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Moderated communities beat unmoderated ones on any metric you can name. Always have, always will. Nobody wants to drink at a pub that won't throw out rude patr

by raldi 6y ago

Moderated communities beat unmoderated ones on any metric you can name. Always have, always will. Nobody wants to drink at a pub that won't throw out rude patrons.

thinkingemote 6y ago
4chan is heavily moderated. The moderation is just that the barrier is in a different place, and it's hidden for the most part. But there is moderation. It's like the pub you don't want to drink in because it's full of the thugs and drug dealers who have the scariest bouncers at the door. Any trouble makers get taken out back, but they do have methods to control what they consider to be trouble makers.
- sonotathrowaway 6y ago
  We know 4chan is moderated, simply because 8chan exists and has produced several more mass murderers than 4chan has, despite the close overlap of ideologies. 4chan has a magnitude less users posting their manifestos before committing mass murder.
ninkendo 6y ago
Exactly this. Folks can rant about free speech all they want, but no sane person would actually want to experience it. I support your right to speak, but doesn’t mean I want to listen to you. IMO the only parts of the internet that should be absolutely required to allow unfiltered (legal, protected) speech, should be ISP’s, and maybe datacenters that rent out physical rack space. Everyone else should absolutely consider it their right to exercise moderation on their platform (throw out the rude patrons, as it were.)
- MinusGix 6y ago
  I think this is more of a matter of scale, like in your ISP and datacenter example, social media could be counted in on that too due to the sheer size of it and influence it can have on people. I agree that not having moderation isn't something we can do, for staying on topic or getting rid of certain users. The benefit of Reddit in this is that sub-communities can be made with harsher moderation policies than the outside Reddit, which allows getting rid of users they don't want. Since this is small sub-communities, if the users who disliked that subreddit really wanted they could make their own alternative and still be accessible to the wider Reddit. This would help avoid the problems of Voat becoming full of people on the extremist end of the spectrum. It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but being shared around reddit and accessible through the same account would make it a lot easier to dilute things like that.
  - creato 6y ago
    > I think this is more of a matter of scale, like in your ISP and datacenter example, social media could be counted in on that too due to the sheer size of it and influence it can have on people. It's not about scale, it's about alternatives. It's easy to just not go to reddit if you don't want to. If your ISP bans reddit (or hackernews?), and it's the only reasonable price/performance ISP you have access to, that's a much bigger problem.
  - ninkendo 6y ago
    > I think this is more of a matter of scale, like in your ISP and datacenter example, social media could be counted in on that too due to the sheer size of it and influence it can have on people. Massively disagree here. Nobody owes anyone a platform. YouTube doesn’t need to host hate speech. Twitter doesn’t need to let people spread false claims about election fraud. They are perfectly within their rights (and I’d argue, their responsibility) to set standards for discourse and acceptable behavior on their platforms. If you want a site that will host your alternate-reality qanon bullshit, you can always host it yourself.
- Throwaway1771 6y ago
  In many cases, the free speech (shocking stuff) is a litmus test for the compromised nature of the platform. It's important, historically, to test this regularly, and thoroughly. Voat/4Chan et al MUST be viewed in this context. Must!
  - ninkendo 6y ago
    > Voat/4Chan et al MUST be viewed in this context. Nah. It really musn’t. We’re all a lot happier without you on our platforms. Qanon can always pay for his own hosting.
    - Throwaway1771 6y ago
      You don't think people who run, or are users of, 4Chan/Voat/IRC channels etc actually care about your preferences...?
    - Throwaway1771 6y ago
      What I mean to say is: those aren't "your platforms" - and you DON'T speak for the entire internet. Even if you feel that way.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  > Folks can rant about free speech all they want, but no sane person would actually want to experience it. Always remember that "free speech" is 100% about the right to say what you want and not be prosecuted for it. It has never, ever been about the social consequences of any particular one person's speech. Insulting your boss and getting fired isn't an abridgement of free speech, neither is getting banned from the neighborhood pub for racist monologues.
  - verroq 6y ago
    >Always remember that "free speech" is 100% about the right to say what you want and not be prosecuted for it No I don’t remember. You can have “free speech” except the social consequences are that your neighbours lynch you in the streets. No I don’t recall it like that. Free speech has always been absolute because the majority opinion is immune from social consequences. It is the minority opinion that requires protection.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      Aside from the extreme hypothetical you made up, there are other laws against lynching, you know. That has nothing to do with free speech.
      - verroq 6y ago
        Lynching has always been a crime and that’s why nobody was lynched ever. The mob already has protection because their numbers. It is everyone but the mob that needs the protection.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        “Laws don’t work, which is why we need more laws” is quite an argument.
        verroq 6y ago
        Me: “there isn’t enough done to protect dissenting voices” You: “so we should do nothing and give them up to the lynch mob, laws don’t work anyway, this is what I call freedom of speech but not from consequences”
axguscbklp 6y ago
I enjoy rude online communities. Sometimes it's nice to go to places where people say what they mean rather than try to be polite and/or politically correct. Pubs and websites are different from each other. I probably wouldn't go to a pub that refused to throw out rude patrons because there would be a relatively high chance of physical violence occurring at such a pub. Online, assuming that my use of a website would have no consequences like doxxing that could get back to the rest of my life, that wouldn't be an issue. Also, it's hard to ignore loud people at a pub. On the other hand, it's easy to ignore annoying people on a website.
- eropple 6y ago
  Don't worry. The places in question do that, too.
  - axguscbklp 6y ago
    Sorry, you were probably replying to a part of my comment that I subsequently edited out. Namely, I originally mentioned that even though I enjoy rude websites, I don't like when rudeness crosses the line into stuff like manipulating schizophrenic people or telling clinically depressed people to kill themselves. You're right, the places in question do that, too. That said, I would hope that there can be places where consensual rudeness can nonetheless be practiced. Not everyone can handle mountain biking, rough sex, or reading about how to make explosives, but other people enjoy those activities without coming to harm.
- sellyme 6y ago
  > assuming that my use of a website would have no consequences like doxxing that could get back to the rest of my life This is a brave assumption.
TameAntelope 6y ago
4chan has a place on the Internet, and if that counts as "moderation" then Voat had moderation too.
- judge2020 6y ago
  Voat definitely has moderation, CP and other illegal content is kept off of the platform; but both 4chan and voat can be largely hateful places with threats of violence thrown around. 4chan somehow has funding (it has ads and a paid subscription option but iirc there's also angel investors funding it) so it's going to stay up for the foreseeable future. Unless voat can start a patreon or something of the sorts (maybe chargebee), it's going to be turned off.
- nemothekid 6y ago
  The idea that 4chan doesn't have moderation isn't true. I largely have to suspect it has to do with the the time moot stopped making bans public, but 4chan moderation used to be very visible. A number of other alternate chans were created because 4chan was "too strict". Even /pol/'s current political flavor is a product of deliberate moderation. Regardless, despite 4chan's "lack of moderation", with the exception of /pol/, the level of racism and hate you see isn't anywhere near what you would see on voat.
- egeozcan 6y ago
  Even though there are many actual racists in between, I wouldn't take 99.9% of what's posted on 4Chan seriously. It's just a place people talk sh__ with zero consequences. There are no explanations (other than trolling like QAnon), or rationalizations. I guess it's because actually 4Chan is moderated, and it detracts the people with "real agendas". Voat on the other hand, from the preview I've seen above, seems to be horrifyingly serious. People really seem to be trying to rationalize their racism. From my 5 minutes there, I really got scared about what some of those people would think of other human beings.
anshumankmr 6y ago
True. But the only problem is when moderators hold too much power, like in the case of most subs in Reddit.
- sellyme 6y ago
  Moderators on Reddit hold very little power. Unlike almost every other messageboard in existence, they can do absolutely nothing to stop you from creating a competing community on the exact same website, leveraging the existing userbase. The only tools are standard moderator ones: content deletion, stickying, and a banhammer. There's not many sites where moderators have less power.
  - anshumankmr 6y ago
    True, but there should be a way to control the moderators as well. The Reddit admins are pretty useless. Redditors and especially, Reddit moderator are not known for tolerating even a slightest difference in opinion.
  - yakireev 6y ago
    > they can do absolutely nothing to stop you from creating a competing community on the exact same website, leveraging the existing userbase. Admins can though. I see a recurring pattern of this in U.S. politics or politics-infested parts of reddit: mods of /r/PoliticalHumor or /r/MurderedByWords can make a pro-D. echo chamber out of their subreddits, but an attempt to make a pro-R. echo chamber of the similar temperature would be quarantined/banned/whatever. For an outsider, it was quite disturbing to see how dissenting opinions on U.S. politics were silenced on reddit in a matter of couple of years (2017-2018, I guess?). I do not care about U.S. politics that much, but erasure of dissent is scary.
    - pstuart 6y ago
      I'm curious about this dissent you speak of. Could you share some examples of it that you have seen or would like to see? Edit: the question was asked in sincerity. I haven't seen any such dissent but I live in a bubble. The only conservative dissent I've seen in the last 4 years has been been republicans leaving the party over Trump.
octoberfranklin 6y ago
> Moderated communities beat unmoderated ones on any metric you can name. Prevalence of power trips? Let's face it, almost nobody gets paid to moderate, so the compensation has to be something else. I never had much interest in IRC because the format (live/real-time) has a much higher moderation (op) burden, more powerfully attracting people who like power trips and narrative control. The solution isn't Galilean absolute-frame-of-reference moderation. It's something more relativistic, like the PGP Web of Trust. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25405128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25405128
Throwaway1771 6y ago
Bikers do. Because the bikers handle their own personal space...
aaron695 6y ago
Voat was moderated. No one designs forums that are un-moderated that I know of? Maybe newsgroups 25 years ago would fit. Community moderation is an interesting idea that I believe is still unsolved online.
- raldi 6y ago
  That reads to me a bit like saying party planning is still unsolved.
  - aaron695 6y ago
    *online
- ourcat 6y ago
  Ahh NNTP. Those were indeed the days. As were the killfiles we used, to try and deal with an ever-increasing amount of spammers.
berryjerry 6y ago
This is dead on correct. The problem is online most people don't have to hear what you say, they can just not subscribe or not follow you and never hear a word of what you said. This is why over-moderation on the big tech sites like Reddit, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook is so frustrating. It goes beyond kicking someone out of the bar to not allowing someone to open a bar. And they get their moderation wrong, and I mean a lot. Unless the person they got it wrong with has a following that noticed it, they have zero chance at appealing or arguing their side.
- raldi 6y ago
  Not following. You can't make your own subreddit / YT channel / FB group?
  - ayewo 6y ago
    I guess the parent is referring to an eventuality of getting noticed by moderators repeatedly, they kick you out of their platform completely to save them any more headaches.
- phoe-krk 6y ago
  > It goes beyond kicking someone out of the bar to not allowing someone to open a bar. You can open your bar just fine. Just don't expect someone else to invite people in there for you.
- mtberatwork 6y ago
  > It goes beyond kicking someone out of the bar to not allowing someone to open a bar. This analogy doesn't work. Anyone can open their own "bars" on the Web. Reddit and Voat are the "bars" here. Voat was created because they were kicked off of Reddit. Voat even mimics Reddit in terms of functionality.
  - rchaud 6y ago
    I think he meant open a bar on the same property as the bar that kicked him out, in order to siphon of some of the customers.
fulafel 6y ago
There have been some pretty successful unmoderated (centrally) social networks. Email, Usenet, IRC come to mind. The moderation does happen in these but it's self organizing.
- ninkendo 6y ago
  I wouldn’t call IRC or Email “social networks”, or even platforms at all, really. Email is more of a direct person-to-person communication platform, similar to SMS in that it isn’t really used to “publish” stuff, outside of spam (which is the worst part of email) and mailing lists (which you ostensibly have to sign up for, or else it’s spam.) IRC is a bit more in the middle, but it’s never had much of a critical mass outside of maybe EFNet? The rest of the IRC world is too fragmented to even call it one social network. And I would say moderation problems are directly proportional to the scale of the network (EFNet has its trolls, especially in its heyday.) Usenet has always had a huge problem with trolls... again, proportional to its usage. It was only “good” back when the internet was very young and there was such a thing as “netiquette”. See also the eternal September.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fulafel 6y ago
  Also: the blogosphere, with pingbacks and RSS is a social network.
conradfr 6y ago
I'm part of an unmoderated forum and it's so refreshing. We have some racists and we laugh at their posts. We have some threads that are hidden for non-trusted members but that's more about censorship laws in our country. Of course things like child porn would be removed and one or two members may have been kicked but anyone can register. I would agree that it's a matter of scale though.

by raldi 6y ago

Moderated communities beat unmoderated ones on any metric you can name. Always have, always will. Nobody wants to drink at a pub that won't throw out rude patrons.

thinkingemote 6y ago

4chan is heavily moderated. The moderation is just that the barrier is in a different place, and it's hidden for the most part. But there is moderation. It's like the pub you don't want to drink in because it's full of the thugs and drug dealers who have the scariest bouncers at the door. Any trouble makers get taken out back, but they do have methods to control what they consider to be trouble makers.

sonotathrowaway 6y ago
We know 4chan is moderated, simply because 8chan exists and has produced several more mass murderers than 4chan has, despite the close overlap of ideologies. 4chan has a magnitude less users posting their manifestos before committing mass murder.

ninkendo 6y ago

Exactly this. Folks can rant about free speech all they want, but no sane person would actually want to experience it. I support your right to speak, but doesn’t mean I want to listen to you. IMO the only parts of the internet that should be absolutely required to allow unfiltered (legal, protected) speech, should be ISP’s, and maybe datacenters that rent out physical rack space. Everyone else should absolutely consider it their right to exercise moderation on their platform (throw out the rude patrons, as it were.)

MinusGix 6y ago
I think this is more of a matter of scale, like in your ISP and datacenter example, social media could be counted in on that too due to the sheer size of it and influence it can have on people. I agree that not having moderation isn't something we can do, for staying on topic or getting rid of certain users. The benefit of Reddit in this is that sub-communities can be made with harsher moderation policies than the outside Reddit, which allows getting rid of users they don't want. Since this is small sub-communities, if the users who disliked that subreddit really wanted they could make their own alternative and still be accessible to the wider Reddit. This would help avoid the problems of Voat becoming full of people on the extremist end of the spectrum. It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but being shared around reddit and accessible through the same account would make it a lot easier to dilute things like that.
- creato 6y ago
  > I think this is more of a matter of scale, like in your ISP and datacenter example, social media could be counted in on that too due to the sheer size of it and influence it can have on people. It's not about scale, it's about alternatives. It's easy to just not go to reddit if you don't want to. If your ISP bans reddit (or hackernews?), and it's the only reasonable price/performance ISP you have access to, that's a much bigger problem.
- ninkendo 6y ago
  > I think this is more of a matter of scale, like in your ISP and datacenter example, social media could be counted in on that too due to the sheer size of it and influence it can have on people. Massively disagree here. Nobody owes anyone a platform. YouTube doesn’t need to host hate speech. Twitter doesn’t need to let people spread false claims about election fraud. They are perfectly within their rights (and I’d argue, their responsibility) to set standards for discourse and acceptable behavior on their platforms. If you want a site that will host your alternate-reality qanon bullshit, you can always host it yourself.
Throwaway1771 6y ago
In many cases, the free speech (shocking stuff) is a litmus test for the compromised nature of the platform. It's important, historically, to test this regularly, and thoroughly. Voat/4Chan et al MUST be viewed in this context. Must!
- ninkendo 6y ago
  > Voat/4Chan et al MUST be viewed in this context. Nah. It really musn’t. We’re all a lot happier without you on our platforms. Qanon can always pay for his own hosting.
  - Throwaway1771 6y ago
    You don't think people who run, or are users of, 4Chan/Voat/IRC channels etc actually care about your preferences...?
  - Throwaway1771 6y ago
    What I mean to say is: those aren't "your platforms" - and you DON'T speak for the entire internet. Even if you feel that way.
ashtonkem 6y ago
> Folks can rant about free speech all they want, but no sane person would actually want to experience it. Always remember that "free speech" is 100% about the right to say what you want and not be prosecuted for it. It has never, ever been about the social consequences of any particular one person's speech. Insulting your boss and getting fired isn't an abridgement of free speech, neither is getting banned from the neighborhood pub for racist monologues.
- verroq 6y ago
  >Always remember that "free speech" is 100% about the right to say what you want and not be prosecuted for it No I don’t remember. You can have “free speech” except the social consequences are that your neighbours lynch you in the streets. No I don’t recall it like that. Free speech has always been absolute because the majority opinion is immune from social consequences. It is the minority opinion that requires protection.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Aside from the extreme hypothetical you made up, there are other laws against lynching, you know. That has nothing to do with free speech.
    - verroq 6y ago
      Lynching has always been a crime and that’s why nobody was lynched ever. The mob already has protection because their numbers. It is everyone but the mob that needs the protection.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        “Laws don’t work, which is why we need more laws” is quite an argument.
        verroq 6y ago
        Me: “there isn’t enough done to protect dissenting voices” You: “so we should do nothing and give them up to the lynch mob, laws don’t work anyway, this is what I call freedom of speech but not from consequences”

axguscbklp 6y ago

I enjoy rude online communities. Sometimes it's nice to go to places where people say what they mean rather than try to be polite and/or politically correct. Pubs and websites are different from each other. I probably wouldn't go to a pub that refused to throw out rude patrons because there would be a relatively high chance of physical violence occurring at such a pub. Online, assuming that my use of a website would have no consequences like doxxing that could get back to the rest of my life, that wouldn't be an issue. Also, it's hard to ignore loud people at a pub. On the other hand, it's easy to ignore annoying people on a website.

eropple 6y ago
Don't worry. The places in question do that, too.
- axguscbklp 6y ago
  Sorry, you were probably replying to a part of my comment that I subsequently edited out. Namely, I originally mentioned that even though I enjoy rude websites, I don't like when rudeness crosses the line into stuff like manipulating schizophrenic people or telling clinically depressed people to kill themselves. You're right, the places in question do that, too. That said, I would hope that there can be places where consensual rudeness can nonetheless be practiced. Not everyone can handle mountain biking, rough sex, or reading about how to make explosives, but other people enjoy those activities without coming to harm.
sellyme 6y ago
> assuming that my use of a website would have no consequences like doxxing that could get back to the rest of my life This is a brave assumption.

TameAntelope 6y ago

4chan has a place on the Internet, and if that counts as "moderation" then Voat had moderation too.

judge2020 6y ago
Voat definitely has moderation, CP and other illegal content is kept off of the platform; but both 4chan and voat can be largely hateful places with threats of violence thrown around. 4chan somehow has funding (it has ads and a paid subscription option but iirc there's also angel investors funding it) so it's going to stay up for the foreseeable future. Unless voat can start a patreon or something of the sorts (maybe chargebee), it's going to be turned off.
nemothekid 6y ago
The idea that 4chan doesn't have moderation isn't true. I largely have to suspect it has to do with the the time moot stopped making bans public, but 4chan moderation used to be very visible. A number of other alternate chans were created because 4chan was "too strict". Even /pol/'s current political flavor is a product of deliberate moderation. Regardless, despite 4chan's "lack of moderation", with the exception of /pol/, the level of racism and hate you see isn't anywhere near what you would see on voat.
egeozcan 6y ago
Even though there are many actual racists in between, I wouldn't take 99.9% of what's posted on 4Chan seriously. It's just a place people talk sh__ with zero consequences. There are no explanations (other than trolling like QAnon), or rationalizations. I guess it's because actually 4Chan is moderated, and it detracts the people with "real agendas". Voat on the other hand, from the preview I've seen above, seems to be horrifyingly serious. People really seem to be trying to rationalize their racism. From my 5 minutes there, I really got scared about what some of those people would think of other human beings.

anshumankmr 6y ago

True. But the only problem is when moderators hold too much power, like in the case of most subs in Reddit.

sellyme 6y ago
Moderators on Reddit hold very little power. Unlike almost every other messageboard in existence, they can do absolutely nothing to stop you from creating a competing community on the exact same website, leveraging the existing userbase. The only tools are standard moderator ones: content deletion, stickying, and a banhammer. There's not many sites where moderators have less power.
- anshumankmr 6y ago
  True, but there should be a way to control the moderators as well. The Reddit admins are pretty useless. Redditors and especially, Reddit moderator are not known for tolerating even a slightest difference in opinion.
- yakireev 6y ago
  > they can do absolutely nothing to stop you from creating a competing community on the exact same website, leveraging the existing userbase. Admins can though. I see a recurring pattern of this in U.S. politics or politics-infested parts of reddit: mods of /r/PoliticalHumor or /r/MurderedByWords can make a pro-D. echo chamber out of their subreddits, but an attempt to make a pro-R. echo chamber of the similar temperature would be quarantined/banned/whatever. For an outsider, it was quite disturbing to see how dissenting opinions on U.S. politics were silenced on reddit in a matter of couple of years (2017-2018, I guess?). I do not care about U.S. politics that much, but erasure of dissent is scary.
  - pstuart 6y ago
    I'm curious about this dissent you speak of. Could you share some examples of it that you have seen or would like to see? Edit: the question was asked in sincerity. I haven't seen any such dissent but I live in a bubble. The only conservative dissent I've seen in the last 4 years has been been republicans leaving the party over Trump.

octoberfranklin 6y ago

> Moderated communities beat unmoderated ones on any metric you can name. Prevalence of power trips? Let's face it, almost nobody gets paid to moderate, so the compensation has to be something else. I never had much interest in IRC because the format (live/real-time) has a much higher moderation (op) burden, more powerfully attracting people who like power trips and narrative control. The solution isn't Galilean absolute-frame-of-reference moderation. It's something more relativistic, like the PGP Web of Trust. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25405128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25405128

Throwaway1771 6y ago

Bikers do. Because the bikers handle their own personal space...

aaron695 6y ago

Voat was moderated. No one designs forums that are un-moderated that I know of? Maybe newsgroups 25 years ago would fit. Community moderation is an interesting idea that I believe is still unsolved online.

raldi 6y ago
That reads to me a bit like saying party planning is still unsolved.
- aaron695 6y ago
  *online
ourcat 6y ago
Ahh NNTP. Those were indeed the days. As were the killfiles we used, to try and deal with an ever-increasing amount of spammers.

berryjerry 6y ago

This is dead on correct. The problem is online most people don't have to hear what you say, they can just not subscribe or not follow you and never hear a word of what you said. This is why over-moderation on the big tech sites like Reddit, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook is so frustrating. It goes beyond kicking someone out of the bar to not allowing someone to open a bar. And they get their moderation wrong, and I mean a lot. Unless the person they got it wrong with has a following that noticed it, they have zero chance at appealing or arguing their side.

raldi 6y ago
Not following. You can't make your own subreddit / YT channel / FB group?
- ayewo 6y ago
  I guess the parent is referring to an eventuality of getting noticed by moderators repeatedly, they kick you out of their platform completely to save them any more headaches.
phoe-krk 6y ago
> It goes beyond kicking someone out of the bar to not allowing someone to open a bar. You can open your bar just fine. Just don't expect someone else to invite people in there for you.
mtberatwork 6y ago
> It goes beyond kicking someone out of the bar to not allowing someone to open a bar. This analogy doesn't work. Anyone can open their own "bars" on the Web. Reddit and Voat are the "bars" here. Voat was created because they were kicked off of Reddit. Voat even mimics Reddit in terms of functionality.
- rchaud 6y ago
  I think he meant open a bar on the same property as the bar that kicked him out, in order to siphon of some of the customers.

fulafel 6y ago

There have been some pretty successful unmoderated (centrally) social networks. Email, Usenet, IRC come to mind. The moderation does happen in these but it's self organizing.

ninkendo 6y ago
I wouldn’t call IRC or Email “social networks”, or even platforms at all, really. Email is more of a direct person-to-person communication platform, similar to SMS in that it isn’t really used to “publish” stuff, outside of spam (which is the worst part of email) and mailing lists (which you ostensibly have to sign up for, or else it’s spam.) IRC is a bit more in the middle, but it’s never had much of a critical mass outside of maybe EFNet? The rest of the IRC world is too fragmented to even call it one social network. And I would say moderation problems are directly proportional to the scale of the network (EFNet has its trolls, especially in its heyday.) Usenet has always had a huge problem with trolls... again, proportional to its usage. It was only “good” back when the internet was very young and there was such a thing as “netiquette”. See also the eternal September.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fulafel 6y ago
Also: the blogosphere, with pingbacks and RSS is a social network.

conradfr 6y ago

I'm part of an unmoderated forum and it's so refreshing. We have some racists and we laugh at their posts. We have some threads that are hidden for non-trusted members but that's more about censorship laws in our country. Of course things like child porn would be removed and one or two members may have been kicked but anyone can register. I would agree that it's a matter of scale though.