This is a real band aid that will do nothing to dissuade people from continuing their abusive behaviour.
Moderation on social media isn't something that can be solved satisfactorily, everyone is always unhappy with it. Take the lab leak theory with COVID, originally Facebook came under fire for allowing misinformation to spread so was blocking content which contained this claim because it was considered harmful but they reversed course once traditional media such as Vanity Fair began reporting it. Regardless of where you stand on this, you're unhappy with what they did.
Even hate speech is pretty ambiguous. The issue is one of subjective interpretation. Some comments are unambiguously hateful, others are hateful to some and not to others due to their cultural context which is important when you consider that these are global platforms. I've found it much easier to not use them than worry about what's on them.
I wholeheartedly disagree. I think the human-approach of HN mods is _the_ reason this site is better and different from other social/forum sites.
If someone is being an asshole to other patrons in a bar, they get thrown out. No one worries about whether they’re happy with the decision. No one says “actually their comments are only subjectively asshole-ish.” We make these judgments constantly, in basically every arena in life. Why do we start wringing our hands when it comes to online platforms?
If you want to open it up more you can and layer in content moderators for hire, AI models to try, dashboards to optimize what you want, etc.
Analogously to real life, one doesn't have the option to choose all of ones neighbors, but you can choose the neighborhood you live in (assuming you have adequate wealth, redlining is illegal, etc). Moderation bubbles would enforce content rules much like an HOA enforces grass cutting, etc. I'm not sure how it would work out, but I'm curious if there are existing examples.
Obviously throttling means less revenue and that collides with commercial interests. However, given people are over reliant on social media and social media with engagement, moderating this perniciousness might be worth trying out.
Band aid, yes.
The only thing that will change behaviour is consequences. I don't verbally abuse people face to face because there is a non zero chance of being punched. I am almost entirely liberated from consequences in the online world.
Online I can't see the person I'm abusing, I don't see their pain, I have zero chance of empathising with them.
Even verified accounts wont help, if there are no consequences to me abusing someone. The next best thing is to hellban. (in my opinion.)
The problem is, doing that at scale is exceptionally hard.
This makes me think that if I am physically weaker and guaranteed not to beat you, you will abuse me in person until I cry or am otherwise seriously disturbed.
I don't abuse people in real life because I have a deep seated need to be liked. Pissing people off makes them not like me. This is a consequence.
Seeing someone disapprove of what I'm saying, as I say it, burns.
Just so we're clear...if you live in the US, you absolutely have a right to stand on the street corner and abuse me as long as you're not likely to cause imminent lawless action...all of that without getting punched.
You absolutely can call for all people of my ethnic/racial group to be deported(or worse). What you can't do is call for your followers to go kill me or burn down my house or any other lawless action.
You DO NOT have a right to say those things on facebook/youtube.
In case anyone was thinking of bring up the "fighting words exception", please read this https://www.thefire.org/misconceptions-about-the-fighting-wo...
I'm talking about literally being punched in the face for saying something that you'd hear a 14 year old gamer shout over the microphone. In the real world, they'd never say it to my face, because they know I might tell their parents
Wow. At least you can admit this. To me, this summarizes most of the divisive nature in today's society. People just cannot empathise with other people any more. It's a very sad bit of social commentary. To me, rather than bringing people together, social media has lost that bit of humanity where people seem to just think of other users as non-people and just some anonymous chatbot level of emmotionless rather than an actual human.
We should develop a method so that when you make an online comment that you would not make in person for fear of being punched, the readers of the asshole comment can trigger your monitor to release a punch. It can be as outlandish and cartoonish as Data's boxing glove on a spring from the Goonies. So now, instead of just being afraid of being punched by the one person the comment was made, you must now be afraid of being punched by anyone on the internet that can read the comment.
For those too young to have seen the Goonies, jump to 1:35 for the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLzupaRrzAY
in the online world you have to chose to empathise, and its really easy not to. This is why I seek out what "the other side" are thinking, and why they say what they do. Because otherwise its really easy just to dismiss them as "stooges", "snowflakes" "nazi" or any other signposted pejorative.
but I'm not perfect, as my comments will show. Sometimes I fail.
one that we don't teach, anymore. maybe i'll go along with that, but it was definitely taught when i was a kid. "how would that make you feel if they did that to you?" was a very common chastisement growing up. not just from my mom, but from teachers in elementary school as well. then of course being drug to church by my mom, there was always people spouting "remember the golden rule". which when it comes down to it, is the only thing i really "took" from church. i treat people how i would like to be treated myself.
so, if none of that basic stuff is being taught nowadays, i weep for humanity ;-)
btw, we all fail, we just have to strive to do better!?!
That's not a problem. Even if all society became Instagram users, Instagram couldn't act as the moral arbiters of all society, they can still only moderate their own users on their own platform.
Substitute that with any platform, including Facebook and its billions of followers. Facebook isn't society. Facebook hasn't replaced or supplanted governments, doesn't control the media, doesn't burn books or dissidents, doesn't censor any of the countless alternative means of communication that exist. No matter how big Facebook gets, Facebook can only control Facebook.
If Facebook can't profitably operate their business in a way that is acceptable to the society they operate within, they don't have some inherent right to a profit.
Yes, this is some effort and will cost money. But we are talking about hugely large and profitable companies here.
While it might not be possible to "solve" the issue entirely, it could get a lot better if done thoroughly.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/09/300000-...
What do you think the annual cost of manual moderation would be?
They've spent tens of millions of dollars just settling with the human moderators for their job-related mental health issues https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/12/21255870/facebook-content... .
How well do you think that cost would stack up against spending millions on half-hearted automated moderation?
It's not a scaling problem - it's a provisioning problem. And Facebook isn't willing to pay for it.