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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

#371

Post by seanmcdirmid »

LuisMondragon wrote: post #252
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…

> 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.

Not to mention “pom” in certain fixed width TTY fonts.

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

#372

Post by raxxorrax »

Veen wrote: post #136
commandlinefan wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they won't like what a completely moderation free site looks like. So you say, but we've never actually had a chance to see one. We have seen content moderation slippery-slope its way to highly opinionated censorship... every time it's been tried.

One alternative to moderation is to make people pay to post. If you set the price high enough, you'll disuade most spammers and some other species of asshole. Unfortunately, people who hate moderation also tend to hate paying for online services.

True, this keeps the community small and those work really well without moderation.

The moment it becomes a bit more popular, shit hits the fan. I am still for a light approach. Banning spammers, trolls, and illegal porn posters is a separate issue for me, but many platforms began to delete unpopular opinions.

The most heavy handed moderated places are very often the most toxic ones, I think they are far worse than free for all examples. Given, that might not work for the masses.

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

#373

Post by OneTimePetes »

sdenton4 wrote: post #139
mrkurt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shadow ban abusive users on Fly.io and it works great. Everything seems to work right up until they try to connect to a deployed app. It took me a while to realize that ramping up the frustration level is, itself, a helpful deterrent.

Yeah, in the end you wind up with a small set of persistent adversaries who have been tweaking their abuse alongside your fixes, and a hopefully much higher wall for new abusers to scale. If possible, it can help to hold back new systems and release a bunch of orthogonal anti abuse systems at once. Then the attackers need to find multiple tweaks instead of just evading one new system.

I wonder though, would it not be easier, to identify the watchers and shadowban those.

Just present bisected realities to spam watching groups and identify those who trigger a reaction.

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

#374

Post by raxxorrax »

commandlinefan wrote: post #124
ronsor wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only because the most powerful reddit moderators are basically corrupt dictators.

It's not just reddit, though - if you're going to start moderating, you have a meta-problem to address which is what to do about opinionated moderators.

It also puts the moderator under pressure. User will start ushering demands what you should ban. In worst case law enforcement too.

I don't really understand why people waste so much time getting something removed instead of just reading something else, but there are whole communities that live for banning others by now.

In a larger legal scope platforms are under heavy scrutiny by moral busybodies right now.

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

#375

Post by raxxorrax »

shuntress wrote: post #183

It really frustrates me that this level of abuse is just accepted as a fact of nature. It feels like watching masked bandits stick up a bank then walk away casually to the next bank down the street while the bank manager says "Drat! Too bad we didn't stop that one at the door. Oh well, at least they only got one register" I know all the responses to this are going to be "mUh PoLicE sTaTe" but I really wish there was…

I don't. The advantages are overwhelming, people just forgot to appreciate it that there isn't some form of central information control.

We see a lot of moral panics and authoritarian ambitions right now and the bad accessibility to information control is a huge blessing. If we had more responsibility here, it might look different, but that isn't really the case and probably unrealistic.

For politics, clout or attention some people would love to get rid of some others people, often just because of disagreement. It is good that they cannot. We see companies firing people because they aren't a good look. Gladly that doesn't work with internet users.

If I get abuse online, defense is in most cases very trivial. Given, that is a bit different for public personas. This is behavior not restricted to online content and why prominent people often have to employ PR. But that isn't a reason to worsen the net as a whole for everyone.

If I only want to consume curated content, there are countless venues to do that. Sadly and curiously, people show up in places where content isn't moderated and start to complain.

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

#376

Post by raxxorrax »

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?

Probably acceptance. You can create that platform, but I wouldn't want to use it personally.

But I see room for that. I would prefer it for kids until they reach a certain age so they can decide themselves. Given, I would have a lot of requirements for the identity provider. This requires a lot of trust and I don't really see many on the horizon here.

But universally for the net it would be a huge setback. It would end up like TV and interactivity isn't the only reason it got less popular.

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

#377

Post by specialist »

nicbou wrote: post #268
Goronmon wrote: post #100

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…

That was also my experience moderating a medium-sized city subreddit. Bigger problems were easily dealt with. Toxicity was a lot harder to deal with, especially when it's so easy to create a throwaway account. I quit when one user decided to target me personally, and kept evading bans to cause more grief. All of this crap, and your reward is more complaints, more demands.

> ...so easy to create a throwaway account

Bingo.

Why is authenticity so verboten?

If u/gonewild can manage user verification, then any one can.

Doubly so when surveillance capitalists like facebook and NSA already have (shadow) profiles for every person, living and dead.

Facebook absolutely already knows the true identity of each and every troll. Not verifying account creation is a convenient fiction, willful ignorance, allowing their outrage machine to profit. "lalala", hands over ears, "i can't hear you!"

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

#378

Post by raxxorrax »

tomcam wrote: post #207

There is an untold story here which is how incredibly well HN is moderated. Don’t know how it can remain so good. I feel like the center cannot hold. The site seems to me hideously understaffed, yet they do a pretty much perfect job of moderating. Would love to know if it is all human, supplemented by ML, or what.

While there are rules and expectations on HN, I wouldn't call it heavy moderation. I think there are about 2 moderators?

What I see is a reply when something crosses the line and users might down vote the post. Users adjust and carry on.

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

#379

Post by shakna »

Qub3d wrote: post #317
ljm wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember an old mailing list discussion on sourcehut, because sourcehut provides a build service that you can use for automation. The decision from sircmpwn was, at the end, to charge money for the service. Charging money and KnowYourCustomer will kill most exploits dead. In this sense, this is turning the frustration level to 11. You can use the service to a certain extent, without frustration, but if you want to…

> The decision from sircmpwn was, at the end, to charge money for the service. Frankly, I'm shocked the other major free providers (GitHub/Lab) haven't done this by default. GitHub's current default is free for public branches, and a small fee for private. I could see a flipped setup working: by default a very small fee (1-5 cents per x number of batches) that most companies wouldn't notice, and a path for FOSS proje…

> I'm sure they've built very sophisticated filtering tools, but imagine someone slips through the cracks and gets a cryptominer working.

It's been done, multiple times. Here's a handful (96) of documented cases which are somewhat recent. [0][1]

It seems to be surprisingly easy to abuse the process, and GitHub are continually playing catch up.

[0] https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/the-github-action-mining-...

[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/github-action...

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

#380

Post by Jyaif »

madrox wrote: post #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.

> platforms supporting more silo'd communities that make and enforce their own rules are how it will look

Those individual communities need help enforcing their own rules. I would happily pay a couple bucks per months for a bot that could warn and ban people on my discord server.

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