[HN Gopher] On Front Porch Forum, politics is fair game but unki...
___________________________________________________________________
On Front Porch Forum, politics is fair game but unkindness is
prohibited
Author : eevilspock
Score : 124 points
Date : 2024-08-10 10:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| eevilspock wrote:
| https://archive.is/5Je01
| bell-cot wrote:
| > A text-heavy, newsletter-based site that reads like a cross
| between a neighborhood internet mailing list and a small-town
| newspaper's letters-to-the-editor section, Front Porch Forum
| seems an unlikely candidate to outcompete the big social media
| platforms. It has achieved critical mass in the Green Mountain
| State not by embracing the growth hacks, recommendation
| algorithms and dopamine-inducing features that power most social
| networks, but by eschewing them.
|
| > While most tech giants view content moderation as a necessary
| evil, Front Porch Forum treats it as a core function. Twelve of
| its 30 full-time employees spend their days reading every user
| post before it's published, rejecting any that break its rules
| against personal attacks, misinformation or spam.
|
| > The process is slow and laborious, but it seems to work. Front
| Porch Forum is the highest-scoring platform ever on New_ Public's
| "Civic Signals" criteria, which attempt to measure the health of
| online communities.
|
| Tiny, not quickly scalable, and probably not profitable enough to
| make anyone even slightly rich.
|
| But very good for human beings.
|
| What are your priorities?
| aredox wrote:
| Twitter, Facebook & co could have hired millions of people and
| paid them magnanimously with the _billions_ they make to scale
| moderation up. (Billions are really huge sums of money that
| people can 't really fathom)
|
| Instead they choose not to, and let the parts of the internet
| they cornered enshitify and pollute the rest of society.
|
| Ironically had they done so, they would have now far more data
| to train moderation AI on. Instead they only have haphazard
| data
| gruez wrote:
| >Twitter, Facebook & co could have hired millions of people
| and paid them magnanimously with the billions they
|
| Paying "millions" of people with "billions" of dollars means
| each person is getting paid $1k. That's below poverty levels
| of income, not "magnanimously" by any sane definition.
| from-nibly wrote:
| Also twitter is not profitable. It has negative money to
| play with.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Twitter, Facebook & co could have hired millions of people
| and paid them magnanimously with the billions they make to
| scale moderation up."
|
| Nope, run the calculator again. Twitter is barely profitable
| even with current staff (and your proposal would literally
| multiply that staff _thousandfold_ ). Facebook is a bit
| better off, but you can't make enough money on ads to support
| good moderation for a global chatbox of a billion users
| speaking hundreds languages. Even at a ratio of 1 moderator
| per 100 users, the payroll would dwarf Meta's yearly revenue.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| What are the founder's priorities going to be when they're a
| few years older and wearier, and still can't afford a second
| home in some warm climate?
| mplanchard wrote:
| It's a public benefit corporation, so there's some limitation
| on what can be done with it. That said, I think their goal is
| just to continue to make something useful for the community,
| and continue their lives here when they retire.
|
| I know it's crazy to the silicon valley mindset, but a lot of
| people are happy making enough money to be comfortable,
| running or working in a sustainable local business, and being
| a part of the fabric of their community.
| getwiththeprog wrote:
| "Front Porch Forum is a free community-building service in
| Vermont and parts of New York. Your neighborhood's forum is only
| open to the people who live there. It's all about helping
| neighbors connect." - https://frontporchforum.com/
| barkerja wrote:
| What sets this apart from Nextdoor?
| AstroJetson wrote:
| Good question. Nextdoor is full of people that I would not
| let on my physical front porch.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| This is about the #3 reason I seldom scan Nextdoor
| nowadays. Filtering/blocking of posts needs to be much more
| sophisticated.
| NikkiA wrote:
| I got an email notification yesterday about a new posting
| by 'Ministry of Justice' on nextdoor, being slightly
| piqued by it and not having logged in for 6 months or so,
| I logged in to see it was a reminder by the police that
| in the UK racial hatred posted in a public forum is
| actionable, and I thought 'yep, that's nextdoor alright'.
|
| A quick look at the local nextdoor posts indeed
| illustrated a whole slew of 'it's all the <insert slur>'s
| fault' posts about everything from drunkenness to dog poo
| on the street.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Less "growth and engagement" and more "sustainable business"
| vibes.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Great, but for how long?
|
| > My wife, Valerie, and I founded Front Porch Forum in 2006
| to serve our hometown of Burlington, Vermont
|
| https://frontporchforum.com/about-us
|
| They've been running the organization, now grown to 30
| people, for 18 years. How long till they're wanting more
| space in their lives for other interests? And if they hand
| off management responsibilities, how might it change?
|
| From https://frontporchforum.com/terms-of-use
|
| > Here at FPF we strive to:
|
| > Remain small and local: FPF is a Vermont-grown and
| Vermont-owned public benefit corporation, and we commit to
| remaining locally owned and Vermont-scale.
| mplanchard wrote:
| What's your point? Either they'll find someone local who
| wants to take it over, or they'll sell out, or they'll
| fold. The possible inevitability of something's decay
| doesn't make it any less valuable in the meantime.
|
| The community here cares a lot about locality, so I
| suspect they'll try to keep it as such even when they
| eventually bow out, but we'll see.
| mplanchard wrote:
| I think a big part of it is the active moderation and the
| hyper-locality of the neighborhoods. It is also less ad-
| driven and less about trying to stoke engagement.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Oh great, another service that requires and tracks your real-
| world identity in everything you do. No privacy, no thank you!
| hasbot wrote:
| > Front Porch Forum counts nearly half the state's adults as
| active members.
|
| > While most tech giants view content moderation as a necessary
| evil, Front Porch Forum treats it as a core function. Twelve of
| its 30 full-time employees spend their days reading every user
| post before it's published, rejecting any that break its rules
| against personal attacks, misinformation or spam.
|
| Reading every post!? Rejecting misinformation! How does that
| work? Say I post some information but I'm wrong. Does the
| moderator research the topic to determine I'm wrong and then
| reject the post?
|
| It's a shame visitors can't view the content to see what the
| forum is like. Registration requires entering a valid street
| address.
|
| It'd be interesting to try something like this in the local
| neighborhood. It'd take years though to gain traction especially
| in sleepy neighborhoods where there is nothing much going on.
| netsharc wrote:
| > Rejecting misinformation! How does that work?
|
| If I can guess... most misinformation spread by stupid people
| are easily debunked. For more complicated stuff, I wonder if a
| disclaimer "This information is unverified" is appropriate. One
| can also use weasel words like "As reported on $NEWSPAPER..."
| or "$PERSON claims...", or "If I can guess...". A lot of news
| sites do the first two.
|
| In general, a line on every user-submitted input to remind
| people "The information written by the user may be wrong,
| reader beware." would probably help to make a better Internet.
| Weasel phrase: IMO ;-)
| warkdarrior wrote:
| The information written by the netsharc may be wrong, reader
| beware.
|
| (As a side note, such notes will quickly become as useful as
| the California Prop 65 warnings.)
| dimal wrote:
| > What we say is, attack the issue, not the neighbor.
|
| > Wood-Lewis said the beauty of careful moderation is that,
| over time, most users learn to adhere to the site's norms on
| their own.
|
| Seems like these principles alone can do a lot of the legwork.
| People forget how much culture matters. Individuals conform to
| the culture of civility or they leave. X and Facebook have
| encouraged toxic cultures to thrive and so no amount of
| moderation can fix them at this point.
|
| And if FPF isn't optimizing for engagement, they're not trying
| to get more posts for posts sake. So I'd think the volume of
| posts requiring moderation is probably lower.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| > Does the moderator research the topic to determine I'm wrong
| and then reject the post?
|
| No, they will rely on their own limited knowledge and their own
| biases. It's how things like the lab leak theory got censored
| heavily on social media by people who had limited knowledge.
| These types of moderator groups tend to become monocultures who
| think they're doing the right thing and can't see past their
| own limitations. This article is trying to make it seem like
| having a monoculture is good. Ironic to see them argue against
| real diversity.
| beezle wrote:
| The moderation is light and generally around the obvious -
| personal attack/flamewars, spam, or specific rules broken (and
| they let the poster know what it was). The volume of posts in
| most areas is not huge - order 15-50 a day, many of them cut
| and dry lost/found forsale type posts.
| meowfly wrote:
| I've kind of wondered if flattening the world isn't the root
| problem with social media. There are very few people I encounter
| IRL that I disagree too much with. We do disagree, but everyone
| kind of understands each other to some degree. In contrast, my
| values and the values of someone in Germany (as an example),
| might be less aligned. We frame so much of this as either echo
| chambers (we work in the set of people who agree) or ML targeted
| rage bait. Maybe the best algorithm is Californians mostly
| engaging with Californians with a spectrum of viewpoints that
| naturally exists from the urban rural divide.
| energy123 wrote:
| It's often not somebody from Germany, but a troll farm of
| humans or LLMs controlled by an intelligence agency with the
| explicit goal of making you miserable and disenchanted. This
| has been ongoing since at least 2020 across all social media
| platforms.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| What is the difference between that and masses of years using
| downvotes or reporting to make everyone they disagree with
| feel miserable and disenchanted? I feel like the notion of a
| troll farm is exaggerated while the influence of regular
| users and moderators in manipulating others is ignored.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| You've fallen for a conspiracy theory. This is something
| people say over and over again but without any data to
| support it.
| energy123 wrote:
| I don't think so. Have a read of these articles and get
| back to me.
|
| Beyond examples, it would be highly surprising if they
| weren't doing it. I think the burden of proof is on the
| person saying that they wouldn't do the thing that any
| sensible realist actor would do to a rival. That would be a
| level of bizarre incompetence that is too much to fathom.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-
| covi...
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/faceboo
| k...
|
| https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-
| by-...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_Black_Lives_Matter
|
| https://www.scmp.com/week-
| asia/politics/article/3266870/onli...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/29/politics/iran-covert-
| influenc...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4ng24pxkelo
| fragmede wrote:
| Do people really actually believe that?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| It's a thing Russian government was doing. It's pretty
| documented. do you think they stopped?
|
| Their bots are not very difficult to notice if you look at
| profiles. Weird usernames used to give it away too
| dleink wrote:
| I went to school with some Russians so I was often able
| to pick out troll profiles based on slight grammar
| mistakes and word choice. I imagine LLMs are going to
| make this harder.
| energy123 wrote:
| Read these articles and see if your doubt holds:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41215899
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The platform itself does a wonderful job of promoting
| outrageous/divisive content since this yields much more
| "engagement" (which is how they make money) than feel-good,
| innocent content.
|
| This disgusting business model itself is the problem, not
| some malicious foreign actors (though they no doubt can take
| advantage of the free exposure the platform will give them if
| their content "engages" enough people).
| randomdata wrote:
| The "problem" (really, what makes it great) with social media
| is that it isn't real. You can adopt a different "persona" and
| explore ideas that are incompatible with the person you
| actually are, making it a fantastic way to learn. The, uh, "no
| so with it" crowd sometimes becomes confused by what it is, but
| such is life. Nothing is perfect.
|
| The real experience is also there to explore, and is worth
| exploring, but there is also value in trying something else
| once in a while, and that is what social media offers. After
| all, if it were just a digital duplication of outside, why
| wouldn't you just go outside?
| jltsiren wrote:
| Internet in the 90s taught me that I have more in common with
| like-minded people around the world than with the people I meet
| in daily life. But then ads became the primary business model
| for online communities, and the need to drive engagement turned
| most of them toxic.
|
| And then I moved to one of the least affordable areas in the
| US, which is also a college town and a tourist destination and
| has huge issues with homelessness and property crime. Here you
| don't have to use social media anymore. If you want conflict,
| you can just talk to your neighbors about local issues. Your
| financial interests and ideas about the future of the community
| are guaranteed to be in conflict with many of them.
| mplanchard wrote:
| I live in Vermont, and I love FPF. It's full of typical
| neighborly posts about lost items, people selling things,
| announcements about local events, etc. The only time it gets
| slightly contentious is around local elections, but even that is
| remarkably moderate.
|
| I think it helps that the groups really are hyper-local, on the
| order of a few streets, so it's very likely you're interacting
| with one of your neighbors at any given time. My wife and I
| posted some bookshelves we wanted to give away when we moved into
| our neighborhood, and the person who responded wound up being our
| neighbor from less than halfway down the block.
|
| Compared to every other place on the internet, it feels a lot
| more like the way people are in real life: friendly, helpful, and
| good-natured.
| hasbot wrote:
| I'm kinda surprised that a hyper-local forum has enough posts
| to encourage engagement. I'm subscribed to many city specific
| subreddits over the years and most have few posts (except for
| /r/Portland but that's a different beast) beyond "Who has the
| best hamburgers?" and "Thinking of moving here."
| oglop wrote:
| Reddit overall selects for a certain population to use it. I
| would not use it as a comparison for something like this.
| mplanchard wrote:
| As an example of what you're saying, the Vermont subreddit
| skews wildly snarky and mean-spirited relative to either
| front porch forum or actual people in real life
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| My small city's Reddit sub is fairly well managed and has a
| variety of tame posts on local interests, events, and Q&A.
| You need to have enough people who aren't stuck on a
| monomaniacal groupthink to keep things civil.
| beezle wrote:
| FPF isn't about "encouraging engagement" in the back and
| forth discussion type. It is more about giving/getting very
| localized information/resources. Think "did you get my
| package" "I need someone to put a new culvert in" "lost dog"
| "hens for sale" "town hall closed today"
| mplanchard wrote:
| An exemplar local post from my neighborhood recently:
|
| > Hi, has anyone been letting a black cat into their house
| lately? His name is Indy, he is very friendly and loves people.
| However, if you let him inside he will likely steal your stuff.
| He is particularly fond of toys (either for pets or children)
| and food. For context, he once stole an entire baguette. I
| don't know why he steals, I didn't teach him to do it, I'm not
| that smart. If you don't let him inside, he won't break in,
| he's not that smart. And if you're currently missing a stuffed
| animal hedgehog and/or a small pillow, please let me know and I
| can return it.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| This sounds like it came straight out of Stardew Valley--
| utopia compared to other social media.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > I think it helps that the groups really are hyper-local, on
| the order of a few streets, so it's very likely you're
| interacting with one of your neighbors at any given time.
|
| Are there ever complaints about not being able to reach friends
| who happen to live just outside the geo boundaries?
| mplanchard wrote:
| It's not really a social network in that sense: posts aren't
| directed to individuals but to the neighborhood. If you do
| want to reach the surrounds, there is an option to make your
| post viewable to nearby neighborhoods, which is useful when
| selling stuff or posting about events or lost items
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Isn't it the same as e. g. reddit (posting to subreddits,
| not to individuals) which sits firmly in the "social
| network" category?
| jgoewert wrote:
| >> move slowly and moderate heavily
|
| Yep. This is what is really needed for civil discussion. It is
| hard to work with otherwise as you get what my local small town
| FB feed normally is like. We are past the limit of peak assholery
| that only a system like that can even begin to filter things
| down.
|
| For example: Tiny local news source posted about an accident on
| the highway on a FB feed yesterday afternoon. Top 3 FB comments
| were about one of the people involved in the accident and blaming
| them because of the color of their skin, so he probably caused
| it. Over 50% of the posts were racist and semi racist rants
| spewing everything ranging from 'he was most likely going to a
| drug deal' to 'this is why we shouldn't let them out of the
| nearby city'. 10% were normal 'oh, that is why it was messed up.'
| 5% were 'wtf, calm down racists' and those posts got major
| responses about 'get out of my small town if you don't like it'.
|
| Seriously.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Moderating heavily just means that the group in power will
| censor the other side's opinions. We already have that, it is
| called Reddit. I'm not sure that is a solution. Maybe you can
| claim that there is less conflict, but in reality it just turns
| into a one sided echo chamber.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > the group in power will censor the other side's opinions
|
| You mean on individual subreddits, or is this a snide jab at
| Reddit-the-company?
|
| I think a big part of how online moderation goes bad comes
| when _secret_ moderation is permitted, which prevents a
| community-at-large from noticing or organizing against
| abusive behavior.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Moderating heavily just means that the group in power will
| censor the other side's opinions._
|
| They key is not to moderate based on content, but on tone.
| "Tone" isn't really a good word, because tone is hard to get
| through a textual medium. I think what I mean is that you
| moderate things like ad hominem attacks and people being
| disrespectful or uncivil. Criticism is fine as long as it's
| constructive and delivered respectfully. But you don't
| moderate based on what someone's views are.
|
| I know that's hard, and even people who actively try to watch
| their biases and avoid making decisions influenced by them
| will still screw up sometimes. But it's not impossible.
| arp242 wrote:
| > I know that's hard, and even people who actively try to
| watch their biases and avoid making decisions influenced by
| them will still screw up sometimes. But it's not
| impossible.
|
| Honestly, I don't think it's that hard. Everyone knows what
| an asshole looks like; it's just that people aren't willing
| to moderate based on just a vague "they're an asshole"-type
| vibes.
|
| Decades of shouting "zomg, liberal bias!" from exactly the
| sort of assholes that you don't want on these platforms
| have gaslit everyone in thinking everything everyone does
| is infused with "bias". But it's not hard, and by and large
| most well-intentioned people are perfectly capable
| detecting assholes based purely on their assholery alone,
| separate from the views.
|
| The tricky bit where bias does come in to play is _not_
| moderating assholery because you agree with the gist of it.
| "Yeah, they were a bit rude about it, but they're right!"
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| The challenge is that there's no such thing as equitable
| moderation to the satisfaction of an increasingly large group.
| Uehreka wrote:
| I think the general policy of "if you want to say stuff like
| that go to a lava pit like Gab where they affirmatively want
| to hear it" is good and should just be the moderation policy
| in any mainstream situation. People who say outright racist
| stuff like that are generally a highly vocal minority who
| often end up pushing away the less vocal normies who make up
| most of the audience.
| colingoodman wrote:
| I agree with this. I think of the few websites where
| moderation truly is very light such as 4chan and how the
| discussion on those websites can get truly disturbing. Even
| the fairly innocuous boards dedicated to the discussion of
| hobbies are full of slurs and insults.
|
| I greatly appreciate free speech in principle and don't
| have any problem with websites like 4chan existing, but
| those spaces don't feel conducive to the kind of thing the
| article talks about.
|
| The free speech absolutists in these comments seem to
| disparage the heavy handed moderation tactics on this
| neighbor forum, but it sounds like that kind of management
| is working out extremely well for it.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I totally get your concerns with discourse online quickly going
| to unhelpful or seemingly dangerous areas, we've all seen it.
|
| If the only solution is moderation though, aka censorship, I'd
| argue that the real problem is the medium itself and not how
| we're using it. It seems totally reasonable that having
| meaningful and useful dialog via a medium that allows anonymous
| participation may just not work.
|
| Censorship is an extremely dangerous road. It often starts out
| well intentioned, as is the road to hell and all that. There
| were very important reasons the US founding fathers
| specifically carved out free speech as a fundamental right.
| Without it, censorship will inevitably used against the public.
| If censorship is the only way to have discussions online then
| we should just give up on that fantasy and have instead have
| meaningful conversations in public, say on your front porch
| with those that live in your community.
| fragmede wrote:
| There are already censors, just try and post a copy of the
| latest Disney movie or CSAM. The sooner we acknowledge that
| there are censors, the sooner we can figure out how to have
| constructive discussion online.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Of course there are already censors, and I'd say that's a
| problem. Sharing CSAM or a copyright protected media file
| isn't speech though, and isn't protected by free speech
| laws.
| kelnos wrote:
| Creating CSAM and posting it online is certainly speech,
| though, just as much as posting a legal form of original
| artwork is. But I'm 100% fine with the person responsible
| for that CSAM being censored and prosecuted, by the
| government, and that's exactly what will happen.
| _heimdall wrote:
| If you extend speech protections to cover creating and
| distributing CSAM you open the flood gates to a mountain
| of other actions that are crimes today.
|
| What is the difference in creating CSAM and creating
| heroine that would make the former free speech and the
| later a crime?
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| You are conflating censorship by the govt and moderation of a
| privately run forum.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Moderation is censorship though, it doesn't matter who is
| doing it. I raised the founding father's only to make the
| point that people have already learned the hard way that
| censorship carries very real risks, not to directly equate
| government censorship and censorship in private groups or
| on private platforms. The former is legally protected, the
| latter generally isn't.
|
| My GP comment isn't arguing that censorship online is
| dangerous because of governments, its that censorship of
| speech in general is dangerous. People need to be able to
| freely speak their mind.
|
| Online that can easily get out of control. You could argue
| that we just need benevolent censors to deal with it. I'm
| arguing that anonymous online discussions just don't
| created an environment where quality conversations will
| happen.
| bdcravens wrote:
| The appeal to authority via the "founding fathers"
| probably isn't the best argument one could make. The
| centuries have propped up a legendary version of them
| that is a bit different from the reality. In reality they
| weren't all Christians; Jefferson in particular.
| Jefferson also said the constitution should be rewritten
| every 19 years. History has lost the voices of those who
| dissented.
|
| The point is that the values we have ascribed to them may
| not be accurate. I don't think they meant "free speech"
| to be a freedom orgy, but a tool to prevent abuse by
| those in power. Remember, moderation itself is a form of
| speech. The most democratic approach is public,
| transparent moderation. While it isn't perfect, I feel
| like HN does the best job of this I've seen.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > In reality they weren't all Christians; Jefferson in
| particular.
|
| That's an interesting inclusion if you're wanting to
| avoid appeals to authority. Why does it matter whether
| they were Christian?
|
| It is a fine line between appealing to authority and
| pulling historical examples of lessons learned the hard
| way. I don't know what else to refer to those who wrote
| the constitution as, if "founding fathers" has some
| subtle whiff of appealing to authority I'm haply to refer
| to them as something else. The point remains, though,
| that freedom of speech was protected so early on based on
| what people of that time saw happen without free speech.
| bdcravens wrote:
| My point was that the the first amendment says very
| little, so intuiting what they would think about
| situations other than Congress restricting free speech
| takes quite a big leap of inference, which often comes
| from a place of false information about what they truly
| believed. I was getting to the idea that much of what we
| believe about them is wrong or incomplete, so why would
| their values here hold any more to our preconceptions?
| _heimdall wrote:
| There's actually a still a surprisingly long collection
| of the founders' writings. Jefferson alone has a 1,000
| page book full of his writings from notes and letters
| related to the Virginia state house to a letter he wrote
| to the king enumerating a list of grievances.
|
| Knowing their values is extremely important. As you note,
| many of the amendments are short and when legally
| challenged the court is generally left interpreting what
| was meant and intended by the amendment. How could we
| interpret what was meant or intended by the law without
| knowing everything we can about those who wrote and
| passed the legislation?
| threecheese wrote:
| While I don't disagree at all high level that power can
| (and does) corrupt the censors (-ers?), moderation can
| certainly _feel like_ censorship when you want to say
| something in or act a certain way within a social group
| where others don't want and shouldn't have to hear or
| know about it. If your speech can be "moderated" within
| some social group (ex: they don't interact with you),
| then why shouldn't that group be permitted to revoke your
| permission to speak in their digital version of that
| group? Maybe this just doesn't scale, or we haven't
| figured out how to scale it yet.
|
| Moderation ain't censorship if you're being a dick.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I raised the founding father 's only to make the point
| that people have already learned the hard way that
| censorship carries very real risks_
|
| I don't think that really makes the point, though. The
| founding fathers recognized that _government_ censorship
| is dangerous because the government has the power to take
| away your freedom and possessions, even your life.
| Putting censorship and police power together is a recipe
| for autocracy, oppression, and human rights violations.
|
| Censorship by private individuals and organizations just
| doesn't have the same punch. Consider that the first
| amendment is only concerned with government censorship;
| the founding fathers could have banned all forms of
| censorship if they thought it was a reasonable and
| necessary thing to do.
|
| > _I 'm arguing that anonymous online discussions just
| don't created an environment where quality conversations
| will happen._
|
| That's trivially disprovable: we're having one right now,
| on an online forum that has moderation (or "censorship",
| if you must).
| kelnos wrote:
| You say "censorship" instead of "moderation" because the
| former has negative connotations, but I don't agree that all
| forms of censorship are bad. Removing spam is censorship, but
| I would hope we can agree that we'd both prefer spam gets
| removed. (If you don't agree, then honestly let's just stop
| discussing this now, because our fundamentals are different
| enough that we're not going to agree on _anything_ on this
| topic.)
|
| > _the real problem is the medium itself and not how we 're
| using it. It seems totally reasonable that having meaningful
| and useful dialog via a medium that allows anonymous
| participation may just not work._
|
| There are plenty of people on HN who are
| anonymous/pseudonymous, and yet we have lots of meaningful
| and useful dialog here. Not 100%, but still lots. This
| subthread is a fine example. I only see your username, and
| you haven't filled out anything in your profile, so you are
| for all intents and purposes anonymous to me. And yet... here
| we are.
|
| And on the other side of that coin, read some of the other
| comment threads under this post and you'll see that there are
| anecdotes describing plenty of very-not-anonymous people who
| post shitty things on Facebook in places where people who
| know them in real life will see it. People who even lived
| near each other and could easily run into each other in town.
| I haven't been on Facebook for a good 5 years or so now, but
| in the 15 years or so I was an active user, I too saw plenty
| of truly nasty arguments, involving people with their real
| names and photos right there. And there _is_ moderation
| there. I cringe to think how much worse it would be without.
|
| People suck. We hold our beliefs too closely, and feel
| threatened when anyone challenges them. Sometimes we get
| scared of things and lash out in unfortunate ways. And that's
| before we even get to the tons of people who are racist,
| sexist, and whatever other -ist you can think of, and feel no
| hesitation or shame in displaying their disrespectful,
| hurtful, inhuman(e) attitudes in public.
|
| > _Censorship is an extremely dangerous road._
|
| In general I am very skeptical of slippery-slope arguments.
| They're often used to shut down discussion without presenting
| any actual evidence of a trend, but only hand-wavy,
| hypothetical fears that something bad _might_ happen.
|
| But sure, censorship can get out of hand; that's why rules
| and guidelines are important. The HN guidelines, as an
| example, read as somewhat informal, but I think they're
| pretty great. I think they're why HN is fairly successful at
| fostering community and thoughtful discussion. Sure,
| sometimes the bad kind of censorship does happen; no set of
| guidelines is perfect, and no humans enforcing those
| guidelines are perfect. But that's life. You try to have a
| mechanism to call out and review bad decisions, and learn
| from the mistakes.
|
| > _There were very important reasons the US founding fathers
| specifically carved out free speech as a fundamental right_
|
| And yet the US government can and does censor people from
| time to time, with the support of SCOTUS rulings. 1A's grant
| of freedom of speech would appear to be absolute just from
| reading the text, but in practice it very much is not.
|
| > _If censorship is the only way to have discussions online
| then we should just give up on that fantasy and have instead
| have meaningful conversations in public_
|
| Sure, you can go and do that if you want. But I'm fine
| "talking" in public online spaces knowing that some
| moderation actions might censor what I have to say, for
| reasons that I might agree or disagree with. I don't think I
| should have the right to say whatever I want, wherever I
| want, to whomever I want, without consequences. That's not
| how any society works.
|
| And think about that: moderation ("censorship") happens out
| in the real world too. I've experienced social circles where
| someone has been ostracized for behaving badly, to the point
| of being excluded from the group. That's the most extreme
| form of moderation/censorship: being banned!
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Freedom from censorship does not allow you to shout "Fire!",
| in a crowded theatre, and all that.
|
| A forum dedicated to a neighbourhood trying to be neighbourly
| does not need the fake panic of racism and xenophobia strewn
| through it. It's fine to prohibit that behaviour.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| ------------- Begin Nitpick ---------------
|
| The 'Fire' example is overused. The speech alone can
| _directly_ cause physical harm. Racist, xenophobic and
| other distasteful speech does not. Free speech, in the USA
| means you have a right to distasteful speech, actively
| harming someone with speech is just as bad as harming them
| with a stick, therefore it can be prohibited.
|
| ----------- End Nitpick --------------
| squigz wrote:
| The fire example does not directly cause physical harm -
| unless they're Dragonborn, I suppose. What does, as with
| racism and other hate speech, is how people react to it.
| Do they panic and rush out the door? Do they act on the
| racist rhetoric?
| _heimdall wrote:
| One of the more damaging aspects of the cancel culture,
| woke culture, etc (pick your overused generalization
| term) is that they normalized the idea of retroactively
| blaming someone for how others respond to them.
|
| I can't control how people respond to what I say. I can
| attempt to predict and account for what I think responses
| will be, but I can be wildly wrong.
|
| The whole way through it has felt to me like a lazy
| shortcut around the fact that proving intent is extremely
| hard. Ignoring intent completely is much easier, and
| that's exactly what a person is doing when they judge
| someone based on how others respond as a replacement for
| understanding what that person originally meant.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Add a shadowban fprum branch with a educational ChatGpt
| instance reforming trolls
| maeil wrote:
| > "I think there's a real social media fatalism that has set in,
| that it's just irredeemably toxic and never going to get any
| better," Pariser said. "The goal here is to demonstrate that
| local conversations don't have to be toxic. That's a result of
| the business model and how they're designed."
|
| I've been preaching this for years and am delighted to see the
| existence of such a great social network that provides a
| brilliant example of how true this is.
|
| The Meta-Alphabet-and-friends concept that "it's simply
| impossible to moderate once you reach a certain scale" is a bald-
| faced lie. It both serves as an excuse for them not doing so, and
| as a warning to founders to definitely not build a competing
| social network because it _must_ turn into a cesspit.
|
| It's very possible to keep a social network high quality - the
| big ones just don't want to. And they don't want you to, either.
| rchaud wrote:
| > there's no real-time feed, no like button, no recommendation
| algorithm and no way to reach audiences beyond your local
| community.
|
| This just sounds like a messageboard, of which several still
| remain and are going strong. Of course trolling and
| misinformation will be minimal if there's adequate moderation,
| and the scope of the community is local enough that there's no
| point for bad actors to create accounts to troll.
|
| There used to be another one called city-data.com or something
| like that, but it covered too many cities, and quickly attracted
| people posting nothing but crime stories and fearmongering.
| dimal wrote:
| Interesting that the article doesn't mention that they're a
| public benefit corporation. I think we need more of these.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Regarding toxicity. My local crimewatch Facebook group has twice
| in the last few years been used to drum up lynch mobs for black
| teens.
|
| The first post about supposedly brutality perpetrated upon the
| individuals property and even more sadly against their cat. The
| problem is the neighbor wasn't real, the cat was from google
| image search and happened in a different state, the property
| damage likewise. The only thing real was the teens they were
| trying to drum up hate for.
|
| More recently we have the same pattern but NOW the poster is
| anonymous and shares no pictures of self nor of the misbehavior
| which is described only as text and shares no pictures of
| malfeasance just the straight pic of the kids.
|
| The first post actually had one of the teens names in it and
| threats of violence!
|
| Despite this response is slow and admins refuse to implement a
| policy of not posting minors images and Facebook has no interest
| in the situation whatsoever.
| mplanchard wrote:
| Their 2023 mission statement (required as part of their being a
| Vermont public benefit corporation) has a lot of interesting
| perspective in it on the focus of the business, how they view
| their mission, and their vision for the future:
| https://frontporchforum.com/uploads/FPF_Benefit_Corp_Report_...
| m463 wrote:
| I think there are a few notable things about vermont...
|
| It is 49/50 in population, 50/50 in state GDP, it is not
| multicultural, and the only large city is probably burlington.
|
| It seems like all the classic reasons for friction would be
| minimized.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Addressed in TFA:
|
| "It's not totally shocking that the 'slow food' of social media
| is coming from Vermont," a state famous for artisanal small
| businesses, Pariser said, acknowledging the model might not
| translate easily to larger, more diverse states. "But Vermont
| also has a class divide. And one of the things we think is
| notable about Front Porch Forum is it seems to kind of bridge
| those divides."
|
| And no, class divide is by many accounts a classic reason for
| friction. Or at least Karl Marx thought so.
| rglullis wrote:
| The idea of "class" that Marx talks about is very different
| from its more contemporary usage.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Economic and social classes are as real as any other human
| cultural distinction, and different from each other. That
| is, they have many unclear borders and major impact on
| life.
| lazide wrote:
| And what high friction class divides are present in
| Vermont?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I grew up in Vermont so my anecdotes are out of date but:
| one of our neighbors ran an unlicensed trash dump in his
| front yard. He had appliances and salvage, even a couple
| of cars buried underneath the driveway. Some of his more
| direct neighbors complained about it, but nobody backed
| them up because he was also the snowplow operator for our
| neighborhood and hence untouchable. There was also some
| friction (in general) over hunting and private property.
| In grade school all the kids hung out regardless of what
| their parents did, but in high school things tended to
| partition between the kids whose parents went to college
| and expected their kids to do so too, and the kids who
| didn't have that background. A few wannabe neo-Nazi kids
| showed up from a much more remote town; not sure if that
| was a class divide or just an asshole divide.
| whythre wrote:
| Seems like moving the goalposts. There are distinctions
| between income levels. Yes. Of course.
|
| The Marxist distinction between proletariat and
| bourgeoisie was inherently a situation where the have-
| nots are preyed upon and exploited by the upper class.
| This seems to a fairly poor description of the socio-
| economic facts in Vermont.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| It is true that the kind of class system Marx talked about
| doesn't really fit well into modern contexts. One also sees
| people using 'class' as a synonym for 'household income
| band' which, while it's fair to say is a contemporary
| usage, doesn't really correspond to what is meant when the
| term is used in, for example, the Washington post.
| beezle wrote:
| It is in the 30s for per capita gdp. Burlington proper is not a
| large city at 45K but, the immediate area including S.
| Burlington, Winooski, Essex expand it to over 100K. The state
| is more "multicultural" than most think.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| i hope that means places like dslreports will come back, such a
| glorious time to be on the internet in it's heyday
| subjectsigma wrote:
| "Hey, we're off building our own thing for our own community,
| here's how it works, and we think it's working fine. You don't
| have to participate if you don't want to."
|
| _queue angry comments_
| com wrote:
| "Cue" as in call an actor to begin their part of a play. But
| "queue" is also fair play!
| subjectsigma wrote:
| Doh, was posting past my bedtime again
| tptacek wrote:
| All of local politics in the muni I live in takes place in a
| forum like this, on Facebook, with a single moderator (the Dan
| Gackle of Chicagoland) who I do not think really grasps what a
| big project they've signed up for and gotten off the ground. I
| can't tell you how often I've wanted to just post the Guidelines
| link from HN to them and say "just use these".
|
| The electeds in our muni post on it; I've gotten two different
| local laws done by posting there (and I'm working on a bigger
| third); I met someone whose campaign I funded and helped run who
| is now a local elected. It is crazy to think you can HN-
| effortpost your way to _changing the laws of the place you live
| in_ but I 'm telling you right now that you can.
|
| To an extent, I feel like the experience of posting here is an
| almost-unfair advantage to posting in forums like that. Really,
| though, I'm more frustrated that new, important forums, like mine
| and like FPF, seem unable to learn the lessons of successful
| existing forums like MF, WP, and HN.
| mcdow wrote:
| Hi! Fairly new HN reader here. I've been wondering where to
| find similar online communities. Specifically, less tech-
| focused websites that promote healthy discourse. What are MF
| and WP?
| lambertsimnel wrote:
| I suspect WP is Wikipedia.
|
| Presumably MF is MetaFilter:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaFilter
| trte9343r4 wrote:
| _> If your issue is a barking dog or hypodermic needles in the
| park, then let's talk about that. But don't say, 'This particular
| person' or 'This particular dog.' We can't fact-check that, and
| you could totally destroy someone's reputation."_
|
| But we can fact-check that. Many people who complain about dogs
| have video evidence, and weeks of records.
|
| We had similar local forum. I complained about off leash dogs
| attacking children, and shitting in children playgrounds. Our
| city has strict leash-laws. I offered to provide video evidence
| for everything.
|
| But "politeness" rules went out of the window. I am "horrible"
| and "unhappy" person who hates dogs. And somehow it is children
| fault, they get attacked by illegal dog, while playing at
| designated dog-free area! They "provoke" and "trigger" dogs, by
| sitting, walking or riding bicycle. Usual gaslighting!
| jim-jim-jim wrote:
| I take it you were dealing with The Breed of Peace?
| trte9343r4 wrote:
| No, every dog breed does that.
| jimhefferon wrote:
| Did this happen on FPF?
| trte9343r4 wrote:
| Facebook
| yamrzou wrote:
| > Most of all, he learned what the moderator of almost any
| successful online forum learns: If you don't set and strongly
| enforce rules for how people can talk to each other, things will
| get ugly in a hurry.
|
| Looks like what made HN successful as well
| xg15 wrote:
| This seems great for discussing whether your local neighborhood
| should have a roundabout or rather use traffic lights, but I
| don't see how a network of purposely separated and local
| discussion boards would be useful for discussing larger-scale or
| even national or international issues.
|
| (If the answer is "it wasn't meant to do that", in the article,
| it was touted as an alternative to traditional social media which
| do have that role, so the question does stand)
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think lots of people don't really go on social media for the
| latter reason, it's just that such content tends to be high
| engagement and so the big sites end up prioritising it in
| people's feeds.
| xg15 wrote:
| Yeah, good point. And the low-drama local discussions are one
| of the areas where Facebook is still most useful, so it makes
| sense to build a separate service which can provide for this
| even better. The problem is, I think there _is_ a real need
| to discuss larger-scale issues, especially in a time like
| this. So I think the best medium for this might not yet be
| found.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _I think there is a real need to discuss larger-scale
| issues, especially in a time like this._
|
| Is there, though? How many of those issues are a
| consequence of expecting everyone to have an opinion on
| larger-scale issues, creating infrastructure that allows
| everyone to voice those opinions, and then having the ad
| industry cancer metastasize and grow a great, ugly, self-
| sustaining tumor over it?
|
| Right now, we're surely doing too much shallow talking with
| too much emotions pent up in it. We need to find a
| different way to discuss this, one that doesn't degenerate
| to drive-by engagement.
| beezle wrote:
| State wide issues such as property taxes, river control, Act
| 250 do come up for discussion. National issues generally don't
| as most people do not want to have their _real names and towns_
| attached to overty team red /blue political positions/rants.
| digbybk wrote:
| I was disappointed when I realized that Nextdoor was an even
| worse place than other social media platforms. In principle it
| should be like FPF. Is it the moderation or does FPF work because
| Vermont is so sparsely populated and homogeneous?
| beezle wrote:
| I have used FPF as a sometimes resident of VT.
|
| First off, you need to register with a local address/real name
| and the communities are generally population/geographic. So three
| or four towns along a common route may be combined giving a total
| population order 5k. That would be the default group a post goes
| to, though there is the option to also include "nearby" areas.
| Remember, nearby in VT is measured in miles.
|
| Second - the vast majority of the postings concern lost/found
| pets, farm animals and packages, people looking for services -
| plumber to chimney sweep to excavation, things for free or sale,
| and announcements (closures, openings, events).
|
| There is a low volume of "discussions". Very few people engage
| with the overtly political posts. Posts that do get some traction
| are road and safety issues and recently, school budgets.
|
| It is not facebook/reddit/twitter. More of a pin up bulletin
| board system that allows quick replies.
| mason55 wrote:
| Sounds like my local semi-rural NextDoor posts. Lost dogs,
| cats, the occasional horse. Updates when the main road gets
| closed. Recommendations for local businesses. And occasionally
| a politics post that most people ignore while a few people
| argue for weeks.
|
| I've heard that NextDoor in suburban and urban areas is quite a
| cesspit but ours is pretty helpful and cordial.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > NextDoor in suburban and urban areas is quite a cesspit
|
| yes it is, and with an additional bonus of lurking law
| enforcement building profiles, and their unpublic commercial
| partners in an arms race to do more of it.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| I live in Vermont and use Front Porch Forum (FPF). Here are three
| observations that I think are important that the article misses:
|
| 1. FPF is primarily used via email. You get an email newsletter
| each day with the latest posts, sometimes multiple times a day.
| In essence it's just many glorified local mailing lists. Email is
| universal and mailing lists have been around forever. But what
| the FPF founders did effectively is organize, manage, moderate
| and create mailing lists for every local neighborhood in the
| state and then advertise them to people. Not an easy task and not
| a bad idea--but it doesn't require anywhere near the
| infrastructure of a FB or Twitter nor offer anywhere near the
| features.
|
| 2. FPF has a "beg for money" business model. They charge very
| high advertising rates and then every few months they send out
| emails about how they don't have enough funding to meet their
| needs and ask for donations. They're a for-profit company that
| constantly asks for donations. They even have a donate link [0]
| right on the bottom of their home page. That really turns me off
| from them. Sometimes they use the word "subscription" but other
| times they call it "donations." If it was truly a subscription,
| they wouldn't accept one-time donations, which they do.
|
| They seem to think of themselves as a community service and
| consider themselves essential to the Vermont conversation,
| despite also being a for-profit company. I think if they want to
| have a donation model and be considered critical rural
| communication glue they should become a non-profit and open
| source their software.
|
| 3. The Washington Post article's premise that important political
| conversations are happening on FPF I'm sure is true but I think
| really depends on which community you live in. This is not really
| one-social network, but instead thousands of mini-social networks
| (each little local mailing list has its own vibe). In my
| neighborhood the more substantive political conversations happen
| on the less moderated Facebook group. Nextdoor was just
| introduced here a couple years ago and seems to continue to be
| growing. I suspect over time, with its much greater feature set,
| it may really challenge FPF.
|
| [0] https://frontporchforum.com/supporting-members
|
| Overall, it's a good service. Every neighborhood should have a
| well-organized email list. But let's not pretend this is a
| Facebook competitor.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| The problem with moderation of forums is that the most common
| model seems to be one of enlightened despotism. Moderators are
| hired/appointed by the site owner and have sometimes godlike
| powers to do what they want.
|
| Are there any forums where moderator is an elected position, with
| predefined term lengths? Or one where moderation actions are
| adjudicated in an open process, with appeals, etc?
|
| So much of moderation seems like star chamber proceedings.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I would like to see this approach tested on something really
| controversial, e.g. Gaza or Ukraine.
|
| I am not saying it surely wouldn't work, but ...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| More on FPF from New_ Public:
|
| <https://newpublic.substack.com/p/the-vermont-miracle-how-one...>
| bwanab wrote:
| As a newish resident who signed up a couple of months back, I've
| been amazed at the civilized tone in FPF. I think the article
| overstates the part about politics, though - it just doesn't seen
| like that frequent a topic of discussion very unlike the Vermont
| Reddit group.
| jijojohnxx wrote:
| "Combining Rust and SQL for robust Postgres replication? This is
| a game-changer! #RustLang #Postgres"
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I had read a study that people give accurate political views as
| soon as there is money at stake for giving the answer, absent
| that it seems people only know how to deflect towards a
| deficiency of "the other side" instead of addressing the
| criticisms to their political view
|
| Thats why I love Polymarket, because you dont have to debate
| anyone to express a political belief and it allows room for
| complex nuance to reach that belief
|
| I like the kindness concept too, especially since there is no
| money involved
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