You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation • Hacker News Board

Re: You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

#241

Post by fragmede » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #216

Roblox is working on a "moderation" system that can ban a user within 100ms after saying a bad word in voice. But their average user is 13 years old. Interestingly, Second Life, the virtual world built of user-created content, does not have this problem. Second Life has real estate with strong property rights. Property owners can eject or ban people from their own property. So moderation, such as it is, is the respon…

It sounds like Second Life lived long enough to build content moderation, pushed the work of content moderation onto its users, and in a hilarious psychological trick worthy of machiavelli, made the users think they own a piece of something (they don't) so that what other users do on "your" land is up to you. My job would also love if I paid them to work there instead of the other way around.

The Internet must be heavily censored to be suitable for mainstream consumption and the tools described make Second Life sound like no exception.

> You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

Re: You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

#242

Post by fragmede » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

dexwiz wrote: post #229

Animats wrote: post #216

Roblox is working on a "moderation" system that can ban a user within 100ms after saying a bad word in voice. But their average user is 13 years old. Interestingly, Second Life, the virtual world built of user-created content, does not have this problem. Second Life has real estate with strong property rights. Property owners can eject or ban people from their own property. So moderation, such as it is, is the respon…

For some reason I remember everyone's behavior on old school message boards as much better than modern social media. Sure, you have your degenerate boards, but just don't go there. Moderation and censor ship will always exist, but they seem to work better when they are more locally applied.

Gosh, imagine how the users of the Internet from before us felt when we all joined!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

#243

Post by sroussey » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

Goronmon wrote: post #100

jonshariat wrote: post #22

I'll never forget having to be a moderator for a somewhat popular forum back in the day and oh man did I learn how a few people can make your life hell. One thing not mentioned many times in these discussions are the poor moderators. Having to look at all that stuff, some of which can be very disturbing or shocking (think death, gore, etc as well as the racy things) really takes a toll on the mind. The more automatio…

I'll never forget having to be a moderator for a somewhat popular forum back in the day and oh man did I learn how a few people can make your life hell. I was also a mod for a popular gaming forum way back in the day. It was pretty miserable looking back. Personally, for me, the extreme/shocking content wasn't the biggest issue. That stuff was quick and easy to deal with. If you saw that type of content you just imme…

We had some of the crazy people track us down and call in bomb/death threats to our office building.

So many though we were in collusion with a specific forum moderator (out of a million forums) and got to incensed. And this was in the early 2000s that we think was a saner time.

Re: You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

#244

Post by ummonk » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

Alir3z4 wrote: post #17

Around 1 year ago we got hit badly on our [blogging platform][0] by people/groups submitting fake customer support description of other big companies, either being Microsoft, Facebook, Comcast etc. Rolled out a machine learning model and trained it on the database. 99% of them vanished. Next day, the machine didn't work and success rate was around 5%. Found out, they have learned the trick and now using symbols from…

This story needs to be turned into a writeup and submitted to HN on its own.

Re: You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

#245

Post by armchairhacker » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #216

Roblox is working on a "moderation" system that can ban a user within 100ms after saying a bad word in voice. But their average user is 13 years old. Interestingly, Second Life, the virtual world built of user-created content, does not have this problem. Second Life has real estate with strong property rights. Property owners can eject or ban people from their own property. So moderation, such as it is, is the respon…

The biggest reason IMO for moderation in the first place is because if you don't block/censor some people, they will block/censor others. Either by spamming, making others feel intimidated or unwelcome, making others upset, creating "bad vibes" or a boring atmosphere, etc.

So in theory, passing on moderation to the users seems natural. The users form groups where they decide what's ok and what's banned, and people join the groups where they're welcome and get along. Plus, what's tolerable for some people is offensive or intimidating for others and vice versa: e.g. "black culture", dark humor.

If you choose the self-moderation route you still have to deal with legal implications. Fortunately, I believe what's blatantly illegal on the internet is more narrow, and you can employ a smaller team of moderators to filter it out. Though I can't speak much to that.

In practice, self-moderation can be useful, and I think it's the best and only real way to allow maximum discourse. But self-moderation alone is not enough. Bad communities can still taint your entire ecosystem and scare people away from the good ones. Trolls and spammers make up the minority of people, but they have outsized influence and even more outsized coverage coverage from news etc.. Not to mention they can brigade and span small good communities and easily overwhelm moderators who are doing this for volunteering.

The only times I've really seen moderation succeed are when the community is largely good, reasonable, dedicated people, so the few bad people get overwhelmed and pushed out. I suspect Second Life is of this category. If your community is mostly toxic people, there's no form of moderation which will make your product viable: you need to basically force much of your userbase out and replace them, and probably overhaul your site in the process.

Re: You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

#246

Post by fragmede » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #65

echelon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll never forget having to be a moderator for a somewhat popular forum back in the day Similar experience, though I'll say that the worst was dealing with other teenagers that threatened suicide when you banned them. That always took a lot of effort to de-escalate and was a complete drain on personal mental health. I could deal with porn, shock images, and script kiddie defacements, but having people threaten to k…

Several years ago a popular gaming forum with a significant teenage audience I used to read had declared a simple policy toward threats of suicide. If you were threatening to kill yourself, do it , and stop messaging the mods, they are not here to talk you down from a ledge. It seemed pretty effective.

That's horrible! Did you run that plan past any lawyers?

Re: You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

#247

Post by loco053100 » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

jffry wrote: post #89

Alir3z4 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have had better eyes while searching, could find this and saved some hours.

I only learned about it myself after spending too long building my own half-baked version. I think it's in pretty opaque language that makes it hard to find even if you know what you want. Maybe somebody else on here will see it and learn about it before they need it, and at least you still have a new tool to reach for in the future.

Mein Handy is voller kacke hacking Apps. Mein Handy wird seit 2004 gehackt ihr seit kleine Maden doch die Maden kommen jetzt zum Anwalt ich lasse mir das nicht mehr bitten. Ich habe genug was ich brauche! Habt ihr kein Leben anscheinend armselig

Re: You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

#248

Post by srfvtgb » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

PerkinWarwick wrote: post #169

phkahler wrote: post #133

Here's a thought. Have a platform where identity is verified. Users can post publicly or within their circle. Any illegal or fraudulent content can be handled by the legal system due to the lack of anonymity. Beyond that, let users form groups for topics like reddit. Where does this fall down?

What I'd like is something identical to Facebook (preferably hosted in a box on my desk) that I invite all my friends to, and they have the ability to invite people to. 2nd gen is probably far enough. Anyone cuts up rough, I go by their house and make them miserable.

You lose out on the network effect with this solution.

If someone gets to pick who's allowed onto a network, then they won't bother using it. Maybe your friends will join since they are allowed to add _their_ friends, but those friends of friends wouldn't bother because most of their friends can't join, meaning your friends won't bother either unless they really want to talk to you specifically.

It would work for groups where most people know each other, but there are already options for that that allow users to be in groups that aren't all owned by the same person e.g. Discord, Signal, Facebook.

Re: You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

#249

Post by loco053100 » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

Ich gehe zum Anwalt seit 2004 hackt ihr mein Handy. Und da fallen beleidigungen Mobbing fernsteuern alles abhören. Die scheisse hört jetzt auf. Kommt doch mal in der Realität fotzn wollt ihr mein Leben zerstören seit 7 Jahren schon.??? Ich kann das alles belegen und das passiert endlich auch. Dann sehen wir uns beim Gericht in Realität

Re: You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation

#250

Post by fragmede » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #189

rtkwe wrote: post #71

It's really funny every time a "we don't censor" platform pops up catering too the American right they speed run going from moderation == censorship to we're moderating our platform in record time. Turns out moderation is really important to make a platform for a community.

If you create a platform with absolutely zero censorship, you become a repository for child porn. I participated in Freenet many years ago because I liked its ideas (And thought it would have been a nice way to pirate games without my ISP being able to know), but it got a reputation for being used for CP, and I promptly deleted it, because I want no part in that. If you merely censor illegal content, you will become…

> See Parler.

Gab may be a more useful point of reference, but what's hilarious about right-wing platform is that their censorship is fine, it's the other people's censorship that's the problem. (Similar to how immigrants having fake papers is wrong but having a fake vaccination card is sticking it to the man). Go post some pro-vaccine or pro-mask mandate things, and see how long you last before being deplatformed.