[HN Gopher] Former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong on the difficulties of...
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Former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong on the difficulties of running a
social media site
Author : slg
Score : 37 points
Date : 2022-04-15 19:30 UTC (3 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (threadreaderapp.com)
| pillowkusis wrote:
| This thread is an interesting perspective on social media
| "censorship" that you don't hear often.
|
| Of course everyone working at a social media company has an
| ideological bias, and that can come out in the product. But
| consider also that the latest censorship controversy creates
| negative PR, makes people leave the platform, attracts regulatory
| attention, and ultimately, hurts the company's profits. Content
| moderators are at least as worried about that as they are about
| making sure their ideological opponents aren't given a voice.
|
| Social media companies are in the unenviable position of playing
| referee in the culture war, and like referees in any sport,
| they're going to constantly be criticized for doing it, right or
| wrong. These companies are global and universal, and there's no
| way they can satisfy all parties. Sometimes, the values of left
| and right, or Iran and the US, or Israel and Palestine, are just
| irreconcilable. You're better off just trying to avoid as much
| trouble as possible, and avoiding negative media attention.
|
| Reddit is probably the most ham-fisted example of this approach.
| Their content moderation is pretty hands off, but as soon as any
| subreddit attracts negative attention, it's quarantined or
| banned, no matter if the controversy is justified or not. When
| Russia invaded Ukraine and Russia Is Bad Now, they just straight
| up banned /r/russia and any link to an .ru domain! That does
| nothing to address the conflict, but it does keep those NYT
| opinion pieces from showcasing Problematic Russian Bot Behavior
| on Reddit.
|
| I'll note that I don't think this model fully explains moderation
| policies at Twitter or other social media sites. I genuinely
| believe moderation leans left due to an ideological monoculture
| (I've seen it first hand). But it's important to recognize the
| difficult situation social media sites are in.
| qiskit wrote:
| His description of "old internet" and freedom is wrong. The "old
| internet" was predominantly american ( 90%+ ) and we didn't just
| want to protect free speech from conservatives attacking porn,
| but from everyone ( soccer moms, woke leftist, europeans, ADL,
| canadians, etc ).
|
| > it means you're standing up against EVERYONE, because every
| side is trying to take away the speech rights of the other side.
|
| Exactly. That's why the old internet defaulted to free speech.
| Because everyone understood that taking their free speech meant
| my free speech was vulnerable and it was impossible to just
| censor one and not everyone else.
|
| > It's also where Russia is fighting a real war against us
|
| This nonsense. Just the russians? What about the british,
| israelis, canadians, australians, saudis, chinese, iranians, etc.
| Not to mention the biggest threat - our own government. What
| percentage of foreign propaganda is russian? 1%? Just like all
| the russian money spent on facebook gave trump the presidency?
| All $40K was it?
|
| > I want you to pause for a minute and think about your political
| alignment and whether you're on the left or right of this issue,
| because you probably think one of those things.
|
| I'm neither and social media clearly leans towards one side.
|
| > Elon is one of those, because he doesn't understand what has
| happened to internet culture since 2004. Or as I call it, just
| culture.
|
| The culture was formed by censorship. The social media companies
| are trying to change culture. Get rid of censorship and we'll see
| about the culture. If yishan is right, how come real world
| culture is so different from social media culture? Perhaps
| because censorship allows a tiny minority to have the most
| influence/say?
|
| > Facebook's userbase has at various times been left-leaning,
| then right-leaning, then bifurcated. So has Reddit's. Twitter's
| also. The social platforms don't care.
|
| Is that why they collectively banned trump. Because they don't
| care?
|
| > It is because we brought all of our old horrible collective
| dysfunctions onto the internet
|
| The horrible collective dysfunctions were on the old internet
| long before social media.
|
| > They are censoring because they are large social platforms, and
| ideas are POWERFUL and DANGEROUS.
|
| That must be why we censor libraries...
|
| Instead of wasting pages of text and much of our time, he could
| have been honest and answered in less than 140 characters - "We
| censor because of money".
|
| The only difference between old internet and new internet is
| money and shareholders and centralization. The guy talks about
| everything - culture, russians, old internet, etc but ignores the
| elephant int the room. Money makes the world go round and money
| makes social media censor. If you are dependent on ads, you
| probably will have to conform to money's demands. I do wonder how
| elon will deal with the problem of money/ads. Though taking the
| company private and owning it outright should give him more
| leeway, I doubt he's willing to lose money year after year on
| twitter.
| neilpointer wrote:
| > Is that why they collectively banned trump. Because they
| don't care?
|
| When he says "they don't care" he's saying they [social media
| orgs] don't care about ideology. If they did, they'd just ban
| large swaths of people they disagree with.
|
| They banned Trump because he incited a fucking riot on the
| nation's capitol and even after seeing the consequences of this
| incitement - in the form of a dead supporters of his and
| potentially members of our government being killed by an angry
| mob - Trump doubled down like he always does.
|
| Yishan's entire thread boils down to "social media companies
| don't give a shit about ideology until it manifests as an
| actual threat to public safety". I'm confused how you weren't
| able to glean that from his thread. When they banned Trump, he
| had become a clear threat to basic societal order and the
| companies decided they had a responsibility to stop assisting
| the escalation of that threat.
|
| > That must be why we censor libraries...
|
| this comes across as sarcastic, not sure though. We absolutely
| censor libraries. Currently large portions of the country are
| obsessed with throwing out LGBT literature that kids might have
| access to. I'm sure you can guess as to why that is.
|
| > Instead of wasting pages of text and much of our time, he
| could have been honest and answered in less than 140 characters
| - "We censor because of money".
|
| That doesn't make sense. For social media companies, engagement
| = money and having trolls, Trump, and outrage clicks is
| certainly more profitable than not having those things.
|
| But you're right about one thing, if the entire country
| devolved into civil war (one of the logical outcomes of letting
| Trump's bid to overthrow a peaceful transition of power
| continue), profits would definitely take a nosedive. Sometimes
| good business sense aligns with doing the right thing.
| qiskit wrote:
| > They banned Trump because he incited a fucking riot on the
| nation's capitol and even after seeing the consequences of
| this incitement - in the form of a dead supporters of his and
| potentially members of our government being killed by an
| angry mob - Trump doubled down like he always does.
|
| So what should happen to social media companies who supported
| BLM and the riots that ensued? Should they be banned? What
| about social media companies role in the color revolutions?
|
| > Yishan's entire thread boils down to "social media
| companies don't give a shit about ideology until it manifests
| as an actual threat to public safety". I'm confused how you
| weren't able to glean that from his thread.
|
| See the above comment.
|
| > We absolutely censor libraries. Currently large portions of
| the country are obsessed with throwing out LGBT literature
| that kids might have access to. I'm sure you can guess as to
| why that is.
|
| We talking libraries or elementary schools? Big difference.
|
| > That doesn't make sense. For social media companies,
| engagement = money and having trolls, Trump, and outrage
| clicks is certainly more profitable than not having those
| things.
|
| It makes sense if the advertisers don't like it. Advertisers
| aren't just interested in numbers. They are also interested
| in branding.
|
| > Sometimes good business sense aligns with doing the right
| thing.
|
| Most times good business sense aligns with doing the wrong
| thing.
|
| Just in case you were wondering. Not a fan of Trump. Not a
| fan of the left or right.
| neilpointer wrote:
| > So what should happen to social media companies who
| supported BLM and the riots that ensued?
|
| I'm not aware of BLM having any elected leaders, but if
| they were using social media to coordinate violence I would
| expect them to be banned. Please let us know if you've
| found any folks with 80m followers that have been left free
| to coordinate violence on social media platforms. That
| said, here's NYPost detailing a bunch of Antifa-affiliated
| Twitter accounts being banned for coordinating/encouraging
| violence https://nypost.com/2021/01/22/twitter-suspends-
| antifa-accoun...
|
| > We talking libraries or elementary schools? Big
| difference.
|
| Schools have libraries, it's not a big difference. But
| don't worry, we're talking libraries too.
| https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-
| government/article260...
|
| > Most times good business sense aligns with doing the
| wrong thing.
|
| Hence my usage of the word "sometimes".
|
| > Just in case you were wondering. Not a fan of Trump. Not
| a fan of the left or right.
|
| Well now its you who could've saved us a lot of characters
| and just said "I'm one of those guys that thinks they're
| non-ideological, but here's my obvious rightward bias
| anyways"
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| > The "old internet" was predominantly american ( 90%+ ) and we
| didn't just want to protect free speech from conservatives
| attacking porn, but from everyone ( soccer moms, woke leftist,
| europeans, ADL, canadians, etc ).
|
| No one was concerned with woke leftists in the 90s. No one.
| "Woke" wasn't a term, and after the fall of the Soviet Union,
| no one was worried about the corroding influence of leftists,
| or cultural marxism, or any of the bogeymen that resurfaced
| over the past decade.
| qiskit wrote:
| > No one was concerned with woke leftists in the 90s. No one.
| "Woke" wasn't a term
|
| I know woke wasn't a term. I grew up in the 90s. I just put
| it in there to emphasize "everyone". Thought people would be
| butthurt about me adding canadians/europeans, not woke
| leftist. But the precursors of modern "woke left" certainly
| existed in the 90s even though they didn't gain the power
| they did after the 2007 financial crisis.
| neilpointer wrote:
| Oh wow I had no idea the Woke Leftists ran the banks and
| private equity firms. Wild.
| qiskit wrote:
| Not just the banks and private equity. CIA, FBI, Army,
| etc. It's crazy how the elites ( at least a significant
| faction of them ) and the people ( at least a significant
| faction of them ) are living in two different worlds.
| neilpointer wrote:
| ah yes, the well-known leftists of the CIA, FBI, and
| Army. They were playing the long-game murdering all those
| leftist governments of Central and South America, I
| guess.
|
| Maybe just give a definition of 'woke'?
| specto wrote:
| Been seeing these conspiracy "theories" on HN lately,
| it's interesting to say the least.
| psyc wrote:
| In the 90s, we had "PC." In retrospect, it was a very mild
| strain of what we have now.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I co-ran a co-working space for many years in a zeitgeisty tech
| city as a side thing to keep my companies rent cheap (kind of.)
|
| We were early holders of bitcoin meetups, we threw crypto events,
| we gave away schwag with those guys who 3d printed guns. We
| hosted "Young African Leaders" events (yali) and hosted some
| amazing people from overseas. We hosted the local 2600 meetup and
| other maker events. We hosted the local colleges Asian chamber of
| commerce events.
|
| We threw parties with thousands of people filtering through our
| converted warehouse space.
|
| We had actual communists and unabashed capitalists and new
| atheists and couldn't care less multi generational atheists and
| old burnouts and young idiots, people abandoned by their
| families, from loving families and Christians, Muslims,
| Buddhists, Hindus.. We had classes for robotics, pickling
| vegetables, we burned a lot of stuff and made some huge art
| installations.
|
| We kicked people out for being shitty and insulting (which was
| extremely rare among members, totalling 3 people over many
| years). We occasionally reprimanded people who were fine in
| person but abusive online.
|
| Hell is other people. I miss what we built and the ideas and
| companies and the hope and economic power our members could tap
| into.
|
| But I do not miss the bad behavior, the guy who seemed cool and
| nerdy until he gets drunk and starts trying to physically corner
| women. The attempted rapists who came to some of our larger
| warehouse parties and had to be removed by police.
|
| The assholes who came in with bad faith arguments or the copious
| number of bad faith actors trying to monetize our more
| inexperienced members.
|
| We were a meatspace, old internet, freedom of speech group and we
| kept our facilities a little dingy just to keep things more maker
| oriented and attract less of the superficial.
|
| Having seen it all in person it's always the bad faith actors,
| the predators, the non-makers and the fragile egos that come out.
| We did a good job in person having ideological, cultural and
| class diversity because "making" was our prime member criteria.
|
| I don't see how it's possible on the internet at large. I've seen
| many terrible people in person and at least there were
| consequences for overtly evil or lying acts, I just don't see it
| happening on the consumer internets social media platforms.
|
| Great perspective to read about and rings very true with my years
| "sitting at the city gates" in our modern times.
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