For some reason, this makes me wonder how Slashdot's moderation would work in the current age. Too nerdy? Would it get overwhelmed by today's shit posters?
Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
411–420 of 975 posts
Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
#412It's kinda funny that many of the problems he's mentioning is exactly how moderation on reddit currently works. Hell, newly revamped "block user" mode got extra gaslighting as a feature, now person blocked can't reply to anyone under the comment of person that blocked them, not just the person that blocked them so anyone that doesn't like people discussing how they are wrong can just ban the people that disagree with…
Seems reasonable to me. IRL I can walk away from a voluntary discussion when I want. If people want to continue talking after I’ve left they can form their own discussion group and continue with the topic. Think this is good because it usually stops a discussion from dissolving into a meaningless flame war. It allows the power of moderation to stay within the power of those in the discussion.
Now imagine if some random other people in the group who happen to have posts higher in the tree were able to silently remove you without anyone knowing.
Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
#413Anyone got a TL;DR? I don't feel like trudging through 100 sentences of verbal diarrhea.
Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
#414Here's a radical idea: let me moderate my own shit! Twitter is a subscription-based system (by this, I mean that I have to subscribe to someone's content) so if I subscribe to someone and don't like what they say then buh-bye! Let me right click on a comment/tweet (I don't use social media so not sure of the exact terminology the kids use these days) with the options of: - Hide this comment - Hide all comments in thi…
You've never been targeted for harassment, obviously.
Blocking a comment, or even blocking a user for a comment is useless on platforms that allow free and endless user accounts.
Mail spam/scam folders of everyone's email accounts are proof that "let me moderate it myself" does not work for the majority of people.
And remember "It is harder to police bad behavior than it is to automate it."
Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
#415Here's a radical idea: let me moderate my own shit! Twitter is a subscription-based system (by this, I mean that I have to subscribe to someone's content) so if I subscribe to someone and don't like what they say then buh-bye! Let me right click on a comment/tweet (I don't use social media so not sure of the exact terminology the kids use these days) with the options of: - Hide this comment - Hide all comments in thi…
Maybe you might like that, but I personally don't want to wade through dozens of "MAKE BIG $$$$ WORKING FROM HOME!!!" every morning on my feed.
This is solved by allowing people to "hire" others as their moderators.
Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
#416Every 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…
Some people are much more likely to engage in bad behavior than others. The thing is, people who engage in bad behavior are also much more likely to be "whales," excessive turboposters who have no life and spend all day on these sites.
Someone who has a balanced life, who spends time at work, with family, in nature, only occasionally goes online, uses most of their online time for edification, spends 30 minutes writing a reply if they decide one is warranted - that type of person is going to have a minuscule output compared to the whales. The whales are always online, thoughtlessly writing responses and upvoting without reading articles or comments. They have a constant firehouse of output that dwarfs other users.
Worth reading "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People"[1].
If you actually saw these people in real life, chances are you'd avoid interacting with them. People seeing a short interview with the top mod of antiwork almost destroyed that sub (and lead to the mod stepping down). People say the internet is a bad place because people act badly when they're not face to face. That might be true to some extent, but we're given online spaces where it's hard to avoid "bad actors" (or people that engage in excessive bad behavior) the same way we would in person.
And these sites need the whales, because they rely on a constant stream of low quality content to keep people engaged. There are simple fixes that could be done, like post limits and vote limits, but sites aren't going to implement them. It's easier to try to convince people that humanity is naturally terrible than to admit they've created an environment that enables - and even relies on - some of the most unbalanced individuals.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like a insurmountable problem. What makes this even more interesting to me is that HN seems to have this working pretty well. I wonder how much of it has to do with clear guidelines of what should be valued and what shouldn't and having a community that buys in to that. For example one learns quickly that Reddit-style humor comments are frowned upon because the community enforces it with downvotes and frequ…
HN works very well, because it's about as far from free speech as you can get on the internet, short of dang personally approving every post.
I think most posts are short lived so they drop off quickly and people move on to new content. I think a lot of folks miss a lot of activity that way. I know I miss a bunch. And if you miss the zeitgeist it doesn’t matter what you say cause nobody will reply.
The twitter retweet constantly amplifies and the tweets are centered around an account vs a post.
Reddit should behave similarly but I think subreddit topics stick longer.
Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
#418The 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
It's the best approach for flipping your bozo bit in the minds of most of your readers, but I don't see how that leads to "growth."
Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
#419tldr tangential babbling that HN protects and wants us to admire...because reddit YC darlings. it almost makes me feel nostalgic.
Why are we to take yishan as an authority on content moderation, have you BEEN to reddit?! the kind of moderation of repetitive content he's referring to is clearly not done AT ALL.
He does not put forth any constructive advice. be "operationally excellent". ok, thanks. you're wrong about spam. you're wrong about content moderation. ok, thanks. who is his audience? he's condescending the people who are dialed into online discourse inbetween finding new fun ways to plant trees and design an indulgent hawaiian palace. i expected more insight, to be honest. but time and time again we find the people at the top of internet companies are disappointingly common in their perspective on the world. they just happened to build something great once and it earned them a lifetime soapbox ticket.
ok, thanks.
Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation
#420I can speak only at a Star Trek technobabble level on this, but I'd like it if I could mark other random accounts as "friends" or "trusted". Anything they upvote or downvote becomes a factor in whether I see a post or not. I'd also be upvoting/downvoting things, and being a possible friend/trusted. I'd like a little metadata with my posts, such as how controversial my network voted it. The ones that are out of calibr…
Slashdot started introducing features like this 20 years ago. We thought ”web of trust” would be the future of content moderation, but subsequent forums have moved further and further away from empowering users to choose what they want to see and towards simple top down censorship.
Web of trust works too well and unfortunate ideas can be entertained by someone you trust, which is a no-no once you have top-down ideas.
Almost everyone has someone they trust so much that even the most insane conspiracy theory would be entertained at least for awhile if that trusted person brought it up.