I wonder if we could solve content moderation at scale through gamification. Imagine a game where the content you saw was actual content from somewhere and your decisions could influence if it gets taken down. In exchange, you get points.
Show HN: Moderator Mayhem, a game about the difficulties of content moderation
81–90 of 128 posts
Re: Show HN: Moderator Mayhem, a game about the difficulties of content moderation
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s the point though, right? Encouraging illegal activity may not itself be illegal but moderators aren’t arbiters of the law, they’re protecting the integrity of the website for the intended user base. If you want to allow people to encourage cocaine usage on your website, you have to be prepared to deal with law enforcement — because when someone follows the advice and dies with the website open on their compute…
How can one protect the integrity of a website if they're undermining free speech rights and simultaneously derailing conversations and fragmenting communities while doing so? Though we didn't first define what "integrity" meant, it now seems impossible to formulate a meaning for it that isn't absurdly ironic given the actions performed to protect it. One could be forgiven if we were talking about a forum or website…
> How can one protect the integrity of a website if they're undermining free speech rights
What free speech rights? You have no legal right to compel someone else to display your words on their website.
Re: Show HN: Moderator Mayhem, a game about the difficulties of content moderation
#83this is a bad game, because it doesn't reflect reality
reality dictates that what is or isn't acceptable content is not a function of platform policy, it's a function of the legal jurisdiction in which the content is produced and/or consumed
this isn't really complicated
Re: Show HN: Moderator Mayhem, a game about the difficulties of content moderation
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can one protect the integrity of a website if they're undermining free speech rights and simultaneously derailing conversations and fragmenting communities while doing so? Though we didn't first define what "integrity" meant, it now seems impossible to formulate a meaning for it that isn't absurdly ironic given the actions performed to protect it. One could be forgiven if we were talking about a forum or website…
> How can one protect the integrity of a website if they're undermining free speech rights What free speech rights? You have no legal right to compel someone else to display your words on their website.
That's an interesting theory. I'm not sure you understand the implications of it though. Were it so simple, then it is plausible enough to construct a society where you have no free speech at all, anywhere, without your legal rights being violated.
In fact, you all seem to be constructing that society even as we speak. Given the audience of this particular forum, more than a few of you are literally doing just that, rather than being accomplices and bystanders.
I'm more of a free speech fundamentalist myself.
Re: Show HN: Moderator Mayhem, a game about the difficulties of content moderation
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it is.
The next obvious question is who funds it.
I thought they would have a membership list but I don't see it. They have this geographically-oriented index of (some of) their members
https://www.engine.is/startupseverywhere
which I guess may be meant to appeal to legislative staff (because they can see that there are likely to be startups in their districts?).
Re: Show HN: Moderator Mayhem, a game about the difficulties of content moderation
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Content that breaks laws" "Content that promotes the breaking of laws" "Content that is clearly satire/parody/a joke" A lot of time context matters. In a forum thread called "What would be the worst title for a self help book?" a post that just says "Give up, kill yourself" is not actually promoting self harm. It's saying that its the worst advice. assuming the entire point of the game is "moderation is harder than…
I think that content moderation is in fact quite difficult, even given clear rules to follow, because so much content requires lots of context to understand. But that makes me even more annoyed at this game which rather than presenting me with legitimately difficult judgment calls, just gave me clear rules that were not the rules that the actual game used when determining whether I did the right thing. It's possible…
It seems like a very thoughtful game to me. I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt.
Re: Show HN: Moderator Mayhem, a game about the difficulties of content moderation
#87this is a bad game, because it doesn't reflect reality reality dictates that what is or isn't acceptable content is not a function of platform policy, it's a function of the legal jurisdiction in which the content is produced and/or consumed this isn't really complicated
all games distort reality in some form in order to be playable
Re: Show HN: Moderator Mayhem, a game about the difficulties of content moderation
#88This game was made by a political action group for startups. Here is their agenda: https://engineis.squarespace.com/s/Startup-Policy-Agenda-202...
I 100% appreciate you linking to this.
Also this game is interesting and I don't mind at all if they are using the game to make a point. Perhaps we all need to learn this lesson. Especially elected officials could stand to learn the problem with moderation.
Re: Show HN: Moderator Mayhem, a game about the difficulties of content moderation
#89this is a bad game, because it doesn't reflect reality reality dictates that what is or isn't acceptable content is not a function of platform policy, it's a function of the legal jurisdiction in which the content is produced and/or consumed this isn't really complicated
all games distort reality in some form in order to be playable
the problem here is that the "distortion" is core to the thesis of the game
you can't evaluate the acceptability of a given post on a content platform without knowledge of the relevant legal jurisdiction
the game doesn't seem to understand this core property, so (shrug) useless I guess
Re: Show HN: Moderator Mayhem, a game about the difficulties of content moderation
#90Elsewhere in this thread I and other people talked about how Engine probably made this with the goal of making people more sympathetic to tech companies' challenges with content moderation, by giving people some form of first-hand experience.
It turns out that we don't have to speculate about this motivation, because they spelled it out quite explicitly in a blog post: