Programming@programming.devbyCoderSupreme@programming.dev
2 days

What is the best moderation system for a social platform?

English

One of the main features of my site will be Discourse-style trust levels, the higher your trust level, the more moderation privileges you gain. I’m also considering either a jury system, where multiple users collaborate on moderation decisions, or a meta-moderation system, where users can vote “fair” or “unfair” on moderation actions taken.

Someone mentioned to me in another post that Bluesky also has a very good moderation system, but the best one I’ve found so far is Discourse. What I really like about it is that you earn trust levels by reading posts, not by taking moderation actions. I definitely don’t want to gamify moderation the way Stack Overflow did, that was the worst I’ve ever seen.

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    • litchralee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3 days

      “best” is relative, and while moderation can achieve a great deal of success on a smaller scale, it’s proven to be extremely tricky at large scale. Mike Masnick of TechDirt (and on the BlueSky board of directors) has documented this rather well, using some very notable case studies.

      For example, moderation is both necessary and complex (Twitter post buyout): https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/

      Decentralized moderation like Mastodon is good (by blocking Gab from the get-go) but requires active coordination from federated operators: https://www.techdirt.com/2019/07/16/gab-mastodon-challenges-content-moderation-more-distributed-social-network/

      At a slightly larger scale, volunteer moderators can be overburdened and lead to adverse infrastructure shutdowns (Parler getting bumped for violating AWS policies): https://www.techdirt.com/2021/01/13/parlers-laughably-bad-antitrust-lawsuit-against-amazon/

      My point with these examples are that a moderation system solely based on volunteer effort can be: 1) overwhelmed, 2) manipulated, or 3) antithetical to the purposes of the community and/or platform. There is no magic moderation system that will be 100% effective for your environment at all times.

      • CoderSupreme@programming.dev
        3 days

        I think we can most agree that while “best” may be relative Disourse is definitely better than StackOverflow in regards to moderation system.

        • litchralee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2 days

          By what criteria do you say that? You might be right, but without any qualification for how one might be better than another, it’s as useful as saying “purple is better than yellow”.

          But ultimately, you’re looking for a moderation paradigm and don’t owe me or anyone else a criteria or explanation for what you ultimately choose. It merely means that the question as posed is unanswerable, no different than “why is green the best color?”.

    • CameronDev@programming.dev
      3 days

      Had a quick look at your doc, and the juries idea does not sound good.

      • Moderation is not something loads of people want to do. Take a look at the list of unmoderated communities: https://programming.dev/u/Vacant - Forcing random users to be involved would likely annoy your users.

      • For certain types of reports, CSAM, gore, etc, you absolutely do not want to share that to random users. If your users are underage, it could be illegal to do that anyway, but sensitive users may not want to be exposed to triggering content.

      Maybe you make being in the jury opt-in, but if most don’t opt in your back to regular old moderation by the few who have the stomach for it.

        • CameronDev@programming.dev
          3 days

          Criticizing that system without offering any better alternative isn’t useful.

          Disagree. Pointing out flaws in a proposal is important, it raises awareness so that they can be resolved.

          In the jury system, content could be hidden as soon as it is reported

          True of all moderation systems, but is open to abuse. Removing content, even temporarily is good way to censor opinions, by hiding them until they fall off the “new” page. Moderation usually happens quite slowly if the mods arent terminally online. A jury system may exacerbate that if the jurors aren’t available to respond in time.

          Penalising false reports also risks discouraging reports, and may actually just encourage “group think”. And if accounts are easy to spin up, there is no real cost to abusing reports to hide content.

          I actually think the current systems are actually adequate. We have a moderators who can be replaced at any time by admins, which gives oversight, and we have the ability to simply move communities to other instances if that fails.

    • 0xtero@beehaw.org
      3 days

      I tend to like systems that give the user tools to moderate their own feed and content they see. Then it’s up to me to decide what I want in my timeline and what I don’t want. This can be a bit heavy on the system though, especially if you don’t have lot of metadata and have to rely on full-text search blocking. Seems to work on Mastodon though.

      This then leaves only certain moderation tasks to the server admins (automating CSAM scanning/reporting) - and filtering out content that breaks the server ToS.

      Back in the days, Slashdot had a system where you could “opt-in” as a moderator, and this would randomly give you “mod-points” every now and then. You could use your points to up- or downvote posts and comments. I quite enjoyed it and it didn’t feel like I had to apply for a 2nd job (which is the case with lot of other moderation systems)