People don't like being banned, pt. 2: People don't like being moderated

submitted by [deleted] from self.whatever

earlier: people don't like being banned, pt. 1

So I have this tiny sub that someone gave me now. I have taken 3 moderator actions on it so far.

Of the three people I moderated, all three of them did not seem to like it. One was rude to me and didn't edit & repost the content. Another was polite and didn't edit & repost the content and deleted their account. And the last wrote a bunch elsewhere about my moderation decision being horrible (though a good discussion came out of it) and so far has not reposted the content.

I feel like I have a lot more sympathy for mods. Do all mods experience stuff like this? Why is it like this?

Would it go smoother and leave everyone feeling happier if the way moderation were done was different? Like pull-based instead of remove-based? Like maybe if there were a special section of "pulled quality/vetted content" that moderators could make? So people would be trying to get chosen as offering high quality content, rather than being annoyed when stuff they thought was ok and put work into was removed?

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[–]magnora7 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (11 children)

I feel like I have a lot more sympathy for mods. Do all mods experience stuff like this? Why is it like this?

Haha yeah. About half the people I moderate will work with me and are wonderful people just trying to do their best.

The other half blow up in my face at any action of moderation, have an emotional meltdown about free speech and how saidit is ruined.

Then about half of those harass me directly through PMs. About 10% create another account and break rules again straight away. About 1% post deliberate garbage to saidit (gross porn or worse) to deliberately mess up the site, so I have to ban that user too, remove all those posts, then I have to ban their IP.

Then about 1% will turn on a VPN and do it again with another username, and then I have to ban their new usernames and their VPN IP range.

And then about 0.1% will go to other websites and write a spin story to smear saidit and me over the event that just occurred (usually as an expose about how saidit hates free speech, even though they were breaking site rules by advocating violence, but they always leave that part out).

This is basically a normal day for me. People are basically either nice about it, or they go apeshit and go up this huge scale of escalation. But I have a process for it, and I just apply the process. It's routine at this point for me.

I can understand why the admin at voat just let it all go to shit, because some people use so many emotional tactics to try and get their ways, and it's kind of exhausting. But that's the point, they want you to be so exhausted by their antics that you tacitly allow it just so they stop throwing tantrums.

And then some admins and mods react way too strongly the other way to this pressure and go on drives to purge out these people (because they are tired of dealing with them) and I think that's what we are seeing on reddit right now.

It honestly takes a very careful balance to deal with the troublemakers, but not go overboard. That's why we have the pyramid of debate as a guide, and we have our rules set up the way we do.

There's just no pleasing everyone. You will always have some people on the anti-censorship side that that will cry crocodile tears that they can't shout fire in a crowded theater and yell open threats to kill people. And you will also have on the pro-censorship side the people who can't believe the "horrible" things that you allow to exist on the forum, as if it should be a carefully curated walled garden that never displeases their particular worldview, and you're responsible for that. Both are obviously untenable positions. But as an admin or mod, the challenge is to balance all this.

It's surprisingly non-trivial.

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

I know I've said it before, but I really appreciate the work you do here M7 (and D3rr of course!). And the fact that you are active all through the site and talk with all levels of users. I don't know how you find the time!

I've had my own experience with an unhappy poster in the last couple of days, after I deleted what I genuinely thought was a spam link. I can't even imagine the scale you are dealing with!

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Thanks :) It is tricky to find ways to scale what I do, but getting help from vantafount has been a big part of this, vanta has been doing a great job doing content moderation for the site, mostly focusing around spam control and other things, so I can focus on the trickier stuff.

[–]SierraKiloBravo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Love your work mate :-)

When are we going to hear you back on The Tinfoil Hat?

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ha who knows, maybe not ever. I heard ryan left the show, and he was the main drive for getting me on there the first time. It's probably more likely I'd be on Higherside chats again, but I don't really have a "thing" to talk about because I run this forum now instead of writing articles, which is what Carlwood picks up on to ask me for interviews. The only "thing" I have to talk about is cybersecurity and how to run forums, which might be interesting in itself, but I'd probably have to write an article about it first and hone it down to an interesting set of factoids. Maybe someday

[–]Dragonerne 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Then about 1% will turn on a VPN and do it again with another username, and then I have to ban their new usernames and their VPN IP range.

How do you know it's them if they use a VPN?

[–]Dragonerne 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

There's just no pleasing everyone. You will always have some people on the anti-censorship side that that will cry crocodile tears that they can't shout fire in a crowded theater and yell open threats to kill people. And you will also have on the pro-censorship side the people who can't believe the "horrible" things that you allow to exist on the forum, as if it should be a carefully curated walled garden that never displeases their particular worldview, and you're responsible for that. Both are obviously untenable positions. But as an admin or mod, the challenge is to balance all this.

The problem is that it's an asymmetric relationship. Group A wants to censor. Group B wants everyone to be able to say whatever they want. Sitation 1:
Group A becomes mods and Group B is removed which makes them into troublemakers.
Admins can either ignore, punish Group A or Group B but will likely punish Group B.

Situation 2:
Group B becomes mods and Group A is allowed to participate.
Group A whines repeatedly about what Group B says and mass reports.
Admins can either ignore, punish Group A or B but will likely ignore or start removing mods from Group B.

This is why any organisation that is not explicitedly anti-leftist eventually becomes leftist. Intolerance & Collectivism beats Tolerance & Individualism.

The pyramid of debate is by design anti-leftist and encourages good faith behaviour, which creates a great environment. Most people from Group B will be fine with rules if they are consistently enforced and clear. Group A will intentionally not make the rules clear nor will they enforce them consistently - instead they will shape the rules to target those they don't like and they will use "context" as justification when the rule is applied differently to different people in the exact same situation.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

instead they will shape the rules to target those they don't like and they will use "context" as justification when the rule is applied differently to different people in the exact same situation.

related

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Normal people from Group B would simply accept it because it looked like the mods really did a good job considering the responses.

    This! This is what bothered me about the non-transparent rules at the GC subs and other places on reddit.

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

    It's akin to the survivorship bias if you know about it. The system might be horrible discriminatory but the ones who made it on top will feel like "If I can do it, then why can't the rest" because by taking this position they get all the credit and can feel validated in their social position, while if they had to accept that others that did as they did were denied the same opportunity, then they wouldn't feel the same accomplishment - rather they would feel that they were lucky rather than being good.
    Spez does the same. "We are a free speech website. We have plenty of conservatives that can follow the rules". The ones that weren't suspended yet by spez would read this and say "Yep. If I can do it, then it must have been the others that were at fault."
    Spez can then point to and highlight one extreme example out of the 1000 banned and act as if this one was representing all of the banned users.

    The transparency is good on saidit but you still can't view the removed content, so it's hard to judge if it was correctly removed.

    [–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

    Here's the creator of Ycombinator echoing your sentiments on a twitter post just now, haha: https://saidit.net/s/SocialMedia/comments/5d26/heres_a_little_known_fact_about_the_history_of_y/

    [–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    Wait, did PG make the pyramid of debate specifically as a way to deal with problems he was having with moderation? Is that how you found it?

    [–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    I don't know why he made it, and I didn't find out he was the one who made it until years after saidit was made. So it was all rather circumstantial in a roundabout way

    [–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    How did you find it? Was it something you already happened to like when you were thinking of what rules you thought would be good? Or were you looking for a solution to something when you found it?

    [–]magnora7 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    I found it like 3 years before saidit, in a comment someone left on reddit, and I just thought it was extremely well done and a great idea as just a debate concept. Then a few years later I was thinking of how to design saidit's rules and I thought of the pyramid one day, and the rest is history. I had no idea at the time it had anything to do with another forum, or anything. I thought it was just some academic concept I had stumbled upon

    [–]strangerdanger69 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    hi bro. because saidit doesn't have direct messaging can i ask a question?

    [–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Saidit does have direct messaging. Click my username, then on the right sidebar click "send message". But you can ask it here or there, whichever is fine