I have moderated a particular person who has blatantly been using hubski to incite hatred. Multiple users are calling him out on it but he still seems to feel vindicated here no matter how people tell him otherwise. Maybe because people are following him out of, I choose to assume, morbid curiosity?
mk insomniasexx thenewgreen et al fixed a bug that made us see muted folks posts in tag feeds and I'm genuinely thankful for that, but the aforementioned person has now discovered they can reply to my comments on others' posts and I thus now feel significantly less comfortable about commenting. So far this has been merely used for simple mockery, but I am loathe to find out how far it will escalate. And yes, I am aware this post itself will likely escalate it, but I think it's more important to speak up than be intimidated as I trust this isn't supposed to be a site exclusively for the thickest skinned.
I'm not sure whether this has a technological answer. There's obviously a practical limit on how much personalized moderation can be implemented before it weighs the whole site down with the complexity. There's comments on others' posts, comments other people make on muted posts that show up on their user page, there's the posts and comments on the community page, and there's certainly more.
I'm going to keep participating for now; this isn't a him or me ultimatum. His nonsense is so obviously ridiculous and ridiculed though apparently not filtered enough, and so far it is successfully highlighting others on hubski who don't deserve my eyeballs. I'm just documenting how it's making me as a newcomer feel, and wondering what the long term solution is.
If there is one.
I second camarillobrillo. I know that "wait it out" doesn't really give you that satisfying answer but there have been many o' trolls that have come and gone when the satisfaction is gone and half of hubski has muted them. Mute, filter, hush and don't feed the trolls. Hubski strives for intelligent discussion and as dramatic and situations like this seem in the moment, they tend to end earlier rather than later. There is one user in particular who is now incredibly active on reddit, always yelling about how awful Hubski. He (she?) was muted by 99% of Hubski due to consistently vitriolic and ignorant remarks. (S)he believes that muting will be destroy Hubski. I believe muting (or some form of it—none of us are under the assumption that every feature of Hubski is implemented with perfection) will save it in the end. I have my personal, non-Hubski related beliefs on muting and think it should go further, but we have debated and discussed it and my views were aligned to those of the greater community. As a female...on the internet...who has been on the receiving end of targeted harassment....I am grateful for any and all tools I have to block out harassers. But please, let's try not to have another scenario where all are feeds are filled with meta-discussions on moderation. Here's some past discussions on ignoring (now know as "filtering", FYI) and muting issues that can provide further insight that may help you. Feel free to restart discussions over there as well if applicable.
Also, mk, can you confirm that if I mute someone and they respond to my comment on a post that is not mine, I do not get notified. I believe that should happen at the very least.
Can I suggest a DEFCON system? Whereby DEFCON 1 blocks all PMs, replies to comments / posts, replies to replies to your comments, etc. all the way up to DEFCON 5, where users may only be filtered from view in feed / global / chatter / globalchat? On the spectrum of "control given to the user", it removes a lot of the customizability of how I block / ignore someone. But I think it would be safe to say that if I don't want someone PM'ing me, then I probably don't want them replying to my threads nor do I want to see their posts. It might also simplify the current system, as I think a few people have noted that "filter" / "hush" / "mute" are not quite as intuitive in meaning as we might hope...
Sorry I misread your DEFCON 5. I thought that meant that they would be filtered from view in global for everyone (total world nuclear war). That being said, most of that seems accomplishable just by tweaking the existing mute/filter/hush system.
Yes, just we're getting to the point of too many options, which I recall a few of the admins mentioning they wanted to avoid. Plus the added factor of being able to declare DEFCON against people (which is probably a negative, since I don't think the admins want us unnecessarily going nuclear)
Okay, I'll bite. What's your first favorite Hubski comment of all time?
That would be "Who gives a shit?", by the immeasurable regveljohnson. (You had to be there.)
Ah, geeze, I giggled. A lot. I guess his shares of Hubski stock weren't enough to influence the board of directors.The matter will be closed when you close the site...
Why not make a list of all a person's mutes public on their page? This helps prevent instances of people using the mute feature for censorship and also allows people to see people who are being hushed for legitimate reasons (to also hush them themselves). Kind of a transparency of censorship type thing. You could even put a reason as to why you muted a specific user. Then there's the possibility for "recently muted" pages or "most muted users" pages, but those are a bit less important.
Mmm, that seems so vindictive to me...Why would we want a page of Hubski's most muted users? It seems more like a tool to shame people than anything. Also, what do you mean by "people using the mute feature for censorship?" It's kind of an individual decision, I'm pretty sure that there haven't been (or at least I haven't seen) instances of people using the mute feature because they don't agree with people's point of view; educated discussion is part of the reason I keep coming back to hubski. I like having my ideas challenged. But, even if that were to happen, it's not like who I chose to mute has any impact on you. If I chose to "censor" you, it's because I, as an individual, chose not to listen to you. Censorship implies something widespread and/or systematic. There are also times where I might not want people to know I've muted someone; maybe they're super popular on hubski, or maybe they've been harassing me and I'd rather deal with it quietly.
The reason I added that last part as a "possibility" was that I wanted a discussion about it and not to have it as part of the actual idea. I think you're right about that, it would end up being vindictive. Every time in Hubski's past that we've discussed the mute feature, instances come out of the cracks of the feature being used for censorship and the people being censored are reluctant to come forward about it. A more recent example was this: I made a post and as you can see it has no comments on it. Grendel PM'd me saying that he thought it was ironic that he wished to make a reasonable disagreement with me about censorship yet the poster had muted him, so he couldn't. The title of the post was actually Censorship, and it was in defense of no censorship at all. I don't really know what his view is as a result, and I wish I did. I like hearing opposing viewpoints, it helps me understand others, develop my own points, and having them public helps others hear opposing viewpoints and prevent sounding chambers (cough reddit cough). Grendel is pretty clearly not a troll, so this is clear censorship of his ideas. Maybe it makes more sense to also make a mute something that prevents only direct commenting. I know that shout-outs are a way to bypass a mute but how do you know who to shout-out if someone is being censored? I think that only direct comments to someone should be considered something that can be muted. Two layers deep seems a bit excessive. One layer deep (direct comments to your post or your comments) prevents harassment just fine. Anything 2 layers deep would by necessity be trying to prevent someone's views from entering the discussion entirely. A troll that posts on someone else's comment can easily be muted by that person or filtered by others, because at that point he isn't harassing the original person but the person below, which that person would WANT to know that someone is out there like that and he needs to mute them.Also, what do you mean by "people using the mute feature for censorship?" It's kind of an individual decision, I'm pretty sure that there haven't been (or at least I haven't seen) instances of people using the mute feature because they don't agree with people's point of view; educated discussion is part of the reason I keep coming back to hubski. I like having my ideas challenged.
Nothing prevented him from giving that view in that private message. He chose not to for whatever reason. He wasn't censored, he just could not use OP's post as a platform for what was a derailment of that topic. Op isn't obliged to listen to him, or host him.
Is it really free speech if you are whispering it behind closed doors? What happens when someone else views the same thread and wants to see an opposing viewpoint to mine? What if they are never exposed to the opposing viewpoint in their lives, ever? They can't read our private messages, and this builds a closed public discussion on a narrow set of viewpoints. That policy creates the public image of a discussion that is controlled to be exactly one viewpoint, and all the real discourse is in private. That is practically the definition of a sounding chamber. Lock your subversive thoughts up in private.
There is not and can not be a dichotomy of free speech or censorship. If someone wants to see more of what Grendel wants to say, they click on his name. There they can currently see him posting a video about feminists deserving to be whipped, and decide if they still want to see his idea of "reasonable disagreement". If they do, they can follow and/or mail him. OP muting him doesn't prevent this. A user who actually wants to hear from Grendel and is capable enough to find hubski isn't too stupid to figure this out.
How can you click on the name of someone you don't know exists? You only currently know about him because I told you about him in this context. If you visited the original thread, you would not have known he existed, and there would have been no name to click on. You seem to be blinded by the specific example of Grendel, let's take it to an abstract. When republicans visit a democratic convention or vice versa, imagine if they were just blocked from entering the building (which they are, usually you have to be a registered democrat/republican to go to those things). This creates a sounding chamber for all democrats to think democratly and all republicans to think republicanly. Now imagine if you didn't know the other party existed. Let's take the Mendelssohn party for example. It comes around, gets blocked at the door from all political debates, and never reaches public knowledge that the party even exists or what its ideals are. I, the average person, can't just go to the Mendelssohn party's homepage if I don't know that the Mendelssohn party exists.
Trust me when I say you didn't introduce me to Grendel. There are plenty of his thoughts hosted by Hubski. Your political party example confuses me. Political parties and politicians do not exist in a void. Mainstream media isn't in a void. People browsing the internet aren't in a void. People setting boundaries around their participation in the few places where there are tools to do so, is not going to create an echo chamber as dramatic as the one you are imagining. Nor is excluding someone from hijacking your platform.
Wait it out has always won the day long term in the past. I think the meta discussion, even when it's been extremely heated, has in the end been beneficial to the way Hubski operates. I hate a big meta storm but it's probably just the cost of maturation.
Very true cgod. Perhaps we can settle on a tag (#meta , #muted, whatever) that's easily ignorable that I can visit and respond to when I'm in that sort of mood without becoming meta-distressed when I'm taking a work break. ;)I think the meta discussion, even when it's been extremely heated, has in the end been beneficial to the way Hubski operates. I hate a big meta storm but it's probably just the cost of maturation.
if I want to check on them, I can log out and see everything, or perhaps visit their profile specifically. hubski shouldn't try to facilitate amnesty on behalf of someone whose presence is clearly not wanted. as it stands, hubski even allows blocked people to send PMs, which is absurd
someday: Edit: flagamuffin - I feel like I helped kill minimum_wage with my shit-posting. :/"plz un-mute me. i luv u."
Personally, I only mute the spam. I enjoy hearing all perspectives, no matter how much I may disagree. I do think self-moderation is the key to Hubski, what seperates it from all the rest. It may need a few tweaks but the system has always been in place to shoot an unwanted voice into space. And in space no one can hear you scream.
The Hubski team discussed this in depth last night and I wanted to give you all an update. We discussed further options for nuking someone from your Hubski experience and the possibility of expanding the muting option, as well as whether or not a muted person should be allowed to PM you. At this point, we're not changing the way muting works or adding a new feature. We revisited our previous discussions and notes from ~365 days ago about a blocking feature and a lot more. We came to the conclusion that it does more harm than good at this point and that people will likely use it much more lightly than we would intend it to be used. One item that came up was, "what happens if you block someone from replying to your comment?" Can they reply, but you can't see them? What happens to the children of that comment? Can they not reply? What does this do to a comment feed if there are a lot of blocked people? There are obviously circumstances where preventing someone from commenting on your comments would be a positive. If someone is going around and following you and replying, "fuck you, dickwad" on every comment, waiting for the larger Hubski community to more widely mute them would be far too slow and too painful. However, if someone is replying to every comment of yours and harassing you, the likelihood of them creating a new account is also high and the mute or block feature wouldn't prevent them from accessing you anyways. The reality is, if blocking were implemented, a lot of the blocking that would occur would be towards people who simply have dissenting or ignorant opinions that differ from your own. Blocking those types of people is not a Hubski we want to encourage. To quote myself from a couple years ago: It takes all types to make the world, and Hubski, go around. Echo-chambers and nuking people from existence will never help you grow and become globally informed on any topic. Instead, it contributes to your overall ignorance and sets up a microcosm that leads you to believe the world operates in a way it does not. People are dickheads sometimes. People disagree with you sometimes. People can hurt you at sometimes. That's part of the human condition and, in turn, Hubski. Personal harassment is one area where I feel it is necessary to have the ability to prevent someone from contacting you in all forms. Luckily, that level of internet-hatred has yet to appear on Hubski, as far as we are aware. If it does, or has, please let myself, mk, or thenewgreen know via PM and we will take the steps needed and come up with a transparent plan of counter-attack for addressing issues that may arise moving foward. cc minimum_wage because I know you are looking forward to a blocking feature.As much as it angered me, shocked me, and still makes my brain flip every time I think about it, there are real people out there that think like that. And those people are sitting across the table from me thinking "I can't believe there are people who think like that!"
Thanks for the update, highly informative and thoughtful as usual. I apologize if this subject has become tiresome, but I would like to mention that my proposal did not make it into your recap and the negatives you mention don't seem to apply. The idea is to let anyone comment wherever they like, and people can simply choose not to see comments from users they don't care for. The affected user need not even know that anything changed. This, I think, solves a lot of issues. Preventing someone from commenting is like painting over graffiti: it motivates more. Much better to leave the graffiti on the wall, where people who like graffiti can see it, but make it invisible to people who don't like it. Muting currently works on the fairly arbitrary basis of which user happens to post an article. None of us browse Hubski exclusively on our own posts, so we are all dependent on other users having similar moderation preferences (and many users never mute anyone). Probably we spend more time on the posts of others, so for the majority of the time our mute settings are ineffective. For lurking users or people who only comment, the current mute option is completely useless. The worst consequence I can think of is that there will sometimes be a little gap in the discussion where I see some comments, then a hidden comment from someone I don't like, then more comments. This sounds like an ideal outcome, but if I do want to see the complete conversation a single click on the hidden comment makes it visible {demo}. Even the worst-case-scenario of a determined "dickwad" commenter is not intolerable. One click hides all the offending comments from me, everywhere, but the troll is none the wiser, making it far easier for me to follow the ignore-and-do-not-feed rule.
Someone once went to the local train station of my childhood town and painted a swastika there out of human feces. In your analogy, if it were possible for passers-by to decide not to see (or smell) that graffiti on the wall (AFTER seeing it once), you think it would be preferable to leave the fecal symbol up on the wall on principle. We could all disable the sight and smell of the swastika. However, every person who passed by without being warned would get an eyeful and accompanying noseful of literal racist shit. And for many, this would have been their first impression of my town. In this way, you invite in people who are excited by a community that enables a racist shit-smearer as their welcoming committee. You drive away people who don't appreciate the sight or smell of literal racist shit. You still think it's better not to paint over the graffiti?
Like most ideas, my proposal has costs and benefits. I don't argue that it gets perfect results, only that it is better than the current situation. Let's test it with your scenario. Today, if someone joins the site and posts a hateful, offensive comment, nothing stops them. The comment is visible to all users, forever. If it is offensive enough, the admins may step in and disable the account, but I expect this to happen rarely. The hateful, offensive person continues to exist. Under my proposal, if someone joins the site and posts a hateful, offensive comment, nothing stops them. If it is offensive enough, the admins may step in and disable the account, but I expect this to happen rarely. The comment is visible to all users, unless they click on the username and check a box saying "I prefer not to see comments from this user." After which they no longer see the offensive comment or any other comments from that user. The hateful, offensive person continues to exist. The standard rule for dealing with trolls is to pay them no attention.
I'm capable of paying no attention to racist comments, and I don't even need the mute option. The problem is that when I see, say, a racist comment, I know that a lot of people probably lost interest in the site upon seeing it. And those people, not the racists, are the ones I would like to be in an online community with. Not only that, but a safe haven for trolls will draw enough trolls that I see racist comments frequently. On Reddit, in the default subs, you can meet a new racist every day. The personal blocking option doesn't scale.
Don't worry. These things tend to work themselves out based on how Hubski is designed. There are always cracks but the foundation is strong.
I don't know who you're talking about, but if other people are following him, maybe it's not related to him being racist. Perhaps he is putting up other posts that people like and they aren't researching his others posts to make a decision on whether or not to follow him.