Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mux.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 429 posts

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

#391

Post by evandwight »

pjc50 wrote: post #360
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

That swings to the other side of "you either die an MVP or build content moderation": people are not going to submit real ID for a random project. They've only just started implementing this on Youtube ""age verification"" because they were made to, and Facebook only did it as an arbitrary after-the-fact hammer. It causes all sorts of problems (what do you regard as valid? What about deadnames?). Twitter and lots of…

I agree. You build the MVP then as you need content moderation you start requiring more onerous proof of identity. The only goal is to make ban evasion more difficult.

For everything else, just ask the community what they want. If they don't like Donald Trump in the conversation, then he's gone. Donald can then attempt to find a community (subreddit) that accepts him. That community can be quarantined or banned if people really don't like it.

Thank you for the feedback. I strongly suspect I'm wasting my time :(

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

#392

Post by mooreds »

SilverRed wrote: post #346
mooreds wrote: post #52

I agree. My employer has a moderation product (for comments, usernames, etc): https://cleanspeak.com/ I don't work with it much, but from what I can see it's surprisingly complicated to filter out comments quickly without impacting user experience. I guess you know you've succeeded when the pottymouths join your platform :).

These kinds of things never work because people will come up with infinite dog whistle terms for blocked terms. Things like "egg plant", "13%", etc. You couldn't possibly block all of these things without blocking a lot of legitimate discussion.

Hmm. Tell that to our customers, who seem to think it effective enough to purchase. :)

I think that you are not aiming for 100% automated moderation with a tool like this. Rather, you are looking to screen out the obvious stuff as quickly as you can, and then escalate the iffy content up to humans. But I speculate a bit.

Since I'm not familiar with the Cleanspeak platform, happy to set up a call with you and our sales team. My contact info is in my profile. :)

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

#393

Post by dredmorbius »

mijustin wrote: post #234
jfengel wrote: post #55

If you host blobs for free, somebody is going to use you as their host. Even if you just hosted audio, I'm sure somebody will quickly come along with a steganography tool to hide their content on your site (and use your bandwidth). Similarly, if you make compute power available, people will use you to mine cryptocurrency. Even if all you host is text, somebody will come along to be abusive. When you put a computer on…

> If you host blobs for free This is the key distinction. If you charge money, from the beginning, most of your content moderation woes go away. At Transistor.fm we host podcasts and charge money for it (starting at $19/month). We've had very little problems with questionable content. We're a counterpoint to the narrative here: small (4 full-time people), profitable, and calm. > Even if you just hosted audio Most DMC…

Charging also gives a (potential) communications path with the customer, through the payments processor. This can be useful for resolving account issues, which are otherwise a nightmare when there's no identification whatsoever.

But any payment also means that you're now fighting against "free" for growth. Free may come either from some massive monopoly who can offer their alternative as a loss-leader, or as a subsidised offering on the back of another monetisation scheme (usually advertising), where revenue potential increases with platform scale. Yes, you'll have fewer issues, but you'll also always be on the short end of the growth stick.

This is a rephrasing of another reply to your comment, hopefully with a different and clarifying emphasis.

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

#394

Post by dredmorbius »

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.

Pointing to a mental health crisis service would be far more advisable.

I'd stick with the ban if the threat was in response to moderation actions.

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

#395

Post by dredmorbius »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #324
rtkwe wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's the Tolerant Pilgram problem.

(See early US history around relgious ... freedom.)

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

#396

Post by dredmorbius »

avs733 wrote: post #334
fragmede wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Agnotology and bad faith arguments[0] [0] https://medium.com/s/story/a-field-guide-to-bad-faith-argume...

NB, that post seems to have migrated here:

https://www.aaronhuertas.com/a-field-guide-to-bad-faith-argu...

Can you tell me about my epistemology?

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

#397

Post by dredmorbius »

sneak wrote: post #179
regiostech wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they own the platform, why shouldn't they get to make the rules?

Legally, they are within their rights to. Practically, it makes them an asshole. Just because you are legally entitled to do something doesn't mean it's good for your users or society: e.g. the widespread practice of IAPs, or Apple's censorship of the App Store.

Are you ... trying to make a rule?

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

#398

Post by dredmorbius »

nicbou wrote: post #10
seany wrote: post #4

Freenet/lbry/tor hidden sites all exists (and get used all the time) and it's 100% not required there at all. I hope at some point weird moralization of nudity will stop.

> moralization of nudity Even porn sites need moderation. Trying to stop sexual abuse and child pornography isn't weird moralization. > and it's 100% not required there at all I'm not super familiar with the darkweb, but I assume that darkweb platforms also have active moderation, even if it's only to keep griefers out. Pornography is not the only use case for moderation.

Or revenge porn, entrapment, white slavery, etc., etc.

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

#399

Post by dredmorbius »

godshatter wrote: post #40

I guess I would rather see a system that focuses on scanning all images for illegal content (presumably there are services where you can hash the image and check for known child porn images, for example), and focus on tagging all other images for certain things (like David Hasselhof's bare chest or whatever concerns your users). Give the users tools to flag images as illegal content, or for misapplied or missing tags…

This addresses only a small subset of the problem.

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

#400

Post by simorley »

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…

> Especially sometimes when the most toxic users were also some of the most popular users.

If the "toxic" users were the most popular, how do you know you were not the "toxic" one instead? If the community is supporting the "toxic" material, how could it be "toxic"?

In my experience, it's not the toxic users that's the problem. It tends to be the toxic mods. You can ignore toxic users. You really can't ignore the toxic mods.

I also have a problem with the term "toxic". It ultimately means "something I don't like". Mods should never ban "toxic" content. They should ban illegal and perhaps non-pertinent content. But that's just my opinion.

Post reply on HN