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Decentralised content moderation

martin.kleppmann.com

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Re: Decentralised content moderation

#11

Post by throwaway2245 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #4
AstroNoise58 wrote: post #2

I find it pretty interesting that Martin does not mention the kind of community member-driven up/downvote mechanism found on this site (and elsewhere) as an example of decentralised content moderation. Edit: now I see Slashdot and Reddit mentioned at the end in the updates section (I don't remember seeing them on my first read, but that might just be me).

FTA: "even though such filtering saves you from having to see things you don’t like, it doesn’t stop the objectionable content from existing". He doesn't want upvoting/downvoting, he wants complete eradication (of whatever the majority happens to objects to right now).

> of whatever the majority happens to objects to right now

I don't see that Martin Kleppmann is using 'democracy' to mean 'majoritarianism' here. He makes considered points about how to form and implement policies against harmful content, and appears to talk about agreement by consensus.

Democracy and majoritarianism are (in general) quite different things. This might be more apparent in European democracies.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#12

Post by nine_k »

commandlinefan wrote: post #4
AstroNoise58 wrote: post #2

I find it pretty interesting that Martin does not mention the kind of community member-driven up/downvote mechanism found on this site (and elsewhere) as an example of decentralised content moderation. Edit: now I see Slashdot and Reddit mentioned at the end in the updates section (I don't remember seeing them on my first read, but that might just be me).

FTA: "even though such filtering saves you from having to see things you don’t like, it doesn’t stop the objectionable content from existing". He doesn't want upvoting/downvoting, he wants complete eradication (of whatever the majority happens to objects to right now).

This is the crux of censorship. If anything, it hinges on hubris: the censor assumes to know which content deserves to exist at all.

The need for censoring content still exists because certain kinds of content are deemed illegal, and failure to remove that may end up in serving jail time.

On the other hand, moderation is named very aptly.

That said, I fully support the right of private companies to censor content on their premises as they see fit. If they do a poor job, I can just avoid using their services.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#13

Post by tdjsnelling »

nathias wrote: post #8

There is absolutely no difficulty, if you don't want censorship, just have a button that hides content you personally don't want and leave that decision to all individual users. What others wish to see or not is not your decision to make, and if some of them are illegal that should be a job for the police not some ego-triping janny.

Totally agree. Why should someone else I've never met decide what I can and can't see? Leave that decision up to the individual user, and they can tailor their own experience as they desire. Allow them to filter out particular words, phrases, other users and so on.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#14

Post by nine_k »

Steltek wrote: post #10
AstroNoise58 wrote: post #2

I find it pretty interesting that Martin does not mention the kind of community member-driven up/downvote mechanism found on this site (and elsewhere) as an example of decentralised content moderation. Edit: now I see Slashdot and Reddit mentioned at the end in the updates section (I don't remember seeing them on my first read, but that might just be me).

How would up/down votes work on a decentralized platform? Wouldn't it be easy to game by standing up your own server and wishing up a legion of sockpuppets? There's a whole Moonshot of spam resistance that's going to need to happen in Mastodon/Matrix/Whatever.

Decentralized networks need trust, and trust is not a Boolean value.

With a centralized service, trust is simple: how much you trust the single entity that represents the service.

In a distributed network, nodes need to build trust to each other. In the best-known federated network, email, domain reputation is a thing. Various blacklists and graylists pass around trust values in bulk.

So a node with a ton of sock puppets trying to spam votes (or content) is going to lose the trust of its peers fast, so the spam from it will end up marked as such. A well-run node will gain considerable trust with time.

This, of course, while helpful, does not guarantee "fairness" of any kind. If technology and people's values clash, the values prevail. You cannot alter values with technology alone (even weapon technology).

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#15

Post by mytailorisrich »

AstroNoise58 wrote: post #2

I find it pretty interesting that Martin does not mention the kind of community member-driven up/downvote mechanism found on this site (and elsewhere) as an example of decentralised content moderation. Edit: now I see Slashdot and Reddit mentioned at the end in the updates section (I don't remember seeing them on my first read, but that might just be me).

Up/downvote mechanisms always end up as agree/disagree votes.

Moderation is not the same. It is not about agreeing but curating content that is not acceptable (off-topic, illegal, insulting).

Article quote: "In decentralised social media, I believe that ultimately it should be the users themselves who decide what is acceptable or not"

In my view that is only workable if that means users define the rules because, as said above, I think 'voting' on individual piece of content always leads to echo chambers and to censoring dissenting views.

Of course this may be fine if within an online community focus on one topic or interest, but probably not if you want to foster open discussions and a plurality of views and opinions.

We can observe this right here on HN. On submissions that are prone to trigger strong opinions downvotes and flagging explode.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#16

Post by sandworm101 »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #9

I've been thinking hard about decentralized content moderation, especially around chatrooms, for years. More specifically because I'm building a large, chatroom-like service for TV. I think it's evident from Facebook, Twitter, et al that human moderation of very dynamic situations is incredibly hard, maybe even impossible. I've been brewing up strategies of letting the community itself moderate because a machine real…

>> a centralized service dictate what is and isn't "good".

This isn't movie reviews. Good and bad are not the standards. The standard is whether or not something is illegal. When the feds come knocking on your door because your servers are full of highly illegal content, "we let them moderate themselves" will be no defense.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#17

Post by eternalban »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #9

I've been thinking hard about decentralized content moderation, especially around chatrooms, for years. More specifically because I'm building a large, chatroom-like service for TV. I think it's evident from Facebook, Twitter, et al that human moderation of very dynamic situations is incredibly hard, maybe even impossible. I've been brewing up strategies of letting the community itself moderate because a machine real…

Make a cogent and non-authoritarian case for even having a "decentralized content moderation" which doesn't pass the "is this an oxymoron?" smell test.

> I'm building a large, chatroom-like service for TV.

So the profit motive is likely the motivation for applying a "central" doctrine of acceptable discourse using a decentralized mechanism.

> While I think that community moderation will inevitably lead to bubbles

Which allows for e.g. an athiest community to have content that rips religion x's scripture to shred (and why not?) in the same planet that also has a religion-x community that has content that takes a bat to over-reaching rationalism. Oh the horror! Diversity of thought. "We simply can not permit this."

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#18

Post by _gmnw »

Obviously upvoting and downvoting is not enough for adequate moderation. There's still the aspect of people trolling and generally posting horrible things online. There's a reason Facebook had to pay $52 million to content moderators for the trauma/ptsd they suffered.
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