Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 975 posts

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#621

Post by MikePlacid »

ufo wrote: post #586

In the US, where Twitter & Facebook are dominant, the current consensus in the public mind is that political polarization and radicalization are driven by the social media algorithms. However, I have always felt that this explanation was lacking. Here in Brazil we have many of the same problems but the dominant social media are Whatsapp group chats, which have no algorithms whatsoever (other than invisible spam filte…

> I think Yishan is nailing the nail on the head by focusing the discussion on user behavior instead of on the content itself.

But user behavior problem can be solved cheaply, easily and in a scalable way:

Give each user an ability to form the personal filter. Basically, all what I need is:

1. I want to read what person A writes - always.

2. I want to read what person B writes - always, except when talking to person C.

3. I want to peek through a filter of the person I like - to discover more interesting to me persons.

4. Show me random people posts like 3-4 (configurable) times per day.

This is basically how my spinal brain worked in unmoderated Fido-over-Usenet groups (Upd: yes, this “oh how everyone will die without moderation” problem is that old). Some server help will be great, sure, but there is nothing here that is expensive or not scalable. PS: centralized filtering is needed only when you are going after some content, not noise.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#622

Post by wwweston »

jchw wrote: post #487
wwweston wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard for me to imagine what “scary actual censorship” is happening — that is, to identify topics or perspectives that cannot be represented in net forums. If such topics/perspectives exist, then the effectiveness must be near total to the point where I’m entirely unaware of them, which I guess would be scary if people could provide examples. But usually when I ask, I’m supplied with topics which I have indeed se…

The problem is that it's not really about censorship the way that people think about it; it's not about blanket banning the discussion of a topic. You can clearly have a discussion about extremely heated debate topics like abortion, pedophilia, genocide, whatever. However, in some of these topics there are pretty harsh chilling effects that prevent people from having very open and honest discussion about them. The re…

> The problem is that it's not really about censorship the way that people think about it; it's not about blanket banning the discussion of a topic.

Then we're far away enough from the topic of censorship that we should be using different language for what we're discussing. It's bad enough that people use the term "censorship" colloquially when discussing private refusal to carry content vs state criminalization. It's definitely not applicable by the time we get to soft stakes.

As someone whose life & social circle is deeply embedded in a religious institution which makes some claims and teachings I find tenuous to objectionable, I'm pretty familiar with chilling effects and other ways in which social stakes are held hostage over what topics can be addressed and how. And yet I've found these things:

(1) It's taught me a lot about civil disagreement and debate, including the fact that more often than not, there are ways to address even literally sacred topics without losing the stakes. It takes work and wit, but it's possible. Those lessons have been borne out later when I've chosen to do things like try to illuminate merits in pro-life positions while in overwhelmingly pro-choice forums.

(2) It's made me appreciate the value of what the courts have called time/place/manner restrictions. Not every venue is or should be treated the same. Church services are the last time/place to object to church positions, and when one does choose that it's best to take on the most obligation in terms of manner, making your case in the terms of the language, metaphors, and values of the church.

(3) Sometimes you have to risk the stakes, and the only world in which it would actually be possible for there NOT to be such stakes (and risk and conflict over them) would be one in which people have no values at all

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#623

Post by originalvichy »

ufo wrote: post #586

In the US, where Twitter & Facebook are dominant, the current consensus in the public mind is that political polarization and radicalization are driven by the social media algorithms. However, I have always felt that this explanation was lacking. Here in Brazil we have many of the same problems but the dominant social media are Whatsapp group chats, which have no algorithms whatsoever (other than invisible spam filte…

I actually went into a deep dive of any statistical efforts that showed bans on twitter based on American political leanings.

Apparently in both studies I found the most statistically significant user behavior for bans was if the user had a tendency to post articles from low quality online ”news” sites.

So essentially even the political controversy around moderation boils down to the fact that one side, the right, is happily posting low quality news/fake news that they either get banned for disinformation or other rule-breaking behavior.

https://psyarxiv.com/ay9q5

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#624

Post by jacobr1 »

ledauphin wrote: post #550
dbrueck wrote: post #458

At least one missing element is that of reputation . I don't think it should work exactly like it does in the real world, but the absence of it seems to always lead to major problems. The cost of being a jerk online is too low - it's almost entirely free of any consequences. Put another way, not everyone deserves a megaphone. Not everyone deserves to chime in on any conversation they want. The promise of online discu…

I agree with the basic idea that we want reputation, but the classic concept of reputation as a single number in the range (-inf, inf) is useless for solving real-world problems the way we solve them in the real world. Why? Because my reputation in meatspace is precisely 0 with 99.9% of the world's population. They haven't heard of me, and they haven't heard of anyone who has heard of me. Meanwhile, my reputation wit…

Social reputation IRL also has transitive properties - vouching from other high-rep people, or group affiliations. Primitive forms of social-graph connectedness have been exposed in social networks but it doesn't seem like they've seen much investment in the past decade.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#625

Post by threeseed »

lettergram wrote: post #259
threeseed wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not Twitter's customer. Advertisers are. And they don't want their brands to be associated with unpleasant content.

People producing products don’t actually care. I’d love to see stats on this made public (I’ve seen internal metrics). Facebook and Twitter don’t even show you what your ad is near. You fundamentally just have to “trust” them. If you have a billboard with someone being raped beneath it and a photo goes viral, no one would blame the company advertising on the billboard. Frankly, no one will associate the two to change…

> Facebook and Twitter don’t even show you what your ad is near

But their customers complain about it, media picks it up and it becomes an outrage story.

That's what brands are scared of.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#626

Post by danans »

Manuel_D wrote: post #382
danans wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 chan…

Hate absolutely can, and is, applied to disagreements: Plenty of people consider disagreement around allowing natal males in women's sport is hateful. Plenty of people consider opposition to the abolishment of police is hateful. Plenty of people immigration enforcement hateful. I could go on...

> Plenty of people consider disagreement around allowing natal males in women's sport is hateful. Plenty of people consider opposition to the abolishment of police is hateful. Plenty of people immigration enforcement hateful.

Those things aren't deemed hate speech, but they might be disagreed with and downvoted on some forums (i.e. HN), and championed on others (i.e. Parler) but that has nothing to do with them being hate speech. They are just unpopular opinions in some places, and I can understand how it might bother you if those are your beliefs and you get downvoted.

Actual hate speech based on your examples is: promoting violence/harassment against non-cisgender people, promoting violence/harassment by police, and promoting violence/harassment by immigration authorities against migrants.

Promoting violence and harassment is a fundamentally different type of speech than disagreeing with the prevailing local opinion on a controversial subject that has many shades of gray (that your examples intentionally lack).

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#627

Post by threeseed »

filoleg wrote: post #114
threeseed wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was incoherent rambling and none of really works for Twitter. Twitter is ultimately at the behest of its advertisers who are constantly on a knife edge about whether to bother using it or not. We have already seen GM and L'Oreal pull ad spend and many more will follow if their moderation policies are not in-line with community standards. If Musk wants to make Twitter unprofitable then sure relax the moderation oth…

L'Oreal didn't pull their twitter ad spend[0]. 0. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/loral-suspe...

FT disagrees: https://www.ft.com/content/17281b81-b801-4a8f-8065-76d3ffb40...

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#628

Post by brookst »

dbrueck wrote: post #549
brookst wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? Reputation systems can devolve into rewarding groupthink. It's a classic "you get what you measure" conundrum, where once it becomes clear that an opinion / phrase / meme is popular, it's easy to farm reputation by repeating it. I like your comment about "track record of insightful, levelheaded conversation", but that introduces another abstraction. Who measures insight or levelheadedness, and how to avoid tha…

Yeah, definitely potential for problems and downsides. And I don't know of any implementations that have gotten it right. And to some degree, I imagine all such systems (online or not) can be gamed, so it's also important for the designers of such a system to not try to solve every problem either. And maybe you do have some form of moderation, but not in the sense of moderation of your agreement/disagreement with ide…

> Your participation in a community would involve reading, posting as desired once you've been in a community for a certain amount of time, taking a turn at evaluating N comments that have been flagged, and taking a turn at evaluating disputes about evaluations, with the latter 2 being spread around so as to not take up a lot of time (though, having those duties could also reinforce your investment in a community).

This is an interesting idea, and I'm not sure it even needs to be that rigorous. Active evaluations are almost a chore that will invite self-selection bias. Maybe we use sentiment analysis/etc to passively evaluate how people present and react to posts?

It'll be imperfect in any small sample, but across a larger body of content, it should be possible to derive metrics like "how often does this person compliment a comment that they also disagree with" or "relative to other people, how often do this person's posts generate angry replies", or even "how often does this person end up going back and forth with one other person in an increasingly angry/insulting style"?

It still feels game-able, but maybe that's not bad? Like, I am going to get such a great bogus reputation by writing respectful, substantive replies and disregarding bait like ad hominems! That kind of gaming is maybe a good thing.

One fun thing is this could be implemented over the top of existing communities like Reddit. Train the models, maintain a reputation score externally, offer an API to retrieve, let clients/extensions decide if/how to re-order or filter content.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#629

Post by lifeisstillgood »

ufo wrote: post #586

In the US, where Twitter & Facebook are dominant, the current consensus in the public mind is that political polarization and radicalization are driven by the social media algorithms. However, I have always felt that this explanation was lacking. Here in Brazil we have many of the same problems but the dominant social media are Whatsapp group chats, which have no algorithms whatsoever (other than invisible spam filte…

This to me is a vital point.

One of the things rarely touched on about Twitter / FB et al are that they are transmission platforms and then a discovery / recommendation layer on top.

The "algorithm" is this layer on top and it is assumed that this actively sorts people into their bubbles and people passively follow - there is much discussion about splitting the companies AT&T style to improve matters.

But countries where much of the discourse is on WhatsApp do not have WhatsApp to do this recommendation - it is done IRL (organically) - and people actively sort themselves.

The problem is not (just) the social media companies. It lies in us.

The solution if we are all mired in the gutter of social media, is to look up and reach for the stars.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#630

Post by threeseed »

pessimizer wrote: post #232
threeseed wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit tried to just let communities moderate themselves. It resulted in rampant child pornography, doxxing, death threats, gory violence etc. It epitomised the worst of humanity. Now the Reddit admins keep a watch on moderators and if their subreddits do not meet site-wide standards they are replaced.

> It resulted in rampant child pornography, doxxing, death threats, gory violence etc. It epitomised the worst of humanity. It resulted in reddit. That style of moderation is how reddit became reddit; so it should also get credit for whatever you think is good about reddit. The new (half-decade old) reddit moderation regime was a new venture that was hoping to retain users who were initially attracted by the old mode…

This is revisionist history.

My Reddit account is 16 years old. I was there in the very early days of the site well before the Digg invasion and well before it gained widespread popularity.

It was never because it allowed anything. It was because it was a much more accessible version of Slashdot. And it was because Digg did their redesign and it ended up with a critical mass of users. Then they started opening up the subreddits and it exploded from there.

The fact that Reddit is growing without that content shows that it wasn't that important to begin with.

Post reply on HN