4 ms·

I'm a big fan of free speech as a philosophy, but I also am practical enough to understand a bit about how hateful culture festers, spreads, and grows when allo

I'm a big fan of free speech as a philosophy, but I also am practical enough to understand a bit about how hateful culture festers, spreads, and grows when allowed to thrive online, and honestly I'm at a loss for how I'd reconcile these two concepts. What's the current state of the art for curbing the growth of hate groups while still providing a platform for honest and free discussion? We all probably have some ideas on how we'd give it a shot, but I wonder if there are one, or a few common themes.

thosakwe 8y ago
It's still imperfect, but sentiment analysis and flagging known slurs might be a good start. You can roll-your-own, or use a third-party API (whatever the implications might be).
std_throwaway 8y ago
The upvote/downvote-system by itself seems like a bad idea in regards of free speech. You'll end up with the largest group agreeing to each other and upvoting each other thereby silencing (and driving away) other groups. The votes themselves take almost no energy and simple puns get showered in upvotes while long and well thought-out but slightly unusual posts die in the desert. If you go with the voting system alone with moderate moderation you'll probably always end up with mediocre content that is easy to consume by a majority of your users. Depending on your users you'll get funny cat gifs or ever repeating racist jokes. The subreddits seem to help a bit since they filter users by interest first and employ strict moderation throughout but after they reach a certain threshold they, too, seem to go downhill fast. I have no solution but the effortless vote system doesn't sound like such a good idea after all these years.
bduerst 8y ago
If you're really keen on free speech as a philosophy, read up on John Stuart Mill's contributions. His take is that free speech is paramount except when it causes harm, which is missed by many today.

thosakwe 8y ago

It's still imperfect, but sentiment analysis and flagging known slurs might be a good start. You can roll-your-own, or use a third-party API (whatever the implications might be).

std_throwaway 8y ago

The upvote/downvote-system by itself seems like a bad idea in regards of free speech. You'll end up with the largest group agreeing to each other and upvoting each other thereby silencing (and driving away) other groups. The votes themselves take almost no energy and simple puns get showered in upvotes while long and well thought-out but slightly unusual posts die in the desert. If you go with the voting system alone with moderate moderation you'll probably always end up with mediocre content that is easy to consume by a majority of your users. Depending on your users you'll get funny cat gifs or ever repeating racist jokes. The subreddits seem to help a bit since they filter users by interest first and employ strict moderation throughout but after they reach a certain threshold they, too, seem to go downhill fast. I have no solution but the effortless vote system doesn't sound like such a good idea after all these years.

bduerst 8y ago

If you're really keen on free speech as a philosophy, read up on John Stuart Mill's contributions. His take is that free speech is paramount except when it causes harm, which is missed by many today.