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Me too, but then I miss a great deal about the earlier internet environment as well, just before all the spam and viruses meant you were no longer going to use

Me too, but then I miss a great deal about the earlier internet environment as well, just before all the spam and viruses meant you were no longer going to use that webmail host with the cute domain name, join that chat room, run that executable that a friend sent you. It's not that we lost trust in things, it's that we originally didn't factor trust into our dealings with them because it wasn't a big issue. The same thing seems to be now creeping into online discussion, so I have to at least guess it'll go the same boring way in general. If someone comes up with a magical way to easily attest that a post has been made by a genuine human, while also not burdening that human with the asymmetric backlash potential of the internet mob, perhaps it plays out differently.

selfhoster11 4y ago
I think going in the direction of low trust and strict identity verfiication is a mistake (although, given the trajectory taken by social media thus far, is likely to be the path we continue on). IMO a much better bet is to shut down or discourage participation in large, "flat open space" social media a la Twitter or Facebook, in favour of smaller, closed pseudonymous communities (like you might find on Discord). Moderating a community that's grown beyond a certain size requires draconian and unexplainable automated systems, because the alternative is finding enough paid moderators to hammer it into something resembling a coherent discourse. Moderating a community of a few dozen, or even a few hundred people, can work with a much smaller number of moderators, and it's likely that those moderators could even do it for free. You could even have such communities be tightly knit without the need for identity verification, because any sockpuppet accounts would first have to prove themselves worthy of inclusion, or risk being banned.
- FooHentai 4y ago
  I certainly agree it's not an ideal option, if one exists at all. What you propose is a different path that could be taken, thought I'm not sure the outcome would be better. Just different. I have left many discord servers because I could see a repeated pattern playing out in each - immature kids posting edgy content was sliding rapidly into sincerely held extreme beliefs, and polarizing members into either leaving or buying further into it. Those smaller non-public communities are breeding grounds for extremity and the problems there, while quite different to the problems faced in wider open internet discussion forums, are also quite severe and IMO heading somewhere very dark medium term. I recently came across a Tom Scott tweet that at first I reacted dismissively towards, then on reflection realized it was kinda the same thing I just mentioned: https://twtext.com/article/1316099118792572929# https://twtext.com/article/1316099118792572929# I guess the problem there just shifts from where a bad actor can potentially lie - In other posters is one thing, but in the overarching administration of the forum is another place. In wider public areas those moderators/administrators can be flawed people, who attract a lot of flame (legitimately or otherwise), or an uninvolved automated system, which then pushes the issue back down to the posters again. In private smaller communities the lack of sunlight combined with the potential for bad actor (or uninvolved) moderation only intensifies that problem.

selfhoster11 4y ago

I think going in the direction of low trust and strict identity verfiication is a mistake (although, given the trajectory taken by social media thus far, is likely to be the path we continue on). IMO a much better bet is to shut down or discourage participation in large, "flat open space" social media a la Twitter or Facebook, in favour of smaller, closed pseudonymous communities (like you might find on Discord). Moderating a community that's grown beyond a certain size requires draconian and unexplainable automated systems, because the alternative is finding enough paid moderators to hammer it into something resembling a coherent discourse. Moderating a community of a few dozen, or even a few hundred people, can work with a much smaller number of moderators, and it's likely that those moderators could even do it for free. You could even have such communities be tightly knit without the need for identity verification, because any sockpuppet accounts would first have to prove themselves worthy of inclusion, or risk being banned.

FooHentai 4y ago
I certainly agree it's not an ideal option, if one exists at all. What you propose is a different path that could be taken, thought I'm not sure the outcome would be better. Just different. I have left many discord servers because I could see a repeated pattern playing out in each - immature kids posting edgy content was sliding rapidly into sincerely held extreme beliefs, and polarizing members into either leaving or buying further into it. Those smaller non-public communities are breeding grounds for extremity and the problems there, while quite different to the problems faced in wider open internet discussion forums, are also quite severe and IMO heading somewhere very dark medium term. I recently came across a Tom Scott tweet that at first I reacted dismissively towards, then on reflection realized it was kinda the same thing I just mentioned: https://twtext.com/article/1316099118792572929# https://twtext.com/article/1316099118792572929# I guess the problem there just shifts from where a bad actor can potentially lie - In other posters is one thing, but in the overarching administration of the forum is another place. In wider public areas those moderators/administrators can be flawed people, who attract a lot of flame (legitimately or otherwise), or an uninvolved automated system, which then pushes the issue back down to the posters again. In private smaller communities the lack of sunlight combined with the potential for bad actor (or uninvolved) moderation only intensifies that problem.