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Decentralised content moderation

martin.kleppmann.com

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Re: Decentralised content moderation

#111

Post by easterncalculus »

colllectorof wrote: post #37

It's pretty obvious that the tech crowd right now is so intoxicated by its own groupthink that these attempts to come up with "solutions" are going to have awful results. You don't even know what the problem really is. "I fear that many decentralised web projects are designed for censorship resistance not so much because they deliberately want to become hubs for neo-nazis, but rather out of a kind of naive utopian be…

Exactly. Shifting the blame from trending pages to posters is just a way to blame users for opinions instead of platforms that spread them as fact. These websites want to be the problem and the solution.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#112

Post by kstrauser »

I'm active with Mastodon and absolutely love its moderation model. In a nutshell:

- It's made up of a bunch of independent servers, or "instances". The common analogy here is to email systems.

- If you want to join the federation, stand up an instance and start using it. Voila! Now you're part of it.

- My instance has a lot of users, and I don't want to run them off, so it's in my own interest to moderate my own instance in a way that my community likes. Allow too much in without doing anything? They leave. Tighten it so that it starts losing its value? They leave. There's a feedback mechanism that guides me to the middle road.

- But my users can leave for greener pastures if they think I'm doing a bad job and think another instance is better. They're not stuck with me.

The end result is that there are thousands of instances with widely varied moderation policies. There are some "safe spaces" where people who've been sexually assaulted hang out and that have zero tolerance for harassment or trolling. There are others that are very laissez faire. There's a marketplace of styles to choose from, and no one server has to try to be a perfect fit for everyone.

I realize that this is not helpful information for someone who wants to run a single large service. I bring it up just to point out that there's more than one way to skin that cat.

(That final idiom would probably get me banned on some servers. And that's great! More power to that community for being willing and able to set policies, even if I wouldn't agree with them.)

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#113

Post by youdontlisten »

timdaub wrote: post #58
colllectorof wrote: post #37

It's pretty obvious that the tech crowd right now is so intoxicated by its own groupthink that these attempts to come up with "solutions" are going to have awful results. You don't even know what the problem really is. "I fear that many decentralised web projects are designed for censorship resistance not so much because they deliberately want to become hubs for neo-nazis, but rather out of a kind of naive utopian be…

> The design of a medium is far more important than how it is moderated IMO this is a great point. Social medias as they exist today are broken because they have been engineered on the assumption to make money on ads. Making money on ads works by engineering around virality, engagement and influencing. Another thing that McLuhan teaches though is that actually the (social) media is the message. And ultimately this le…

> 'Social medias as they exist today are broken because they have been engineered on the assumption to make money on ads. '

No, actually, they are created by intelligence agencies, for the sole purpose of gathering intelligence on everyone in the world. Full stop.

Facebook was founded the very same day the DARPA LifeLog project was 'abandoned.' Look it up.

The 'ad' stuff is just the nonsense they use to 'explain' how these companies somehow sprang up out of nothing overnight and continue to persist today, supposedly by selling billions of dollars of advertising, while you or I couldn't figure out how to even keep the lights turned on selling ads.

All of the 'brokenness' of 'social' media, and of society in general, isn't by accident. It's all by design.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#114

Post by youdontlisten »

enumjorge wrote: post #40
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is obviously that people very often do not want what they say they want. When a man says he supports freedom of speech, he isn't thinking about the speech that he wishes to limit as he finds it so abhorrent, and where that line lies differs from one man to the other. Such initiatives fail, as even when men come together and admit they allow for the most abhorrent of opinions to be censored, they seldom re…

Case in point, alt-right communities who champion “free speech” like Parler and in Reddit often ban people who express opinions they disagree with.

Case in point, alt-left communities who champion "free speech" like Hacker News often shadowban people who express opinions they disagree with, especially if it's said in the wrong 'tone' of voice--direct aggression rather than passive aggressiveness, which is the preferred atmosphere here.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#115

Post by ardy42 »

crmrc114 wrote: post #43
colllectorof wrote: post #37

It's pretty obvious that the tech crowd right now is so intoxicated by its own groupthink that these attempts to come up with "solutions" are going to have awful results. You don't even know what the problem really is. "I fear that many decentralised web projects are designed for censorship resistance not so much because they deliberately want to become hubs for neo-nazis, but rather out of a kind of naive utopian be…

"What you should have learned in the last decade is that social networks designed around virality, engagement and "influencing" are awful for the society in the long run." Yes, and don't forget the 24 hour news cycle with its focus on getting outrage and attention through fear. I did not know who Marshall McLuhan was until now- thanks for the tip!

> Yes, and don't forget the 24 hour news cycle with its focus on getting outrage and attention through fear.

Yeah, social media is just one in a series of possibly misguided techno-social "innovations," and it probably won't be the last.

My understanding is that groups like the Amish don't reject technology outright, but adopt it selectively based on its effects on their society (and will even roll back things they've adopted if they're not working out). Wider society probably would benefit from a dose of that kind of wisdom right now, after decades of decades of "because we can"-driven "innovation."

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#116

Post by Blikkentrekker »

youdontlisten wrote: post #114
enumjorge wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point, alt-right communities who champion “free speech” like Parler and in Reddit often ban people who express opinions they disagree with.

Case in point, alt-left communities who champion "free speech" like Hacker News often shadowban people who express opinions they disagree with, especially if it's said in the wrong 'tone' of voice--direct aggression rather than passive aggressiveness, which is the preferred atmosphere here.

I'm always suspicious when specifically “left” or “right” or any other specific political colors are mentioned as such with regards to censorship — it reeks of not being objective.

It is a problem of all mankind, not any particular political color; the only color above it are of course specifically the free speech advocates.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#117

Post by abathur »

Steltek wrote: post #86
abathur wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are separate problems. Engagement is still roughly "our" problem, because ad-driven ~media are externalizing the costs of engagement on society. This is where the Upton Sinclair quote fits. Moderation is still roughly the platform's problem because it comes with liabilities they can't readily externalize. Engagement certainly overlaps with this, but most of these liabilities exist regardless of engagement.

Engagement _is_ moderation! When FB chooses what to show you, it's already moderating things but simply using a different value system. The're a pushback on "censorship" today but censorship has been happening for years.

We may be playing semantics games, here?

Mechanisms that optimize for increased engagement via dynamic suggestions for a user's feed or ~related content are not moderation (unless, perhaps, the algorithmic petting zoo is the only way to use the service).

This is exactly why I'm drawing a distinction.

Many of a platform's legal and civil liabilities for user-submitted content are poorly correlated with how many people see it and whether it is promoted by The Algorithm (though the chance it gets noticed probably correlates). This is ~compliance work.

Their reputational liabilities are a little more correlated with whether or not anyone is actually encountering the content (and more about how the content is affecting people, than its legality). This is ~PR work.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#118

Post by jl2718 »

ardy42 wrote: post #115
crmrc114 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What you should have learned in the last decade is that social networks designed around virality, engagement and "influencing" are awful for the society in the long run." Yes, and don't forget the 24 hour news cycle with its focus on getting outrage and attention through fear. I did not know who Marshall McLuhan was until now- thanks for the tip!

> Yes, and don't forget the 24 hour news cycle with its focus on getting outrage and attention through fear. Yeah, social media is just one in a series of possibly misguided techno-social "innovations," and it probably won't be the last. My understanding is that groups like the Amish don't reject technology outright, but adopt it selectively based on its effects on their society (and will even roll back things they'v…

They also force all 17-year-olds to go live with and as ‘the English’ for two years and then decide whether they want to go back, and what things should be brought back with them.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#119

Post by zarkov99 »

nindalf wrote: post #90
zarkov99 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The central problem here is in what circumstances free people should give up the right to decide what information they can consume. This is not a question that can be answered easily but without first accepting it as the central issue we are not going to make meaningful progress.

That’s part of it. The other part is that free people say they don’t want to see illegal content (child exploitation imagery, terrorism, scams, sale of opioids etc). The platform needs to moderate to remove that. Then the same users also say they don’t want to see legal but distasteful (in their opinion) content like pornography, spam and so on. The platform then has to remove that as well. For most part platforms ta…

Well, that should be solvable by giving people much better tools to manage their personal information intake. The crux of the problem is figuring out when it is OK to decide for them what they can or cannot see.

Re: Decentralised content moderation

#120

Post by zarkov99 »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #110
nindalf wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s part of it. The other part is that free people say they don’t want to see illegal content (child exploitation imagery, terrorism, scams, sale of opioids etc). The platform needs to moderate to remove that. Then the same users also say they don’t want to see legal but distasteful (in their opinion) content like pornography, spam and so on. The platform then has to remove that as well. For most part platforms ta…

I don't want to see "legal but distasteful" content (and I would also add: annoying, boring, stupid, etc.)... and what I mean is that I don't want it to be shown to me... but I am okay if other people show it to each other. So instead of some global moderator (whether it be one person, or some complicated "democratic" process) deciding globally what is okay and what is not, I want many bubbles that can enforce their…

That approach would not address the, in my opinion, valid concerns about speech that is harmful to society overall. There is a real problem here with disinformation and incitement to violence. I do not know that letting the self-virtuous tech sector decide what is or not allowed is the answer, but the problem is real.
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