[HN Gopher] Content moderation is broken (2019)
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Content moderation is broken (2019)
Author : heresie-dabord
Score : 17 points
Date : 2022-11-19 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| incomingpain wrote:
| Content moderation clearly found the line and blew past it. Those
| who have been taking advantage of this seem immensely upset they
| are losing this power. Really playing all their cards down and
| are talking about leaving the game and going out back.
|
| What seems inevitable is the US government starts hosting public
| forums to talk; but being bound by free speech. Virtually
| anything goes unless it's an actual crime. What happens after
| this?
| gardenfelder wrote:
| In theory, everyone needs a platform, to be heard. It seems to
| me that one question in that context is this:
|
| How can you give people a platform, but at the same time, tame
| the conversation?
| tunap wrote:
| Back in the golden age of phpBBs, I would give posters 1
| notice when veering OT or getting nasty, then transfer the
| (sub-)thread to our 'FlameWar' room. There, they could, and
| would, be as nasty as they liked to each other. I failed to
| stem the flow of toxicity, but merely re-directed it. It
| worked out pretty well, and ironically, the more toxic
| categories were the most popular viewed threads for trolls
| and lurkers, alike. Go figure.
| pvg wrote:
| _What happens after this?_
|
| We know exactly what happens because it's been attempted. It
| fills up with spam and screaming bigots and nobody uses it
| beside spammers and screaming bigots. Which is why the the only
| 'inevitable' thing about such a government-run forum is that it
| won't happen.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > We know exactly what happens because it's been attempted.
|
| When have we ever had a government-run social network before?
| And why aren't physical, offline public squares full of
| screaming bigots?
| pvg wrote:
| _When have we ever had a government-run social network
| before?_
|
| We've had many failed attempts at 'anything as long as it's
| not breaking a law' online spaces.
|
| _why aren 't physical, offline public squares full of
| screaming bigots?_
|
| Because we impose severe social costs on people for that
| sort of thing. The screaming bigots are only bold and
| screaming when they feel they can avoid them. An 'anything
| goes' pseudonymous online forum is effectively a gift to
| them and mostly them - most people prioritize other things
| in their online social spaces far above 'anything goes'.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> And why aren 't physical, offline public squares full of
| screaming bigots?_
|
| They are, but only now and then.
|
| The reason is that, for _most_ (not all) communities, there
| are only a few screaming bigots within easy reach of the
| town square, so their demonstrations often look like
| this[0].
|
| With teh Internets tubes, you can gather together all those
| little groups of nutters, into one big nutball, so it
| _looks_ like there 's a lot more of them, _per capita_ ,
| than there actually are.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu-0HDBJHc8
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| yeah aside from all that basically every community has
| regulations regarding disturbing the peace and needing
| approval for rallies etc. so anybody that got up on a
| soapbox in the middle of the park and started yelling
| slurs would probably be hauled away pretty quick.
| someNameIG wrote:
| > What happens after this?
|
| 4chan
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| The town square doesn't exist in the American dream,
| capitalists would rather the public pay an admissions fee.
| Anyways, publicly funding anything of the sort is communism,
| right? When compared to Europe, Americans can't even manage
| public transit because monied interests and NIMBYism interfere.
| And the public good from transit is way more demonstrable than
| say, a forum for your racist uncle air his conspiracy theories.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _What seems inevitable is the US government starts hosting
| public forums to talk; but being bound by free speech.
| Virtually anything goes unless it 's an actual crime. What
| happens after this?_
|
| Everyone gets tired of 19 out of every 20 posts being about why
| they need Viagra, and goes back to MySpace.
| josephcsible wrote:
| How so? You just wouldn't follow the accounts that posted
| that kind of thing.
| giantrobot wrote:
| So when exactly did you go into the coma you just awoke
| from, 1993? No sort of forum can operate solely on content
| users explicitly follow. That's just unfederated blogs. On
| an online forum there's always going to be some public
| stream that pulls content from all user posts. Without
| moderation it almost instantly devolves to bigots and
| spammers. We've seen this routinely for the past 30 years
| of online forums.
|
| So "just don't follow" is not only meaningless advice but
| it's painfully naive.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Don't a lot of people use Twitter's chronological
| timeline view and completely ignore features like
| Discover? Isn't that basically what I'm describing?
| pc86 wrote:
| I think this is how _most_ people use Twitter, especially
| if they go so far as to install any extensions which
| block ads, clear CSS, etc. - I use Minimal Twitter which
| has been pretty good. The only time I see posts from
| people I 'm not following is when someone I do follow is
| responding, quote-tweeting, or retweeting.
|
| If you use Twitter as is, there are a lot of things
| promoted for you but it's not any sort of public feed,
| it's (theoretically) based on who people you follow
| follow, who they like tweets from consistently, that sort
| of thing. No Viagra ads are going to be showing up in
| that.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _Be kind. Don 't be snarky._
|
| > _Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._
|
| > _Please don 't post shallow dismissals_
|
| Perhaps you should give these a read and edit your
| comment accordingly:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pilgrimfff wrote:
| It's too bad there's no way to use hybrid approaches or
| use some kind of learning, but for machines! No
| heuristics to rank and prioritize content.
|
| We better tell every big tech company that what they've
| been doing forever is impossible to do if they don't also
| de platform those deplorables.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| big platforms follow a concept like we've had for public places.
| Just like you cant visit the pub naked. The solution is to rent
| or buy your own turf. Just like the privacy of your hone you can
| go wild. Rules still apply but those are covered much better by
| the legal system. A platform can still rent space to you and they
| can chose to promote your content but if alternative aggregation
| is available their moderation can just be shooting from the hip
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Problematically, companies' community standards also often
| feature exceptions for public figures: That's why the president
| of the United States can tweet hateful things with impunity, but
| an ordinary user can't.
|
| I'm kind of disappointed that the EFF never issued a correction
| or retraction for this claim.
|
| > users being censored for engaging in counterspeech or for using
| reclaimed terms
|
| A few paragraphs up, weren't they saying it was a bad thing that
| different rules apply to different people? Now they're saying
| it's a bad thing if the same rules apply to everyone?
| boardwaalk wrote:
| > I'm kind of disappointed that the EFF never issued a
| correction or retraction for this claim.
|
| What kind of correction or retraction would you be looking for?
| That is explicitly Twitter policy[1].
|
| Trump may have eventually crossed a line. That doesn't mean his
| line was in the same place as other people's.
|
| [1] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-
| intere...
| mediumdeviation wrote:
| Also someone proved this experimentally just by tweeting out
| the same things that Trump did and got banned
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/bot-banned-
| from-...
| anamexis wrote:
| > A few paragraphs up, weren't they saying it was a bad thing
| that different rules apply to different people? Now they're
| saying it's a bad thing if the same rules apply to everyone?
|
| Or they're saying that the rules themselves are problematic,
| and more sophistication is needed than just "this word is not
| allowed."
| tpmx wrote:
| atq2119 wrote:
| The entire purpose of the EFF is political activism, and always
| has been.
|
| I suspect I know what you're trying to insinuate, but please at
| least be explicit instead of contributing to a world of
| increasingly fuzzy language.
| tpmx wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not a native speaker of English. I did struggle a
| bit with that sentence. How would you put it?
|
| What I tried to convey was: They abandoned their core
| mission, just like the ACLU did.
| detaro wrote:
| the article seems to fit quite well into their core
| mission? What am I missing?
| josephcsible wrote:
| The relevant example to this article in particular is the
| move from "we're against online censorship" to "we're
| against online censorship of viewpoints we agree with".
| tpmx wrote:
| I'm talking about their general direction and purpose the
| past few years, not this article from 2019.
| detaro wrote:
| Could you spell out what you mean? Because your other
| link also is just "they've stopped working with someone",
| without any reasoning why that means they are now the
| wrong kind of political organization?
| tpmx wrote:
| I have clarified my comment a few levels up.
| cauch wrote:
| Can you clarify of how EFF abandoned their core mission?
|
| From what I see, EFF was not public on why Gilmore was
| removed. According to wikipedia, Gilmore described the
| parting as amicable, so probably the decision of EFF is not
| too strongly opposed to core value of Gilmore himself.
|
| For the rest, apparently, there are just rumors. Some of
| those rumors are funny. For example, I've seen things like
| "I think it was because Gilmore sided with Applebaum. This
| is scandalous, because Gilmore was just doing the correct
| thing of refusing to accuse people just based on rumors.
| So, I therefore declare that EFF is a big bad evil, I
| accuse them, just based on rumors"
| tpmx wrote:
| You know: I'd rather not. It would send me an even
| nastier wave of downvotes and flaggings. Commenting on
| this was clearly a mistake. Please carry on.
| cauch wrote:
| Fair enough. If you don't want to, you don't have to.
|
| On my side, my quest to understand why the EFF is somehow
| bad now continues. The closest I've got was so far was
| people who, after few exchanges, showed that they don't
| really care about the principles, just about what "side"
| is the one they consider "the good one".
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-11-19 23:00 UTC)