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Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites

townsquare.cauenapier.com

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Re: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites

#121

Post by toofy »

ncallaway wrote: post #49
sneak wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…or you could just let people talk? People who engage with social features generally do so because they want to talk to other people. That carries some inherent risks.

Nah, drive those horrible people out of social spaces. I want to talk to other people without racist assholes bumbling around. Being a racist asshole carries some inherent risks too, like people choosing not to let you enter their spaces.

more than anything it’s just signal to noise ratios.

i’m so sick of people just adding dipshit noise to every single place they can and making it impossible to have normal ass conversation.

at the end of the day, these people need to realize the simple shit we realize in like 1st grade: if you’re an asshole to everyone around you, no one will want to be around you.

it really is that simple. but for some reason some of these people struggle to understand basic ass things little kids learn easily.

Re: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites

#122

Post by Mtinie »

paytonjjones wrote: post #114
Mtinie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After having been a moderator for a number of communities over the years—BBCs in the 90s, niche forums during the 00s & 10s, Reddit boards in the 20s—I’ve come to believe that running shadow services where disruptive individuals can comingle may be the best way to handle this. The advent of LLMs really opens the door to shunting off these “community members “ who’d rather contribute in misanthropic ways for the lulz…

This suggestion is scarier than the thought someone might say a slur. You're talking about using a machine to detect social undesirables then quarantining them in the matrix.

A slur is rarely the problem. Trolls can (sometimes) add flavor to a community and keep things interesting. Mostly they can be an annoyance.

I’m specifically referring to people who have seemingly made it their sole purpose to create as much indiscriminate damage as possible.

You can ban them, block routes for them to attempt to Sybil themselves back to having accounts, etc. but even with great moderation tools and systems, it’s extremely difficult to set up a strong enough set of controls which don’t adversely impact everyone else who you want to have participate in the community.

Yes, a shadow environment is dystopian. It’s not my nature to want to even consider using one.

But we’re talking about privately run communities which also deserve to exist to serve their purposes.

So given the choice between anarchy which drives away people who contribute to make the community what it is and a shadow option for those actively working against its interests, I’ll consider the community first.

You may have misinterpreted my comment. I’m not suggesting you use LLMs as moderators. I’m talking about using LLMs as participant “members” of this shadow board to interact with someone whose account was flagged by a human moderator.

Re: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites

#123

Post by toofy »

furyofantares wrote: post #120
toofy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on the other hand, if someone is making their own site, they may care about the user impression their site gives to visitors. i would think they should have the freedom on the site they build and host to choose the impression they give. and sure, if they choose to let their square be filled with noise rather than signal, that’s absolutely their choice. but they also may choose for it to be filled with signal rather t…

Is this related to my comment in a way I'm not understanding?

well yes, you indicate all of the moderation should be handled on the visitors end. i’m saying if the site owner is specifically intending the visitor to have a certain experience designed by the site owner themselves, then clients choosing their own moderation is the opposite of this.

if we limited it to client side only, the creator of the site has lost their choice of how they prefer their site to come across.

and for sure, some people may absolutely prefer to send an experience full of noise that overshadows the rest of their site.

Re: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites

#124

Post by Larrikin »

petee wrote: post #112
0x3f wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the desire to moderate your game, but how are words 'harmful' exactly? Especially random, throwaway internet spew. Harmful to your game's reputation, maybe. But to the people?

Clearly you haven't been exposed to much of the underbelly of the internet. Words can translate to physical harm and actions in the real world, and do regularly

This sounds like a disingenuous argument to actually try to argue for more racism. Every kid in the world has been called stupid by a classmate and knows that words aren't meaningless.

Re: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites

#125

Post by [deleted] »

tasuki wrote: post #111
purple-leafy wrote: post #37

Moderation moderation moderation . It’s a big problem I have similar moderation concerns in my browser game/engine but I only ban offensive slurs not swears, but I give no visual affordance that the word is not allowed The only surface where players see the input content is in a share card, and if they finish a game and get to the share card they will find the offensive word has been REDACTED lol So it’s a long feedb…

What is the difference between slurs and swears?

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites

#126

Post by cr125rider »

goobatrooba wrote: post #68
freakynit wrote: post #32

I made something similar last year: A p2p chat popup (that sits on bottom right of the page as a bubble) that allows all visitors to chat with each other. It had simple keyword based moderation in-built (can be easily bypassed though). Was planning to add github oauth to get a known identity and persistent messaging so visitors can chat with each other across sites. Instead of a webmaster adding script to their site,…

It sounds like a nice idea, but probably only one of those things that work only once at scale - with hundreds of millions of pages, you will only meet others on the most common ones unless the extension is already very popular?

The network effect is HARD

Re: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites

#128

Post by herval »

sneak wrote: post #44
purple-leafy wrote: post #37

Moderation moderation moderation . It’s a big problem I have similar moderation concerns in my browser game/engine but I only ban offensive slurs not swears, but I give no visual affordance that the word is not allowed The only surface where players see the input content is in a share card, and if they finish a game and get to the share card they will find the offensive word has been REDACTED lol So it’s a long feedb…

…or you could just let people talk? People who engage with social features generally do so because they want to talk to other people. That carries some inherent risks.

Yea I think this was somewhat true back in 2001. With bots composing half the traffic of the internet, governments controlling massive social botnets and the polarization of politics everywhere, the internet became a full scale spam/hate fest

Re: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites

#129

Post by voidfunc »

toofy wrote: post #121
ncallaway wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, drive those horrible people out of social spaces. I want to talk to other people without racist assholes bumbling around. Being a racist asshole carries some inherent risks too, like people choosing not to let you enter their spaces.

more than anything it’s just signal to noise ratios. i’m so sick of people just adding dipshit noise to every single place they can and making it impossible to have normal ass conversation. at the end of the day, these people need to realize the simple shit we realize in like 1st grade: if you’re an asshole to everyone around you, no one will want to be around you. it really is that simple. but for some reason some o…

Unlike a playground assholes on the internet realize a couple things:

1. Theres a near endless supply of assholes

2. If youre loud enough and an asshole enough you'll find other assholes.

3. Your new found group of assholes can then go off and terrorize other people while attracting more assholes.

Re: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites

#130

Post by furyofantares »

toofy wrote: post #123
furyofantares wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this related to my comment in a way I'm not understanding?

well yes, you indicate all of the moderation should be handled on the visitors end. i’m saying if the site owner is specifically intending the visitor to have a certain experience designed by the site owner themselves, then clients choosing their own moderation is the opposite of this. if we limited it to client side only, the creator of the site has lost their choice of how they prefer their site to come across. and…

I see. It seemed unrelated to me because I talked about strong opinionated defaults, which is, to me, entirely about the creator choosing how their site comes across. I don't think being able to turn showdead on here on HN significantly changes how the site comes across, but it being on by default would.
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