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HackerNews could not exist in your proposed world. I doubt YC would hire a full-time staff of moderators to vet every single post. Since we remove things for b

HackerNews could not exist in your proposed world. I doubt YC would hire a full-time staff of moderators to vet every single post. Since we remove things for being off-topic or overly mean, the only possible conclusion is that HN would shut down because they do not want to bear liability for the posts they leave up. The Internet as we know it would not exist without S230. Please read this[0] for a primer. [0]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

zarkov99 6y ago
Different rules apply with scale. HN is fine doing whatever it does but global monopolies require special handling.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gizmo385 6y ago
  Where does your cutoff apply? At what point are there "too many users"? How would you prevent something like that from being a completely arbitrary platform killer?
  - zarkov99 6y ago
    The courts would decide just like they do when a company is thought to have become a monopoly. This is not a new problem entirely but in this hyper politicized moment in the country it somehow has turned, just like everything else, into a left vs right issue. Its pathetic how we lost the hability to look at the issues without partisan glasses.
the8472 6y ago
A platform does not mean there can be no moderation. Part of the platform can be offering moderation tools. One could also draw a distinction between burying content vs. completely deleting it. A lot of HN moderation already works by just dropping the content from the frontpage or making comments invisible rather than outright deleting it. I presume the FCC would still consider this
- sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
  I think the GP post was specifically saying that if you're a "platform" you cannot moderate content. You are required to distribute anything users write on your "platform" that is not illegal (in the US?).
  - the8472 6y ago
    The platform operator can't. That's how common carriers work (telephone, your ISP etc.). But things running on that platform could. Basically look at reddit and perhaps take it up a notch. If the platform operator does not want to be associated with some of the stuff happening on their site then perhaps they should deemphasize their branding. It wouldn't be "reddit/watchpeopledie" just "watchpeopledie". I not sure how this could work for a single-purpose community like HN. Maybe if YC ran a neutral HNaaS then the HN-prime could be operated and moderated by independent staff. An alternative approach would be exemptions for non-profit sites. I think it would be possible to operate within these broad rules if the details are crafted right, but even then it would require significant adjustments for many site operators.
    - JoshTriplett 6y ago
      > An alternative approach would be exemptions for non-profit sites. Another alternative would be "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine". Site operators can and should have the ability to ban anyone or remove any content, for any reason or no reason, and doing so does not mean they should be liable for everything they might have missed. (In practice, "liable for everything they might have missed" is equivalent to "unable to operate" for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators, and it'd have a chilling effect even there.) Destroying the concept of moderation does not make the world better. The liability shield is the whole reason Section 230 exists: to make it possible to have enjoyable communities online, without incurring so much liability that you have to shut them all down for fear of getting prosecuted. If you want unmoderated communities, they exist. Go use them. Stop trying to destroy the concept of moderated communities.(Removing the liability shield would be tantamount to destroying such communities.) Some people want the audience of moderated communities, but they don't want the standards of those communities. There's a reason unmoderated communities have fewer (and different) users.
dexen 6y ago
>HackerNews could not exist in your proposed world Provably, definitively wrong. 1. HN relies on the "platform" choice to avoid responsibility for 3rd party posts. HN also relies on operators like dang moderating at the server side. 2. The proposed model would prevent operators moderating at the server side, when the "platform" model was selected. 3. Historically, Usenet had workflow, content, and userbase similar to HN - multiuser, near-realtime threaded discussions with text and links, on technical & related subjects. 4. Usenet didn't rely on centralized moderation by the operators; instead the moderation was performed at the client side, by end users. This was entirely sufficient for the purpose. This was done partly in collaborative ways, with sharing of moderation tools & datafiles. 5. Certain groups were centrally moderated through middlemen; participation in those was optional, and content was explicitly submitted to moderation. Those were generally ran in parallel to similar unmoderated groups. HN, and other fora, would do just fine as "platforms whose operators abstain from interfering in the flow of content", as informed by the historical precedent. It irks me how quickly we forget the hard wrought lessons from the early internet.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  w.r.t. your #4: Usenet also had epic flamewars as users failed to self-moderate and groups which suffered particularly from this were very hostile to new users. w.r.t. your #5: how does 'participation in some groups is subject to moderation, but participation is optional' fit with the platform/publisher dichotomy?
  - dexen 6y ago
    >w.r.t. your #4: Usenet also had epic flamewars as users failed to self-moderate and groups which suffered particularly from this were very hostile to new users. No different from the present day centrally moderated platforms - whether Facebook, Twitter, or HN. There's significant amount of objectionable and even illegal content on Twitter. The central moderation is a figleaf over it. >w.r.t. your #5: how does 'participation in some groups is subject to moderation, but participation is optional' fit with the platform/publisher dichotomy? To re-emphasize: >>Certain groups were centrally moderated through middlemen; (participation in those was optional), and content was explicitly submitted to moderation. Easily the key distinction is that the moderators weren't part of the platform. It was not the platform doing the moderating. It was pre-arranged users that were designated by the community to have a say who selects the best posts to then forward. It wasn't "this post breaks our ever-shifting rules"; it was "this post is good enough for me to to forward it to the list". The proverbial firewall separating the platform from the users doing the selection is the key distinction. The closest modern analogy of how the moderated Usenet groups were is "a public-read, private-commit Git repo, with project heads accepting pull requests at their discretion".
hyper0perator 6y ago
Disagree. Platforms are immune to liability of their users. HN could become a platform and abide regulations like the phone company.
- eropple 6y ago
  And be ruined by bad actors destroying the signal-to-noise ratio because--hey, you have to let them stay, even if they're trashing every discussion with nonsense or spam or they're spewing racist sludge you have no interest in endorsing. Nah. This is just mendacity on behalf of the right wing of American culture that has changed their mind and decided that, yes, facts have to care about their feelings.
  - dexen 6y ago
    >And be ruined by shitty actors destroying the signal-to-noise ratio Moderation on the client side is a thing. It already is practiced on networks like Twitter and Mastodon. It was the historical model on Usenet too. At this point you're just posting excuses for prolonging the monopoly of centralized moderation. The bogeyman of "the right wing of American culture" doesn't help, given how international the discourse of the subject is.
    - eropple 6y ago
      Moderation on the client side doesn't work and never has. The Usenet killfile model was awful and was a big part of why huge swaths of it were an unnavigable mess for most users--because unless you wanted to expend the effort to build one you didn't have one and got the whole sewer pipe spraying straight into your face. And, oh boy, client-side moderation happens on Twitter, it works so well? Then why do female friends whose posts get some attention have a bunch of dudes in their mentions saying how they want to have sex with (consensually or not) and/or kill them no matter how many they block? Could it be because it's an abject failure of a model due to the low stakes of spinning up a new account--so low that Twitter stopped using egg avatars because they destroyed interaction rates with new users because most of them were troglodytes? I do wonder. I'm trying to assume good faith in your reply so let me point something out to you: the people who are wringing their hands about this used to bleat about shared block lists being used to get some semblance of value out of "client-side moderation" (which is not to say that it is successful at dealing with shitty actors, just that it's less unsuccessful, when you use them), just as they're bleating about this. Because the real beef here is not with Twitter Deciding, it's with Anyone Deciding that they are not entitled to the attention of anyone they demand it from. But they lost re: shared block lists, and this is a retrenchment to attempt to keep relevance when they can, and should, lose this one too and be shown the door. If they want "unmoderated", there are platforms like Parler and Gab where they can have that. Relatedly, those platforms are full of literal-not-figurative fascists. I wonder why.
AnHonestComment 6y ago
HN also wouldn’t be able to benefit from immunity when infringing my content while simultaneously shadowbanning me for “wrongthink”. HN would have to give users tools to moderate content themselves, instead of HN using moderation as a tool of political control. Good.

zarkov99 6y ago

Different rules apply with scale. HN is fine doing whatever it does but global monopolies require special handling.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gizmo385 6y ago
Where does your cutoff apply? At what point are there "too many users"? How would you prevent something like that from being a completely arbitrary platform killer?
- zarkov99 6y ago
  The courts would decide just like they do when a company is thought to have become a monopoly. This is not a new problem entirely but in this hyper politicized moment in the country it somehow has turned, just like everything else, into a left vs right issue. Its pathetic how we lost the hability to look at the issues without partisan glasses.

the8472 6y ago

A platform does not mean there can be no moderation. Part of the platform can be offering moderation tools. One could also draw a distinction between burying content vs. completely deleting it. A lot of HN moderation already works by just dropping the content from the frontpage or making comments invisible rather than outright deleting it. I presume the FCC would still consider this

sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
I think the GP post was specifically saying that if you're a "platform" you cannot moderate content. You are required to distribute anything users write on your "platform" that is not illegal (in the US?).
- the8472 6y ago
  The platform operator can't. That's how common carriers work (telephone, your ISP etc.). But things running on that platform could. Basically look at reddit and perhaps take it up a notch. If the platform operator does not want to be associated with some of the stuff happening on their site then perhaps they should deemphasize their branding. It wouldn't be "reddit/watchpeopledie" just "watchpeopledie". I not sure how this could work for a single-purpose community like HN. Maybe if YC ran a neutral HNaaS then the HN-prime could be operated and moderated by independent staff. An alternative approach would be exemptions for non-profit sites. I think it would be possible to operate within these broad rules if the details are crafted right, but even then it would require significant adjustments for many site operators.
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    > An alternative approach would be exemptions for non-profit sites. Another alternative would be "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine". Site operators can and should have the ability to ban anyone or remove any content, for any reason or no reason, and doing so does not mean they should be liable for everything they might have missed. (In practice, "liable for everything they might have missed" is equivalent to "unable to operate" for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators, and it'd have a chilling effect even there.) Destroying the concept of moderation does not make the world better. The liability shield is the whole reason Section 230 exists: to make it possible to have enjoyable communities online, without incurring so much liability that you have to shut them all down for fear of getting prosecuted. If you want unmoderated communities, they exist. Go use them. Stop trying to destroy the concept of moderated communities.(Removing the liability shield would be tantamount to destroying such communities.) Some people want the audience of moderated communities, but they don't want the standards of those communities. There's a reason unmoderated communities have fewer (and different) users.

dexen 6y ago

>HackerNews could not exist in your proposed world Provably, definitively wrong. 1. HN relies on the "platform" choice to avoid responsibility for 3rd party posts. HN also relies on operators like dang moderating at the server side. 2. The proposed model would prevent operators moderating at the server side, when the "platform" model was selected. 3. Historically, Usenet had workflow, content, and userbase similar to HN - multiuser, near-realtime threaded discussions with text and links, on technical & related subjects. 4. Usenet didn't rely on centralized moderation by the operators; instead the moderation was performed at the client side, by end users. This was entirely sufficient for the purpose. This was done partly in collaborative ways, with sharing of moderation tools & datafiles. 5. Certain groups were centrally moderated through middlemen; participation in those was optional, and content was explicitly submitted to moderation. Those were generally ran in parallel to similar unmoderated groups. HN, and other fora, would do just fine as "platforms whose operators abstain from interfering in the flow of content", as informed by the historical precedent. It irks me how quickly we forget the hard wrought lessons from the early internet.

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
w.r.t. your #4: Usenet also had epic flamewars as users failed to self-moderate and groups which suffered particularly from this were very hostile to new users. w.r.t. your #5: how does 'participation in some groups is subject to moderation, but participation is optional' fit with the platform/publisher dichotomy?
- dexen 6y ago
  >w.r.t. your #4: Usenet also had epic flamewars as users failed to self-moderate and groups which suffered particularly from this were very hostile to new users. No different from the present day centrally moderated platforms - whether Facebook, Twitter, or HN. There's significant amount of objectionable and even illegal content on Twitter. The central moderation is a figleaf over it. >w.r.t. your #5: how does 'participation in some groups is subject to moderation, but participation is optional' fit with the platform/publisher dichotomy? To re-emphasize: >>Certain groups were centrally moderated through middlemen; (participation in those was optional), and content was explicitly submitted to moderation. Easily the key distinction is that the moderators weren't part of the platform. It was not the platform doing the moderating. It was pre-arranged users that were designated by the community to have a say who selects the best posts to then forward. It wasn't "this post breaks our ever-shifting rules"; it was "this post is good enough for me to to forward it to the list". The proverbial firewall separating the platform from the users doing the selection is the key distinction. The closest modern analogy of how the moderated Usenet groups were is "a public-read, private-commit Git repo, with project heads accepting pull requests at their discretion".

hyper0perator 6y ago

Disagree. Platforms are immune to liability of their users. HN could become a platform and abide regulations like the phone company.

eropple 6y ago
And be ruined by bad actors destroying the signal-to-noise ratio because--hey, you have to let them stay, even if they're trashing every discussion with nonsense or spam or they're spewing racist sludge you have no interest in endorsing. Nah. This is just mendacity on behalf of the right wing of American culture that has changed their mind and decided that, yes, facts have to care about their feelings.
- dexen 6y ago
  >And be ruined by shitty actors destroying the signal-to-noise ratio Moderation on the client side is a thing. It already is practiced on networks like Twitter and Mastodon. It was the historical model on Usenet too. At this point you're just posting excuses for prolonging the monopoly of centralized moderation. The bogeyman of "the right wing of American culture" doesn't help, given how international the discourse of the subject is.
  - eropple 6y ago
    Moderation on the client side doesn't work and never has. The Usenet killfile model was awful and was a big part of why huge swaths of it were an unnavigable mess for most users--because unless you wanted to expend the effort to build one you didn't have one and got the whole sewer pipe spraying straight into your face. And, oh boy, client-side moderation happens on Twitter, it works so well? Then why do female friends whose posts get some attention have a bunch of dudes in their mentions saying how they want to have sex with (consensually or not) and/or kill them no matter how many they block? Could it be because it's an abject failure of a model due to the low stakes of spinning up a new account--so low that Twitter stopped using egg avatars because they destroyed interaction rates with new users because most of them were troglodytes? I do wonder. I'm trying to assume good faith in your reply so let me point something out to you: the people who are wringing their hands about this used to bleat about shared block lists being used to get some semblance of value out of "client-side moderation" (which is not to say that it is successful at dealing with shitty actors, just that it's less unsuccessful, when you use them), just as they're bleating about this. Because the real beef here is not with Twitter Deciding, it's with Anyone Deciding that they are not entitled to the attention of anyone they demand it from. But they lost re: shared block lists, and this is a retrenchment to attempt to keep relevance when they can, and should, lose this one too and be shown the door. If they want "unmoderated", there are platforms like Parler and Gab where they can have that. Relatedly, those platforms are full of literal-not-figurative fascists. I wonder why.

AnHonestComment 6y ago

HN also wouldn’t be able to benefit from immunity when infringing my content while simultaneously shadowbanning me for “wrongthink”. HN would have to give users tools to moderate content themselves, instead of HN using moderation as a tool of political control. Good.