The TikTok ban and Donald Trump's rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized social media.
I mentioned this in another comment, but we need to somehow move away from free form text. So here’s a super flawed makes-you-think idea to start the conversation:
Suppose you had an alternative kind of Lemmy instance where every post has to include both the post like normal and a “Simple English” summary of your own post. (Like, using only the “ten hundred most common words” Simple English) If your summary doesn’t match your text, that’s bannable. (It’s a hypothetical, just go with me on this.)
Now you have simple text you can search against, use automated moderation tools on, and run scripts against. If there’s a debate, code can follow the conversation and intervene if someone is being dishonest. If lots of users are saying the same thing, their statements can be merged to avoid duplicate effort. If someone is breaking the rules, rule enforcement can be automated.
Ok so obviously this idea as written can never work. (Though I love the idea of brand new users only being allowed to post in Simple English until they are allow-listed, to avoid spam, but that’s a different thing.) But the essence and meaning of a post can be represented in some way. Analyze things automatically with an LLM, make people diagram their sentences like English class, I don’t know.
It sounds like you’re describing doublespeak from 1984.
Simplifying language removes nuance. If you make moderation decisions based on the simple English vs. what the person is actually saying, then you’re policing the simple English more than the nuanced take.
I’ve got a knee-jerk reaction against simplifying language past the point of clarity, and especially automated tools trying to understand it.
I think I communicated part of this badly. My intent was to address “what is this speech?” classification, to make moderation scale better. I might have misunderstood you but I think you’re talking about a “who is speaking?” problem. That would be solved by something different.
I mentioned this in another comment, but we need to somehow move away from free form text. So here’s a super flawed makes-you-think idea to start the conversation:
Suppose you had an alternative kind of Lemmy instance where every post has to include both the post like normal and a “Simple English” summary of your own post. (Like, using only the “ten hundred most common words” Simple English) If your summary doesn’t match your text, that’s bannable. (It’s a hypothetical, just go with me on this.)
Now you have simple text you can search against, use automated moderation tools on, and run scripts against. If there’s a debate, code can follow the conversation and intervene if someone is being dishonest. If lots of users are saying the same thing, their statements can be merged to avoid duplicate effort. If someone is breaking the rules, rule enforcement can be automated.
Ok so obviously this idea as written can never work. (Though I love the idea of brand new users only being allowed to post in Simple English until they are allow-listed, to avoid spam, but that’s a different thing.) But the essence and meaning of a post can be represented in some way. Analyze things automatically with an LLM, make people diagram their sentences like English class, I don’t know.
It sounds like you’re describing doublespeak from 1984.
Simplifying language removes nuance. If you make moderation decisions based on the simple English vs. what the person is actually saying, then you’re policing the simple English more than the nuanced take.
I’ve got a knee-jerk reaction against simplifying language past the point of clarity, and especially automated tools trying to understand it.
A bot can do that and do it at scale.
I think we are going to need to reconceptualize the Internet and why we are on here at all.
It already is practically impossible to stop bots and I’m a very short time it’ll be completely impossible.
I think I communicated part of this badly. My intent was to address “what is this speech?” classification, to make moderation scale better. I might have misunderstood you but I think you’re talking about a “who is speaking?” problem. That would be solved by something different.