this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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I heard a story about a whole world that was perfect because they locked a kid up in a room and threw all the bad stuff in there with the kid. The poor kid suffered all of the world's miseries so that others could enjoy life. That kid's name? 4chan.
4chan is 99% deplorable garbage. I won't even go into /b/. Helllll no. But oddly enough, some of the internet's best memes come out of there.
4chan is what the internet would look like if everything had the bare minimum of moderation. Actually a very interesting case study about the human psyche, and I've had many a interesting conversation on there, especially early internet days.
Is it a shithole? Overall, yes. But the right board at the right time is truly early internet ethos.
If the entire internet was as unmoderated as 4chan, it would be a lot less extreme than 4chan is.
But since there are only very few places like that, all the weirdos and nazis congregate there, cause that's where they don't get banned for using the n-word.
I don't really think so, every online fora I've been a part of starts unmoderated, and it works, for years sometimes. But every single time without fail when a platform reaches a critical mass, moderation becomes necessary.
I think putting a digital mask on shows the true nature of people, and moderation is the only way of keeping conversation* civil on the internet.
Maybe, if you're determined to preserve a certain culture on a specific site. But as long as movement between sites is pretty easy (was quite common in the days of forums), then the community could self-regulate reasonably well. Either the weirdos would leave, or the constructive members of the community would leave and the site would get shut down. Either way, the problem solves itself without moderation becoming necessary.
IMO, the only reason we "need" moderation is because we've decided that the site itself needs to be preserved. That's the mindset that needs to change. Sites should come and go and take the trash out with it.
Well, yeah. Storing your potatoes in the dark is also not "necessary" if you're willing to just throw them away when they sprout. But wanting to preserve things we like is a given to most people.
I think that's true if you only have a handful of options, but if you have hundreds to choose from, it's easy to pick up and move elsewhere. That's the nice thing about small communities, it's easy to join multiple and then leave if a couple turn bad. But if you only have one or two, you're going to fight to fix it.
I prefer the small community form of moderation, the community ostracizes those that behave poorly, and if that doesn't work, the community moves elsewhere. That's how social relationships tend to work, and that's generally how the early internet worked. Now that everything is so centralized, things get more complicated.