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I expect somewhere which has 1. pseudo-anonymity, 2. strong moderation and 3. a kind of federation but not quite actual decentralization. 1. pseudo-anonymity,

by chippy 5y ago

I expect somewhere which has 1. pseudo-anonymity, 2. strong moderation and 3. a kind of federation but not quite actual decentralization. 1. pseudo-anonymity, gives people freedom to speak their minds 2. moderation ensures people know that they are in a controlled space 3. Ensures that spaces have a branding, shared identity between them but are not being controlled from without, but only within

sedatk 5y ago
Decentralization and strong moderation are mutually exclusive. You can't simply have a single source of authority for content moderation and decentralize it too. It's either decentralized with variable rate of moderation quality, or have it centralized. There's no way inbetween.
- 1270018080 5y ago
  Upvotes/downvotes and reporting on reddit are forms of decentralized strong moderation.
  - sedatk 5y ago
    Users can't vote out a content, they can only downvote it which doesn't affect its visibility, only its sort order. There are even people who love that kind of content and read Reddit sorted by "controversial". Curation has some censorship effects but moderation power trumps it. Reporting is advisory too, it's not a power per se. If subreddit mods don't read any of the reports, nothing would happen. No consequences.
kspacewalk2 5y ago
"Strong moderation" is vague, and can mean a variety of levels of involvement, from commonsense weeding out of spam and malicious trolling (what I will look for), to heavy handed and blatant attempts to steer conversation toward a particular point of view and to "combat" even reasonable disagreement and skepticism on important topics. Covid is the perfect example of this. I get it, some mods on my local subreddit fancy themselves Responsible And Important People On A Mission To Fight Misinformation (in their own minds). I don't care about their precious opinions on what constitutes Evil Covid Misinformation though, I just want an adult discussion that doesn't get siderailed by trolls. That's it, nothing else. Keep the sermonizing to yourselves thanks. So whatever reddit successor gives me that, I'll go to.
- cruano 5y ago
  > "Strong moderation" is vague Could also mean "No controversial subjects", sort of like Tik Tok where any kind of political conversation, Covid related subject, etc. is taken down or ignored by the algorithm. Lots of people already think of reddit from a content consumption POV instead of a forum
nickysielicki 5y ago
I've thought about this a lot. I really should start working on it. > 1. pseudo-anonymity, gives people freedom to speak their minds Making an influential account should be exceptionally difficult. All submissions and comments should be, by default, anonymous, with users only taking an identity when relevant (ie: if you're a scientist on something like r/askscience, or a developer on r/programming). Nobody should have to make a throwaway account to be anonymous, it should just be a flag on the server. Throwaway account comments should not be possible, you should need to build reputation to make a comment that is seen by most. > 2. moderation ensures people know that they are in a controlled space Moderation, if granted special powers, will always be taken over by "powerusers" with an agenda. Moderation should be done exclusively through comment and post scoring, not through individual named users. If downvoting and upvoting worked correctly, moderation would be entirely unnecessary. That's the whole point of curation, isn't it? My main idea is to take a known set of good voters (ie: myself, some friends, early contributors, etc.) who exclusively follow the etiquette and can pick a substantial post from a bad one, and then based on user similarity to the known good set, you can grant a multiplier or a decimation to those that seem to vote similarly or dissimilarity. Essentially, you'll have fractional voting/scoring. > 3. Ensures that spaces have a branding, shared identity between them but are not being controlled from without, but only within I don't like the idea of anyone being able to create a namespace. It fractures things too significantly and you get echochambers for each party or each viewpoint. The usenet hierarchy was better, and it should be combined with subscriptions to #tags to get more granularity for individual user interests.
- ronsor 5y ago
  > (1a) All submissions and comments should be, by default, anonymous, with users only taking an identity when relevant This honestly sounds awfully similar to 4chan. > (1b) Throwaway account comments should not be possible [...] build reputation to make a comment that is seen by most. Reddit is already sort of like this, honestly. That's why high karma accounts are often sold. > (2) grant a multiplier or a decimation to those that seem to vote similarly or dissimilarity. This will be slowly (or swiftly) shifted by brigading bots. > (3) I don't like the idea of anyone being able to create a namespace. It fractures things too significantly and you get echochambers for each party or each viewpoint. You'll still get echochambers for each viewpoint. There will just be fewer of them. Based on point 2, the majority will choose the viewpoints of the echochamber.
nisegami 5y ago
Damn, back to the imageboards it is.

by chippy 5y ago

sedatk 5y ago

Decentralization and strong moderation are mutually exclusive. You can't simply have a single source of authority for content moderation and decentralize it too. It's either decentralized with variable rate of moderation quality, or have it centralized. There's no way inbetween.

1270018080 5y ago
Upvotes/downvotes and reporting on reddit are forms of decentralized strong moderation.
- sedatk 5y ago
  Users can't vote out a content, they can only downvote it which doesn't affect its visibility, only its sort order. There are even people who love that kind of content and read Reddit sorted by "controversial". Curation has some censorship effects but moderation power trumps it. Reporting is advisory too, it's not a power per se. If subreddit mods don't read any of the reports, nothing would happen. No consequences.

kspacewalk2 5y ago

"Strong moderation" is vague, and can mean a variety of levels of involvement, from commonsense weeding out of spam and malicious trolling (what I will look for), to heavy handed and blatant attempts to steer conversation toward a particular point of view and to "combat" even reasonable disagreement and skepticism on important topics. Covid is the perfect example of this. I get it, some mods on my local subreddit fancy themselves Responsible And Important People On A Mission To Fight Misinformation (in their own minds). I don't care about their precious opinions on what constitutes Evil Covid Misinformation though, I just want an adult discussion that doesn't get siderailed by trolls. That's it, nothing else. Keep the sermonizing to yourselves thanks. So whatever reddit successor gives me that, I'll go to.

cruano 5y ago
> "Strong moderation" is vague Could also mean "No controversial subjects", sort of like Tik Tok where any kind of political conversation, Covid related subject, etc. is taken down or ignored by the algorithm. Lots of people already think of reddit from a content consumption POV instead of a forum

nickysielicki 5y ago

I've thought about this a lot. I really should start working on it. > 1. pseudo-anonymity, gives people freedom to speak their minds Making an influential account should be exceptionally difficult. All submissions and comments should be, by default, anonymous, with users only taking an identity when relevant (ie: if you're a scientist on something like r/askscience, or a developer on r/programming). Nobody should have to make a throwaway account to be anonymous, it should just be a flag on the server. Throwaway account comments should not be possible, you should need to build reputation to make a comment that is seen by most. > 2. moderation ensures people know that they are in a controlled space Moderation, if granted special powers, will always be taken over by "powerusers" with an agenda. Moderation should be done exclusively through comment and post scoring, not through individual named users. If downvoting and upvoting worked correctly, moderation would be entirely unnecessary. That's the whole point of curation, isn't it? My main idea is to take a known set of good voters (ie: myself, some friends, early contributors, etc.) who exclusively follow the etiquette and can pick a substantial post from a bad one, and then based on user similarity to the known good set, you can grant a multiplier or a decimation to those that seem to vote similarly or dissimilarity. Essentially, you'll have fractional voting/scoring. > 3. Ensures that spaces have a branding, shared identity between them but are not being controlled from without, but only within I don't like the idea of anyone being able to create a namespace. It fractures things too significantly and you get echochambers for each party or each viewpoint. The usenet hierarchy was better, and it should be combined with subscriptions to #tags to get more granularity for individual user interests.

ronsor 5y ago
> (1a) All submissions and comments should be, by default, anonymous, with users only taking an identity when relevant This honestly sounds awfully similar to 4chan. > (1b) Throwaway account comments should not be possible [...] build reputation to make a comment that is seen by most. Reddit is already sort of like this, honestly. That's why high karma accounts are often sold. > (2) grant a multiplier or a decimation to those that seem to vote similarly or dissimilarity. This will be slowly (or swiftly) shifted by brigading bots. > (3) I don't like the idea of anyone being able to create a namespace. It fractures things too significantly and you get echochambers for each party or each viewpoint. You'll still get echochambers for each viewpoint. There will just be fewer of them. Based on point 2, the majority will choose the viewpoints of the echochamber.

nisegami 5y ago

Damn, back to the imageboards it is.