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Aside from the degenerate cases like “kill all white men” or “liberalism is a mental disorder”, one man’s “toxic comment” is another man’s “common sense”. And a
by throwaway84742 9y ago
Aside from the degenerate cases like “kill all white men” or “liberalism is a mental disorder”, one man’s “toxic comment” is another man’s “common sense”. And as frustrating as it may be to SV digital overlords they don’t get to decide which is which, at least not without unpleasant repercussions down the line.
So there’s really no way to solve this. There is a way to contain it somewhat: create homogeneous bubbles. Which is what we’ve been observing over the past few years.
- abvdasker 9y agoOr, rather than giving up or "creating homogeneous bubbles" instead you could look at things on a case-by-case basis as Reddit is doing. At the end of the day the privately run company does get to decide whether content warrants removal or not since they are running a business and advertisers don't like advertising in a space associated with extreme or harmful content. They also have an incentive not to take the moderation too far since to do so would put the company's most valuable asset — its user base — at risk.
- throwaway84742 9y agoTrouble begins when you try to define “harmful” content outside the most egregious cases. Politics inevitably creep in. Worse, these days some people think that “words are violence”, that being offended gives them any rights (and thus creates the vicious cycle of being offended by more and more inane things), and that everyone who voted for Trump is a Nazi. How far are you willing to go, as a private company, to please your advertisers? And how far will your user base allow you to go before deserting en masse?