3 ms·
Everything is a bandaid when you're policing what people say. Manual moderation is unlikely to solve the issue to people's liking either, it doesn't on here or
by strangeattractr 5y ago
Everything is a bandaid when you're policing what people say. Manual moderation is unlikely to solve the issue to people's liking either, it doesn't on here or anywhere else I see it done.
Moderation on social media isn't something that can be solved satisfactorily, everyone is always unhappy with it. Take the lab leak theory with COVID, originally Facebook came under fire for allowing misinformation to spread so was blocking content which contained this claim because it was considered harmful but they reversed course once traditional media such as Vanity Fair began reporting it. Regardless of where you stand on this, you're unhappy with what they did.
Even hate speech is pretty ambiguous. The issue is one of subjective interpretation. Some comments are unambiguously hateful, others are hateful to some and not to others due to their cultural context which is important when you consider that these are global platforms. I've found it much easier to not use them than worry about what's on them.
- elliekelly 5y ago> Manual moderation is unlikely to solve the issue to people's liking either, it doesn't on here or anywhere else I see it done. I wholeheartedly disagree. I think the human-approach of HN mods is _the_ reason this site is better and different from other social/forum sites.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoHN is a fairly ideologically homogeneous community. Moderating it is "easy mode" compared to FB or somewhere else that has a broader cross section of the population.
- jakelazaroff 5y agoThe point of moderation is not to make everyone happy. It’s to maximize profit, which is a second order effect of the size and engagement of the user base. If assholes are being toxic on your platform, that might be good for a while — until people start leaving and the media starts reporting on it. If someone is being an asshole to other patrons in a bar, they get thrown out. No one worries about whether they’re happy with the decision. No one says “actually their comments are only subjectively asshole-ish.” We make these judgments constantly, in basically every arena in life. Why do we start wringing our hands when it comes to online platforms?
- SpicyLemonZest 5y agoI don't know if this is true for everyone, but I had no issue a decade ago. I only started wringing my hands once I started seeing people abuse online moderation policies for political gain. I've seen increasing evidence of that over the years, and the big crossover point for me was in October, when Twitter moderators banned a newspaper article about a presidential candidate's son under the premise that obtaining his private documents was hacking.
- _ph_ 5y agoIt would be a good start if any clear hate speech and very personal attacks would be moderated and prosecuted regularly.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoThe manual moderation here is pretty terrific. No doubt there are some that feel abused by it, but I'm sure they can find another platform more to their liking.