• xantoxis@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    [There are] no stupid questions, but there sure are questions with an obvious axe to grind.

  • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Because without mods, people tend to be horrible to each other. Just read through the modlogs sometime, it’s depressing how unpleasant some people choose to be.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Having moderated for a while, it’s surprisingly sad with the kind of stuff we have to remove from even small and low stakes communities

    • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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      10 months ago

      “Unpleasant” is anything that strays outside a very small circle of behavior. Moderation is a force for mediocrity and an energy-suck. And doubly so given the people who seek the job. It’s inevitable

      • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        “A very small circle of behaviour” - okay, lol.

        You can hang out in unmoderated areas with people hurling slurs around at each other, personally I enjoy a more civilized experience where people aren’t just trolling each other.

        Edit: Ahhhhh, this is a new account. I guess you got banned and are now butthurt and whiny about it. Which tracks.

        • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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          10 months ago

          Yes, an area full of assholes is bad. But an area full of smug fellows like yourself might actually be worse. The average asshole seems less inclined to team up with likeminded assholes and call their group vibe “objectivity”.

          • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Why don’t you share your previous username? Then we can see what got you banned and use that as a test case for “is Lemmy better with or without mods”?

            • SUKKONDIS@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              I have yet to come across anyone sharing their username after they get banned. You see them in posts or comments “I was wronged!” but then they don’t want to give their user name. Sure buddy!

            • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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              10 months ago

              Because nothing says truth like a consensus of smug fellows like yourself, right?

              • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                In other words, you know you were a dick and you know how sharing the username you were banned under would go.

      • livus@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        You do realise that in the fediverse you don’t have to have a mod, right?

        You can:

        • run your own instance

        • create whatever communities you like there

        • have no mods in them

        • federate with the rest of us

        No matter how much modding or even defederating any of us did, you would have the complete ability to say whatever you like and even see all our content.

        All we could do is choose whether to interact with you.

    • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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      10 months ago

      Also, the mods are subject to GIFT too. In all probability even even moreso.

      Hello, yes, I think that I would be a great moral authority. I am just the person to tell people what they can and cannot say. That’s me to a T.

      You don’t want that guy in charge in a million years.

    • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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      10 months ago

      Then do it with bots. Bots are uncorruptable or at least perfectly auditable.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Alright, we’ll write a bot that can accurately moderate arbitrary internet content with an acceptably low rate of false negatives and false positives.

        You first.

        • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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          10 months ago

          Here’s an idea

          When you read a post you vote it.

          This vote is also sticks to the person who wrote it.

          Whenever he posts, his post automatically get a (weighted) rating based on the history of your votes of his posts.

          Also, any post he votes automatically gets a (weighted) rating, for you, on his recommendation, based on his rating.

          This post voting rating propagates. And of course works for both positive and negative voting.

          Then you filter however.

          Everybody starts at 0. Which is also informative of course.

          • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            10 months ago

            That just means that folk from vulnerable minorities each individually have to downvote every new troll account targetting them, until the person just moves on to a new troll account.

            Which in turn is how you end up with communities full of nothing but white, straight middle class western cis men who think that trolling each other is a national sport.

            • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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              10 months ago

              The cracking-resistance of this system is in the voters who are smart enough to vote as they like (flatworms can do it, so can we) and the depth and complexity of an organic voter/votee history, which would be hard to fake or quickly synthesize.

              Of course, yes, the proof requires pudding. A Lemmy fork? Ugh, it’s a lot of work. Maybe a friendly hs teacher can make it the class project.

              • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                10 months ago

                You miss the point. Your approach requires the targetted minority to experience the hate first, and then react to it, and gives them no method of pro-actively avoiding the content from new sources. It also ensures that every member of the minority in the community in question sees it, and has to individually remove it.

                That suits bigots fine, and unsurprisingly, isn’t sustainable for many targets of bigotry.

                • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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                  10 months ago

                  Your approach requires the targetted minority to experience the hate first

                  That isn’t so. There is vote propagation among peers to consider.

                  If a trusted (upvoted) peer or peers downvotes a bigot (by downvoting the bigot’s posts) then you will see that bigot downvoted in your own perspective as well.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Just because some hall monitors let their title go to their heads, that doesn’t mean they wield power in any meaningful way.

    You’re confusing petty tyrants and actual tyrants.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        They control what I say. That’s pretty big.

        My, but you certainly have an outsized estimation of your own importance, don’t you?

        No one is obligated to host what you have to say. You want to get your message out, find somewhere that will or host it yourself.

        Like everyone else.

      • livus@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        They control what I say

        No they don’t. They just control whether you get to say it in that particular space.

        Editors at publishing companies don’t “control” what I say just because they can choose whether or not to publish my book.

        • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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          10 months ago

          If you remove my words, that is literally censorship.

          Don’t get semantic. Please.

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    I don’t think that the type of power that a janny has is able to meaningfully corrupt the janny. At least, not in most cases; because it’s practically no power, like it or not your online community means nothing in the big picture.

    Instead, I think that bad moderators are the result of people with specific moral flaws (entitlement, assumptiveness, irrationality, lack of self-control, context illiteracy) simply showing them as they interact with other people. They’d do it without the janny position, it’s just that being a janny increases the harm that those trashy users cause.

    Why the alternatives that you mentioned to human moderation do not work:

    • Bots - content moderation requires understanding what humans convey through language and/or images within a context. Bots do not.
    • Voting - voting only works when you have crystal clear rules on who’s allowed or not to vote, otherwise the community will be subjected to external meddling.
    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Bots - content moderation requires understanding what humans convey through language and/or images within a context. Bots do not.

      so, like. bots are programed by people. all they really do is put a buffer between the actions of a moderator and the (real) moderators.

  • vettnerk@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    Because some of us remember how the internet was without moderators, and how it went to shit early 2000’s when “everyone” started using it.

    20-25 years ago mods were rarely needed beyond booting a couple of spammers and getting rid of the occasional goatse and tubgirl. Now platform-wide efforts are needed to combat csam and gore.

    • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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      10 months ago

      There has to be an algorithm. A crowdsourced wisdom. Individuals can’t be trusted. From spez to the very mods here.

      • vettnerk@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Whenever I hear someone suggest “an algorithm” without elaborating further, I’m usually correct in presuming that it makes as much sense as “a wizard will use magic”. The other times it’s usually someone suggesting blockchain. Sometimes it’s both.

        Or, hear me out, collaboration across networks. That’s what lemmy does. And it’s nothing new.

      • neptune@dmv.social
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        10 months ago

        An algorithm gets programmed… By who? T Its the cover Facebook takes. “Well we didn’t mean to radicalized thousands of people, we just had an algorithm feed them addictive and increasingly political videos until they were”.

  • livus@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    I think you’re starting from a false premise. “All power corrupts” is a demonstrably untrue maxim.

    If it were true we would never have anyone with power over anything. Being the one in charge of taking the cat to the vet would somehow be corrupting.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
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    10 months ago

    To quote Dr Cox: “People are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.”

    So we elect some people to be chief jerkfaces against all the other miserable sods, then the rest of us pricks have to bully the mods to keep things fair… or unfair in so many directions at once that the scales still balance out. Thus turning our weakness into strength.

    Or at least, that’s the plan.

  • fiat_lux@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    Because for anything that is built, someone else will set out to destroy or manipulate it for their own purposes. For example, spammers will use social media to try to boost their SEO and as an avenue for free advertising.

    As much as I’d love if everyone could act with the best intentions towards others at all times, there is too much motivation and reward for anti-social actions. As a result, we have to have a complex system of rules and enforcement.

    • cameron_vale@lemm.eeOP
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      10 months ago

      Yes, we need a control. But control by the worst of us is a bad control. And yes, there is a race to the bottom for control here.

  • neptune@dmv.social
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    10 months ago

    I feel like you are close to asking good political science questions. Close. Are you advocating for anarchy? Or communism? No? Just a technocracy that “works”?

  • ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip
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    10 months ago

    Unchecked, unanswerable power corrupts. On lemmy everyone is free to create their own sub. Heck they’re free to create their own instance. That makes the “power” of moderators pretty tame.

    Compare that to the power a corporate CEO has over the typical employee. Especially since the 1970s and 1980s redefinition of the primary responsibility of the directors of a corporation to be “maximize shareholder value” instead of “maximize stakeholder value.”

    Even in (small d democratic) politics, at least an aggrieved voter can run to replace a corrupt, abusive politician. Not many companies, probably no publicly traded ones, have a mechanism for the workers to replace the management. That’s where major corruption by power can be witnessed.