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

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

#251
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Echoing the same sentiment Counter Strike was exactly the same. There was an insane diversity of servers. Some were literally labeled Adult Content and way on the other extreme some were 'christian' where saying the word "shit" would get you banned.

True sense of authority keeps everyone at bay; if one a mod goes rogue it all collapses. But when a mod can be countable for their actions, everyone acts as a community and holds the peace. A transparent modlog could really make a community.

Clan's were more than just a bunch of mates playing a game. It was a free-open community where everyone was treated with respect regardless of who you were. Q3Arena was my first FPS at 13 and I fell in love for just the community spirit.

Organized clan-wars between X and Y, joining rival clan-servers just to poke and have fun are days which are now lost. It's the same experience of inserting a VHS cassette and hitting play knowing you were going to receive a real-feel of an experience.

I may of hit the tequila a bit too stiff tonight and this really hits hard but I do wonder if the same experience will ever make a come back.

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

#252
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…

> Found out, they have learned the trick and now using symbols from different languages to make it look like English.

I wonder if you can train a ML model using text as images. For example, taken as strings, "porn" and "p0rn" are not very similar, but visually they are.

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

#253
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Normal users don't use text like this I think that depends on the users. People copying and pasting bits of text that was in English or another common language— think documentation, code, news articles, tweets, etc.— with a different character set could be problematic. Also, 𝒮ℴ𝓂ℯ 𝒜𝓅𝓅𝓈 marketed as "𝔽𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕤 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕤𝕠𝕔𝕒𝕝 𝕞𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒" would be ℭ𝔞𝔲𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔲𝔭 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰. (math symbols) A user base with…

I can especially echo the "social media fonts" trend. They're quite popular on certain Discord guilds at least. Minor nitpick, but ツ is the katakana tsu.

Oh, fact. Not a Japanese speaker. (or reader)

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

#254
post #84

Can't help but think back to W. Edwards Deming's distinction between after-the-fact efforts to "inspect" quality into the process -- as opposed to before-the-fact efforts to build quality into the process. OP offers a first-rate review (strategy + tactics!) for the inspection approach. But, the unspoken alternative is to rethink the on-ramp to content-creation privileges, so that only people with net-positive value t…

Absolutely this. Don't build the ship and then run around plugging leaks --- plan out the ship well enough to prevent leaks in the first place. This is hard, and rare, because it requires predicting how all sorts of different people are going to interact with the community. Traditionally, this hasn't been something that the people who start software companies are particularly interested in, or good at. And a laser fo…

Maybe when the Internet was new. But whether you count the Internet's birth in the 1980's with the original cross-content and cross-country links, or around the first dot com boom and bust in 2001, or with the iPhone in 2007, we know how "the Internet" is going to interact with "the community". We knew this back in 2016 when Microsoft released their "AI" chatbot to Twitter, and Twitter taught it to be a racist asshole in less than 24 hours† and the Internet, collectively said duh. Of course that was going to happen.

Anyone who's started a new community these days knows they have to start with a sort of code of conduct. That's non-negotiable these days. Would it be better if platforms like Discord did more to address the issue? Absolutely.

You're totally right it isn't easy - but the Internet's a few decades old by now and we know what's going to happen to your warm cosy website that allows commenting. The instant the trolls find it, you either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation.

†: https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-ch...

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If you merely censor illegal content, you will become a home for disinformation and ultra right-wing conspiracies. See Parler. What do you count as disinformation and why is it a problem? If you disagree with something you can ignore it and move on, or engage with it and respond with your own counter-argument. It doesn't seem like a problem that reduces the viability of the entire platform. It is also strange to me…

If you disagree with something you can ignore it and move on, or engage with it and respond with your own counter-argument.

I sympathize with a lot of what you wrote (and didn't downvote it), but the Trump era has highlighted a serious problem with your specific point above. The marginal cost of bullshit is zero. It takes basically no effort to post more of it, while it always takes at least a small amount of effort to debunk it.

Worse, the bullshitter usually has the first-mover advantage. To claim the initiative, they only have to post a new thread predicated on far-right propaganda or conspiracy theories or hijack an existing one. Once lost, the rhetorical high ground is difficult and time-consuming to reclaim. As soon as you argue with the shitposter, they effortlessly shift their role from aggressor to victim, as some would suggest is happening in this very conversation.

I've always maintained that the antidote to bad speech is more speech. A few years ago I would have died on this hill at your side. But principles that don't work in practice are useless... and this one, having been tested, simply doesn't work in practice. The sheer quantity of bullshit has an ironclad quality all its own.

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Normal users don't use text like this I think that depends on the users. People copying and pasting bits of text that was in English or another common language— think documentation, code, news articles, tweets, etc.— with a different character set could be problematic. Also, 𝒮ℴ𝓂ℯ 𝒜𝓅𝓅𝓈 marketed as "𝔽𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕤 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕤𝕠𝕔𝕒𝕝 𝕞𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒" would be ℭ𝔞𝔲𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔲𝔭 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰. (math symbols) A user base with…

Bizarrely, I'm seeing recruiters using this on LinkedIn.

huh. For any specific purpose? Does it seem like they avoiding paying for recruiter accounts or something by evading algorithms designed to detect their activity, or is it just for the heck of it?

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

#257
I considered doing a moderation as a service startup a couple years ago. I didn't end up doing it because came to the conclusion that global communities aren't the future. I think platforms supporting more silo'd communities that make and enforce their own rules are how it will look. Discord and Twitch use this model, and while they have their problems, the problems look quite different from the ones outlined here.

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

#258

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…

> What was a lot harder were the toxic users that just stuck around. Not doing anything bad enough to necessarily warrant a permanent ban, but just a constant stream of shitty behavior. Especially sometimes when the most toxic users were also some of the most popular users.

What people find out, again and again, is that you just ban those users. Don't need an excuse. Just ban them. Even if they are popular. Your community will be much better once you do.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A close friend of mine is a primary contributor to an extremely popular console emulator. He learned quickly to author under an alias which he keeps secret – even from most of our friend group.

It's bizarre that he has to keep this real love of his, which he's devoted hundreds and hundreds of hours to, so close to his chest.

But sadly The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory holds true today.

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

#260
Ihr benutzt mein Handy als wäre es eures ihr steuert mein Handy macht was ihr wollt damit. Hirnlose ratten seit ihr ich zeig euch an 7 jahre Steuerung 7 jahre habt ihr mein leben beeinträchtigt wenn man sich das allein vorstellen unter aller sau krank seit ihr. Ich will euch weg deswegen geh ich zum Anwalt und verklagt euch endlich erpressen wollte mich jemand nächstes Jahr 20.000 doller. Ich hau ihn 21.000 mal auf die nuß . 7 jahre habt ihr mein leben beeinträchtigt jetzt ist zahltag für euch sonst is nie ruhe!
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