The only strategy that works is a tight knit community that is hostile to bad actors and good moderation. Trying to automate away human negativity will never work.
I'm not necessarily asking about how to automate negativity away. I'm honestly not clear that you want to eliminate all negativity. Indeed, I am generally wary of policies that kick out members. It can help some things, sure; but not having a path to good is a problem for members, too. Similarly, not allowing any bad behavior is the "purity spiral" that has killed a fair number of communities, too. You don't want it to flare out in such a way that it causes trouble, though.
I'm also curious on the tight knit community. I recognize some names here, sure. I think I would be stretching definitions to say I was part of this community, though? Specifically, I'm guessing there is, at most, a hand full that would ever recognize my username?
The Somethingawful forums is still one of the best places on the internet, the $10 price tag on accounts help reduce the bad actors (or at least puts a price tag on bad behavior) and thus make good moderation easier. Sadly the free internet suffers from the tragedy of the commons, of course an entirely pay to access internet will be it own nightmare.
That is fundamentally wrong. Pushing content moderation onto every person who posts a message on social media is a chilling effect on people posting. Pushing content moderation onto every person who reads a message on social media is a chilling effect on people reading.
People are fine reading stuff they disagree with, it’s fun that way. They just downvote if they disagree. It’s not fun sitting around in a moderated hugbox where everyone is saying the same thing
You're talking about a system of good actors that just disagree on what's being said, if you spend 10 minutes running your own site you'll quickly learn there is a metric shitton of bad actors.
Run something unmoderated long enough and, depending where you are, you'll have law enforcement knocking on your door.
>Downvotes are a perfect way to ensure you end up with a hugbox where people are afraid to disagree.
Hacker News has downvotes and people here disagree all the time. It's subjective but it even feels like downvoting and disagreement have increased over time, so the presence of downvotes at best doesn't seem to have an effect and at worse seems to encourage disagreement.
In fact, I actually can't think of a platform for which your claim is actually true.
I welcome censorship on my personal site because I control the censorship.
Likewise I'd like the option of controlling the conversation for responses to my posts. You're welcome to say whatever you want about me - under your own threads.
You're not going to get much sympathy if your stance is censorship = bad
> Upvote / downvotes are good enough on their own
Not sure I've seen this work. It's not good enough for Reddit or HN, both of which have heavy moderation.
If I couldn't run my own site with social features and reserve the right to kick anybody out just because I probably wouldn't run a site with social features.
For a small site the argument is that there are many other small sites you could go to if you got kicked out of one or the other.
For a site like Facebook or YouTube, however, it starts looking more and more like an essential public utility. I think of a case in my town where there is a person who is being a real jerk to their neighbors who run a "BiPOC garden". They've filed a federal discrimination case which probably won't accomplish anything because discrimination law applies to landlords, employers and similar gatekeepers -- like the stork said in this book
Having seen many, many comments in my lifetime that have ultimately been removed due to moderation: yes, we do seem to need someone babysitting us. Without moderation, bad actors end up ruling all spaces.
Bad actors are especially egregious in spaces dedicated toward a niche topic. Want to talk about hiking in a hiking forum? Nope! Ends up in culture war talking points and racial epithets.
That might be the type of communication platform you'd like, but the vast majority of people disagree. Good moderation is a Godsend, and dismissing it as "censorship" is a thought terminating cliche.
> Hacker News only works because it is heavily censored.
...by the community, which is not "censored" by most definitions of the word, which almost always refer to a single powerful entity doing the censoring.
Those distinctions have absolutely no basis in reality.
Censorship is merely the act of limiting access to information. It doesn't matter who is doing this. Yes, governments often do it, but so can private entities. An individual can even do it to himself, in the form of self-censorship.
Moderation is the application of censorship in order to modify a discussion. Once again, anyone could potentially do this, including governments. An individual can do this to himself, too, by selectively choosing which parts of a discussion to consume.
I've been timed out by dang for inciting flamewars, I took my time out like an adult and learned to improve my communication
If you don't like the moderation policies of HN, there are plenty of other places you can make comments. Continuing on your "censorship" opinion is likely to earn you more downvotes and flags from other users
