I remember when "user generated content" was a common phrase. It was great, users generate the content for the site and you just have to provide a platform for it. It seemed like a positive thing.
Not it seems clear that if you open yourself to host something for your users you also need to be prepared to accept that you're going to be hosting the worst of humanity, exposing others to it, including people who work for you.
It seems like such an extreme contrast from what it seemed like user content could be and what it is.
This isn't particularly surprising to anyone who has been online for a while - sometimes you'd see gruesome stuff even on forums, and then you also had the culture on sites like 4chan.
Moderation isn't something that one could really escape from even about 20 years ago, just now we're more cognizant of the effects of poor moderation and users are more aware of how people behave when moderators/admins are pushed to the boundaries of the set rules.
The the scale of the platform is the differentiator. If you're moderating a few hundred or thousand people on a forum, especially a site with a constrained vision and purpose, you're simply not encountering content and behavior like this on a regular basis, if ever.
Now, look at facebook. Billions of users. No constrained vision or purpose to being there; if you're human, you're a customer, and human behavior can be pretty gross at the fringes. And maybe most importantly; they can't just Ban whatever people or content they want, due to both a profit motive and public outrage due to their preeminent position.
This isn't a problem that has already existed, because the problem is with the Scale, not with the Behavior.
Yeah the problem today compared to BBS's/forums 10-20 years ago is that there are "smart" algorithms that will escalate the spread of fake news and shit content, compared to having everything equally exposed to everyone.
I think the big difference is how oversensitive society is now. Before, your moderators just had to deal with outright illegal content, maybe a flame war or two (or just move the discussion to the flame war section). If you ran into anything as a user, it was understood that you should report it and that the moderators would get to it with varying degrees of speed. There was no expectation of a perfectly safe bubble.
Now, if even the most milquetoast comment which could possible be offensive if I assume the absolute worst about the poster, isn't moderated post-hate, you'll be reported to the media who will almost certainly archive it and use it to fill the next 1 - 24 hours of their outrage media cycle. I honestly see a future where people file lawsuits against web sites for not moderating enough, a failure to keep safe or sort of negligence. "Your web site gave me PTSD or enabled cyber-bulling". What's worst, they'll win.
I think this argument has been being made by people for two thousand years (this generation is too soft! Uphill both ways in the snow!) but I've yet to see a causation demonstrated.
Just watch an old movie from about the 90s and you will be surprised how politically incorrect some of those movies were. They are just a reflection of what was acceptable in those days.
And in 20 years we'll watch media from this decade and be shocked at what we put in our media. Society advances, culture changes. Viewing the past through the lens of the present is always going to be a different exercise than viewing the present through the lens of the present.
I agree with the second part of that. Not necessarily the first.
Viewing the past through the lens of the present is always going to be a different exercise than viewing the present through the lens of the present.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture of intolerance. A few months ago there was a race car driver who lost his sponsorship because of something his father said before the driver was even born.
This is quite the theory - do you have more backing other than the single instance you've just quoted? And what is "intolerance" and why is this "bad"?
Excellent diving in! I believe you are accusing me of hypocrisy - could you expand on this? I'm very interested if I can be caught out in fallacy, given how ardently I challenge fallacy when I find it.
To note - literally, I did not use the word "tolerant" in the previous post, and someone made an argument based off a strange assumption that I did.
I don't believe racism should be tolerated. Does that thus mean we live in an intolerant society? If I claimed my opinion set the cultural Zeitgeist, would you not accuse me of great arrogance?
I don't think that you're a hypocrite; I think that you're honest about your intolerance. But you're not the only one, and I think that you are an example of our current Zeitgeist, which is — I believe — one of remarkable intolerance for opposing points of view.
Granted, we're all intolerant of something; the question is where we draw the line. I think that for quite awhile in the 80s and 90s the line was high, but now it's very very low in comparison.
Maybe it would help to define "intolerant?" For example, I don't believe racists shouldn't be harmed for their beliefs, but I think their beliefs should be called out as harmful and immoral at every opportunity. That is what I mean by "intolerant." Do you have a different idea?
You're asking for a lot in a very small space. HN isn't the proper forum to discuss this, and I can't take that much time away from work to educate you. If you can't see it for yourself, then there's nothing I can do for you.
That makes a lot of sense to me, so I'm curious why you lobbed the theory over the wall at a public forum with no intention of defending it.
Would you believe me if I told you "we live in the greatest age of free speech in human history - our societies are more tolerant than ever before?" No? Well, I've given as much argument as you, so I suppose we are at an impasse.
Yep. Society has changed a lot in recent history. Things that were considered OK in the 80's and 90's will end your career today.
Example: The 1985 Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" is shortened when played on radio in Canada, and on non-rock stations on Sirius Satellite Radio because it has a verse that is now considered unacceptable.
Example: In the 1990's sit-com Frasier, it was mentioned at least once that people were being referred to psychological counseling for homosexuality.
Agreed - it's quite remarkable. In conversations with non-white friends of mine, it's fairly eye-opening how recently they feel they've gotten a fair shake in films. Like, remember Mr. Yunioshi from Breakfast at Tiffany's? It's insane what they got away with.
This surprises nobody who has any experience with hosting. Even as far back as when I ran my own BBS, it was immediately clear that some people only wanted to leverage the content hosting for nasty things. If you were lucky, it was just perfectly legal pornography.
Not it seems clear that if you open yourself to host something for your users you also need to be prepared to accept that you're going to be hosting the worst of humanity, exposing others to it, including people who work for you.
It seems like such an extreme contrast from what it seemed like user content could be and what it is.