5 ms·

>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

by 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.
- stale2002 6y ago
  > Moderation on the client side doesn't work and never has. Are you claiming that the phone system does not work? Or that ISPs do not work? I think that they work pretty well, even though there really is not much top down moderation. > If they want "unmoderated" Why can't we consider the phone network, or ISPs, which are successful examples of the kind of unmoderated approach, that people are asking for?
  - eropple 6y ago
    ISPs aren't a remotely relevant comparison. Neither are point-to-point phone calls, though as an aside the phone system certainly doesn't work. I get elderly-preying spam calls at a rate of eight to twelve a day and the Caller ID gets spoofed so numbers I block are useless. And because I use the phone for my job, I can't go contacts-only.
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    Because phone companies and ISPs only facilitate private peer–to–peer connections between a small number of parties, whereas the platforms we’re discussing host often-public interactions involving millions of people. It’s a fundamentally different problem. If people use my phone company to have racist companies, I don’t have to know or care. Whereas if I had to deal with people saying racist shit every time I went on Twitter, I’d stop using it. Consider also that most people’s biggest complaint with the phone system is a consequence of them not moderating, i.e. spam calls.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Who said ISPs and the phones are "unmoderated"? Try running a server with significant traffic from your home. Or using blue boxes (? I don't know, whatever Woz used) to get free long-distance calls. They absolutely perform moderation, only at the network layer, so most people never see it.
    - stale2002 6y ago
      > Who said ISPs and the phones are "unmoderated"? ISPs have to follow common carrier laws. If social media platforms were subject to these same common carrier laws, then that is good enough for me. That is what I mean by unmoderated. I mean, that they are following things such as common carrier laws, which have very significant requirements.
- eternalban 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?" Re client side moderation, it's possible that users can be educated about effective approaches. Just like they started warming the non-geeks about email with hollywood films (You've Got Mail, 1998), and I'm sure there must have been similar sort of concerted media efforts for older technology. Automobiles, for example. I -bet- we can dig up content (old films) that basically were teaching the American public how to use cars using movies. Given the inherently democratic aspect of client-side filterings, and serious inherent political concerns with centralized moderation, it seems wrong to give up on the idea simply because the avant garde generation on internet (using mostly antique kludgy UI/UX, btw) had problems with it. We can fix client side moderation with education. It is a transitory issue, only. Centralized moderation is inherently problematic for public platforms. (I have no issues with private, members only, platforms opting for centralized moderation.)
  - eropple 6y ago
    "Just educate users" didn't work when there were a few hundred to a few thousand users. It's one of the reasons, though granted not the only one, why Usenet was a hole and people migrated to saner pastures when they were available. What makes you think it's any more feasible when it's "now you just need to go administer your ration of racism and transphobia and personal threats" on a millions-to-billions scale? If you're being legit with your post, you're falling for a tremendous okeydoke here on the part of people who wish to do civil society harm. Literally all this approach accomplishes, literally and exclusively and without exception all it does, is cede the public square to people who want to export misery or deal with the exporters of misery--a vanishingly small fraction of the decent people out there. We can and must be better and that means that no, we are under no obligation to waste time or resources on people who were never socially potty-trained.
sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
It's possible some people just disagree with you. Implying anyone who thinks you're wrong is "just posting excuses for prolonging the monopoly of centralized moderation" is neither civil nor persuasive. Anyway, your examples are unconvincing. Twitter is primarily moderated by server-side spam and abuse prevention tools. The other two are both far smaller, and don't exactly do a great job at content moderation.
eli 6y ago
So you agree then that HN on its current form could not exist and we require some new model of client side moderation that doesn’t currently exist? That’s seems bad.

by dexen 6y ago

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.

stale2002 6y ago
> Moderation on the client side doesn't work and never has. Are you claiming that the phone system does not work? Or that ISPs do not work? I think that they work pretty well, even though there really is not much top down moderation. > If they want "unmoderated" Why can't we consider the phone network, or ISPs, which are successful examples of the kind of unmoderated approach, that people are asking for?
- eropple 6y ago
  ISPs aren't a remotely relevant comparison. Neither are point-to-point phone calls, though as an aside the phone system certainly doesn't work. I get elderly-preying spam calls at a rate of eight to twelve a day and the Caller ID gets spoofed so numbers I block are useless. And because I use the phone for my job, I can't go contacts-only.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  Because phone companies and ISPs only facilitate private peer–to–peer connections between a small number of parties, whereas the platforms we’re discussing host often-public interactions involving millions of people. It’s a fundamentally different problem. If people use my phone company to have racist companies, I don’t have to know or care. Whereas if I had to deal with people saying racist shit every time I went on Twitter, I’d stop using it. Consider also that most people’s biggest complaint with the phone system is a consequence of them not moderating, i.e. spam calls.
- triceratops 6y ago
  Who said ISPs and the phones are "unmoderated"? Try running a server with significant traffic from your home. Or using blue boxes (? I don't know, whatever Woz used) to get free long-distance calls. They absolutely perform moderation, only at the network layer, so most people never see it.
  - stale2002 6y ago
    > Who said ISPs and the phones are "unmoderated"? ISPs have to follow common carrier laws. If social media platforms were subject to these same common carrier laws, then that is good enough for me. That is what I mean by unmoderated. I mean, that they are following things such as common carrier laws, which have very significant requirements.
eternalban 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?" Re client side moderation, it's possible that users can be educated about effective approaches. Just like they started warming the non-geeks about email with hollywood films (You've Got Mail, 1998), and I'm sure there must have been similar sort of concerted media efforts for older technology. Automobiles, for example. I -bet- we can dig up content (old films) that basically were teaching the American public how to use cars using movies. Given the inherently democratic aspect of client-side filterings, and serious inherent political concerns with centralized moderation, it seems wrong to give up on the idea simply because the avant garde generation on internet (using mostly antique kludgy UI/UX, btw) had problems with it. We can fix client side moderation with education. It is a transitory issue, only. Centralized moderation is inherently problematic for public platforms. (I have no issues with private, members only, platforms opting for centralized moderation.)
- eropple 6y ago
  "Just educate users" didn't work when there were a few hundred to a few thousand users. It's one of the reasons, though granted not the only one, why Usenet was a hole and people migrated to saner pastures when they were available. What makes you think it's any more feasible when it's "now you just need to go administer your ration of racism and transphobia and personal threats" on a millions-to-billions scale? If you're being legit with your post, you're falling for a tremendous okeydoke here on the part of people who wish to do civil society harm. Literally all this approach accomplishes, literally and exclusively and without exception all it does, is cede the public square to people who want to export misery or deal with the exporters of misery--a vanishingly small fraction of the decent people out there. We can and must be better and that means that no, we are under no obligation to waste time or resources on people who were never socially potty-trained.

sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago

It's possible some people just disagree with you. Implying anyone who thinks you're wrong is "just posting excuses for prolonging the monopoly of centralized moderation" is neither civil nor persuasive. Anyway, your examples are unconvincing. Twitter is primarily moderated by server-side spam and abuse prevention tools. The other two are both far smaller, and don't exactly do a great job at content moderation.

eli 6y ago

So you agree then that HN on its current form could not exist and we require some new model of client side moderation that doesn’t currently exist? That’s seems bad.