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Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

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Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#291
post #233

Every single social media platform that has ever existed makes the same fundamental mistake. They believe that they just have to remove or block the bad actors and bad content and that will make the platform good. The reality is everyone , myself included, can be and will be a bad actor. How do you build and run a "social media" product when the very act of letting anyone respond to anyone with anything is itself the…

This is something Riot Games has spoken on, the observation that ordinary participants can have a bad day here or there, and that forgiving corrections can preserve their participation while reducing future incidents.

Did Riot eventually sort out the toxic community? If so that would be amazing, and definitely relevant. I stopped playing when it was still there, and it was a big part of the reason I stopped.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#292
> youʻll end up with a council of third-rate minds and politically-motivated hacks, and the situation will be worse than how you started.

Wow, surprising honesty from someone affiliated with Reddit. I'm sad that I wasn't on the site during the time of the old guard.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#293
These random detours into climate-related topics are insanely disruptive of an otherwise interesting essay. I absolutely hate this pattern. I see what he's trying to do - you don't want to read about climate change but you want to read this other thing so I'm going to mix them together so you can't avoid the one if you want the other - but it's an awful dark pattern and makes for a frustrating and confusing reading experience. I kept thinking he was making an analogy before realizing he was just changing topics at random again. It certainly isn't making me more interested in his trees project. If anything I'm less interested now.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#294

If I wanted quality content, I would just do the Something Awful approach and charge $x per account. If I wanted lots of eyeballs (whether real or fake) to sell ads, I would just pay lip service to moderation issues, while focusing on only moderating anything that affects my ability to attract advertisers. But what I want, above all, because I think it would be hilarious to watch, is for Elon to activate Robot9000 on…

Robot9000 really didn't improve quality in the places it was deployed though and people just game it. edit: that said I think Something Awful arguably has the best approach to this does it not? The site is over 20 years old at this point. That is absolutely ancient compared to all the public message forums that exist.

I agree. I think the SA approach is the best I've ever seen. But as I'm flippantly pointing out: it only works if you really only care about fostering quality social interaction.

The mistake SA is making is not fixating on revenue as the chief KPI. ;)

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#295
post #246

> Because it is not TOPICS that are censored. It is BEHAVIOR. > (This is why people on the left and people on the right both think they are being targeted) An enticing idea but simply not the case for any popular existing social network. And it's triply not true on yishan's reddit which both through administrative measures and moderation culture targets any and all communities that do not share the favoured new-left…

Can you elaborate with an example? I'm unfamiliar with reddit and it's content management. I'm unsure if the premise of "AI" moderation is true, how it could moderate beyond a pattern or behavior since it can't reasonably be scanning every post and comment for political affiliation?

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#296
post #132

Is anyone else having a hard time following along? Can someone provide a tl;dr?

The public thinks about moderation in terms of content. Large social networks think in terms of behavior. Like let's say I get a chip on my shoulder about... the Ukraine war, one direction or another. And I start finding a way to insert my opinion on every thread. My opinion on the Ukraine war is fine. Any individual post I might make is fine and contextual to the convo. But I'm bringing down the over-all quality of discussion by basically spamming every convo with my personal grievance.

Some kinds of content also gets banned, like child abuse material and other obvious things. But the hard part is the "behavior" type bans.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, and maybe this will be panned, but the real answer is for people to grow thicker skin and stop putting one's feelings on a pedestal above all.

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…

> 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 is still a choice to participate online. I'm not on Twitter or Facebook or anything like that. It doesn't affect my life in the slightest. Someone could be on there right this minute calling me names, and it can't bother me because I don't see it, and I don't let it into my life. This is not a superpower, it's a choice to not engage with social media and all the ills it brings.

Have I occasionally gotten hate mail from an HN post? Sure. I even got a physical threat over E-mail (LOL good luck, guy). If HN ever became as toxic as social media can be, I could just stop posting and reading. Problem solved. Online is not real if you just ignore it.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#300

If I wanted quality content, I would just do the Something Awful approach and charge $x per account. If I wanted lots of eyeballs (whether real or fake) to sell ads, I would just pay lip service to moderation issues, while focusing on only moderating anything that affects my ability to attract advertisers. But what I want, above all, because I think it would be hilarious to watch, is for Elon to activate Robot9000 on…

Robot9000 really didn't improve quality in the places it was deployed though and people just game it. edit: that said I think Something Awful arguably has the best approach to this does it not? The site is over 20 years old at this point. That is absolutely ancient compared to all the public message forums that exist.

SA is also not the font of internet culture that it once was, either, so clearly the price of admission is not sufficient to make it successful. It seems to me it was, at most, a partial contributor.
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