Better group chats
Friend asks: Wanna be a co admin of $one_of_our_signal_group_thread?
My reply: Not especially… but I am interested in building decentralized moderation tools for signal
Them: That sounds interesting
Either: a) No one does much moderation — individuals are unclear if others are as bothered, maybe afraid of seeming too controlling — and so one or two people struggle to read the room, send a bunch of non-stop obnoxious messages, the majority of other people build up silent resentment, and the quality of the group vibes falls off hard.
Or: b) one or maybe two people do take it upon themselves to be the room’s (hopefully) benevolent dictator, and decide to call out the obnoxious offenders for their shitty messages. But then sometimes maybe the power goes a little to their head, or they just make questionable decisions that aren’t actually widely supported, kick people because their personal feelings were hurt in an argument, etc.
Case (A) is like the “wiser” people too full-of-doubt to take unilateral action.
Case (B) is someone decides enough is enough, but ruins the channel with too strong actions, kicking people a little unjustly, which has its own negative chilling effect.
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Easy-to-use ways to give offenders “time-outs”. Not perma kicks, but like:
“hey, you can stay in the room to read but refrain from posting anything for ${duration}, or else you’ll be auto-kicked. After ${duration} you can post again like normal and you’ll be invited back if you were kicked.”
Where
$durationcan be escalating times like 10 min, 4 hours, 24 hours, 4 days, 2 weeks, 1 month, 1 year. -
Ways for group members to cast secret votes, on whether the accused deserves the punishment or not. Secrecy lets people really vote their conscious, not be afraid of the offender getting pissed at them.
With all the rules clearly visible, possibly configurable by admins.
Unfortunately my sense is Signal-the-org is pretty reluctant to add first party support for such tools directly into the app, but I think it’s all still possible to implement with chatbots, then rooms can choose to add the moderation bots whenever they want.
If we could show that it’s a useful addition even in the worse UX of chatbots, it could eventually “graduate” to proper first party support.
It’s basically the millennia long struggle of social group theory, runaway dictatorships, coordination problems, and democratic innovations — like ancient Athenian Ostracism — reinvented for cyberspace
Another friend's comments:
i think it’s good
as a general feature to be added to signal
i like
<Mute for x duration>should also have kick option
Me:
well admins can already kick
Them:
i mean kick by vote
Me:
ah
Them:
secret voting
Me:
yea
Them:
anyone can launch a vote
they had this on computer game multiplayer servers
also, in addition to muting, which is a little harsh, can vote for a separate punishment where the user gets a banner next to their name saying that they’re gay or something
Me:
ha. a dunce hat?
Them:
oooh another good one is, not muting, but ratelimiting
so, most ppl can you know type stream of consciousness but if someone is being obnoxious, can vote to rate limit them to one message per minute for an hour or something
Me:
yea worth trying
Them:
but yeah i spose kick and temporary mute would be the bread and butter
Or like, it appends to every message that you send “ Oh, and I suck by the way.”
or something like that
because ppl don’t really need harsh punishment. It’s so embarrassing to get any punishment
They just need like the littlest thing
rate limit them for 1 hr is like, plenty
well, i mean, for adults in a private chat
not like a giant public forum