5 ms·

You know who should really be doing the moderation work? The very people in that very local community! This is how this is supposed to work in a healthy and w

by pen2l 3y ago

You know who should really be doing the moderation work? The very people in that very local community! This is how this is supposed to work in a healthy and well-functioning society/community -- it moderates itself with internal deliberation about what the norms are and with reflection and awareness of how things are changing, with self-assigned community leaders and adults! The moment you outsource that important task outside the community is the moment you doom and cripple that community. Because when it's some Kenyans far away doing the moderation then we here don't have an awareness of what's going on here and what the social climate is, how norms are changing, what the youth are up to. Forgoing this feedback loop which results in some measure of self-correction can't be good and that lag in cognizance will come to get us before it's too late to do much of the dangers lurking about.

Zetice 3y ago
Er, how do you draw borders around an Internet community, which has no physical boundaries?
- jameskilton 3y ago
  This is the fundamental failure of social networks. We never should have expected "anyone in the world can talk to anyone else" to work. Humans just don't work like that (and physically cannot function in such an environment. See research by Robin Dunbar et. al).
  - Zetice 3y ago
    I’m currently in Arkansas. Where are you?
    - cjs_ac 3y ago
      I'm in the UK, but we are united by a common culture: HN is designed to select its users for a particular set of interests, attitudes and behaviours. But mainstream social media platforms are designed to be for everybody, and that's not working.
      - Zetice 3y ago
        They’re designed to show you content you like so you watch their ads… But sure, only compatible cultures should talk to one another? So which cultures pair well with yours and which don’t, then? Who would you kick off the Internet/social media?
        cjs_ac 3y ago
        > But sure, only compatible cultures should talk to one another? No, this would be taking my argument too far. Online communities develop their own cultures and norms, mostly borrowed from the real-world cultural contexts of their constituent members. Someone trying to participate in a community without conforming to those cultural expectations is going to cause trouble. > So which cultures pair well with yours and which don’t, then? Who would you kick off the Internet/social media? I see no reason to kick anyone off social media, but I think unfocused social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, &c. are causing social problems. There were Americans in America protesting against coronavirus lockdowns in Australia, and there are Australians who have reoriented their entire identities around Donald Trump and QAnon: people are being radicalised about events that have nothing to do with them, and over which they have no control. The social media I want to see is the old-style message fora that existed before modern social media: phpBB- and vBulletin-based communities that were designed around shared interests, not platform functionality. Moderation is a real problem for modern social platforms. In the 90s, we had the so-called Scunthorpe Problem: AOL users living in UK towns like Scunthorpe and Penistone were banned from the AOL support forum for giving honest answers to inquiries into their location. The problem persists in a more subtle form, even on this website, in the Forbidden Meatball Problem[0]. Interest-based online communities would be able to carry out their own moderation according to their own cultures, and consequently avoid these problems. [0] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-dish-encounters-question-of-taste-on-facebook-7890gqd0m2c https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-dish-encounters-q...
        Zetice 3y ago
        Okay cool; so we should... ban companies that build social networks that are too inclusive? What is the action you're suggesting?
jabroni_salad 3y ago
that seems like the ideal, but I'm pretty sure in my town the moderator will end up being the mayor's best friend and just railroad everything. Just can't help but notice that everybody in leadership where I live is from the same clan!
- adolph 3y ago
  Well yeah, whoever is the town moderator is any mayor's best friend. Essentially the same power formerly held by a newspaper's publisher and editorial board.
jjoonathan 3y ago
Internet moderation is even more thankless and maligned than meatspace moderation, so nobody wants to do it. I don't know how to fix the problem, but that's at the heart of it.
- bawolff 3y ago
  Counterpoint wikipedia. Reddit. Various smaller forums But i agree that i cant see it working for facebook which isn't really modeled as a community.
- thomasahle 3y ago
  Reddit mostly managed to get people to do this. (Even taking recent controversy into account.) Facebook could similarly require people who create a group to moderate it. Of course Facebook also has "non group" posts, but that's the minority of the total posts, and they could probably get completely rid of it.
indymike 3y ago
> The very people in that very local community! I think you are right. It's also important that the local community set behavioral boundaries (in real life, actual laws) and the system for dealing with breaking those boundaries (in real life, the actual judicial system). The stuff they are moderating, if done in real life, would enjoy very little protection from the law. Facebook: Person starts talking to person, sends dick pic, continues conversation. Real Life: Person starts conversation in public place, exposes self, keeps on talking. In real life this kind of behavior is highly likely to result in an arrest, engagement with the legal system, possible fines and jail. In Facebook world, you might get a post post deleted, a warning from a mod, and maybe get your account suspended. Additionally, local norms may be very different, and so laws tend to be very different. A lot of the bad behavior we see in social media is largely because people get away with it, with little risk to loss of freedom and wealth.
- Chris2048 3y ago
  > In Facebook world, you might get a post post deleted, a warning from a mod, and maybe get your account suspended In Ireland sending dick pics is now illegal and can result in legal action.
bacchusracine 3y ago
>You know who should really be doing the moderation work? >The very people in that very local community! Don't be silly! Then people might get the idea that they own their own community instead of passively accepting what they're told. They might even get the idea that they should actively participate instead of mindlessly doomscrolling and receiving the all important consensus shaping on what to purchase this week. And who wants that?
EatingWithForks 3y ago
What do you mean "in that very local community". Do you mean DMs should also be public to the geographic location you're in? Do you mean a white majority in a local space should be allowed to blanket ban black people from using facebook?
raverbashing 3y ago
I'd suggest googling what kinds of material is there on Fb and considering a bit if it's appropriate for "the community" to moderate such kinds of material
lelanthran 3y ago
> This is how this is supposed to work in a healthy and well-functioning society/community -- it moderates itself with internal deliberation about what the norms are and with reflection and awareness of how things are changing, with self-assigned community leaders and adults! I'd like to think that it's a good idea, but don't you think that it will quickly become an echo chamber? Think of current communities known for being intolerant of outside ideas (The very religious communities, the hard left/right communities) - the only way they can do so is because they police themselves against new ideas.
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  Maybe. So what? Humans are wired to form small communities. That was the world before the internet. Now everyone is connected on these massive platforms and people are miserable. Maybe that older model was the right one after all, and the trade-off--less contact between those communities--is worth it, so long as people can freely associate with whichever communities they choose.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > Maybe. > So what? So ... nothing, I guess? I didn't say whether I thought it was a good or bad thing, I just wanted to point out that there is more nuance than appears at first glance. I'm not advocating for blind "in-group good, out-group bad" policies, nor for the reverse of "new thing good, old thing bad".
- pen2l 3y ago
  I get and appreciate what you're saying but I disagree because I think when the veil is a little bit lifted for a community of the mechanisms of moderation it is subject to, it both nullifies a component of chaos in its evolution and I think it hastens the path of progression by allowing a more clear-headed internal deliberation. I think it is generally true that things get better and better values win when a community is left alone to their devices (pun unintended), what with the long arc of justice in the universe and all.
rob74 3y ago
Ok, let's take the example of the video of someone being beheaded, who from the "local community" should do the moderation in that case? The ones doing the beheading, or the ones in danger of being beheaded?
- pizzafeelsright 3y ago
  I personally would want to know who in my local community is doing the beheading, who is supporting it, and what the reason is for the beheading. I am against moderation in the online world. We need to bring it all into the light and be transparent. Perhaps we just have "flag and make this post blurry" button on the post and keep the content as a compromise. edited: rewording
  - mypastself 3y ago
    But the vast majority of people don’t want to see it. How would you resolve that?
    - MarcoZavala 3y ago
      [dead]
    - gxt 3y ago
      Don't shield people of the horrors caused by mad men, for they will be their next victims.
      - mypastself 3y ago
        Shouldn’t the people decide what constitutes shielding and sheltering by themselves?
      - notahacker 3y ago
        I'm pretty sure my chances of being beheaded don't vary with how many ISIS videos some troll adds to my Facebook feed
    - 3y ago
bartread 3y ago
> The very people in that very local community! On one level I agree. On another level I think this is perhaps unrealistically idealistic. I'm a member, and very infrequent poster, on a couple of different facebook groups for local communities. I've seen too many instances of admins in these communities going on some sort of mini-powertrip with post "moderation" to believe that many of the people in these communities possess the maturity, objectivity, and self-awareness to do this well. And then, if you are a mod, and you're genuinely good at it, you still seem to get tons of abuse thrown at you, so where's the incentive? It seems like a very thankless task to me.
armchairhacker 3y ago
To an extent. Members of the gardening community probably won't be ok moderating gore and creepy DMs, they'll be scared away. You need someone else who's desensitized enough to gore and creepy DMs that they can filter them out before they get to the community. I really doubt that Kenyans are filtering anything remotely reasonable, only obvious hate speech and nudity/gore. And the general consensus is that people shouldn't be exposed to hate and graphic content unless they explicitly seek it out, even though it by-definition "shelters" them.
zajio1am 3y ago
> The very people in that very local community! This is mostly how Reddit moderation works, each subreddit is one small community with local moderators. I generally agree that this approach to moderation is much better than some universal moderation. OTOH, small communities are often playgrounds for petty dictators.

by pen2l 3y ago

Zetice 3y ago

Er, how do you draw borders around an Internet community, which has no physical boundaries?

jameskilton 3y ago
This is the fundamental failure of social networks. We never should have expected "anyone in the world can talk to anyone else" to work. Humans just don't work like that (and physically cannot function in such an environment. See research by Robin Dunbar et. al).
- Zetice 3y ago
  I’m currently in Arkansas. Where are you?
  - cjs_ac 3y ago
    I'm in the UK, but we are united by a common culture: HN is designed to select its users for a particular set of interests, attitudes and behaviours. But mainstream social media platforms are designed to be for everybody, and that's not working.
    - Zetice 3y ago
      They’re designed to show you content you like so you watch their ads… But sure, only compatible cultures should talk to one another? So which cultures pair well with yours and which don’t, then? Who would you kick off the Internet/social media?
      - cjs_ac 3y ago
        > But sure, only compatible cultures should talk to one another? No, this would be taking my argument too far. Online communities develop their own cultures and norms, mostly borrowed from the real-world cultural contexts of their constituent members. Someone trying to participate in a community without conforming to those cultural expectations is going to cause trouble. > So which cultures pair well with yours and which don’t, then? Who would you kick off the Internet/social media? I see no reason to kick anyone off social media, but I think unfocused social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, &c. are causing social problems. There were Americans in America protesting against coronavirus lockdowns in Australia, and there are Australians who have reoriented their entire identities around Donald Trump and QAnon: people are being radicalised about events that have nothing to do with them, and over which they have no control. The social media I want to see is the old-style message fora that existed before modern social media: phpBB- and vBulletin-based communities that were designed around shared interests, not platform functionality. Moderation is a real problem for modern social platforms. In the 90s, we had the so-called Scunthorpe Problem: AOL users living in UK towns like Scunthorpe and Penistone were banned from the AOL support forum for giving honest answers to inquiries into their location. The problem persists in a more subtle form, even on this website, in the Forbidden Meatball Problem[0]. Interest-based online communities would be able to carry out their own moderation according to their own cultures, and consequently avoid these problems. [0] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-dish-encounters-question-of-taste-on-facebook-7890gqd0m2c https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-dish-encounters-q...
        Zetice 3y ago
        Okay cool; so we should... ban companies that build social networks that are too inclusive? What is the action you're suggesting?

jabroni_salad 3y ago

that seems like the ideal, but I'm pretty sure in my town the moderator will end up being the mayor's best friend and just railroad everything. Just can't help but notice that everybody in leadership where I live is from the same clan!

adolph 3y ago
Well yeah, whoever is the town moderator is any mayor's best friend. Essentially the same power formerly held by a newspaper's publisher and editorial board.

jjoonathan 3y ago

Internet moderation is even more thankless and maligned than meatspace moderation, so nobody wants to do it. I don't know how to fix the problem, but that's at the heart of it.

bawolff 3y ago
Counterpoint wikipedia. Reddit. Various smaller forums But i agree that i cant see it working for facebook which isn't really modeled as a community.
thomasahle 3y ago
Reddit mostly managed to get people to do this. (Even taking recent controversy into account.) Facebook could similarly require people who create a group to moderate it. Of course Facebook also has "non group" posts, but that's the minority of the total posts, and they could probably get completely rid of it.

indymike 3y ago

> The very people in that very local community! I think you are right. It's also important that the local community set behavioral boundaries (in real life, actual laws) and the system for dealing with breaking those boundaries (in real life, the actual judicial system). The stuff they are moderating, if done in real life, would enjoy very little protection from the law. Facebook: Person starts talking to person, sends dick pic, continues conversation. Real Life: Person starts conversation in public place, exposes self, keeps on talking. In real life this kind of behavior is highly likely to result in an arrest, engagement with the legal system, possible fines and jail. In Facebook world, you might get a post post deleted, a warning from a mod, and maybe get your account suspended. Additionally, local norms may be very different, and so laws tend to be very different. A lot of the bad behavior we see in social media is largely because people get away with it, with little risk to loss of freedom and wealth.

Chris2048 3y ago
> In Facebook world, you might get a post post deleted, a warning from a mod, and maybe get your account suspended In Ireland sending dick pics is now illegal and can result in legal action.

bacchusracine 3y ago

>You know who should really be doing the moderation work? >The very people in that very local community! Don't be silly! Then people might get the idea that they own their own community instead of passively accepting what they're told. They might even get the idea that they should actively participate instead of mindlessly doomscrolling and receiving the all important consensus shaping on what to purchase this week. And who wants that?

EatingWithForks 3y ago

What do you mean "in that very local community". Do you mean DMs should also be public to the geographic location you're in? Do you mean a white majority in a local space should be allowed to blanket ban black people from using facebook?

raverbashing 3y ago

I'd suggest googling what kinds of material is there on Fb and considering a bit if it's appropriate for "the community" to moderate such kinds of material

lelanthran 3y ago

> This is how this is supposed to work in a healthy and well-functioning society/community -- it moderates itself with internal deliberation about what the norms are and with reflection and awareness of how things are changing, with self-assigned community leaders and adults! I'd like to think that it's a good idea, but don't you think that it will quickly become an echo chamber? Think of current communities known for being intolerant of outside ideas (The very religious communities, the hard left/right communities) - the only way they can do so is because they police themselves against new ideas.

BaseballPhysics 3y ago
Maybe. So what? Humans are wired to form small communities. That was the world before the internet. Now everyone is connected on these massive platforms and people are miserable. Maybe that older model was the right one after all, and the trade-off--less contact between those communities--is worth it, so long as people can freely associate with whichever communities they choose.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Maybe. > So what? So ... nothing, I guess? I didn't say whether I thought it was a good or bad thing, I just wanted to point out that there is more nuance than appears at first glance. I'm not advocating for blind "in-group good, out-group bad" policies, nor for the reverse of "new thing good, old thing bad".
pen2l 3y ago
I get and appreciate what you're saying but I disagree because I think when the veil is a little bit lifted for a community of the mechanisms of moderation it is subject to, it both nullifies a component of chaos in its evolution and I think it hastens the path of progression by allowing a more clear-headed internal deliberation. I think it is generally true that things get better and better values win when a community is left alone to their devices (pun unintended), what with the long arc of justice in the universe and all.

rob74 3y ago

Ok, let's take the example of the video of someone being beheaded, who from the "local community" should do the moderation in that case? The ones doing the beheading, or the ones in danger of being beheaded?

pizzafeelsright 3y ago
I personally would want to know who in my local community is doing the beheading, who is supporting it, and what the reason is for the beheading. I am against moderation in the online world. We need to bring it all into the light and be transparent. Perhaps we just have "flag and make this post blurry" button on the post and keep the content as a compromise. edited: rewording
- mypastself 3y ago
  But the vast majority of people don’t want to see it. How would you resolve that?
  - MarcoZavala 3y ago
    [dead]
  - gxt 3y ago
    Don't shield people of the horrors caused by mad men, for they will be their next victims.
    - mypastself 3y ago
      Shouldn’t the people decide what constitutes shielding and sheltering by themselves?
    - notahacker 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure my chances of being beheaded don't vary with how many ISIS videos some troll adds to my Facebook feed
  - 3y ago

bartread 3y ago

> The very people in that very local community! On one level I agree. On another level I think this is perhaps unrealistically idealistic. I'm a member, and very infrequent poster, on a couple of different facebook groups for local communities. I've seen too many instances of admins in these communities going on some sort of mini-powertrip with post "moderation" to believe that many of the people in these communities possess the maturity, objectivity, and self-awareness to do this well. And then, if you are a mod, and you're genuinely good at it, you still seem to get tons of abuse thrown at you, so where's the incentive? It seems like a very thankless task to me.

armchairhacker 3y ago

To an extent. Members of the gardening community probably won't be ok moderating gore and creepy DMs, they'll be scared away. You need someone else who's desensitized enough to gore and creepy DMs that they can filter them out before they get to the community. I really doubt that Kenyans are filtering anything remotely reasonable, only obvious hate speech and nudity/gore. And the general consensus is that people shouldn't be exposed to hate and graphic content unless they explicitly seek it out, even though it by-definition "shelters" them.

zajio1am 3y ago

> The very people in that very local community! This is mostly how Reddit moderation works, each subreddit is one small community with local moderators. I generally agree that this approach to moderation is much better than some universal moderation. OTOH, small communities are often playgrounds for petty dictators.