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Facebook has laughably weak moderation. Twitter, despite having stricter moderation (which seldom seems to result in consequences), seems to have an even bigge

Facebook has laughably weak moderation. Twitter, despite having stricter moderation (which seldom seems to result in consequences), seems to have an even bigger problem. An election in a certain country (I'm wary of even mentioning the name of that country, lest I be bombarded) exposed a huge army of dubious accounts shutting down dissent. In another country, a network of Twitter bots attempted to start a race war. Then there are the 100k+ follower accounts that seem to get away with blatant incitement and rule-breaking, and Twitter is too afraid of a backlash to shut them down, even when they admit to having multiple admins (something that should disqualify them from the blue checkmark). WhatsApp seems to be an even more pernicious vector of viral garbage...why it doesn't disable forwarding entirely (or forwarding to groups) remains a mystery. It isn't an SV phenomenon: in another recent election, WeChat was used to spread fake electoral propaganda. It may be time, for the sake of democracy, and stability in the world to "de-platform" the platforms entirely. The other option would be for remorseful founders to allow them to be swamped with spam (it might provide plausible deniability to shareholders), and be killed off that way.

udfalkso 7y ago
Moderation is an extremely hard problem to deal with well. Have you ever attempted to manage a community?
- zxcb1 7y ago
  There are over two billion people on there. How about paying their users for finding and reporting content? A reputation system to find and pay trustworthy people to clean up. Thereby delegating the task back to the scale where it belongs, some money and incentives too.
  - udfalkso 7y ago
    How do you decide who to trust?
  - panarky 7y ago
    I've been thinking about a online bounty hunter service to do exactly this. Next step - how to prevent Sybil accounts created by the bounty hunters from generating new mal-content on an industrial scale for bounty hunters to identify for reward.
- 50656E6973 7y ago
  That's true, but FB is not a "community" -- its a global mass mob consiting of billions of people. Even thinking about trying to moderate something at that scale is ridiculously impossible and disengenuous.
  - debaserab2 7y ago
    I think to this person's point, though – managing something like an online community is a microcosm of what social media platforms deal with, and if you've done it before you know how hard it can be to set the boundaries of acceptable behavior without finding yourself in spot that is viewed as hypocritical. I can't think of anything harder than that to scale.
- panarky 7y ago
  "Move fast and break things" is all well and good until you build something so big, so pervasive, and so dangerous that you can't fix it without turning it off completely.
spangry 7y ago
Why don’t we just shut off the internet entirely? That’ll stop the spread of “viral garbage” for sure.
- throwaway94843 7y ago
  The internet is decentralized. Social networks are centralized attention monopolising machines where sophisticated algorithms work to manipulate users. Social networks enable virality on a scale not seen before, which provides a massive incentive to bad actors. Virality via email didn’t have the same impact, simply because there was so much spam that people don’t trust the medium. USENET was similar, with the trolls drowned out by pure spam, and no one trusting anyone. Social media presents unique challenges that do not exist on other parts of the internet.
  - ummonk 7y ago
    >Social networks are centralized attention monopolising machines where sophisticated algorithms work to manipulate users. That's not true for WhatsApp though is it? It's just messaging + forwarding, not unlike email.
    - throwaway94843 7y ago
      You are correct. There is no reason for WhatsApp to shut down forwarding immediately ...It’s not like any credible competitor is out there (and if any emerged, chances are it would be strangled in its cradle by concerned governments).

udfalkso 7y ago

Moderation is an extremely hard problem to deal with well. Have you ever attempted to manage a community?

zxcb1 7y ago
There are over two billion people on there. How about paying their users for finding and reporting content? A reputation system to find and pay trustworthy people to clean up. Thereby delegating the task back to the scale where it belongs, some money and incentives too.
- udfalkso 7y ago
  How do you decide who to trust?
- panarky 7y ago
  I've been thinking about a online bounty hunter service to do exactly this. Next step - how to prevent Sybil accounts created by the bounty hunters from generating new mal-content on an industrial scale for bounty hunters to identify for reward.
50656E6973 7y ago
That's true, but FB is not a "community" -- its a global mass mob consiting of billions of people. Even thinking about trying to moderate something at that scale is ridiculously impossible and disengenuous.
- debaserab2 7y ago
  I think to this person's point, though – managing something like an online community is a microcosm of what social media platforms deal with, and if you've done it before you know how hard it can be to set the boundaries of acceptable behavior without finding yourself in spot that is viewed as hypocritical. I can't think of anything harder than that to scale.
panarky 7y ago
"Move fast and break things" is all well and good until you build something so big, so pervasive, and so dangerous that you can't fix it without turning it off completely.

spangry 7y ago

Why don’t we just shut off the internet entirely? That’ll stop the spread of “viral garbage” for sure.

throwaway94843 7y ago
The internet is decentralized. Social networks are centralized attention monopolising machines where sophisticated algorithms work to manipulate users. Social networks enable virality on a scale not seen before, which provides a massive incentive to bad actors. Virality via email didn’t have the same impact, simply because there was so much spam that people don’t trust the medium. USENET was similar, with the trolls drowned out by pure spam, and no one trusting anyone. Social media presents unique challenges that do not exist on other parts of the internet.
- ummonk 7y ago
  >Social networks are centralized attention monopolising machines where sophisticated algorithms work to manipulate users. That's not true for WhatsApp though is it? It's just messaging + forwarding, not unlike email.
  - throwaway94843 7y ago
    You are correct. There is no reason for WhatsApp to shut down forwarding immediately ...It’s not like any credible competitor is out there (and if any emerged, chances are it would be strangled in its cradle by concerned governments).