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Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

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Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#41

Post by barry-cotter »

otterley wrote: post #19
Meekro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, "respected fact checkers" are anything but. The HN discussion you linked to actually mentions some interesting things that these fact checkers omitted. Factcheck.org claims: "there is no evidence that Hunter Biden was ever under investigation or that his father pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin on his behalf." However, the fired Ukranian prosecutor testified in court that "the truth is that I was force…

I agree that there might be evidence, and Factcheck.org may have gotten that wrong. But perfection isn't the bar we're aiming for, nor is it practically attainable - "usually correct" is reasonable. Moreover, let's not confuse testimonial evidence with fact. They are not identical. In our judicial system, the jury is the finder of fact; they weigh the evidence to make conclusions. We also can't let a minor technical…

Correct except when it matters is worse than known sea of lies and misinformation.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#42

Post by Karunamon »

barry-cotter wrote: post #39
sedatk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit mods aren’t chosen by the community. Reddit isn’t even mentioned in the article.

Do you mean admins? Because mod teams are self-selecting once a subreddit is up and running and if you don’t like a subreddit you can always start your own. People don’t vote for mods but they participate in subreddits they like. In Albert Hirschman’s typology it’s all exit, voice and loyalty are irrelevant.

This ignores network effects. Significant community forks are pretty rare in Reddit's history, and launching a new subreddit is not a trivial thing to do - that goes double since you can expect mods to suppress all mention of the new community since they have absolutely no constraints on their conduct.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#43

Post by lacampbell »

pjkundert wrote: post #33
bbanyc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cure for edginess is growing up. The cure for fascism is a bullet in the head.

Now that everyone and the grandma is a “nazi”, is that truly what you believe? Apparently I’m a nazi, because I believe in liberty. Are you advocating this for me?

He should at least have the good manners to tell us who he's going to murder.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#44

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

otterley wrote: post #19
Meekro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, "respected fact checkers" are anything but. The HN discussion you linked to actually mentions some interesting things that these fact checkers omitted. Factcheck.org claims: "there is no evidence that Hunter Biden was ever under investigation or that his father pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin on his behalf." However, the fired Ukranian prosecutor testified in court that "the truth is that I was force…

I agree that there might be evidence, and Factcheck.org may have gotten that wrong. But perfection isn't the bar we're aiming for, nor is it practically attainable - "usually correct" is reasonable. Moreover, let's not confuse testimonial evidence with fact. They are not identical. In our judicial system, the jury is the finder of fact; they weigh the evidence to make conclusions. We also can't let a minor technical…

These are good points. Moreover, they're unusually well made.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#45

Post by enraged_camel »

Meekro wrote: post #16
otterley wrote: post #2

Moderation is indeed difficult, but automating moderation is a bar we need not even get to yet, when even policies that are relatively easy to enforce keep getting watered down. Just today, for example, it was revealed that Facebook is no longer going to prohibit false factual claims in paid political advertisements -- even if those falsehoods are determined by generally-respected fact checkers. See, e.g., https://po…

The problem is, "respected fact checkers" are anything but. The HN discussion you linked to actually mentions some interesting things that these fact checkers omitted. Factcheck.org claims: "there is no evidence that Hunter Biden was ever under investigation or that his father pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin on his behalf." However, the fired Ukranian prosecutor testified in court that "the truth is that I was force…

I can’t believe people on HN, of all places, are peddling conspiracy theories by corrupting the facts.

Fact 1: Burisma was under investigation.

Fact 2: Hunter Biden was on Burisma’s board.

Fact 3: Hunter Biden himself was not under investigation. Not only that, there is no evidence that the investigation Burisma was under had any relevance to Hunter Biden.

edit: downvoters better explain themselves. If you have evidence to the contrary, let’s see it.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#46

Post by reilly3000 »

wslh wrote: post #17

Simple answer: because moderation doesn't move the business needle.

I would argue it absolutely does. When NYC started "moderating" Times Square a lot more people started coming and spending money. People pay money for all kinds of blocking, scanning and auditing of email content, web content, etc. I expect moderation, and when its not done well, I don't come back.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#47

Post by pdonis »

wvenable wrote: post #13

There are two classes of users: normal people who want to use your service and people who actively weaponize it for their own ego. Those latter users have all the time in world and can defeat any attempt to stop them. This is because, online, time is the only resource that matters. You have a limited amount of this resource. Your company has a limited amount of this resource. Your normal users have a limited amount o…

> Most big platforms right now have a huge mess of people tossing free bytes at each other

Which of course suggests the obvious solution of not letting the bytes be free any longer. Make users who want to post on your site pay for it.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#48

Post by moultano »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #30

The article concludes with: 1. Effective moderation can only come from others steeped in the particular cultural context they're part of. 2. Effort should be given to moderate to give communities the ability to moderate themselves at scale. With that in mind, it may be worth considering Reddit. Each subreddit has it's own moderation team from the community that is charged with enforcing sitewide guidelines like not d…

I do think Reddit is particularly well suited to having good moderation by virtue of its structure, and Twitter is particularly poorly suited. Twitter is all about decontextualizing what people are saying.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#50

Post by baroffoos »

pdonis wrote: post #47
wvenable wrote: post #13

There are two classes of users: normal people who want to use your service and people who actively weaponize it for their own ego. Those latter users have all the time in world and can defeat any attempt to stop them. This is because, online, time is the only resource that matters. You have a limited amount of this resource. Your company has a limited amount of this resource. Your normal users have a limited amount o…

> Most big platforms right now have a huge mess of people tossing free bytes at each other Which of course suggests the obvious solution of not letting the bytes be free any longer. Make users who want to post on your site pay for it.

So only the people fanatical enough to pay gets to express their opinion and the regular people just don't bother?
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