Since that thread was written, I’ve thought more about this, had significant discussion about this genre-of-policies in non-LW-related contexts, and learned more about the shape of the actual information environment.
I’m basically not at all worried about people advocating for individual violence on LW and successfully convincing people. The arguments against it are strong, the LW audience is smart, and on the few occasions where it comes up, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of people eager to write the counter-arguments. I am worried about people concluding, incorrectly, that other people are secretly more sympathetic to violence than they outwardly appear. I think that visible censorship would tend to create that false impression.
I also notice that mob-reactions to bad comments are often, from my perspective as someone who occasionally likes to put on an investigator hat, pretty directly opposed to what I want as a person wearing an investigator hat (and by extension opposed to the public interest as I understand it). If someone posts something bad, and people demand that it be deleted, I view that as analogous to demanding the destruction of police body-cam footage. And if someone posts a call for violence and people demand that they be blocked from commenting further, I view that as analogous to demanding that they be prevented from speaking without their lawyer. It’s much better to let people incriminate themselves, or clear themselves, if that’s what they’re going to do.
If someone posts something bad, and people demand that it be deleted, I view that as analogous to demanding the destruction of police body-cam footage
I think this analogy is stretched beyond usefulnesss—there’s a very wide gap between “removal of publishing” and “deletion of legal evidence”. There’s a LARGE class of body-cam footage that never gets made public, but is not irrevocably deleted. Private website operators also have very different duty and liability shapes than police departments do.
Thanks! I think I mostly agree with what you’re optimizing for. Some comments:
On why delete: I’m not particularly worried about people convincing LW users to commit violence. I’m worried about people who are much more willing to commit violence than approximately all LW users finding each other via LW.
On evidence of common knowledge: as I mentioned in the post, people would expect self-censorship, especially from senior community members, and so I’d be worried about people still incorrectly concluding that others are secretly more sympathetic to violence than they outwardly appear, even in the absence of rules prohibiting specific calls for violence.
On preserving evidence: I’m very sympathetic to it, and also very sympathetic to having police officers wear body-cams. I think this does not require the comments to exist under schelling-pointy posts about violence, though? E.g., one way to do this would be to remove a comment from the post, but keep it available (or even actively reported) to law enforcement, and available to other users (established users?) in the moderation log.
On speaking with a lawyer: I think automod already somewhat prevents people from speaking further without their lawyer; but also I’m not sure how to best balance being a place where people can incriminate themselves and preventing people like that from finding collaborators using the platform. (Or are you worried that established users would err on the side of speaking with a lawyer even when not actually warranted?)
Since that thread was written, I’ve thought more about this, had significant discussion about this genre-of-policies in non-LW-related contexts, and learned more about the shape of the actual information environment.
I’m basically not at all worried about people advocating for individual violence on LW and successfully convincing people. The arguments against it are strong, the LW audience is smart, and on the few occasions where it comes up, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of people eager to write the counter-arguments. I am worried about people concluding, incorrectly, that other people are secretly more sympathetic to violence than they outwardly appear. I think that visible censorship would tend to create that false impression.
I also notice that mob-reactions to bad comments are often, from my perspective as someone who occasionally likes to put on an investigator hat, pretty directly opposed to what I want as a person wearing an investigator hat (and by extension opposed to the public interest as I understand it). If someone posts something bad, and people demand that it be deleted, I view that as analogous to demanding the destruction of police body-cam footage. And if someone posts a call for violence and people demand that they be blocked from commenting further, I view that as analogous to demanding that they be prevented from speaking without their lawyer. It’s much better to let people incriminate themselves, or clear themselves, if that’s what they’re going to do.
I think this analogy is stretched beyond usefulnesss—there’s a very wide gap between “removal of publishing” and “deletion of legal evidence”. There’s a LARGE class of body-cam footage that never gets made public, but is not irrevocably deleted. Private website operators also have very different duty and liability shapes than police departments do.
It’s not as bad, quantitatively speaking, but it’s the same kind of bad; both are steps to prevent incriminating information from being seen.
Thanks! I think I mostly agree with what you’re optimizing for. Some comments:
On why delete: I’m not particularly worried about people convincing LW users to commit violence. I’m worried about people who are much more willing to commit violence than approximately all LW users finding each other via LW.
On evidence of common knowledge: as I mentioned in the post, people would expect self-censorship, especially from senior community members, and so I’d be worried about people still incorrectly concluding that others are secretly more sympathetic to violence than they outwardly appear, even in the absence of rules prohibiting specific calls for violence.
On preserving evidence: I’m very sympathetic to it, and also very sympathetic to having police officers wear body-cams. I think this does not require the comments to exist under schelling-pointy posts about violence, though? E.g., one way to do this would be to remove a comment from the post, but keep it available (or even actively reported) to law enforcement, and available to other users (established users?) in the moderation log.
On speaking with a lawyer: I think automod already somewhat prevents people from speaking further without their lawyer; but also I’m not sure how to best balance being a place where people can incriminate themselves and preventing people like that from finding collaborators using the platform. (Or are you worried that established users would err on the side of speaking with a lawyer even when not actually warranted?)