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Is content moderation a dead end?

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Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#201

Post by motohagiography »

pdonis wrote: post #135
motohagiography wrote: post #104

It's hard to separate content moderation from the problem of Evil. Low entropy evil is easy to automate out, high entropy and sophisticated evil can convince you it doesn't exist. This is also the basic problem of growing communities, where you want to attract new people while still providing value to your core group, while still managing both attrition and predators. What content moderation problems have proven is t…

> In the hundreds of forums I've used over decades, the best ones were moderated by starting with a high'ish bar to entry. I've had the same experience. And at the other end of the spectrum, the reason Facebook, Twitter, etc. have such problems with moderation is that there is no bar to entry--anyone can sign up and post. With what results, we see.

Agreed, with a thought:

I actually think that Facebook's business model was premised on the Steve Carell movie, "Dinner for Schmucks," where a tool originally designed to signal you went to an ivy school got that cohort on board, and then invited everyone else for as kind of a cruel joke where they didn't know they were only the entertainment. Now the party's long over and the only people left are loud drunks yelling at each other and couples acting out some very public domestics.

Imo, there is no solution to those platforms' moderation problems, only management into something even more banal and worthy of disruption.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#202

Post by alex_g »

u801e wrote: post #191
alex_g wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Right or wrong" maybe not, but for well managed communities on the internet, there are objective definitions for appropriate and inappropriate, based on shared values and context. If you leave it up to each individual to decide what is appropriate or inappropriate, and provide them with the tools to block content they consider inappropriate, that's a burden on them, because you're not taking care of it at the commun…

> If you leave it up to each individual to decide what is appropriate or inappropriate, and provide them with the tools to block content they consider inappropriate, that's a burden on them, because you're not taking care of it at the community level. The assumptions behind having individuals decide what's appropriate or not are: 1. The majority of the community would make the same choices 2. Those posting what most…

And if I join this community, I need to go through the effort of setting up software/apps to enforce my content choices.

And if I'm viewing a conversation/thread/topic with something blocked in it, where I have blocked it but other members of the community have not, what does that experience look like to me?

And if a spammer posts a dozen links to their website, but I haven't blocked that content yet in my content filtering setup, that'll be fun.

This just sounds something like Parler. You can post anything you want there, nothing is blocked, and you're free to set up browser-based filters to hide the content you don't wish to see. In effect, you end up with a community biased towards those who are comfortable with vitriol, and as such it's filled with terrible content.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#203

Post by [deleted] »

alex_g wrote: post #199
meowkit wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a social network? Fundamental its a graph structure of human relationships. Humans are the actors/nodes and edges are the interactions. Two people chatting fits this criteria. You can have a private chat on Clubhouse between two people.

> Clubhouse is not just private phone calls. Yes, you can have a private chat on Clubhouse. You can also have a private chat on Facebook or Twitter. They are all social networks. I don't think trying to find edge cases for what constitutes a social network is helpful to this conversation.

[deleted]

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#204

Post by swirepe »

hodgesrm wrote: post #188
alex_g wrote: post #82

This is a weird take. You get lots of messages from Nigerian scammers, but the solution was not to prevent people from writing freeform emails. The solution was to build powerful spam detection algorithms, make it easy for people to classify emails to help strengthen the training set, and the problem is basically solved. There's no easy answer to content moderation. There's no one size fits all solution, nor is there…

There are multiple ways to address problems with objectionable content. One is not to have it, which is what the author proposes. Spam detection works well to eliminate email you don't want to see but nobody seems to have figured out how to apply it to social media content. Part of the problem (I guess) is that most of us agree what spam is whereas objectionable content is very much in the eye of the beholder.

I like the idea of an objectionable content filter that's personalized like a spam filter. People don't always agree on what spam is, and they can change their minds at any time.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#205

Post by edrxty »

riskneutral wrote: post #192

> we require seat belts and safety standards, and speed limits, but don’t demand that cars be unable to exceed the speed limit. That isn't how cars generally work. Without advanced electronic controls, it's not possible to build a car that can't exceed the speed limit. You can try to limit the acceleration but not the speed. It's basic physics. It's worrying that the author used it as an analogy (metaphor?) but doesn…

It's actually pretty trivial to build a mechanical governor and they have existed for hundreds of years [1]

Everything comes down to political will. The German manufacturers have an informal agreement to limit all their cars to 155mph as to avoid the government adding further limits to the autobahn.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#207

Post by setr »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #168
croutonwagon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there a fine line between these and curated lists (which most would use) that create echo chambers and comfirmation bias (which many platforms have). I like the methods this site uses over others quite frankly and that seems to be quite a bit of human moderation to get to it. But i think scale also has something to do with it. Reddit was much like this site in its earlier days.

In its earlier days reddit was a bunch of bots talking to themselves. HN works because the official moderation is more of a nudge than a fist, the community enforces its own standards, and it's a relatively small niche.

I think it has more to do with culture — the way moderation occurs enforces a certain style of good and bad behavior, and once the community is trained correctly, it becomes self-enforcing. And people have a natural tendency to conform, and if they refuse to, quickly leave to find another group more relevant to them.

The problem with most communities is that there is no culture being enforced — whatever grows, grows haphazardly and randomly.

It’s also why good communities tend to start small and grow slowly — and why eternal September is so deadly. If you have too many people enter the system too quickly, that culture can’t be enforced and trained before the next group of people come in. Rather than having the “elders” teach their ways to the “young”, it becomes the young teaching the young.

As an additional influence, those elders tend to leave and establish new communities, making it such that the problem can never be corrected.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#208

Post by croutonwagon »

closeparen wrote: post #186
croutonwagon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there a fine line between these and curated lists (which most would use) that create echo chambers and comfirmation bias (which many platforms have). I like the methods this site uses over others quite frankly and that seems to be quite a bit of human moderation to get to it. But i think scale also has something to do with it. Reddit was much like this site in its earlier days.

Echo chambers and confirmation bias are also known as community. I know everyone wants to “do something” but other people occupying communities whose identities and norms and beliefs you don’t like is a problem of humanity, not the internet.

See that take I don't agree with. There are plenty of communities where you can disagree without flaming. Where discussion and dissent can be had and heard without having to alienate or "pwn" them.

You don't have to just ignore or exclude minority viewpoints to be a community. Most of the more welcoming communities typically embrace those as a matter of fact, and try to educate or evolve based on challenging their viewpoints.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#209

Post by Tiktaalik »

> we have to decide what we want, just as we did for cars or telephones - we require seat belts and safety standards, and speed limits, but don’t demand that cars be unable to exceed the speed limit.

off topic but, yikes, what a bad analogy.

Considering the fact that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for children, young people, and unnatural death in general I dunno if one should compare anything positively to our society's decision to embrace the car.

Accepting the insane deaths, dangers and terrible second order effects deriving from car oriented infrastructure and then just shrugging because of convenience has been one of the most misguided policy mistakes of the 20th century.

Re: Is content moderation a dead end?

#210

Post by Tiktaalik »

> ...the answers to our problems with social media are not more moderators, just as the answer to PC security was not virus scanners, but to change the model - to remove whole layers of mechanics that enable abuse. So, for example, Instagram doesn’t have links, and Clubhouse doesn’t have replies, quotes or screenshots.

This is effectively already what many newspapers do in disabling commentary on certain articles.

I often notice this on the CBC that whenever there's any article about indigenous people posted, comments will be disabled to prevent incredible amounts of racism.

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