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Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

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Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#911

Post by MikePlacid »

astrange wrote: post #872
MikePlacid wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This doesn't work and it seems like you ignored his entire point. If moderation is being done to reduce the tone of angry conversations, then you have to actually effectively reduce it. If every person out there is running a personal filter list and ignoring your mods' decisions then there is no way to do that and the emotional state is completely uncontrollable. Which you'll find you won't enjoy. You'll also find yo…

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I’ve participated in such kind of discussions in 1990s when we were moving our Fido group to Usenet. Fido was very strictly moderated, since data was carried over people’s personal phone lines and nobody wanted to spend money on carrying garbage. But Usenet has no such restrictions and eventually we decided to go unmoderated, because no matter whom we elected - and we knew these people rather personally over the years - moderator’s powers were always abused. Going unmoderated was scary to me at first - I was for keeping the moderation, yes, but the experience turned out to be quite enjoyable - I just needed to teach my spinal brain those simple rules I’ve outlined. Now to your arguments.

Why on earth I would want to control your (for example) emotional state? You are a grown up person, your medical decisions are yours to take, not mine. Yes, angry conversations are long and stupid and are always reduced to “inventive” cursing - but a lot of people seem to enjoy this style of “argument” - who am I to stop them? Why stop others’ fun? All I want is - not to read and preferably not even to see such kind of “discussions”.

> You'll also find you can't keep up with these filters of yours

But I can. All I ask is just some help from the server.

> surely you have better things to do than personally moderate every forum you use?

It’s much easier than you think. I do not object to people hiring cleaning companies to clean their houses, but I prefer to clean my house myself. And this Dyson handheld helps very much. Same goes for moderation - why delegate this dirty work to others, especially when I’ve observed how even reasonable people I personally know tend to abuse this power?

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#912

Post by whiddershins »

This is a great article. Thoughtful and substantive.

Nothing in this article has anything to do with why all the platforms banned Alex Jones.

Which is the part no one seems to be addressing.

Once we accepted banning Alex Jones, which was relatively easy to accept because he is so hated, we opened the door to deplatforming as something distinct from moderation.

But the distinction isn’t made, and it all gets conflated instead.

That is how the platforms lost all of our trust. This must be directly addressed.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#913

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dang wrote: post #818
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the difference between the original post and the revised post often is malice (or so I suspect). The ideas are the same, though they may be developed a bit more in the second post. The difference is the anger/hostility/bitterness coloring the first post, that got filtered out to make the second post. I think that maybe the observable "bad effects" and the unobservable "malice" may be almost exactly the same thing…

I agree but I don't think malice is the best word for that.

OK, I think I can see that. "Malice" is too strong; it implies too much intent and/or too much long-term. Hostility? Bile? Venom?

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#914

Post by thoughtstheseus »

The idea of a single point of moderation will not work imo. We need to empower users (both individuals & groups) to moderate and curate their own information feeds. Create a market for moderation and curation!

Verified accounts will be instrumental as well. It’s important to understand who or what you are having a conversation with.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#915

Post by shadowgovt »

admax88qqq wrote: post #909
shadowgovt wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This explanation would also indicate why we had less of this issue in the pre-Internet era of broadcast media. Broadcast is centralizing the conversation, and to maximize viewership / listenership they are encouraged to talk about a broad variety of things... But they're the ones doing the talking. Apart from choosing to tune into specialized shows, there's less self-sorting possible when the channels and content are…

Did we have less problems in the pre internet era? We had WW1 and 2, Vietnam. Civil wars, internment camps, genocide. Lots of these were approved and even celebrated by the majority of the population when all they had was broadcast media telling them what to think about. I think it's wild how much people romanticize "traditional media." Broadcast and print media is and always has been awful.

I'm not talking about fewer issues in general, I'm talking about less of this issue: the issue that people are self-radicalizing by sorting into echo chambers where their priors are re-enforced instead of being compelled to hear someone else's worldview or a broadcaster-controlled consensus worldview.

Broadcaster-controlled consensus worldviews can be faulty. But we have not replaced those faults with the self-sorting of the listener, because listener worldviews are also faulty.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#916

Post by goatcode »

commandlinefan wrote: post #564
goatcode wrote: post #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.

> I'm sad that I wasn't on the site during the time of the old guard. It really was great - I probably wouldn't care how horrible it's become if not for the fact that I remember how it used to be.

There are so few places anymore where you can't guess exactly what will be in the comments threads, and you go between feeling either frustrated or occasionally relieved to see someone who is open-minded. The few that popped up either seem to become echo chambers with their own biases, mysteriously disappear, or get flooded by organized campaigns to ruin the landscape.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#917

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #865
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attitude of "If you don't like it, leave!" is allowing the bullies to win. Minorities, both racial and gender, should be able to use social media without having vitriol spewed at them because they're guilty of being a minority.

They can use a different social media. That toxic social media then gets a bad reputation.

What happens when every major social network has a bad reputation?

"Start your own" isn't really a viable solution since the greatest challenge of making a social network is getting people to use it.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#918

Post by AhmedF »

gambler wrote: post #705
AhmedF wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's trivial to demonstrate that YouTube and Twitter (easy examples) primarily target conservatives with their "moderation". Terrible take. Actual data analysis shows that at worst conservatives are moderated equally, and at best, less than non-conservatives. Here's something to chew on: https://forward.com/fast-forward/423238/twitter-white-nation...

You didn't link to data, you linked to an opinion from Vice laundered through another outlet. Here is some actual data, which (predictably) shows that conservatives are targeted significantly more for suspensions: https://archive.ph/SDo33 But that's besides the point, because it's much simpler than that. You don't need elaborate analysis to see that people tired of Twitter "moderation" filled 4 other platforms: Gab,…

Here we go, hope this helps: https://twitter.com/MaxKennerly/status/1588378198168915968

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#919

Post by AhmedF »

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…

Lets be clear - twitter favors right-wingers - says their own engineers: https://twitter.com/MaxKennerly/status/1588378198168915968

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#920

Post by rhacker »

count wrote: post #110
nradov wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real society is not that polarized. If you talk to real people they mostly have moderate political opinions. But they don't tweet about politics. Twitter is not a real place.

Society is a closed system, twitter is not outside of society. The people on twitter are real people (well, mostly, probably), and have real political opinions. If you talk to people, by and large they'll profess moderate opinions, because in person discussions still trigger politeness and non-confrontational emotions in most people, so the default 'safe' thing to say is the moderate choice, no matter what their true…

So most of the republicans I run into are extremely frank about the way the country ought to be run. When I was younger it was the same way with democrats.
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