6 ms·

About 14 years ago, I also tried to tackle the public conversation troll problem and created a forum that got quite a bit of traction. While Radiopaper takes th

by daenz 4y ago

About 14 years ago, I also tried to tackle the public conversation troll problem and created a forum that got quite a bit of traction. While Radiopaper takes the carrot approach ("write things people want to engage with"), I took the stick approach: "anyone can ban anyone else for a non-trivial amount of time, but you must reply to their post, and people will see that you banned them." It was a probabilistic method to filtering out the trolls, and it worked well. Trolls wanted to ban, but they themselves became the more-frequent targets of bans. Eventually, they would get frustrated with the bans and leave. The people that remained, stayed civil to not become a clear target of a ban. There would be brief chaotic behavior, but it never lasted. Cooler heads always prevailed. Radiopaper mentions that there is a lot of room for exploration in this space, to try different models for creating emergent social behavior and productive conversations. I hope we see more of it!

Theory42 4y ago
Smart. Tit for tat is often a winning strategy.
kamikaz1k 4y ago
Sounds like it worked? What happened with the project? Not enough mass of attention?
- daenz 4y ago
  It was growing steadily but there was no clear way for me to monetize it. From a business perspective, I didn't know what I was doing. 4chan founder Chris Poole reached out to me at one point and we had a call (I was a bit star-struck!) to talk about it and some new project he was working on (I don't remember the name). But money was really tight for me and I couldn't afford to run it anymore, so I had to shut it down.
  - pooper 4y ago
    How much did it cost to run? Did you have any money coming in at all?
    - daenz 4y ago
      No I had no money coming in. I don't remember the cost tbh, but it was costing time and money, since I desperately needed to find work at the time.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> "anyone can ban anyone else for a non-trivial amount of time, but you must reply to their post, and people will see that you banned them." This, I like. It would be interesting to experience this system. My own personal policy on HN is: never downvote anyone for the content of their comment, prefer replying; if downvoting then it must be for extremely poor presentation, not content. That said, I don't tend to upvote or downvote a whole lot.
- tayo42 4y ago
  Isnt that that actual intent of of upvotes and downvotes. It was never supposed to be an agree or disagree button. Same on reddit, but its a lost cause there...
  - dash2 4y ago
    I think that dang has said that it's OK to downvote something you disagree with. There is a difference between "I disagree" and "this is dumb", but there's a very broad grey area.
- Tozen 4y ago
  On HN, it appears the downvoting is about those with the power disagreeing with a different or unpopular opinion, so is of little deterrence to trolling. The troll can be typing something that is popular or is popular, but is specifically targeting or bullying other users. The troll behavior isn't punished, unless a moderator steps in, where arguably it would have reached the point of being quite obvious or outrageous. So on HN, it seems that if a user has an issue with trolling, they would have to e-mail HN about it. And here again, it would likely need to be something more on the continual, obvious, or outrageous side for actions to be taken.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    You can click the timestamp of a comment, and then on the page you're taken to choose to flag the comment.
phailhaus 4y ago
What was the scale of your community, and how long did the forum last? I would be curious to hear such a system would perform against large numbers of bots or sockpuppet accounts. I think that techniques that work in forums may simply not scale to millions of users, when it actively affects the national conversation. For example: every time a big political announcement is to be made or an event happens, the optimal game theoretic play is to ban them to prevent them from being able to set the narrative. And it just takes one person to do it. That's not hard at all: if you have millions of users, someone will do it!
- daenz 4y ago
  I ran it for about 6 months iirc. It never got to the size where sockpuppets were a legitimate threat or IP bans insufficient. Occasionally people would switch wifi to ban the person who banned them, but I leveraged cookies where I could to try to detect that behavior. This was before browser fingerprinting and "evercookies" were widespread, or I probably would have used those too. In your example, the person would have to have posted recently in order for you to ban them, since bans only worked on quasi-recent posts. But yes, if you made yourself into a target, someone would ban you, and it was accepted in the culture because it was fun. It was acceptable that everyone got banned frequently, but far less frequently than the trolls. I should probably have mentioned that all users were anonymous to each other.
tomcam 4y ago
OK I would like to hear a whole lot more about your project!
trenchgun 4y ago
I would really like to try out this plaftorm.
mro_name 4y ago
> Eventually, they would get frustrated the trolls! That's genius!
spangry 4y ago
> "anyone can ban anyone else for a non-trivial amount of time, but you must reply to their post, and people will see that you banned them." Was that on a per-thread basis i.e. if I start a thread, I have the power to publicly ban other users who reply to my thread?
- daenz 4y ago
  Yes iirc, but bans were throttled (N bans per hour), and by banning someone, you make yourself vulnerable to a ban, because you have to reply to their post.
palisade 4y ago
You run the risk of an echo chamber with this method, though. Where like-minded groups of individuals gang up on others to keep opinions they find unpopular concealed. Which may be desirable depending on the goal of your platform or service. But, it is something to be aware you are causing.
derekzhouzhen 4y ago
I took a similar approach as radiopaper: everything you say is pre-banned, and only the person you talked to has the sole discretion to lift the ban. during the ban you cannot post again to the same person on the same topic. The other party cannot reply to you without lifting the ban. Once the ban is lifted, everyone else can see it and reply to it.

by daenz 4y ago

Theory42 4y ago

Smart. Tit for tat is often a winning strategy.

kamikaz1k 4y ago

Sounds like it worked? What happened with the project? Not enough mass of attention?

daenz 4y ago
It was growing steadily but there was no clear way for me to monetize it. From a business perspective, I didn't know what I was doing. 4chan founder Chris Poole reached out to me at one point and we had a call (I was a bit star-struck!) to talk about it and some new project he was working on (I don't remember the name). But money was really tight for me and I couldn't afford to run it anymore, so I had to shut it down.
- pooper 4y ago
  How much did it cost to run? Did you have any money coming in at all?
  - daenz 4y ago
    No I had no money coming in. I don't remember the cost tbh, but it was costing time and money, since I desperately needed to find work at the time.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

> "anyone can ban anyone else for a non-trivial amount of time, but you must reply to their post, and people will see that you banned them." This, I like. It would be interesting to experience this system. My own personal policy on HN is: never downvote anyone for the content of their comment, prefer replying; if downvoting then it must be for extremely poor presentation, not content. That said, I don't tend to upvote or downvote a whole lot.

tayo42 4y ago
Isnt that that actual intent of of upvotes and downvotes. It was never supposed to be an agree or disagree button. Same on reddit, but its a lost cause there...
- dash2 4y ago
  I think that dang has said that it's OK to downvote something you disagree with. There is a difference between "I disagree" and "this is dumb", but there's a very broad grey area.
Tozen 4y ago
On HN, it appears the downvoting is about those with the power disagreeing with a different or unpopular opinion, so is of little deterrence to trolling. The troll can be typing something that is popular or is popular, but is specifically targeting or bullying other users. The troll behavior isn't punished, unless a moderator steps in, where arguably it would have reached the point of being quite obvious or outrageous. So on HN, it seems that if a user has an issue with trolling, they would have to e-mail HN about it. And here again, it would likely need to be something more on the continual, obvious, or outrageous side for actions to be taken.
- matsemann 4y ago
  You can click the timestamp of a comment, and then on the page you're taken to choose to flag the comment.

phailhaus 4y ago

What was the scale of your community, and how long did the forum last? I would be curious to hear such a system would perform against large numbers of bots or sockpuppet accounts. I think that techniques that work in forums may simply not scale to millions of users, when it actively affects the national conversation. For example: every time a big political announcement is to be made or an event happens, the optimal game theoretic play is to ban them to prevent them from being able to set the narrative. And it just takes one person to do it. That's not hard at all: if you have millions of users, someone will do it!

daenz 4y ago
I ran it for about 6 months iirc. It never got to the size where sockpuppets were a legitimate threat or IP bans insufficient. Occasionally people would switch wifi to ban the person who banned them, but I leveraged cookies where I could to try to detect that behavior. This was before browser fingerprinting and "evercookies" were widespread, or I probably would have used those too. In your example, the person would have to have posted recently in order for you to ban them, since bans only worked on quasi-recent posts. But yes, if you made yourself into a target, someone would ban you, and it was accepted in the culture because it was fun. It was acceptable that everyone got banned frequently, but far less frequently than the trolls. I should probably have mentioned that all users were anonymous to each other.

tomcam 4y ago

OK I would like to hear a whole lot more about your project!

trenchgun 4y ago

I would really like to try out this plaftorm.

mro_name 4y ago

> Eventually, they would get frustrated the trolls! That's genius!

spangry 4y ago

> "anyone can ban anyone else for a non-trivial amount of time, but you must reply to their post, and people will see that you banned them." Was that on a per-thread basis i.e. if I start a thread, I have the power to publicly ban other users who reply to my thread?

daenz 4y ago
Yes iirc, but bans were throttled (N bans per hour), and by banning someone, you make yourself vulnerable to a ban, because you have to reply to their post.

palisade 4y ago

You run the risk of an echo chamber with this method, though. Where like-minded groups of individuals gang up on others to keep opinions they find unpopular concealed. Which may be desirable depending on the goal of your platform or service. But, it is something to be aware you are causing.

derekzhouzhen 4y ago

I took a similar approach as radiopaper: everything you say is pre-banned, and only the person you talked to has the sole discretion to lift the ban. during the ban you cannot post again to the same person on the same topic. The other party cannot reply to you without lifting the ban. Once the ban is lifted, everyone else can see it and reply to it.