4 ms·
You're correct again. Spammers and bots are the most determined actors, so these secretive measures don't impact them. In fact, such secrecy benefits spammers.
by rhaksw 3y ago
You're correct again. Spammers and bots are the most determined actors, so these secretive measures don't impact them.
In fact, such secrecy benefits spammers. Good-faith users never imagine that platforms would secretly action content. So when you look at overall trends, bots, spammers and trolls are winning while genuine users are being pushed aside.
I argued that secrecy benefits trolls in a blog post, but I don't want to spam links to my posts in the comments.
- speedgoose 3y agoMost spammers aren’t that competent. Hiding their posts without telling them used to be very effective on Reddit (now Reddit tells them). I guess it’s the same on HN.
- rhaksw 3y agoSpammers are more competent than genuine users. They are advertisers, so they are more likely to be tracking metrics.
- dang 3y agoIf that were right, then HN would be overrun by spam.
- rhaksw 3y agoSo you think secretive measures more often defeat spammers than trusting users? I'd argue HN's content could be a lot better than it currently is. Content curation is necessary, but shadow moderation is not helping. When a forum removes visible consequences, it does not prepare its users to learn from their mistakes. I'll admit, I find HN to be more transparently moderated than Reddit and Twitter, but let's not pretend people have stopped trying to game the system. The more secret the rules (and how they are applied), the more a system serves a handful of people who have learned the secret tricks. Meanwhile, regular users who are not platform experts trust these systems to be transparent. Trustful users spend more time innovating elsewhere, and they are all disrupted by unexpected secretive tricks.
- sanderjd 3y ago> So you think secretive measures more often defeat spammers than trusting users? Yes. And it's really not a close question. "Regular users" don't have to be platform experts and learn tricks and stuff. They just post normal links and comments and never run into moderation at all.
- rhaksw 3y ago> They just post normal links and comments and never run into moderation at all. On the contrary, secret suppression is extremely common. Every social media user has probably been moderated at some point without their knowledge. Look up a random reddit user. Chances are they have a removed comment in their recent history, e.g. [1]. All comment removals on Reddit are shadow removals. If you use Reddit with any frequency, you'll know that mods almost never go out of their way to notify users about comment removals. [1] https://www.reveddit.com/y/Sariel007/ https://www.reveddit.com/y/Sariel007/ archive: https://archive.is/GNudB https://archive.is/GNudB
- sanderjd 3y agoI'm talking specifically about HN, not reddit.