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Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

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Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#391

Post by whoopdedo »

bambax wrote: post #244
jameskilton wrote: post #9

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…

You're confusing bad actors with bad behavior . Bad behavior is something good people do from time to time because they get really worked up about a specific topic or two. Bad actors are people who act bad all the time. There may be some of those but they're not the majority by far (and yes, sometimes normal people turn into bad actors because they get upset about a given thing that they can't talk about anything els…

And bad behavior gets rewarded with engagement. We learned this from "reality television" where the more conflict there was among a group of people the more popular that show was. (Leading to producers abandoning the purity of being unscripted in the pursuit of better ratings.) A popular pastime on Reddit is posting someone behaving badly (whether on another site, a subreddit, or in a live video) for the purpose of mocking them.

When the organizational goal is to increase engagement, which will be the case wherever there are advertisers, inevitably bad behavior will grow more frequent than good behavior. Attempts to moderate toward good behavior will be abandoned in favor of better metrics. Or the site will stagnate under the weight of the new rules.

In this I'm in disagreement with Yishan because in those posts I read that engagement feedback is a characteristic of old media (newspapers, television) and social media tries to avoid that. The OP seems to be saying that online moderation is an attempt to minimize controversial engagement because platforms don't like that. I don't believe it. I think social media loves controversial engagement just as much as the old-school "if it bleeds, it leads" journalists from television and newspapers. What they don't want is the (quote/unquote) wrong kind of controversies. Which is to say, what defines bad behavior is not universally agreed upon. The threshold for what constitutes bad behavior will be different depending on who's doing the moderating. As a result the content seen will be influenced by the moderation, even if said moderation is being done in a content-neutral way.

And I just now realize that I've taken a long trip around to come to the conclusion that the medium is the message. I guess we can now say the moderation is the message.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#392

Post by kashyapc »

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…

Hi, dang! I wonder if it makes sense to add a summarized version of your critical point on "effects, not intent" to the HN guidelines. Though, I fear there might be undesirable ill effects of spelling it out that way.

Thanks (an understatement!) for this enlightening explanation.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#393

Post by SilasX »

billiam wrote: post #361

The best part of his engrossing Twitter thread is that he inserts a multitweet interstitial "ad" for his passion project promoting reforestation right in the middle of his spiel.

Maybe it’s as some kind of reinforcement of his point about policing the lines between spam and non spam?

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#394

Post by UncleMeat »

thepasswordis wrote: post #358
UncleMeat wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SRD has an explicit "no brigading other subs" rule. How is their explicit purpose brigading other subs?

"Hey guys no brigading okay? ;-)" followed by a page which directly links to threads for people to brigade. They don't even bother to use the np.reddit "no participation" domain. Most other subs don't even allow you to link outside the sub, because they've been warned by admins about brigading. Their rules barely even mention brigading: https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditdrama/wiki/rules , and you have to go to the ex…

IIRC, np was the norm for many years and it just didn't actually change anything. Oodles of people do get banned from SRD for commenting in linked threads. The easiest way to see this is when month+ old threads get linked. Only the admins can see downvoting patterns.

Is simply linking to other threads on reddit sufficient for you to consider something promoting brigading?

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#395

Post by baby »

billiam wrote: post #361

The best part of his engrossing Twitter thread is that he inserts a multitweet interstitial "ad" for his passion project promoting reforestation right in the middle of his spiel.

that's the best approach to growth:

1. find what's trendy

2. talk about what's trendy

3. in the middle or at the end of that, talk about how that relates to you and your work

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#396

Post by KarlKode »

thepasswordis wrote: post #358
UncleMeat wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SRD has an explicit "no brigading other subs" rule. How is their explicit purpose brigading other subs?

"Hey guys no brigading okay? ;-)" followed by a page which directly links to threads for people to brigade. They don't even bother to use the np.reddit "no participation" domain. Most other subs don't even allow you to link outside the sub, because they've been warned by admins about brigading. Their rules barely even mention brigading: https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditdrama/wiki/rules , and you have to go to the ex…

What I got from similar subreddits (e.g. /r/bestoflegaladvice) is that you'll get (shaddow)banned really fast if you click a link in the subreddit and coment on the linked post.

Just mentioning this because I agree with the point you make (in general).

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#397

Post by UncleMeat »

Manuel_D wrote: post #374
UncleMeat wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SRD has an explicit "no brigading other subs" rule. How is their explicit purpose brigading other subs?

Kiwifarms has an explicit "don't interact with the subjects" rule. Does that mean it never happens?

Brigading absolutely happens in SRD. We can talk about whether this style of content should exist, but it does not "exist with the explicit purpose of brigading other subs."

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#398

Post by deckard1 »

I did not see any mention of structure.

Reddit has a different structure than Twitter. In fact, go back to before Slashdot and Digg and the common (HN, Reddit) format of drive-by commenting was simply not a thing. Usenet conversations would take place over the course of days, weeks, or even months.

Business rules. Twitter is driven by engagement. Twitter is practically the birthplace of the "hot take". It's what drives a lot of users to the site and keeps them there. How do you control the temper of a site when your goal is inflammatory to begin with?

Trust and Good Faith. When you enter into a legal contract, both you and the party you are forming a contract with are expected to operate in good faith. You are signaling your intent is to be fair and honest and to uphold the terms of the contract. Now, the elephant in the room here is what happens when the CEO, Elon Musk, could arguably (Matt Levine has done so, wonderfully) not even demonstrate good faith during the purchase of Twitter, itself. Or has been a known bully to Bill Gates regarding his weight or sex appeal, or simply enjoys trolling with conspiracy theories. What does a moderation system even mean in the context of a private corporation owned by such a person? Will moderation apply to Elon? If not, then how is trust established?

There is a lot to talk about on that last point. In the late '90s a site called Advogato[1] was created to explore trust metrics. It was not terribly successful, but it was an interesting time in moderation. Slashdot was also doing what they could. But then it all stopped with the rise of corporate forums. Corporate forums, such as Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook, seem to have no interest in these sorts of things. Their interest is in conflict: they need to onboard as many eyeballs as possible, as quickly as possible, and with as little user friction as possible. They also serve advertisers, who, you could argue, are the real arbiters of what can be said on a site.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advogato

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#399

Post by bombcar »

stcredzero wrote: post #313
jameskilton wrote: post #9

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…

The original post is paradoxical in the very way it talks about social media being paradoxical. He observes that social media moderation is about signal to noise. Then he goes on about introducing off-topic noise. Then, he comes to conclusions that seem to ignore his original conclusion about it being a S/N problem. Chiefly, he doesn't show how a "council of elders" is necessary to solve S/N problems. Strangely enoug…

I think the key is that no moderation can withstand outside pressure. A community can be entirely consistent and happy but the moment outside pressure is applied it folds or falls.
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