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Andrew Cuomo says he’ll run a third-party bid for New York mayor after losing Democratic primary (www.cnn.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 1 year ago (18 children)

(back at work and on a real key board now so I can do longer formed responses)

But this is also why we need the tools I'm building. What I'm talking about can only really be "witnessed", outside of anectdata, in the aggregate. If you wanted to help, I'm need to find specific instances of this happening and the Ozma one is low hanging fruit because the mod who did the ban said in precise language that it was being done in an effort to control the narrative (regardless of if you agree with the editorial bias or not, I think we take jordan at their word). Agreeing with the political bias of the ban, doesn't mean it wasn't an example of an authority (a mod) using that authority to structure the political narratives of the commons, which is what I'm trying to identify.

Specifically, there are a few mods who regularly were getting into flaming arguments which would result in them banning the counter party. flyingsquid was notorious for this, and its a task I need to do to validate a system for automatically identifying its occurrence. I need a couple real examples, so if you find any, send them my way. Some other good subs to look for are c/world and c/political_memes. Squid would regularly flame people then ban them.

And as far as "endless stream"; thanks, because that gave me another task to put on the to do list. What Ozma got banned for isn't actually what I'm really looking for (although it could be, but its beyond my original scope). What I'm really looking for are bans related to things that happen in the comments. But it would be important to getting a complete picture to also look at someones posts and maybe try and look at how that impacts narratives. That's a much more difficult process though, but I'm sure in review we'd get asked why we didn't do that.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (9 children)

    the Ozma one is low hanging fruit because the mod who did the ban said in precise language that it was being done in an effort to control the narrative

    That's not at all what he said. He said, more or less, that Ozma had indicated that he was deliberately trying to control the narrative. Specifically, he said he was seeking out anti-Biden stories and posting them as a sort of semi-automated process, just as many as he could find, to bring "balance" or something along those lines to the narrative. He wasn't all that concerned with whether the stories were true -- just "which side" of the narrative they supported.

    Like I said, I actually don't agree with that being a good reason for banning him, although I do agree he should have been banned. To be honest I think the design of a lot of Lemmy's systems, moderation included, is just fundamentally broken. If someone wants to come in and manipulate the narrative (which again was what ozma specifically said he was trying to do), there's not any good way to prevent them, which is a problem.

    Also like I said I think if you study this objectively you will see that mod abuse works the opposite of the way you're thinking that it does. I think the vast majority of mods that are trying to manipulate the narrative are ones most people haven't heard of, that are quietly finding reasons to ban anyone who argues too loudly with return2ozma or whatever. But I'm happy to see the data. Personally, after having looked at the way the systems fit together and how people try to abuse them on both sides of the user/moderator divide, and done a certain amount of your same type of numerical analysis, I think the right thing to do is more or less to just throw a lot of the core concepts away (or, maybe better, layer some better core concepts on top of them and bring moderation back to its role as just keeping the porn / spam away and try to depend on higher-level constructs to keep debates on track.)

    But it would be important to getting a complete picture to also look at someones posts and maybe try and look at how that impacts narratives.

    IDK if you really need to do this. You're welcome to, but I feel like instead of spending any significant time trying to prove any particular way that the existing systems are broken, just accepting that they (in particular the "mods are gods" model) are broken, and trying to make something better, might be a better way.

    I thought today partly because of this conversation about making a politics community which was something along the lines of:

    This community works differently to how most politics communities work. It has strict rules designed to facilitate productive discussion. You can be rude, to a point, but you can't participate in bad faith:

    • If you claim someone said something they didn't say, that's a temp ban.
    • If you make a factual claim but then aren't interested in backing it up, that's a temp ban.
    • If you're asked one or two reasonable questions about what you said, and you're still talking but you're pretending the questions didn't happen, that's a temp ban.

    The idea is to make the discussion productive. Let's see how it works. Maybe this is a fool's errand but IDK how any set of moderation could be worse than lemmy.world.

    Other misc rules:

    • Reliable sources only.
    • No image / video posts.
    • Self posts for discussion are fine.
    • No personal insults.
    • No racism / transphobia / related bigotry.

    In that world, you'd be able to ban return2ozma the first time he posted an article about how Biden did some horrifying thing that he objectively didn't do, and someone asked about it in the comments, and ozma said "IDK I'm just trying to bring balance" and posted 5 more articles. For me, I would vastly prefer that over the current moderation structure where it is sort of arbitrary rules and the comments are mostly a bad faith free-for-all where the mods' actions don't really do all that much beyond keeping obvious death threats and things away.

    Can you sense the salt in my overall feelings lol

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (8 children)

    I think the vast majority of mods that are trying to manipulate the narrative are ones most people haven’t heard of, that are quietly finding reasons to ban anyone who argues too loudly with return2ozma or whatever.

    A big part of this is about power dynamics. Moderators are in a position of power, return2ozma has only the power of their rhetoric, their prominence, and the support of the community. The power dynamic is important. But we can deal with that when we're writing.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (7 children)

    return2ozma has only the power of their rhetoric, their prominence, and the support of the community

    The fuck are you smoking?

    https://lemmy.world/post/16224102

    Top replies:

    • "Good move, they were a clown and pointing out that they were arguing entirely in bad faith is correct."
    • "Dude thank God"
    • "My take is the dude just filled the board with unrelenting misery."
    • "I think I agree more with the spam angle than the “only bad news” angle."
    • "I blocked him quite a while ago. Poll after poll after poll were filling up my feed at one point. Fuck that shit. You sir, may fuck off."

    I can't rightly tell if you are legitimately this bad at remembering / perceiving what is happening on Lemmy, is why you're giving me this whole alternate history where with the power of his rhetoric, he was trying to bring light to the darkness, and the mods just wouldn't allow it so they could shape the narrative, but it's seeming less and less likely that this is innocent mistakenness on your part the longer I talk to you about it.

    • "
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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

    They aren't a mod. They don't have power in the relationship. Just straight up.

    Mods have a degree of power and control in the relationship that Ozma doesn't have; and you are giving me an excellent example of how they can use that power to structure and control a narrative.

    Mods have a power that a user/ participant will never have.

    And the example you are providing is a perfect example of what I want to highlight. The mods used their power to create the impression of a specific narrative, and you bought it. Other voices, objecting to this, were actively being suppressed in this very thread. But the mods have the power in the relationship, so you see at the top the comments you are highlighting: this is exactly the kind of abuse of power I intend to highlight. And your perceptions of what you think was happening is the exact effect I'm interesting in documenting.

    And the key here, is that, in-spite of their power, reality has a way of coming around. Ozma was "right" in the sense that when history was finally written, they're on the right side of it, and Jordan is on the wrong side. Jordan won the narrative battle, but lost the narrative war. Jordan's ability to control and manage that narrative is perfectly on display in those top comments, but now, the narrative has shifted towards the narrative that Ozma was trying to construct and deliver.

    More broadly, everyone is always trying to construct these kinds of narratives. You are trying to construct a narrative. I'm trying to construct a narrative. Ozma is trying to construct a narrative. Jordan is trying to construct a narrative. But only has Jordan has the ability to drop a ban hammer. That's the critical difference. Thats the power dynamic that is present.

    Edit, to put a finer point on it.

    Say in this thread the community is 90:10 in agreement with the ban. Lets say today that people would be 40:60 in favor of a ban. That's would be a 50 point swing in Ozma's favor.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    The mods used their power to create the impression of a specific narrative, and you bought it.

    Everyone knows I always obey what the mods want to shape, as the narrative. Especially Jordan.

    Ozma was "right" in the sense that when history was finally written, they're on the right side of it, and Jordan is on the wrong side. Jordan won the narrative battle, but lost the narrative war. Jordan's ability to control and manage that narrative is perfectly on display in those top comments, but now, the narrative has shifted towards the narrative that Ozma was trying to construct and deliver.

    If you accept a whole bunch of reframings of things into other things, then yes, this makes perfect sense. For example, you might say that because ozma can't say his viewpoint 15 times a day, but only as many times a day as other people who are posting a variety of viewpoints including criticism of the Democrats, that means his viewpoint was suppressed, on purpose because Jordan bans any constructive criticism of the Democrats, and so on.

    I can't really add anything to what I've said already. You're welcome to have the interpretation you like of what happened. It sounds like you're pretty attached to your current one.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    Okay, but you can at least agree that mods have a form of power that user/participants dont?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Sorry, did something I said sound like "I'd like to have an extended debate about this with you?" I think I've laid out pretty clearly how I feel about it and why at this point.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Lol. We get to the rub of the matter and you want to take your ball and go home.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm not stopping you from laying out your thing, you can still say it. I feel like it'll probably just be a reiteration of what you already said, which is why I don't really want to go back and forth about it, I got your point already and I felt like I said my thing in turn. But sure, go ahead.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    so can u tell me more about this project wen u have time? I previously commented to you that I think it's sick. but are you using it to attack users or to find out bad mod actions and proof of mods and admins and people like @PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au who obsess and witchhunt people they disagree with?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (6 children)

    so can u tell me more about this project wen u have time?

    Certainly! I can also give you code you can work and play around with yourself. I'm more than happy to send you some boiler plate you can play around with yourself.

    but are you using it to attack users or to find out bad mod actions and proof of mods and admins and people like @PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au who obsess and witchhunt people they disagree with?

    Well, not really any of the above. I've tried with some mild success to build a "troll detection" system, but it needs far more work. Also, in the months since my initial work on this matter, I've found some far better approaches and would want to implement them. So my old work isn't reflective of the new direction I'm planning to take.

    Fundamentally, I'm interested in these things from an academic perspective. How do conversations (debate) online work? What governs them? There are obviously rules (you can read them on the side bar), but there are also "rules" that aren't written on the side bar. What are the unwritten rules?

    What does it take to "change" someones mind? Or, more broadly, what does it take to change a communities mind? How do power dynamics play into that? For example, you've probably read my thread with @PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au at this point about the power mods have to steer the direction of a community.

    Part of the reason I'm interested in this is because its part of my lived experience. I watch how myself and others were, frankly, absolutely brigaided against, for months, years on end, for holding critical but important positions on the Democratic party. It was very, very bad. We had opinions that were not very popular at the time and suffered as a result. But things changed, and time has shown we were right in our criticism. So what dynamics were at play that resulted in those perspectives being at first oppressed/ suppressed, to then become the dominant narratives? How does that work? What is its function?

    Beyond that, I'm a quantitative person. I want a number at the end of the day; as shocking as it might be with all my discussion of narrative, at the end of the day I want a number, something solid I can stand on. So doing this kind of work in my own way, I want to find a way to quantify these things. Its not enough for me to simply look at an encode the stories; I want to put a number on it. That means building things up to be reproducible and automated to support large, if not census, level samples.

    Finally, I really like doing network analysis. Its something I do professionally, but its just something I think is neat. Taking all of those previous questions and putting them into the context of a social network, thats something that sounds really challenging and fun to me.

    And in regard to your other question:

    this sounds gross and very much like witch-hunting and stalking. yes, all comments are public but u coming up w a tool just to find someones and analyze and make judgement on them seems gross and out of line. think of how fasicst and controling that sounds. what if some republican was doing that and bragged about it? think about that

    I mean, you do realize that anyone, quite literally anyone, could form a 1 person instance and vacuum up all comment, post, etc.. data from every other instance? I don't have issue with it, in the same manner that I don't have issue someone going through all 9k of my comments and reading them. If I didn't want them to be made public, I wouldn't make those comments. There are things I don't say because I don't want that information to be made public. Fundamentally these things are about power dynamics. For something to be fascistic or controlling I would have to have power over someone or something. I don't. I have no secret access to any secret information, I have no power over any one or any thing. I'm simply working with and observing what is present.

    This is a somewhat famous thread here that I recommend you read all of the comments of. Its the one @PhillipTheBucket@quokk.au and I are discussing. It also highlights the dynamic I'm interested in illustrating. Here is the link: https://lemmy.world/post/16224102?sort=Top

    I recommend sorting by "Top" and reading through the first couple comment threads from top to bottom. Then scroll to the very bottom and read the comment threads in reverse order, basically most down voted. This should give you an idea for the type of dynamic I'm identifying, and the research I'm interested in conducting is how this dynamic shifted within our community. These days you would see an inversion of which narratives are being upvoted and which ones are being down-voted. So how did that come to be?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    Well, not really any of the above. I've tried with some mild success to build a "troll detection" system, but it needs far more work. Also, in the months since my initial work on this matter, I've found some far better approaches and would want to implement them. So my old work isn't reflective of the new direction I'm planning to take.

    I've actually done a version of this and a couple of other various ideas about it. The current WIP idea works totally differently to what you are talking about, I actually got as far as making a community for it, but then abandoned the effort because I couldn't figure out a way to deploy it that would be in any way productive.

    I'm going to say it knowing ahead of time that roughly 100% of the people reading are going to think it's a terrible idea: It is an LLM-based moderator that watches the conversation and can pick out bad faith types on conduct in the conversation. I actually 100% agree with you about political conversation online being almost exclusively a big waste of time (including because of the way moderation happens and people trying to deliberately distort the narrative). This was just my idea to try to help it.

    The thing that led me to never do anything with it was that I didn't feel like anyone would ever buy into it enough to even take part in a conversation where it was deployed (even assuming it worked passably well which is not proven). If you care about these issues also, though, would you like to try the experiment of having the whole conversation we're having with it observing the conversation and weighing in? I would actually like to, I'd be fine with continuing with the questions you were asking and continuing this whole debate about moderation and its impact on Lemmy, in that context. Let me know.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    The thing that led me to never do anything with it was that I didn’t feel like anyone would ever buy into it enough to even take part in a conversation where it was deployed

    Yeah I think its got to work for people to buy into it. And frankly my earliest implementations were "inconsistent" at best.

    My thought right now is that the tool needs to do a first pass to encode the "meta-structure", or perhaps.. scaffolding(?) of a conversation.. then proceed to encode the impressions/ leanings. I have tools that can do this in-part, but it needs to be.. "bigger".. whatever that means. So there is sentiment analysis, easy enough. There is key phrase extraction. And thats fine for a single comment.. but how do we encode the dynamic of a conversation? Well thats quite a bit more tricky.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Yeah, generally having it read the conversation (I think as JSON, maybe in markdown for the first pass, I can't remember, it's a little tricky to get the comments into a format where it'll reliably grasp the structure and who said what, but it's doable) and then do its output as JSON, and then have those JSON pieces given as input to further stages, seems like it works pretty well. It falls apart if you try to do too much at once. If I remember right, the passes I wound up doing were:

    • What are the core parts of each person's argument?
    • How directly is the other person responding to each core part in turn?
    • Assign scores to each core part, based on how directly each user responded to it. If you responded to it, then you're good, if you ignored it or just said your own thing, not-so-good, if you pretended it said something totally different so you could make a little tirade, then very bad.

    And I think that was pretty much it. It can't do all of that at once reliably, but it can do each piece pretty well and then pass the answers on to the next stage. Just what I've observed of political arguments on Lemmy, I think that would eliminate well over 50% of the bullshit though. There's way too many people who are more excited about debunking some kind of strawman-concept they've got in their head, than they are with even understanding what the other person's even saying. I feel like something like that would do a lot to counteract it.

    The fly in the ointment is that people would have to consent to having their conversation judged by it, and I feel like there is probably quite a lot of overlap between the people who need it in order to have a productive interaction, and those who would never in a million years agree to have something like that involved in their interactions...

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    still seems to me u guys are doing it for witchhunting. if someone doesn't like someone they can just ban them. you two going on and on about writing a program and using ai to catch peopel you don't like is icky. I'll be one of the people voting against this if it ever goes wide on lemmy. no thanks. u all need to touch grass, ur way too caught up in lemmy

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    At least for the tool I was talking about, it wasn't planning on banning anyone. I've been a moderator for a decently large collection of forums on Lemmy and I can't even remember the last time I banned someone, although it did happen a handful of times months and months ago. The tool was planned as purely something to give input to the participants about elements of the other person's point that they were getting carried away with their own stuff and not addressing.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    u are right that mods banend pepole for talking against the dem talk here. lemmy def tries to stifle voices. it's better now, but befor eelection, it was so blatent. Anyone who supported thrid party were attacked. but yoru tracking program still sounds icky.

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