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I completely agree with the concern over CS research being too heavily influenced by industry. An area I feel is underresearched is social media moderation, esp
by rhaksw 5y ago
I completely agree with the concern over CS research being too heavily influenced by industry. An area I feel is underresearched is social media moderation, especially in the more open systems like reddit where anyone can moderate.
There has been no research that I've found that looks at the impact of Reddit's style of comment moderation: by default, authors are not notified of removals and the content is presented to them as if it's still live [1]. You can try and see it yourself here [2].
Some people in-the-know may brush off this behavior, assuming it wards off bad actors. However, bad actors have access to the same tool. The question is, what is the result of that?
[1] https://i.imgur.com/E3bFvKh.png https://i.imgur.com/E3bFvKh.png
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything
- srvmshr 5y agoJust curious: What is the relationship between Reddit moderation and conference funding. I seem to have missed your point. Could you please elaborate further?
- rhaksw 5y agoThe article suggests conference funding influences what gets researched, which is the wider concern. The link is between conference funding and research. Reddit moderation is an example of something I feel is underresearched. Thanks for your question, I edited my original comment to hopefully be more clear on this.
- srvmshr 5y agoThere are enough significant impact conferences like FOCS or the TCS+ symposium, which have no/minimal corporate funding. In the initial years, even ICLR didn't have corporate sponsorship. That actually does not stop people from probing pressing issues. Reddit censorship may not be a great simile of corporate funding. Maybe even anecdotal. There are more academics on Twitter, and I havent seen evidence of censorship. (I have active accounts in both of them and the difference is quite visible of engagement in Twitter)
- rhaksw 5y ago> There are enough significant impact conferences like FOCS or the TCS+ symposium, which have no/minimal corporate funding. In the initial years, even ICLR didn't have corporate sponsorship. That actually does not stop people from probing pressing issues. Sorry if I wrote this in the wrong place. IMO it is a pressing issue that has not been researched. The assumption among many is there is nothing bad happening. > I havent seen evidence of censorship. The site in my profile can yield examples under "How do people react?"
- marginalia_nu 5y agoResearch on Reddit moderation seems more like it may belong in sociology or psychology than CS to be fair.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rhaksw 5y agoThat would be amazing if those fields would dive in but I don't think that's happened yet. Such researchers would need to pair with a coder. FWIW, this is the result of a google scholar search for "reddit moderation": https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=reddit+moderation&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=redd...
- lolinder 5y ago> Such researchers would need to pair with a coder. To set up the code for the experiment, maybe, but that could be done by even a second-year CS student. A CS researcher wouldn't be needed at all to do this research. It's strictly a social science question.
- rhaksw 5y agoI completely agree. Nonetheless, the research I've seen up to now has come from computing labs, and I was speculating that access or familiarity with the data may contribute to that.