I made a robot moderator. It models trust flow through a network that's made of voting patterns, and detects people and posts/comments that are accumulating a large amount of "negative trust," so to speak.

In its current form, it is supposed to run autonomously. In practice, I have to step in and fix some of its boo-boos when it makes them, which happens sometimes but not very often.

I think it's working well enough at this point that I'd like to experiment with a mode where it can form an assistant to an existing moderation team, instead of taking its own actions. I'm thinking about making it auto-report suspect comments, instead of autonomously deleting them. There are other modes that might be useful, but that might be a good place to start out. Is anyone interested in trying the experiment in one of your communities? I'm pretty confident that at this point it can ease moderation load without causing many problems.

!santabot@slrpnk.net

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[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 month ago (24 children)

So it would delete people's posts if they get downvoted a lot or if the poster tends to upvote heavily downvoted posts?

You've automated the suppression of dissenting voices.

[–] auk@slrpnk.net 27 points 1 month ago (23 children)

So it would delete people’s posts if they get downvoted a lot

No.

or if the poster tends to upvote heavily downvoted posts?

No.

You’ve automated the suppression of dissenting voices.

Am not.

It's a perfectly fair concern. I'm trying to be careful to make sure I'm not doing that. There's quite a lot of explanation in the FAQ, and some conversations you can look back over with people who were concerned, because they've had experience with exactly that happening to them.

At one point I tried to illustrate with data just how big a jerk you have to be before it starts banning you. If you're interested, I can start doing that again. Being a dissenting voice on its own is nowhere near enough to anger the bot. You can look over !pleasantpolitics@slrpnk.net and see quite a few dissenting voices. I've also offered to delve, for any user who feels that this has happened to them, into the breakdown of why they're being ranked down, which almost always is because they're being a jerk about their "dissenting" opinion, and not the opinion itself.

Also, I think it's hilarious that someone coming from lemmy.ml is accusing me of trying to suppress dissenting voices. Lemmy.ml has been suppressing dissenting voices since its inception. The degree to which I'm bending over backwards not to suppress dissenting voices is something I think you should absorb and carry over to the lemmy.ml moderators as a good replacement for their current banhammer circus.

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (17 children)

At one point I tried to illustrate with data just how big a jerk you have to be before it starts banning you. If you’re interested, I can start doing that again.

Would you?

My understanding is that downvotes reflect whether or not someone agrees with a post or comment much more than whether the user is making a constructive comment or not so they can only be used to infer how agreeable the comment is.

I’ve also offered to delve, for any user who feels that this has happened to them, into the breakdown of why they’re being ranked down, which almost always is because they’re being a jerk about their “dissenting” opinion, and not the opinion itself.

Use me as an example, I regularly get dozens of downvotes for such hot takes as "facilitating genocide hurts the dems chances of getting elected, we need them to stop that if we want them to win.".

[–] auk@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My understanding is that downvotes reflect whether or not someone agrees with a post or comment much more than whether the user is making a constructive comment or not so they can only be used to infer how agreeable the comment is.

I never responded to this part, and I should have. Yes, people definitely vote in exactly that fashion. They do, however, upvote about 10 times more than they downvote. And, the bot takes into account everything you say. It's not just those controversial topics. You have to be talking about only, or majority, things that people don't want to hear in order to trigger it. And, Lemmy is all those minority political takes on things. There are a lot of communities where you'll get straight-up banned for saying things that are mainstream American points of view. The people who tend to be argumentative like to maintain a fiction that people on Lemmy just can't handle someone who's anti-genocide, or something like that, when they're showing up right next to a "fuck Israel" meme or a "fuck Biden for arming Israel" meme that has 1,500 upvotes.

It's hard for me to make a convincing argument that it's tolerant of dissenting voices who aren't jerks about it without listing off accounts. I can do some version, though, if you're interested, listing examples of banned and not-banned accounts to illustrate where the boundary line is.

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Lemmy just can’t handle someone who’s anti-genocide

They can't when that stance conflicts with their party. Hence why "The dems need to stop the genocide, people are not going to vote for genocide" gets you downvoted.

“fuck Biden for arming Israel” meme that has 1,500 upvotes

Those exist on .world? I see too many "You have to vote for genocide because trump would do genocide and also other bad things" type posts, it'd be weird if they coexisted.

can do some version, though, if you’re interested

Sure if it's trivial I'd be interested, but don't put too much work into it.

[–] auk@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 month ago

I don't know how much I want to go around this merry-go-round. I'm losing some of my good humor about it. I'll try though.

If you need evidence, here it is:

https://lemmy.world/search?q=fuck%20biden&type=All&listingType=All&communityId=1384&page=1&sort=TopAll

Let's look at the first page:

Fuck Biden and fuck Putin.

(Even though I did vote for Biden in 2020 and plan to again in 2024 if he’s the Democratic nominee.)

118 upvotes (inb4 you pretend that the other three also included that little disclaimer, even though they didn't)

Also genocide. Never forget that Biden is aiding and abetting a genocide. Don’t fucking look away because he’s your guy, motherfuckers

81 upvotes

Obligatory: Fuck Biden, Fuck Putin, Fuck Netanyahu/IDF and anybody else complicit in killing innocent people and/or oppressing people.

51 upvotes

Broadly, Biden supporting this genocide in the way that he has is costing him the election. Acknowledging this doesn’t mean you support Trump. Arguing that if you don’t support Biden in-spite of this position is headspinning, and some posters here (@PugJesus@lemmy.world ) are doing the work of trying to separate the left from Democrats in this regard.

49 upvotes

Expressing the viewpoint that you are claiming is banned, is incredibly popular.

You said, "They can’t when that stance conflicts with their party." That's backwards. I can't speak for everybody, but for me, it's exactly the other way around. Because I dislike genocide, and because Trump getting elected will accelerate the genocide tenfold, I support Harris. I'm not clinging to the Democrats even though they're enabling genocide. I'm voting Democratic in this election because the alternative is more genocide. Much, much more.

You can understand and deal with that viewpoint head-on without caricaturing it into something else. You could say it doesn't make sense, you could criticize the logic, you could try to argue some other strategy that is no genocide, instead of Harris or Trump. All fine. Instead you're doing a little dodge where you pretend that the only reason someone might say that, is that they love Democrats and are okay with genocide. For as long as that's your debate style, you are not welcome, as far as I'm concerned. Learn to respect the point of view of people you disagree with, if you like. I think it'll help you. Or don't, and get used to being not listened to in some forums, and banned from some others.

You can take that or leave it. I'm not trying to debate you. But I'm now pointing out for the second time that, rather than the issue being your viewpoint, which is popular on Lemmy, the issue is that you are caricaturing your opponent's also-popular viewpoint on Lemmy into something nutty, so that you can send messages which have no possible possibility of any productive impact. That's disrespectful and inflammatory. That's why you are banned. Not because of your viewpoint, which is very popular on Lemmy.

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