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Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

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Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#481

Post by brookst »

dbrueck wrote: post #458

At least one missing element is that of reputation . I don't think it should work exactly like it does in the real world, but the absence of it seems to always lead to major problems. The cost of being a jerk online is too low - it's almost entirely free of any consequences. Put another way, not everyone deserves a megaphone. Not everyone deserves to chime in on any conversation they want. The promise of online discu…

Maybe? Reputation systems can devolve into rewarding groupthink. It's a classic "you get what you measure" conundrum, where once it becomes clear that an opinion / phrase / meme is popular, it's easy to farm reputation by repeating it.

I like your comment about "track record of insightful, levelheaded conversation", but that introduces another abstraction. Who measures insight or levelheadedness, and how to avoid that being gamed?

I general I agree that reputation is an interesting and potentially important signal, I'm just not sure I've ever seen an implementation that doesn't cause a lot of the problems it's trying to solve. Any good examples?

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#482

Post by Ztynovovk »

scraptor wrote: post #412
Ztynovovk wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems reasonable to me. IRL I can walk away from a voluntary discussion when I want. If people want to continue talking after I’ve left they can form their own discussion group and continue with the topic. Think this is good because it usually stops a discussion from dissolving into a meaningless flame war. It allows the power of moderation to stay within the power of those in the discussion.

Now imagine if some random other people in the group who happen to have posts higher in the tree were able to silently remove you without anyone knowing.

Meh, it’s the most reasonable bad solution imo. I’ve had some pretty heated convos on reddit and have only ever been blocked once.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#483

Post by pclmulqdq »

esotericimpl wrote: post #129
jameskilton wrote: post #9

Every single social media platform that has ever existed makes the same fundamental mistake. They believe that they just have to remove or block the bad actors and bad content and that will make the platform good. The reality is everyone , myself included, can be and will be a bad actor. How do you build and run a "social media" product when the very act of letting anyone respond to anyone with anything is itself the…

Charge them $10 to create an account (anonymous, real, parody whatever), then if they break a rule give them a warning, 2 rule breaks, a 24 hour posting suspension, 3 strikes and permanently ban the account. Let them reregister for $10. Congrats, i just solved spam, bots, assholes and permanent line steppers.

This kind of thing worked for a few forums that tried it before FB/Twitter came around.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#484

Post by PathOfEclipse »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #444
PathOfEclipse wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately it's not a strawman. From the article: ===== Moderating spam is very interesting: it is almost universally regarded as okay to ban (i.e. CENSORSHIP) but spam is in no way illegal. Spam actually passes the test of “allow any legal speech” with flying colors. Hell, the US Postal Service delivers spam to your mailbox. When 1A discussions talk about free speech on private platforms mirroring free speech laws,…

For the record, I agree with your points in your original post regarding the nature of free speech and with regard to the Overton window for tolerable speech (if there is such a thing). I disagree with the notion that Yishan made a mistake in how he wrote about spam. You used that as a basis for disclaiming his conclusions. Yishan was not making a point about free speech, he was making the point that effective modera…

That's a fair point. At the same time:

A) saying moderation is not about free speech is, I think, making a point about free speech. Saying one thing is unrelated to another is making a point about both things.

B) Even framed this way, I think Yishan is either wrong or is missing the point. If you want to do content moderation that better supports free speech, what does that look like? I think Yishan either doesn't answer that question at all, or else implies that it's not solvable by saying the two are unrelated. I don't think that's the case, and I also think his approach of focusing less on the content and more on the supposed user impact just gives more power to activists who know how to use outrage as a weapon. If you want your platform to better support free speech, then I think the content itself should matter as much or more than peoples' reaction to it, even if moderating by content is more difficult. Otherwise, content moderation can just be gamed by generating the appropriate reaction to content you want censored.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#485

Post by TulliusCicero »

DoItToMe81 wrote: post #341
paradite wrote: post #302

I recently started my own Discord server and had my first experience in content moderation. The demographics is mostly teenagers. Some have mental health issues. It was the hardest thing ever. In first incident I chose to ignore a certain user being targeted by others for posting repeated messages. The person left a very angry message and left. Comes the second incident, I thought I learnt my lesson. Once a user is t…

Mental illness or not, your interactions with users in a service with a block button are all voluntary. Unless someone is going out of their own way to drag drama out of Discord, or god forbid, into real life, it tends to be best to just let it happen, as they are entirely willingly participating in it and the escape is just a button away.

I see this a fair amount, and yeah, "just let people block others" is really terrible moderation advice.

Besides the very reasonable expectation almost everyone has that assholes will be banned, the inevitable result of not banning assholes is that you get more and more assholes, because their behavior will chase away regular users. Even some regular users may start acting more like assholes, because what do you do when someone is super combative, aside from possibly leaving? You become combative right back, to fight back.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#486

Post by bombcar »

Atheros wrote: post #474
excite1997 wrote: post #243

He frames this as a behavior problem, not content problem. The claim is that your objective as a moderator should to get rid of users or behaviors that are bad for your platform, in the sense that they may drive users away or make them less happy. And that if you do that, you supposedly end up with a fundamentally robust and apolitical approach to moderation. He then proceeds to blame others for misunderstanding this…

> Challenging the cultural dogma [doesn't work] That is a byproduct of Reddit specifically. With 90s style forums, this kind of discussion happens just fine because it ends up being limited to a few threads. On Reddit, all community members must interact in the threads posted in the last day or two. After two days they are gone and all previous discussion is effectively lost. So maybe this can be fixed by having sub-…

The whole idea of "containment threads" is a powerful one that works very well in older-style forums, but not nearly as well on Reddit. "containment subs" isn't the same thing at all, and the subs that try to run subsubs dedicated to the containment issues usually find they die out.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#487

Post by jchw »

wwweston wrote: post #459
jchw wrote: post #442

The commentary is interesting, but it does unfortunately gloss over the very real issue of actually controversial topics. Most platforms don't typically set out to ban controversial stuff from what I can tell, but the forces that be (advertisers, government regulators, payment processors, service providers, etc.) tend to be quite a bit more invested in such topics. Naughty language on YouTube and porn on Twitter are…

It’s hard for me to imagine what “scary actual censorship” is happening — that is, to identify topics or perspectives that cannot be represented in net forums. If such topics/perspectives exist, then the effectiveness must be near total to the point where I’m entirely unaware of them, which I guess would be scary if people could provide examples. But usually when I ask, I’m supplied with topics which I have indeed se…

The problem is that it's not really about censorship the way that people think about it; it's not about blanket banning the discussion of a topic. You can clearly have a discussion about extremely heated debate topics like abortion, pedophilia, genocide, whatever. However, in some of these topics there are pretty harsh chilling effects that prevent people from having very open and honest discussion about them. The reason why I'm being non-specific is twofold: one is because I am also impacted by these chilling effects, and another is because making it specific makes it seem like it's about a singular topic when it is about a recurring pattern of behaviors that shift topics over time.

If you really don't think there have been chilling effects, I put forth two potential theories: one is that you possibly see this as normal "consequences for actions" (I do not believe this: I am strictly discussing ideas and opinions that are controversial even in a vacuum.) OR: perhaps you genuinely haven't really seen the fringes very much, and doubt their existence. I don't really want to get into it, because it would force me to pick specific examples that would inextricably paint me into those arguments, but I guess maybe it's worth it if it makes the point.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#488

Post by derefr »

paradite wrote: post #302

I recently started my own Discord server and had my first experience in content moderation. The demographics is mostly teenagers. Some have mental health issues. It was the hardest thing ever. In first incident I chose to ignore a certain user being targeted by others for posting repeated messages. The person left a very angry message and left. Comes the second incident, I thought I learnt my lesson. Once a user is t…

> In first incident I chose to ignore a certain user being targeted by others for posting repeated messages. The person left a very angry message and left.

> Comes the second incident, I thought I learnt my lesson. Once a user is targeted, I tried to stop others from targeting the person. But this time the people who targeted the person wrote angry messages and left.

Makes me think that moderators should have the arbitrational power to take two people or groups, and (explicitly, with notice to both people/groups) make each person/group's public posts invisible to the other person/group. Like a cross between the old Usenet ignore lists, and restraining orders, but externally-imposed without either party actively seeking it out.

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#489

Post by throw_m239339 »

archagon wrote: post #405
throw_m239339 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

r/politics is “communist”? That’s… just a really dumb take. If there is a far-left presence on Reddit, it is not prominent. r/politics is left-leaning and angry, but, objectively speaking, not really all that extreme. And, for what it’s worth, it seems perfectly reasonable to label those who tried to overthrow our democratic government “traitors”.

> r/politics is “communist”? That’s… just a really dumb take. If there is a far-left presence on Reddit, it is not prominent. r/politics is left-leaning and angry, but, objectively speaking, not really all that extreme.

Obviously, none of the affluent idiots from chapo or at hexbear controlling r/politics r/news or r/worldnews are really communists, they are just rich asshats that just pretend to be, my point still stands. They are still spouting marxist non sense, violent speech, and their behavior isn't moderated, as long as they don't target "the wrong people".

Re: Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation

#490

Post by cloverich »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #8

There are some neat ideas raised by Yishan. One is 'put up or shutup' for appeals of moderator decisions. That is anyone who wishes to appeal needs to also consent to have all their activities on the platform, relevant to the decision, revealed publicly. It definitely could prevent later accusations of secretiveness or arbitrariness. And it probably would also make users think more in marginal cases before submitting…

It is expensive to do, because you have to ensure the content being made public doesn't dox / hurt someone other than the poster. But I think you could add two things to the recipe. 1 - real user validation. So the banned user can't easily make another account. Obviously not easy and perhaps not even possible, but essential. 2 - increased stake. Protest a short ban, and if you lose, you get an even longer ban.
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