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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

#321

Post by notacoward »

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…

> What was a lot harder were the toxic users that just stuck around.

In about a year as a mod on a semi-busy political forum, the trickiest situations always seemed to involve two users, neither generally horrible but both continually stepping over the line in their interactions with each other. And each had their own highly motivated allies, so any action would ignite a new firestorm of complaints about biased moderators. What a nightmare. Probably part of why that site doesn't exist any more.

BTW, that's also where I learned some rules of effective moderation. Unfortunately, finding a forum where moderators know how to moderate is hard. Far more often, they fall into a pattern of ruling on technicalities instead of considering what will actually improve discourse, and they always end up getting manipulated by the community's worst members to drive out better ones.

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

#322

Post by evandwight »

marcthe12 wrote: post #320
evandwight wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you verify real identities? Can't you use phone numbers, photos of IDs, charging a credit card, verification of physical addresses, or invites to increase the difficulty if creating fake accounts? Yes, there is an issue of increasing the difficulty if signing up for real users but once accounts are tied to real identities doesn't that allow crowd moderation? - person whose fallen into your apparent fallacy

Privacy issues? That come up alot here on HN

I agree that you'd need to securely store the personal information but as it's only used during account sign up it could be an entirely separate system.

It's definitely a huge draw back that you'd risk such important information.

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

#323

Post by derekzhouzhen »

npunt wrote: post #271
derekzhouzhen wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flame wars, abuse etc. only happen if there are other people watching. Why would anyone try to abuse someone of which they have next to zero info for no personal gain, and no one can witness your triumph anyway?

DMs are a major abuse vector, and only the abuser and their victim see DMs. It doesn't sound like you've thought this one through.

I don't even support DM.

Also anyone get only one chance to reply, unless the reply is approved.

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

#324

Post by TulliusCicero »

rtkwe wrote: post #227
User23 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that funny? Every platform has to block illegal content. Every platform wants to block low value content like spam. Many platforms want to block obscenity and pornography. None of this is in any way news to any of the platforms you’re alluding to. The interesting distinction between platforms is not whether they moderate, but what lawful and non-abusive (of the platform itself) content they permit. Edit: Child…

It's not illegal content I'm talking about. I'm specifically thinking of sites like Parler and Gab which very loudly and specifically start as anti-censorship of anything legal for the American right that feel like they're being censored off of the regular platforms. Then they quickly learn that no moderation means you'll get absolutely flooded with trolls who aren't a fan of your chosen ideology and are willing to s…

Exactly. They were never actually mad about moderation in general, they just didn't get like getting their stuff getting modded off the platform. They're fine doing the same thing to others.

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

#325

Post by TulliusCicero »

unethical_ban wrote: post #132
commandlinefan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> early reddit Reddit is the best example of why heavy moderation is worse than lack of moderation.

It's a difficult problem. No moderation = porn, gore and nazi discussion. Period. "Light" moderation often = bad-faith trolls taking advantage of your moderation. HN does a good job of moderating for civility and effort of the post, rather than ideology. Here's the thing: Talking about controversial topics, or debating with people who think differently than you, takes a lot of effort online, because there are so many…

I don't see it as an unfortunate thing for private spaces. It's very natural, and realistically the span of opinions where you can get productive dialogue going between people is not infinite. You're never going to get any useful discussion from, say, anarchists and neo-nazis talking to each other.

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

#326

Post by TulliusCicero »

derekzhouzhen wrote: post #83

There is no correct way to do the content moderation, so on my website, https://roastidio.us I don't plan to have any. My rules are simple: * you can say whatever you want to say, but only one person, the one you replied to, get to see it other than youself * the one you replied to get to approve whether it can be shown to other people. No further reply is allowed until this one is approved. * Even the one you replie…

What do you do about harassment or people spreading illegal things?

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

#327

Post by TulliusCicero »

derekzhouzhen wrote: post #323
npunt wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DMs are a major abuse vector, and only the abuser and their victim see DMs. It doesn't sound like you've thought this one through.

I don't even support DM. Also anyone get only one chance to reply, unless the reply is approved.

Then they'll make tons of accounts to create single comments harassing someone.

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

#328

Post by derekzhouzhen »

prawn wrote: post #286
derekzhouzhen wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flame wars, abuse etc. only happen if there are other people watching. Why would anyone try to abuse someone of which they have next to zero info for no personal gain, and no one can witness your triumph anyway?

You will get dominated by bot-generated spam at the very least. The bots don’t care that their content will be seen by one person, they just hammer every form they find, and the recipients will be overwhelmed having to delete this, and they will criticise your platform. As well as bots, you will get people manually hitting it. They’ll often use software customised to spam you. There is zero chance this model survives…

I am flattered. Let's say my platform somehow get popular, and bots is hitting it for no financial reason at all, they still get the one reply per node limit. Also I have a global per user replies limit per day.

If you have an orchestrated army of bots hitting me, then I would get DDoS'ed, just like everyone else. However, that has nothing to do with content moderation at all, right?

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

#329

Post by s-lambert »

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.

I think this is because old school message boards had a sense of community between existing users and there wasn't a large influx of users at any single point. If one person comes in and starts running amok it's easy to just ignore them, tell them off or ban them. But now there's less persistent forums that people are a part of, so there's a lack of community standards that people just naturally gravitate towards. There's no overall community between, for example, people who comment on youtube, so any youtube comment section is just whoever happens to stumble across it.

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

#330

Post by derekzhouzhen »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #326
derekzhouzhen wrote: post #83

There is no correct way to do the content moderation, so on my website, https://roastidio.us I don't plan to have any. My rules are simple: * you can say whatever you want to say, but only one person, the one you replied to, get to see it other than youself * the one you replied to get to approve whether it can be shown to other people. No further reply is allowed until this one is approved. * Even the one you replie…

What do you do about harassment or people spreading illegal things?

Anyone in this world has to be able to take a small amount of abuse to survive. I am not trying to eliminate abuse, I am trying to take away the positive feedback loop that amplifies injustice.

It is like emails. People can spam you. But if they know nothing about you, and the spam would never get acknowledged, and each SPAM incur some small delay and inconvenience to them, and they can never reap any gain, eventually they will stop.

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