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I think semi-private communities will be the way forward. Open ended forums just don't work. I play Magic The Gathering, the public Discord and Reddits are awfu

I think semi-private communities will be the way forward. Open ended forums just don't work. I play Magic The Gathering, the public Discord and Reddits are awful. Twitter even worse. There's then a subset of Discord servers that are great to hang out in, and since most people get to know eachother it also makes everyone nicer. Similar thing for a dev tools builders Discord I moderate, it's invite-only and the discussion is very good and non-extreme. The cynics self-select themselves out quickly as there's no likes to be earned.

than3 4y ago
This is doomed to failure. More of something that hasn't previously worked doesn't solve anything. There's a saying, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. The main issues revolve around two things, lack of education about malign influence campaigns and their tactics and targeted blindspots, and structural issues that allow a many to one communication while giving the illusion that its one to one (i.e. bot accounts posing as people to amplify or de-amplify). A large portion of our identities are developed through reflected appraisal, and when you interfere with core identity, and you see it everywhere, this becomes distorted, and can induce demoralized psychological states that include both radically violent states, as well as unresponsive states. Now if you have a destabilizing event, very few resources are actually needed to topple governments as was seen in 1953 with the Shah coup. People generally act and do crazy things when they are isolated and marginalized, its illegal to treat animals that way, and that hasn't stopped technology which allows the perfect weapon to do just that to people, often without their knowledge. This at its core is what political warfare is all about, winning at any cost without war, and there is a very detailed book which has been written and is available for free from US Marine Corp University's Publisher. If you can't identify malign influence, then you are doomed to be a victim of it. The Russian's have called it ideological subversion, the Chinese call it the destruction of national will. Its all the same, and because we value free speech it has been allowed to fester and poison for several generations. You even have people pushing socialist policies now without even knowing its socialist themselves, and without any true understanding of the structural deficits inherent in what they are pushing, such as corruption, shortages, economic calculation problem, and a number of other areas that inevitably make it an unstable system over time. This and other interference is what drives a lot of these issues. Its not rocket science. There's a reason those countries are enemies. They have used malign influence to corrupt and subvert, targeting future generations to destroy our civilization. We as a country largely dismantled our political warfare machinery back in the 70s, at least according to multiple history books I've read, while they haven't stopped, and have in fact developed it even further in scale and scope.
- mixedCase 4y ago
  How does your comment explain that smaller communities are doomed to failure? It seems you disagreed and went on a very wild tangent far away from the idea the GP brought up, and in fact may only reinforce it.
  - than3 4y ago
    It should be fairly obvious that communities are dynamic, they either grow, or they shrink. When was the last time you saw a community stay the same... ever. There are times of population accumulation, and distribution. Growth leads to being a bigger target, once you have a certain population, it makes sense to target them. If you have a community with access to something, it may make even more sense at a smaller population size. Shrinking eventually hits an unsustainable participation point where content becomes stale, and/or benefits erode. This is the standard lifecycle of a community, you either grow, or you shrink, and bots are cheap and provide downward bias with a well resourced adversary. As soon as it makes sense as a target, you then have disunity, chaos, toxic behavior, trolls, fake accounts, and bots often targeting those that contribute most because volunteer psychology says you stop volunteering when it starts costing you personally. The agenda is as I previously mentioned and progresses from there. If you are too busy putting out fires, you're too busy to notice important targeted shifts.
    - pksebben 4y ago
      Unbounded growth is a fundamental evil. Our system of corporate organization has been creating troll accounts for a lot longer than the Internet has been around (they just call it marketing, but a pig by any other name...). Nationalism is anachronistic and hasn't been anything but an infected social appendix since the Internet. I wonder why it is that at the same time, you're so seemingly rose tinted about the situation domestically as you are paranoid about the situation internationally. I don't mean to say that bots, trolls, and psyops don't exist; they do.. But we perform them on our own people anyway and it's not as if the goals of the government are aligned with the people in it anyhow. The effectiveness of these campaigns is about on par with that of what journalism has unfortunately become - mostly bullshit and everyone knows it but what are ya gonna do? They keep putting it out and it's not like you're going to convince those still locked to the cycle that they're living in a cave. I think size is a major part of the problem.
d110af5ccf 4y ago
> The cynics self-select themselves out quickly as there's no likes to be earned. If these are invite-only communities do they actually self select out or do they get kicked out? My experience has generally been that small groups are often cliquish and won't tolerate significant dissent even when it's civil. I've experienced surprisingly civil and insightful discussion in online spaces that were very nearly unmoderated. It's not for everyone and it's certainly a mixed bag but there's a lot more than just a public/private dichotomy going on in terms of social dynamics. Even HN is a good example of a solidly public space where I've had countless constructive interactions over many years.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  Some people want constructive interactions, some want lulz and flame wars. Many people want both at different stages in their lives, or even simultaneously on different forums. Just remember you are free not to read and free not to reply. Wish there were AI personal moderators to selectively ignore stuff.
  - glass3 4y ago
    AI moderators don't have to be personal. It would be enough to tag comments as constructive, lulz and flame and let users decide which type they want, or to which degree they want it. The technology of spam-detecting Markov chains should be enough since the users can easily correct the classification. Since the feature is possible but not used, question remains why users don't need it.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
      If I were AI, I would remove any post not containing a link or a number. And remove any comment containing a sequence {capital I followed by a space}. Including this one :)
- braza 4y ago
  I participate of some invite-only communities for a while and you have a point, being a dissent it’s quite challenging and demands extra reasoning to express that. On the other side, the real issue moderating any closed invite-only community is that the false positive cost is too high and it can fall apart the entire thing, e.g. 90% of the people stops to post/share/interact.

than3 4y ago

This is doomed to failure. More of something that hasn't previously worked doesn't solve anything. There's a saying, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. The main issues revolve around two things, lack of education about malign influence campaigns and their tactics and targeted blindspots, and structural issues that allow a many to one communication while giving the illusion that its one to one (i.e. bot accounts posing as people to amplify or de-amplify). A large portion of our identities are developed through reflected appraisal, and when you interfere with core identity, and you see it everywhere, this becomes distorted, and can induce demoralized psychological states that include both radically violent states, as well as unresponsive states. Now if you have a destabilizing event, very few resources are actually needed to topple governments as was seen in 1953 with the Shah coup. People generally act and do crazy things when they are isolated and marginalized, its illegal to treat animals that way, and that hasn't stopped technology which allows the perfect weapon to do just that to people, often without their knowledge. This at its core is what political warfare is all about, winning at any cost without war, and there is a very detailed book which has been written and is available for free from US Marine Corp University's Publisher. If you can't identify malign influence, then you are doomed to be a victim of it. The Russian's have called it ideological subversion, the Chinese call it the destruction of national will. Its all the same, and because we value free speech it has been allowed to fester and poison for several generations. You even have people pushing socialist policies now without even knowing its socialist themselves, and without any true understanding of the structural deficits inherent in what they are pushing, such as corruption, shortages, economic calculation problem, and a number of other areas that inevitably make it an unstable system over time. This and other interference is what drives a lot of these issues. Its not rocket science. There's a reason those countries are enemies. They have used malign influence to corrupt and subvert, targeting future generations to destroy our civilization. We as a country largely dismantled our political warfare machinery back in the 70s, at least according to multiple history books I've read, while they haven't stopped, and have in fact developed it even further in scale and scope.

mixedCase 4y ago
How does your comment explain that smaller communities are doomed to failure? It seems you disagreed and went on a very wild tangent far away from the idea the GP brought up, and in fact may only reinforce it.
- than3 4y ago
  It should be fairly obvious that communities are dynamic, they either grow, or they shrink. When was the last time you saw a community stay the same... ever. There are times of population accumulation, and distribution. Growth leads to being a bigger target, once you have a certain population, it makes sense to target them. If you have a community with access to something, it may make even more sense at a smaller population size. Shrinking eventually hits an unsustainable participation point where content becomes stale, and/or benefits erode. This is the standard lifecycle of a community, you either grow, or you shrink, and bots are cheap and provide downward bias with a well resourced adversary. As soon as it makes sense as a target, you then have disunity, chaos, toxic behavior, trolls, fake accounts, and bots often targeting those that contribute most because volunteer psychology says you stop volunteering when it starts costing you personally. The agenda is as I previously mentioned and progresses from there. If you are too busy putting out fires, you're too busy to notice important targeted shifts.
  - pksebben 4y ago
    Unbounded growth is a fundamental evil. Our system of corporate organization has been creating troll accounts for a lot longer than the Internet has been around (they just call it marketing, but a pig by any other name...). Nationalism is anachronistic and hasn't been anything but an infected social appendix since the Internet. I wonder why it is that at the same time, you're so seemingly rose tinted about the situation domestically as you are paranoid about the situation internationally. I don't mean to say that bots, trolls, and psyops don't exist; they do.. But we perform them on our own people anyway and it's not as if the goals of the government are aligned with the people in it anyhow. The effectiveness of these campaigns is about on par with that of what journalism has unfortunately become - mostly bullshit and everyone knows it but what are ya gonna do? They keep putting it out and it's not like you're going to convince those still locked to the cycle that they're living in a cave. I think size is a major part of the problem.

d110af5ccf 4y ago

> The cynics self-select themselves out quickly as there's no likes to be earned. If these are invite-only communities do they actually self select out or do they get kicked out? My experience has generally been that small groups are often cliquish and won't tolerate significant dissent even when it's civil. I've experienced surprisingly civil and insightful discussion in online spaces that were very nearly unmoderated. It's not for everyone and it's certainly a mixed bag but there's a lot more than just a public/private dichotomy going on in terms of social dynamics. Even HN is a good example of a solidly public space where I've had countless constructive interactions over many years.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
Some people want constructive interactions, some want lulz and flame wars. Many people want both at different stages in their lives, or even simultaneously on different forums. Just remember you are free not to read and free not to reply. Wish there were AI personal moderators to selectively ignore stuff.
- glass3 4y ago
  AI moderators don't have to be personal. It would be enough to tag comments as constructive, lulz and flame and let users decide which type they want, or to which degree they want it. The technology of spam-detecting Markov chains should be enough since the users can easily correct the classification. Since the feature is possible but not used, question remains why users don't need it.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
    If I were AI, I would remove any post not containing a link or a number. And remove any comment containing a sequence {capital I followed by a space}. Including this one :)
braza 4y ago
I participate of some invite-only communities for a while and you have a point, being a dissent it’s quite challenging and demands extra reasoning to express that. On the other side, the real issue moderating any closed invite-only community is that the false positive cost is too high and it can fall apart the entire thing, e.g. 90% of the people stops to post/share/interact.