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Do up/down votes matter?
(lemmy.zip)
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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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Asklemmy
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It's a democratic way of judging posts. Democracy is good.
Developed further, voting could replace moderators. I'd like to see that happen.
How could it replace moderators developed further?
By providing a way to filter spam, trolls and whatever else you like, without the need for a central authority.
people can already do this via blocking, but no-one regards that as sufficient.
I have not seen a forum that does it this way. Do you have a link to it or a failed experiment?
Voting can't replace mods, because the instance owner is legally responsible for what's posted to their instance.
They are bound by law to remove illegal content immediately.
Also, mobbing is a form of democracy, too.
See details on that "development" to which I referred, elsewhere in this thread.
Voting could replace mods in some ways, but in others it would be less effective (I know, not all mods are effective).
For instance, combatting spam; more users would have to see the spam and downvote it to have it removed (presumably in this system, a post could be removed when it reaches a certain downvote threshold? Not sure how else it would replace mods).
Additionally, content moderators and admins do actually do at least one other good thing; they look at and remove illegal or seriously upsetting material. Unfortunately, Lemmy has had several issues with csam being posted by presumably bots -- good, active content moderators remove this as quickly as possible, protecting more of the users on their instances than a downvote threshold.
Outside of having some sort of threshold, I'm not sure I have a good picture of how downvotes could replace mods? Human oversight is really key to a lot of accurate and effective decision making; I'm sure we've all dealt with fully automated systems and know the pain of that.
The Democratic system of forum management to which I refer would work basically like this.
You choose who to speak to. You keep a list. Rating, flagging and tagging other forum members. (as opposed to having it done for you by a moderator)
This list can be something that you personally create. It can also be gotten from a friend or somebody who's opinion you respect. It could be provided as a service, thus emulating the role of moderator. It could also be dictated to you, in the case of legally forbidden stuff. The list that you use might be the sum of several lists, tweaked over time to suit you.
(One term I've heard for this is "a system of silos". Though I don't really get the reference.)
It's an idea that's going around.
This is just a block list system. You can already do this now.
It's a bit more than that but ya, it's pretty simple and tested technology. But of course the magic is in the network.
It would effectively mean that someone new to a widely used community would potentially immediately run into spam, trolling, abuse and child porn and have to manually block a bunch of users before it looks normal.
There are other ways to get the list than manually creating it. You could get it from a friend or a list providing service. Or both. All or in part. And then optionally tweak it later.
Yes, so you mean people can simply import other users block-lists. That's the only difference. But if someone new arrived, and didn't know of one - they would be met with a wall of spam and abuse.
Moreover, I'd also add that websites have a legal requirement to remove child porn.
Your system just converts communities into hashtags. It's in opposition to what this site is.
We'd have a default list available, optionally pre-installed. But this is obvious.
Yes, That is addressable via this mechanism as well.
It's simply another way of doing a forum. A better way.
No, because the child porn would still be present. Not good enough legally.
There is no support for your ideas on the fediverse.
Your naysaying is repetitive and insubstantial. Sorry.
Perhaps focus on a single argument and back it up a bit more.
That is my argument. The Fediverse has to remove child-porn. Simply allowing to be filtered out by users isn't good enough legally.
Moreover, the system you call for would degrade communities as merely being twitter hashtags. That's simply not how this is supposed to work.
If the cp is blacklisted then it will be removed from the listverse.
"It would be bad" and "it isn't how it's supposed to work" are not substantial arguments.
No, it would still be present if someone wasn't running any blocklists.
Yes, they are. The Fediverse is ultimately shaped by what the users want. If most of the users don't want to lose the moderation tools because they find the outcome undesirable, then it won't happen.
You are in a very small minority.
It would be present on a guy's computer and the network would block any communication with him. I think that's as good as it gets.
I think you're dead wrong there. I think that everybody hates being told what they can say and who they can talk to.
No, from the way you have described it - people who have enabled a blocklist that block his account would block any communication with him and thus blacklist his child porn. But anyone else who enters the website new without any blocks up would see it.
This debate has come up many times before on the fediverse. Most people do not support the site being turned into 4chan.
Many instances are run relatively stricter than other instances (such as beehaw and lemmy.blahaj) and specific communities require higher levels of moderation maintain a level of quality (particular subreddits not present on the fediverse function like this right now such as askscience, askhistorians etc).
That would be one of those mandatory blacklists to which I referred. And now I'm repeating myself.
Just say, "bwaaaah! I don't like it" and be done with it.
Bye.
So a "mandatory blacklist" sounds an awful lot like just a admin ban which is no different to what exists now.
I don't. But for many other reasons to.
Oh, that's an interesting idea. It's more nuanced than just relying on upvotes, and sort of democratises the role of moderator! I was thinking maybe reporting would come into it somewhere but I see that the idea you're describing has more depth than I was picturing. I'd be up for using a system like that, I think!
Re this, though:
Is that just admins? Does that decision sort of shift mod responsibility upwards, leaving a good majority of decisions in the hands of the public but ultimately leaving a few powerful people with more global "modding" capability still? Not trying to nitpick or be antagonistic, this sounds like a cool system to use, I'm just trying to understand
However you slice it, if mandates are handed down by the legal authorities, this is the form (black lists, added to local lists, informing filters) it would probably take.
Ah yeah I hadn't thought about legal authorities. I guess that would entail local police forces monitoring Lemmy and blacklisting and subsequently investigating specific users or bots once they post something illegal, which seems not so feasible sadly. But, definitely up for a more democratised system of modding generally!
How are legal mandates handled in lemmy presently?
No idea honestly mate, but what I meant when I brought up the illegality was really that it's usually very disturbing content, which mods catch and remove before loads of people have to see it.
If it's a new account posting that stuff, I don't know how the system we're discussing would prevent loads of users having to see it - altho I guess if those blacklists of users were collaborative and the person or team whose list you've "subscribed" to catch it, maybe that solves the issue?
Ya, something like that. There would be a government man with an account, keeping an eye out. Updating the gov black list as necessary.
That feels a bit dangerous to me, sincerely. Like, what if the government mod of a country decides LGBTQ stuff is blacklisted? How do users protest the legislative blacklist? I guess just switch instance?
About the same as lemmy I guess. The gov will always be an issue
I think it's good for judging points and whatnot, but there's definitely some places that could not have mods replaced by votes. I agree when it comes to most communities though. Have a great day! :D
You sound like a serf arguing for the need for kings