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Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

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Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#331

Post by danans »

motohagiography wrote: post #91

I've had to give this some thought for other reasons, and after a couple decades solving analogous problems to moderation in security, I agree with yishan about signal to noise over the specific content, but what I have effectively spent a career studying and detecting with data is a single factor: malice. It's something every person is capable of, and it takes a lot of exercise and practice with higher values to rea…

> "Hate," is a weak substitute because it is so vague we can apply it to anything

That is a big stretch. Hate can't be applied to many things, including disagreements like this comment.

But it can be pretty clearly applied to statements that, if carried out in life, would deny another person or peoples' human rights. Another is denigration or mocking someone on the basis of things that can't or shouldn't have to change about themselves, like their race or religion. There is a pretty bright line there.

Malice (per the conventional meaning of something bad intended, but not necessarily revealed or acted out) is a much lower bar that includes outright hate speech.

> but really, you can see when someone is actuated by it.

How can you identify this systematically (vs it being just your opinion), but not identify hate speech?

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#332

Post by Eliezer »

dang wrote: post #219
motohagiography wrote: post #91

I've had to give this some thought for other reasons, and after a couple decades solving analogous problems to moderation in security, I agree with yishan about signal to noise over the specific content, but what I have effectively spent a career studying and detecting with data is a single factor: malice. It's something every person is capable of, and it takes a lot of exercise and practice with higher values to rea…

For me, malice relates to intent. Intent isn't observable. When person X makes a claim about Y's intent, they're almost always filling in invisible gaps using their imagination. You can't moderate on that basis. We have to go by effects, not intent ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). It took me a long time to learn that if I tell a user "you were being $FOO" where $FOO relates to thei…

This exchange ought to be a post in its own right. It seems to me that malice, hate, Warp contamination, whatever you want to call it, is very much a large part of the modern problem; and also it's a true and deep statement that you should moderate based on effects and not tell anyone what their inner intentions were, because you aren't sure of those and most users won't know them either.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#333

Post by BlargMcLarg »

synu wrote: post #291
dgant wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only success I've seen in sorting out random vitriol is cutting chat off entirely and minimizing methods of passive aggressive communication. But Nintendo's online services haven't exactly scaled to the typical MOBA size to see how it actually works out

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#334

Post by thepasswordis »

paradite wrote: post #302

I recently started my own Discord server and had my first experience in content moderation. The demographics is mostly teenagers. Some have mental health issues. It was the hardest thing ever. In first incident I chose to ignore a certain user being targeted by others for posting repeated messages. The person left a very angry message and left. Comes the second incident, I thought I learnt my lesson. Once a user is t…

How old are you? An adult running a discord server for mentally ill teenagers seems like a cautionary tale from the 1990s about chatrooms.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#335

Post by rsync »

dwater wrote: post #290
esotericimpl wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge them $10 to create an account (anonymous, real, parody whatever), then if they break a rule give them a warning, 2 rule breaks, a 24 hour posting suspension, 3 strikes and permanently ban the account. Let them reregister for $10. Congrats, i just solved spam, bots, assholes and permanent line steppers.

This is how the SomethingAwful forums operated when they started charging for accounts. Unfortunately it probably wouldn't be useful as a test case because it was/is, at it's core, a shitposting site.

I think metafilter still does this ?

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#336

Post by lancesells »

etchalon wrote: post #230
esotericimpl wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge them $10 to create an account (anonymous, real, parody whatever), then if they break a rule give them a warning, 2 rule breaks, a 24 hour posting suspension, 3 strikes and permanently ban the account. Let them reregister for $10. Congrats, i just solved spam, bots, assholes and permanent line steppers.

You solved bots, but destroyed the product.

I don't even know if it solved bots. Rich countries, rich organizations, rich people could do a lot. $100M would buy you 10M bots.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#337

Post by thepasswordis »

bnralt wrote: post #284
blfr wrote: 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…

Indeed, I've seen several subs put in new rules where certain topics aren't allowed to be discussed at all, because the administrators told them that the sub would get banned if the users went against the beliefs held by the admins (even if the admins had a minority opinion when it came to the country as a whole). Then there is just arbitrary or malicious enforcement of the rules. /r/Star_Trek was told by admins they…

/r/srd and /r/againsthatesubreddits exist with the explicit purpose of brigading other subs, and yet they are not banned.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#338

Post by pj_mukh »

blfr wrote: 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…

I mean that's the claim, the counter-claim would require a social network banning topics and not behavior. Note: As a user you can see topics, you can't see behavior. The fact that some users flood other users' DM's is not visible to all users. So how do you know?

"I don't trust left-y CEO's", is a fair enough answer, but really that's where the counter-claim seems to end. Now that we have a right-wing CEO, looks like the shoe is on the other foot[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1588174959817658368?s=20&t=F9...

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#339

Post by dang »

ascv wrote: post #238
dimva wrote: post #100

His argument makes no sense. If this is indeed why they are banning people, why keep the reasoning a secret? Honestly, every ban should come with a public explanation from the network, in order to deter similar behavior. The way things are right now, it's unclear if, when, and for what reason someone will be banned. People get banned all the time with little explanation or explanations that make no sense or are incon…

Honestly it seems like you didn't read the thread. He's not talking about how Twitter itself works but about problems in moderation more generally based on his experience at Reddit. Also, he specifically advocates public disclosure on ban justifications (though acknowledges it is a lot of work).

He also makes an important and little-understood point about asymmetry: the person who posts complaints about being treated unfairly can say whatever they want about how they feel they were treated, whereas the moderation side usually can't disclose everything that happened, even when it would disprove what that user is saying, because it's operating under different constraints (e.g. privacy concerns). Ironically, sometimes those constraints are there to protect the very person who is making false and dramatic claims. It sucks to be on that side of the equation but it's how the game is played and the only thing you can really do is learn how to take a punch.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#340

Post by zimpenfish »

tjoff wrote: post #308
sbarre wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have more info on why you believe this? My experience has been that Google successfully filters spam from my Inbox, consistently. I get (just looked) 30-40 spam messages a day. I've been on Gmail since the invite-only days, so I'm in a lot of lists I guess.. Very Very rarely do they get through the filter. I also check it every couple of days to look for false-positives, and maybe once a month or less I find a…

Just see what gets through and more importantly which valid mails are being marked as spam. It is evident that they haven't got a clue. So, how do they "solve" it? By using the "reputation" of your IP addresses and trust that more than the content of the email.

I've got 6 mails in my gmail spam (in the last month) - 2 of them are not spam which is about normal for what I see (30-40% non-spam.)
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