Issues with moderating free speech.

[Danioover9000]

   I occasionally visit the forum and the blog posts, and come across the latest one that Leo Gura has posted here below:

https://www.actualized.org/insights/issues-with-moderating-free-speech

and he made a comment under that YouTube video below, to which I began searching for but I couldn't find it:

https://youtu.be/4nNk7fvxiGM

   So, a few questions from me: Did rebel wisdom hide the comment, or was it YouTube's algorithm? I bring up rebel wisdom because even for channel, it's understandable that whoever saw Leo's comment didn't have the wisdom to see it for what it is, but I also bring up YouTube because it's algorithm would pick up on comments that contain negative wording and hide it.

   Also, what are you're thoughts on online freedom of speech and moderation?

[zurew]

I could find his comment,  but it was hard to find.

15 minutes ago, Danioover9000 said:

what are you're thoughts on online freedom of speech and moderation?

Some sort of moderation is always needed to have a good platform.

The problem is how to find the right tools for moderation and how to balance it out. The 'being bias' problem will always come up, but it can be mitigated if one can set up very precise and clear rules. So if the moderators could follow some golden rules that could help, but of course, its super hard to make rules for every possible future scenarios. 

The other big problem is, that sentences and messages can be interpreted in multiple ways, so its is really hard.

[Danioover9000]

@zurew

50 minutes ago, zurew said:

I could find his comment,  but it was hard to find.

Some sort of moderation is always needed to have a good platform.

The problem is how to find the right tools for moderation and how to balance it out. The 'being bias' problem will always come up, but it can be mitigated if one can set up very precise and clear rules. So if the moderators could follow some golden rules that could help, but of course, its super hard to make rules for every possible future scenarios. 

The other big problem is, that sentences and messages can be interpreted in multiple ways, so its is really hard.

   Well, I tripled checked again and the comment isn't there, so it's likely that you've captured this comment before it's hidden, and I was a bit late to quote it. I swear it's not there anymore.

   Yes, I'm aware of both the language problem of words, sentences and paragraphs, in any format including online messages having multiple interpretations, and the epistemological problem of how do we know which tools, methods and ways to address issues of free speech.

   One simplistic solution, to resolve this issue to near completeness, is that we make the internet and online spaces like real world society, governed by rules, regulations and multiple check points. Despite this, we'll never satisfy some of the groups with more extreme views, but like Leo has said, limitations, government and how society is structured has, throughout history up to now, is pretty efficient in dealing with libertarian and anarchistic types of individuals and groups through various means of policing. Otherwise, we would be like Gotham city with criminals, villains and vigilantes running around.    

[Rokazulu]

Anarchy is not chaos or freedom to be immoral. Quite the opposite. It calls for direct representation of our government so that corruption is less likely to take place. Meaning we all participate within the government on equal terms. Nothing about just letting people get away with immorality. . We involve ourselves with a lot of unnecessary control of individual action in most cases, because of a handful of individual's fear of losing their perceived power.

However, our standard for what morality is, as a collective, is rather distorted right now anyways. It would be ideal if this was discussed in the same way to prevent central authorities from overtaking the entire conversation with their limited point of view. Moderation can be handled in many creative ways that doesn't in any way, shape, or form, have to include a central authority making all the decisions.

[zurew]

16 minutes ago, Danioover9000 said:

 Well, I tripled checked again and the comment isn't there, so it's likely that you've captured this comment before it's hidden, and I was a bit late to quote it. I swear it's not there anymore.

I did it after you made this thread. I can still see it but i think i know whats going on. You need to choose the option 'the newest first' because automatically the comment sorting is on 'the best comments' which basically means it will display comments with the most likes.

Both option should display all the comments, but for whatever reason 'only the 'newest first' comment sorting option displaying Leo's comment.

Edited May 9, 2022 by zurew

[zurew]

17 minutes ago, Rokazulu said:

Moderation can be handled in many creative ways that doesn't in any way, shape, or form, have to include a central authority making all the decisions.

Such as?

[Danioover9000]

@Rokazulu

2 minutes ago, Rokazulu said:

Anarchy is not chaos or freedom to be immoral. Quite the opposite. It calls for direct representation of our government so that corruption is less likely to take place. Meaning we all participate within the government on equal terms. Nothing about just letting people get away with immorality. . We involve ourselves with a lot of unnecessary control of individual action in most cases, because of a handful of individual's fear of losing their perceived power.

However, our standard for what morality is, as a collective, is rather distorted right now anyways. It would be ideal if this was discussed in the same way to prevent central authorities from overtaking the entire conversation with their limited point of view. Moderation can be handled in many creative ways that doesn't in any way, shape, or form, have to include a central authority making all the decisions.

   You mean like the government in Libya?

[Danioover9000]

@zurew

16 minutes ago, zurew said:

I did it after you made this thread. I can still see it but i think i know whats going on. You need to choose the option 'the newest first' because automatically the comment sorting is on 'the best comments' which basically means it will display comments with the most likes.

Both option should display all the comments, but for whatever reason 'only the 'newest first' comment sorting option displaying Leo's comment.

   Nope, still not showing on my end after clicking the newest first. Time to ping @Leo Gura about this, what is going on?

[Danioover9000]

   After reading through the comment section, I could see why the comment could be hidden, because a large part of the comments expressed dislike to Aaron Rabinowitz, so it's possible that Leo's comment could be misinterpreted as leaning more with Aaron, but in fact Leo was talking about something deeper than what Aaron was discussing in the video. 

[zurew]

15 minutes ago, Danioover9000 said:

 After reading through the comment section, I could see why the comment could be hidden, because a large part of the comments expressed dislike to Aaron Rabinowitz, so it's possible that Leo's comment could be misinterpreted as leaning more with Aaron, but in fact Leo was talking about something deeper than what Aaron was discussing in the video. 

This is strange, cause i can see it  both using youtube without an account and seeing it with an account.

putting the sorting on 'newest first' is working for me well, even if i use UK's vpn. So it will be something with your account or i don't know.

Edited May 9, 2022 by zurew

[lostingenosmaze]

I saw the comment too, it's probably the libertarians/prudes offended by the example of daughter-rape who're downvoting it to oblivion, if anyone else sees it make sure to upvote Leo's comment, I'd like to see more interesting discourse

Edited May 9, 2022 by lostingenosmaze

[Rokazulu]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

Such as?

https://cdn-assets.minds.com/The_Censorship_Effect.pdf

Starting at page 49.
Something like a community ran moderation system, where everyone decides what is actually unacceptable speech vs what is only believed to be unacceptable speech.

 

1 hour ago, Danioover9000 said:

@Rokazulu

   You mean like the government in Libya?

I don't know. To me, it is rather contradictory to resist violence with violence. Some would say "they aren't enacting violence, they are enacting resistance or force against tyranny" and yet, violence remains unjustified no matter what we label it as. If we say it is justified, then whatever negatives we believe about the word "anarchy" now becomes half-true.  Still another way remains. Peaceful direct democracy. More community responsibility.



 

Edited May 10, 2022 by Rokazulu

[something_else]

16 minutes ago, Rokazulu said:

Something like a community ran moderation system, where everyone decides what is actually unacceptable speech vs what is only believed to be unacceptable speech.

This is basically what Reddit has with upvotes and downvotes

It encourages a hive mind approach that is not healthy at all

 

[Rokazulu]

11 minutes ago, something_else said:

This is basically what Reddit has with upvotes and downvotes

It encourages a hive mind approach that is not healthy at all

 

The hive mind of any sub-reddit lies in their mods willingness to censor any thread deemed unworthy, not in their voting system; which at least still shows what the community believes is valuable and what is not.

 

[Leo Gura]

@Danioover9000 Nobody removed my comment. Calm down.

[something_else]

9 hours ago, Rokazulu said:

The hive mind of any sub-reddit lies in their mods willingness to censor any thread deemed unworthy, not in their voting system; which at least still shows what the community believes is valuable and what is not

I don’t think that makes sense, hive mind is by definition the entire community. It isn’t really controlled by a select group of mods, kind of by definition

And generously, 50% of the people on any given subreddit are not the kind of people you want to have any say in how things are run lol

[zurew]

11 hours ago, Rokazulu said:

Something like a community ran moderation system, where everyone decides what is actually unacceptable speech vs what is only believed to be unacceptable speech.

1 hour ago, something_else said:

And generously, 50% of the people on any given subreddit are not the kind of people you want to have any say in how things are run lol

Yeah the democratic free speech system sounds great, however it still has the same weakpoints as the centralized one.

Also with the centralized one you only need a handful of very developed people who control the information flow, in your case we need at least 50%+ of that particular communties people to be very developed, because if they are not, it will just become an echo-chamber.

Also, another weak point of the democratic free speech approach, is that what if not all people are engaging in voting? Every topic and every thread and every post needs to be voted by everyone or at least by 50% of people? Because that doesn't seem sustainable to me. What if less than 50% of people are voting? Those topics/threads/posts won't be published or if they will be published they won't be moderated?

@Rokazulu I saw, that the link you gave mentioned a holistic approach and also mentioned AI as well. AI moderation won't be possible, because we ourselves don't even know where the lines should be drawn. It sounds great, that an unbiased AI will moderate, but that AI to become a moderator, it needs to be trained on already structured data and examples and how should the AI decide what should or shouldn't be moderated and in what cases? I think the AI "solution" is just pushing this problem forward but not really solves anything and it begs the question that we can't answer yet. 

If moderation could be algorithmized, then we would have done that already. Unfortunately it can't be or it can't be yet.

If you @Rokazulu don't agree, please share some points why your 'democratic free speech' approach is better than the centralized one.

 

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by zurew

[Rokazulu]

3 hours ago, zurew said:

Yeah the democratic free speech system sounds great, however it still has the same weakpoints as the centralized one.

If you @Rokazulu don't agree, please share some points why your 'democratic free speech' approach is better than the centralized one.

 

 

It works by appealing and reversing bans that mods of the service may make that are not consistent with the network policy. People simply report actions that go against network policy to remove actual hate speech. Every topic and every thread does not need to be voted upon to be posted. AI only serves as one other way to find and remove bots, spammers, or other obvious breaches in network policy.

Since the code is open source, the way the community moderates itself, and any algorithm is known to the public, and requests to change the code to more efficient setups can be made.

I don't see how it could be worse to create a more community driven setup to moderation. Same type of thinking would be a quantum leap in how we govern ourselves as well.

 

[Rokazulu]

3 hours ago, something_else said:

I don’t think that makes sense, hive mind is by definition the entire community. It isn’t really controlled by a select group of mods, kind of by definition

And generously, 50% of the people on any given subreddit are not the kind of people you want to have any say in how things are run lol

Each sub-reddit usually has several mods. Those mods can decide which threads stay and which leave. This means, the banned portion of these communities are  driven to their own sub-reddit echo chamber. Sometimes the overall reddit moderators decide to take down those sub-reddits as well, to drive them off the site.

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Rokazulu said:

It works by appealing and reversing bans that mods of the service may make that are not consistent with the network policy. People simply report actions that go against network policy to remove actual hate speech.

So basically, trying to make the mods accountable for their actions? I have some problems with this approach.

1. People with the biggest groups can dominate how platforms should work, they can reverse any ban they feel unjustified, and they can report people they don't like and get them banned (thats basically cancel culture)
2. Most bans that are going to be percieved as unjustified will be on the edge. What do i mean by that? I mean, that most of the unjustifiably percieved bans are made, because we are talking about such cases where the line isn't precise or clear so its on the moderator's interpretation to decide if its banworthy or not. Now, how you are going to manage to reverse that, when you can't defend it with clear points, you can only argue about interpretations? (so the people who wants to reverse some other person's ban, can only say that this x mod's interpretation of this post was wrong, so please unban him/her)

In those cases, where the ban is clearly unjustified, i would agree with this community driven approach, however in such cases where most people are angry about a ban is already avalaible. If enough people start to shit talk about a platform and their mods actions they will be forced to make changes.

Or if they don't make any changes, then the platform's integrity and prestige going to be hurt.

Look at it from being a platform owner perspective. You want to have a platform what you can fairly moderate, because if you can't moderate your own platform, then eventually you can lose your whole platform, because rascist and other bad faith people can dominate it and decide what can and what can't be done. So you are going to lose advertisers, promoters and business opportunities. 

Edited May 10, 2022 by zurew