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The problem is moderation. Any time you make a new media library hosting platform, it attracts exactly the people who need it most. The answer is good metadat

The problem is moderation. Any time you make a new media library hosting platform, it attracts exactly the people who need it most. The answer is good metadata and categorization, but that requires active moderation. Moderation is the single most expensive part of the internet, and most of it is being done for free. Big tech like Facebook and Google are making themselves incompatible with traditional moderation, which is why they keep trying (and failing) to automate it. -- I think the best solution is a web of trust. Instead of using a tracker/site like TPB (and its moderation) to introduce trust, let each user make whatever authoritative claims they want (this torrent is good, that one is corrupted, and this other one has a virus), and let other users back those claims via gpg signature. Instead of forum moderators, you get trust curators.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I agree that webs of trust are the way forward. Power corrupts, and any set of curators will eventually fall to corruption, but the nice thing about having software that lets you explicitly trust people (instead of implicitly trusting the platform) is that the switching costs are low. You don't have to wait for somebody who is both tech savvy enough to build a competing platform and also trustworthy enough to curate the content, you just need the trustworthy part. You just twiddle your trust settings and you've got a fresh start. I also think that the who-trusts-whom-in-what-category dataset would be incredibly useful. For instance, you can follow the edges until you get a cycle, and that cycle is going to be at the heart of a community of experts. Or if you're having trouble seeing eye to eye with someone you can consult the trust graph and find a mediator, or if they're not to be found then you'll find thought leaders who exemplify the disagreement. You'll have to be hygenic about who you trust though, and that's not the lazy path forward. So culturally I think any project of this sort is going to face an uphill battle.
pojzon 3y ago
> Facebook and Google are making themselves incompatible with traditional moderation, which is why they keep trying (and failing) to automate it Its the other way around. They try to automate and fail miserably after spending billions and fallback to manual moderation by farms in asian countries coz its cheaper.
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  The impossible is infinitely expensive. Manual moderation costs only slightly less. An inadequate amount of both is affordable.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

I agree that webs of trust are the way forward. Power corrupts, and any set of curators will eventually fall to corruption, but the nice thing about having software that lets you explicitly trust people (instead of implicitly trusting the platform) is that the switching costs are low. You don't have to wait for somebody who is both tech savvy enough to build a competing platform and also trustworthy enough to curate the content, you just need the trustworthy part. You just twiddle your trust settings and you've got a fresh start. I also think that the who-trusts-whom-in-what-category dataset would be incredibly useful. For instance, you can follow the edges until you get a cycle, and that cycle is going to be at the heart of a community of experts. Or if you're having trouble seeing eye to eye with someone you can consult the trust graph and find a mediator, or if they're not to be found then you'll find thought leaders who exemplify the disagreement. You'll have to be hygenic about who you trust though, and that's not the lazy path forward. So culturally I think any project of this sort is going to face an uphill battle.

pojzon 3y ago

> Facebook and Google are making themselves incompatible with traditional moderation, which is why they keep trying (and failing) to automate it Its the other way around. They try to automate and fail miserably after spending billions and fallback to manual moderation by farms in asian countries coz its cheaper.

thomastjeffery 3y ago
The impossible is infinitely expensive. Manual moderation costs only slightly less. An inadequate amount of both is affordable.