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As someone who's moderated a community, this is exactly what things feel like. Especially given that our community has an explicit focus on freedom of expressio

As someone who's moderated a community, this is exactly what things feel like. Especially given that our community has an explicit focus on freedom of expression (and what a thorn in our side that's ended up being) We've adopted pretty vague rules as a result, with a lot of room for interpretation, and rather than changing the rules often we've just updated our interpretations and communicated them with the community. It's been a slow boil. But things are different now than they were years ago. Not just because the community has grown but (at least from my perspective) because the tone of the internet seems to have shifted slightly. We at least are fortunate to have the capability to build tools to identify behavior that might be an issue even without taking automated action. But "I'm not touching you" behavior is sometimes hard to catch when people avoid certain key words, at least until confronted. It's a pain, really.

noir_lord 6y ago
> because the tone of the internet seems to have shifted slightly. Over the time I've used it (94 to 2020) it's shifted radically, it used to be kooky, niche, fun or just weird (and it is still that on the edges) but by and large rarely mean/cruel, the main sites are just a torrent of bile spouted by morons venting their spleen at the universe. Comment sections on any news article, youtube videos - pretty much everywhere outside of heavily moderated forums and the like are vile. It's one of the reasons I visit a few heavily moderated subject specific sub-reddits, this place and IRC and ignore literally everything else (I have comment sections nuked in ublock origin). I respect anyone who voluntarily wades through that crap honestly. I do moderate https://old.reddit.com/r/realminimalism/ https://old.reddit.com/r/realminimalism/ but no-one has ever gotten the joke.
- jandrese 6y ago
  Even back in '94 the Usenet could get ugly. The Usenet is where Godwin observed his famous law in practice. As a community grows the probability that it includes disruptive assholes approaches 1. Unmoderated communities do not scale.
qdog 6y ago
Biggest difference I have seen is a change from random trolls (often who were easy to identify and proud of who what/they were) to larger, organized campaigns. Even if the campaign isn't running on your forum, people are reading Facebook or whatever and this causes many people to start spouting similar stuff they have seen. And even here, the comments often get close to looking like astro-turfing. I barely read the comments anymore, usually only a quick glance to see if there are more links relevant to the topic.
afiori 6y ago
From this point of view I would almost prefer sites to adopt just overall stricter rules, strictly moderating both tone and "off-topic" content tuned to each individual forum. I think that a lot of communities had a passion for cultivating a freedom of expression, but actually had a lot of unspoken/unrealized rules in mind. In my opinion a lot of communities would gain a lot by a flashing banner "We decide what content we want on our platform and we will take arbitrary action to protect our choices". In practice is what social media companies are doing now even if they cannot state it as such (in part for legal reasons and in part for marketing reasons)
- pjc50 6y ago
  Rather like the serious end of anarchism, recognising that the price of freedom is taking responsibility for yourself. And it breaks down with scaling in the same way.

noir_lord 6y ago

> because the tone of the internet seems to have shifted slightly. Over the time I've used it (94 to 2020) it's shifted radically, it used to be kooky, niche, fun or just weird (and it is still that on the edges) but by and large rarely mean/cruel, the main sites are just a torrent of bile spouted by morons venting their spleen at the universe. Comment sections on any news article, youtube videos - pretty much everywhere outside of heavily moderated forums and the like are vile. It's one of the reasons I visit a few heavily moderated subject specific sub-reddits, this place and IRC and ignore literally everything else (I have comment sections nuked in ublock origin). I respect anyone who voluntarily wades through that crap honestly. I do moderate https://old.reddit.com/r/realminimalism/ https://old.reddit.com/r/realminimalism/ but no-one has ever gotten the joke.

jandrese 6y ago
Even back in '94 the Usenet could get ugly. The Usenet is where Godwin observed his famous law in practice. As a community grows the probability that it includes disruptive assholes approaches 1. Unmoderated communities do not scale.

qdog 6y ago

Biggest difference I have seen is a change from random trolls (often who were easy to identify and proud of who what/they were) to larger, organized campaigns. Even if the campaign isn't running on your forum, people are reading Facebook or whatever and this causes many people to start spouting similar stuff they have seen. And even here, the comments often get close to looking like astro-turfing. I barely read the comments anymore, usually only a quick glance to see if there are more links relevant to the topic.

afiori 6y ago

From this point of view I would almost prefer sites to adopt just overall stricter rules, strictly moderating both tone and "off-topic" content tuned to each individual forum. I think that a lot of communities had a passion for cultivating a freedom of expression, but actually had a lot of unspoken/unrealized rules in mind. In my opinion a lot of communities would gain a lot by a flashing banner "We decide what content we want on our platform and we will take arbitrary action to protect our choices". In practice is what social media companies are doing now even if they cannot state it as such (in part for legal reasons and in part for marketing reasons)

pjc50 6y ago
Rather like the serious end of anarchism, recognising that the price of freedom is taking responsibility for yourself. And it breaks down with scaling in the same way.