Free Speech and Offensive Content

submitted by fschmidt from self.nonmorons

Ruqqus is an example of the failure to deal with offensive content in a free speech site. SaidIt is a compromise between free speech and offensive content which doesn't fully solve either issue. Free speech means that one should be able to express any opinion with the limits of the law. Dealing with offensive content means that the majority of the content that the average user sees by default shouldn't be offensive to him. I will give my solution for solving both.

SaidIt has in its top menu SUBSCRIBED-ALL-RANDOM. RANDOM is useless. I would replace this with SUBSCRIBED-MOST-ALL. ALL would really be all subs excluding subs you muted. MOST would be all subs excluding subs you muted and subs muted by N users. So MOST would exclude the most offensive subs.

To control quality within subs, I would simply let mods moderate however they want. If you don't like how a sub is moderated, don't go there and possibly mute the sub.

Does anyone see any problems with this approach? I hope to use it for FreedIt.

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[–]Mcheetah 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I like this idea. I guess the subreddit idea was abandoned, though.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

I like it, as long as N is set pretty high so that people/bots don't game the system. (disclaimer: am moron)

edit: an alternative to "most" would be a "hide offensive communities" preference or something, that worked the same way. adding a new list feed doesn't mean people will ever click on it.

[–]fschmidt[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

MOST would be the default. The default has to be inoffensive. The offensive stuff should require at least a click. Making it a preference would require much more and be more hidden.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

agreed, the default has to be inoffensive for any hope of growth. ruqqus fucked that one up hard*. just keep in mind that another name for "subscribed" is "popular". old.reddit.com calls it popular now, if you land on their home page logged out. for logged out users here it says "subscribed" but they get a pre-curated list of subreddits called the "default subs". so it's a list of like 30 that we have picked out on purpose. there is a configuration setting thing to set them. * that's not to shit on your "most" approach, just to point out that there are usable options for day 1.

[–]fschmidt[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Yes I agree, SaidIt code is good enough as is for launch. I am just posting ideas to show the direction that I would like to go.

[–]wristaction 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

Pardon me if this has been asked and answered already, but what happened with Rukkus? Never visited.

Without knowing what the specific story with Rukkus was, I'll say one thing: Being kicked off of essential web services due to targeted adverse interference by the ADL is not an example of "Free speech gone wrong". It's a case of the ADL being a literally evil organization, possessing too much power and enacting tyranny.

[–]Node 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

The brief version is the admins turned out to be commies, faggots, trannies, and jews. Once they began to "ban all the nazis" while still calling themselves a free speech site, it started going downhill fast.

[–]wristaction 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Ahh. So was it that way from the onset or was it a hijacking effort like on reddit?

[–]fschmidt[S] 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

You should be thrilled to know that I am racially Jewish and most of my family died in the Holocaust. But actually I am the perfect person to run a free speech site because I hate all groups and all groups hate me, so I won't discriminate. The Left hates me and I hate them. The alt-right hates me and I hate them. The Jews hate me and I hate them. The only things I will ban are whatever is illegal or obscene. Nazis, communists, and other assorted scum will have unrestricted free speech.

[–]Node 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I believe it was a case of the admins finally showing their true colors, after some previous false starts. I'm not really the person to go into details, because I only had an inactive account over there. (the site colors and guild structure were too off-putting)

[–]JasonCarswell 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (13 children)

IMO, you might want to consider skipping this "MOST" idea altogether for several reasons....

Conserve your energy for the rest of life's hurdles. Don't stop thinking about it, keep outlining and refining it, but only build it when you actually need it. (And make it so that you can add more than just 3 options (ideally everything could be modular and expandable)).

What would you do when the SJWs and/or bots decide to swarm the place and artificially tip the "MOST" ratios? All tech solutions will be subverted by more tech solutions in this war. This is just one never ending battlefront.

IMO, you should cultivate a trusted team to co-moderate/co-admin any forum - and draft up a manifest/constitution that lays out your fundamental concepts. Always refer to it when discussing new things or forum justice. Preferably something better than the pyramid of debate which IMO is a terrific guide (we need MANY more guides like it), but it's a terrible arbitrary rule. Make as few rules as possible, but all very clear.

IMO, there are much better things to work on. You could draft up a list of things to improve SaidIt code (like this developed and abandoned a couple years ago), then ask the community for their top issues, then pick the top 3 to focus and work on. We (d3rr and I) dropped the ball on this one and haven't picked it back up, but I still believe this system could work very well - and not just for coding or SaidIt. (See also: /s/Organizing)

That's just off the top of my head.

[–][deleted]  (4 children)

[deleted]

    [–]fschmidt[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    I don't want admins controlling this. The feature is basically for modern scum, and I (the admin) am unqualified to judge what modern scum can tolerate.

    Unlike downvotes, this would only affect one feature (MOST) that you don't have to use. Downvotes actually kind of make sense for modern scum, but they don't make sense for reasonable people. So my proposal gives the appropriate features to each audience.

    I already covered the bots issue.

    [–]JasonCarswell 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

    Reddit has already shown us how absolutely evil downvotes are.

    IFIFY:
    Reddit has already shown us how absolutely evil downvotes subtracted from upvotes are.

    YouTube shows the up AND downvotes for a very useful ratio. Oddly, not in the comments. And YouTube censorship is another problem altogether.

    What you could do instead is have a bigotry toggle for each sub. Admins could toggle the bigotry tag on for subs that allow bigotry and users could filter out subs with the bigotry tag if they choose to.

    This would be fantastic for any and all metatags. But that's an entirely different rewrite beast.

    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

    [deleted]

      [–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

      While I don't care about the the free speech or bigotry aspects, because I don't need protective safe spaces, I do recognize that I also don't want gore on my screen while I'm eating. More importantly I would love for things to be more organized, even if most people are lazy and won't bother much with new systems, at least for a while. It would be worth determining what people are actually interested in using metatags for - and of course figuring out how to theoretically best apply it so that perhaps the code jockeys can implement it.

      I'm guessing metatags might be akin to flair. Perhaps they can just improve flair labels somehow.

      [–][deleted] 3 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 4 fun -  (3 children)

      IMO, you might want to consider skipping this "MOST" idea altogether for several reasons....

      oh my god, you said no to a time suck idea. maybe there's hope for you yet.

      [–]JasonCarswell 3 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 4 fun -  (2 children)

      Maybe.

      I share a lot of good and bad ideas. I try not to share too many ugly ideas, but I do get them, so maybe I've been saying no to timesuck ideas all along but you didn't know it.

      [–]Node 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

      [sideways glance at that sub ownership list]

      lol

      [–]JasonCarswell 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

      True.

      I got rid of many subs, great, good, and meh, and kept many undeveloped ugly ducklings that could become something beautiful - if I don't kill them by neglect.

      [–]fschmidt[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

      only build it when you actually need it.

      The issue of free speech and offensive content is an immediate issue. If this isn't addressed from the beginning, the site will immediately get a bad reputation and will never take off.

      What would you do when the SJWs and/or bots decide to swarm the place and artificially tip the "MOST" ratios? All tech solutions will be subverted by more tech solutions in this war. This is just one never ending battlefront.

      You have a point here. But I don't need a perfect solution, just good enough to get the site off the ground. Maybe I should only count subs muted by users qualified to start subs. This would make it difficult enough to subvert the system that the enemy wouldn't bother until the site becomes big, and then it wouldn't matter as much.

      IMO, you should cultivate a trusted team to co-moderate/co-admin any forum - and draft up a manifest/constitution that lays out your fundamental concepts.

      This is exactly what I want to avoid. I don't want editorializing by the management. In my proposal, the commons is just ALL and MOST. ALL is purely free speech, no censorship. MOST is mildly censored by users. Everything else is outside the commons, so is controlled by owners. I see no need for site-wide moderation (except for things like illegal content, porn, etc.).

      IMO, there are much better things to work on. You could draft up a list of things to improve SaidIt code (like this developed and abandoned a couple years ago), then ask the community for their top issues, then pick the top 3 to focus and work on.

      This is one area where I will be a dictator. I will make a "FreedIt" sub where I will welcome suggestions, but I will decide what needs to be done because it will be my site. Of course the code is shared with SaidIt, so I have no control over code requests coming from SaidIt. But I will choose the code requests coming from FreedIt.

      [–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

      The issue of free speech and offensive content is an immediate issue.

      Yes.

      I feel like we need to step back a moment and cover a couple things so I better know what your purpose is.

      SaidIt exists. It's safe to say you want to try to run things better somehow. Having a backup forum is good and decentralizes things too.

      SaidIt is not "free-speech" but it is for free-thinking and truth-seeking. I think it's pretty free, but maybe I'm missing something. You want more free-speech than is here. I don't know what you can actually expect other than bad behaviour. Personally, I don't have time to waste on uncreative trolls, with lame senses of humour, and apparently you don't either or you wouldn't have blocked me for whatever tickled your snowflake sensibilities. Yet, ironically you're willing to allow gutter-dwellers in.

      Are there other fundamental reasons why you're bothering to start up with this old code?

      If this isn't addressed from the beginning, the site will immediately get a bad reputation and will never take off.

      This seems very rational and plausible.

      I too want to hammer out as much as possible in writing (with the community) before I even open our Lemmy forum. This winter I'll be focusing on our Projex.Wiki for any kind of project, organizing resistance, my LeverMind Variety Show, and of course for developing and sharing decentralized forum ideas. Just as Creative Commons has 4 licenses (needs 9 IMO) for content rights, IMO we should co-develop plug-n-play "Forum Codes" that quickly, easily, and clearly define your type of forum. Naturally this would be for quick reference and people could read further in greater detail, and of course the forums using could draft custom amendments for specific details, and help improve the "Forum Codes" with upgraded versions over the years to come.

      IMO, this could help future forums and users cover a lot of initial communications in a short time.

      You have a point here. But I don't need a perfect solution, just good enough to get the site off the ground. Maybe I should only count subs muted by users qualified to start subs. This would make it difficult enough to subvert the system that the enemy wouldn't bother until the site becomes big, and then it wouldn't matter as much.

      Have you considered a community sub-creation process?

      I don't want a chaos of subs on our project. I don't need to dictate what goes either. I aim to have community come up with the subs/topics/communities/feeds/etc - together and vote in whatever they like AND develop a consistent naming convention (including proper capitals, a pet peeve).

      Orderly subs might not be the ultimate solution but it might help. There's the "broken windows" and "littered subway" kind of studies about how people tend to keep a place tidy.

      IMO, you should cultivate a trusted team

      This is exactly what I want to avoid. I don't want editorializing by the management.

      I don't either. Then CLEARLY define their roles and limitations. Also make it so that common users have appeal processes as well as processes to directly address the community, the team, you, etc. And have the team watching each other. The ultimate goal is that everyone is essentially on even ground being treated fairly. The only difference is that some have earned their status to weigh in with some weight on the final outcome. Because it is all transparent, the limitations are outlined, there shouldn't be much room for abuse. I would hope.

      I see no need for site-wide moderation (except for things like illegal content, porn, etc.).

      Those exceptions still require vigilance.

      Sounds like an invitation for trouble.

      This is one area where I will be a dictator. I will make a "FreedIt" sub where I will welcome suggestions, but I will decide what needs to be done because it will be my site. Of course the code is shared with SaidIt, so I have no control over code requests coming from SaidIt. But I will choose the code requests coming from FreedIt.

      Not just your site, it's also your time and energy, as well as interests and motivation. But it's not just all about you. It's also about community - and balance.

      IMO, it would make sense to collaborate with SaidIt before you fork things up.

      [–]fschmidt[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

      SaidIt is not "free-speech" but it is for free-thinking and truth-seeking. I think it's pretty free, but maybe I'm missing something. You want more free-speech than is here. I don't know what you can actually expect other than bad behaviour. Personally, I don't have time to waste on uncreative trolls, with lame senses of humour, and apparently you don't either or you wouldn't have blocked me for whatever tickled your snowflake sensibilities. Yet, ironically you're willing to allow gutter-dwellers in.

      Maybe thinking about the difference between capitalism and socialism would make my purpose clearer. SaidIt is like socialism. The SaidIt admins set policy for the whole site, so sub mods don't really own the subs. The site has uniform (site) government mandated standards. What I want is more like capitalism. Sub mods should really own their subs. I should be able to ban morons from /s/nonmorons. I should be able praise God for killing the population of Sodom and Gomorrah. But both of these things are against SaidIt policy, so I can't do them here.

      Are there other fundamental reasons why you're bothering to start up with this old code?

      Using old code is the path of least resistance. I tried to find someone to develop new code, but this failed.

      I too want to hammer out as much as possible in writing (with the community) before I even open our Lemmy forum. This winter I'll be focusing on our Projex.Wiki for any kind of project, organizing resistance, my LeverMind Variety Show, and of course for developing and sharing decentralized forum ideas. Just as Creative Commons has 4 licenses (needs 9 IMO) for content rights, IMO we should co-develop plug-n-play "Forum Codes" that quickly, easily, and clearly define your type of forum. Naturally this would be for quick reference and people could read further in greater detail, and of course the forums using could draft custom amendments for specific details, and help improve the "Forum Codes" with upgraded versions over the years to come.

      SaidIt isn't a forum, it is a forum platform. Each sub is a forum. So I am not sure if what you mean here is "forum codes" or "forum platform codes".

      Have you considered a community sub-creation process?

      No. Whatever SaidIt is doing now seems to work fine.

      This is exactly what I want to avoid. I don't want editorializing by the management.

      I don't either. Then CLEARLY define their roles and limitations.

      This is something I don't have to worry about at the beginning since I will do everything at the beginning. I will worry about this later.

      IMO, it would make sense to collaborate with SaidIt before you fork things up.

      d3rr controls the code base, so there is no risk of that.

      [–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

      Maybe thinking about the difference between capitalism and socialism would make my purpose clearer. SaidIt is like socialism. The SaidIt admins set policy for the whole site, so sub mods don't really own the subs. The site has uniform (site) government mandated standards. What I want is more like capitalism. Sub mods should really own their subs. I should be able to ban morons from /s/nonmorons. I should be able praise God for killing the population of Sodom and Gomorrah. But both of these things are against SaidIt policy, so I can't do them here.

      Now I see. A fair comparison, but it has issues.

      Perhaps it's worth examining from another angle. There are a lot of issues with subs. Only 2 votes = weak qualitative data. Lack of metatags. No flags. Etc etc etc.

      Another issue is that there are several TYPES of subs. Topical subs, category subs, community subs, commons subs, private subs, genre subs, fan subs, blog subs, bot auto-feed subs (potentially), etc.

      It seems to me like you want a cross between a public and private sub as they are on SaidIt - your subjective best of both worlds.

      Perhaps you need to create other classes of subs with clear labels so there's no misunderstanding with users and mods and functionality of each sub.

      Personally I think of all of SaidIt as a community and the subs as topical places to file specific content. I know others think differently.

      Using old code is the path of least resistance. I tried to find someone to develop new code, but this failed.

      On the plus side, d3rr was thinking Docker can help SaidIt survive with the outdated Python.

      SaidIt isn't a forum, it is a forum platform. Each sub is a forum. So I am not sure if what you mean here is "forum codes" or "forum platform codes".

      I was talking about site-wide platform fundamentals (rules, guides, social management systems, etc). (And of course, each feed can add on their own custom addons.) I was talking about creating internet-wide standards for platforms, especially decentralized platforms, for easy navigation and understanding. From deplorables to SJWs, from free-speech to heavily censored, akin to a political compass, but with much more. Even if websites don't officially adopt the standards we can still collectively describe them and communicate clearly among ourselves.

      No. Whatever SaidIt is doing now seems to work fine.

      Chaotic subs are not fine.

      This is something I don't have to worry about at the beginning since I will do everything at the beginning. I will worry about this later.

      You literally said, "If this isn't addressed from the beginning, the site will immediately get a bad reputation and will never take off.

      I'm getting mixed signals about your free speech and moderation ideas, and what's a priority or not.

      IMO, it would make sense to collaborate with SaidIt before you fork things up.

      d3rr controls the code base, so there is no risk of that.

      Yes. He's a very agreeable and sensible person. It seems to me you should collaborate rather than be lone cowboys. Find someone else and the pardners will become a posse.

      [–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

      I'd tell you but you blocked me.

      [–]fschmidt[S] 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

      I just unblocked you.

      [–]Cornfed 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

      Couldn't even this be seen as caving to the sniveling multitudes?

      [–]fschmidt[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

      Do you have a better solution? Suppose someone made a spam sub and invited all spammers to post there. How should this be handled?

      [–]Cornfed 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

      Ideally there would be maximal expression of ideas so expressing ideas of whatever kind would be allowed whereas that which impeded the expression of ideas - spam, unpleasant images etc. - would not. Probably the only way to enforce this would be to have a sensible code of conduct and sensible global mods enforcing it. I thought you disapproved of downvoting and shadowbanning. Your suggestion would achieve those things based of the initial reaction of lamestream morons to anything that challenges their silly and boring worldview. Probably the better the ideas the more offensive the morons would find them. I would have thought the purpose was to have all ideas on a level playing field so that the best ideas could win in the end.

      [–]fschmidt[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

      If a site is designed for non-morons, it will have almost no users, just like this sub. So I want to address the needs of both morons and non-morons. I would never use MOST, I would just use SUBSCRIBED and ALL. But MOST is needed for the morons who are too lazy to mute subs and are easily offended. Is there really any point to subjecting morons to anything that challenges their silly and boring worldview? I don't see any.

      Also, I am reluctant to establish a code of conduct that can't be trivially defined and judged. A non-trivial code of conduct would result in endless debates about how the site should be run.

      [–]Cornfed 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

      If there is going to be a thumb on the scale in favour of the establishment like with the rest of the Internet then there is arguably no point in troubling yourself. Some of the less moronic morons may see reason if exposed to it for long enough. Things seemed to be working out that way on social media before the purge of 17, which is why the purge happened.

      [–]thefirststone 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

      Dealing with offensive content means that the majority of the content that the average user sees by default shouldn't be offensive to him.

      I disagree. It depends on what the user's goal is. Avoiding offense is what nancy boys aspire to.

      RANDOM is useless.

      Wrong.

      If you don't like how a sub is moderated, don't go there and possibly mute the sub.

      Admirable, but the site will suffer from bad content if your default front page isn't appealing. This is the fine line Voat trod, with more or less moderation of subs getting them into trouble. Either your site needs a strict policy that you can hold moderators accountable to, or your default subs need to be admin-only, without separate moderators believing they have control.

      What will new visitors see? This is the "front" page. Tailor it to not drive people away, but to still attract the people who have been driven away from other sites. For logged-in users, this should simply be their subscribed subs minus their muted ones, which is a way of asking for those posts to be shown.

      Should "all" exclude muted subs? To me, yes. That makes it easy to browse items from new and previously-idle subs without being bothered with crap I explicitly muted. This is especially important as a site grows with different diaspora groups on it. This mattered for Voat and Saidit. Maybe it won't for yours, if it never grows that big.

      [–]fschmidt[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

      What will new visitors see?

      They would see MOST. If not logged-in then SUBSCRIBED=MOST.

      [–]thefirststone 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

      subs muted by N users. So MOST would exclude the most offensive subs.

      Where "offensive" here means a plurality or majority of your users don't want to see it, which isn't what it means.

      Do you never mute subs you agree with precisely because it's boring shit you agree with? Do you never see an influx of users you don't agree with? If you want your users to comprise a hive mind, it needs to be an exclusive club.