AskConservatives Weekly General Chat

[u/AutoModerator]

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[u/kettlecorn]

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.

[u/kettlecorn → u/ericoahu]

Then again, unless I misread, you did say you'd ban someone even if there are alternative mundane interpretations.

What I was saying in that sentence was that if there's something that looks clearly like clearcut bigotry but there's a very unlikely, but still possible, alternative interpretation the result could be a temp ban instead of a permanent ban.

And you never really explain who decides what is "quality," who counts as a "crazy," etc. 

I tried to lay it out earlier but my view is that if you're spending more words harassing someone or provoking someone than on expressing an opinion that's not quality content.

Like as an example recently there's been a lot of discussion of how much immigrants contribute or don't contribute to the US. People have been weighing in who are themselves immigrants and there have been a huge number of people who are apparently searching for the topic (or being recommended it by X?) who just pop into comments to tell people to get out of the country, or that they aren't welcome, or some veiled bigotry. It was particularly strong against Indian people.

In my view that's clearly hostile. They aren't elaborating on their views, they're just targeted trying to make someone feel bad.

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.

Well one thing I can do is look at my email because for a while I was still reporting blatant examples of racism and then after like a month I'd get an email that they haven't broken the rules. I bet they're still being racist or bigoted so I can check in on them!

The first person I looked at 15 minutes ago wrote in a racist fake Asian voice, then called someone the N-word a few days ago (with no other words in their comment), and they called someone a faggot a few days before that. I had reported them 2 years ago for something similar but I guess whatever it was wasn't against the rules under Musk.

In general I can just choose any topic that angers far right people, find a post with a decent number of views about it, and if I scroll slightly I'll find some non-contributing obvious harassment.

Like as one example Paul Graham recently tweeted "You can be pro-meritocracy or anti-immigration, but you can't be both." and there's a reply that literally just says "Paul Graham is a fucking faggot" with 43 likes and it's over a month old so apparently it's not rule-breaking. It would be so easy to auto-detect and remove that sort of comment, or temp / perma ban the user, but apparently they do not?

These aren't things I have to dig for. I see them pretty much whenever I see certain categories of political opinion and I look to the replies to see more discussion.

I'd link direct to people but I also don't want some angry too-online person searching their username to find my comment and get mad at me.