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> I think Yishan is nailing the nail on the head by focusing the discussion on user behavior instead of on the content itself. But user behavior problem can be

> I think Yishan is nailing the nail on the head by focusing the discussion on user behavior instead of on the content itself. But user behavior problem can be solved cheaply, easily and in a scalable way: Give each user an ability to form the personal filter. Basically, all what I need is: 1. I want to read what person A writes - always. 2. I want to read what person B writes - always, except when talking to person C. 3. I want to peek through a filter of the person I like - to discover more interesting to me persons. 4. Show me random people posts like 3-4 (configurable) times per day. This is basically how my spinal brain worked in unmoderated Fido-over-Usenet groups (Upd: yes, this “oh how everyone will die without moderation” problem is that old). Some server help will be great, sure, but there is nothing here that is expensive or not scalable. PS: centralized filtering is needed only when you are going after some content, not noise.

ufo 4y ago
I disagree, we can't frame this discussion on only the content. My whatsapp "feed" is doing just fine. The problem are all the other whatsapp groups that I'm not in, which are filled with hateful politics. It hurts when I meet in real life a friend that you haven't met in a while, and then find out that they've been radicalized. The radical Bolsonaro whatsapp groups are a mix of top down and grass roots content. On one end there is the central "propaganda office", or other top political articulators. On the bottom are the grassroots group chats: neightborhoods, churches, biker communities, office mates, etc. Memes and viral content flow in both directions. The contents and messages that ressonate in the lower levels are actively distributed by the central articulators, which have a hierarchy of group chats to circulate new propaganda as widely as possible. You can see this happen in real time when a political conundrum happens,e.g a corruption scandal. The central office will A-B test various messages in their group chats and then the one that resonates better with their base gets amplified and suddenly they manage to "change the topic" on the news. The end result is that we just had 4 years of political chaos, where the modus operandi of the goverment was to put out fires by deflecting the public discourse whenever a new crisis emerged. It's not merely a content problem that could be solved by a better filtration algorithm. It's a deeper issue of how social media can affect human behavior. How quickly ideas can spread, how easy it became for people to self-organize into "bubbles", and so on.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  > The problem are all the other whatsapp groups that I'm not in, which are filled with hateful politics. If you do not like hateful politics, just filter them out - of your own feed. My solution, if implemented, will give you exactly that opportunity.
  - acdha 4y ago
    How precisely does that protect you from the people who are seeking those out? Filtering your feed doesn’t cause them not to vote against their interests, firebomb your store, or attempt to assassinate leaders.
    - didericis 4y ago
      People are not seeking those groups out of nowhere. Most of them are getting pushed there from automated platforms bombarding them with things they can't stand. The automated outrage machines are what radicalize people, not the private message groups. By the time you have private message groups propagating the same messaging the damage has already been done. To get people out, you need to cut off the source of the outrage and soothe whatever fear is being ramped up. Censoring the outrage and dismissing/patronizing people from a position of authority doesn't work, it just acts as an accelerant. I think the crazy groups will sputter out if there's enough space for venting, free association, and ability for the average person to turn off things they don't want to see. I think that last point is the key. Millions of people are bombarded with things they really don't like in systems they have no way to really manage themselves. The legitimate complaints will filter up and out of the crazy circles if people are allowed to form their own groups and don't feel forced to pack themselves together around the loudest people who can given them a voice on the big automated feeds they don't really understand. People have a much better chance at effectively communicating with their neighbor or family member or old friend with a different perspective than a stranger online with a different perspective, and they are much more likely to engage when in a frame of mind that will actually accept differences of opinion if they are managing their own connections and exposure themselves.
slg 4y ago
Personal user filtering can't be the only form of moderation. There is some content that I don't care if it exists as long as I don't see it. Spam is one example of this. However there is some content that its existence on the platform makes me less likely to use the platform even if I never see it. I'm sure Yishan knows this from his time at Reddit. They seem to go through a controversy about this every year or two[1] with most of the offenders focussed on either hate or porn. /r/jailbait is one of the early examples that comes to mind. It hosted risqué, but apparently legal photos of underage girls. Reddit couldn't just tell people "Don't visit those subreddits if you don't want to see that content". Most people found the content objectionable enough to want it removed completely. Its mere existence made normal users less likely to use Reddit despite users needing to go out of their way to see that objectionable content. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  > Its mere existence made normal users less likely to use Reddit despite users needing to go out of their way to see that objectionable content. To me it’s kind of perverse logic. If a platform hosts persons that some powerful group of people want to be removed - than I can trust the platform to less likely to remove me, when and if I cross some powerful or just loud and anger people. Like: there is a lot of people in the US that I do not like, but I rather live in a country with 14th Amendment than in a country without one. I’ve tried both :)
  - slg 4y ago
    It’s funny you mention the 14th Amendment. It is a little over 150 years old. For the first century interracial marriage wasn't on the list of protections provided by the 14th. When enough people consistently say you shouldn't be allowed to do something, we won't allow you to do it. When enough people say you should be allowed, you will be. Maybe that is cynical, but that is life in a democracy. Churchill was right about it being the worst form of government.
    - 4y ago
gnicholas 4y ago
Also: 1(b) I want to read what person A writes about #hashtag 1(c) I never want to see person A's posts about #hashtag The latter can be bluntly accomplished by hiding everything about #hashtag, but sometimes you don't want to do that (you still want to see stuff on the topic, just not written by that person).
vintermann 4y ago
This is the amazing thing Yishan misses. He claims there's no difference between spam filtering, moderation and censorship. How come he's been in charge at reddit all these years and never looked at it through the lens of "consent"? Ask, can you consent to this? For spam filtering, the answer is obviously hell yes. That's pretty much how we define spam: stuff we don't want, and which essentially no one wants. Moderation is when it's still about you and what you want for yourself, but where you concede that some people may want it. And it may be more or less OK that some people want it, but this is not the place for it. If you don't want religion or politics in your game discussion group, that's moderation. Censorship is about controlling what other people want, in order to shape their opinions and beliefs. You can't coherently consent to it. You're not worried that there's some magically seductive piece of propaganda that will turn you into a Nazi, or a furry for that matter. No, you're worried that there's a seductive piece of propaganda that will work on other people. That's the defining aspect of censorship, that it's for other people's sake, not your own. Now, censors will often claim that they're only doing it for themselves, that they just get so disgusted by furries (or whatever) that they just don't want to deal with it. A way to test that, is to see how transparent they are about their supposed moderation. If it's moderation, being transparent about it is perfectly fine. But for the censor, transparency is not possible, because even letting the poor flock know that the seductive information exists, could tempt them to go look for it. Another way, of course, is whether they are content with moderating their own spaces. People that try their damndest to eliminate the thing they hate from existence with DDoS attacks, targeted harassment, or preventing communication they're not even a party to, are obviously censorious, not merely "moderating". Now, there's a separate discussion of when, if ever, it's appropriate to censor. Maybe if we're talking about people who can't meaningfully consent and are easily manipulated (i.e. children). Maybe if there's some sort of existential issue at stake (e.g. national security). But let's not pretend, like Yishan Wong does, that consent doesn't matter.
- astrange 4y ago
  > How come he's been in charge at reddit all these years and never looked at it through the lens of "consent"? That would be two years (2012-14).
astrange 4y ago
This doesn't work and it seems like you ignored his entire point. If moderation is being done to reduce the tone of angry conversations, then you have to actually effectively reduce it. If every person out there is running a personal filter list and ignoring your mods' decisions then there is no way to do that and the emotional state is completely uncontrollable. Which you'll find you won't enjoy. You'll also find you can't keep up with these filters of yours; surely you have better things to do than personally moderate every forum you use?
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I’ve participated in such kind of discussions in 1990s when we were moving our Fido group to Usenet. Fido was very strictly moderated, since data was carried over people’s personal phone lines and nobody wanted to spend money on carrying garbage. But Usenet has no such restrictions and eventually we decided to go unmoderated, because no matter whom we elected - and we knew these people rather personally over the years - moderator’s powers were always abused. Going unmoderated was scary to me at first - I was for keeping the moderation, yes, but the experience turned out to be quite enjoyable - I just needed to teach my spinal brain those simple rules I’ve outlined. Now to your arguments. Why on earth I would want to control your (for example) emotional state? You are a grown up person, your medical decisions are yours to take, not mine. Yes, angry conversations are long and stupid and are always reduced to “inventive” cursing - but a lot of people seem to enjoy this style of “argument” - who am I to stop them? Why stop others’ fun? All I want is - not to read and preferably not even to see such kind of “discussions”. > You'll also find you can't keep up with these filters of yours But I can. All I ask is just some help from the server. > surely you have better things to do than personally moderate every forum you use? It’s much easier than you think. I do not object to people hiring cleaning companies to clean their houses, but I prefer to clean my house myself. And this Dyson handheld helps very much. Same goes for moderation - why delegate this dirty work to others, especially when I’ve observed how even reasonable people I personally know tend to abuse this power?
  - astrange 4y ago
    Yes, I do remember Usenet - not very well! That was a while ago. I wasn't a heavy user, but it was a bit of a smaller world back then - that tends to make people behave a bit better (obviously not always…), but there were also fewer other places to go if you got tired of it, it was mainly for personal use, and there wasn't a feeling that someone "owned" it. These days if a forum has bad vibes people will want to leave it, and there's more of a customer service attitude because they know someone runs it. (Or for a professional/project mailing list, a non-abusive-workplace attitude maybe.) Similarly the people running it feel more responsible so they want to mod it more. It's mostly just annoying if there's a lot of intense arguments on it, not necessarily bad for business, but if they get really bad there's the worry it drives away new users and eventually gets you legal attention over users, say, stalking each other, or planning crimes, or posting terrorism threats. > It’s much easier than you think. It was in the 90s, I just don't think killfile technology has kept up with the rate of modern posting on something like Twitter. There is block and mute but there's not, say, OCR to stop people from screenshotting you and attracting new harassers for years after the fact. Though I think Twitter just laid off all their mods so we'll see how it goes.

ufo 4y ago

I disagree, we can't frame this discussion on only the content. My whatsapp "feed" is doing just fine. The problem are all the other whatsapp groups that I'm not in, which are filled with hateful politics. It hurts when I meet in real life a friend that you haven't met in a while, and then find out that they've been radicalized. The radical Bolsonaro whatsapp groups are a mix of top down and grass roots content. On one end there is the central "propaganda office", or other top political articulators. On the bottom are the grassroots group chats: neightborhoods, churches, biker communities, office mates, etc. Memes and viral content flow in both directions. The contents and messages that ressonate in the lower levels are actively distributed by the central articulators, which have a hierarchy of group chats to circulate new propaganda as widely as possible. You can see this happen in real time when a political conundrum happens,e.g a corruption scandal. The central office will A-B test various messages in their group chats and then the one that resonates better with their base gets amplified and suddenly they manage to "change the topic" on the news. The end result is that we just had 4 years of political chaos, where the modus operandi of the goverment was to put out fires by deflecting the public discourse whenever a new crisis emerged. It's not merely a content problem that could be solved by a better filtration algorithm. It's a deeper issue of how social media can affect human behavior. How quickly ideas can spread, how easy it became for people to self-organize into "bubbles", and so on.

MikePlacid 4y ago
> The problem are all the other whatsapp groups that I'm not in, which are filled with hateful politics. If you do not like hateful politics, just filter them out - of your own feed. My solution, if implemented, will give you exactly that opportunity.
- acdha 4y ago
  How precisely does that protect you from the people who are seeking those out? Filtering your feed doesn’t cause them not to vote against their interests, firebomb your store, or attempt to assassinate leaders.
  - didericis 4y ago
    People are not seeking those groups out of nowhere. Most of them are getting pushed there from automated platforms bombarding them with things they can't stand. The automated outrage machines are what radicalize people, not the private message groups. By the time you have private message groups propagating the same messaging the damage has already been done. To get people out, you need to cut off the source of the outrage and soothe whatever fear is being ramped up. Censoring the outrage and dismissing/patronizing people from a position of authority doesn't work, it just acts as an accelerant. I think the crazy groups will sputter out if there's enough space for venting, free association, and ability for the average person to turn off things they don't want to see. I think that last point is the key. Millions of people are bombarded with things they really don't like in systems they have no way to really manage themselves. The legitimate complaints will filter up and out of the crazy circles if people are allowed to form their own groups and don't feel forced to pack themselves together around the loudest people who can given them a voice on the big automated feeds they don't really understand. People have a much better chance at effectively communicating with their neighbor or family member or old friend with a different perspective than a stranger online with a different perspective, and they are much more likely to engage when in a frame of mind that will actually accept differences of opinion if they are managing their own connections and exposure themselves.

slg 4y ago

Personal user filtering can't be the only form of moderation. There is some content that I don't care if it exists as long as I don't see it. Spam is one example of this. However there is some content that its existence on the platform makes me less likely to use the platform even if I never see it. I'm sure Yishan knows this from his time at Reddit. They seem to go through a controversy about this every year or two[1] with most of the offenders focussed on either hate or porn. /r/jailbait is one of the early examples that comes to mind. It hosted risqué, but apparently legal photos of underage girls. Reddit couldn't just tell people "Don't visit those subreddits if you don't want to see that content". Most people found the content objectionable enough to want it removed completely. Its mere existence made normal users less likely to use Reddit despite users needing to go out of their way to see that objectionable content. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...

MikePlacid 4y ago
> Its mere existence made normal users less likely to use Reddit despite users needing to go out of their way to see that objectionable content. To me it’s kind of perverse logic. If a platform hosts persons that some powerful group of people want to be removed - than I can trust the platform to less likely to remove me, when and if I cross some powerful or just loud and anger people. Like: there is a lot of people in the US that I do not like, but I rather live in a country with 14th Amendment than in a country without one. I’ve tried both :)
- slg 4y ago
  It’s funny you mention the 14th Amendment. It is a little over 150 years old. For the first century interracial marriage wasn't on the list of protections provided by the 14th. When enough people consistently say you shouldn't be allowed to do something, we won't allow you to do it. When enough people say you should be allowed, you will be. Maybe that is cynical, but that is life in a democracy. Churchill was right about it being the worst form of government.
  - 4y ago

gnicholas 4y ago

Also: 1(b) I want to read what person A writes about #hashtag 1(c) I never want to see person A's posts about #hashtag The latter can be bluntly accomplished by hiding everything about #hashtag, but sometimes you don't want to do that (you still want to see stuff on the topic, just not written by that person).

vintermann 4y ago

This is the amazing thing Yishan misses. He claims there's no difference between spam filtering, moderation and censorship. How come he's been in charge at reddit all these years and never looked at it through the lens of "consent"? Ask, can you consent to this? For spam filtering, the answer is obviously hell yes. That's pretty much how we define spam: stuff we don't want, and which essentially no one wants. Moderation is when it's still about you and what you want for yourself, but where you concede that some people may want it. And it may be more or less OK that some people want it, but this is not the place for it. If you don't want religion or politics in your game discussion group, that's moderation. Censorship is about controlling what other people want, in order to shape their opinions and beliefs. You can't coherently consent to it. You're not worried that there's some magically seductive piece of propaganda that will turn you into a Nazi, or a furry for that matter. No, you're worried that there's a seductive piece of propaganda that will work on other people. That's the defining aspect of censorship, that it's for other people's sake, not your own. Now, censors will often claim that they're only doing it for themselves, that they just get so disgusted by furries (or whatever) that they just don't want to deal with it. A way to test that, is to see how transparent they are about their supposed moderation. If it's moderation, being transparent about it is perfectly fine. But for the censor, transparency is not possible, because even letting the poor flock know that the seductive information exists, could tempt them to go look for it. Another way, of course, is whether they are content with moderating their own spaces. People that try their damndest to eliminate the thing they hate from existence with DDoS attacks, targeted harassment, or preventing communication they're not even a party to, are obviously censorious, not merely "moderating". Now, there's a separate discussion of when, if ever, it's appropriate to censor. Maybe if we're talking about people who can't meaningfully consent and are easily manipulated (i.e. children). Maybe if there's some sort of existential issue at stake (e.g. national security). But let's not pretend, like Yishan Wong does, that consent doesn't matter.

astrange 4y ago
> How come he's been in charge at reddit all these years and never looked at it through the lens of "consent"? That would be two years (2012-14).

astrange 4y ago

This doesn't work and it seems like you ignored his entire point. If moderation is being done to reduce the tone of angry conversations, then you have to actually effectively reduce it. If every person out there is running a personal filter list and ignoring your mods' decisions then there is no way to do that and the emotional state is completely uncontrollable. Which you'll find you won't enjoy. You'll also find you can't keep up with these filters of yours; surely you have better things to do than personally moderate every forum you use?

MikePlacid 4y ago
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I’ve participated in such kind of discussions in 1990s when we were moving our Fido group to Usenet. Fido was very strictly moderated, since data was carried over people’s personal phone lines and nobody wanted to spend money on carrying garbage. But Usenet has no such restrictions and eventually we decided to go unmoderated, because no matter whom we elected - and we knew these people rather personally over the years - moderator’s powers were always abused. Going unmoderated was scary to me at first - I was for keeping the moderation, yes, but the experience turned out to be quite enjoyable - I just needed to teach my spinal brain those simple rules I’ve outlined. Now to your arguments. Why on earth I would want to control your (for example) emotional state? You are a grown up person, your medical decisions are yours to take, not mine. Yes, angry conversations are long and stupid and are always reduced to “inventive” cursing - but a lot of people seem to enjoy this style of “argument” - who am I to stop them? Why stop others’ fun? All I want is - not to read and preferably not even to see such kind of “discussions”. > You'll also find you can't keep up with these filters of yours But I can. All I ask is just some help from the server. > surely you have better things to do than personally moderate every forum you use? It’s much easier than you think. I do not object to people hiring cleaning companies to clean their houses, but I prefer to clean my house myself. And this Dyson handheld helps very much. Same goes for moderation - why delegate this dirty work to others, especially when I’ve observed how even reasonable people I personally know tend to abuse this power?
- astrange 4y ago
  Yes, I do remember Usenet - not very well! That was a while ago. I wasn't a heavy user, but it was a bit of a smaller world back then - that tends to make people behave a bit better (obviously not always…), but there were also fewer other places to go if you got tired of it, it was mainly for personal use, and there wasn't a feeling that someone "owned" it. These days if a forum has bad vibes people will want to leave it, and there's more of a customer service attitude because they know someone runs it. (Or for a professional/project mailing list, a non-abusive-workplace attitude maybe.) Similarly the people running it feel more responsible so they want to mod it more. It's mostly just annoying if there's a lot of intense arguments on it, not necessarily bad for business, but if they get really bad there's the worry it drives away new users and eventually gets you legal attention over users, say, stalking each other, or planning crimes, or posting terrorism threats. > It’s much easier than you think. It was in the 90s, I just don't think killfile technology has kept up with the rate of modern posting on something like Twitter. There is block and mute but there's not, say, OCR to stop people from screenshotting you and attracting new harassers for years after the fact. Though I think Twitter just laid off all their mods so we'll see how it goes.