The thing is that all solutions are bad, but leaving the problem (of spam etc.) unaddressed is even worse than the usual solutions.
Sometimes small websites avoid this, when they are unknown enough that they don’t attract any spammer or any crazy person, and unimportant enough that people who don’t like the content simply leave. But if they get more popular, it’s only a question of when.
Imagine that your user base is: 50% Greens, 30% Blues, 10% crazy people, and 10% spammers. If you leave the site unmoderated, crazy people and spammers will make it unpleasant for everyone else. If you have a voting system, Greens will eliminate the Blues. If you have moderators, you must choose carefully, because a majority of Greens or Blues among the moderators will eliminate the other side; and of course having the same number of Green and Blue moderators would be unfair, because then the Blues are overrepresented compared to the user base. (Also, this would incentivize the 0.01% Purples to demand equal representation among moderators, too. And if you grant it, then either Greens or Blues, by making a coalition with Purples, can eliminate the other side.) You can’t win.
Sometime the solutions are bad enough that it’s not worth having the problem in the first place. If there is no way to input user generated content then you can’t spam. However websites are kind of expected to have these sorts of functions even when their core mission doesn’t revolve around it.
There is also the issue that some of the costs for solutions are private costs beared by the website but having social slant and pressures on the content has a downside that is more beared by the public for a possible eroding of discussion or culture quality. And if every individual website is incentivies to be open to mobs instead of closed to them that enpowers mobs and can make cross-site movements. At some point cross-site culture will be stronger than site spesifc one where even if you try to establish a particular website to be for certain types of users / needs they will be swamped by a bigger existing community that will forfcefully install their norms.
The example voting system whether Greens eliminate Blues depends on the voting mechanisms. But I guess it is a general feature that some content will be hidden/downplayed. The arguments mechanics are plausible if it is a majority first-past-the-post. I think there are power balancing mechanism that get a lot more close to proportionality. The mechanic also requires that the sides are interested in destroying content associated with other parties. You could have a system where there is only finite influence power that is shared among promotion and supression. If all players suppress all content generated by others then they could not promote their own stuff but if everybody promoted their own stuff they would use lower amount of the resource the point would be to make it dominant to promote your stuff rather than attack others. Then on the balance losing factions are not erased even if they have “unfairly low” visiblity. The thing would be that spam would be supressed unilaterally. Even if you don’t make the emphasis power finite treating unilaterally promoted stuff comparatelivy same than content that is promoted by some groups and supressed by others could reach a different balance. That is if you have 10 moderators and you need 3 to vote “supress” and no-one vote “promote” to have it not visible then any “controversial” content would probably get throguh.
And even if we keep voting around the users are unlikely to carefully scrutines the voting mechanics. That is even if they are clearly biased that biased would survival for a very long time until anybody would try to balance that bias.
If there is no way to input user generated content then you can’t spam.
Yep. If I ever have a meaningful web page, there will be no user comments, because it seems like there is no good solution.
I think there are power balancing mechanism that get a lot more close to proportionality.
I am afraid that online even this wouldn’t work. First, people can make multiple accounts. (The infamous guy on LW 1.0 made several hundreds of them.) Second, I feel that participating in online debates already selects for a worse parts of humanity, simply because some people have better things to do and some don’t.
I prefer the archipelago model of internet. Rationalist websites for rationalists, homeopathic websites for homeopaths; rather than having all of them in the same place fighting each other. But goes against the incentives of the big websites, who want to be for everyone, because that allows them to display advertising to everyone.
On the other hand, creating “reality bubbles” (because, let’s admit it honestly, this is what the archipelago model means) also has its own problems.
One of the issues is that you will struggle to be meaningful if more attractive webpages manage to be attractive because they allow for self-expression or because so many other users are using or viewing them. Part of tyhe problem can be that if you read a news paper you get nicely editorialised content but if you get your news on reddit you can have fun fights in the comments so people will pass on “boring” newspaper because they can’t fullfill their expectation of engagement.
How about when the incentives of the populus are as misaligned as would-be-moderators?
That’s what always happens, I guess.
The thing is that all solutions are bad, but leaving the problem (of spam etc.) unaddressed is even worse than the usual solutions.
Sometimes small websites avoid this, when they are unknown enough that they don’t attract any spammer or any crazy person, and unimportant enough that people who don’t like the content simply leave. But if they get more popular, it’s only a question of when.
Imagine that your user base is: 50% Greens, 30% Blues, 10% crazy people, and 10% spammers. If you leave the site unmoderated, crazy people and spammers will make it unpleasant for everyone else. If you have a voting system, Greens will eliminate the Blues. If you have moderators, you must choose carefully, because a majority of Greens or Blues among the moderators will eliminate the other side; and of course having the same number of Green and Blue moderators would be unfair, because then the Blues are overrepresented compared to the user base. (Also, this would incentivize the 0.01% Purples to demand equal representation among moderators, too. And if you grant it, then either Greens or Blues, by making a coalition with Purples, can eliminate the other side.) You can’t win.
Sometime the solutions are bad enough that it’s not worth having the problem in the first place. If there is no way to input user generated content then you can’t spam. However websites are kind of expected to have these sorts of functions even when their core mission doesn’t revolve around it.
There is also the issue that some of the costs for solutions are private costs beared by the website but having social slant and pressures on the content has a downside that is more beared by the public for a possible eroding of discussion or culture quality. And if every individual website is incentivies to be open to mobs instead of closed to them that enpowers mobs and can make cross-site movements. At some point cross-site culture will be stronger than site spesifc one where even if you try to establish a particular website to be for certain types of users / needs they will be swamped by a bigger existing community that will forfcefully install their norms.
The example voting system whether Greens eliminate Blues depends on the voting mechanisms. But I guess it is a general feature that some content will be hidden/downplayed. The arguments mechanics are plausible if it is a majority first-past-the-post. I think there are power balancing mechanism that get a lot more close to proportionality. The mechanic also requires that the sides are interested in destroying content associated with other parties. You could have a system where there is only finite influence power that is shared among promotion and supression. If all players suppress all content generated by others then they could not promote their own stuff but if everybody promoted their own stuff they would use lower amount of the resource the point would be to make it dominant to promote your stuff rather than attack others. Then on the balance losing factions are not erased even if they have “unfairly low” visiblity. The thing would be that spam would be supressed unilaterally. Even if you don’t make the emphasis power finite treating unilaterally promoted stuff comparatelivy same than content that is promoted by some groups and supressed by others could reach a different balance. That is if you have 10 moderators and you need 3 to vote “supress” and no-one vote “promote” to have it not visible then any “controversial” content would probably get throguh.
And even if we keep voting around the users are unlikely to carefully scrutines the voting mechanics. That is even if they are clearly biased that biased would survival for a very long time until anybody would try to balance that bias.
Yep. If I ever have a meaningful web page, there will be no user comments, because it seems like there is no good solution.
I am afraid that online even this wouldn’t work. First, people can make multiple accounts. (The infamous guy on LW 1.0 made several hundreds of them.) Second, I feel that participating in online debates already selects for a worse parts of humanity, simply because some people have better things to do and some don’t.
I prefer the archipelago model of internet. Rationalist websites for rationalists, homeopathic websites for homeopaths; rather than having all of them in the same place fighting each other. But goes against the incentives of the big websites, who want to be for everyone, because that allows them to display advertising to everyone.
On the other hand, creating “reality bubbles” (because, let’s admit it honestly, this is what the archipelago model means) also has its own problems.
One of the issues is that you will struggle to be meaningful if more attractive webpages manage to be attractive because they allow for self-expression or because so many other users are using or viewing them. Part of tyhe problem can be that if you read a news paper you get nicely editorialised content but if you get your news on reddit you can have fun fights in the comments so people will pass on “boring” newspaper because they can’t fullfill their expectation of engagement.