Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

Imagine it is a text and you can mark any paragraph. You can save that paragraph, like it, or even reply to it. So the interaction can grow like tentacles (edit: or rather like a tree).

Right now, I could make a comment on either your first or second paragraph, or on your entire comment. However, there is no way to determine which category my reply falls into until you have read it entirely. On a platform like Twitter, where there can be up to 100,000 comments on a given piece of content, this is very useful.

Better yet, it allows the author himself to dig down into tangent. In theory, someone could create an account and then have all of their interactions stay on the same tree without ever cutting off. Essentially turning their account into an interconnected "wiki" where everyone can add information.

With enough time your brain no longer registers the metadata around the tweet. If you ignore it and read it as an entire text it is not very different from a regular article or long form comment: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1586955288061452289.html

Look - I don't even particularly disagree with you, but I want to point out a problem with this approach.

I'm 33. I grew up playing multiplayer video games (including having to run a db9 COM cable across the house from one machine to another to play warcraft 2 multiplayer, back when you had to explicitly pick the protocol for the networking in the game menu)

My family worked with computers, so I had DSL since I have memories. I played a ton of online games. The communities are BRUTAL. They are insulting, abusive, misogynistic, racist, etc... the spectrum of unmonitored teenage angst, in all it's ugly forms (and to be fair, some truly awesome folks and places).

As a result - I have a really thick skin about basically everything said online. But a key difference between the late 90s and today, is that if I wanted it to stop, all I had to do was close the game I was playing. Done.

Most social activities were in person, not online. I could walk to my friend's houses. I could essentially tune out all the bullshit by turning off my computer, and there was plenty of other stuff to go do where the computer wasn't involved at all.

I'm not convinced that's enough anymore. The computer is in your pocket. It's always on. Your social life is probably half online, half in person. Your school work is online. Your family is online. your reputation is online (as evidenced by those fucking blue checkmarks). The abuse is now on a highway into your life, even if you want to turn it off.

It's like the school bully is now waiting for you everywhere. He's not waiting at school - he's stepping into the private conversations you're having online. He's talking to your friends. He's hurling abuse at you when you look at your family photos. He's in your life in a way that just wasn't possible before.

I don't think it's fair to say "Just grow a thicker skin" in response to that. I think growing a thicker skin is desperately needed, but I don't think it's sufficient. The problem is deeper.

We have a concept for people who do the things these users are doing on twitter in person - They're called fighting words, and most times, legally (even in the US) there is zero assumption of protected speech here. You say bad shit about someone with the goal of riling them up and no other value? You have no right of free speech, because you aren't "speaking" - you're trying to start a fight.

I'm not protecting your ability to bully someone. Full stop. If you want to do that, do it with the clear understanding that you're on your own, and regardless of how thick my skin is - I think you need a good slap upside the head. I'd cheer it on.

In person - this resolves itself because the fuckwads who do this literally get physically beaten. Not always - but often enough we have a modicum of civil discussion we accept, and a point where no one is going to defend you because you were a right little cunt, and the beating was well deserved.

I don't know how you simulate the same constraint online. I'm not entirely sure you can, but I think the answer isn't to just stop trying.

So instead of moderating users, you moderate moderators, still seems like a net win.

Your logic makes sense but is not how these moderation services actually work. When I used my own phone number to create a Twitter, I was immediately banned. So instead I purchased an account from a service with no issues. It’s become impossible for me at least to use large platforms without assistance from an expert who runs bot farms to build accounts that navigate the secret rules that govern bans.

> The world absolutely has not changed in the context of censorship.

Citation needed