from Hacker News

On Front Porch Forum, politics is fair game but unkindness is prohibited

by eevilspock on 8/10/24, 10:18 AM with 159 comments

  • by eevilspock on 8/10/24, 10:21 AM

  • by tptacek on 8/11/24, 6:09 AM

    All of local politics in the muni I live in takes place in a forum like this, on Facebook, with a single moderator (the Dan Gackle of Chicagoland) who I do not think really grasps what a big project they've signed up for and gotten off the ground. I can't tell you how often I've wanted to just post the Guidelines link from HN to them and say "just use these".

    The electeds in our muni post on it; I've gotten two different local laws done by posting there (and I'm working on a bigger third); I met someone whose campaign I funded and helped run who is now a local elected. It is crazy to think you can HN-effortpost your way to changing the laws of the place you live in but I'm telling you right now that you can.

    To an extent, I feel like the experience of posting here is an almost-unfair advantage to posting in forums like that. Really, though, I'm more frustrated that new, important forums, like mine and like FPF, seem unable to learn the lessons of successful existing forums like MF, WP, and HN.

  • by mplanchard on 8/10/24, 1:22 PM

    I live in Vermont, and I love FPF. It’s full of typical neighborly posts about lost items, people selling things, announcements about local events, etc. The only time it gets slightly contentious is around local elections, but even that is remarkably moderate.

    I think it helps that the groups really are hyper-local, on the order of a few streets, so it’s very likely you’re interacting with one of your neighbors at any given time. My wife and I posted some bookshelves we wanted to give away when we moved into our neighborhood, and the person who responded wound up being our neighbor from less than halfway down the block.

    Compared to every other place on the internet, it feels a lot more like the way people are in real life: friendly, helpful, and good-natured.

  • by maeil on 8/10/24, 2:49 PM

    > “I think there’s a real social media fatalism that has set in, that it’s just irredeemably toxic and never going to get any better,” Pariser said. “The goal here is to demonstrate that local conversations don’t have to be toxic. That’s a result of the business model and how they’re designed.”

    I've been preaching this for years and am delighted to see the existence of such a great social network that provides a brilliant example of how true this is.

    The Meta-Alphabet-and-friends concept that "it's simply impossible to moderate once you reach a certain scale" is a bald-faced lie. It both serves as an excuse for them not doing so, and as a warning to founders to definitely not build a competing social network because it must turn into a cesspit.

    It's very possible to keep a social network high quality - the big ones just don't want to. And they don't want you to, either.

  • by jgoewert on 8/10/24, 1:34 PM

    >> move slowly and moderate heavily

    Yep. This is what is really needed for civil discussion. It is hard to work with otherwise as you get what my local small town FB feed normally is like. We are past the limit of peak assholery that only a system like that can even begin to filter things down.

    For example: Tiny local news source posted about an accident on the highway on a FB feed yesterday afternoon. Top 3 FB comments were about one of the people involved in the accident and blaming them because of the color of their skin, so he probably caused it. Over 50% of the posts were racist and semi racist rants spewing everything ranging from 'he was most likely going to a drug deal' to 'this is why we shouldn't let them out of the nearby city'. 10% were normal 'oh, that is why it was messed up.' 5% were 'wtf, calm down racists' and those posts got major responses about 'get out of my small town if you don't like it'.

    Seriously.

  • by beezle on 8/11/24, 11:56 AM

    I have used FPF as a sometimes resident of VT.

    First off, you need to register with a local address/real name and the communities are generally population/geographic. So three or four towns along a common route may be combined giving a total population order 5k. That would be the default group a post goes to, though there is the option to also include "nearby" areas. Remember, nearby in VT is measured in miles.

    Second - the vast majority of the postings concern lost/found pets, farm animals and packages, people looking for services - plumber to chimney sweep to excavation, things for free or sale, and announcements (closures, openings, events).

    There is a low volume of "discussions". Very few people engage with the overtly political posts. Posts that do get some traction are road and safety issues and recently, school budgets.

    It is not facebook/reddit/twitter. More of a pin up bulletin board system that allows quick replies.

  • by m463 on 8/10/24, 11:39 PM

    I think there are a few notable things about vermont...

    It is 49/50 in population, 50/50 in state GDP, it is not multicultural, and the only large city is probably burlington.

    It seems like all the classic reasons for friction would be minimized.

  • by meowfly on 8/10/24, 1:13 PM

    I've kind of wondered if flattening the world isn't the root problem with social media. There are very few people I encounter IRL that I disagree too much with. We do disagree, but everyone kind of understands each other to some degree. In contrast, my values and the values of someone in Germany (as an example), might be less aligned. We frame so much of this as either echo chambers (we work in the set of people who agree) or ML targeted rage bait. Maybe the best algorithm is Californians mostly engaging with Californians with a spectrum of viewpoints that naturally exists from the urban rural divide.

  • by getwiththeprog on 8/10/24, 12:13 PM

    "Front Porch Forum is a free community-building service in Vermont and parts of New York. Your neighborhood's forum is only open to the people who live there. It's all about helping neighbors connect." - https://frontporchforum.com/

  • by mplanchard on 8/10/24, 10:23 PM

    Their 2023 mission statement (required as part of their being a Vermont public benefit corporation) has a lot of interesting perspective in it on the focus of the business, how they view their mission, and their vision for the future: https://frontporchforum.com/uploads/FPF_Benefit_Corp_Report_...

  • by dimal on 8/10/24, 4:23 PM

    Interesting that the article doesn’t mention that they’re a public benefit corporation. I think we need more of these.

  • by yamrzou on 8/11/24, 8:23 AM

    > Most of all, he learned what the moderator of almost any successful online forum learns: If you don’t set and strongly enforce rules for how people can talk to each other, things will get ugly in a hurry.

    Looks like what made HN successful as well

  • by WoodenChair on 8/11/24, 1:58 PM

    I live in Vermont and use Front Porch Forum (FPF). Here are three observations that I think are important that the article misses:

    1. FPF is primarily used via email. You get an email newsletter each day with the latest posts, sometimes multiple times a day. In essence it's just many glorified local mailing lists. Email is universal and mailing lists have been around forever. But what the FPF founders did effectively is organize, manage, moderate and create mailing lists for every local neighborhood in the state and then advertise them to people. Not an easy task and not a bad idea—but it doesn't require anywhere near the infrastructure of a FB or Twitter nor offer anywhere near the features.

    2. FPF has a "beg for money" business model. They charge very high advertising rates and then every few months they send out emails about how they don't have enough funding to meet their needs and ask for donations. They're a for-profit company that constantly asks for donations. They even have a donate link [0] right on the bottom of their home page. That really turns me off from them. Sometimes they use the word "subscription" but other times they call it "donations." If it was truly a subscription, they wouldn't accept one-time donations, which they do.

    They seem to think of themselves as a community service and consider themselves essential to the Vermont conversation, despite also being a for-profit company. I think if they want to have a donation model and be considered critical rural communication glue they should become a non-profit and open source their software.

    3. The Washington Post article's premise that important political conversations are happening on FPF I'm sure is true but I think really depends on which community you live in. This is not really one-social network, but instead thousands of mini-social networks (each little local mailing list has its own vibe). In my neighborhood the more substantive political conversations happen on the less moderated Facebook group. Nextdoor was just introduced here a couple years ago and seems to continue to be growing. I suspect over time, with its much greater feature set, it may really challenge FPF.

    [0] https://frontporchforum.com/supporting-members

    Overall, it's a good service. Every neighborhood should have a well-organized email list. But let's not pretend this is a Facebook competitor.

  • by bell-cot on 8/10/24, 10:34 AM

    > A text-heavy, newsletter-based site that reads like a cross between a neighborhood internet mailing list and a small-town newspaper’s letters-to-the-editor section, Front Porch Forum seems an unlikely candidate to outcompete the big social media platforms. It has achieved critical mass in the Green Mountain State not by embracing the growth hacks, recommendation algorithms and dopamine-inducing features that power most social networks, but by eschewing them.

    > While most tech giants view content moderation as a necessary evil, Front Porch Forum treats it as a core function. Twelve of its 30 full-time employees spend their days reading every user post before it’s published, rejecting any that break its rules against personal attacks, misinformation or spam.

    > The process is slow and laborious, but it seems to work. Front Porch Forum is the highest-scoring platform ever on New_ Public’s “Civic Signals” criteria, which attempt to measure the health of online communities.

    Tiny, not quickly scalable, and probably not profitable enough to make anyone even slightly rich.

    But very good for human beings.

    What are your priorities?

  • by michaelmrose on 8/10/24, 8:11 PM

    Regarding toxicity. My local crimewatch Facebook group has twice in the last few years been used to drum up lynch mobs for black teens.

    The first post about supposedly brutality perpetrated upon the individuals property and even more sadly against their cat. The problem is the neighbor wasn't real, the cat was from google image search and happened in a different state, the property damage likewise. The only thing real was the teens they were trying to drum up hate for.

    More recently we have the same pattern but NOW the poster is anonymous and shares no pictures of self nor of the misbehavior which is described only as text and shares no pictures of malfeasance just the straight pic of the kids.

    The first post actually had one of the teens names in it and threats of violence!

    Despite this response is slow and admins refuse to implement a policy of not posting minors images and Facebook has no interest in the situation whatsoever.

  • by xg15 on 8/11/24, 10:27 AM

    This seems great for discussing whether your local neighborhood should have a roundabout or rather use traffic lights, but I don't see how a network of purposely separated and local discussion boards would be useful for discussing larger-scale or even national or international issues.

    (If the answer is "it wasn't meant to do that", in the article, it was touted as an alternative to traditional social media which do have that role, so the question does stand)

  • by yieldcrv on 8/11/24, 10:26 PM

    I had read a study that people give accurate political views as soon as there is money at stake for giving the answer, absent that it seems people only know how to deflect towards a deficiency of “the other side” instead of addressing the criticisms to their political view

    Thats why I love Polymarket, because you dont have to debate anyone to express a political belief and it allows room for complex nuance to reach that belief

    I like the kindness concept too, especially since there is no money involved

  • by jackcosgrove on 8/11/24, 2:48 PM

    The problem with moderation of forums is that the most common model seems to be one of enlightened despotism. Moderators are hired/appointed by the site owner and have sometimes godlike powers to do what they want.

    Are there any forums where moderator is an elected position, with predefined term lengths? Or one where moderation actions are adjudicated in an open process, with appeals, etc?

    So much of moderation seems like star chamber proceedings.

  • by trte9343r4 on 8/11/24, 6:38 AM

    > If your issue is a barking dog or hypodermic needles in the park, then let’s talk about that. But don’t say, ‘This particular person’ or ‘This particular dog.’ We can’t fact-check that, and you could totally destroy someone’s reputation.”

    But we can fact-check that. Many people who complain about dogs have video evidence, and weeks of records.

    We had similar local forum. I complained about off leash dogs attacking children, and shitting in children playgrounds. Our city has strict leash-laws. I offered to provide video evidence for everything.

    But "politeness" rules went out of the window. I am "horrible" and "unhappy" person who hates dogs. And somehow it is children fault, they get attacked by illegal dog, while playing at designated dog-free area! They "provoke" and "trigger" dogs, by sitting, walking or riding bicycle. Usual gaslighting!

  • by bwanab on 8/11/24, 5:44 PM

    As a newish resident who signed up a couple of months back, I've been amazed at the civilized tone in FPF. I think the article overstates the part about politics, though - it just doesn't seen like that frequent a topic of discussion very unlike the Vermont Reddit group.

  • by dredmorbius on 8/11/24, 4:45 PM

  • by subjectsigma on 8/11/24, 4:11 AM

    "Hey, we're off building our own thing for our own community, here's how it works, and we think it's working fine. You don't have to participate if you don't want to."

    queue angry comments

  • by inglor_cz on 8/11/24, 4:22 PM

    I would like to see this approach tested on something really controversial, e.g. Gaza or Ukraine.

    I am not saying it surely wouldn't work, but ...

  • by overstay8930 on 8/11/24, 2:35 AM

    i hope that means places like dslreports will come back, such a glorious time to be on the internet in it’s heyday

  • by digbybk on 8/11/24, 11:21 AM

    I was disappointed when I realized that Nextdoor was an even worse place than other social media platforms. In principle it should be like FPF. Is it the moderation or does FPF work because Vermont is so sparsely populated and homogeneous?

  • by rchaud on 8/10/24, 3:02 PM

    > there’s no real-time feed, no like button, no recommendation algorithm and no way to reach audiences beyond your local community.

    This just sounds like a messageboard, of which several still remain and are going strong. Of course trolling and misinformation will be minimal if there's adequate moderation, and the scope of the community is local enough that there's no point for bad actors to create accounts to troll.

    There used to be another one called city-data.com or something like that, but it covered too many cities, and quickly attracted people posting nothing but crime stories and fearmongering.

  • by jijojohnxx on 8/11/24, 5:44 PM

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  • by hasbot on 8/10/24, 12:32 PM

    > Front Porch Forum counts nearly half the state’s adults as active members.

    > While most tech giants view content moderation as a necessary evil, Front Porch Forum treats it as a core function. Twelve of its 30 full-time employees spend their days reading every user post before it’s published, rejecting any that break its rules against personal attacks, misinformation or spam.

    Reading every post!? Rejecting misinformation! How does that work? Say I post some information but I'm wrong. Does the moderator research the topic to determine I'm wrong and then reject the post?

    It's a shame visitors can't view the content to see what the forum is like. Registration requires entering a valid street address.

    It'd be interesting to try something like this in the local neighborhood. It'd take years though to gain traction especially in sleepy neighborhoods where there is nothing much going on.