[falcrist]

And again, you run into the problem where nobody wants their website to work like that. In fact, limiting the person's audience really only works with facebook's system where people post content specifically to their friends. Other sites like Hacker News, Reddit, youtube, and various other forums aren't even designed with the concept of friends that are the sole consumers of your content. You're specifically posting in a public space that everyone can see. That's not a social media thing. That's just an internet thing where most things are visible to everyone.

And again, people still post horrible content to small groups just like they post it in large ones. You've divided the problem up, but you haven't really solved anything. Someone has to moderate the content.

[intopieces]

>And again, you run into the problem where nobody wants their website to work like that.

Cancer patients don't want chemo, but it's better than dying, some might say.

>Other sites like Hacker News, Reddit, youtube, and various other forums aren't even designed with the concept of friends that are the sole consumers of your content.

Right, which is why those sites (besides HackerNews) would require slightly different solutions.

Reddit: Limit subreddits to 500 participants at most. Eliminate the number next to upvotes. Verify accounts. Limit posting.

YouTube: Not sure. This one is video-forward, probably the most difficult problem in terms of bad content. Definitely remove the algorithm for targeting people based on interest, though.

>That's not a social media thing. That's just an internet thing where most things are visible to everyone.

This is not any feature inherent to the Web, it's a function of sites that purposefully link together and allow people to rapidly post information. Pre-social media, to get your idea out you had to build a website. There was friction. The earl y web had little moderation because you really had to go searching for bad stuff.

>And again, people still post horrible content to small groups just like they post it in large ones. You've divided the problem up, but you haven't really solved anything. Someone has to moderate the content.

Dividing the problem up is a strategy that I propose lessens the impact to both the users (because content can't spread as fast) and the moderators (because there will be less content to moderate).

Elimination of advertisers and the implementation of cost (as a form of friction), I think, would also go a long way. Cost per post would be ideal.

[falcrist]

> Cancer patients don't want chemo, but it's better than dying, some might say.

What good is chemo if your patients refuse it?

> Reddit: Limit subreddits to 500 participants at most. Eliminate the number next to upvotes.

This doesn't stop people from posting disturbing content, and it destroys reddit's entire model. This solution doesn't work.

> Verify accounts.

In what way? Do you want to abolish anonymity? Because I can tell you right now that most of us aren't interested in such a solution.

> Limit posting.

In what way? Throttling posting speed? Sure if you just lessen the amount of content overall there will also be less disturbing content... but there's still disturbing content that needs to be moderated.

> This is not any feature inherent to the Web, it's a function of sites that purposefully link together and allow people to rapidly post information.

The default state of the internet is publicly viewable information. Thus it's an inherent feature that you can access almost anything out there.

> Pre-social media

As far as I'm aware, there was no such time. There have almost always been bulletin boards, forums, chat rooms, image/file sharing sites, and other forms of social media.

> there will be less content to moderate

Dividing up the content doesn't reduce the amount of it that needs to be moderated any more than cutting a cake reduces the amount of cake.

> Elimination of advertisers and the implementation of cost (as a form of friction), I think, would also go a long way. Cost per post would be ideal.

This just shuts people out according to income bracket. It reduces the total population, but I doubt it helps reduce the fraction of that population that are interested in posting and sharing disturbing content. It's just throwing the baby out with the bath water.