A bit more historic, but still very relevant. The FBI used surveillance in repeated attempts to discredit Martin Luther King JR. It’s chilling how they used the information they gathered to try to get rid of MLK any way they could. They were even trying to use information they gathered to convince him to commit suicide.

Regardless of the other stuff, deputy spam catcher is and extremely valuable contribution to the community. I have requested this of people on Lemmy and been pleasantly surprised by how willing people are to help.

This especially holds true for niche subjects. I love back country skiing so I created and moderate /c/Backcountry . The mirror community on Reddit is extremely small and dumb crypto spam sits around for days before removal because there is only one mod. He seems like a cool person dedicated to the sport, but he just can’t be there all the time. I created the community in the hopes that I can invite and keep a larger mod team.

Computer science. However, statistics is more of a hobby than anything. I am just intrigued by the idea of federated social media in general so I have thought a bit on how I would personally make it work. Perhaps I will make some more in depth blog posts about my ideas at some point.

Spam detectors are pretty opaque by their nature. In contrast, karma is pretty easy to understand: “x number of people upvoted comments or posts from this user”. This lets people understand a score even if they don’t agree. If a karma replacement behaved like a spam detector, it would probably just annoy people.

Sporting brackets may be a better analogy. They are developed with statistics in mind but are understandable to the average sports fan. I think a karma replacement should have similar properties.

Here is a good general explanation of Bayesian inference.

I think @jayrhacker@kbin.social is suggesting using such techniques to predict “troll” or “not troll” given the posting history/removed comments/etc. My personal thought is that whatever system replaces karma, it should be understandable to the typical user. I think its possible Bayesian inference could be used in developing the system, but the end system should be explainable without it.

Very good response. To see less complaining about Reddit, make more posts about other things. Lemmy will be what we make it. I have spent two weeks posting into the void with the community I started and I’m finally starting to see engagement. These things take time.

Yeah, automatic posts drive me away faster than anything. Good point on cross posting though, I just followed your advice. It’s pretty much free if your post fits in multiple places and there are lots of nearly empty communities right now.