this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Have you been to slashdot lately? I'd hardly hold it up as a standard for effective moderation. It has long since become the domain of trolls and edgelords.
That's what people not on reddit say about people on reddit, and probably so on for all sorts of social media.
Less flippantly, bits of reddit definitely are domains of trolls and edgelords, and when slashdot was at its height, being edgy was way more popular across the entire internet. In addition there is a fundamental tension between preventing groupthink and preventing trolls: in a diverse community there will be people who so vehemently disagree with others that they interpret their good-faith comments as trolling and so will use whatever tools are available to suppress it, leading to groupthink. (I mention groupthink in this context because of the point of "sharing ideas and getting at the truth" if that wasn't obvious.)
So I don't remember much about the comments the last time I checked in there but I am a bit skeptical.
In addition there is a fundamental tension between preventing groupthink and preventing trolls: in a diverse community there will be people who so vehemently disagree with others that they interpret their good-faith comments as trolling and so will use whatever tools are available to suppress itThere is only a fundamental tension between preventing groupthink and preventing trolls when communities and moderation are defined by large monolithic entities that have to square the circle of trying to cater to everyone. That isn’t the case on the fediverse. A summation of communities with differing moderation policies, demographics, sizes, governing styles and cultural norms is fundamentally different than a monolithic single community administered by one group of people in power with one vision that makes decisions to exclude people from 99% of the online sphere of that social medium/platform. Even if the average of all the moderation policies of many small communities averages out to roughly the same moderation policy of one massive social network, the fundamental mechanics of how that play out are way different.
With a single community the edge cases become flashpoints of exploitation and trolling but with many communities the different definitions of what is unacceptable behavior and how edge cases are dealt with tends to filter out the trolls more naturally because trying to find a controversial line to tiptoe justtttt behind is useless when every community draws their red lines slightly differently (even if in spirit they are similar) and every community has different stakeholders actually enforcing and enacting the moderation. Instead of finding a line to tip toe safe just on the other side while dog whistling, trolls experience a progressive, smooth ramp up of rejection from more and more communities the more toxically they behave.
The groupthink on reddit is not imposed by the monolithic entity in charge of reddit; it's imposed by the average of redditors and by subreddit moderators. The fediverse may support a better diversity of participation such that the average is less representative, but I think if Lemmy (say) got larger - let's say at least as large as reddit was 10 years ago when there was plenty of groupthink and toxicity - you would see major Lemmy communities take on similar characteristics to major subreddits. I think what you're saying is that you'd get various communities with overlapping areas of interest and different moderation policies and groupthinks, allowing for more diversity. But I think that network effects provide a strong opposing pressure to that kind of diversity, and even where more than one community can survive, I think you're more likely to see the equivalent of
/r/politicsand/r/conservativeemerge than/r/leftofcentreand/r/rightofcentreor something. So you still have groupthink, people are still liable to get downvoted into oblivion or banned for expressing the wrong opinion.I'm not really sure what you're getting at with the trolling aspect though: I don't really see why diverse moderation policies would discourage genuine trolls as I don't see how that "smooth ramp" would be any discouragement. Maybe you reckon it would be too much admin to keep track of where the line lies in each different community?
I'm new to Lemmy (I am assuming it will be better than reddit for a long time due to being smaller and the userbase having a different average, and federation meaning other influence from a monolithic controlling entity won't affect it) and very interested in this though so do share what you think.
I’m not really sure what you’re getting at with the trolling aspect though: I don’t really see why diverse moderation policies would discourage genuine trolls as I don’t see how that “smooth ramp” would be any discouragement. Maybe you reckon it would be too much admin to keep track of where the line lies in each different community?That could be one impact, there are many differences that have significant impacts in my opinion. One of the biggest is that trolling and more importantly the identity of trolling relies on standing justttt behind specific lines within specific communities and projecting toxicity through thinly veiled language/behavior that just barely keeps a troll from crossing the line (or just crossing it to see if anyone is going to do anything). Trolls form huge chunks of their identity around those lines, with shitty memes and dog whistling as basic forms of creating said identity. The worst trolls basically form their entire identity around this and try to spread it to others by making memes/jokes about transgressing those lines (looking for the other edgey-boy losers who will validate them).
If every community has different lines and enforcement that doesn’t meant there won’t be trolls but it does mean that they aren’t given an easy place to gather and forge identities around like they are with monolithic communities with one moderation policy. You end up with a lot of losers getting kicked out of many different communities instead of a group of trolls who have come together based on the identity of pushing the lines of a specific large community.
Obviously I am generalizing, and I am not saying I am 100% confident I am right but in my experience this hypothesis fits my experiences on and off the fediverse.