tech could filter duplicate accounts and be a boon for once.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#177

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

dan-robertson wrote: post #175

I wonder how well somethingawful-style signup fees solve this problem: pay $10 to sign up and if the platform doesn’t like your behaviour they can ban you or set you back to the pre-payment stage. This then somewhat disincentivises bad behaviour and, in particular, repeated or automated bad behaviour. Surely this would harm growth and it doesn’t feel like you’d have success charging a smaller fee in poorer countries.…

It also means that people with large amounts of disposable income can get away with not following the rules.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#178

Post by prawn »

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…

(Have run and moderated a forum for 15+ years.)

You are outnumbered. Spammers or bad actors run 24/7 whereas you need to sleep or holiday. You are criticised for moderating (“censorship!”) or not moderating, if you are ever inconsistent you’re “playing favourites”. Persistent bad actors skirt the boundaries and dedicate themselves wholly to getting past you. Trolls work in the grey areas. You and your parents get doxxed for handing out a minor imposition.

You are up against spam bots working constantly to bypass you. Up against bots skirting what contravenes rules, or spammers asking an “innocent question” to set up another account to provide a spam answer.

Any question remotely involving politics/gender/race devolves immediately into a shitshow (this is a newish phenomenon).

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#179

Post by dan-robertson »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #168
croutonwagon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In its earlier days reddit was a bunch of bots talking to themselves. HN works because the official moderation is more of a nudge than a fist, the community enforces its own standards, and it's a relatively small niche.

The community kind of enforced its own standards (eg almost no jokes, especially no stupid Reddit-style joke threads).

But I think moderation was more important. However much pg wrote about being curious or “intellectual honesty” or whatever, it was the change in moderation (to dang) that saw changes. But that sort of thing doesn’t fit all communities.

For one thing this one is basically public (there’s no shared-private things like subgroups or DMs) and tends to have reasonably highly educated members. For another, the volume is low enough that dang can deal with it all with only some automated tools, giving a reasonably consistent approach to moderation. Also I think he is paid much more like a software engineer in Silicon Valley than a typical social media moderator.

There are certainly some other more general things though, like the anti-flame mechanisms, the lack of more inflammatory media like pictures or videos, the lack of printed comment score and downvote limits, and the generally public moderation trail (though moderator may privately email users too).

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#180

Post by wilg »

dan-robertson wrote: post #175

I wonder how well somethingawful-style signup fees solve this problem: pay $10 to sign up and if the platform doesn’t like your behaviour they can ban you or set you back to the pre-payment stage. This then somewhat disincentivises bad behaviour and, in particular, repeated or automated bad behaviour. Surely this would harm growth and it doesn’t feel like you’d have success charging a smaller fee in poorer countries.…

We're working on a social tool (maybe not a network?) that we want to be funded by users instead of ads and we're thinking that as you say a fee may help discourage automated spam.

Also we're finding that some of the features that enhance user privacy could help reduce bad behavior, like defaulting to smaller, closed groups of people.

But it's a fascinating challenge and there's so many facets to it – glad people are starting to think about different ways to approach the problems with social!

(Sneaky pitch: if this sounds interesting to you maybe let's work together! https://frenlo.com/)

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