4 ms·

But what about all the small, independent forums in the internet? For them it would really be impossible to comply with monitoring every post. Often they are ho

But what about all the small, independent forums in the internet? For them it would really be impossible to comply with monitoring every post. Often they are hobby projects.

username332211 3y ago
To paraphrase the GP - Well, tough luck. [This] is YOUR problem, not MINE. If hobbyists can't comply, maybe it's about time we prevented small independent forums from existing.
MrRolleyes 3y ago
[dead]
ianai 3y ago
Thats obviously not a primary concern. Similar to how your home kitchen isn't going to have a food inspector show up and close it.
- username332211 3y ago
  The comparison you're making is nonsensical. My home kitchen doesn't routinely serve strangers. The forum I host trough a server in my cupboard does. If you want to make a comparison, it's between a small family restaurant and a giant fast food chain. It may surprise you but food inspectors treat both in roughly the same way. Face it. Nothing meaningfully separates my forum from giant social media companies apart from scale. Hence, small forums hosted by hobbyists and volunteers should be shut down.
  - glimshe 3y ago
    Anything at scale is something else entirely.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - Alex3917 3y ago
    > My home kitchen doesn't routinely serve strangers. Most states have cottage food laws, with basic regulations for small-scale commercial production. E.g. you need to take a course on food safety, you need your water tested, and you can only sell up to $X per year, but you aren't subject to random inspections. There is no reason why the web shouldn't be regulated similarly, with different rules based on the size of the audience.
    - username332211 3y ago
      How does that mesh with the original post's point? If we have different rules depending on scale, how is it OK for the rules for large scale social media platforms to be impossible to comply with by large scale social media platforms?
      - autoexec 3y ago
        Ideally, no matter what the size of the platform is, if it's genuinely impossible for the people running that platform to not harm children, that should be their problem. If they can't figure out how to not be harmful to children, they don't get to exist. That's how it's supposed to work. In practice though, it's not unreasonable to say that we should expect more from companies that can cause harms at a much larger scale. Perhaps there's some kind of threshold where we can accept some harm being done at a small scale while still not allowing harm at a much larger scale. Seems fair enough.
  - YouSuck2 3y ago
    You're making a ridiculous argument
ForHackernews 3y ago
What? How do you figure? I run a small hobby forum for a niche interest and it's very easy to monitor every post. We have five moderators, a couple hundred registered users and we get maybe 3 or 4 posts a day.
firecall 3y ago
I frequent the OCAU forum here in Australia. Moderating the News board became too arduous and carried potential legal liability. So they turned the board off. It’s really not that hard. And anyway, just because you can’t fix everything, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and fix something. All or nothing thinking leads to inaction.
- vasdae 3y ago
  So we can only have discussion forums where the owner is a big company that can afford to have a team of moderators around the clock. Yes, that's going to end well. (For the elites, that is.)
  - firecall 3y ago
    My direct experience is that all social is now Dark Social. It's invite only Groups on Telegram, FB Messenger, or Apple Messages mostly. So it has ended well for my social circle ;-)
- nitwit005 3y ago
  A lot of discussion forums died that way. They shut down the problematic parts, but those were also the parts people were engaged with.
spookie 3y ago
There needs to be a line drawn from those who service a large number of people, and those who don't. Either way, only those who are big enough can be actively monitored and accounted for. Before the obvious argument "where do you draw the line?", I may add that only a select and obvious number of social platforms reach the level of Meta's.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- username332211 3y ago
  The original post claimed every post should be monitored for "harm to children". And that if giant social media companies can't do that, they shouldn't exist. Now you want to exempt everyone apart from giant social media companies from that same rule? This is getting a bit Kafkaesque.
  - spookie 3y ago
    Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't notice that extremely important part. That is... more than kafkaesque. I thought the conversation was around marketing, not user posts.

But what about all the small, independent forums in the internet? For them it would really be impossible to comply with monitoring every post. Often they are hobby projects.

username332211 3y ago

To paraphrase the GP - Well, tough luck. [This] is YOUR problem, not MINE. If hobbyists can't comply, maybe it's about time we prevented small independent forums from existing.

MrRolleyes 3y ago

[dead]

ianai 3y ago

Thats obviously not a primary concern. Similar to how your home kitchen isn't going to have a food inspector show up and close it.

username332211 3y ago
The comparison you're making is nonsensical. My home kitchen doesn't routinely serve strangers. The forum I host trough a server in my cupboard does. If you want to make a comparison, it's between a small family restaurant and a giant fast food chain. It may surprise you but food inspectors treat both in roughly the same way. Face it. Nothing meaningfully separates my forum from giant social media companies apart from scale. Hence, small forums hosted by hobbyists and volunteers should be shut down.
- glimshe 3y ago
  Anything at scale is something else entirely.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Alex3917 3y ago
  > My home kitchen doesn't routinely serve strangers. Most states have cottage food laws, with basic regulations for small-scale commercial production. E.g. you need to take a course on food safety, you need your water tested, and you can only sell up to $X per year, but you aren't subject to random inspections. There is no reason why the web shouldn't be regulated similarly, with different rules based on the size of the audience.
  - username332211 3y ago
    How does that mesh with the original post's point? If we have different rules depending on scale, how is it OK for the rules for large scale social media platforms to be impossible to comply with by large scale social media platforms?
    - autoexec 3y ago
      Ideally, no matter what the size of the platform is, if it's genuinely impossible for the people running that platform to not harm children, that should be their problem. If they can't figure out how to not be harmful to children, they don't get to exist. That's how it's supposed to work. In practice though, it's not unreasonable to say that we should expect more from companies that can cause harms at a much larger scale. Perhaps there's some kind of threshold where we can accept some harm being done at a small scale while still not allowing harm at a much larger scale. Seems fair enough.
- YouSuck2 3y ago
  You're making a ridiculous argument

ForHackernews 3y ago

What? How do you figure? I run a small hobby forum for a niche interest and it's very easy to monitor every post. We have five moderators, a couple hundred registered users and we get maybe 3 or 4 posts a day.

firecall 3y ago

I frequent the OCAU forum here in Australia. Moderating the News board became too arduous and carried potential legal liability. So they turned the board off. It’s really not that hard. And anyway, just because you can’t fix everything, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and fix something. All or nothing thinking leads to inaction.

vasdae 3y ago
So we can only have discussion forums where the owner is a big company that can afford to have a team of moderators around the clock. Yes, that's going to end well. (For the elites, that is.)
- firecall 3y ago
  My direct experience is that all social is now Dark Social. It's invite only Groups on Telegram, FB Messenger, or Apple Messages mostly. So it has ended well for my social circle ;-)
nitwit005 3y ago
A lot of discussion forums died that way. They shut down the problematic parts, but those were also the parts people were engaged with.

spookie 3y ago

There needs to be a line drawn from those who service a large number of people, and those who don't. Either way, only those who are big enough can be actively monitored and accounted for. Before the obvious argument "where do you draw the line?", I may add that only a select and obvious number of social platforms reach the level of Meta's.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
username332211 3y ago
The original post claimed every post should be monitored for "harm to children". And that if giant social media companies can't do that, they shouldn't exist. Now you want to exempt everyone apart from giant social media companies from that same rule? This is getting a bit Kafkaesque.
- spookie 3y ago
  Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't notice that extremely important part. That is... more than kafkaesque. I thought the conversation was around marketing, not user posts.