6 ms·

The only redditlike sites that outcompete Reddit are ones with more moderation (e.g., HN), not less.

by raldi 6y ago

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Moderation should be similar to a database view. I would love a browser extension and backend store like Lemmy that posts to both the site I’m on but also Lemmy (each site would be a distinct “namespace”). What is a forum but a collection of post identifiers with a corresponding tree of comments. If a mod removes, hides, or takes other mod action on a comment or post, the browser extension and federated storage system still allows me to see and interact with that content and it’s writer (“showdead” globally). You could subscribe to “mod actions” (which is just curation) by mod, which would govern your experience of the content. I appreciate the mod work here, for example, but I also want to be able to bypass that “filter opinion” so I can still interact with folks and content out of band if I so choose (one person’s “flame war” is another person’s vigorous debate).
- ralusek 6y ago
  Yes. Even just the existence of different subreddits with different moderation policies is already close to a perfect solution. I don't understand why people are so hellbent on getting subreddits that exceed their tolerances removed from the platform. There are orders of magnitude more subreddits that I ignore altogether than the ones that I choose to subscribe to.
  - antepodius 6y ago
    Because it isn't about protecting yourself from harm, it's about attacking people you hate.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Speaking only of the US legal framework, hate speech is still free speech. Ignore speech you prefer not to consume instead of supporting the curtailment of rights.
      - antepodius 6y ago
        No, I mean it's about removing people you hate's ability to speak to each other (and to you) in a completely legal manner, by getting reddit to destroy the place where they congregate and hounding them out of the digital cities. The answer, of course, is that these people should build their own cities. But first, of course, they'll just have to build their own websites, servers, datacentres, ISPs, and nations. (And militaries, to stop USGOV from killing them all, presuming they dare challenge the banks by building alternatives to traditional payment processors.)
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        > The answer, of course, is that these people should build their own cities. But first, of course, they'll just have to build their own websites, servers, datacentres, ISPs, and nations. Yeah! I’m proposing building systems on top of Reddit and Hacker News (just two examples, any forum really that serves its data as http) to backfill their content and discussion data (comments), and prevent global censorship by mod actions. If you can’t censor The Pirate Bay and SciHub, you’d expect such a system to be equally durable. It’s all JSON blobs, identifies, and endpoints. These sites are temporary (remember Digg?), so you want to build discussion systems that are durable, prevent censorship, and will outlive their underlying websites they sit on top of. These are not unreasonable amounts of data we’re dealing with, it’s mostly compressible text. I can store 100TB in Backblaze for $500/month, and front it from VMs around the world.
        antepodius 6y ago
        Good luck! We do need something more robust than individual company-owned websites. My optimistic side hopes that when we get good enough protocols for this sort of thing entrenched, things will stay good.
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        I’m hopeful. The Distributed Web movement appears to have legs and momentum. Time will tell if it delivers the aspirational value supporters believe in.
fastball 6y ago
I would say it's not "more moderation" but rather "better moderation". An unbelievable amount of human effort is spent moderating reddit. It is very, very far from unmoderated. The issue is that the moderation going on is not intended to help along things like constructive conversation. Moderation on Reddit by and large exists to make subreddits as insular and myopic as possible.
ralusek 6y ago
I don't think HN outcompetes Reddit... Also, Reddit has more moderation than Reddit. Subreddits exist for a reason.
asjw 6y ago
Moderation hides content That's the biggest limit of moderated forums, they only reflect the opinion of the most active groups who can steer the discussion helped by moderators who benefit from rewarding the largest groups instead of the best comments If moderation was visible and moderators were forced to leave a note about why the moderation took place it would be a real discussion platform HN is not Slashdot is a lot better than many others in this regards, but it's not popular anymore and you can't make money on it, while a lot of people leave by posting shit on Reddit Worse is better always wins
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  That's just the nature of discussion basically anywhere. Every person and group have lines that you're not allowed to cross, and when people cross them you just get unproductive blow-ups, and someone or some sub-group will leave. If you tried to herd state socialists/tankies and anarcho-capitalists/voluntarists into the same discussion space, they're so violently opposed they'd just be constantly screaming epithets at each other. That's not a useful thing. Not to mention even when you have ideologically-aligned folks, some people are just anti-social dickwads who will constantly pick fights or argue in bad faith. I don't understand some people's seeming obsession with defending this kind of person, Some people just suck and everyone else is better off if they're not around. A private space is under no obligation to tolerate a poster who adamantly refuses to get along.
  - chinesempire 6y ago
    That's the nature of discussion when there is someone who controls the discussion. If I'm having a discussion with people in real life I decide what I accept or not, there's no third party that decides for me what is right. Decentralisation is exactly about that: it empowers you and not someone else to decide what you like to read or not.
    - TulliusCicero 6y ago
      > If I'm having a discussion with people in real life I decide what I accept or not, there's no third party that decides for me what is right. Yes, and that works fine because there's no platform there, just a 1 on 1 or small group conversation. You can still easily replicate this, unmoderated, with email or various messaging apps. Once you can talk to potentially hundreds or thousands of people at once, once there's a platform, that model breaks down. Bad actors who would be uninterested in trolling single individuals are very interested in trolling hundreds at a time. And nobody wants to "walk away" from an otherwise good community because of handful of very loud people are spouting hate there. Any platform that's both popular and unmoderated will eventually be dominated by extreme content, and will push out normal people, who will go somewhere that's popular and moderated.

The only redditlike sites that outcompete Reddit are ones with more moderation (e.g., HN), not less.

by raldi 6y ago

The only redditlike sites that outcompete Reddit are ones with more moderation (e.g., HN), not less.

Moderation should be similar to a database view. I would love a browser extension and backend store like Lemmy that posts to both the site I’m on but also Lemmy (each site would be a distinct “namespace”). What is a forum but a collection of post identifiers with a corresponding tree of comments. If a mod removes, hides, or takes other mod action on a comment or post, the browser extension and federated storage system still allows me to see and interact with that content and it’s writer (“showdead” globally). You could subscribe to “mod actions” (which is just curation) by mod, which would govern your experience of the content. I appreciate the mod work here, for example, but I also want to be able to bypass that “filter opinion” so I can still interact with folks and content out of band if I so choose (one person’s “flame war” is another person’s vigorous debate).

ralusek 6y ago
Yes. Even just the existence of different subreddits with different moderation policies is already close to a perfect solution. I don't understand why people are so hellbent on getting subreddits that exceed their tolerances removed from the platform. There are orders of magnitude more subreddits that I ignore altogether than the ones that I choose to subscribe to.
- antepodius 6y ago
  Because it isn't about protecting yourself from harm, it's about attacking people you hate.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Speaking only of the US legal framework, hate speech is still free speech. Ignore speech you prefer not to consume instead of supporting the curtailment of rights.
    - antepodius 6y ago
      No, I mean it's about removing people you hate's ability to speak to each other (and to you) in a completely legal manner, by getting reddit to destroy the place where they congregate and hounding them out of the digital cities. The answer, of course, is that these people should build their own cities. But first, of course, they'll just have to build their own websites, servers, datacentres, ISPs, and nations. (And militaries, to stop USGOV from killing them all, presuming they dare challenge the banks by building alternatives to traditional payment processors.)
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        > The answer, of course, is that these people should build their own cities. But first, of course, they'll just have to build their own websites, servers, datacentres, ISPs, and nations. Yeah! I’m proposing building systems on top of Reddit and Hacker News (just two examples, any forum really that serves its data as http) to backfill their content and discussion data (comments), and prevent global censorship by mod actions. If you can’t censor The Pirate Bay and SciHub, you’d expect such a system to be equally durable. It’s all JSON blobs, identifies, and endpoints. These sites are temporary (remember Digg?), so you want to build discussion systems that are durable, prevent censorship, and will outlive their underlying websites they sit on top of. These are not unreasonable amounts of data we’re dealing with, it’s mostly compressible text. I can store 100TB in Backblaze for $500/month, and front it from VMs around the world.
        antepodius 6y ago
        Good luck! We do need something more robust than individual company-owned websites. My optimistic side hopes that when we get good enough protocols for this sort of thing entrenched, things will stay good.
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        I’m hopeful. The Distributed Web movement appears to have legs and momentum. Time will tell if it delivers the aspirational value supporters believe in.

fastball 6y ago

I would say it's not "more moderation" but rather "better moderation". An unbelievable amount of human effort is spent moderating reddit. It is very, very far from unmoderated. The issue is that the moderation going on is not intended to help along things like constructive conversation. Moderation on Reddit by and large exists to make subreddits as insular and myopic as possible.

ralusek 6y ago

I don't think HN outcompetes Reddit... Also, Reddit has more moderation than Reddit. Subreddits exist for a reason.

asjw 6y ago

Moderation hides content That's the biggest limit of moderated forums, they only reflect the opinion of the most active groups who can steer the discussion helped by moderators who benefit from rewarding the largest groups instead of the best comments If moderation was visible and moderators were forced to leave a note about why the moderation took place it would be a real discussion platform HN is not Slashdot is a lot better than many others in this regards, but it's not popular anymore and you can't make money on it, while a lot of people leave by posting shit on Reddit Worse is better always wins

TulliusCicero 6y ago
That's just the nature of discussion basically anywhere. Every person and group have lines that you're not allowed to cross, and when people cross them you just get unproductive blow-ups, and someone or some sub-group will leave. If you tried to herd state socialists/tankies and anarcho-capitalists/voluntarists into the same discussion space, they're so violently opposed they'd just be constantly screaming epithets at each other. That's not a useful thing. Not to mention even when you have ideologically-aligned folks, some people are just anti-social dickwads who will constantly pick fights or argue in bad faith. I don't understand some people's seeming obsession with defending this kind of person, Some people just suck and everyone else is better off if they're not around. A private space is under no obligation to tolerate a poster who adamantly refuses to get along.
- chinesempire 6y ago
  That's the nature of discussion when there is someone who controls the discussion. If I'm having a discussion with people in real life I decide what I accept or not, there's no third party that decides for me what is right. Decentralisation is exactly about that: it empowers you and not someone else to decide what you like to read or not.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    > If I'm having a discussion with people in real life I decide what I accept or not, there's no third party that decides for me what is right. Yes, and that works fine because there's no platform there, just a 1 on 1 or small group conversation. You can still easily replicate this, unmoderated, with email or various messaging apps. Once you can talk to potentially hundreds or thousands of people at once, once there's a platform, that model breaks down. Bad actors who would be uninterested in trolling single individuals are very interested in trolling hundreds at a time. And nobody wants to "walk away" from an otherwise good community because of handful of very loud people are spouting hate there. Any platform that's both popular and unmoderated will eventually be dominated by extreme content, and will push out normal people, who will go somewhere that's popular and moderated.