On Front Porch Forum, politics is fair game but unkindness is prohibited

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Looks like what made HN successful as well

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.

> 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?

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.

(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)

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

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.

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!

<https://newpublic.substack.com/p/the-vermont-miracle-how-one...>

queue angry comments

I am not saying it surely wouldn't work, but ...

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.

> 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.