I'm wrapping up my first (official) week at KAIST today. So far it's been a whirlwind of new experiences.
Joseph Seering
@josephseering@hci.social
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Content moderation research, Stanford --> KAIST
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Joined November 12, 2022
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Aug 04, 2023
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 27, 2023
Waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of licking is super creepy if you don't immediately remember that you have a cat.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 21, 2023
This is really the case for Reddit specifically because of its structure, though less so for some of the other major volunteer-moderated platforms.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 21, 2023
With that said though, Reddit mods are a different story. The pool of users who have the expertise, the patience, and the time to run the most popular subreddits well is much smaller than people seem to think.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 21, 2023
For reasons I've discussed before, I definitely don't see Kick as a viable competitor to Twitch in the long term, so I wasn't particularly fazed to see the xQc (and Amouranth now I guess?) announcements.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 21, 2023
I'm sure xQc brought in tons of money, but history seems to have shown that whenever a top streamer leaves, others will rise to fill their place. For this reason, a strong ~farm system~ is more important for Twitch than any particular all star streamer.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 21, 2023
There's an (amusing?) comparison to be made between Twitch ~losing xQc and Reddit alienating its mods. At first glance it might seem like top Twitch streamers are valuable assets that should be courted to remain on the platform, while Reddit mods are interchangeable volunteers, but I actually think it's sort of the reverse.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
@andresmh@hci.social @drewww@social.coop Oh I have many many pages of thoughts on the ethics of platforms relying on volunteer labor. They'll make it into a paper eventually. Brief spoiler though, I actually don't think it's as exploitative as it might seem, at least if structured in particular ways. More detail to come in... CSCW 2025?
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
@drewww Either way, that’s just speculation. My original point still stands though I think, which is that taking away mods’ ability to protest is a bad idea. It’s difficult to see the future on this one, but I’m fairly confident in saying that past protests have probably made Reddit more viable as a company, not less. See e.g., the mid-2020 blackout pushing for Reddit to finally actually have a hate speech policy, which really was not an unreasonable demand in mid-2020.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
@drewww@social.coop I'm sure that there's a financial justification somewhere, and it's possible that it's even a good one, but I don't think spez has earned the full benefit of the doubt on this one. A more mature executive would definitely be handling all of this much differently, at least in terms of comms strategy. An unscripted press tour with this type of rhetoric toward power users is... well, not mature, so I'm inclined to wonder whether other parts of his strategy might also not be fully mature.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
@drewww (I don't have a problem with centralization of ad control on either Reddit _or_ Twitch, but the latter is a separate conversation.)
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
@drewww@social.coop Okay, then sure, I certainly agree that there are the above problems with full apps. Still not sure I think that the full apps were really the origin of all of this, especially given the initial focus on pushshift. I think he's also specifically said somewhere that only a very tiny sliver of the userbase uses these third party apps? But that's really neither here nor there, I don't really have a problem with working to centralize control over ads.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
@drewww@social.coop Okay, so we should be clear on terms here -- when spez has talked about/shown ~disgust for third party apps, he seems to specifically be talking about full apps that are substitutes for Reddit's own client. He actually praises third party "tools, bots, [and] enhancements to Reddit" (https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762501/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-protests-blackout). Are you making that same distinction or are you calling all of the above apps?
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
@drewww@social.coop Was this meant to be a reply in thread or a separate post?
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
@drewww I read an hour ago that now moderation tools are maybe being exempted from the API charges, but unclear? Also unclear if that was intended all along and just poorly communicated or if it's a course change?
Worth pointing to a historical example as well -- one of the smartest things Reddit ever did, IMO, was hiring the developer of automoderator to make it a core platform feature as opposed to a third party tool. So much of what happens on Reddit wouldn't be possible without it.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
@drewww@social.coop Good point, and I'm very sympathetic to Reddit's need to make money. I actually think it's fine to charge money for API access, just in a somewhat more nuanced way than was proposed.
I'm also not sure it's the loss of ad revenue that's driving this as much as the perceived loss of revenue when looking at how much money OpenAI et al are making (or are going to make) off of Reddit's data for free.
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
(verb was 모르다, funnily enough)
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Jun 18, 2023
Studying my Korean verbs, going through flashcards on quizlet, find one I can't remember. I click "Get a hint" and it provides me with: "to ______".
I guess I'm not sure what hint I was expecting, but...
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Dec 08, 2022
@sarahgilbert Thank you!
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Dec 08, 2022
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Dec 08, 2022
@cfiesler Thank you! I'm super excited!
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@josephseering@hci.social
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Dec 08, 2022
I'm thrilled to announce that I will be joining KAIST in Fall 2023 as an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing! I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to join a fantastic HCI and social computing community.
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