Is it possible to block / remove accounts based on external sources they link to?
For example if somebody links to the substack of a well-known Kremlin propagandist, is it possible to flag an account for action? I guess a form of white-/black-listing
Obviously a policy of this nature would be tricky as somebody might be linking for reference and not for endorsement.
What resources exist for recruiting, adding, onboarding, and training #moderators in online spaces, especially volunteer #mods? I also welcome resources specific to Mastodon #moderation, but many lessons for moderating other online communities should translate.
Also, while practical guides to moderation itself are important, I would especially value any insight into supporting the human moderators. How can mods work together effectively, and avoid conflict & burnout?
"At its shining moment, Twitter was like the Tower of Babel before it fell." From Israel vs. Hamas threats to Donald Trump’s “wild” posts, Del Harvey helped make the platform’s hardest content moderation calls for 13 years. Then she left in 2021 … and disappeared. https://www.wired.com/story/del-harvey-twitter-trust-and-safety-breaks-her-silence/
This video about #moderation might be interesting to #fedi moderators. It doesn't go as deep as I've seen conversations get here, but it is an interesting addition.
Automatic federation with any other entity, no questions asked. IMO, there should be minimum requirements to federate a multi-user instance, such as completion of a course and signing a public statement. #fediverse#mastodon@jerry@Gargron
OK, why were my replies to @ErrataRob erased without any trace or sign of #moderation... more significantly while he was posturing as a free speech absolutist #cancelculture victim?
Question for current Relatica testers (or potential future users): on the client side filtering do you think it would be better if the app remembered if you unhid a post/comment? #relatica#friendica#fediverse#moderation
Supreme Court to consider giving First Amendment protections to social media posts.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear five cases ending in 2024, that collectively give the court the opportunity to reexamine the nature of content moderation.
Supreme Court will decide on First Amendment protections for social media.
The court has the opportunity to reexamine the nature of content moderation and the constitutional limitations of the government regarding speech on platforms such as Facebook, X, TikTok, and Instagram.
Clicking on it prevents a post from appearing in a thread when viewed on the web version of the server hosting my account. Eg;
A reply to my post uses an offensive term in the heat of the moment. I don't want to feed the trolls by replying, but I don't want people thinking I endorse that kind of hateful language. So I click Mute Post, and and anyone who views my account on Mastodon.nzoss.nz won't see it.
Outsourcing moderation entirely to AI, while it may save some money, is not a good idea... full article below.
1500 votes! Thank you all for your support! 💜
The more of you who lend your voices, the more you show that this is a real issue that is worth correcting!
@cragsand
Discussion regarding Twitch moderation AI spread to Reddit where I clarified some questions that arose:
Since this global AI AutoMod remains an undocumented "feature" of Twitch chat from a while back a lot of the conclusions I've listed in the thread are based on deduction from watching active chatters get suspended and tell their stories on Discord and social media.
Most can luckily get their account reinstated after appealing but it relies on having an actual human look at the timestamp of the VOD and take their time to figure out what actually happened as well as get the complete context of what was going on on stream when it occurred. I've seen many apologies from Twitch moderation sent in emails after appealing, but if you get unbanned, an apology or stay banned seems mostly random.
Being banned like this will also make it much less likely that you want to participate and joke around in chat in the future, leading to a much worse chatting experience.
I see some discussions are arguing that all AI flagged moderation events are actually reviewed by humans (but poorly) and this is a possibility. Because of the lack of transparency from Twitch regarding how this works it's very difficult to know for sure how these reviews are done. A manual report in combination with an AI flag is almost certainly a ban. One thing is sure though, and that is that too much power is given to AI to judge in these cases.
Seeing as permanent suspensions from accounts who have had active paying subscriptions for YEARS on Twitch can be dished out in seconds, either those reviewing are doing a lousy job, or its mostly done by AI. Even worse, if those reviewing are underpaid workers who get paid by "number of cases solved per hour" there is little incentive for them to take their time to gather more context when reviewing.
It's likely that if Twitch gets called out for doing this, they have little incentive to admit it as it may even be in violation of consumer regulations in some countries. Getting a response that they "Will oversee their internal protocol for reviewing" may be enough of a win which results in them actually turning this off. Since there is no transparency we can't really know for sure.
A similar thing happened on YouTube at the start of 2023, where they went through all old videos speech-to-text transcripts and issues strikes retroactively. It got a lot of old channels to disappear, especially those with hours of VOD content where something could get picked up and flagged by AI. For the communities I'm engaged in, it meant relying less on YouTube for saving Twitch VODs. It was brought up by MoistCritical about a year ago since it also affected monetization of old videos.
Here it is: "Spirit AI" using "proactive" technology.
I fear this has backfired to instead mean presumed guilt until proven innocent. Makes me think of Minority Report. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that I guess.
Thank you everyone who helped bring attention to this!
But looks like it was shut down by Twitch.
They misinterpreted the whole thing, perhaps intentionally. AI is being used to flag/ban without considering context and I hope that this is reconsidered.
I wanted to try the default mastodon social instance to get the hang of it - and I know there’s all kind of specific-interest ones like for art, music, tech, games, etc. but does anyone out there have some recommendations for other decent, all-purpose ones?
It seems that to be effective, a Block relies entirely on the Block being respected by the remote server hosting the blocked account. If that server is self-hosted by the operator of that account, it's hardly going to respect Block requests.
Why can't the server hosting the account doing the blocking identify a request to see a post from the blocked account, and refuse that request?
Right now making mature jokes in chat can get chatters permanently suspended globally on Twitch completely without any human intervention that requires context....
AI based #AutoMod is causing issues for streamers on #Twitch.
When any single line of text can be taken to mean something horrific out of context, streamers are seeing their most active chatters getting permanently suspended without any human intervention.
I wrote an article to hopefully change this. Maybe it can at least lead to further discussion regarding the matter.
Outsourcing #moderation to #AI, while it may save money, is NOT a good idea.
For all those who'd been wondering about FSEP and where it's at, @nivenly have just published an update: FSEP is on hold, pending the return of the original maintainer, or until a new maintainer can be found:
This is annecdata - not a serious academic study. Adjust your expectations accordingly. When I first got online, the World Wide Web was still in its infancy - so CompuServe was my gateway to the Internet. I loved their well organised chat room. A couple of clicks and I could be discussing Babylon 5 with […]
Moderator?
Could Eugen kindly have his beloved instance back please?...
Global AI AutoMod does not understand context - Tell your experience in comments (twitch.uservoice.com)
Right now making mature jokes in chat can get chatters permanently suspended globally on Twitch completely without any human intervention that requires context....