An in-depth report reveals an ugly truth about isolated, unmoderated parts of the Fediverse. It’s a solvable problem, with challenges.

  • Elise@beehaw.org
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    11 months ago

    Perhaps this technical approach is the wrong way entirely. In a scale free network it might seem like a good approach because of the seemingly infinite number of edges the hub nodes service (yt, twitter). The numbers are so large that you have a tendency to come up with a technical solution.

    However a network can be laid out in a way that is more conducive to meaningful moderation. With meaningful in this case I am referring to there being people involved rather than algos. This requires having small world communities with influential core members or moderators.

    This allows for a more inclusive/wider and more nuanced moderation. For example I assume that yt detects and removes CSAM, however it still has CSAM-like content because it is legal, but it would still be filtered otherwise. Likewise issues such as transphobia are not legal problems and thus are not properly moderated. On the flip end, stuff gets removed that has nothing wrong with it. When different communities create their own meaning through values and principles based on those values, we will have more diversity, and this allows for social progress in the long run.

    This might be the case for the federated structure of Lemmy.

    Of course this ignores communities that break off and do their own thing and polarize into a more extreme form. I feel that is a different problem that requires a different solution.

    Excuse me for being all over the place with this post, but I have to run :)

    • modulus
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      11 months ago

      Well, in a way that’s what we’re doing now, and by and large it works but obviously there’s some leakage, which is impossible to bring down to zero but which makes sense working on improving.

      The other side of the coin is that the price of this moderation model is subjecting a lot more people to a lot more horrible shit, and I unfortunately don’t know any way around that.

      • Elise@beehaw.org
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        11 months ago

        Maybe it would be good to know more about this leakage. Are these isolated communities? I’ve personally not encountered any CSAM so far. The only thing I’ve seen so far was a transphobe and they were banned quickly.

        And about that subjecting moderators to bad stuff. Is that true? Why would anyone constantly post CSAM in a place where it constantly gets removed and their accounts banned?

        ATM it seems to me like these are isolated instances?