Hi and free-speech idea
Hi everyone!
This website looks great. Looking forward to being a part of the community! If you don't mind reading a little wall of text, I have a suggestion for the site, and any feedback is appreciated.
I sent an email to FAQ with basically a copy paste of below, but thought I might start a community discussion about it:
I'm coming from Reddit, and I'm sure you're aware of some of their "drama" regarding free speech vs hate speech. I read the "Etiquette on posting & commenting" section, and of course I have no problem with any of these guidelines. I was just curious how they would be enforced, if at all. If we're not planning on banning people (which I think we shouldn't), I have an idea which you may have already thought of: allowing an exceeding amount of reports of bad activity to a user result in a lowering of their reputation, or an increase in some other form of infamous reputation.
And if you could publicly display some normalized score of how much a troll/hater this person is, people could even filter out people below a certain threshold, etc. The default setting (especially for new users and guests to the site) could filter out (auto-shadow-ban) certain types of people, but if someone is curious, they could lower the filter setting or turn it off completely, and descend into the dark side. Of course you can still moderate the darker areas to prevent actually illegal activity, but at least you won't be censoring people, you'll just be putting them in an echo chamber.
Now that I think about it, the system would need a few key points. I think one user can give at the maximum only one negative point to any other user. So anyone's opinion of anyone else could only be "I like them", "I don't like them", or "I don't care". You could also limit the number of times you could dislike someone "1 unique user per day", which would prevent disliking someone the same weight as simply down-voting them. You'd have to think about who you "like" for the day, and you who "don't like". These would limit the effects of inevitable brigading. I think it will really drive people who hate a lot of things to become introspective. Some might be proud of their negative nancy badge and wear it with pride, but I think a lot of others will at least consider why so many people don't like what they have to say.
I'm sure there are many other ways to control and limit the power of this system, but I think it would be pretty unique, and pretty powerful.
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Hi, Thanks for starting the discussion. Personally, I think people should be banned from Snapzu for hate speech- this is no impingement on free speech. Free speech means not being imprisoned for for what you say, it doesn't mean a site has to publish what you say. Book publishers do this all the time with rejection letters :) If people want a forum to spread malicious, nasty, hateful, denigrating material then let them invest their own time and money into creating their own space to do so.
That's perfect, I couldn't agree more.
Yes - totally agree that banning certain people for spreading hate is not necessarily an impingement on free speech - the hard part is drawing the line. Ultimately, if someone is going to draw a line, it's inherently a jagged and subjective line. Would you ban Scientologists from creating a tribe? How about the Westboro Baptist Church? How about a group affiliated with the KKK? Is creating the tribe ok, but they aren't allowed to hate a "certain amount"? More importantly, who is responsible for deciding who to ban? One person, or a select few - are these people elected or volunteers?
I'm not condoning any hateful behavior, and with a small community I doubt a system like the one I proposed is even necessary. But if this site eventually gets popular, you're going to get all kinds of people. Better to have a system in place beforehand, in my opinion. Changing the rules once you have e-mobs can get messy :)
Hmmm. It seems like a try at auto-policing, and we've all seen what happens when you give that power to a large enough group with some systems like the downvote; It doesn't go as planned. The potential for abuse, even when regimented, is insanely high. You said it would limit brigaging, but I doubt it. It'd limit the number of victims per day, maybe, but would not have any noticeable effect on the trend.
I'm with /u/Boudicca on that one. The guidelines are there for a reason, namely have a great community, and not abiding by them should not be a matter that gets taken lightly, or even something that could be gamed.
Yep, the greatest risk to a system like that is if there is a herd mentality. With a more diverse community, though, I think it would work very well.
The important function of the system should not be to discourage bad behavior, it should be to encourage good behavior. Being helpful and kind should make you a more visible member of the community, while being mean and toxic should make you more invisible, in my opinion.
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