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> Users who violate the rules must talk to a “conflict coordinator” and read documents about why their behavior was problematic before they can post again. Thes

by beachy 4y ago

> Users who violate the rules must talk to a “conflict coordinator” and read documents about why their behavior was problematic before they can post again. These moves are intended to “lay a foundation for users and set a different expectation” for how users should behave online, Ms. Austin said. There are lots of great ideas about how to tame problematic online behaviour. But in the end I've only see one working well and at scale - here at HN, @dang's courteous yet determined interventions. As luck would have it, I noticed a new one this morning, classic dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31265977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31265977 Perhaps there is literally no tech. that can do as good a job as a motivated savvy human.

aaomidi 4y ago
Dang is great most of the time but effectively ends up pushing a "centrist" semi liberal view point. I do not envy what dang does. It's a hard job. But at the end of the day these positions end up effectively enforcing the middle ground logical fallacy.
- chillacy 4y ago
  From what I've seen and noticed myself, exposure and engaging with different arguments in good faith (e.g. able to switch sides and argue for the other side in as convincing a way, as one might do in a debate club) tends to either move people towards the center or makes them agnostic to any solution. At least in political questions, or questions of "ought" as opposed to "is".
- dvt 4y ago
  > I do not envy what dang does. It's a hard job. But at the end of the day these positions end up effectively enforcing the middle ground logical fallacy. Dang has personally dinged me a few times -- maybe I'd disagree with a few, but the guy seems alright. Sometimes I troll and don't get caught, sometimes I'm being honest but dang dings me. I dunno', but this is by far the best forum on the modern web. Of all fallacies, the "middle ground fallacy" seems to me to be the best.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  The middle ground "fallacy" as used by most people in reference to social media moderation is usually a strawman. Often pushed by the exact types of people responsible for social media being the divisive cesspool that it is. dang's job sucks, but him pushing for moderation (as in moderate behavior regardless of opinion being expressed) is exactly what makes HN enjoyable even in threads where I don't necessarily agree with the consensus.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    Liking moderate behavior is because you're a moderate. Which is basically my point. You didn't explain how it's a fallacy rather than just state it is. The middle ground might be right in some stuff, it might also be extremely damaging in others. I'm sure you can think of examples for that.
    - dotnet00 4y ago
      In my experience, when people cite the middle ground fallacy, it's because they're so radicalized that they believe that to a self-described centrist, the ideal compromise between genocide and no genocide is half a genocide, which is obviously a complete strawman. I've only ever seen it used in bad faith arguments of that sort, thus my previous comment. In my opinion that sort of ever more absurd "if you're not with us you're against us" type thinking is what has turned social media into such a cesspool, and by enforcing a sort of moderate state, that sort of person gets pushed away, making the space more tolerable for healthier minds. Eg. with abortion it's almost impossible to have a civil, nuanced debate on social media because the extremes of both sides have cemented themselves into (fairly hypocritical) positions that paint everyone who isn't fully with them as an enemy, even though there's a lot of room for reasonable compromise and healthy debate on the effects and tradeoffs of specifics of related policy.
      - aaomidi 4y ago
        I mean the example you give is actually great. The idea that everything should be a debate is kinda how things get pushed to really weird areas. Most Americans would argue (and there's data to back this up) that abortion shouldn't even be something that we need to have a nuanced discussion about. The idea of nuanced discussion for everything is how stuff get pushed into harmful and extremist views. The idea of "nuanced discussion" doesn't really work when the outcome of one side of the nuanced discussion is the subjugation of a whole class of people. America went through "nuanced discussion" about the "Japanese problem". It went through "nuanced discussion" about civil rights. Most of this ended up either literally fucking over a group of innocent people, or delaying action that should've been taken decades prior. The idea that a "nuanced discussion" is the way to go is exactly what that fallacy is talking about. Basically you can't have people's rights and lives talked about as if one side of the discussion has the right to take that away from them. Think about how long it took us to legalize gay marriage. The only thing that got the ball really rolling was stonewall. Or think about the Vietnam War. Extremists helped end it. How about climate change? Do we have a nuanced discussion between the older population who is going to be dead by the time this becomes a problem, or do we listen to the climate extemists who are generally younger and the ones who are going to get fucked by this? Anyway, middle ground politics is a dead area and not something that always works. The people who like it are generally the people who are fine with the status quo. So of course you're going to see angry view points (who most of the time have all the right to be angry) as a cesspool.
- baisq 4y ago
  I agree with you. In the interest of cohesion and to avoid conflict, every new user who posts their point of view and isn't a centrist-leaning-to-the-left progressive ends up banned in the end. Even if the new user is polite and well-meaning, after so many years the community is completely full of centrist progressives and every post that goes against that is a trigger for a flame war - in the interest of avoiding conflict it's easier to ban the new guy than it is to warn everybody involved.
  - MrMan 4y ago
    There is nothing progressive about HN - it was created to push a libertarian agenda.
    - baisq 4y ago
      Back in the day, yes. Today, not at all. Everything you read here is regulation, regulation, regulation.
- hoseja 4y ago
  Vast majority of people are semi-liberal centrists.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    That's not necessarily a reason to push conversations to the middle.
headsoup 4y ago
Absolutely correct. Their moderation idea quoted here sounds horrible, as in 'we'll take you to room 101 for re-education' horrible. You just point users to the moderation/conduct guidelines and ban them if they continue to offend. Human moderation against clearly set community expectations for behaviour is the only effective way. And if things are going to get too spicy, do the same as always and ban religious/political discussion altogether. The reason we have such massive issues with Twitter/FB/etc is becuase they essentially said they were gigantic open public spaces with no moderation guidelines at all, then started enforcing arbitrary 'moderation' based on political or cultural biases, including banning content instead of bad behaviour (which it seems a lot of people out there - including the WSJ staffer writing the article - have a really hard time understanding the difference between). HalloApp will avoid the problem by having the 50 user group limit, but how long until they get the 'feature request' to allow bigger and bigger groups? It also sounds almost exactly like Facebook groups, so what's new there aside paying for it? I would be cautious with this platform being created from ex-Twitter employees, they will continue to implement 'misinformation' policies that police content rather than behaviour, but time will tell. It's interesting to see it all come round again to basically the forums of old: Specific interest groups, smaller scale, moderation to suit. Who knew that worked...
thinkingemote 4y ago
And all silcon valley wants to do away with this type of work in the name of HumanOps. Highly educated professionals as typically hired by tech do not want to moderate for money and so they and their employers use machine learning for such "drudge work". Moderation is triggering and traumatic and abuse reports can cause psychological harm to the worker dealing with it. This is literally what all of silicon valley believes. In real life, therapists have to go to their own therapists regularly so there is some precedent! That they don't see the army of Reddit moderators as an indicator that things can scale is a sign. I suspect it's about an under valued skill in people. Personally I'm in favour of the semi-anonymous freenode channel ops who are encouraged to be hidden at least until required and image board "janitors". Basically moderators shouldn't be idolized or be given unique powers or made to stand out as a special power user but it should be seen as a kind of service. Humble moderation.
TheMightyLlama 4y ago
IMO The current moderation model centres around moderating the things people communicate so as not to offend others. And results in attempts at keeping all communications in the sphere ‘pure’. Social media however has grown far beyond what I think the original inventors intended at the time of creation. couple that with a multitude of legal jurisdictions and levels of sensitivity I fee we can no longer keep the environment clean to so many different standards and must instead switch to a model which is more akin to defaulting to being exposed to nothing and choosing over time to be exposed to some categories of potentially offensive things. I did have a stab at this and fee it needs refining for sure. Wether this is a valid attempt or not, I think the worry that the current moderation model isn’t adequate is grounded in reality. https://gist.github.com/TheMightyLlama/bb77a05d3dde4da2511426e34279e7d6 https://gist.github.com/TheMightyLlama/bb77a05d3dde4da251142... Typing from phone. Sorry.
qiskit 4y ago
> There are lots of great ideas about how to tame problematic online behaviour. Isn't that what all the censoring europeans, chinese, russians, saudis, israelis, etc all say? All censors are trying to target "problematic" behavior. Your comment is no different than what every tyrannical or oppressive regime espouses. The biggest problem with social media and internet is that it is transnational. Countries and people that value censorship really shouldn't have a say in american social media. I believe they should develop their own social media. I no longer ascribe to the idea that everyone should have free speech. I believe we should have free speech in america and you should have whatever you want in your own country and own social media. The problem with american social media is that it is trying to appease everyone and as a result, it becomes a race to the lowest common denominator.
- beachy 4y ago
  > Countries and people that value censorship really shouldn't have a say in american social media. I believe they should develop their own social media. If American social media chooses to be global (it does!), then putting up with the rules of the countries it chooses to operate in is part of the game.

by beachy 4y ago

aaomidi 4y ago

Dang is great most of the time but effectively ends up pushing a "centrist" semi liberal view point. I do not envy what dang does. It's a hard job. But at the end of the day these positions end up effectively enforcing the middle ground logical fallacy.

chillacy 4y ago
From what I've seen and noticed myself, exposure and engaging with different arguments in good faith (e.g. able to switch sides and argue for the other side in as convincing a way, as one might do in a debate club) tends to either move people towards the center or makes them agnostic to any solution. At least in political questions, or questions of "ought" as opposed to "is".
dvt 4y ago
> I do not envy what dang does. It's a hard job. But at the end of the day these positions end up effectively enforcing the middle ground logical fallacy. Dang has personally dinged me a few times -- maybe I'd disagree with a few, but the guy seems alright. Sometimes I troll and don't get caught, sometimes I'm being honest but dang dings me. I dunno', but this is by far the best forum on the modern web. Of all fallacies, the "middle ground fallacy" seems to me to be the best.
dotnet00 4y ago
The middle ground "fallacy" as used by most people in reference to social media moderation is usually a strawman. Often pushed by the exact types of people responsible for social media being the divisive cesspool that it is. dang's job sucks, but him pushing for moderation (as in moderate behavior regardless of opinion being expressed) is exactly what makes HN enjoyable even in threads where I don't necessarily agree with the consensus.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  Liking moderate behavior is because you're a moderate. Which is basically my point. You didn't explain how it's a fallacy rather than just state it is. The middle ground might be right in some stuff, it might also be extremely damaging in others. I'm sure you can think of examples for that.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    In my experience, when people cite the middle ground fallacy, it's because they're so radicalized that they believe that to a self-described centrist, the ideal compromise between genocide and no genocide is half a genocide, which is obviously a complete strawman. I've only ever seen it used in bad faith arguments of that sort, thus my previous comment. In my opinion that sort of ever more absurd "if you're not with us you're against us" type thinking is what has turned social media into such a cesspool, and by enforcing a sort of moderate state, that sort of person gets pushed away, making the space more tolerable for healthier minds. Eg. with abortion it's almost impossible to have a civil, nuanced debate on social media because the extremes of both sides have cemented themselves into (fairly hypocritical) positions that paint everyone who isn't fully with them as an enemy, even though there's a lot of room for reasonable compromise and healthy debate on the effects and tradeoffs of specifics of related policy.
    - aaomidi 4y ago
      I mean the example you give is actually great. The idea that everything should be a debate is kinda how things get pushed to really weird areas. Most Americans would argue (and there's data to back this up) that abortion shouldn't even be something that we need to have a nuanced discussion about. The idea of nuanced discussion for everything is how stuff get pushed into harmful and extremist views. The idea of "nuanced discussion" doesn't really work when the outcome of one side of the nuanced discussion is the subjugation of a whole class of people. America went through "nuanced discussion" about the "Japanese problem". It went through "nuanced discussion" about civil rights. Most of this ended up either literally fucking over a group of innocent people, or delaying action that should've been taken decades prior. The idea that a "nuanced discussion" is the way to go is exactly what that fallacy is talking about. Basically you can't have people's rights and lives talked about as if one side of the discussion has the right to take that away from them. Think about how long it took us to legalize gay marriage. The only thing that got the ball really rolling was stonewall. Or think about the Vietnam War. Extremists helped end it. How about climate change? Do we have a nuanced discussion between the older population who is going to be dead by the time this becomes a problem, or do we listen to the climate extemists who are generally younger and the ones who are going to get fucked by this? Anyway, middle ground politics is a dead area and not something that always works. The people who like it are generally the people who are fine with the status quo. So of course you're going to see angry view points (who most of the time have all the right to be angry) as a cesspool.
baisq 4y ago
I agree with you. In the interest of cohesion and to avoid conflict, every new user who posts their point of view and isn't a centrist-leaning-to-the-left progressive ends up banned in the end. Even if the new user is polite and well-meaning, after so many years the community is completely full of centrist progressives and every post that goes against that is a trigger for a flame war - in the interest of avoiding conflict it's easier to ban the new guy than it is to warn everybody involved.
- MrMan 4y ago
  There is nothing progressive about HN - it was created to push a libertarian agenda.
  - baisq 4y ago
    Back in the day, yes. Today, not at all. Everything you read here is regulation, regulation, regulation.
hoseja 4y ago
Vast majority of people are semi-liberal centrists.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  That's not necessarily a reason to push conversations to the middle.

headsoup 4y ago

Absolutely correct. Their moderation idea quoted here sounds horrible, as in 'we'll take you to room 101 for re-education' horrible. You just point users to the moderation/conduct guidelines and ban them if they continue to offend. Human moderation against clearly set community expectations for behaviour is the only effective way. And if things are going to get too spicy, do the same as always and ban religious/political discussion altogether. The reason we have such massive issues with Twitter/FB/etc is becuase they essentially said they were gigantic open public spaces with no moderation guidelines at all, then started enforcing arbitrary 'moderation' based on political or cultural biases, including banning content instead of bad behaviour (which it seems a lot of people out there - including the WSJ staffer writing the article - have a really hard time understanding the difference between). HalloApp will avoid the problem by having the 50 user group limit, but how long until they get the 'feature request' to allow bigger and bigger groups? It also sounds almost exactly like Facebook groups, so what's new there aside paying for it? I would be cautious with this platform being created from ex-Twitter employees, they will continue to implement 'misinformation' policies that police content rather than behaviour, but time will tell. It's interesting to see it all come round again to basically the forums of old: Specific interest groups, smaller scale, moderation to suit. Who knew that worked...

thinkingemote 4y ago

And all silcon valley wants to do away with this type of work in the name of HumanOps. Highly educated professionals as typically hired by tech do not want to moderate for money and so they and their employers use machine learning for such "drudge work". Moderation is triggering and traumatic and abuse reports can cause psychological harm to the worker dealing with it. This is literally what all of silicon valley believes. In real life, therapists have to go to their own therapists regularly so there is some precedent! That they don't see the army of Reddit moderators as an indicator that things can scale is a sign. I suspect it's about an under valued skill in people. Personally I'm in favour of the semi-anonymous freenode channel ops who are encouraged to be hidden at least until required and image board "janitors". Basically moderators shouldn't be idolized or be given unique powers or made to stand out as a special power user but it should be seen as a kind of service. Humble moderation.

TheMightyLlama 4y ago

IMO The current moderation model centres around moderating the things people communicate so as not to offend others. And results in attempts at keeping all communications in the sphere ‘pure’. Social media however has grown far beyond what I think the original inventors intended at the time of creation. couple that with a multitude of legal jurisdictions and levels of sensitivity I fee we can no longer keep the environment clean to so many different standards and must instead switch to a model which is more akin to defaulting to being exposed to nothing and choosing over time to be exposed to some categories of potentially offensive things. I did have a stab at this and fee it needs refining for sure. Wether this is a valid attempt or not, I think the worry that the current moderation model isn’t adequate is grounded in reality. https://gist.github.com/TheMightyLlama/bb77a05d3dde4da2511426e34279e7d6 https://gist.github.com/TheMightyLlama/bb77a05d3dde4da251142... Typing from phone. Sorry.

qiskit 4y ago

> There are lots of great ideas about how to tame problematic online behaviour. Isn't that what all the censoring europeans, chinese, russians, saudis, israelis, etc all say? All censors are trying to target "problematic" behavior. Your comment is no different than what every tyrannical or oppressive regime espouses. The biggest problem with social media and internet is that it is transnational. Countries and people that value censorship really shouldn't have a say in american social media. I believe they should develop their own social media. I no longer ascribe to the idea that everyone should have free speech. I believe we should have free speech in america and you should have whatever you want in your own country and own social media. The problem with american social media is that it is trying to appease everyone and as a result, it becomes a race to the lowest common denominator.

beachy 4y ago
> Countries and people that value censorship really shouldn't have a say in american social media. I believe they should develop their own social media. If American social media chooses to be global (it does!), then putting up with the rules of the countries it chooses to operate in is part of the game.