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There's a lot of user hostile moderation practices that occur on this site, manual and automatic. They're not often, or really at all, discussed. Some of them d

There's a lot of user hostile moderation practices that occur on this site, manual and automatic. They're not often, or really at all, discussed. Some of them don't work well, and haven't for as long as they've existed.

dang 3y ago
I don't want us to be user hostile. Can you link to some examples?
- johngladtj 3y ago
  I would consider any moderation action that isn't visible to users to be user hostile. If you're going to censor someone, you owe it to them to be honest about what you're doing to them.
  - nunez 3y ago
    If it's visible, it can be worked around. Blame the trolls that prevent us from having nice things.
  - hk__2 3y ago
    Shadow banning is one of the most effective ways to fight spam and harassment. Not being "honest" with spammers and harassers can often be a good thing.
  - DamonHD 3y ago
    You possibly haven't experienced how devious and determined and dishonest and unpleasant some bad actors are, including SPAMmers. (Even when doing the RightThing(TM) would probably be easier...) And, BTW, I occasionally get blocked by the mechanisms here, even though not doing anything bad, but understand that there is a trade-off.
    - johngladtj 3y ago
      I am fully aware of the issue. That's one of the costs with having a public website.
      - DamonHD 3y ago
        And that cost is so high that over the ~25Y+* that I have been running my own sites I have not had UGC on any of them, other then a very brief experiment, which showed me what utter relentless turds the bad actors can be. Operators of public sites should NOT have to pay that tax. So you are best are not fully aware of the actual cost, IMHO. Congrats to HN for striking a reasonable pragmatic balance. *I had some of the first live (non-academic) Internet connectivity in the UK, and the very very first packets were hacking attempts...
      - simonw 3y ago
        The HN moderation policies are clearly effective, because the site is mostly full of useful information that attracts a wide audience of readers. I really like this take on moderation: "The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience." From Nilay Patel in https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...
        DamonHD 3y ago
        We may not all be fans of Musk at the moment, but one of his observations about PayPal was that its job was not especially about payments because that bit was easy, it was about preventing fraud. And as the ex-director of a small payments system (e-money issuer), I agree. The bit which everyone outside the system doesn't realise is the hard bit is dealing with all the bad actors.
      - dang 3y ago
        I agree with you both. The only thing I'd add is that it's a tradeoff - if we do it this way, it's only because the alternative would be even more user-hostile.
  - yownie 3y ago
    >If you're going to censor someone unless HN is suddenly the government what you've misnomered is moderation, not censorship. Calling censorship just exaggerates your opinion and makes you look unhinged. It's a private website not national news.
    - johngladtj 3y ago
      Censorship is not limited to who does it.
      - hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
        So please explain the difference between censorship and moderation.
        93po 3y ago
        In my head, censorship is the removal of an idea that is offensive to a particular ideology but isn’t objectively harmful. Moderation is the removal of content that objectively doesn’t belong in context, eg spam Obviously that moderation definition is nuanced bc some could argue that Marxist ideas don’t belong in the context of a site with a foundation in startups. And indeed Marxist ideas often get flagged here
        miki123211 3y ago
        I like Scott Alexander's definition[1]. Quoting directly: > Moderation is the normal business activity of ensuring that your customers like using your product. If a customer doesn’t want to receive harassing messages, or to be exposed to disinformation, then a business can provide them the service of a harassment-and-disinformation-free platform. > Censorship is the abnormal activity of ensuring that people in power approve of the information on your platform, regardless of what your customers want. If the sender wants to send a message and the receiver wants to receive it, but some third party bans the exchange of information, that’s censorship. Censorship is somewhat subjective, something that you might find offensive and want moderated might not be considered so by others. Therefore, Alexander further argues that the simplest mechanism that turns censorship into moderation is a switch that, when enabled, lets you see the banned content, which is exactly what HN does. Alexander further argues that there are kinds of censorship that aren't necessarily bad, by this definition, disallowing pedophiles from sharing child porn with each other is censorship, but it's something that we should still do. [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moderation-is-different-from-censorship https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moderation-is-differen...
dotancohen 3y ago
I've twice had some "user hostile moderation practice" used against me on HN. Both times an email to the right person cleared it up - and one of those times in fact I had crossed a boundary that I shouldn't have crossed. Any long-time community member here knows what to do.

dang 3y ago

I don't want us to be user hostile. Can you link to some examples?

johngladtj 3y ago
I would consider any moderation action that isn't visible to users to be user hostile. If you're going to censor someone, you owe it to them to be honest about what you're doing to them.
- nunez 3y ago
  If it's visible, it can be worked around. Blame the trolls that prevent us from having nice things.
- hk__2 3y ago
  Shadow banning is one of the most effective ways to fight spam and harassment. Not being "honest" with spammers and harassers can often be a good thing.
- DamonHD 3y ago
  You possibly haven't experienced how devious and determined and dishonest and unpleasant some bad actors are, including SPAMmers. (Even when doing the RightThing(TM) would probably be easier...) And, BTW, I occasionally get blocked by the mechanisms here, even though not doing anything bad, but understand that there is a trade-off.
  - johngladtj 3y ago
    I am fully aware of the issue. That's one of the costs with having a public website.
    - DamonHD 3y ago
      And that cost is so high that over the ~25Y+* that I have been running my own sites I have not had UGC on any of them, other then a very brief experiment, which showed me what utter relentless turds the bad actors can be. Operators of public sites should NOT have to pay that tax. So you are best are not fully aware of the actual cost, IMHO. Congrats to HN for striking a reasonable pragmatic balance. *I had some of the first live (non-academic) Internet connectivity in the UK, and the very very first packets were hacking attempts...
    - simonw 3y ago
      The HN moderation policies are clearly effective, because the site is mostly full of useful information that attracts a wide audience of readers. I really like this take on moderation: "The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience." From Nilay Patel in https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...
      - DamonHD 3y ago
        We may not all be fans of Musk at the moment, but one of his observations about PayPal was that its job was not especially about payments because that bit was easy, it was about preventing fraud. And as the ex-director of a small payments system (e-money issuer), I agree. The bit which everyone outside the system doesn't realise is the hard bit is dealing with all the bad actors.
    - dang 3y ago
      I agree with you both. The only thing I'd add is that it's a tradeoff - if we do it this way, it's only because the alternative would be even more user-hostile.
- yownie 3y ago
  >If you're going to censor someone unless HN is suddenly the government what you've misnomered is moderation, not censorship. Calling censorship just exaggerates your opinion and makes you look unhinged. It's a private website not national news.
  - johngladtj 3y ago
    Censorship is not limited to who does it.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
      So please explain the difference between censorship and moderation.
      - 93po 3y ago
        In my head, censorship is the removal of an idea that is offensive to a particular ideology but isn’t objectively harmful. Moderation is the removal of content that objectively doesn’t belong in context, eg spam Obviously that moderation definition is nuanced bc some could argue that Marxist ideas don’t belong in the context of a site with a foundation in startups. And indeed Marxist ideas often get flagged here
      - miki123211 3y ago
        I like Scott Alexander's definition[1]. Quoting directly: > Moderation is the normal business activity of ensuring that your customers like using your product. If a customer doesn’t want to receive harassing messages, or to be exposed to disinformation, then a business can provide them the service of a harassment-and-disinformation-free platform. > Censorship is the abnormal activity of ensuring that people in power approve of the information on your platform, regardless of what your customers want. If the sender wants to send a message and the receiver wants to receive it, but some third party bans the exchange of information, that’s censorship. Censorship is somewhat subjective, something that you might find offensive and want moderated might not be considered so by others. Therefore, Alexander further argues that the simplest mechanism that turns censorship into moderation is a switch that, when enabled, lets you see the banned content, which is exactly what HN does. Alexander further argues that there are kinds of censorship that aren't necessarily bad, by this definition, disallowing pedophiles from sharing child porn with each other is censorship, but it's something that we should still do. [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moderation-is-different-from-censorship https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moderation-is-differen...

dotancohen 3y ago

I've twice had some "user hostile moderation practice" used against me on HN. Both times an email to the right person cleared it up - and one of those times in fact I had crossed a boundary that I shouldn't have crossed. Any long-time community member here knows what to do.