zlacker

>>feross+(OP)
I think something that really bothers me about this discussion about moderation is how many people approach this debate like a new born baby. They have an idea and then speculate on how it fixes everything. There's never any discussion of what exists in the real world. ACX here is essentially describing some key attributes of reddit. Each sub-reddit has it's own moderation team that decides what's acceptable and then you opt-in. This is pretty close to what ACX is proposing.

So let's look at what happened in reality. Almost immediately sub-reddits pop up that are at the very least attempting to skirt the law, and often directly breaching the law- popular topics on reddit included creative interpretations of the age of consent for example, or indeed the requirement for consent at all. Oh and because anyone can create one these communities, the site turns into whack-a-mole.

The second thing that happened was communities popped up pretty much for the sole purpose of harassing's other communities. But enabling this sort of market place of moderation, you are providing a mechanism for a group of people to organize a way to attack your own platform. So now you have to step back in and we're back to censorship.

I also think that this article completely mischaracterizes what the free speech side of the debate want.

>>Silver+hP
I have observed an awful lot of Eternal September effect in these debates. I suspect it might be easy for people who have been living on the Internet for a long time to miss the ways in which their intuitions don't mesh with somebody new to the space. Leads to a lot of two ships passing in the night debate.

Fresh ideas are always welcome, but the people who are trying to maintain working forums have been at the process for a long time now and can draw on experience all the way back to the BBS days.

>>shadow+ZY
>I have observed an awful lot of Eternal September effect in these debates. I suspect it might be easy for people who have been living on the Internet for a long time to miss the ways in which their intuitions don't mesh with somebody new to the space. Leads to a lot of two ships passing in the night debate.

I don't disagree with your point, there's quite a bit of knowledge around building communities and moderation that's been around and honed for at least a generation. And we should take that knowledge and build on and around it.

That said, folks have been going on about "Eternal September" for decades. Granted, people are born all the time, but they've grown up in the age of the Internet.

As such, it seems to me that at some point (if not now, when?) we need to get away from that particular excuse.

Anyone born before the Internet (myself included) has had a long time to figure things out, and anyone born in the Internet's wake is immersed in it from a fairly young age.

So why do we continue to use "Eternal September" as a foil?

It's entirely possible I'm missing something important, and if I am, please do enlighten me. Thanks!

>>nobody+O51
You grew up in the age of elevators and have undoubtedly been completely immersed in them more or less your entire life. Do you think you know more or less about elevators than somebody who lived through the initial transition towards them?

It's a fun example because of how wrong Hollywood (and intuition) gets this one. You're on an elevator and an evil terrorist cuts the cables! Oh no! What happens next!? Not much, besides you being annoyed at probably being stuck somewhere in between floors. People had to be persuaded that the technology was safe and so Elisha Otis' [1] regular demonstrations of his safety stopping invention is a big part of the reason of why elevators were able to take off. It's practically impossible to make an elevator fall down a shaft.

Now us growing up with them simply take everything for granted to the point we have absolutely no clue at all about what we're using, but always have used it, so just assume it must be okay as is.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Otis#Lasting_success