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This strategy seems to be especially effective for focused communities as they grow from 50-5000 users. As you approach facebook scales and a more generalized a

This strategy seems to be especially effective for focused communities as they grow from 50-5000 users. As you approach facebook scales and a more generalized audience ("the public") I'd imagine the optimal strategy may shift some. A federation (small "f") of smaller, more focused communities might be the best you can hope for.

a_bonobo 3y ago
Has Facebook perhaps shifted towards a federation of communities? My Facebook feed as it used to be, general life updates by various friends, is pretty much dead. Nobody posts these things anymore. However, neighbourhood groups, Buy Nothing groups, and other local special interest groups thrive, I see several daily posts in each. Plus Facebook constantly recommends me more groups. This is a n=1 experience but I wonder whether Facebook is 'falling apart' into these groups.
- aldonius 3y ago
  Makes sense to me. The admins of the groups are responsible for managing the discussion in groups including frontline anti-spam against the porn bots and the shoe bots and whatever. So it's semi-distributed moderation. (Assuming group admins care, but if they don't then users just abandon the group.) Compared to e.g. Reddit, FB groups aren't as world readable or writable as subreddits are so you don't really get that classic inter-subreddit drama. Where global moderation is still needed from FB's perspective is when group activities start spilling outside of that group, e.g. because they're coordinating extremist activity. This probably won't be the result of user reports though. For privacy and scalability that implies an automated system which (hopefully reliably but only rarely) flags posts to a human working for FB.
bawolff 3y ago
I think wikipedia serves as an example of community governance on a large scale. Not quite facebook scale, but en wikipedia has 126,000 users who have taken an action in the last 30 days, which is pretty big scale. Then again the wikipedia community is full of drama.
- klyrs 3y ago
  Can you point me to a human community of 100k individuals that isn't full of drama? Asking for a friend

a_bonobo 3y ago

Has Facebook perhaps shifted towards a federation of communities? My Facebook feed as it used to be, general life updates by various friends, is pretty much dead. Nobody posts these things anymore. However, neighbourhood groups, Buy Nothing groups, and other local special interest groups thrive, I see several daily posts in each. Plus Facebook constantly recommends me more groups. This is a n=1 experience but I wonder whether Facebook is 'falling apart' into these groups.

aldonius 3y ago
Makes sense to me. The admins of the groups are responsible for managing the discussion in groups including frontline anti-spam against the porn bots and the shoe bots and whatever. So it's semi-distributed moderation. (Assuming group admins care, but if they don't then users just abandon the group.) Compared to e.g. Reddit, FB groups aren't as world readable or writable as subreddits are so you don't really get that classic inter-subreddit drama. Where global moderation is still needed from FB's perspective is when group activities start spilling outside of that group, e.g. because they're coordinating extremist activity. This probably won't be the result of user reports though. For privacy and scalability that implies an automated system which (hopefully reliably but only rarely) flags posts to a human working for FB.

bawolff 3y ago

I think wikipedia serves as an example of community governance on a large scale. Not quite facebook scale, but en wikipedia has 126,000 users who have taken an action in the last 30 days, which is pretty big scale. Then again the wikipedia community is full of drama.

klyrs 3y ago
Can you point me to a human community of 100k individuals that isn't full of drama? Asking for a friend