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Web-of-trust mentioned in the article could also be used for moderation. Instead of somebody defining The Moderators who are allowed to make decisions, everybod

Web-of-trust mentioned in the article could also be used for moderation. Instead of somebody defining The Moderators who are allowed to make decisions, everybody would pick their own (or could decide to trust selections made by somebody else). In the "web-of-moderators" model no content would be outright blocked. Each user would have a personalized view, depending on his personal moderator network. One side effect of this would be that trying to outsmart the moderation would be harder, since all the bans would be shadow bans. Spammer would not know from how many people in his network the content is hidden.

sametmax 10y ago
This is an incredibly good idea. Everybody is using moderation in a centralized manner. Like there is one source of truth. But like curation, you need the moderation that suits you. This solves elegantly one problem hard with moderation: allowing freedom of speech while giving a safe place for people to be. You can imagine a forum where you have official moderators, and non official moderators. By default the forum display the very clean, politically correct moderated content. However, if you create an account you can switch your moderation source, and see more content. People ok with dirty jokes or extrem opinions would be able to enjoy the site as well as children. That's actually a fantastic idea even outside of the web-of-moderator concept, just as a implementation in a regular centralized software. Even better in a global ring of course, but one is harder than the other.
- milesrout 10y ago
  There are some things that actually should be completely deleted and off-limits, though, like people that post peoples' personal information. But yes, I often wish I could see deleted comments on reddit in places like /r/askscience: I want to see what stupid shit people have said to get banned. ALTHOUGH, like everything discussed in any of these threads as 'solutions' to the so-called 'problem' of 'abuse': it really is just going to result in more echo chambers.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Well that's the problem you see. You and me agree on that, but plenty people won't. And plenty people won't agree that you can mention gay sex, the coran or a political statement either. And they are sure to be right, as much as we are sure we are right. That's the problem with freedom of speech. One of the solution is to allow: - anything that is legal geographically - anything that is not followed by destructive actions IRL - or both And even that is hard and very imperfect. Morality is always arbitrary, it's impossible to draw a perfect line in the sand. Which is why systems life freenet are both a fantastic place (you got everything man, even the craziest informations) and a terrible curse (you got everything man, even a 10 years old getting raped). The web-of-moderator is an elegant solution to this problem. You don't draw one line in the sand, you draw many and let people choose a line. This doesn't solve the moral or legal issue, but it does solve the "i'm offended" issue. Which is more that what we could do up until here.
    - milesrout 10y ago
      Yeah I like the web-of-moderators, as I said. >This doesn't solve the moral or legal issue, but it does solve the "i'm offended" issue. Which is more that what we could do up until here. I entirely disagree. It does not solve that issue at all. The issue there is that people feel they have the right to filter out everything they disagree with or find uncomfortable. They don't. The TV news doesn't avoid showing images that are graphic, they say 'graphic images upcoming, turn off if you can't handle it' then show them.
      - sametmax 10y ago
        > The issue there is that people feel they have the right to filter out everything they disagree with or find uncomfortable. They don't. Yes but this is a way harder battle than creating a web-of-moderators :)
M_Grey 10y ago
If you're Reddit or some other group that depends on mods, you're still going to want moderators who take down the kind of material you're legally required to remove and report.
- jpalomaki 10y ago
  This works for walled gardens like Reddit, HN or Facebook. If the content is really distributed (think for example SMTP or NNTP) there's no way to reliably recall something that has been posted. In this case it is up to each node to make the decisions what content they keep and what remove (and who they give the authority to make these decisions).

sametmax 10y ago

This is an incredibly good idea. Everybody is using moderation in a centralized manner. Like there is one source of truth. But like curation, you need the moderation that suits you. This solves elegantly one problem hard with moderation: allowing freedom of speech while giving a safe place for people to be. You can imagine a forum where you have official moderators, and non official moderators. By default the forum display the very clean, politically correct moderated content. However, if you create an account you can switch your moderation source, and see more content. People ok with dirty jokes or extrem opinions would be able to enjoy the site as well as children. That's actually a fantastic idea even outside of the web-of-moderator concept, just as a implementation in a regular centralized software. Even better in a global ring of course, but one is harder than the other.

milesrout 10y ago
There are some things that actually should be completely deleted and off-limits, though, like people that post peoples' personal information. But yes, I often wish I could see deleted comments on reddit in places like /r/askscience: I want to see what stupid shit people have said to get banned. ALTHOUGH, like everything discussed in any of these threads as 'solutions' to the so-called 'problem' of 'abuse': it really is just going to result in more echo chambers.
- sametmax 10y ago
  Well that's the problem you see. You and me agree on that, but plenty people won't. And plenty people won't agree that you can mention gay sex, the coran or a political statement either. And they are sure to be right, as much as we are sure we are right. That's the problem with freedom of speech. One of the solution is to allow: - anything that is legal geographically - anything that is not followed by destructive actions IRL - or both And even that is hard and very imperfect. Morality is always arbitrary, it's impossible to draw a perfect line in the sand. Which is why systems life freenet are both a fantastic place (you got everything man, even the craziest informations) and a terrible curse (you got everything man, even a 10 years old getting raped). The web-of-moderator is an elegant solution to this problem. You don't draw one line in the sand, you draw many and let people choose a line. This doesn't solve the moral or legal issue, but it does solve the "i'm offended" issue. Which is more that what we could do up until here.
  - milesrout 10y ago
    Yeah I like the web-of-moderators, as I said. >This doesn't solve the moral or legal issue, but it does solve the "i'm offended" issue. Which is more that what we could do up until here. I entirely disagree. It does not solve that issue at all. The issue there is that people feel they have the right to filter out everything they disagree with or find uncomfortable. They don't. The TV news doesn't avoid showing images that are graphic, they say 'graphic images upcoming, turn off if you can't handle it' then show them.
    - sametmax 10y ago
      > The issue there is that people feel they have the right to filter out everything they disagree with or find uncomfortable. They don't. Yes but this is a way harder battle than creating a web-of-moderators :)

M_Grey 10y ago

If you're Reddit or some other group that depends on mods, you're still going to want moderators who take down the kind of material you're legally required to remove and report.

jpalomaki 10y ago
This works for walled gardens like Reddit, HN or Facebook. If the content is really distributed (think for example SMTP or NNTP) there's no way to reliably recall something that has been posted. In this case it is up to each node to make the decisions what content they keep and what remove (and who they give the authority to make these decisions).