Undercover Facebook moderator was instructed not to remove fringe groups or hate speech - https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/17/17582152/facebook-channel-4-undercover-investigation-content-moderation
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@jotbe Good! While hate speech is ugly yu can just block it and walk away. That is not the place for a moderator to get involved.
@freemo while i am an advocate of free speech, moderation is sometimes required, not everything is okay to say. e.g. clear hate speech or death threats must not be ok. question is where are the boundaries and who should decide. in that particular example, only groups with a corresponding large audience (i.e. bringing lots of traffic to facebook) have not been moderated or punished. all the others were. this is entirely wrong imo. and: victims of hate speech often cannot easily just walk way.
@jotbe
I disagree on the point that "hate speech" speech needs moderation. It is of course disgusting and if it is ever witnessed it should be shunned and no one should act like it's acceptable. But I don't think that means the appropriate solution is global moderation when each individual has the power to choose their own moderation.
@freemo when i ask that hater to leave, he/she can go somewhere else and spread his hate but at least that person won't harass my guests. maybe it will even make him think about his behavior. if i accept hate towards other guests i would be a bad host. :)
@jotbe Or the guests who dont enjoy it can just push a magical button and the person becomes invisible to them and unable to effect them in any way. That way your guests who enjoy their company are free to interact with them and those who do not are free to hit that button.
@freemo oh, and plenty of communities suffered from hate speech, trolls, and annoying behavior of their members already, see uucp/usenet back then or mailing lists that failed because people were turned away because of the tone there. which is very sad imo. e.g. twitter got quite bad over the years whereas i enjoy conversations on mastodon, like with you. this not an argument for moderation (not deleting content but just reminding people to be nice to each other/to not act like jerks)
@jotbe In my view that revolves around the fact that those tools didnt give sufficient means for a user to self-moderate. You need to make it easy for users to pick who they personally want to see or not. Mastodon makes that easier because users can block/mute people or whole servers. It isnt a complete solution but its a step in the right direction.
In short dont rely on some master to go around blocking people for you, that should never be needed except for extreme cases. Enable a system where the user has that power.
It is only an issue when you have people who have the power to moderate on your behalf regardless of if you want it or not.
@freemo […]In short dont rely on some master to go around blocking people for you, that should never be needed except for extreme cases. Enable a system where the user has that power. […] - yes, exactly, that's great! (i also like the magical button metaphor) - but if moderation is in place (returning to the article), the rule imo must never be "lots of traffic/lots of followers -> do not block".
@jotbe On that i entierly agree. The fact that they're moderating but have an unfair policy is basically the absolute worst example of moderation. In fact, its exactly why i dont like other people being in control of my moderation in the first place.
@jotbe I'm not sure the example is equivelant. If someone has to close their eyes and plug their ears it implies they are suffering from the incident. With a block there are no down sides, it would appear for all intents and purposes as if the person wasnt there, but otherwise the "victim" continues unaffected in every way.
While you certainly have the legal right to kick whoever you want from your instance I would argue that you'd be morally deficient for doing so if your only basis is that you dont like some words someone said. Though to be clear i see less of an issue with someone saying "leave my instance and use another" than i would with someone banning another user entirely regardless of what instance they are on.
@freemo i understand and agress up to a certain degree. also: every owner of a platform has rules of what is acceptable, company or private owner, e.g. hosting her own blog, and even legally responsible for published content. i like to compare it with my flat. if a guest is rude to other people, puts up posters with "i hate $anotherguest" and yells at that guest, i could either tell the affected guest to close her eyes, and give her ear plugs. or i ask the hater to stfu and leave my flat. 1/2