Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

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Sigh. A "certain level of bad behaviour on the internet and on social might just be inevitable" has been an excuse since the beginning. I worked on the first web-based chat, bianca.com, and I heard it back then. More recently, I worked on anti-abuse at Twitter a few years back and hear the same talking point. Now I work on the problem at a not-for-profit, and it's still a talking point. Ignoring that the social media landscape has shifted dramatically over the decades, as have the technologies and our understanding of the problem.

It was always a terrible point, but it's especially ridiculous to see techno-utopians turn techno-fatalists in an eyeblink. The same people will go right from "innovation will save the world" to "I guess progress has now stopped utterly". And what they never grapple with is who is bearing the brunt of them giving up. I promise you it's not venture capitalist and rich guy Ben Evans who will be experiencing the bulk of bad behavior. It's easy enough for him to sacrifice the safety of others, I suppose, but to me it seems sad and hollow.

I did think I’d made it extremely explicit that I don’t think any of that at all, but perhaps not (although the way you throw in a rather childish ad hominem sneer suggests you’re not thinking very clearly). What I actually wrote is that though (of course!) there will always be some bad behaviour, we want to minimise it (I compare it to malware, for heaven’s sake), but moderation might not be the best way to minimise it, and we might need different models.

As it happens, I would suggest that the idea that somehow we CAN just stop all of bad human behaviour online would be the most extreme techno-utopianism possible.

> ad hominem [...] you're not thinking very clearly

Huh. Not totally sure you understand what "ad hominem" means.

But moving on from that, I'm not objecting to the notion that we might need different models. The way we do anything today is unlikely to be the best way for all of time. Given that I've spent years trying to improve things, perhaps you can take it as read that I think we can improve things.

What I'm objecting to is your fatalism that bad shit is probably going to happen to somebody (a note you include in your closing paragraph) combined with your failure to examine exactly who's going to bear the brunt of it. Something you conspicuously didn't do in your reply here, instead suggesting it's some sort of shocking rudeness to point out that as a rich person, it's unlikely to be you.

Ok, so you have a lot of experience of this subject - would you mind suggesting your preferred approach(es) to moderation? What can work?

It is not that surprising having gone through this ebb and flow myself.

All utopias and utopic dreams rely too much on human nature being entirely good.

The comunist utopia relied on the goodness of the people in government. The capitalist utopia relied on the goodness of the entrepreneurs. Online communities and communities in general rely on the goodness of the members.

The reality is human nature contains both good and bad. And as a utopist, being faced with pure destructiveness like you are in content moderation is demoralizing.

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