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Have you pondered the moral implications of your startup?

• sammyo 19y ago
  Bah, humbug. ;-)
• mynameishere 19y ago
  I'm not proposing they censor the site (it wouldn't really be possible, anyway Sure it is. The problem is that censors are always idiots: They define things as "good" and "evil" rather than "true" and "false". This tends to leave them and their compadres reading nothing but falsehood.
  • ecommercematt 19y ago
    Regardless of the criteria for censorship, it'd be ineffective on a community like Reddit. Wikipedia's process for ensuring quality of content is admirable, if imperfect. They benefit from the community's clearly defined constraints and overall mission.
  • brianr 19y ago
    Censorship usually is not associated with filtering true vs. false information. From wikipedia: Censorship is the suppression or deletion of material, which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor. "Censorship" implies a value judgement, not just filtering out content that is false (although even then, it can be hard to determine what is unquestionably untrue). That's why it's so subjective and difficult.
  • maxwell 19y ago
    I think defining things as "true" and "false" is just as shackling though. You end up generalizing something that shouldn't be reduced to Boolean logic. You can't understand Wikipedia by looking at its bytecode, just as you can't understand a human by reading their genome. They're more than the sum of their parts.
• edw519 19y ago
  Stop worrying. Now. Every nanosecond you worry about this is a resource permanently lost from where it belongs: your startup. What if Henry Ford hesitated because he worried about drunk drivers? Or Edison and Bell hesitated because they worried about drug dealers and criminals? We'd still have automobiles, lights, and phones. But you would have never heard of any of them. You have little or no control over this. Have a little faith in others; stepping forward to confront evil is their thing. In the meantime, do yours.
  • ntoshev 19y ago
    Thinking about how to nurture your community is not a waste of time. The right community is vitally important to many startups, certainly not less important than the technology (Reddit and Wikipedia are both good examples). He has control over the community in the way he implements its mechanisms of interaction. Crash course here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswi...
  • boredguy8 19y ago
    The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.
    • edw519 19y ago
      How is building something people can use (or possibly misuse) the same as remaining neutral?
      • aston 19y ago
        It's a moot point anyway because most of the time when you make a moral stand in your product you end up making the experience for its audience better. The tricky part is knowing which types of people you'll lose or gain based on those moral stands.
  • ecommercematt 19y ago
    Thanks for your feedback. I agree that protracted hand-wringing over the potential outcomes of my startup would be a waste of time. Nonetheless, I think it is worth pondering the issue. In a sense, the specific problems I raised with Reddit are just a subset of a larger issue: community-driven sites rotting at their core. Sometimes they rot at their core due to racists (and other types of bigots and hate mongers) spouting off, and sometimes they rot at their core due to idiots being idiots, and sometimes they rot at their core due to spammers. I raised the topic because I've heard plenty of ideas on how to reduce the number/influence of idiots and spammers on community-driven sites, but I have heard far less about how to prevent hate from taking hold. This is important not just because racism and other forms of bigotry harm society, but because prominently featured prejudice-based hatred diminishes the credibility of the information a given community creates/organizes just as much as idiots and spammers do. Our concept is not really like Reddit (or Wikipedia), and we think it is less vulnerable to the rot-inducing influences I referenced above.
• edu 19y ago
  "Things happen, what the hell!" - Terry Pratchet, The Hogfather.
• cperciva 19y ago
  Yes, I have pondered the moral implications of my startup. Cryptography comes with a price: The bad guys get to use it too. Where my startup is concerned, this means that organized crime would have access to TLA-quality secure backups (and by "backing up" data from one system and "restoring" it to another, secure communication, too). In the end I decided that since (a) criminals would need to pay for the service (which makes tracking them down easier), and (b) I'm going to be logging IP addresses, the extent to which this would assist criminals is fairly limited; and that the legitimate needs people have for secure backups far outweigh the potential for abuse.
  • randallsquared 19y ago
    Er, not to mention which, anyone who wants secure commo can just use GnuPG and friends.
  • imsteve 19y ago
    You must also consider the potential for abuse by governments or other individuals against your users. This is particularly relevant to online backups. You aren't facing a big ethical problem at all if you ask me. Privacy is a basis of US laws, and all that.
• ntoshev 19y ago
  Yes, there are things you can do to drive the community in the way you want, without resorting to censorship. There are softer measures you can take - make the votes of trusted editors (and people who vote like them) count for more in the ranking algo in the Reddit's case, for example. Is this ethical? Well, you have to decide for yourself. A few examples to think of might help: - Western civilization generally spreads its values along with its technology. Is this Ok? - Is it ethical to support democracy in cultures that don't grow it themselves? - If you are the government of some country and have a tribe practicing female genital mutilation and considering it normal (including the women), what is the ethical thing to do? - Is Scientology ethical? Is it ethical to constraint them?
• mrtron 19y ago
  You can't make people good. You can make yourself a better person and lead by example, but you can't stop people from doing something like spreading misinformation and hate speech. It has been going on since the beginning of civilization. If your startup has the right moral and socially beneficial intentions, then that is really the most you can do. If someone comes along and uses your tool for evil, that doesn't mean you shouldn't have created your tool. In scientific and technological research, there are often amazing uses that benefit humanity. For example, splitting the atom resulted in nuclear power which is arguably a great invention for mankind. However, due to human nature, it created the greatest weapon mankind has seen. You cannot blame the researcher for facilitating this, you can only blame human nature for abusing the technology.
  • imsteve 19y ago
    > created the greatest weapon mankind has seen Stretching it a bit... I think the guy who made machine guns happen slept worse at night. You must realize though, that both were obvious inventions that were going to happen no matter what.
    • r7000 19y ago
      indeed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow
• pg 19y ago
  I'm surprised how often this comes up in YC startups, actually. I'm not sure if this is true of founders in general (it might be) but practically everyone we've funded not only wants to not be evil, but actively wants to make the world better. This was certainly true of the Reddits. And in fact I think they succeeded. If you make a site where everyone can say what they want, some people are going to say things other people don't like. But isn't this a net improvement over the preceding model, where there were a few narrow channels for the distribution of news, and the companies that controlled them controlled the news? I'm not sure what you mean by "hate speech," and I doubt you are either, but I think we're net ahead if we have a world in which its harder for the powerful to suppress news, even if a few people take advantage of this new openness to say things that offend others. In fact, some of the best ideas started out that way.
  • ecommercematt 19y ago
    It doesn't surprise me that this is a common concern in YC startups. It also doesn't surprise me that the Reddit guys gave the issue consideration. I agree that limiting the ability to suppress news, even if some people take advantage of increasing openness to advance harmful agendas, is a positive trend. I used to regularly derive enjoyment from Reddit, and occasionally, I still do. Nonetheless, I think Reddit's struggle with various forms of abuse (by idiots, racists, spammers, etc.), is relevant to those of us working on community driven web-based projects (even if "community-driven," and "web-based" are the only traits in common with Reddit, as is the case with my startup). If I were one of Reddit's founders, I'd be troubled by its current state, and I want to do whatever I can to prevent similar problems from happening to our site. As to what I meant by hate speech, I'll lean on Justice Potter Stewart's words regarding the definition of pornography: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it There is plenty of hate speech on Reddit, and I know it when I see it. The first time I discovered your (pg's) existence was when I received a link to your essay "What You Can't Say." http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html You said in that essay "like every other era in history, our moral map almost certainly contains a few mistakes." I agree with you. Nonetheless, I'm sure that it isn't a mistake to consider white supremacist propaganda, for example, to be harmful to society. I'd be surprised if you haven't encountered hate speech on Reddit, but perhaps you haven't. I imagine it wouldn't take you long to find, if you tried, as I have stumbled across it quite regularly by accident. Regardless, the particulars of my critique of Reddit aren't relevant. Figuring out how to make a community good, and keep it good, is my goal. The consensus here appears to be that an ounce of bad sprinkled in with tons of good is still worth it. I agree, but I'm still going to think about how to reduce that ounce to a gram, or less. Any ideas would be appreciated.
• maxwell 19y ago
  That which lasts is self-correcting.
• cousin_it 19y ago
  Long time lurker, finally registered to respond to this. On controversial matters like race, religion or abortion, no matter what your position is and how sure you are about it, there almost certainly exists someone on the other side who's better educated/informed and just as sure as you. My ideal community site would allow the most extreme opinions, but not let any group jam the signal for others. For example, the Wikipedia page "Race and intelligence" would be much improved if it were split into two pages side by side, each editable by only one of the factions.
  • ecommercematt 19y ago
    That's an interesting perspective. The problem that initially jumps out at me is what to do when there aren't two clear sides to an issue. Any ideas on handling complicated, muddled, and contentious issues with multiple sides?
    • cousin_it 19y ago
      Not sure. Google gives me this: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfact-ultimate-social-verifier.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfac...
• MisterMerkin 19y ago
  You can't throw out accusations of hate speech at the reddit community without some specifics which I've yet to see you mention in this post.
• papersmith 19y ago
  Just curious, can you give some examples of hate speeches on reddit? I'm thinking of the recent James Watson controversies, but that would seem pretty fuzzy. Any clarifications are appreciated.
• jsnx 19y ago
  If I understand it correctly, the idea with Reddit is that the community can decide what news it wants to see, by posting links and then filtering them. If the community wants hate speach (or more of those Ron Paul links) and Reddit serves up hate speach, then isn't the algorithm working? I suppose you could actively ban users who skew the community in that direction -- though you'd have an endless calvacade of sock puppets to deal with.
• cmars232 19y ago
  My current toy idea is a real-time captcha trading market. On the one hand, spammers might pay to use it. On the other hand, it will inspire websites to come up with something better than captchas. In any case, making a real-time market is too fun to worry about implications, don't you think? :)