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Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

Mike Masnick wrote the speed run guide to content moderation here: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...

In short, the problem is that there is no universally agreed-upon definition of "problematic" content. No matter what definition you think is reasonable for moderation, there will both be people who complain that it is too permissive and people who complain that it is too restrictive. At a large enough scale, people on both extremes of the spectrum will be complaining about your moderation policies--and at very large scales, there will be politicians to listen to them!

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> In short, the problem is that there is no universally agreed-upon definition of "problematic" content. No matter what definition you think is reasonable for moderation, there will both be people who complain that it is too permissive and people who complain that it is too restrictive.

But this is rather the point. What you need is a wall between hosting and discovery.

Alice has some rather controversial things to say, Bob wants to hear about them and Caren doesn't. So Bob and Caren should be using different filtering systems that they can choose for themselves. What shouldn't happen is that Alice gets banned from the internet or shadow banned on a dominant platform with a network effect just because Caren doesn't like her, because Caren should only be deciding for Caren and not Bob.

This doesn't mean Caren has to design her own filtering system. She can use someone else's. But she should have a choice in which one to use, independent of the underlying platform, and so should Bob.

Right now we tie the filtering system to the thing with the network effect and then have Zuckerberg or Musk deciding for everybody when it should be everybody deciding for themselves.

The problem is that it's an awful lot of work for everyone to decide for themselves, and I don't think the average user is going to care enough to build their own moderation algorithm. They'll just complain and move on

The other problem is that many (most?) people want to decide for others.

We see exactly this in real life. The more heavily moderated a forum is, the more popular it becomes. Open it as a free-for-all and let the abuse run wild, and all the normies head for the exits.

> The more heavily moderated a forum is, the more popular it becomes.

This is objectively false. The forums run by a tinpot dictator who excludes too many things that people want to see have zero users, not the most users. Many of the most popular forums became popular before they had any kind of strong moderation and only adopted it after they already had a lot of users. HN is one of the rare examples where the moderation was present from the beginning, a major reason it works is that it's a specialized site that doesn't target general audiences, and it's "popular" but not half as popular as 4chan.

As a general rule people don't like spam, but if the place where their friends are has some spam, they're going to stay there while complaining about the spam. And, of course, they hate it when somebody excludes something that they want. But that might not get them to leave either, because network effects are powerful, even when they hate it. Twitter users have been calling it "the hellsite" for many years while continuing to be Twitter users.

Which is why large general-purpose platforms need different algorithms for different people -- because different people want different things.

> This doesn't mean Caren has to design her own filtering system. She can use someone else's.

There can be one filter that only blocks spam and scams, another that blocks conservatives, another that blocks spam, scams and celebrity gossip, another that only shows technical content etc. You open the config options and pick one, like you choose an ad blocker or a radio station. If you don't like it you pick a different one. It shouldn't be that hard.

Who is in charge of tagging every bit of content so your filter works?

And if the answer is "AI", then who trains it and with what data?

> Who is in charge of tagging every bit of content so your filter works?

Whoever makes it? The entire premise is that anybody could make one, however they want, and people could choose the one that works best for them. Go create one that operates by manual curation if you want to.

But here's an answer to this one:

> And if the answer is "AI", then who trains it and with what data?

You do. On a network where votes/ratings are public, make a filter that looks at how you vote, compares it to other users to find the users with the most similar tastes, and then shows you the things that they liked. Occasionally it shows you something generally popular or vaguely controversial at random to see if you like it and if you do it shows you more.

This isn't even modern "AI", it's old school machine learning and statistics. And it works pretty well until bots figure out how to game it, and then you have to come up with a way to detect the bots, and it becomes a cat and mouse game.

Which is why we need the evolutionary pressure on the other side. Have lots of different filter algorithms made by different people so the bots have to hit multiple targets at once, and users can pick the ones that are most effective at excluding them and don't get stuck with a crappy one they can't change because it's tied to the network itself.

We already have that. One is called 4chan, the other Reddit, the other truth social. And let’s not forget the actual public square. I don’t know why these being different platforms is a relevant detail, the users still have a vibrant level of choice.

The users have no meaningful ability to move other users to a different platform:

> Bob wants to open up his feed and see all the content he likes from Alice and Dave and Erin and Frank. If Alice goes somewhere else, Bob can follow her, but then Dave and Erin and Frank are still on the old site, and maybe Bob doesn't want to give that up, but the others don't even know that Alice exists and have no incentive to move.

Why is it objectionable to you for Bob to have the ability to sort his feed differently than you?

The other way is Alice choosing a different avenue where Caren isn't, and Bob goes where Alice is.

Filtering content is a needed, but ultimately losing proposition (time and resource is one thing, accuracy is another).

Having the source choose which megaphone they'll use and have communities surrounding those probably works better for everyone. It's only an issue when Caren's goal is to have Alice silenced in the first place.

> The other way is Alice choosing a different avenue where Caren isn't, and Bob goes where Alice is.

Which is where the network effect becomes an issue.

Bob wants to open up his feed and see all the content he likes from Alice and Dave and Erin and Frank. If Alice goes somewhere else, Bob can follow her, but then Dave and Erin and Frank are still on the old site, and maybe Bob doesn't want to give that up, but the others don't even know that Alice exists and have no incentive to move.

> It's only an issue when Caren's goal is to have Alice silenced in the first place.

That can be a problem, but what if it's just that Carol doesn't want Alice in her feed? If everyone can choose their own algorithm then she can choose one that doesn't show Alice and Bob chooses one that does. If everyone on the same site gets the same algorithm then Carol starts agitating for one that doesn't show Alice and now there's problems.

> In short, the problem is that there is no universally agreed-upon definition of "problematic" content.

I got banned from my city's subreddit for making a mild criticism about crime once. Now I'm shut off from events, networking, etc.

I'm from the southeast, which is a conservative area of the country. The internet I grew up on had thicker skin, wasn't trigger happy with banning, and because of that I was exposed to ideas and perspectives that I wouldn't have ordinarily been in contact with. People didn't have a disgruntled disposition that immediately banned opposing views on sight, so I was able to soak in so much information.

Expressly because of this, I was able to change my shape from a conservative kid into a well-rounded moderate. I don't think I could replicate this experience easily on today's internet. People are divided into factions and are quick to mute and ban those they disagree with. (The rage-centric algorithms also heighten confrontational language and showdowns, but that's another issue.)

Censorship almost always leads to imbalanced power dynamics and gatekeeping. It's become a tit-for-tat tool of retaliation and playing "gotcha". People enjoy digitally flicking each other off by banning them. It's super fucked.

Filtering is important, but we should have protocols for that where individuals have complete control and discretion. I don't know how that's supposed to work on platforms that are wholly controlled by profit-seeking corporations, but maybe legislation can craft a way forward.

I really hope we don't dive deeper into the censorship rabbit hole. It genuinely terrifies me more than any other issue facing humanity.

I totally understand what you mean by growing up on a different internet.

The mistake I made as a kid was in believing people wanted things like intellectual freedom and to contemplate things they don't agree as to potentially grow and learn something new.

People don't want that at all. I think we can see that largely, people want to be told what to think and then demonize those that think differently for entertainment. That is basically what defines our culture in 2024.

This is just the start of this new culture too. There is so much room left to run when you still have people who remember what things were like at the start of the internet.

What is gen alpha going to save the culture? I think that will be a really comical thought in 15-20 years.

We are still pretty close to the surface. Maybe I won't because of old age but as a society we are going way deeper.

There's definitely a slippery slope when you start with centralized moderation, which seems to be the article's central argument.

With the new Freenet, we're using a decentralized moderation system that lets users control what they see or don't see, based on sensible defaults. This builds on a concept from the original Freenet called web-of-trust[1]. I believe this method, combined with the fact that centralized censorship is impossible in the new Freenet due to its lack of centralized control, offers a strong alternative.

[1] https://github.com/hyphanet/plugin-WebOfTrust/blob/master/de...

There's also Aether, which has a system based on delegation:

https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/

In essence, you can either curate all content yourself, or you can upvote other people's curation for a given community. The curators who are voted for by the majority of a community effectively become the default moderators for it, but any member can explicitly opt out of curation by any given moderator.

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