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Is content moderation a dead end?

ben-evans.com

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Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#241

Post by intended »

jwlake wrote: post #51
mdoms wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with misinformation? Anti vax misinformation could literally devastate an entire society if given enough oxygen. Are your free speech ideals more important than the health of an entire economy and hundreds of thousands of lives at risk?

This reminds me of a line from an NPR story. It said that "false" information spread twice as fast and twice as far as "true" information on twitter. No interrogation of why it spread was investigated. It immediately made me wonder, maybe people just thought "false" information was a whole lot funnier, and hence sharable. The problem with misinformation is it vaguely doesn't exist. There's parody, non-orthodoxy, true…

By the time these papers are distilled to an NPR report, its simplified to an extent that nuance is lost. There are many papers on this, which will answer your question.

The transmission cascades and cascade sizes for false info are studied. Misinformation for example is repeated, like a nuclear feedback loop, or more like gossip being repeated between people till it becomes a “fact”.

Science related info propagates through the network only a few times, as if people who read it understand it and move on.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#242

Post by betwixthewires »

Sorry dude that wrote this article, but it is a bunch of words saying nothing. No conclusion, just a bunch of bad comparisons and analogies. This sentence distils the article entirely:

> an app can’t run in the background, watch what you do, and steal your bank details, because the move to a sandboxed model means applications can’t run in the background and watch what you do.

It can't because it can't. Got it.

To talk about the topic in the title though, content moderation is a dead end, not because of the need to do it, but because people will not tolerate it. Nobody has a monopoly on information sharing on the internet, no amount of justification will get people to sit and allow it. All moderation is good for is keeping your community on focus, trying to prevent any ideas, even bad ideas, from bring shared is a bad idea in itself. It is a dead end not because it is an unsolveable problem, there's a deeper root here. It is a dead end because the people you're trying to moderate don't see a problem that needs a solution in the first place, and they're going to avoid your attempt at controlling their voices and the flow of information. And they should.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#243

Post by engineeringwoke »

benedictevans wrote: post #65
engineeringwoke wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> thousands of content moderators in the Philippines And those are good jobs for people. This is honestly a ridiculous argument. It's simply that technologists don't want to pay for content moderation so they are arguing that it isn't necessary because it is "Sisyphean", which curiously enough raises their margins. It couldn't be more cynical.

I argued that content moderation probably isn’t the answer and we need to something else. I really don’t know how anyone could possibly read what I wrote and believe I was saying we shouldn’t do anything. Frankly, I struggle to see that as anything other than deliberate bad faith.

I think your argument was in bad faith as well, so not much difference there. The "something else" is algorithms, which are cheaper than people.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#244

Post by intended »

wolverine876 wrote: post #154
kartoshechka wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then people will get offended for getting censored out?

Some will, but is that a loss? If you aim at accommodating destructive behavior, you'll have it and attract more of it. If you aim at accommodating constructive behavior, you'll have it and attract more of it. I'd happily let some other sites have the entire market of destructive behavior. But we are just speculating; can someone with actual experience and expertise say how it would work?

You are correct. Eventually moderation becomes opaque to not give information to bad actors (trolls/botters/harassers).

At that point it becomes about attack surface areas and patterns.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#245

Post by throwaway2037 »

ddingus wrote: post #229
seppin wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a stereotype of journalists I have not seen confirmed. Most journalists I know are happy to admit when they are wrong, if it means they are closer to the truth.

I know a few myself. To the point of having real conversations. Those who are working for smaller shops, or who are freelancing are in a very different place than people working within or dependent on the big media machine. What beat you cover matters too. Some topics come with more permissive norms all around. Contrast social issues with economics and foreign policy. How much agency one has to both report in an inve…

"Access journalism". I feel the same about most reporting about non-public tech companies. "If you play nice, we give you a good 'story' (really PR) to print. If not, get lost."

In Japan, "access journalism" is also a serious problem with political reporting. But to be fair, so is the United States, but more subtle / less obvious. Example: Can Fox News really get a long-form interview with President Biden? (I am not trolling.)

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#246

Post by j16sdiz »

sigstoat wrote: post #240
_carbyau_ wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The separation of church and state is precisely because we DO want state laws to enforce morals. i look forward to your support for making the tithe mandatory.

How much does your government charge you for income tax?

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#247

Post by tonyedgecombe »

seriousquestion wrote: post #129
tinus_hn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it worse than YouTube comments? I have never looked at it but that has to be something..

YouTube comments are actually pretty good these days, I find.

Most comments on YouTube are vacuous, it's not worth wading through them.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#248

Post by nxpnsv »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #117
nxpnsv wrote: post #40

I'd love seeing an anonymous peer review approach, to post anything you need to review X other posts. Until there are N accepts posts are invisible. I think it could work, but I am sure HN can tell me how I am wrong :)

In other words, before posting you need to randomly click on X other posts, and to make your posts visible, you need to have N accounts. I believe I could write such script in an afternoon.

I even started, but I have no social network to go with it so I stopped. It should also work for reviews.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#249

Post by powerapple »

closeparen wrote: post #186
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.

Echo chambers and confirmation bias are also known as community. I know everyone wants to “do something” but other people occupying communities whose identities and norms and beliefs you don’t like is a problem of humanity, not the internet.

Exactly. Internet has been able to connect people, so each community become larger and louder. But the real issue is that the voice of majority is actually missing.

It is like if you bought a doughnut from a shop, some will say it loud it is wonderful, if you have complains you probably will make sure you say it loud and clear, the majority people happy with it will just walk away silently.

This way, the voice you hear on internet are mostly from the two extreme of spectrum, nothing in the middle. It would be nice if we have some adjust somehow.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#250

Post by tonyedgecombe »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #13
cryptoz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the cost could be large enough to bankrupt even the largest companies. In my opinion, if you can't hire enough people to moderate without going bankrupt, then bankrupt you go! Would this mean we can't have social media? Maybe. Probably for the best. But you can't moderate then you go out of business. That's the way it should be. Probably then people would find a way to moderate and stay afloat.

That would apply to every website with a comments section, sadly. I think the solution to this is smaller, more isolated groups -- with limited edges between. Back to email threads and Mumble servers, imo. The downside is we'll all be living in filter bubbles, but I think any shared community with a common value (like a video game) is better than some ginormous platform like Facebook.

>The downside is we'll all be living in filter bubbles

That already seems to be the case.

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