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Comment by swayvil | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

>I know that this is an uncommon view.

I don't think this is correct - this is an extremely common view, in several senses of the word. It's especially popular among people who have never tried to use an unmoderated forum with more than a few members, and the sort of people who make moderation a necessity in the first place.

>because it's a convenient lesser evil

This is the true in the sense that pretty much all of society is a convenient lesser evil than "everybody agrees generally what the right thing is and does that all the time without exception".

As well all know thebcrration of universe is considered to be a mistake by most.

I dislike censorship but I dont mind* moderation. Twitter is impossible to use because you have 0 buy in and common ground. I have no problem with a subreddit that wants to show beheading videos that moderates non-beheading videos from being posted. This is how I believe the town square should work. There is room for everyone to have a space, but it's NOT the SAME space.

Moderation of bots and some content makes sites useable as long as everyone agrees what is OK and what is not OK. Thats how HN functions

To riff a bit on Pirsig, those who recognise Quality seem to do a good job of finding and curating it in the wild

Honestly, I just don't get this view - moderation provides clear, obvious value. You know what, we can have an experiment. I'll provide a list of things that are handled by moderation, and you pick which ones you think should be moderated.

  * Spam
  * CSAM
  * Gore
  * Porn
  * Doxxing
  * Threats
  * Libel
  * Personal attacks
  * Racism/other 'isms'
  * Flamebait/ragebait
  * Advertisements
  * Insults
  * Duplicates
  * Off-topic
  * Low-effort commentary
  * Swearing
  * Tone/sarcasm
  * Memes
  * Concern trolling/sealioning/etc.

All of those require the interpretation and goodwill of an authority that I do not trust (and certainly does not express my own will as well as I can do it myself).

Why do you trust this authority?

If you're incapable of trusting some sort of authority on this, why are you here? Go host your own community. Everyone else in the world is willing to make some sort of sacrifice on this front so their community is, in fact, a community, and not a pile of trash.

As for trust - I'm not really sure what trust has to do with it. I evaluate communities based on their content, and what I don't see is often just as important as what I do. If I like it, I'll stick around - if I don't, or if it changes, I'll leave. The community is operated by the people in charge of it, it's theirs by default. Do you visit people's houses and refuse to take your shoes off because they're the "authority"? Seems like an odd thing to get hung up over.

You said that you trust them to provide this "clear obvious value".

So, why do you trust them to do that?

I mean, that's our difference here in a nutshell.

So stop dicking around the bush and just tell me.

Tell me you've never used a platform without bot moderation without telling me you've never used a platform without bot moderation.

> (Let's not fool ourselves. We have moderators and downvotes, not because they work well, but because it's a convenient lesser evil)

Well, indeed. This is just anarchism vs. policing but for text. It gets re-litigated over and over again; different places move the boundary to different places. But very few dare to have no moderators or no police, and those that do are usually fairly immediate disasters. I'm sure you could find Bakunin quotes that accurately describe the moderation dilemma from 100+ years foresight, if you were so inclined.

The most palatable solution (historically speaking) is democracy. Yes I'm being dictated to but at least we're all doing it to ourselves.

A modern technologically enhanced refinement of that is the best that I can think of.

> A solution I saw in the wild is at http://reddit.com/r/generative

This subreddit is actually moderated. And it contains a quite heavy handed rule:

> To avoid disappointment, do not post AI-generated work here.

Which is kinda absurd if you realize the direction generative art is going. (in 50 years, do you think the discussion between generative art with code vs generative art with AI will make sense?)

But, such a rule helps maintain the space on-topic and avoid re-litigating the AI discussion every time someone posts an AI-generated picture.

Trust me. The actual moderation is basically an automatic organic meritocracy. Your 2-second skim notwithstanding.

And you clearly have zero experience with generative art.

I bet your POV is more common than traditionally thought

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