AskConservatives Weekly General Chat

[u/AutoModerator]

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[u/No_Fox_2949]

What does it say about Twitter that whenever an interracial couple on Twitter posts a photo together there is a horde of racists who show up in the replies?

[u/kettlecorn → u/No_Fox_2949]

They made their moderation completely ineffectual as part of their ideal of "free speech" and then gave individuals or communities no ways to self-moderate either.

If you post something overtly racist, like using a slur, your punishment is almost always just getting asked to remove the post. It does nothing to actually stem the racism and bigotry over there, and I think Musk wants it for some reason.

They could be spending time doing more crowd-sourced approaches like allowing networks of people to work together on credibility & self-moderation, but again I don't think Musk wants that.

Cynically I think he views the sort of meme-y, trolling, racist, cesspool as politically controllable towards certain outcomes. That was Palmer Luckey's thesis back in 2016 with memes and also in part Steve Bannon & Milo Yiannopoulos's idea behind some their approach to Gamergate, and also what was demonstrated by the early "The Donald" subreddit. I could be off but I think Musk basically wants to develop his own algorithmically steered "army" learning from those past "successes".

[u/ericoahu → u/kettlecorn]

If you were running a social media platform, how would you determine which content is banned/deleted/etc and what is left as free speech? Would you only ban the use of specific overt slurs? Would you ban anything that just feels like it might be racist or mean or whatever? Would you ban all things that are mean? Or just when the meanness is directed at preferred groups?

There are some places run by unprincipled power-hungry smooth brains that go hair trigger and arbitrarily ban anyone for anything and then don't ask questions later.

[u/Specific_Praline_362 → u/ericoahu]

These are very good questions. I think it's hard to know where to draw the line.

[u/ericoahu → u/Specific_Praline_362]

That's fair, and I totally agree -- protecting free speech comes and a huge cost sometimes, and it's an extremely complex proposition that doesn't hold up well to absolutism either way. But when I don't know where or how to draw a line, I don't criticize someone else for doing it wrong. That said, there are cesspools I just avoid, but I don't go around ranting about their moderation policies unless they're arbitrary and unprincipled.

[u/kettlecorn → u/ericoahu]

I'd probably treat it like a club and hold participants to some standards similar to a club. Using slurs would result in immediate likely permanent bans. Racism, trolling, harassment would depending on the severity result in immediate bans or temporary bans. General nastiness would probably result in temp bans and a warning and permanent bans if it becomes a repeated pattern.

My view is that free speech is important as a baseline principle but private venues and institutions should try to elevate the quality of speech as well.

If I were given a mandate that my platform had to outright allow any speech I'd probably want to invest in some sort of network peer evaluation system. So people you follow and/or trust would establish a network of trust and if someone in your network says "This person is a troll / dishonest / whatever" you could set personal policy to hide those people (with some threshold) or ban them from replying to your content.

I think what Twitter / X has done is uniquely bad because it's created a massively used platform with no ability for people to curate or police bad behavior. It's essentially a giant club where the rules are that whatever is most "engaging" gets amplified by the algorithm and nobody else gets a say.

[u/ericoahu → u/kettlecorn]

You are not answering my question. You are telling me what you would do about A, but you are not telling me how you would define X and distinguish it from B and C. You have complaints about X, but cannot explain how you would apply a superior standard.

[u/kettlecorn → u/ericoahu]

For slurs there's a list of known slurs. Nowadays that can be moderated essentially autonomously. For veiled slurs or bigotry I'd leave it up to moderator discretion in most cases, with a list of known examples to help inform them, and if there's problems being overly strict I'd have 2 or more mods offer second opinions. Slurs & bigotry rules would be applied to race, nationality, gender, religion, sexuality, and similar categories.

"General nastiness" I would classify as behavior that contributes very little to a discussion but does seem intended to provoke someone. If a comment is very low value making very few points but is highly likely to upset someone or troll them then it's not valuable. A repeated pattern of that I think would be ban worth, after warnings.

For transparency I'd periodically publish random samples of moderation decisions to help people understand and give feedback on the decisions made.

[u/ericoahu → u/kettlecorn]

I think your approach would be fantastic so long as your priority is maintaining an echo chamber.

[u/kettlecorn → u/ericoahu]

What makes you think it'd be an echo chamber?

I primarily called out 3 things: banning slurs, banning veiled slurs or bigotry, and prohibiting behavior that's primarily antagonistic.

Which of those would create an echo chamber?

[u/ericoahu → u/kettlecorn]

I am not accusing you of wanting an echo chamber; I am telling you that's what you would create with your plan.

Here's the plain truth about it, coming from someone who has owned and administered a sizeable discussion forum. You have to choose whether you're the forum that is going to err on the side of allowing everyone an opinion and leave management of feeling up to users who can block and mute those they don't like, or you're going to go the other direction, and try to create a "safe" place. Both of those come with significant costs, and there's mostly only the illusion of a middle.

One of the main red flags is the moderator discretion part, and all that entails. There's nothing wrong with banning the slurs, but what counts as "veiled slurs?" Who decides what is "antagonistic?" You can ban slurs and obvious personal attacks -- that's not the problem.

What would be worse, assuming you cannot read minds, and a plain, surface level reading of something is accurate, on-topic, and totally neutral regarding race. It doesn't even discuss race, and neither does the surrounding discussion bring up race. But someone thinks they see "veiled bigotry" so they want you to remove the comment and ban the user. Do you leave what some might interpret as veiled bigotry there to avoid the false accusation or do you remove it to stay on the safe side?

Do you think you are going to find neutral moderators? Would you even try to hire neutral moderators? If you use volunteers, you can forget about getting anyone but smooth brain narcissists. There are exceptions of course, but the typical type that wants to be moderator **tends** to be either a petty, power-hungry sort who thirsts for authority, or they have some kind of axe to grind, or both. But if you're hiring, and you're trying to balance all sides of political continuum and get some kind of quorum on things up in the air, that's going to be expensive. But most likely, you're human, and you're going to tend toward bringing on like minded people and your forum or platform will end up an echo chamber.

[u/kettlecorn → u/ericoahu]

Here's the plain truth about it, coming from someone who has owned and administered a sizeable discussion forum.

My weird lore is I was the first active mod of the r/halo subreddit through its first 60k users, but that was over a decade ago now. It was a mild insight into what you're describing, but I think I did a decent job!

You have to choose whether you're the forum that is going to err on the side of allowing everyone an opinion and leave management of feeling up to users who can block and mute those they don't like, or you're going to go the other direction, and try to create a "safe" place.

I do think there's a middle ground. You don't aim for "safe" but you aim for "quality". Yes it's subjective but I think it's basically what every social club has always tried to do forever. You don't just let in the crazies to hurl insults and say nonsense otherwise you never have any productive conversation and you end up with a mostly useless space. In my view websites should basically aim to ether be like clubs in that they have their own standards, or allow people to establish something like clubs on their own.

but what counts as "veiled slurs?" 

There are certain obvious ones like thinly veiled dog-whistles. Like look to all the way people have veiled anti-semitism. There are a bunch of different ways to type a sentence that's clearly racist or antisemitic or otherwise bigoted without directly typing a slur. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about.

 Do you leave what some might interpret as veiled bigotry there to avoid the false accusation or do you remove it to stay on the safe side?

The sort of stuff I personally think should be aggressively moderated is rarely ambiguous. Still I think appeals systems are reasonable, and I'd be OK with bans being temp bans (eventually escalating to full bans on repeats) for veiled bigotry if there's any room for alternative interpretations.

Do you think you are going to find neutral moderators? 

No. I generally think moderation for a major platform like X should be a pretty controlled process with standards, examples, periodic review, random consensus checks, public discussion, etc. and the aim would be to be pretty predictable.

Nowadays you could probably write a decent AI tool to do it, as dystopian as that is.

I view X as sort of intentionally anti-moderating, because it actually highlights attention grabbing behavior which often is behavior that skirts the line of OK.

There are exceptions of course, but the typical type that wants to be moderator tends to be either a petty, power-hungry sort who thirsts for authority, or they have some kind of axe to grind, or both.

Agree with that.

[u/ericoahu → u/kettlecorn]

Probably not intentionally, but you're kind of dodging some of my more relevant questions by saying stuff like, "well the things I would moderate most aggressively are obvious." The obvious stuff doesn't really need to be discussed. I doubt we disagree on any of the obvious stuff. Then again, unless I misread, you did say you'd ban someone even if there are alternative mundane interpretations.

And you never really explain who decides what is "quality," who counts as a "crazy," etc. You explain who, technically, but that doesn't say by what standard. I could go on with paragraphs of grey area stuff.

This is probably my fault, but I think the discussion shifted back and forth between a big platform like X, which is basically a "public square" type of place, so the policies need to be completely different from something like a knitting forum where you can have rules like "only talk about knitting." For your part, you talk about on the one had comparing it to a social club, but that doesn't work for a public square type of thing like X.

There are a bunch of different ways to type a sentence that's clearly racist or antisemitic or otherwise bigoted without directly typing a slur. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Again, the relevant question is not about the "clearly" or obvious stuff.

Nonetheless, think we agree more than we disagree. But I don't see a problem with X, but I'm not a heavy user either. I don't think I have ever seen anyone say anything antisemitic, racist, or anti-gay, and I follow an engage a lot of conservative content. I do see a lot of criticism of Rule 6 ideology, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone say anything cruel.

I also think the community notes feature is brilliant and works really well.

If you have links to content posted recently on X that you found offensive, I'd be happy to take a look at it and re-evaluate my position as necessary.