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Allowing totally unmoderated comments could lead to the worst aspects of the interent - bullying, harrassment, doxing - as well as open the organisation hosting

by leoedin 11y ago

Allowing totally unmoderated comments could lead to the worst aspects of the interent - bullying, harrassment, doxing - as well as open the organisation hosting the comments to legal issues. Free speech may be protected (in the US anyway - most western countries don't have anything like the free speech protection laws that you do, and that's not always a bad thing), but that doesn't give anyone the right to post their speech anywhere. People may enjoy participating in flame wars, but they don't bring much value to the reader. Judging by the number of upvotes, comments tend to be read by far more people than participate. Often insightful and well thought out comments are a pleasure to read. Flame wars? Less so. Maybe I'm coming from a very different point of view though. By far my favourite discussion websites are the ones with agressive moderation policies and a financial barrier to entry. That seems to do wonders to encourage thoughtful and interesting comments.

coldtea 11y ago
>Allowing totally unmoderated comments could lead to the worst aspects of the interent - bullying, harrassment, doxing - as well as open the organisation hosting the comments to legal issues. Or it would lead to people learning to finally handle those things. The problem with bullying in real life is the physical threat. You can't ignore that guy at the bar or the school bully. On the internet you very much can. >People may enjoy participating in flame wars, but they don't bring much value to the reader. Those people participating are also readers. As for readers not interested in that, they can skip the comment section (in most websites those are hidden behind a button or in the bottom of the page, after ads, etc). >By far my favourite discussion websites are the ones with agressive moderation policies and a financial barrier to entry. That seems to do wonders to encourage thoughtful and interesting comments. I like to talk with people that think in a different way than me, including people from other cultures, political affiliations, etc. So something like that would not work at all, it will be a self-selected echo chamber for the most part. For some things thats OK (e.g. HN is a tech-focused site, so you want to keep discussion to those areas). But for general news stories (something like Medium or CNN), no.
- trowawee 11y ago
  >The problem with bullying in real life is the physical threat. You can't ignore that guy at the bar or the school bully. On the internet you very much can. Unless they send a SWAT team to your house that shoots you, or publish your information all over the web so that your creepy stalker ex can find where you live now and people can steal your identity and ruin your credit, or tell lies about you to your work and get you fired, or overwhelm you with thousands of hateful messages threatening personal harm to you, or do any of the other thousand things that people do, constantly, to other people on the internet that cause them harm in real life. Seriously, we're on a site that has news in the name. You read tech news and have been on the internet for a while, right? How is this still a confusing phenomenon?
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >Seriously, we're on a site that has news in the name. You read tech news and have been on the internet for a while, right? How is this still a confusing phenomenon? We're talking about comment sections. Obviously your "creepy stalker ex" already knows you who are in the first place. But you DO know you can use a handle and NOT use and advertise your real name and address in CNN (or any other place) comment section, right? To quote you "how is this still a confusing phenomenon to people?". For the rest, I'm not from your parts of the world. For 96% of the world's population, getting "SWAT team to your house that shoots you" or "creepy stalker ex" who somehow doesn't know where you live (because you've changed states or whatever), is not a thing. The same way we don't get much (if any) police shootings, or much (if any) pubic shootings in general for that matter.
- leoedin 11y ago
  When I was a less sensible youth I made the mistake of using real contact details on a domain name registration, and then subsequently being an obvious target on a gaming forum. I received targeted attacks on my online accounts which lead to all sorts of things being purchased in my name and I received all sorts of unsolicited and possibly legally dubious things in the mail (probably bought with stolen credit cards). I live in the UK and I think the people targeting me lived somewhere in Europe. Online harrassment is a thing. It is a thing that caused me a lot of stress and anxiety, and I think I probably received a fairly mild dose of it. Unmoderated forums can be vicious and brutal places, and for that reason nobody should be obligated to run one. Usenet was invented 35 years ago. Do you really think that if we (as a society) are going to learn to "finally handle" unmoderated discussion boards when the evidence clearly points to the fact we haven't thus far? There's nothing that says that a moderated discussion forum only allows people who think in a particular way. In my experience the kind of moderation that leads to the highest quality and most interesting discussion (often from people with radically different points of view) is the kind that bans personal attacks and comments which are clearly designed to bait or otherwise incite a flame war. That moderation can happen in an open and visible way.

by leoedin 11y ago

coldtea 11y ago

>Allowing totally unmoderated comments could lead to the worst aspects of the interent - bullying, harrassment, doxing - as well as open the organisation hosting the comments to legal issues. Or it would lead to people learning to finally handle those things. The problem with bullying in real life is the physical threat. You can't ignore that guy at the bar or the school bully. On the internet you very much can. >People may enjoy participating in flame wars, but they don't bring much value to the reader. Those people participating are also readers. As for readers not interested in that, they can skip the comment section (in most websites those are hidden behind a button or in the bottom of the page, after ads, etc). >By far my favourite discussion websites are the ones with agressive moderation policies and a financial barrier to entry. That seems to do wonders to encourage thoughtful and interesting comments. I like to talk with people that think in a different way than me, including people from other cultures, political affiliations, etc. So something like that would not work at all, it will be a self-selected echo chamber for the most part. For some things thats OK (e.g. HN is a tech-focused site, so you want to keep discussion to those areas). But for general news stories (something like Medium or CNN), no.

trowawee 11y ago
>The problem with bullying in real life is the physical threat. You can't ignore that guy at the bar or the school bully. On the internet you very much can. Unless they send a SWAT team to your house that shoots you, or publish your information all over the web so that your creepy stalker ex can find where you live now and people can steal your identity and ruin your credit, or tell lies about you to your work and get you fired, or overwhelm you with thousands of hateful messages threatening personal harm to you, or do any of the other thousand things that people do, constantly, to other people on the internet that cause them harm in real life. Seriously, we're on a site that has news in the name. You read tech news and have been on the internet for a while, right? How is this still a confusing phenomenon?
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Seriously, we're on a site that has news in the name. You read tech news and have been on the internet for a while, right? How is this still a confusing phenomenon? We're talking about comment sections. Obviously your "creepy stalker ex" already knows you who are in the first place. But you DO know you can use a handle and NOT use and advertise your real name and address in CNN (or any other place) comment section, right? To quote you "how is this still a confusing phenomenon to people?". For the rest, I'm not from your parts of the world. For 96% of the world's population, getting "SWAT team to your house that shoots you" or "creepy stalker ex" who somehow doesn't know where you live (because you've changed states or whatever), is not a thing. The same way we don't get much (if any) police shootings, or much (if any) pubic shootings in general for that matter.
leoedin 11y ago
When I was a less sensible youth I made the mistake of using real contact details on a domain name registration, and then subsequently being an obvious target on a gaming forum. I received targeted attacks on my online accounts which lead to all sorts of things being purchased in my name and I received all sorts of unsolicited and possibly legally dubious things in the mail (probably bought with stolen credit cards). I live in the UK and I think the people targeting me lived somewhere in Europe. Online harrassment is a thing. It is a thing that caused me a lot of stress and anxiety, and I think I probably received a fairly mild dose of it. Unmoderated forums can be vicious and brutal places, and for that reason nobody should be obligated to run one. Usenet was invented 35 years ago. Do you really think that if we (as a society) are going to learn to "finally handle" unmoderated discussion boards when the evidence clearly points to the fact we haven't thus far? There's nothing that says that a moderated discussion forum only allows people who think in a particular way. In my experience the kind of moderation that leads to the highest quality and most interesting discussion (often from people with radically different points of view) is the kind that bans personal attacks and comments which are clearly designed to bait or otherwise incite a flame war. That moderation can happen in an open and visible way.