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Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet (2018)

53 points by anarbadalov 8y ago

anarbadalov 8y ago
A year late to this, but it's a fantastic and still relevant topic (content moderation)
malvosenior 8y ago
"According to the ranking service Alexa, the top three sites in the United States, as of this writing, are Google, YouTube, and Facebook. (Porn, somewhat hearteningly, doesn’t crack the top ten.) The rankings don’t reflect everything—the dark Web, the nouveau-riche recluses harvesting bitcoin—but, for the most part, people online go where you’d expect them to go." The author is technically clueless. Nice swipe at Bitcoin, too bad it doesn't even make sense to compare Bitcoin "harvesting" with people going to a web site. These are all the same lame arguments that have been made over and over. No, r/The_Donald doesn't represent the end of the world. Yes, Reddit had some subs that many people would find objectionable. The totally valid and correct argument is: Don't go visit a site when the content offends you.
whatislovecraft 8y ago
> According to the ranking service Alexa, the top three sites in the United States, as of this writing, are Google, YouTube, and Facebook. (Porn, somewhat hearteningly, doesn’t crack the top ten.) That's just....adorable? The author is unaware that those three sites pretty much constitute the "new porn" anyway. How much of reddit is NSFW? I don't think these stats are "heartening" one bit if you subscribe to the author's porn-bad morals, but whatever. I'll keep reading.
- dingo_bat 8y ago
  Even those who agree that porn is nothing bad would agree that it's nothing virtuous either.
- gowld 8y ago
  It's strange the among the author's top concerns is consolidation in the porn web space (ignoring that the vast range of porn sites are mostly owned by the same company), and whether people have more pageviews on porn vs YouTube.
superkuh 8y ago
There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perverse incentives to censor anything that might impact their advertising or other income. There is no single solution for content moderation that is good. That is why giant communities controlled by a single entity with a single standard are inherently toxic themselves. The solutions are innumberable and should be. That's how the gordian knot of moderation is cut. Not one set of standards but a diversity of them. Federation and peer to peer seem to be the only way forwards. Unfortunately most users of the big sites are there for monetary reasons and these reason don't translate to smaller sites. So they'll stick around until the censorship gets so tight the money dries up (ie, what google/youtube is doing now).
- stone-monkey 8y ago
  >There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perverse incentives to censor anything that might impact their advertising or other income. There are definitely other problems besides a centralized internet. Consider attacks by corporate and state level enemies in the form of astroturfing and fake news. Those issues existed outside of a centralized internet, and arguably can be addressed better by centralized access to information. Look at the great firewall of China: do you think the Russian disinformation campaign could succeed there to the extent it did in the west? Free access to the internet lowers the barrier for bad actors. Having said that, I obviously prefer the western model of internet access, but I'd like to state that it doesn't come without its own set of problems.
  - Shekelberg 8y ago
    > Russian disinformation campaign If you're concerned about the pocket change Russia spent on US election ads, you must be apoplectic over the massive amount of US campaign donations and media ownership by Israeli citizens. I assume you are not just using Russia to delegitimize your political opposition, and are genuinely concerned about foreign interference in US politics, so what do you propose we do about the Jewish problem?
umvi 8y ago
Social media is toxic because of its ability to distill extremism. Say you have a person with an extremist view on dating and women - a 1 in 1,000,000 type view. Well, social media gives them a place where hundreds of like-minded individuals can gather in one spot and reinforce their extremism. Then, people with non-extremist views take notice of the community and stop by with popcorn because it's outrageous, disgusting, but above all, entertaining. I think sometimes we overestimate how toxic a community is by doing bad math: "Oh, /r/incels has a subscription count of X and growing?? It must be converting more users to its extremism!! Quick, ban it!" What percentage of subs were just popcorn bystanders and what percentage of content creators were trolls? I would guess much higher than one would expect.
- gowld 8y ago
  I don't see how popularity is relevant to a decision to content-based ban.
  - sosodev 8y ago
    It shouldn't be but it's a factor of how many people are going to notice it and stir up bad publicity.
  - astine 8y ago
    It's relevant to a discussion of free-speech absolutism in a public forum. Free speech as a principle is valuable and if the cost of millions of people being able to express their views is that one random Nazi gets to have his say, then I think most people would think that it's worth it. If that one Nazi were to turn into a thousand Nazis, then I suspect people would be more circumspect about the whole thing. So the question about how prevalent hate-speech is on Reddit has a lot to say about to what extent Reddit will be willing to censor its users.
    - 0x445442 8y ago
      > If that one Nazi were to turn into a thousand Nazis, then I suspect people would be more circumspect about the whole thing. Why? I mean what do you care how many people say the earth is flat? As for Nazis, Antifia and whatever other group you care to use an example, it seems like we already have a descent set of laws in place to protect people from direct harm from those groups. I'm sorry but I think what's going on at these social media companies and with the legacy media is blatant political censorship.
nkkollaw 8y ago
Another leftist publication that advocates censoring unwanted speech. It's only a matter of time before "hate speech" will get you automatically deplatformed. It's going to be fun seeing how what's considered "hate speech" evolves.
- rexpop 8y ago
  When forbidden speech is defined by shadow corporate canals, it's often a weapon of oppression. When forbidden speech is defined collectively, by... wait, there's no leftist censorship movement, because there are no leftists in government.
  - nkkollaw 8y ago
    Well, there is. Silicon Valley companies are or act as far-left. Facebook and Twitter in particular are known to censor conservatives. I actually don't know if they do it because these companies are in traditionally left-wing California, or because of fear of activists.
    - JetSpiegel 8y ago
      > Well, there is. Silicon Valley companies are or act as far-left. They are for-profit entities that leach on the commons (user-generated content) to extract rents. That is the opposite of far left. If you mean Stalinist dictatorships, I can't disagree.
    - rexpop 8y ago
      Facebook and Twitter are known to censor leftists. They're carefully expressing Neoliberalism and, as the sibling comment suggests, ultimately nihilistic, profit-driven ventures. Anyone on the actual left, e.g. labor organizers, is highly critical of a tech industry we see as paying Liberal lip service while implementing as much Authoritarianism an they can get away with. See: 1. gig work wage theft, 2. Tinder & gender, 3. Facebook and privacy, 4. Salesforce and ICE, 5. Palantir and pre-crime
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tha_nose 8y ago
"Detoxify"? Reddit and the internet was fine until the establishment decided to take control of it and censor it. If people didn't like reddit's or the internet's "toxicity", they wouldn't use it. Nobody is forcing anyone to use reddit. If the puritans at the new yorker or the rest of the media don't like reddit, they simply don't have to use it. It would be like me complaining about the toxicity of the new yorker and demanding the new yorker be "detoxified". Or, I could simply not consume the new yorker's content. The new yorker along with the rest of the media uses the same excuse that china, russia and others use to censor. I guess "detoxify" sounds better than "clean up". https://news.sky.com/story/china-cracks-down-in-clean-up-of-internet-services-including-vpns-10740188 https://news.sky.com/story/china-cracks-down-in-clean-up-of-... All this "detoxify" or "clean up" internet nonsense is just cover to censor and control the masses.
- davidw 8y ago
  > Reddit and the internet was fine until You need to spend some more time with the Usenet archives.
  - tha_nose 8y ago
    What about it? What you find "toxic", others might not find "toxic". That's my point. And if there is "toxicity" in usenet, don't use it. Or use the newsgroups that you find less "toxic". But you are missing my point. My point isn't about "toxicity", it's about censorship. "Toxicity" is just an excuse to censor and control. Usenet had been around for decades and has always been "toxic". So what? Did the world end?
    - davidw 8y ago
      Because normal people don't want to frequent toxic environments. It's unpleasant.
      - tha_nose 8y ago
        Is that why reddit is so popular? It was "toxic" and yet it grew and normal people used it in droves. Your argument contradicts itself. Most people don't mind reddit or usenet or the "toxicity". It's a handful of busybodies with power trying justify censorship. No different than the church ladies whining about "toxic" rap or "toxic" tv or "toxic" whatever when they themselves are toxic too. And who defines normal? The saudis? The chinese? The catholic church? The US government? The media? Or do you get to decide? If you find it unpleasant, then don't use it. If you don't like baseball, then don't watch it. Go watch something else. Everytime we as a society get beyond the puritanical blasphemy craze, it rears its ugly head again.
itg 8y ago
In my experience, especially on Reddit, toxic is defined as anything admins/moderators don’t agree with. Meanwhile other toxic behavior such as doxxing/harassment/raids are ignored, and done by the meta-subreddits such as subredditdrama and topmindsofreddit.
0815test 8y ago
(2018)
sleepysysadmin 8y ago
Define what's even toxic? If you look into what is being removed from youtube, twitter, patreon, etc. It's not people calling for genocide that are being removed. Nobody would argue over those. The 'toxicity' being removed seems to be political views. Patreon is a perfect example of the system working correctly however. They started banning people over politics. The right-wing left patreon and went to subscriber-star. Patreon is now in money problems. “Patreon needs to build new businesses and new services and new revenue lines in order to build a sustainable business,” said Patreon CEO Jack Conte.
featherrust 8y ago
IMO there's very little on the internet that's significantly more toxic than Hollywood movies and pop music. Porn, I guess. If you do find it: congrats, you must be pretty inventive. On the extremist content: those people are not well versed. If you reaaaally want to you can let it brainwash you, but at that point a book could do the job as well. And: internet extremists don't have significant attention spans and can barely act in the world. If they learned how to read, well... they'd soon know better. Are "book extremists" still a thing?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- featherrust 8y ago
  Too cynic? IMO the topic demands a huge grain of salt, but perhaps I was otherwise unproductive.
ralusek 8y ago
So long as Reddit has very specific rules regarding what is forbidden, i.e. posting personally identifiable information, then I think the subreddit system is already as close to a perfect solution as I'd want. Subreddits are opt-in and opt-out, and are moderated with VASTLY different tolerances and tastes. I tend to prefer highly controversial conversations, at the expense of pleasantness, and there are subreddits that cater to this just fine. There are others whose sensibilities do not tolerate that, and there subreddits for that too. What I cannot stand is people demanding that subreddits be removed. I filtered out posts from t/The_Donald immediately, and yet I still see people that cannot believe that subreddit still exists. The_Donald is just a highly moderated right wing echo chamber, not unlike r/LateStageCapitalism or equivalent left wing subs. I hate, and am banned, from most of them...but I'm happy they exist for those who subscribe.
- obpacheco 8y ago
  just wondering what subreddits do you subscribe to? I enjoy talking about politics but r/politics is insufferable, I've found r/news to have much better discussions, but it all depends on the post and which type of people a specific headline will attract.
aksss 8y ago
>>an attempt to “self-investigate” claims that the restaurant’s basement was a dungeon full of kidnapped children. Comet Ping Pong does not have a basement. Ah, but did you look for the secret passage under the prep station? The recent JRE episode with AJ was talking about how we have this mix of people on the Internet having fun with ideas, sometimes just to get a laugh, sometimes because they are just wondering out loud, and then this subpop of genuinely mentally disturbed people who take it all very literally and too seriously. That there's no filter between these groups is one of the dangers of the Internet, I guess.
- tha_nose 8y ago
  How is that any different than the new yorker or traditional media spreading lies and hate about jussie smollet, covington or any other incident and causing mentally unstable people to attack others? I find it strange how new yorker feels they should be allowed to be toxic but everyone else isn't. It's strange how they feel they aren't responsible for the mentally unstable they accidentally influence but everyone else is responsible. Using that logic, every movie director, author, journalist, musician, etc would be liable for the actions of the mentally unstable. That would be the end of all media, including the new yorker.

53 points by anarbadalov 8y ago

A year late to this, but it's a fantastic and still relevant topic (content moderation)

"According to the ranking service Alexa, the top three sites in the United States, as of this writing, are Google, YouTube, and Facebook. (Porn, somewhat hearteningly, doesn’t crack the top ten.) The rankings don’t reflect everything—the dark Web, the nouveau-riche recluses harvesting bitcoin—but, for the most part, people online go where you’d expect them to go." The author is technically clueless. Nice swipe at Bitcoin, too bad it doesn't even make sense to compare Bitcoin "harvesting" with people going to a web site. These are all the same lame arguments that have been made over and over. No, r/The_Donald doesn't represent the end of the world. Yes, Reddit had some subs that many people would find objectionable. The totally valid and correct argument is: Don't go visit a site when the content offends you.

whatislovecraft 8y ago

> According to the ranking service Alexa, the top three sites in the United States, as of this writing, are Google, YouTube, and Facebook. (Porn, somewhat hearteningly, doesn’t crack the top ten.) That's just....adorable? The author is unaware that those three sites pretty much constitute the "new porn" anyway. How much of reddit is NSFW? I don't think these stats are "heartening" one bit if you subscribe to the author's porn-bad morals, but whatever. I'll keep reading.

dingo_bat 8y ago
Even those who agree that porn is nothing bad would agree that it's nothing virtuous either.
gowld 8y ago
It's strange the among the author's top concerns is consolidation in the porn web space (ignoring that the vast range of porn sites are mostly owned by the same company), and whether people have more pageviews on porn vs YouTube.

superkuh 8y ago

There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perverse incentives to censor anything that might impact their advertising or other income. There is no single solution for content moderation that is good. That is why giant communities controlled by a single entity with a single standard are inherently toxic themselves. The solutions are innumberable and should be. That's how the gordian knot of moderation is cut. Not one set of standards but a diversity of them. Federation and peer to peer seem to be the only way forwards. Unfortunately most users of the big sites are there for monetary reasons and these reason don't translate to smaller sites. So they'll stick around until the censorship gets so tight the money dries up (ie, what google/youtube is doing now).

stone-monkey 8y ago
>There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perverse incentives to censor anything that might impact their advertising or other income. There are definitely other problems besides a centralized internet. Consider attacks by corporate and state level enemies in the form of astroturfing and fake news. Those issues existed outside of a centralized internet, and arguably can be addressed better by centralized access to information. Look at the great firewall of China: do you think the Russian disinformation campaign could succeed there to the extent it did in the west? Free access to the internet lowers the barrier for bad actors. Having said that, I obviously prefer the western model of internet access, but I'd like to state that it doesn't come without its own set of problems.
- Shekelberg 8y ago
  > Russian disinformation campaign If you're concerned about the pocket change Russia spent on US election ads, you must be apoplectic over the massive amount of US campaign donations and media ownership by Israeli citizens. I assume you are not just using Russia to delegitimize your political opposition, and are genuinely concerned about foreign interference in US politics, so what do you propose we do about the Jewish problem?

umvi 8y ago

Social media is toxic because of its ability to distill extremism. Say you have a person with an extremist view on dating and women - a 1 in 1,000,000 type view. Well, social media gives them a place where hundreds of like-minded individuals can gather in one spot and reinforce their extremism. Then, people with non-extremist views take notice of the community and stop by with popcorn because it's outrageous, disgusting, but above all, entertaining. I think sometimes we overestimate how toxic a community is by doing bad math: "Oh, /r/incels has a subscription count of X and growing?? It must be converting more users to its extremism!! Quick, ban it!" What percentage of subs were just popcorn bystanders and what percentage of content creators were trolls? I would guess much higher than one would expect.

gowld 8y ago
I don't see how popularity is relevant to a decision to content-based ban.
- sosodev 8y ago
  It shouldn't be but it's a factor of how many people are going to notice it and stir up bad publicity.
- astine 8y ago
  It's relevant to a discussion of free-speech absolutism in a public forum. Free speech as a principle is valuable and if the cost of millions of people being able to express their views is that one random Nazi gets to have his say, then I think most people would think that it's worth it. If that one Nazi were to turn into a thousand Nazis, then I suspect people would be more circumspect about the whole thing. So the question about how prevalent hate-speech is on Reddit has a lot to say about to what extent Reddit will be willing to censor its users.
  - 0x445442 8y ago
    > If that one Nazi were to turn into a thousand Nazis, then I suspect people would be more circumspect about the whole thing. Why? I mean what do you care how many people say the earth is flat? As for Nazis, Antifia and whatever other group you care to use an example, it seems like we already have a descent set of laws in place to protect people from direct harm from those groups. I'm sorry but I think what's going on at these social media companies and with the legacy media is blatant political censorship.

nkkollaw 8y ago

Another leftist publication that advocates censoring unwanted speech. It's only a matter of time before "hate speech" will get you automatically deplatformed. It's going to be fun seeing how what's considered "hate speech" evolves.

rexpop 8y ago
When forbidden speech is defined by shadow corporate canals, it's often a weapon of oppression. When forbidden speech is defined collectively, by... wait, there's no leftist censorship movement, because there are no leftists in government.
- nkkollaw 8y ago
  Well, there is. Silicon Valley companies are or act as far-left. Facebook and Twitter in particular are known to censor conservatives. I actually don't know if they do it because these companies are in traditionally left-wing California, or because of fear of activists.
  - JetSpiegel 8y ago
    > Well, there is. Silicon Valley companies are or act as far-left. They are for-profit entities that leach on the commons (user-generated content) to extract rents. That is the opposite of far left. If you mean Stalinist dictatorships, I can't disagree.
  - rexpop 8y ago
    Facebook and Twitter are known to censor leftists. They're carefully expressing Neoliberalism and, as the sibling comment suggests, ultimately nihilistic, profit-driven ventures. Anyone on the actual left, e.g. labor organizers, is highly critical of a tech industry we see as paying Liberal lip service while implementing as much Authoritarianism an they can get away with. See: 1. gig work wage theft, 2. Tinder & gender, 3. Facebook and privacy, 4. Salesforce and ICE, 5. Palantir and pre-crime

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tha_nose 8y ago

"Detoxify"? Reddit and the internet was fine until the establishment decided to take control of it and censor it. If people didn't like reddit's or the internet's "toxicity", they wouldn't use it. Nobody is forcing anyone to use reddit. If the puritans at the new yorker or the rest of the media don't like reddit, they simply don't have to use it. It would be like me complaining about the toxicity of the new yorker and demanding the new yorker be "detoxified". Or, I could simply not consume the new yorker's content. The new yorker along with the rest of the media uses the same excuse that china, russia and others use to censor. I guess "detoxify" sounds better than "clean up". https://news.sky.com/story/china-cracks-down-in-clean-up-of-internet-services-including-vpns-10740188 https://news.sky.com/story/china-cracks-down-in-clean-up-of-... All this "detoxify" or "clean up" internet nonsense is just cover to censor and control the masses.

davidw 8y ago
> Reddit and the internet was fine until You need to spend some more time with the Usenet archives.
- tha_nose 8y ago
  What about it? What you find "toxic", others might not find "toxic". That's my point. And if there is "toxicity" in usenet, don't use it. Or use the newsgroups that you find less "toxic". But you are missing my point. My point isn't about "toxicity", it's about censorship. "Toxicity" is just an excuse to censor and control. Usenet had been around for decades and has always been "toxic". So what? Did the world end?
  - davidw 8y ago
    Because normal people don't want to frequent toxic environments. It's unpleasant.
    - tha_nose 8y ago
      Is that why reddit is so popular? It was "toxic" and yet it grew and normal people used it in droves. Your argument contradicts itself. Most people don't mind reddit or usenet or the "toxicity". It's a handful of busybodies with power trying justify censorship. No different than the church ladies whining about "toxic" rap or "toxic" tv or "toxic" whatever when they themselves are toxic too. And who defines normal? The saudis? The chinese? The catholic church? The US government? The media? Or do you get to decide? If you find it unpleasant, then don't use it. If you don't like baseball, then don't watch it. Go watch something else. Everytime we as a society get beyond the puritanical blasphemy craze, it rears its ugly head again.

itg 8y ago

In my experience, especially on Reddit, toxic is defined as anything admins/moderators don’t agree with. Meanwhile other toxic behavior such as doxxing/harassment/raids are ignored, and done by the meta-subreddits such as subredditdrama and topmindsofreddit.

0815test 8y ago

(2018)

sleepysysadmin 8y ago

Define what's even toxic? If you look into what is being removed from youtube, twitter, patreon, etc. It's not people calling for genocide that are being removed. Nobody would argue over those. The 'toxicity' being removed seems to be political views. Patreon is a perfect example of the system working correctly however. They started banning people over politics. The right-wing left patreon and went to subscriber-star. Patreon is now in money problems. “Patreon needs to build new businesses and new services and new revenue lines in order to build a sustainable business,” said Patreon CEO Jack Conte.

featherrust 8y ago

IMO there's very little on the internet that's significantly more toxic than Hollywood movies and pop music. Porn, I guess. If you do find it: congrats, you must be pretty inventive. On the extremist content: those people are not well versed. If you reaaaally want to you can let it brainwash you, but at that point a book could do the job as well. And: internet extremists don't have significant attention spans and can barely act in the world. If they learned how to read, well... they'd soon know better. Are "book extremists" still a thing?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
featherrust 8y ago
Too cynic? IMO the topic demands a huge grain of salt, but perhaps I was otherwise unproductive.

ralusek 8y ago

So long as Reddit has very specific rules regarding what is forbidden, i.e. posting personally identifiable information, then I think the subreddit system is already as close to a perfect solution as I'd want. Subreddits are opt-in and opt-out, and are moderated with VASTLY different tolerances and tastes. I tend to prefer highly controversial conversations, at the expense of pleasantness, and there are subreddits that cater to this just fine. There are others whose sensibilities do not tolerate that, and there subreddits for that too. What I cannot stand is people demanding that subreddits be removed. I filtered out posts from t/The_Donald immediately, and yet I still see people that cannot believe that subreddit still exists. The_Donald is just a highly moderated right wing echo chamber, not unlike r/LateStageCapitalism or equivalent left wing subs. I hate, and am banned, from most of them...but I'm happy they exist for those who subscribe.

obpacheco 8y ago
just wondering what subreddits do you subscribe to? I enjoy talking about politics but r/politics is insufferable, I've found r/news to have much better discussions, but it all depends on the post and which type of people a specific headline will attract.

aksss 8y ago

>>an attempt to “self-investigate” claims that the restaurant’s basement was a dungeon full of kidnapped children. Comet Ping Pong does not have a basement. Ah, but did you look for the secret passage under the prep station? The recent JRE episode with AJ was talking about how we have this mix of people on the Internet having fun with ideas, sometimes just to get a laugh, sometimes because they are just wondering out loud, and then this subpop of genuinely mentally disturbed people who take it all very literally and too seriously. That there's no filter between these groups is one of the dangers of the Internet, I guess.

tha_nose 8y ago
How is that any different than the new yorker or traditional media spreading lies and hate about jussie smollet, covington or any other incident and causing mentally unstable people to attack others? I find it strange how new yorker feels they should be allowed to be toxic but everyone else isn't. It's strange how they feel they aren't responsible for the mentally unstable they accidentally influence but everyone else is responsible. Using that logic, every movie director, author, journalist, musician, etc would be liable for the actions of the mentally unstable. That would be the end of all media, including the new yorker.