3 ms·

It's like people don't get that arbitrary and shifting rules with inconsistent enforcement are by design, so as to make the people subject to them police themse

It's like people don't get that arbitrary and shifting rules with inconsistent enforcement are by design, so as to make the people subject to them police themselves, which is more effective at managing a community than real rules. This can even be appropriate with limited scopes like single forums and services or monolithic communities. Until a kid can understand language it's how many children and most livestock are managed. However at scale, it's objectively insane. Simple and evenly enforced rules provide a lot of freedom, where arbitrary discretion and making examples with disproportionate punishment incentivises submissiveness, and worse, toadyism. For adults the disproportionate policy approach is the definition of an abusive relationship anywhere else in reality. I realize this is just about a browser I had barely heard of, and there's zero danger of me ever becoming a user, but it's a general platform governance and culture question worth articulating as a dynamic for other issues.

undecisive 5y ago
I fear you have constructed a tectonic collision from a small mammal's soil-based home. If you are arguing against the phenomenon of CoCs in general, then I agree - they are a blight, rife with overreach and often easily misused to justify prejudice or condemn innocent misunderstandings. While I won't deny the emergent behaviour of self-policing based on fear, I suspect the origins of the CoC are actually less subtle and more an attempt to assign power to marginalised and persecuted groups, without recognition that actually causes a net increase in inequity, that power corrupts and in turn causes more persecution thanks to the bad taste left in people's mouths when being victimised unfairly due to prejudices mislabelling themselves as anti-prejudices. But that's an aside. Power will always be, inequality will always be, prejudice will always be - and the point of the CoC was never to improve that, merely invert it. It has, in some ways (along with other cultural and corporate shifts) worked beautifully and now has dominance over the Open Source community landscape at least. I don't see us putting that particular genie back in the bottle any time soon. But we can try to keep the potential harms in check. And raise the alarm when we see potentially dangerous overreaches. In the current climate of escalating prejudice on both sides of the fence, I'm not sure there's much more we can do.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > I fear you have constructed a tectonic collision from a small mammal's soil-based home. Brilliant! You have done your good deed for the day and made me smile!
  - undecisive 5y ago
    I was tempted to remove that line after I finished the whole post. Since it made someone happy, I'm very glad I left it in!
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      Please, never be tempted to remove humour. Too much of HN is humourless already!
- fmajid 5y ago
  > more an attempt to assign power to marginalised and persecuted groups More likely to self-appointed and loud people claiming to advocate for said groups.
  - undecisive 5y ago
    I mean, hypothetically, what if self-appointed and loud "advocates", maybe even members of persecuted groups, narcissisticly pushed a project like that, bullied socially inept project leaders struggling against rising prejudice within their communities, into adopting a useless and counterproductive legalism - while playing the victim against any who refused? Sounds totally implausible, now that I think about it. It's a conspiracy theory, and I'm sure we're better than that. Let's move on.
Pxtl 5y ago
> It's like people don't get that arbitrary and shifting rules with inconsistent enforcement are by design, so as to make the people subject to them police themselves, which is more effective at managing a community than real rules. Or maybe just enforcing community standards is really hard and often you find cases that are obviously wrong and harmful but don't fall under the enumerated list of rules that are broken. Making rules for punishment is really really hard. How hard? Look at the entire study of law. Arbitrary decisions fill in the gaps. It is not reasonable to expect a small company running a small community for a free product to offer a professional arbitration equivalent to legal professionals.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  I'd conjecture that all systems necessarily grow from simple rules and die of complex ones. The inflection point where enforcement becomes inconsistent is the inflection point on growth. The Vivaldi rules are in fact simple, with the exception of what seems like a wrongthink clause that crosses services, which is like a notwithstanding/wish-for-more-wishes rule. The BDFL model of open source worked for this at limited scales, where a person is making a decision and taking responsibility for it. Facebook almost succeeded in doing this well with their public board of censors, but really, once you make it a committee, it launders accountability and becomes arbitrary again. Regarding the study of law, if you want corruption and inescapable suffering, create complex and inconsistent rules. Twitter also could have done a good job when Dorsey had a kind of royal assent that legitimized decisions but he seemed to give that up. Agrawal has a brief opportunity to set good precedents as well. The objection I think most people have to censorship is when the censors don't take ownership of the decision, as then it's basically gaslighting. Rules and punishment are simple, provided they roll up to a person enforcing them. When you move from that, you get a system that is easily gamed, a kind of star chamber, and then most of your effort as a platform owner goes into fighting the tiny minority of people who game the system at the expense of the rest. It's so dumb and obvious that it can only be on purpose.

undecisive 5y ago

I fear you have constructed a tectonic collision from a small mammal's soil-based home. If you are arguing against the phenomenon of CoCs in general, then I agree - they are a blight, rife with overreach and often easily misused to justify prejudice or condemn innocent misunderstandings. While I won't deny the emergent behaviour of self-policing based on fear, I suspect the origins of the CoC are actually less subtle and more an attempt to assign power to marginalised and persecuted groups, without recognition that actually causes a net increase in inequity, that power corrupts and in turn causes more persecution thanks to the bad taste left in people's mouths when being victimised unfairly due to prejudices mislabelling themselves as anti-prejudices. But that's an aside. Power will always be, inequality will always be, prejudice will always be - and the point of the CoC was never to improve that, merely invert it. It has, in some ways (along with other cultural and corporate shifts) worked beautifully and now has dominance over the Open Source community landscape at least. I don't see us putting that particular genie back in the bottle any time soon. But we can try to keep the potential harms in check. And raise the alarm when we see potentially dangerous overreaches. In the current climate of escalating prejudice on both sides of the fence, I'm not sure there's much more we can do.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
> I fear you have constructed a tectonic collision from a small mammal's soil-based home. Brilliant! You have done your good deed for the day and made me smile!
- undecisive 5y ago
  I was tempted to remove that line after I finished the whole post. Since it made someone happy, I'm very glad I left it in!
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    Please, never be tempted to remove humour. Too much of HN is humourless already!
fmajid 5y ago
> more an attempt to assign power to marginalised and persecuted groups More likely to self-appointed and loud people claiming to advocate for said groups.
- undecisive 5y ago
  I mean, hypothetically, what if self-appointed and loud "advocates", maybe even members of persecuted groups, narcissisticly pushed a project like that, bullied socially inept project leaders struggling against rising prejudice within their communities, into adopting a useless and counterproductive legalism - while playing the victim against any who refused? Sounds totally implausible, now that I think about it. It's a conspiracy theory, and I'm sure we're better than that. Let's move on.

Pxtl 5y ago

> It's like people don't get that arbitrary and shifting rules with inconsistent enforcement are by design, so as to make the people subject to them police themselves, which is more effective at managing a community than real rules. Or maybe just enforcing community standards is really hard and often you find cases that are obviously wrong and harmful but don't fall under the enumerated list of rules that are broken. Making rules for punishment is really really hard. How hard? Look at the entire study of law. Arbitrary decisions fill in the gaps. It is not reasonable to expect a small company running a small community for a free product to offer a professional arbitration equivalent to legal professionals.

motohagiography 5y ago
I'd conjecture that all systems necessarily grow from simple rules and die of complex ones. The inflection point where enforcement becomes inconsistent is the inflection point on growth. The Vivaldi rules are in fact simple, with the exception of what seems like a wrongthink clause that crosses services, which is like a notwithstanding/wish-for-more-wishes rule. The BDFL model of open source worked for this at limited scales, where a person is making a decision and taking responsibility for it. Facebook almost succeeded in doing this well with their public board of censors, but really, once you make it a committee, it launders accountability and becomes arbitrary again. Regarding the study of law, if you want corruption and inescapable suffering, create complex and inconsistent rules. Twitter also could have done a good job when Dorsey had a kind of royal assent that legitimized decisions but he seemed to give that up. Agrawal has a brief opportunity to set good precedents as well. The objection I think most people have to censorship is when the censors don't take ownership of the decision, as then it's basically gaslighting. Rules and punishment are simple, provided they roll up to a person enforcing them. When you move from that, you get a system that is easily gamed, a kind of star chamber, and then most of your effort as a platform owner goes into fighting the tiny minority of people who game the system at the expense of the rest. It's so dumb and obvious that it can only be on purpose.