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The trouble is, manual moderating systems are also a no-go at scale. So what do you do?

chmod775 5y ago
You revert back to becoming a 'dumb pipe' and make moderating someone else's problem. Your ISP doesn't moderate for you either.
- xvector 5y ago
  Okay, now we are back where we started. How does that 'someone else' moderate content at scale? Eventually someone has to take the burden.
  - curryst 5y ago
    I think it basically looks like Reddit. You carve up the site into fiefdoms and then have users self-moderate. Moderation that happens at the site layer largely targets fiefdoms rather than users. New accounts are easy to create, but new communities are harder because you have to wait for members. Plus most of your moderators are free. I wouldn't be surprised if Reddit only pays for people to moderate the default subs since advertisers and new users are more likely to see them.
  - toast0 5y ago
    If we're all bunched into small communities, there is no 'at scale'. I regularly hang out in several different communities of thousands of people, including this one. All of them, except the really small ones, have one or a few people who moderate the forums, and ways to report things that are posted. If someone posts a link to disturbing video to HN, it's going to disappear right quick; even if the source lives on. If I try out a community where there's a lot of disturbing videos posted, I'm going to stop going there; but other people might go there specifically because of those video links. If the videos are legal, that's their business and none of mine; I don't want to see it, and by avoiding their community, I won't.
- astrange 5y ago
  They do if you use their email. All email systems are unusable without spam and origin filtering.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    Spam filtering is "keep you from seeing things you don't want to see". Moderation is "keep you from seeing things I don't want to show you".
    - bccdee 5y ago
      That's not true. It's more that spam is automatic, and as such is easy to automate away. If someone replies "BUY MY PRODUCT http://product.link http://product.link" on every post, that's spam. If someone is consistently shitty to other community members and generally acts like an asshole, that's someone who needs to be moderated away.
      - chalst 5y ago
        I partly agree. There's a skill and a moral quality internal to moderation, which means that good moderators will exclude the content they judge the community doesn't want without letting this judgement be swayed by their personal agenda. But bad moderation, where the moderator lacks the skill or the quality to do this, is very much a thing.
  - josefx 5y ago
    They also are unusable with spam and origin filtering. Not getting a message you were waiting for? Turns no message from that service is getting through, no notification, no nothing.
    - astrange 5y ago
      This is actually true, I can’t get any email for one specific Substack I paid for (and others work!). And since they do login by email I can’t log in at all.
afarrell 5y ago
Keep forums smaller than 10x Dunbar’s Number.
dvt 5y ago
> manual moderating systems are also a no-go at scale Yeah, I concede this is a very hard problem (especially when advertisers are involved). And even worse, maybe it's not even worth it to solve. After all, if a minority x% of your creators are expendable to false DMCA takedowns because your market share is so huge, who cares?
dataflow 5y ago
> The problem is, manual moderating systems are also a no-go at scale. So what do you do? Is it? I'd have imagined there's some ratio of 1 mod per N people for N not too small that would make things work. It might be more like 1:1K instead of the 1:1M (or whatever) that companies prefer, but is that genuinely unaffordable or is it just that companies don't like to pay for moderators?
- goodlinks 5y ago
  Imho it cannot work because we dont globally agree whats okay to do and say. I think mass media has some fundamental flaws that we havent accepted yet. Edit: take out advertising in intellectual property and you would get rid of a bunch of bad actors and cobra effects.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    I think your points are valid. But I'm not sure if I see them as moderation issues. As I see it, there's the question of what should be allowed, and there's the question of how to enforce it adequately. As I see it, the former is a policy issue (and likely tougher), whereas the latter is a moderation issue.
    - goodlinks 5y ago
      I 100% agree that moderation could be lightyears better. However i see this as being a bit like the BBC problem: beleiving there is such a thing as being objective, there just isnt. You can have a group of likeminded people who mostly agree and need a bit of moderation for when someones external bad day leaks into their interactions on the plaform. However if there is an underlying fundamental difference of opinion or goals then the moderators become just another weapon. We need leaders not moderators. Moderators in difference of opinion just end up punishing the weak one way or another. Leaders show by example what we can aspire to, which in turn guides moderators in how to apply the rules. If you have global platforms who are the leaders? What direction should they lead that works for china and the US?
DSingularity 5y ago
Pay for it and stop being greedy.
cxr 5y ago
Stop using bullshit centralized platforms. There is no gatekeeper on the matter of posting videos on the Internet. Established players (like Rossman) continuing to publish through the big players lends power to them. So stop doing that.
- Ruthalas 5y ago
  For what it's worth, Rossman also publishes on alternate platforms such as LBRY.
- esyir 5y ago
  You've basically requested to cede all control of the message and to fade into irrelevance.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
alacombe 5y ago
That's a blatant lie. Manual moderation is 100% possible as long as you don't aim for 80% gross profit margin.
varajelle 5y ago
What about user moderation with [+] and [-] buttons ?
- concordDance 5y ago
  Can easily get you echo chambers if the numbers are visible and people start using them as agree/disagree buttons. User moderation via "flag as inappropriate" might work though.
rhizome 5y ago
Shrink "at scale" until the company can handle the responsiblity. There's no inherent right to grow endlessly, and limits can be legislated if FAANG and their "best of the best" employees can't (or don't want to) figure it out.
SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
You accept that there is an upper limit on community size, beyond which unsolvable problems await.
CamperBob2 5y ago
Slashdot's system works just fine. With the exception of overtly-illegal content, moderation should consist solely of communal inputs to a function that operates solely at the discretion of the individual user.
- vetinari 5y ago
  > moderation should consist solely of communal inputs to a function that operates solely at the discretion of the individual user. Exactly, Slashdot works because of its transparency; the user can see, what was moderated down, and thus whether the moderation was done to something he doesn't want to see, or whether it is something that someone else doesn't want him to see.
nikitaga 5y ago
We don't need scale. Google needs YouTube to be the only place to watch videos out there. I don't. Smaller communities self-moderate fine enough, and bigger ones can raise money from members to hire mods / editors / etc. But this isn't working as well as it should because the platform / advertising oligopoly is eating up everyone's revenue and using those funds to vertically and horizontally integrate everything under a handful of megacorp brands. For as long as this consolidation (aka "scale") continues, content moderation will remain "unsolvable".
- PoignardAzur 5y ago
  > We don't need scale. Google needs YouTube to be the only place to watch videos out there. I don't. Smaller communities self-moderate fine enough, and bigger ones can raise money from members to hire mods / editors / etc. The thing is, you still have the scale problem even if you break up Youtube into a hundred different video streaming sites. Say that Google would need to hire a million full-time moderators (in practice it's probably more) to ensure quality moderation for every video uploaded. If it's not sustainable for them to do that, then it won't be sustainable for a hundred companies to hire ten thousand moderators each to do the job. This is especially bad because bad actors can just post the same content on multiple platforms automatically. Unless platforms start pooling their moderation resources (in which case you're back to square one), having lots of small-scale platforms means that attackers can just upload the same thing on as many platforms as they can and hope it slip through the net in a few cases. The only way we can stop that, as a society, is if we decide that any platform for content diffusion needs to factor in and charge the price of filtering that content from the get go. That means no more free uploads on Youtube; if you wanna upload something you have to pay a fee for moderators to look over your video and certify it as safe. I think that would be a viable way for the ecosystem to go, but it would make it harder for small independent creators with no budget to get started.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > The thing is, you still have the scale problem even if you break up Youtube into a hundred different video streaming sites. No, PeerTube is a decentralized video platform with independent servers, which can work together.
Macha 5y ago
This isn't an excuse. e.g. Imagine the argument was "Disposing of chemicals safely is a no-go at scale" Businesses don't get to ignore negative externalities just because it's unprofitable
- mycologos 5y ago
  "Disposing chemicals" doesn't feel like the right analogy. That's a negative externality that wouldn't exist without the manufacturer -- if the manufacturer doesn't exist, then that problem goes away. "My video is not available on this platform" is different, because if the platform doesn't exist, you still have that problem.
tjpnz 5y ago
>So what do you do? You could employ a little common sense when designing your product. Is it really wise for platforms like Facebook to allow anyone to start livestreaming unrestricted? I would argue no, at the very least they should be taking measures to minimise the blast radius should someone decide to walk outside and start shooting people.

You revert back to becoming a 'dumb pipe' and make moderating someone else's problem. Your ISP doesn't moderate for you either.

xvector 5y ago
Okay, now we are back where we started. How does that 'someone else' moderate content at scale? Eventually someone has to take the burden.
- curryst 5y ago
  I think it basically looks like Reddit. You carve up the site into fiefdoms and then have users self-moderate. Moderation that happens at the site layer largely targets fiefdoms rather than users. New accounts are easy to create, but new communities are harder because you have to wait for members. Plus most of your moderators are free. I wouldn't be surprised if Reddit only pays for people to moderate the default subs since advertisers and new users are more likely to see them.
- toast0 5y ago
  If we're all bunched into small communities, there is no 'at scale'. I regularly hang out in several different communities of thousands of people, including this one. All of them, except the really small ones, have one or a few people who moderate the forums, and ways to report things that are posted. If someone posts a link to disturbing video to HN, it's going to disappear right quick; even if the source lives on. If I try out a community where there's a lot of disturbing videos posted, I'm going to stop going there; but other people might go there specifically because of those video links. If the videos are legal, that's their business and none of mine; I don't want to see it, and by avoiding their community, I won't.
astrange 5y ago
They do if you use their email. All email systems are unusable without spam and origin filtering.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Spam filtering is "keep you from seeing things you don't want to see". Moderation is "keep you from seeing things I don't want to show you".
  - bccdee 5y ago
    That's not true. It's more that spam is automatic, and as such is easy to automate away. If someone replies "BUY MY PRODUCT http://product.link http://product.link" on every post, that's spam. If someone is consistently shitty to other community members and generally acts like an asshole, that's someone who needs to be moderated away.
    - chalst 5y ago
      I partly agree. There's a skill and a moral quality internal to moderation, which means that good moderators will exclude the content they judge the community doesn't want without letting this judgement be swayed by their personal agenda. But bad moderation, where the moderator lacks the skill or the quality to do this, is very much a thing.
- josefx 5y ago
  They also are unusable with spam and origin filtering. Not getting a message you were waiting for? Turns no message from that service is getting through, no notification, no nothing.
  - astrange 5y ago
    This is actually true, I can’t get any email for one specific Substack I paid for (and others work!). And since they do login by email I can’t log in at all.

afarrell 5y ago

Keep forums smaller than 10x Dunbar’s Number.

dvt 5y ago

> manual moderating systems are also a no-go at scale Yeah, I concede this is a very hard problem (especially when advertisers are involved). And even worse, maybe it's not even worth it to solve. After all, if a minority x% of your creators are expendable to false DMCA takedowns because your market share is so huge, who cares?

dataflow 5y ago

> The problem is, manual moderating systems are also a no-go at scale. So what do you do? Is it? I'd have imagined there's some ratio of 1 mod per N people for N not too small that would make things work. It might be more like 1:1K instead of the 1:1M (or whatever) that companies prefer, but is that genuinely unaffordable or is it just that companies don't like to pay for moderators?

goodlinks 5y ago
Imho it cannot work because we dont globally agree whats okay to do and say. I think mass media has some fundamental flaws that we havent accepted yet. Edit: take out advertising in intellectual property and you would get rid of a bunch of bad actors and cobra effects.
- dataflow 5y ago
  I think your points are valid. But I'm not sure if I see them as moderation issues. As I see it, there's the question of what should be allowed, and there's the question of how to enforce it adequately. As I see it, the former is a policy issue (and likely tougher), whereas the latter is a moderation issue.
  - goodlinks 5y ago
    I 100% agree that moderation could be lightyears better. However i see this as being a bit like the BBC problem: beleiving there is such a thing as being objective, there just isnt. You can have a group of likeminded people who mostly agree and need a bit of moderation for when someones external bad day leaks into their interactions on the plaform. However if there is an underlying fundamental difference of opinion or goals then the moderators become just another weapon. We need leaders not moderators. Moderators in difference of opinion just end up punishing the weak one way or another. Leaders show by example what we can aspire to, which in turn guides moderators in how to apply the rules. If you have global platforms who are the leaders? What direction should they lead that works for china and the US?

DSingularity 5y ago

Pay for it and stop being greedy.

cxr 5y ago

Stop using bullshit centralized platforms. There is no gatekeeper on the matter of posting videos on the Internet. Established players (like Rossman) continuing to publish through the big players lends power to them. So stop doing that.

Ruthalas 5y ago
For what it's worth, Rossman also publishes on alternate platforms such as LBRY.
esyir 5y ago
You've basically requested to cede all control of the message and to fade into irrelevance.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

alacombe 5y ago

That's a blatant lie. Manual moderation is 100% possible as long as you don't aim for 80% gross profit margin.

varajelle 5y ago

What about user moderation with [+] and [-] buttons ?

concordDance 5y ago
Can easily get you echo chambers if the numbers are visible and people start using them as agree/disagree buttons. User moderation via "flag as inappropriate" might work though.

rhizome 5y ago

Shrink "at scale" until the company can handle the responsiblity. There's no inherent right to grow endlessly, and limits can be legislated if FAANG and their "best of the best" employees can't (or don't want to) figure it out.

SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago

You accept that there is an upper limit on community size, beyond which unsolvable problems await.

CamperBob2 5y ago

Slashdot's system works just fine. With the exception of overtly-illegal content, moderation should consist solely of communal inputs to a function that operates solely at the discretion of the individual user.

vetinari 5y ago
> moderation should consist solely of communal inputs to a function that operates solely at the discretion of the individual user. Exactly, Slashdot works because of its transparency; the user can see, what was moderated down, and thus whether the moderation was done to something he doesn't want to see, or whether it is something that someone else doesn't want him to see.

nikitaga 5y ago

We don't need scale. Google needs YouTube to be the only place to watch videos out there. I don't. Smaller communities self-moderate fine enough, and bigger ones can raise money from members to hire mods / editors / etc. But this isn't working as well as it should because the platform / advertising oligopoly is eating up everyone's revenue and using those funds to vertically and horizontally integrate everything under a handful of megacorp brands. For as long as this consolidation (aka "scale") continues, content moderation will remain "unsolvable".

PoignardAzur 5y ago
> We don't need scale. Google needs YouTube to be the only place to watch videos out there. I don't. Smaller communities self-moderate fine enough, and bigger ones can raise money from members to hire mods / editors / etc. The thing is, you still have the scale problem even if you break up Youtube into a hundred different video streaming sites. Say that Google would need to hire a million full-time moderators (in practice it's probably more) to ensure quality moderation for every video uploaded. If it's not sustainable for them to do that, then it won't be sustainable for a hundred companies to hire ten thousand moderators each to do the job. This is especially bad because bad actors can just post the same content on multiple platforms automatically. Unless platforms start pooling their moderation resources (in which case you're back to square one), having lots of small-scale platforms means that attackers can just upload the same thing on as many platforms as they can and hope it slip through the net in a few cases. The only way we can stop that, as a society, is if we decide that any platform for content diffusion needs to factor in and charge the price of filtering that content from the get go. That means no more free uploads on Youtube; if you wanna upload something you have to pay a fee for moderators to look over your video and certify it as safe. I think that would be a viable way for the ecosystem to go, but it would make it harder for small independent creators with no budget to get started.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > The thing is, you still have the scale problem even if you break up Youtube into a hundred different video streaming sites. No, PeerTube is a decentralized video platform with independent servers, which can work together.

Macha 5y ago

This isn't an excuse. e.g. Imagine the argument was "Disposing of chemicals safely is a no-go at scale" Businesses don't get to ignore negative externalities just because it's unprofitable

mycologos 5y ago
"Disposing chemicals" doesn't feel like the right analogy. That's a negative externality that wouldn't exist without the manufacturer -- if the manufacturer doesn't exist, then that problem goes away. "My video is not available on this platform" is different, because if the platform doesn't exist, you still have that problem.

tjpnz 5y ago

>So what do you do? You could employ a little common sense when designing your product. Is it really wise for platforms like Facebook to allow anyone to start livestreaming unrestricted? I would argue no, at the very least they should be taking measures to minimise the blast radius should someone decide to walk outside and start shooting people.