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I've noticed that all the online spaces I enjoy visiting are heavily moderated. Whenever I get linked to "free speech" loosely-moderated platforms, I usually hi

I've noticed that all the online spaces I enjoy visiting are heavily moderated. Whenever I get linked to "free speech" loosely-moderated platforms, I usually hit the back button pretty quick.

andrewfromx 5y ago
I can't wait for https://www.deso.org/ https://www.deso.org/ to take off, not just for the value of the coin to increase, but to see lots of nodes taking over the responsibility of twitter/fb/youtube etc's what's okay and what's not. There will be someone willing to run a node that has all the stuff blocked or unblocked to suit everyone's tastes.
- simias 5y ago
  Anybody can run their own platform right now without involving any cryptononsense. That's how the net used to work after all. Anybody failing to understand what lead to the centralization is bound to reproduce the same mistakes. It's not a technical issue, it's a social one.
  - andrewfromx 5y ago
    I'm a believer after watching "The Next Big Social Media Network Will Be On the Blockchain. Nader Al-Naji Tells Us Why." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFiPVGN3J2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFiPVGN3J2M
- cinntaile 5y ago
  Isn't that how the different Matrix servers work already?
  - andrewfromx 5y ago
    Incentives! You have to listen to Nader Al-Naji explain the vision. It gives me goosebumps.
    - nobody9999 5y ago
      >Incentives! You have to listen to Nader Al-Naji explain the vision. It gives me goosebumps. This isn't a knock on you personally, but when I come to HN for discussion, I'd like the discussion to be on HN. Insisting that I view some YouTube (which I avoid like the plague because I hate their business model) content in order to understand your point of view, just makes me want to ignore you. Not down-vote you, just ignore you. It sounds like you have a point of view that seems (to you at least) important. If it's that important/relevant/insightful, then please explain your point of view. I don't know or care who "Nader Al-Naji" might be, nor am I going to jump off to another site to find out. I want to be crystal clear about this: I'm not trying to beat up on you (andrewfromx) or anyone else. Rather, I'm interested in your point of view not that of some rando on the site of some rapacious corporation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
robertakarobin 5y ago
Yes, in general "free speech" platforms seem to quickly turn into Alt-Right platforms that are, ironically, heavily moderated. (Looking at you, Voat)
- optimalsolver 5y ago
  I've said this before, but it's particularly notable how free speech Reddit alternatives very quickly end up taking a far-right tone. What's really funny is how all discussions they host have to be approached from that angle. So you can't just talk about your favorite TV show. You have to first make a nod to how it features a Jewish conspiracy to push black-white interracial relationships. Only then can you go on to discuss the actual episode.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    This is because Reddit was the original free speech platform, and you could find anything from any or no political leaning. Then they dropped free speech and kicked off right leaning content. So of course the alternatives quickly go right. If they had kicked off left wing content all of the free speech sites would be left, and you couldn't talk about your favorite TV show without going into the relative representation of different races in the cast.
    - KerrAvon 5y ago
      Pretty sure right-leaning content per se is still available on reddit and what's actually banned is outright Nazism, racism, violence, etc. Lefty content featuring coordinated politcal violence would also get banned, if it existed.
      - mschuster91 5y ago
        > Lefty content featuring coordinated politcal violence would also get banned, if it existed. And that last part is the entire point: There simply is no mainstream-relevant occurency of left-wing terrorism and murders any more in the Western world. The most relevant militant group was the German RAF, which has all but dissolved in the early 90s (there are three still on the run and occasionally robbing a bank but that's it). In contrast, murders and other organized violence and terrorism based on right-wing ideology is shockingly commonplace. With online-based hate speech, it is just the same matter, only a different medium - and there is so much more content that draws in right-wing hate speech (such as anti-immigration stuff, antisemitism, Islamophobia and LGBT hate) than anything that inspires left-wing hate speech. The only thing that comes close to hate speech from the left wing are the "eat the rich" slogan and Stalin/Gulag memes, and that's it. As a result, it is obvious from the numbers that the right wing will always complain about "we are getting censored and the lefties are not!!!"... well, duh, how about if the complainers would stop doing the things they get moderated for?!
jl2718 5y ago
Do you seek the truth unconditionally, or only truth that fits within your pre-conceived notions of acceptability? Can you imagine a society where an objective truth was unacceptable, and denial of that truth was harmful to themselves or others?
- cogman10 5y ago
  To be frank, often when I see this glossy pamphlet cover for free speech, you open up the pamphlet and see a bunch of child porn, antisemitism and/or racism. The issue with free speech platforms is they attract a crowd of people whose only narrative is one that can't be said in other places. It isn't a narrative of truth, it is one of hate and bigotry. I've seen few examples where objective truth is banned. I have, however, seen a lot of Nazis get banned.
  - zionic 5y ago
    That’s just a flaw in your brain’s logical processing. I’ve seen this again and again, people will see an ocean of normal content anywhere free speech is allowed and laser-focus on the single floating turd. They’ll then mischaracterize the entire ocean as the turd, it’s like they have no sense of proportionality.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      Name a free speech platform where I'm not going to find the turd on the front page at this very moment. I'm happy to be shown to be wrong, but from my experience what you are saying doesn't exist.
      - jl2718 5y ago
        I think of the sea of knowledge as a bunch of floating turds at first sight, which are intentionally provocative and noxious but easy to spot, mostly water below, which is the context of common knowledge and beliefs, which may be the unstated assumption of the material, and then nuggets of gold below, which are hard to find because they are repressed for some reason, legal, social, safety, or otherwise, and therefore potentially valuable to a certain set of objectives. But both turds and gold nuggets face the same types of moderation pressure by their disruptive nature.
m_fayer 5y ago
Here here. This and metafilter are my two islands of quality, both very much moderated.
- mesofile 5y ago
  I think what's been even more effective than moderation for Metafilter is the imposition of a $5 flat fee to join. I would happily pay as much to stay on HN. A very affordable and worthwhile purchase for an individual, but a significant economic barrier for bot farms.
axiomsEnd 5y ago
Slate Star Codex put it nicely "The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong."
- astrange 5y ago
  Which is funny since it's an accurate description of his comment section, although I'm sure he knows that.
bnralt 5y ago
Can't say this has been my experience. Many of the places I've found with the best discussions have had little to no moderation. The old IMDB boards, for example, were almost entirely devoid of moderation, but had some of the best and most informative discussions about movies and TV shows. There are a number of niche forums I frequent that are similar. I've even seen a number of subreddits with no moderators/inactive moderators which were pretty good, even with a few thousand members. I suppose might be that the forums you're discussing may be one of the ones created with the express selling point of having low/no moderation, while these other places where created as a place to have discussions first and foremost.
- k__ 5y ago
  There are some hidden gems, that's right. But I had the impression that you habe to ignore a swath of racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, and conspiracy theory to find them.
  - bnralt 5y ago
    Personally, I've found that I've had to avoid hate and misinformation just about anywhere I go on the internet. I think there's a tendency for people to get used to the hate and misinformation that's acceptable for their in-group and become blind to it, thinking that their corner of the internet is devoid of it. For instance, many posts here about geopolitics appear to me as xenophobic and full of false information (particularly when they're countries that I'm familiar with). But it's hard for people to see that, or even think anyone could legitimately feel that way, when it's considered by the in-group to simply be "common sense." Heavy handed moderation about a subject (rather than simple topicality like with Hacker News) can lead to the entrenchment of these in-groups, which can both increases the level of these comments and leads people to think of them as nothing more than common discourse. It also increases bifurcation, so you have competing "destroy all Pepsi" and "destroy all Coke" forums, both of whom think they're merely bring moderate common sense ideas forward to oppose the extremists on the other end. Having said that, the forums I'm talking about seem to have a lower level of this in general, since they often focus on a particular niche. Similar to how the rules against political discussion let's Hacker News have better discussions than in general, but when political discussions do slip through then tend to be closer to typical internet discussions.
wormslayer666 5y ago
It depends on what sort of content you're looking for. Reasoned discussion on contentious issues demands considerable moderation, but anonymous platforms are great for legitimate niche/curiosity-driven topics. For example of the second, there was a thread on /ck/ a few weeks back where some guy (probably a grad student; I'll never know) stumbled on a few $K of food lab equipment. Thread went on with a variety of experiments/projects which ranged from "reasonable" to "why would you even consider this" (some kind of flavored oil distillate from a happy meal, used to make ice cream). If that was on HN, it would be someone's social-climbing portfolio blog, or I would have to wonder if it's astroturfing by some lab equipment company, or Mcdonalds. I'd question if this really was a curiosity-based endeavor, or if it was just someone trying to signal to potential employers "look at my Relevant Project!" or "look how quirky I am!" to friends. But none of that was a concern; there is really no way for that individual to profit or benefit from this in any context. It's an anonymous forum, and there's strong social pressure to not subvert that (unless it is simply by virtue of posting similar content). It takes the game theory out of the equation; nobody is trying to sell me something. It's not for everything or everyone, and there's definitely some effort in filtering out garbage posts. The same goes for HN, except the content to manually filter out is the sea of sometimes-veiled advertisements and self-promotion rather than plain-faced flamebait.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Platforms can be both anonymous (or more usually, pseudonymous) AND moderated. Schopenhauer's commentary on authorship and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivations should be far more widely read.
- Der_Einzige 5y ago
  That thread on /ck/ was legendary! I've also seen some pretty funny "ITT: Pretend we're HN" threads on /g/. The Overlap between 4chan and HN seems to be larger than it originally appears...
  - f1refly 5y ago
    I'd be suprised if most people on 4chan's /g/ and other anonymous technology boards wouldn't frequent hacker news on a regular basis. The individuals behaviour just depends on the sites social norms, so they're not a nuisance here.
matsemann 5y ago
Basically the Paradox of tolerance: The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I've noticed that all the online spaces I enjoy visiting are heavily moderated. Whenever I get linked to "free speech" loosely-moderated platforms, I usually hit the back button pretty quick.

andrewfromx 5y ago

I can't wait for https://www.deso.org/ https://www.deso.org/ to take off, not just for the value of the coin to increase, but to see lots of nodes taking over the responsibility of twitter/fb/youtube etc's what's okay and what's not. There will be someone willing to run a node that has all the stuff blocked or unblocked to suit everyone's tastes.

simias 5y ago
Anybody can run their own platform right now without involving any cryptononsense. That's how the net used to work after all. Anybody failing to understand what lead to the centralization is bound to reproduce the same mistakes. It's not a technical issue, it's a social one.
- andrewfromx 5y ago
  I'm a believer after watching "The Next Big Social Media Network Will Be On the Blockchain. Nader Al-Naji Tells Us Why." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFiPVGN3J2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFiPVGN3J2M
cinntaile 5y ago
Isn't that how the different Matrix servers work already?
- andrewfromx 5y ago
  Incentives! You have to listen to Nader Al-Naji explain the vision. It gives me goosebumps.
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >Incentives! You have to listen to Nader Al-Naji explain the vision. It gives me goosebumps. This isn't a knock on you personally, but when I come to HN for discussion, I'd like the discussion to be on HN. Insisting that I view some YouTube (which I avoid like the plague because I hate their business model) content in order to understand your point of view, just makes me want to ignore you. Not down-vote you, just ignore you. It sounds like you have a point of view that seems (to you at least) important. If it's that important/relevant/insightful, then please explain your point of view. I don't know or care who "Nader Al-Naji" might be, nor am I going to jump off to another site to find out. I want to be crystal clear about this: I'm not trying to beat up on you (andrewfromx) or anyone else. Rather, I'm interested in your point of view not that of some rando on the site of some rapacious corporation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

robertakarobin 5y ago

Yes, in general "free speech" platforms seem to quickly turn into Alt-Right platforms that are, ironically, heavily moderated. (Looking at you, Voat)

optimalsolver 5y ago
I've said this before, but it's particularly notable how free speech Reddit alternatives very quickly end up taking a far-right tone. What's really funny is how all discussions they host have to be approached from that angle. So you can't just talk about your favorite TV show. You have to first make a nod to how it features a Jewish conspiracy to push black-white interracial relationships. Only then can you go on to discuss the actual episode.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  This is because Reddit was the original free speech platform, and you could find anything from any or no political leaning. Then they dropped free speech and kicked off right leaning content. So of course the alternatives quickly go right. If they had kicked off left wing content all of the free speech sites would be left, and you couldn't talk about your favorite TV show without going into the relative representation of different races in the cast.
  - KerrAvon 5y ago
    Pretty sure right-leaning content per se is still available on reddit and what's actually banned is outright Nazism, racism, violence, etc. Lefty content featuring coordinated politcal violence would also get banned, if it existed.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      > Lefty content featuring coordinated politcal violence would also get banned, if it existed. And that last part is the entire point: There simply is no mainstream-relevant occurency of left-wing terrorism and murders any more in the Western world. The most relevant militant group was the German RAF, which has all but dissolved in the early 90s (there are three still on the run and occasionally robbing a bank but that's it). In contrast, murders and other organized violence and terrorism based on right-wing ideology is shockingly commonplace. With online-based hate speech, it is just the same matter, only a different medium - and there is so much more content that draws in right-wing hate speech (such as anti-immigration stuff, antisemitism, Islamophobia and LGBT hate) than anything that inspires left-wing hate speech. The only thing that comes close to hate speech from the left wing are the "eat the rich" slogan and Stalin/Gulag memes, and that's it. As a result, it is obvious from the numbers that the right wing will always complain about "we are getting censored and the lefties are not!!!"... well, duh, how about if the complainers would stop doing the things they get moderated for?!

jl2718 5y ago

Do you seek the truth unconditionally, or only truth that fits within your pre-conceived notions of acceptability? Can you imagine a society where an objective truth was unacceptable, and denial of that truth was harmful to themselves or others?

cogman10 5y ago
To be frank, often when I see this glossy pamphlet cover for free speech, you open up the pamphlet and see a bunch of child porn, antisemitism and/or racism. The issue with free speech platforms is they attract a crowd of people whose only narrative is one that can't be said in other places. It isn't a narrative of truth, it is one of hate and bigotry. I've seen few examples where objective truth is banned. I have, however, seen a lot of Nazis get banned.
- zionic 5y ago
  That’s just a flaw in your brain’s logical processing. I’ve seen this again and again, people will see an ocean of normal content anywhere free speech is allowed and laser-focus on the single floating turd. They’ll then mischaracterize the entire ocean as the turd, it’s like they have no sense of proportionality.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    Name a free speech platform where I'm not going to find the turd on the front page at this very moment. I'm happy to be shown to be wrong, but from my experience what you are saying doesn't exist.
    - jl2718 5y ago
      I think of the sea of knowledge as a bunch of floating turds at first sight, which are intentionally provocative and noxious but easy to spot, mostly water below, which is the context of common knowledge and beliefs, which may be the unstated assumption of the material, and then nuggets of gold below, which are hard to find because they are repressed for some reason, legal, social, safety, or otherwise, and therefore potentially valuable to a certain set of objectives. But both turds and gold nuggets face the same types of moderation pressure by their disruptive nature.

m_fayer 5y ago

Here here. This and metafilter are my two islands of quality, both very much moderated.

mesofile 5y ago
I think what's been even more effective than moderation for Metafilter is the imposition of a $5 flat fee to join. I would happily pay as much to stay on HN. A very affordable and worthwhile purchase for an individual, but a significant economic barrier for bot farms.

axiomsEnd 5y ago

Slate Star Codex put it nicely "The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong."

astrange 5y ago
Which is funny since it's an accurate description of his comment section, although I'm sure he knows that.

bnralt 5y ago

Can't say this has been my experience. Many of the places I've found with the best discussions have had little to no moderation. The old IMDB boards, for example, were almost entirely devoid of moderation, but had some of the best and most informative discussions about movies and TV shows. There are a number of niche forums I frequent that are similar. I've even seen a number of subreddits with no moderators/inactive moderators which were pretty good, even with a few thousand members. I suppose might be that the forums you're discussing may be one of the ones created with the express selling point of having low/no moderation, while these other places where created as a place to have discussions first and foremost.

k__ 5y ago
There are some hidden gems, that's right. But I had the impression that you habe to ignore a swath of racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, and conspiracy theory to find them.
- bnralt 5y ago
  Personally, I've found that I've had to avoid hate and misinformation just about anywhere I go on the internet. I think there's a tendency for people to get used to the hate and misinformation that's acceptable for their in-group and become blind to it, thinking that their corner of the internet is devoid of it. For instance, many posts here about geopolitics appear to me as xenophobic and full of false information (particularly when they're countries that I'm familiar with). But it's hard for people to see that, or even think anyone could legitimately feel that way, when it's considered by the in-group to simply be "common sense." Heavy handed moderation about a subject (rather than simple topicality like with Hacker News) can lead to the entrenchment of these in-groups, which can both increases the level of these comments and leads people to think of them as nothing more than common discourse. It also increases bifurcation, so you have competing "destroy all Pepsi" and "destroy all Coke" forums, both of whom think they're merely bring moderate common sense ideas forward to oppose the extremists on the other end. Having said that, the forums I'm talking about seem to have a lower level of this in general, since they often focus on a particular niche. Similar to how the rules against political discussion let's Hacker News have better discussions than in general, but when political discussions do slip through then tend to be closer to typical internet discussions.

wormslayer666 5y ago

It depends on what sort of content you're looking for. Reasoned discussion on contentious issues demands considerable moderation, but anonymous platforms are great for legitimate niche/curiosity-driven topics. For example of the second, there was a thread on /ck/ a few weeks back where some guy (probably a grad student; I'll never know) stumbled on a few $K of food lab equipment. Thread went on with a variety of experiments/projects which ranged from "reasonable" to "why would you even consider this" (some kind of flavored oil distillate from a happy meal, used to make ice cream). If that was on HN, it would be someone's social-climbing portfolio blog, or I would have to wonder if it's astroturfing by some lab equipment company, or Mcdonalds. I'd question if this really was a curiosity-based endeavor, or if it was just someone trying to signal to potential employers "look at my Relevant Project!" or "look how quirky I am!" to friends. But none of that was a concern; there is really no way for that individual to profit or benefit from this in any context. It's an anonymous forum, and there's strong social pressure to not subvert that (unless it is simply by virtue of posting similar content). It takes the game theory out of the equation; nobody is trying to sell me something. It's not for everything or everyone, and there's definitely some effort in filtering out garbage posts. The same goes for HN, except the content to manually filter out is the sea of sometimes-veiled advertisements and self-promotion rather than plain-faced flamebait.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Platforms can be both anonymous (or more usually, pseudonymous) AND moderated. Schopenhauer's commentary on authorship and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivations should be far more widely read.
Der_Einzige 5y ago
That thread on /ck/ was legendary! I've also seen some pretty funny "ITT: Pretend we're HN" threads on /g/. The Overlap between 4chan and HN seems to be larger than it originally appears...
- f1refly 5y ago
  I'd be suprised if most people on 4chan's /g/ and other anonymous technology boards wouldn't frequent hacker news on a regular basis. The individuals behaviour just depends on the sites social norms, so they're not a nuisance here.

matsemann 5y ago

Basically the Paradox of tolerance: The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance