Slowing Down the Internet – you must be mad?
One of my long-standing and counter-intuitive rules of engagement in internet-enabled interactive-media – comments, forums, social media generally – is that moderation isn’t about “censorship” it’s about slowing down dangerous, counter-productive, explosive, degenerate activity. Moderation as in nuclear reactor moderator rods, slowing down the particle flux between the reactive “fuel”, preventing runaway chain-reaction “going critical”.
Counter-intuitive to the perceived immediate democratisation of the web; where we/anyone is enabled and allowed to communicate anything at the flick of a thumb. It’s the speed and ubiquity that is killing us – little room for listening & thinking before reacting in the memetic race for attention. Dysmemics ensures catchy crap beats nuanced quality.
Enlightened (human) moderators of previous generation forums, bulletin-boards and email-exploders typically made provision for free-unlimited and posts-per-day-limited channels.
I’ve been using the unlikely named “Discord” forum tool for some time in various communities (see below). It’s very flexible and powerful – some people run entire projects and programmes on it – and, obviously dependent on the actual humans and human relationships involved, it provides a great experience. I say unlikely named, and indeed the language and graphics in the user interfaces is kinda “down with the kids” too, originally created and used by gamers and hackers, so first impressions mitigate against it being used for serious grown-up projects, but the way it works is a joy to behold. Sadly of course, being very flexible and powerful, nefarious people also run their nefarious projects on it.
But that’s humans for you. The tool is functionally well designed.
So well designed, I notice it has a “Slow Mode” feature built-in, which can be switched-on if conversational chain-reactions risk going critical – more heat & noise than light & enlightenment. Be interesting to see if we get a case where we need it, but good to know it’s there.
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Discord?
If you don’t know Discord – this is me and my personal Discord DM channel, and we can take it from there with joining mutual group “servers”? If you’re already on Discord, you’ll already know how to find me 🙂 And, if you’re really interested, the exemplary server that uses every project management feature and every group forum bell & whistle is the “Active Inference Institute” run by Daniel Friedman.
I am in awe.
“Where there is Discord, let there be light.”
[With apologies to Maggie.]
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