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Regardless of technical viability, any service without moderation is a service mainstream society will shun, which really just means people won't use it, build

Regardless of technical viability, any service without moderation is a service mainstream society will shun, which really just means people won't use it, build tools for it, or generally accept others who use the service. People seem to both want a service that is immune from society and also used by society. That's a conflict that won't resolve.

whatshisface 6y ago
Fortunately, the problem you're talking about has already been solved with the concept of federation. If the social media system is a protocol and not a company, then society can chase down individual bad actors, and blame them for their own crimes, instead of blaming you.
- Ashanmaril 6y ago
  The issue is we're already doing too much chasing down individual "bad actors." It's like the #1 hobby these days, everyone is looking for the next person to step out of line so they can drag them into the village square for their stoning. There aren't enough "bad actors" to satiate the mob any more so the definition of "bad actor" has to be continually expanded by the day. Just the last week a musician tweeted something dumb about making his daughter learn how to use a can opener to open beans, and within a day, the very successful podcast he did the theme song for, where his track was used for the past like 10 years disowned him and stopped using the song. Then he was kicked off the cruise gathering where he was good friends with the guy who ran it and has been a regular headliner for years. The internet has created a culture problem that I'm not convinced decentralized social networks will fix. At best, if one was created that people actually used, we wouldn't have situations we've seen with Alex Jones and Trump where all the platforms unperson someone on the same day, cause they could still at least keep their audience on the decentralized platform.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    Well, there's bad actors, and then there's twitter-assigned villains. Really bad actors, as in people who are doing things that are clearly bad enough for there to be laws against them, need to be controlled somehow. That's what most moderation energy goes in to preventing.
  - acatsdream 6y ago
    That's mobbing
  - busrf 6y ago
    The saga of bean dad is here: https://mobile.twitter.com/ManiacalV/status/1345870405085573122 https://mobile.twitter.com/ManiacalV/status/1345870405085573... The bean dad attention led people to discover these additional tweets which are much worse than his questionable parenting judgement in that particular thread, and that’s what drove people to stop associating with him: https://www.thewrap.com/bean-dad-deletes-twitter-account-anti-semitic-homophobic-tweets-resurface/ https://www.thewrap.com/bean-dad-deletes-twitter-account-ant... TBH when I first saw that he got chased off twitter for the other tweets I did think it was going to be some cringe “edgy” humour attempt à la James Gunn. But that “white homeland” and “mud people” tweet is overt and not acceptable racism.
    - chillacy 6y ago
      Wow that’s some pretty important context. The parent comment is extremely misleading for leaving this out.
syshum 6y ago
There are different types of moderation, personally I find with platforms offering tools to their users to define the type of content they want to see, sure that can and will end with people in echo chambers of their own making but that is preferred to Platform level moderation where the platform chooses what is allowed and no allows ending with the entire platform being one ideological echo chamber instead if just user silo's with in the platform Reddit used to be an example of this, it allowed communities to create their own rules enforced by their own moderation with very limited rules at the platform level (i.e illegal speech was banned), over the years however due to social pressure on Advertisers, reddit has started shifting more and more of those moderation from the community level to the Platform level, and IMO it is having a negative effect on the site as whole. In the end Platforms should build TOOLS for moderation but not actually do the moderation themselves
- dsr_ 6y ago
  There's three levels of moderation. The platform needs to insulate itself from attacks: DDOS, illegal content, reputation attacks. The groups/fora/subreddits need local moderation that keep it on-topic and restrict trolls, flamers, spammers and other bad actors that destroy the utility of the group. (There are occasional groups that exist to be an outlet for off-topic discussion from others, or to out-troll each other, or rant.) Third is individual content control. Everybody needs to have easy access to a killfile: I don't want to see that idiot; I don't want to see any thread that idiot started; I don't want to see any thread that idiot contributed to; I don't want to see an article or thread with these keywords.
pjkundert 6y ago
Yes, it will resolve, and in fact has been solved. K-means clustering. This will scale, is compatible with machine learning, and yields an effect that is good for the users of a service -- but is not useful to owners of a service that maximizes profit and control over user happiness. If trolls, jackasses, and idiots (by each users independent definition) get automatically segregated into groups where they see only each-others posts, and out-groups just never see their posts: problem solved. Now, you might say "I don't want a service where neo-Nazis congregate!". I say: why, again, don't you want your police service to be able to infiltrate these groups and observe these people, and arrest them as they see fit? Hmmm. I wonder. Once it becomes clear to "evildoers" that the site is not "friendly" to their evil -- toleration doesn't equal agreement -- and that they are not hidden from justice, they will go elsewhere (at least the smart ones), and you can round up the dumb ones at your leisure.
- esja 6y ago
  Grouping by user rather than by content has a major weakness. Grandma can be lovely 99% of the time and a horrible racist the other 1%.
  - pjkundert 6y ago
    I assume that's what people want! Having been on the 'Net since before the Eternal September, I haven't been able to quite understand this drive to purge "things I don't like" from public forums. If grandma is really lovely, but has some bad habits from her youth or a different time or something -- then don't mark her post as "racist". I don't believe, either, that people are incapable of learning. If she spews hateful invective and then doesn't get happy-birthday wishes, she'll learn! Sheesh. Remember, your K-means Clustering will be public; its easy to see where you stand, and why you got there! If people in your preferred group prefer to not see people spouting the N-word, you might want to consider reforming your habits and beliefs, if you want to remain a functioning part of that group! The problem is not moderation: it's the belief in a consequence-free existence. Restore evidence-based reality == restore civilized society. But, there are a lot of people who don't like that idea.
swalsh 6y ago
It is certainly an unresolvable conflict, my major concern is to what extent those that control the "Freedom From" internet will go to prevent the harm done by the "Freedom To" internet. Will my Verizon connection be shutdown if I have a node running?
fulafel 6y ago
We still use email, blogs and the telephone network (including sms/mms). And newer decentralized systems like Mastodon. These kind of have moderation but it's decentralized and island specific (also regulated in case of the telephone network).
- redisman 6y ago
  These forms also don’t have a giant corporation attempting to monetize your attention. Telecoms for example simply charge a monthly fee. I truly believe the micro targeted ad driven and “gets the most clicks “ optimizations have been extremely powerful and destructive
  - fulafel 6y ago
    Exactly, the main issue is social networks under corporate control.

whatshisface 6y ago

Fortunately, the problem you're talking about has already been solved with the concept of federation. If the social media system is a protocol and not a company, then society can chase down individual bad actors, and blame them for their own crimes, instead of blaming you.

Ashanmaril 6y ago
The issue is we're already doing too much chasing down individual "bad actors." It's like the #1 hobby these days, everyone is looking for the next person to step out of line so they can drag them into the village square for their stoning. There aren't enough "bad actors" to satiate the mob any more so the definition of "bad actor" has to be continually expanded by the day. Just the last week a musician tweeted something dumb about making his daughter learn how to use a can opener to open beans, and within a day, the very successful podcast he did the theme song for, where his track was used for the past like 10 years disowned him and stopped using the song. Then he was kicked off the cruise gathering where he was good friends with the guy who ran it and has been a regular headliner for years. The internet has created a culture problem that I'm not convinced decentralized social networks will fix. At best, if one was created that people actually used, we wouldn't have situations we've seen with Alex Jones and Trump where all the platforms unperson someone on the same day, cause they could still at least keep their audience on the decentralized platform.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  Well, there's bad actors, and then there's twitter-assigned villains. Really bad actors, as in people who are doing things that are clearly bad enough for there to be laws against them, need to be controlled somehow. That's what most moderation energy goes in to preventing.
- acatsdream 6y ago
  That's mobbing
- busrf 6y ago
  The saga of bean dad is here: https://mobile.twitter.com/ManiacalV/status/1345870405085573122 https://mobile.twitter.com/ManiacalV/status/1345870405085573... The bean dad attention led people to discover these additional tweets which are much worse than his questionable parenting judgement in that particular thread, and that’s what drove people to stop associating with him: https://www.thewrap.com/bean-dad-deletes-twitter-account-anti-semitic-homophobic-tweets-resurface/ https://www.thewrap.com/bean-dad-deletes-twitter-account-ant... TBH when I first saw that he got chased off twitter for the other tweets I did think it was going to be some cringe “edgy” humour attempt à la James Gunn. But that “white homeland” and “mud people” tweet is overt and not acceptable racism.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    Wow that’s some pretty important context. The parent comment is extremely misleading for leaving this out.

syshum 6y ago

There are different types of moderation, personally I find with platforms offering tools to their users to define the type of content they want to see, sure that can and will end with people in echo chambers of their own making but that is preferred to Platform level moderation where the platform chooses what is allowed and no allows ending with the entire platform being one ideological echo chamber instead if just user silo's with in the platform Reddit used to be an example of this, it allowed communities to create their own rules enforced by their own moderation with very limited rules at the platform level (i.e illegal speech was banned), over the years however due to social pressure on Advertisers, reddit has started shifting more and more of those moderation from the community level to the Platform level, and IMO it is having a negative effect on the site as whole. In the end Platforms should build TOOLS for moderation but not actually do the moderation themselves

dsr_ 6y ago
There's three levels of moderation. The platform needs to insulate itself from attacks: DDOS, illegal content, reputation attacks. The groups/fora/subreddits need local moderation that keep it on-topic and restrict trolls, flamers, spammers and other bad actors that destroy the utility of the group. (There are occasional groups that exist to be an outlet for off-topic discussion from others, or to out-troll each other, or rant.) Third is individual content control. Everybody needs to have easy access to a killfile: I don't want to see that idiot; I don't want to see any thread that idiot started; I don't want to see any thread that idiot contributed to; I don't want to see an article or thread with these keywords.

pjkundert 6y ago

Yes, it will resolve, and in fact has been solved. K-means clustering. This will scale, is compatible with machine learning, and yields an effect that is good for the users of a service -- but is not useful to owners of a service that maximizes profit and control over user happiness. If trolls, jackasses, and idiots (by each users independent definition) get automatically segregated into groups where they see only each-others posts, and out-groups just never see their posts: problem solved. Now, you might say "I don't want a service where neo-Nazis congregate!". I say: why, again, don't you want your police service to be able to infiltrate these groups and observe these people, and arrest them as they see fit? Hmmm. I wonder. Once it becomes clear to "evildoers" that the site is not "friendly" to their evil -- toleration doesn't equal agreement -- and that they are not hidden from justice, they will go elsewhere (at least the smart ones), and you can round up the dumb ones at your leisure.

esja 6y ago
Grouping by user rather than by content has a major weakness. Grandma can be lovely 99% of the time and a horrible racist the other 1%.
- pjkundert 6y ago
  I assume that's what people want! Having been on the 'Net since before the Eternal September, I haven't been able to quite understand this drive to purge "things I don't like" from public forums. If grandma is really lovely, but has some bad habits from her youth or a different time or something -- then don't mark her post as "racist". I don't believe, either, that people are incapable of learning. If she spews hateful invective and then doesn't get happy-birthday wishes, she'll learn! Sheesh. Remember, your K-means Clustering will be public; its easy to see where you stand, and why you got there! If people in your preferred group prefer to not see people spouting the N-word, you might want to consider reforming your habits and beliefs, if you want to remain a functioning part of that group! The problem is not moderation: it's the belief in a consequence-free existence. Restore evidence-based reality == restore civilized society. But, there are a lot of people who don't like that idea.

swalsh 6y ago

It is certainly an unresolvable conflict, my major concern is to what extent those that control the "Freedom From" internet will go to prevent the harm done by the "Freedom To" internet. Will my Verizon connection be shutdown if I have a node running?

fulafel 6y ago

We still use email, blogs and the telephone network (including sms/mms). And newer decentralized systems like Mastodon. These kind of have moderation but it's decentralized and island specific (also regulated in case of the telephone network).

redisman 6y ago
These forms also don’t have a giant corporation attempting to monetize your attention. Telecoms for example simply charge a monthly fee. I truly believe the micro targeted ad driven and “gets the most clicks “ optimizations have been extremely powerful and destructive
- fulafel 6y ago
  Exactly, the main issue is social networks under corporate control.