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> Unless you propose to ruthlessly ban everyone who > forms communities, Reddit is merely a reflection > of ourselves. Humans are a messy species and

> Unless you propose to ruthlessly ban everyone who > forms communities, Reddit is merely a reflection > of ourselves. Humans are a messy species and always > have been. I think that's panglossian. There was no public place with the type of content on Reddit 30 years ago. It didn't exist outside of zines. Things change. This isn't the best of all possible worlds. This is the 1930s, compared to the 1920s. It's the 1970s, compared to the 1960s. A reversal in attitude is inevitable. And Reddit is not a good representation of humanity, even now. It skews to certain demographics (eg: advertisers, certain types of adolescents, interest groups, etc). Is "ruthless moderation" ever okay? Is it okay to "ruthlessly moderate" a website if people post kiddie porn? Or bomb-making instructions? Or leaked private photographs? I wouldn't get used to the way things are now, because the backlash to all the destructive garbage on the internet is likely to turn it all upside down.

intended 8y ago
I moderate, and we mods are not paragons of virtue. They’re unpaid volunteers who have to make complex censorship decisions, which have very complex knock on effects. Moderations is quickly becoming the drone wars of free speech. The free speech question of the 90s is dead, and the issue now is how much can we automod and how much can we socially engineer to manage the workload. And this is not healthy, users can get banned or removed for just going to the wrong forums. Review of bans is dependent on people having the time to care about you. My mod team doesn’t want this, but we don’t have a choice. As a result we are increasingly at odds with our community and the point of the core mission is increasingly alien to our daily tasks. The point is that what’s coming is worse. The new tools are more subtle, and it’s decisions often un-appealable. You can easily denounce kiddie porn. Can you even know that there’s a watch list for keywords which gets updated regularly to identify new and emerging malignant behavior? Ideas which just don’t get play in forums? I’m happy with my team, but if most of us were replaced by mods who had an agenda then it’s pretty much game over. Auto mod is a tool. The. Ore powerful it gets the greater the scope for it to be used in unhealthy ways. And what’s the true effective result of auto mod ? A better idiot filter, and a reduction in work load. Moderation just doesn’t scale enough to solve the problems of human nature. Automatic tools are too dumb to understand intent, and positively terrifying if they come close to figure it out. (All moderation tools are one step away from being weaponized to seek out dissent) The future is bleaker. Once the obvious kiddie porn is sent back underground, those tools made to keep the peace are going to be used to “ensure future peace”.
- charlesism 8y ago
  You probably care about moderation more than Reddit C-level execs do. Do you think you would personally feel more, or less, comfortable than Steve Huffman about hosting content from a hate group on your servers? I don't mean he intentionally supports it, but he tolerates it. > unpaid volunteers That's probably related to why your task is impossible. Reddit's valuation is $2 billion.
  - intended 8y ago
    It’s the same at Facebook and other places, and it’s just going to get worse. This is the kind of messy iob people are going to hate. And for the record, I predict that the job is going to split. Community management and community policing. Part of the job now is specializing and identifying attackers, which was something never imagined before.

intended 8y ago

I moderate, and we mods are not paragons of virtue. They’re unpaid volunteers who have to make complex censorship decisions, which have very complex knock on effects. Moderations is quickly becoming the drone wars of free speech. The free speech question of the 90s is dead, and the issue now is how much can we automod and how much can we socially engineer to manage the workload. And this is not healthy, users can get banned or removed for just going to the wrong forums. Review of bans is dependent on people having the time to care about you. My mod team doesn’t want this, but we don’t have a choice. As a result we are increasingly at odds with our community and the point of the core mission is increasingly alien to our daily tasks. The point is that what’s coming is worse. The new tools are more subtle, and it’s decisions often un-appealable. You can easily denounce kiddie porn. Can you even know that there’s a watch list for keywords which gets updated regularly to identify new and emerging malignant behavior? Ideas which just don’t get play in forums? I’m happy with my team, but if most of us were replaced by mods who had an agenda then it’s pretty much game over. Auto mod is a tool. The. Ore powerful it gets the greater the scope for it to be used in unhealthy ways. And what’s the true effective result of auto mod ? A better idiot filter, and a reduction in work load. Moderation just doesn’t scale enough to solve the problems of human nature. Automatic tools are too dumb to understand intent, and positively terrifying if they come close to figure it out. (All moderation tools are one step away from being weaponized to seek out dissent) The future is bleaker. Once the obvious kiddie porn is sent back underground, those tools made to keep the peace are going to be used to “ensure future peace”.

charlesism 8y ago
You probably care about moderation more than Reddit C-level execs do. Do you think you would personally feel more, or less, comfortable than Steve Huffman about hosting content from a hate group on your servers? I don't mean he intentionally supports it, but he tolerates it. > unpaid volunteers That's probably related to why your task is impossible. Reddit's valuation is $2 billion.
- intended 8y ago
  It’s the same at Facebook and other places, and it’s just going to get worse. This is the kind of messy iob people are going to hate. And for the record, I predict that the job is going to split. Community management and community policing. Part of the job now is specializing and identifying attackers, which was something never imagined before.