Let me explain. So I wrote a Steam review recently, and someone came by and wrote something toxic. Calling me an idiot and other worse things, because I didn’t like their favourite game.
But here’s the great part: I didn’t even have to fully read their vitriol. I just clicked the trash icon and it’s gone forever. It felt empowering and amazing ~ just the ability to remove toxicity at-will. No waiting 7 business days for a mod to maybe think about removing it; no additional trolls seeing the toxicity and taking it as an invitation.
It was a stark contrast to most other social media, where you’re practically powerless. Sure, you can block the aggressor; but their comment is still there for everyone else, like a giant turd you kicked under the living room carpet. It attracts other pests, and it still affects anyone else who comes by.
Of course, it would probably be immediately abused for all the wrong reasons if implemented here ~ but it would be cool if it wasn’t. What do you guys think? Maybe there’s a middle ground that gives users more control over their posts?
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Let’s perform a thought experiment.
I disagree with YOUR post. This one, right here, and I really try to politely articulate my point as to why.
You don’t like it, so you delete it. You delete any post with similar sentiment.
…Is that fair?
If you response is “well, I wouldnt do that,” think about it. That’s the power you’re asking every user on Lemmy user to be responsible with. Do you trust every user to that extent?
Absolutely not, which is why I was wondering if anyone had a way to make it work without enabling abuse. I can’t think of any, but it would be cool if it was possible. Even something like getting 1 delete per day limit might be helpful
One I’ve had, that’s adjacent, is allowing communities to form “hierarchies.”
So niches could be under /c/technology, individual video games or genres could be under /c/gaming, sports, you name it. It would all require consent from the lower and upper parts of the chain.
One benefit would be “pooling” housekeeping moderation. e.g. if a troll harassed you on a niche community, one from a higher one could moderate it quicker. Or if /c/technology was overwhelmed at a point in time, smaller communities mods could step in to housekeep comments in /c/technology, with the granularity of all this being configurable.
I bring this up because I think it helps the issue of moderators not being responsive enough to your comments. And those passionate enough to run some niche community well enough to fit in a hierarchy would earn the power to moderate comments under topics they’d frequently post to anyway. But it has a lot of other benefits, like helping with discoverability of smaller communities without an algo.
just make a community and exclusively post to it if that is what you want.
I prefer it. And I think it’s objectively the better way. I think It’s the way they used to do it back at the beginning of time, in Usenet.
The only reason we do it this way, on Lemmy and Reddit, with centralized moderation of communities, under centralized control of the whole system, is because it makes it easier to censor. I’m serious.
I’ve had it explained to me. For everything that everybody says in the community they need to have one guy who can take responsibility. And that guy needs to have an administrator above him who takes responsibility for what he does. All the way up to actual police. To protect the children of course.
The only reason we do it this way, on Lemmy and Reddit, with centralized moderation of communities, under centralized control of the whole system, is because it makes it easier to censor. I’m serious.
It’s also because the design of Reddit/Lemmy is community-driven and not user-post on profile driven. We post to communities, not profiles. People subscribe to communities and browse the posts within them.
It’s designed that way because it’s designed that way?
Yes, because that’s essentially what Lemmy is - designed to be a federated version of Reddit. What you are suggesting is something that would in practice function entirely different to this place entirely.
We’re talking about a system where control is handled centrally instead of by post. What I suggested is a reason why.
I don’t see how that reason would necessarily result in something other than what we see here.
If you do then tell me.
Lots of people come on here to build communities. You imagine a system where communities don’t exist at all and all posts are essentially just profile posts, purely moderated by the profile owner.
Sounds like federation at it’s ultimate final form. I always imagined someday everybody having their own personal servers and posting locally, rather than joining extant instances*.
I have no idea how moderation tools work on Lemmy though… does it reach out and delete comments from other instances?
Yes, it would. If you are a community mod, and you delete a comment from someone else who is off-instance, that deletion federates.
Yes, I suggest a system without communities.
But that’s obvious.
My point was WHY we have this community-based system. Why it’s designed that way.
Because Reddit was (is), and people wanted alternatives to Reddit. People tend to like the community-based system, in many cases because they themselves have interests they want to promote via that system. I do. There’s plenty of services that exists that are effectively just profile posting.
As a mod on Lemmy, I try to be a little more lenient on comments directly replying to me than I am on others.
As for my opinions about how moderating (and voting) on Lemmy should change, I, for one, kinda miss Slashdot’s system with the limited mod points and meta-moderation.
Blocking someone has the same subjective effect without the risk of abuse.
Sure, you can block the aggressor; but their comment is still there for everyone else, like a giant turd you kicked under the living room carpet. It attracts other pests, and it still affects anyone else who comes by.
If they’re just saying something you dislike, there’s no reason to remove the post for everyone. Nobody gives a rat’s ass what you dislike.
There’s plenty of reasons; but they just don’t seem important to you
You already can. Build your own instance or create your own sub.
There is a community called linux sucks that rules with an iron walnut. Anything that doesn’t meet their criteria perfectly gets removed and the poster permabanned.
He’s saying that each poster would be the mod of their post. Is that functionality built into Lemmy?
You write a post but you cannot stand the responses? You lose.
No. It is not up to you to silence them. And it should not. The world needs to hear both sides.
Yes but you have forgotten one thing: fuck Zionists
That implies that there was anything of value in the insults, though. In the example given, it was literally just 3 sentences explaining how dumb I supposedly am. In my opinion, the world really doesn’t need to hear any more senseless hatred.
I understand your point, but I think that this decision/judgement should be left with a third party. That’s what the role of mods has been invented for.
Personally I try really hard not to remove comments on a post I made. I run a few communities between this instance and another (and a few still on reddit). I’m not saying I won’t delete them and that I haven’t, I have. But I try not to.
For communities where I have co mods, I tag them in if I’m not sure. I don’t want to get in a bad habit of deleting things that hurt my feelings. Did I enjoy someone telling me the other day that my community was stupid and pointless? No. But, I let it sit there anyways.
Now had that same person started spewing hate at me directly or going off on a tangent completely unrelated, I would’ve considered deleting the comment. And if I did, I would’ve made a comment as to why. I believe in holding myself accountable for my modding actions. It’s a slippery slope to becoming “one of those mods” and I don’t want my communities to function like that.
I follow the “oh, shut up” rule.
If someone comes across so disjoinedly to what I wrote that they just sound like a screeching jack off without an argument, into the trash/blocklist/downvote they go.
I think giving users the ability to delete other people’s content is a nuanced issue. A reply to a Steam review is different from a top level comment on a site like Lemmy.
Yeah the last idiot that made a ridiculous reply to a post I made in a community I mod I didn’t delete. I just responded with something along the lines of, thanks for adding so much to the conversation. They were looking for a rage react. They ended up looking like a clown.
If everyone could be trusted to moderate themselves, moderation would have never existed in the first place.
Every rule exists because of the actions of an asshole.
I don’t need to remove their words if I can block them. They are digging their own grave, and I let them while denying them my attention.
I think that definitely makes more sense for reviews than for other topics. That different individuals appreciate different aspects of a product is what makes a collection of reviews valuable, so you can get a well-rounded understanding of a product before purchasing. It’s not a “right and wrong answer” circumstance, and, because the reviews are considered in their totality, it doesn’t matter that much if one or two reviews are just wrong. Whereas most of social media does involve issues of true and false, right and wrong, and people do try to negatively influence others, so moderation is necessary to create a boundary against hateful spam and such.
I think its an interesting idea having OP be the mod of their own posts. If someone consistently deletes every comment they disagree with, I imagine the result would be fewer people would engage with their content. Sort of self policing in that way.
While it may enable you to delete toxic comments, it’ll enable other people to be toxic without being called out.
If the OP is being toxic then you would get the regular mods involved, right? I’m not suggesting one or the other; ideally both
When I was on reddit, I always asked another mod to review it. If it was egregious I’d remove first with no ban and then ask for review; if it was borderline I’d just wait for them. The only exception was metaposts and megaposts, where I was speaking for the sub or modteam at large. But for any personal posts, it’s both better ethics and better optics to have another mod deal with it.
