It seems like no one has figured out a good system for moderation on the internet. IIUC, Facebook hired contractors to do it, then realized that that didn't work and created XCheck to cover the visible cases, and is now in trouble because XCheck also doesn't work and rubber-stamps everything. Even before this there were news stories about the horribleness of those contract moderator jobs. Reddit tried to federate mod…
Ironically, HN's great moderation caused it to become very popular, which has made the task of moderating it all much more difficult, which is having a noticeable effect on discussions and which articles make it to the front page.
You haven’t really touched on the main problem discussed in the article, which is that to Facebook, there are special users - mainly celebrities and politicians - who get to play by different rules than the rest of us. Social media was supposed to help level the playing field of society, not exacerbate its inequalities.
> Social media was supposed to help level the playing field of society, not exacerbate its inequalities. Supposed by whom? Zuckerberg created Facebook when he was at Harvard and had never seemed interested in leveling any playing field.
This was a common belief in the early history of blogging. Facebook was a later manifestation of social media.
It's honestly pretty easy to imagine. Given any company with a clarified goal, the default answer to "How much of the market do we want?" is "All of it." Rare is the company that sets as a goal "10% of the potential customers."
That's not true at all. Plenty of people run lifestyle businesses whose goal is to support themselves and their families, friends, and employees. One example is Aquarium Co-Op [1] who is into promoting the aquarium hobby in all its facets. Cory, the owner, is very frank about the costs of running his business and how he often sells products at or below cost because he believes they're important to the community. A fa…
I think that's excellent and I wish Cory the best. Cragislist is another example I can think of where a company just set out to be small and charge what it needed to make its small employee-base comfortable, not dominate the world.
... but then I'm out of names, is my point. Most companies don't go this road. Perhaps that's because going the other road gathers enough resources to be big enough to make all the headlines, so we don't hear about the others.
It is extremely distressing that a few companies, all located in the same country, and many located in the same state, if not quite the same city, run by a few men with similar politics has the immense power that they do. Some people do not quite understand why. Imagine in they were all Russian and owned by friends of Putin. It should be a matter of national security for other nations to develop regional competitors.…
They won't get broken up because western govs want to compete with China and have similar control while still being able to fly under the freedom flag. FB is a virtual China, "soft authoritarianism" basically.
It is extremely distressing that a few companies, all located in the same country, and many located in the same state, if not quite the same city, run by a few men with similar politics has the immense power that they do. Some people do not quite understand why. Imagine in they were all Russian and owned by friends of Putin. It should be a matter of national security for other nations to develop regional competitors.…
They won't get broken up because western govs want to compete with China and have similar control while still being able to fly under the freedom flag. FB is a virtual China, "soft authoritarianism" basically.
They will get regulated by governments though, there is no reason those companies should have that kind of power.
That's not true at all. Plenty of people run lifestyle businesses whose goal is to support themselves and their families, friends, and employees. One example is Aquarium Co-Op [1] who is into promoting the aquarium hobby in all its facets. Cory, the owner, is very frank about the costs of running his business and how he often sells products at or below cost because he believes they're important to the community. A fa…
I think that's excellent and I wish Cory the best. Cragislist is another example I can think of where a company just set out to be small and charge what it needed to make its small employee-base comfortable, not dominate the world. ... but then I'm out of names, is my point. Most companies don't go this road. Perhaps that's because going the other road gathers enough resources to be big enough to make all the headlin…
I think you're generally going to run out if you try to think of household names. Instead, think local. I don't know about you but there are a lot of local family-run restaurants, bakeries, chocolatiers, furniture/carpentry stores, flower shops, consulting businesses, accounting/tax prep firms, game/hobby stores, boardgame cafes, independent movie theatres, etc. On and on the list goes, though unless you live here (Waterloo) you've probably never heard of any of them. And of course where I live is not special; you can find a similar variety in any city and even many towns or villages.
You have to remember that high profile accounts get 10000x the number of abuse-reports than a normal account - nearly all bogus. The normal automated moderation functions simply do not work. Many users will simply mash the "report abuse" button if they see a politician they don't like, or a sports player for an opposing team. If the normal rules applied identically to everyone, all high profile accounts would simply…
This is exactly the solution. IF tons of people are reporting Steve Newscaster because he posted a status about how his team won, then he shouldn't become immune to criticism, those people should lose the privilege of having their voice heard. Just send them a little message saying "Hey, you've falsely reported a bunch of posts/accounts lately, so we're restricting your ability to report content for 30 days." and if…
That might not work. In the eternal September of Facebook there may always be enough new accounts to continuously file false reports against high profile accounts.
It seems like no one has figured out a good system for moderation on the internet. IIUC, Facebook hired contractors to do it, then realized that that didn't work and created XCheck to cover the visible cases, and is now in trouble because XCheck also doesn't work and rubber-stamps everything. Even before this there were news stories about the horribleness of those contract moderator jobs. Reddit tried to federate mod…
I don't think universal moderation (a moderation standard across all users) is possible or even desirable. Different users want different things. There are users who never want a single even mildly insulting word. There are users who want unlimited freedom. The best you can do is to break down moderation and let people opt into a level and form of moderation. Tell them upfront what they are getting and let them pick…
The common denominator in platforms going to shit is scale.
Most social media platforms get their initial users by targeting a specific niche or demographic. Forums of olde typically revolved around some specific subject matter (e.g a particular game, or band, or subculture). Facebook targeted college students. Reddit targeted techies. But once the platform reaches some critical threshold of popularity, the platform strays from its vision to realize some commercial potential. The admins and moderators, in the interest of growth, try to appeal to a lowest common denominator, which ends up alienating the now-veterans, and the original purpose of the platform is diluted into obscurity.
Technically, all these users are getting Facebook services for free. Is the complaint here that some people are receiving lesser free services than other people's free services?
If that's the case then we need to look at the value of said free services.