What happens with no moderation on an online forum?

[Consept]

Interesting video from Rebel Wisdom, one of the speakers talks about a test facebook group 'Monster Island' that had zero moderation. Quite relevant to a lot of the topics that pop up on this forum - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nNk7fvxiGM

 

This is the original Monster Island article - https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2020/10/monster-island-free-speech-experiment/

Edited April 30, 2022 by Consept

[Husseinisdoingfine]

—————> 4chan.org/pol <————-

Edited May 1, 2022 by Husseinisdoingfine

[Leo Gura]

Same thing that happens when you have no police, no laws, no government, no courts, no judges, no referees, no military, no regulations.

AKA, anarchy.

Nothing new here. People just suck at understanding why government evolved.

[Preety_India]

You need moderation otherwise weed 

 

[Inliytened1]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

 

Nothing new here. People just suck at understanding why government evolved.

Enter libertarians right?

 

[puporing]

No moderation actually can greatly limit freedom of speech. It tends to end up being 'herd think' or whatever the majority agrees upon.   

Edited April 30, 2022 by puporing

[Yarco]

I'd argue this is only an example of making a small corner of the internet unmoderated. 

When you create a tiny corner of the internet without rules, it creates a vacuum that sucks all the radicals into it.

If you unmoderated the entire internet, it's too big to create a vacuum. All of those undesirables get scattered across the whole internet and actually become a lot more manageable.

Unless their views are either persuasive or true enough to convince others to join them, large amounts of regular people aren't going to get turned into undesirables.

I think it's easier for people to curate and moderate their own feeds. We've all got that crazy uncle on Facebook. You just click the 3 little dots next to their post and block, unfollow, or hide their content. There isn't a social media platform today that doesn't allow you to easily block stuff you don't want to see. And most of them have algorithms so you won't get served that kind of content again.

[sholomar]

Honesty you want to know what happens?  I'll tell you. Chuckle. It's just the total truth. The forum gets totally taken over by anti-jew and incel posters... they sit around criticizing Israel and Women all day long. They strive to have some puritan utopia that only exists in their heads as they swallow their right wing conspiracy theories.

I consider myself a political moderate though most here would consider me conservative, and I can see the right's paranoia just like I see the lefts (the woke)  and this is unmoderated political forums after a while.  These types of posters are one trick ponies and it's all they ever talk about. They enjoy their echo chambers where they sit all day long in a circle jerk reinforcing one another's viewpoints.    

Edited May 1, 2022 by sholomar

[Consept]

1 hour ago, Yarco said:

When you create a tiny corner of the internet without rules, it creates a vacuum that sucks all the radicals into it.

The Internet is basically lots of tiny vacuums that suck radicals into it. They then become more moderated as the audience grows in which case radicals are pushed out or leave to find another tiny corner where their views can be tolerated. Large websites can only occur because of moderation. If a website 'stays true' and has minimal moderation it usually stays a tiny corner. If no moderation truly worked on a large scale you would have a massive site that has no moderation already in existence, you can't really backtrack and take a site that got big with moderation and then take that moderation away. It's like taking the safety features out of a car once everyone's bought it because its safe. 

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, Consept said:

The Internet is basically lots of tiny vacuums that suck radicals into it. They then become more moderated as the audience grows in which case radicals are pushed out or leave to find another tiny corner where their views can be tolerated. Large websites can only occur because of moderation. If a website 'stays true' and has minimal moderation it usually stays a tiny corner. If no moderation truly worked on a large scale you would have a massive site that has no moderation already in existence, you can't really backtrack and take a site that got big with moderation and then take that moderation away. It's like taking the safety features out of a car once everyone's bought it because its safe. 

- why Slab City is not outcompeting LA.

[Reciprocality]

You get a bunch of misfits doing as adults what they once did not dare to do in class.

[Girzo]

15 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

Enter libertarians right?

Some libertarians. There obviously are libertarians holding views like "The less state control, the better", because we have seen them on this forum.

But that's not all of the liberatarians. Some are libertarians becuase they see that actions have unforseen consequences and err on the side of less regulation and control, because such regulation might cause harm.

There are liberatarians with even more sophisticated takes.

So I think we should abstain from using this label in such cheeky way on this forum if we want to improve the discourse in this politics sub-forum.

[seriousman24]

People in places with little moderation like 4chan are way more pessimistic so that's their actual bias, I'd say it's incredibly superior energy intensity wise for discussion but it drives more optimistic people out so it fails, we do need more forums or chats with anonymous features I don't know why nobody tried, so it fails because you don't have everyone participate in it same as places with more moderattion, pessimistic people are afraid of being ostracized for their negativity, they themselves might not know it and neither do the optimists but that's where I see the divide, moderating negativity or positivity out severely cuts of basically everything, it's much slower and less creative like this that's why the coolest and highest works of art have both.
 

[Danioover9000]

@Preety_India

23 hours ago, Preety_India said:

You need moderation otherwise weed 

 

    Of course any place needs some moderation. Anyone who owns a garden and dealt with weeds knows how quickly they grow.

[Thought Art]

Things fall apart. We gotta hold others accountable and need others to hold us accountable. 

We all have our limitations and biases. Sometimes we can't see where we are ignorant. It's a double whammy.

I occasionally need to be moderated but I usually do pretty good. 

Sometimes I don't agree with the Mods, and I am pretty open about it with them. 

But, give it some time and I come around and theres usually a fix.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Thought Art

[thisintegrated]

[BlueOak]

The easiest thing to say is nobody knows.

That is the good part of creative anarchy.

The bad part is, that nobody knows. You never know what to expect, and often will get extremes drawing attention. Eye-catching material. Which isolates a lot of people from commenting.

[Espaim]

Relevant video:

 

[Consept]

On 05/05/2022 at 0:26 PM, BlueOak said:

The easiest thing to say is nobody knows.

We have a good idea, if you read the article posted in my first post it talks about an unmoderated forum a guy ran as an experiment for 4 years 

[BlueOak]

3 minutes ago, Consept said:

We have a good idea, if you read the article posted in my first post it talks about an unmoderated forum a guy ran as an experiment for 4 years 

You can't possibly predict what happens over a large enough group free to create whatever they want.

A sample size of one or a handful doesn't reflect billions of voices.

*Again I'll say that, the way the internet is designed, to be focused on he who shouts loudest or replies the most, for example, facilitates the most extreme eye catching material to be in focus, isolating more moderate or reasonable conversation.

Edited May 6, 2022 by BlueOak