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You were probably "inciting violence" or engaging in "adult sexual exploitation". /s I don't think the answer is to legally regulate free speech on social medi

You were probably "inciting violence" or engaging in "adult sexual exploitation". /s I don't think the answer is to legally regulate free speech on social media platforms. I want online platforms to have the power to moderate. However, Facebook in particular has an awful moderation process. Their knee-jerk reactions are a consequence of a platform with a ton of power and no incentive to wield it responsibly. The rest of this is copy-paste from a previous post I made, explaining why I don't want full freedom of speech on social media: Take a look at HN. HN mods do a brilliant job of moderating. We don't have 100% free speech here and the platform is better for it. The discussions here tend to be much higher quality than on similar platforms like Reddit. That's probably a big reason why you're here reading this comment thread. However... I've noticed a difference between HN and the likes of Facebook or Twitter. As far as I can tell, HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say. If you're civil, respectful, and on-topic you're seemingly allowed to present just about any idea. Meanwhile, most other social media platforms seem content to let other people be complete pricks to each other as long as they don't present any ideas which the platform have decided are wrong or "dangerous". I think the HN moderation strategy makes for a much better platform. I'd rather talk with a respectful person who I disagree with than a jerk with whom I agree.

sneak 6y ago
> I don't think the answer is to legally regulate free speech on social media platforms. I want online platforms to have the power to moderate. I'm very anti-regulation in general, but I think that regulation is absolutely needed regarding censorship of DMs on platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, and the like. Posts and groups are one thing, but they're also censoring people's private conversations. There are entire domains that you can't even link your friends to via Messenger. This is a dangerous situation. Much of our society's only contact details for much of their social graph is via these censored platforms that can suspend you on a whim. Regulation to enforce availability of data and contacts export/takeout after suspension would be good at the very least. Saying something the platform doesn't like shouldn't cut you off from your address book.
stonecraftwolf 6y ago
This fails spectacularly when the point of disagreement is one’s humanity, for example. I’m a lot less active here than I would be otherwise, and I know that’s the case for a lot of others who belong to groups that HN considers fair game. I largely consider it a hostile place to me and people like me, and because of this moderation attitude, it’s first mover dominance in certain areas is actively harmful. And no, I’m not going to expose myself by revealing by what aspects of my identity are regularly dehumanized on HN. Social cooling is just as much a phenomena on HN. By its very nature, it’s invisible unless it affects you directly. HN loses plenty of voices it’s never aware of.
- FusionX 6y ago
  I was sincerely hoping to hear your side. I wish your response wasn't this vague.
  - stonecraftwolf 6y ago
    I get it. But I also don’t have much of a tolerance any more for dealing with abuse, and it’s not possible to be open about this stuff without also making yourself vulnerable to that abuse. I wish there was a solution to that, not least because I wish I could participate more frequently and more openly, but if there is a solution beyond moderation for this purpose I haven’t figured it out yet.
    - belorn 6y ago
      An option is to use a throwaway account for comments that would leak personal information if linked to a main account or personalized username.
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        That's an option... but if the person behind the throwaway account still receives abuse, it doesn't matter that the abuse didn't come down on their main account. It's still abuse aimed at them as a person, and it still hurts just as much.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> As far as I can tell, HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say. If you're civil, respectful, and on-topic you're seemingly allowed to present just about any idea. Absolutely, and it’s an excellent principle! Notably, however, HN does restrict what types of stories can be submitted, which has much the same effect of limiting what "ideas can be presented" (particularly when combined with an expectation to stay on topic). To me, the difference is that HN isn’t trying to be a one-stop destination for all of your communication, whereas Facebook absolutely is. Which is to say, I agree that complete free speech on any individual website is impossible without it devolving into a hellscape, so the best way to support free speech on a societal level is to have a diversity of social networks, instead of a handful of major platforms. And we're failing at the diversity part.
- tjchear 6y ago
  Wouldn't a diversity of social media platforms each restricted to a niche produce echo chambers? Not making a case for Facebook, I just don't think we have a good solution to this yet.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    It's a valid concern, but ultimately, a diversity of online spaces more closely matches the real world. The types of conversations which are acceptable at your workplace, your gym, your favorite bar, and your political party's local action committee will all be different, but there's enough cross-pollination that democracy seems to have always worked. From where I'm standing, the rise of Facebook et al's recommendation algorithms seems to have been far more effective at creating echo chambers. And importantly, these algorithms only really work if they have a wealth of potential content to recommend—ie, if the social network is absolutely massive!
Person5478 6y ago
> As far as I can tell, HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say. This is true and I've seen some extremely vile, reprehensible things said, but that went unmoderated because they were said politely (I've actually seen people responding to these vile things get banned because they weren't nearly that polite).
- DenisM 6y ago
  We don't know what's "vile" for you, and I'm sure you've seen people getting super offended over things that you consider essential discussions. Give us some details?
  - Person5478 6y ago
    Advocating for a complete and utter disregard for human life and human experience in the quest for money was the most egregious example. What you're doing here is called Argument to Moderation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation > is the fallacy that the truth is a compromise between two opposing positions. ... > Vladimir Bukovsky maintained that the middle ground between the big lie of Soviet propaganda and the truth was itself a lie, and one should not be looking for a middle ground between information and disinformation. You see it a lot on this site. People want to pretend to be reasonable, which is why we get things like you telling me that you don't know what I consider vile, as if I'm just being unreasonable and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
    - goatcode 6y ago
      Were this 20 years ago, arguing such an authority's point might have been reasonable. However, common values have been questioned to such an extreme extent, admitting that you don't know what someone considers vile isn't entirely unreasonable. There are people nowadays who argue that killing an entire race would have been a great idea, and others who claim that any procreative sexual intercourse is rape, without exception. In the end, you're probably still right, but the past 10 to 15 years have been a bitch for common ground.
belorn 6y ago
The things that speaks in favor of HN moderation are several compared to other online platforms. Actions are usually transparent and with a personal comment by the moderator. There are no private space in HN. Comments are focused on the text, while usernames and user identities are de-empathized. HN moderation is handled consistently by the same persons, and there have been a open discussion with the community that seems to resulted in refocusing on tone rather than content.
ardy42 6y ago
> However... I've noticed a difference between HN and the likes of Facebook or Twitter. As far as I can tell, HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say. If you're civil, respectful, and on-topic you're seemingly allowed to present just about any idea. > Meanwhile, most other social media platforms seem content to let other people be complete pricks to each other as long as they don't present any ideas which the platform have decided are wrong or "dangerous". I don't think there's as much to this observation as it seems. Firstly, HN is a different site than Facebook, which means it has a different userbase with different moderation problems. It's not like people are civilly and respectfully planning insurrections here, and if they were, the moderation would probably shift to stopping those "wrong or 'dangerous'" things. Also, the kinds of dis- and mis-information the the major social networks are fighting hasn't gotten much of a foothold on HN, and is often moderated away when it shows up. Secondly, to your earlier point: HN has human moderators who can (more or less) keep up. While Facebook has human moderators too, there aren't enough of them to keep up, so it relies heavily on automation and crowdsourcing. They don't have the capacity to pay attention to "how you say it," even if they wanted to. It's sort of like day care: if you have one teacher and ten students, the teacher is doing a good job if each student gets a lot of high-quality personalized attention; if you have one teacher and fifty students, the teacher is doing a good job if she manages to just barely keep them from hurting themselves.
tinus_hn 6y ago
The moderators do a great job but the users do not. If you post something that disagrees with the hive mind you’ll find it hidden at -4 and flagged really quickly.
b0tzzzzzzman 6y ago
So, it matters for you. Not others who hate the attachment to phrases used in the clickbate article you have. Please get this off hackernewz.

sneak 6y ago

> I don't think the answer is to legally regulate free speech on social media platforms. I want online platforms to have the power to moderate. I'm very anti-regulation in general, but I think that regulation is absolutely needed regarding censorship of DMs on platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, and the like. Posts and groups are one thing, but they're also censoring people's private conversations. There are entire domains that you can't even link your friends to via Messenger. This is a dangerous situation. Much of our society's only contact details for much of their social graph is via these censored platforms that can suspend you on a whim. Regulation to enforce availability of data and contacts export/takeout after suspension would be good at the very least. Saying something the platform doesn't like shouldn't cut you off from your address book.

stonecraftwolf 6y ago

This fails spectacularly when the point of disagreement is one’s humanity, for example. I’m a lot less active here than I would be otherwise, and I know that’s the case for a lot of others who belong to groups that HN considers fair game. I largely consider it a hostile place to me and people like me, and because of this moderation attitude, it’s first mover dominance in certain areas is actively harmful. And no, I’m not going to expose myself by revealing by what aspects of my identity are regularly dehumanized on HN. Social cooling is just as much a phenomena on HN. By its very nature, it’s invisible unless it affects you directly. HN loses plenty of voices it’s never aware of.

FusionX 6y ago
I was sincerely hoping to hear your side. I wish your response wasn't this vague.
- stonecraftwolf 6y ago
  I get it. But I also don’t have much of a tolerance any more for dealing with abuse, and it’s not possible to be open about this stuff without also making yourself vulnerable to that abuse. I wish there was a solution to that, not least because I wish I could participate more frequently and more openly, but if there is a solution beyond moderation for this purpose I haven’t figured it out yet.
  - belorn 6y ago
    An option is to use a throwaway account for comments that would leak personal information if linked to a main account or personalized username.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      That's an option... but if the person behind the throwaway account still receives abuse, it doesn't matter that the abuse didn't come down on their main account. It's still abuse aimed at them as a person, and it still hurts just as much.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> As far as I can tell, HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say. If you're civil, respectful, and on-topic you're seemingly allowed to present just about any idea. Absolutely, and it’s an excellent principle! Notably, however, HN does restrict what types of stories can be submitted, which has much the same effect of limiting what "ideas can be presented" (particularly when combined with an expectation to stay on topic). To me, the difference is that HN isn’t trying to be a one-stop destination for all of your communication, whereas Facebook absolutely is. Which is to say, I agree that complete free speech on any individual website is impossible without it devolving into a hellscape, so the best way to support free speech on a societal level is to have a diversity of social networks, instead of a handful of major platforms. And we're failing at the diversity part.

tjchear 6y ago
Wouldn't a diversity of social media platforms each restricted to a niche produce echo chambers? Not making a case for Facebook, I just don't think we have a good solution to this yet.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  It's a valid concern, but ultimately, a diversity of online spaces more closely matches the real world. The types of conversations which are acceptable at your workplace, your gym, your favorite bar, and your political party's local action committee will all be different, but there's enough cross-pollination that democracy seems to have always worked. From where I'm standing, the rise of Facebook et al's recommendation algorithms seems to have been far more effective at creating echo chambers. And importantly, these algorithms only really work if they have a wealth of potential content to recommend—ie, if the social network is absolutely massive!

Person5478 6y ago

> As far as I can tell, HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say. This is true and I've seen some extremely vile, reprehensible things said, but that went unmoderated because they were said politely (I've actually seen people responding to these vile things get banned because they weren't nearly that polite).

DenisM 6y ago
We don't know what's "vile" for you, and I'm sure you've seen people getting super offended over things that you consider essential discussions. Give us some details?
- Person5478 6y ago
  Advocating for a complete and utter disregard for human life and human experience in the quest for money was the most egregious example. What you're doing here is called Argument to Moderation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation > is the fallacy that the truth is a compromise between two opposing positions. ... > Vladimir Bukovsky maintained that the middle ground between the big lie of Soviet propaganda and the truth was itself a lie, and one should not be looking for a middle ground between information and disinformation. You see it a lot on this site. People want to pretend to be reasonable, which is why we get things like you telling me that you don't know what I consider vile, as if I'm just being unreasonable and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
  - goatcode 6y ago
    Were this 20 years ago, arguing such an authority's point might have been reasonable. However, common values have been questioned to such an extreme extent, admitting that you don't know what someone considers vile isn't entirely unreasonable. There are people nowadays who argue that killing an entire race would have been a great idea, and others who claim that any procreative sexual intercourse is rape, without exception. In the end, you're probably still right, but the past 10 to 15 years have been a bitch for common ground.

belorn 6y ago

The things that speaks in favor of HN moderation are several compared to other online platforms. Actions are usually transparent and with a personal comment by the moderator. There are no private space in HN. Comments are focused on the text, while usernames and user identities are de-empathized. HN moderation is handled consistently by the same persons, and there have been a open discussion with the community that seems to resulted in refocusing on tone rather than content.

ardy42 6y ago

> However... I've noticed a difference between HN and the likes of Facebook or Twitter. As far as I can tell, HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say. If you're civil, respectful, and on-topic you're seemingly allowed to present just about any idea. > Meanwhile, most other social media platforms seem content to let other people be complete pricks to each other as long as they don't present any ideas which the platform have decided are wrong or "dangerous". I don't think there's as much to this observation as it seems. Firstly, HN is a different site than Facebook, which means it has a different userbase with different moderation problems. It's not like people are civilly and respectfully planning insurrections here, and if they were, the moderation would probably shift to stopping those "wrong or 'dangerous'" things. Also, the kinds of dis- and mis-information the the major social networks are fighting hasn't gotten much of a foothold on HN, and is often moderated away when it shows up. Secondly, to your earlier point: HN has human moderators who can (more or less) keep up. While Facebook has human moderators too, there aren't enough of them to keep up, so it relies heavily on automation and crowdsourcing. They don't have the capacity to pay attention to "how you say it," even if they wanted to. It's sort of like day care: if you have one teacher and ten students, the teacher is doing a good job if each student gets a lot of high-quality personalized attention; if you have one teacher and fifty students, the teacher is doing a good job if she manages to just barely keep them from hurting themselves.

tinus_hn 6y ago

The moderators do a great job but the users do not. If you post something that disagrees with the hive mind you’ll find it hidden at -4 and flagged really quickly.

b0tzzzzzzman 6y ago

So, it matters for you. Not others who hate the attachment to phrases used in the clickbate article you have. Please get this off hackernewz.