4 ms·

We need to flag it, not delete it. Pretending this stuff doesn't exist isn't doing anyone any favors. It's far better to have a public record of who is posting

by unabst 10y ago

We need to flag it, not delete it. Pretending this stuff doesn't exist isn't doing anyone any favors. It's far better to have a public record of who is posting this stuff. Let them advertise themselves, and let's deal with them. That's progressive. Censorship is for communists. For a blanket solution I would suggest a "safe feed" default where tweets flagged as hate speech are removed from your feed. Also have a hate counter in profiles so the number of hate tweets is public information. Then if the user wishes to delete them and have no hate on record, they can. What the manual mod team would need to do is review unflagging requests. Flagging can be done by the community, and most of them will be right. Unflagging and malicious flagging is the right problem to focus on, not whether or not to delete something (minus cases where it's the law).

evunveot 10y ago
I've had remarkably similar ideas rolling around in my head for the past couple of years, watching various viral controversies work their way through Twitter, Reddit, and Wikipedia. I disagree with the idea of a "hate counter," though, because it would encourage people to self-segregate and I think it's wrong to reduce people to their worst attributes. Everyone has the potential to make a positive contribution in at least some niche. I would just add that my ideal system would have a plethora of highly objective, undeniable flags for a variety of potentially disruptive behaviors; posters would be required to disclaim or "pre-flag" their own posts; and readers would have the ability to toggle which flags they're willing to view at any given moment. The punishment for failing to disclaim a flag would be a period of probation (increasing with repeated violations) where the user's posts are automatically disclaimed for that flag. The punishment for malicious flagging, as judged by a group of users with a long history of proper use of a particular flag, would be probation with regard to the ability to use that flag on others' posts. I expect that the "off-topic" flag, along with the ability to rigorously define the topic in any given context, would get a lot of use, as would "name calling," "assigning motives or attributes to a group" (aka "broad brushing"), and "expressing incredulity" (aka the starting-your-comment-with-"Um..." flag).

by unabst 10y ago

evunveot 10y ago

I've had remarkably similar ideas rolling around in my head for the past couple of years, watching various viral controversies work their way through Twitter, Reddit, and Wikipedia. I disagree with the idea of a "hate counter," though, because it would encourage people to self-segregate and I think it's wrong to reduce people to their worst attributes. Everyone has the potential to make a positive contribution in at least some niche. I would just add that my ideal system would have a plethora of highly objective, undeniable flags for a variety of potentially disruptive behaviors; posters would be required to disclaim or "pre-flag" their own posts; and readers would have the ability to toggle which flags they're willing to view at any given moment. The punishment for failing to disclaim a flag would be a period of probation (increasing with repeated violations) where the user's posts are automatically disclaimed for that flag. The punishment for malicious flagging, as judged by a group of users with a long history of proper use of a particular flag, would be probation with regard to the ability to use that flag on others' posts. I expect that the "off-topic" flag, along with the ability to rigorously define the topic in any given context, would get a lot of use, as would "name calling," "assigning motives or attributes to a group" (aka "broad brushing"), and "expressing incredulity" (aka the starting-your-comment-with-"Um..." flag).