Matrix network planning a distributed approach to online moderation
1–10 of 13 posts
Re: Matrix network planning a distributed approach to online moderation
#2>So how would the Russian disinformation campaign unfold in a fully operational decentralised reputation world? Users would subscribe to trusted fact checkers’ reputation lists, which would decrease the rating of the bots and the fake content, leaving the disinformation alone in an echo chamber without an audience.
Sounds like a nightmare. I've seen a LOT of moderation overreach with the primary Matrix homeserver to begin with, and homeservers blocked from federation for seemingly little reason. I do not trust its administrators to 'fact check', nor do I trust its users to approve of it. I think these measures, in the long term, will create an iron hugbox where every lunatic in the asylum exists in his own bubble.
The Matrix network its self is still, as far as I know, still primarily exists within the official homeserver, which has the most users by far. I feel what happens there may have far-reaching consequences to the network, and it would be far better to keep things on a server by server basis rather than making it easier to close off.
Re: Matrix network planning a distributed approach to online moderation
#3Is Matrix really used in such a way that it even needs to solve the captive-audience fan-in problem created by big tech? And if there's a channel of people consensually sharing and coordinating disinfo, then in the limit of free communications, there's not really much to be done. Or is the purpose of this article really to fend off and redirect those calling for censorship?
Meanwhile I'm just siting here wishing I could change the color of my username. Sigh.
Re: Matrix network planning a distributed approach to online moderation
#4Is Matrix really used in such a way that it even needs to solve the captive-audience fan-in problem created by big tech? And if there's a channel of people consensually sharing and coordinating disinfo, then in the limit of free communications, there's not really much to be done. Or is the purpose of this article really to fend off and redirect those calling for censorship? Meanwhile I'm just siting here wishing I co…
"change the color of my username. Sigh." - Has been a top 3 complaints for my users since we started using matrix/element.
I know it's hard because you gotta put code in there and then hope the various clients respect it - and maybe a secondary color choice in case dark mode / non dark mode.. but still I'd put a $100 on bountysource or something to have the needed code given to the matrix peeps to look it over.
regarding comment on the article - I would guess this is a way fend off the cens calls.. similar to other posts - which I appreciate big time.
Re: Matrix network planning a distributed approach to online moderation
#5>So how would the Russian disinformation campaign unfold in a fully operational decentralised reputation world? Users would subscribe to trusted fact checkers’ reputation lists, which would decrease the rating of the bots and the fake content, leaving the disinformation alone in an echo chamber without an audience. Sounds like a nightmare. I've seen a LOT of moderation overreach with the primary Matrix homeserver to…
>The Matrix network its self is still, as far as I know, still primarily exists within the official homeserver, which has the most users by far.
It is true that there are many users on the matrix.org homeserver, however I recall a claim from user?id=Arathorn (lead dev) that less than 30% of users actually use that homeserver, so I am skeptical that such a thing would have as heavy an impact as you feel it may. Regardless, as the developers of the Matrix protocol and most popular implementations, they sure do have a lot of power to steer how users will interact with it all in the future.
Re: Matrix network planning a distributed approach to online moderation
#6Can't we just teach critical thinking in schools and how to do research, learn to determine who has credibility in which fields etc?
This is an endless war against miss information. What is wrong today may be right tomorrow. Things change and people need to be smart enough to make their own determination.
People should also be smart enough to figure out whom to vote for and what to vote for not relying on some in TV or where to tell them.
Re: Matrix network planning a distributed approach to online moderation
#7>So how would the Russian disinformation campaign unfold in a fully operational decentralised reputation world? Users would subscribe to trusted fact checkers’ reputation lists, which would decrease the rating of the bots and the fake content, leaving the disinformation alone in an echo chamber without an audience. Sounds like a nightmare. I've seen a LOT of moderation overreach with the primary Matrix homeserver to…
You've missed the whole point of the article, which is to propose decentralising moderation so that communities can abide by whatever rules they want on their own terms. In other words, if you don't like the rules that the Matrix.org server happens to apply, you can go somewhere else and apply whatever rules you want.
Re: Matrix network planning a distributed approach to online moderation
#8I think these moderation improvements will be a good thing - not for stopping misinformation or whatever, but for stopping spamming attacks.
Re: Matrix network planning a distributed approach to online moderation
#9Can't we just teach critical thinking in schools and how to do research, learn to determine who has credibility in which fields etc? This is an endless war against miss information. What is wrong today may be right tomorrow. Things change and people need to be smart enough to make their own determination. People should also be smart enough to figure out whom to vote for and what to vote for not relying on some in TV…
This is an incredibly limited view and nirvana fallacy.
No project can radically change global education system. So of course can't 'just'. And even somehow your wildest fantasy came true and we were all some perfect robots operating only based on rational sorting of peer reviewed papers it would still not solve anything.
No human has even 1/1000000 of a chance to be a perfect expert on all the things that might be discussed in the world.
Science and critical thinking are not universal. No scientific paper and no amount of historical education on history of Crimea will perfectly inform you about what is 'correct'.
Even beyond all that, moderation is targeted add far more things then miss-information. Its about 100 practical issues. From abuse. To Spam. To harassment. To Spoilers. To keep things 'on topic'. And many other things.
Re: Matrix network planning a distributed approach to online moderation
#10>So how would the Russian disinformation campaign unfold in a fully operational decentralised reputation world? Users would subscribe to trusted fact checkers’ reputation lists, which would decrease the rating of the bots and the fake content, leaving the disinformation alone in an echo chamber without an audience. Sounds like a nightmare. I've seen a LOT of moderation overreach with the primary Matrix homeserver to…
You've missed the whole point of the article, which is to propose decentralising moderation so that communities can abide by whatever rules they want on their own terms. In other words, if you don't like the rules that the Matrix.org server happens to apply, you can go somewhere else and apply whatever rules you want.
I know the point of the article. I believe the current semi-centralized moderation system is vastly preferable to what they propose, because I feel making it easier to block swathes of users and homeservers would have a very negative effect on free discussion.
We've already seen what happens with this style of moderation through things like Twitter blacklists, and these changes would basically integrate such things into the protocol.
If blacklists are commonly accepted and used, but the people maintaining them are biased or incompetent, there stands a chance that your 'own server with whatever rules you want' will not be able to communicate with the vast majority of people. You can see this happening with email now, where large providers like Gmail broadly block smaller ones.