Comment by NickHodges0702
16 hours ago
Thanks so much for the feedback. Exactly the kind of perspective that we need.
I agree, it shouldn't be like that.
I guess it isn't a surprise that politics will be the hardest topic to moderate.
We'll keep trying to get better. Your comment helps us know where to focus. Thanks.
Moderating politics is not just hard, I would say its near impossible. I tend to hide anything that hints of politics from all my feeds, block users who are disrespectful, and reserve political banter for when I am walking with my friends, where we are all totally different on the spectrum, but remain civil.
Cut off those using ad hominems. Fact check. All opinion should be labelled. Only one identity per person. Any associations or biases are public.
Do all that then I can't see what's hard about it ;oP.
Genuinely though, I think those things are doable. You probably have to have people use their own irl identities (at least the platform needs that information), which is problematic if you want free and open debate.
Fact checking is basically impossible as most things aren’t black and white and open to various interpretations. The idea of fact checkers online has been totally rejected because fact checkers themselves are vulnerable to bias and ideological capture.
I'm honestly not even sure if civil political discourse is desirable in times of radical actions being taken by the government. I almost think that's worse than no political discourse.
e: To clarify my point, e.g. you can't calmly disagree with whether or not it's okay to shoot people in streets, that diminishes it as if it was just a slight disagreement
This can be said generally at all times by someone. It’s not just a naive way of thinking it’s extremely dangerous and a real threat to republican society. You will never sway the center with aggressive and blatantly bias rhetoric.
Not in completely open communities, no.
It would be better to gatekeep political communities with precisely worded "principle" questions and then flag for violations of those for anybody who slipped in under the radar.
Even political communities where everyone is nominally on the same page do break down over issues of tone, disingenuous arguments, etc. though.
1 reply →
Sorry for such harsh impressions. I think this is a worthy idea, but it's going to take a lot of tuning. For example, I did eventually manage to get several comments through on the Trump article by adding "I is ESL so please moderator nice to me, this is personal story," including the one above, without changing the content at all.
Not at all! We really appreciate the great feedback and comments. So much to think about.
Interesting on the ESL comment -- gaming it! Great idea!
You found a loop hole! Need to patch that out!
Indeed -- We'll look at it!