[wpietri]

There is no "true neutral" when it comes to moderation. There are a million examples, but the most obvious are of the form "you can have group X or people who hate group X and are dedicated to driving them off the platform". Somebody's not going to have "free speech" in that case. And even if you go for what most "true neutral" advocates want, which is a lack of rules, you'll quickly find that quite a lot of people don't want to hang out at the place that's filled with Nazis or scam artists or spammers or whatever.

So in practice you have to make choices, or you'll end up running the new 4chan and being sad about your life. As happened to the guy who ran the old 4chan: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/4chans...

[haberman]

True neutral means moderating consistently, judging behavior without regard to identity.

The ideal, platonic version of this would be that moderators only see an "identity scrambled" version of each tweet/post when they make their moderation decision. Like a screen that blinds orchestra musicians when they audition, the human would see a statement like "I hate New Yorkers" and not know if the original message said "I hate New Yorkers" or "I hate Floridians." So they would have to make a decision based on the general principle of whether a statement of this form is allowable.

Anywhere you want to draw the line is fine with me, as long as you draw it consistently.

[wpietri]

That sounds like a very personal definition of "true neutral". And also an unworkable one.

Take the use of reclaimed slurs, for example. When used against the discriminated group by a dominant group, their intention is often to cause harm. When used within the group, the intention is to reappropriate the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reappropriation

Similarly, harassers will use terms in ways that are plausibly read different ways depending on who they're talking to. So something that might sound innocuous or just odd when directed at me will be correctly read as a racist attack when directed at somebody else.

And that's not even counting when they'll just come up with new terms so they can be awful in ways that are novel enough that automated filters or out-of-date moderators won't catch. E.g.: https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv88a5/white-supremacists-ha...

In short, because there's a great deal of identity-based hate in the world, identity-blind moderation ends up being an aid to the identity haters out there.

[haberman]

The element of moderation that you consider essential -- the latitude to apply subjective judgments that rely on knowing the specific identities of the participants -- is precisely the element that I do not trust moderators to perform.

That this moderation strategy would prevent the use of all slurs (even reappropriated ones) sounds like a feature to me, not a bug.

[dudinax]

"That this moderation strategy would prevent the use of all slurs (even reappropriated ones) sounds like a feature to me, not a bug."

You're proposing erring on the side of censorship to avoid some gray areas. While this is a reasonable position, it doesn't satisfy some ideal of neutrality and won't really avoid the gray areas, and so still would require subjective judgement.

[wpietri]

For sure. While at the same time allowing the more clever variety of abuser to sail on past.

In practice, almost any nominally "neutral" position ends up allowing an enormous amount of abuse. Which is why you'll see most platforms that start with a free-speech maximalism approach coming up with a lot of nuance and exceptions over time. And those that don't turn into cesspools.

Most people are pretty great, but moderation has to be built for the worst-case attacker.

[haberman]

If detecting abuse requires knowing the identities of the people involved, it sounds like another way of saying that some behaviors are fine if they are directed at certain people, but "abuse" if directed at other people.

Which is ultimately what I object to.

[haberman]

No, I'm proposing erring on the side of consistency. I think it's likely that this strategy would result in less "censorship" in some cases, and more in others.

What we have now is a system where, on many platforms, moderators often put their thumbs on the scale and decide that certain groups need more protection than others. Generalizing about or disparaging certain groups is ok, but the sensitivities of other groups are considered sacrosanct and must be deferred to.

Like I said, draw the line anywhere you like. If it applies to everyone equally, I am happy. I am fine with things that require subjective judgment, as long as that subjective judgment is behind a screen that conceals identity.

[snailmailman]

And also “what’s a slur” alone is very subjective. For instance on Twitter Elon has decided “cis” and “cisgender” are slurs, but “trans” and “transgender” aren’t. But in gender discussions the terms come up all the time, and they are just terms.

Moderation is full of gray areas, and they are unavoidable.