Not sure where to post this. Perhaps METAR old guard may be interested

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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As a matter of general interest and imho a matter of sadness.

https://shrewdm.com/MB?pid=400497444

This was posted on the alternative forum that was set up by manlobbi, which he built as a so-far successful attempt to continue the web style and format of the original TMF.

He writes: “Unlike what is increasingly becoming almost everywhere now, freedom of speech is unlimited at Shrewd’m. That means you can ------------------- (which I suppose everyone but the author would view as a factually false view) - and the post is staying up”

As much as I want to be able to discuss BRK etc with mungofitch and some others that can only be found over on that forum, and as much as I greatly prefer the old interface of TMF, I don’t want to hang out amongst the sort of people that such a content policy will quickly attract. In my opinion, it’s something to consider thoughtfully before signing up or posting there in future.

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I may happen, but so far there have been thousands of posts over almost a year so “quickly” doesn’t seem to be a correct term.

DB2

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(I’ve decided to remove the specific phrase, because I dislike that particular idea so intensely that I don’t want to repeat it out loud. I’m not Jewish myself, I don’t think any of my friends are Jewish either, but I can’t tolerate that thing at all, and I see more and more of it online every year.

In the last 20 years, I have even seen some small finance web forums literally taken over by organised groups of far right people and used to promote that kind of ideology as well as for ‘recruiting’. e.g. they sign up lots of members, get a few people promoted to moderators, annoy and push out the old moderators, … then anyone coming in on web searches for finance, finds themselves in a forum that normalises that stuff.

In fact, not even four weeks ago, I got a personal invitation to join a large private financial web forum, which disappointingly turned out to be … ‘options trading and hate speech’.

And unfortunately, it’s polluting much of the net. For example, I never saw anything antisemitic typed in a computer game by another player till about 10 years ago, but now I see it almost every day. Horrifying.)

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so “quickly” doesn’t seem to be a correct term.

Today is the first time I’ve noticed shrewdm publicly stating it has such a policy. I think expecting a change of faces by the end of same day is unrealistic.

In the past 20 years I’ve seen web community ‘takeover’ attempts happen over the space of months by organised far right groups, when they find a content policy on a site allows or encourages them to post freely and welcomes or defends their ideologies.

I have also witnessed bizarre attempts by large groups at creating forums where they can publish hate speech openly, where they were using cryptic ‘silly phrases’ to replace common ideological slogans but otherwise ‘just chatting’ to try and recruit and normalise their ideas. (One of the strangest had hundreds of people acting, in-character, the roles of circus clowns.)

FWIW - it turns out, the paradox of tolerance is even an issue for bartenders…

https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/hsiisw/kicking_a_nazi_out_as_soon_as_they_walk_in/

It’s one of those things you spend most of your life thinking ‘come on! surely not!’, then one day you see a group of them actively recruiting and bullying etc :frowning:

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DrBob2, a second point in response to your comment.

It perhaps doesn’t actually matter all that much whether the declared site policy over there does lead to lots of ‘extremely awful people’ migrating there or not.

I sometimes find it helpful to consider online comments by imagining situations set in real life.

Hypothetically - if a person was drinking with friends in a new bar, then the bar owner suddenly stands up on a table and unexpectedly declares they will defend the ‘free speech’ of anyone who wants to spread NZ hate propaganda / NZ myths within THEIR bar, to which a loud cheer of support gets roared by 30 people drinking at tables all around you … [1]

Wouldn’t that person ask themselves: OK… uhh… what kind of a bar is this, exactly?

It’s not the same situation, it’s not identical wording, but it guides my own gut feeling on ‘OK… what just happened?’ and how I should react to it.

[*] current ‘best of’ count on that post, but purely coincidentally. also, NZ = I can’t use the full spelling of that word for 1930s german nationalist - inexplicably, this site is also busily denying the existence of history and reality, albeit in a rather different way.

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(I also welcome guidance as to where this post is best placed, if there is a better place for it. I believe ‘old TMF continuation’ was a major topic on METAR among many long-standing TMF posters, before the move.)

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I am in large part disturbed by the prejudice and worse. BUT as African Americans have found to stand up to it in public is better than to shy away from it.

During WW II the most popular Rabbi in NYC wanted to go to FDR to discuss what was happening to Jews in central Europe. His congregation stopped him. Fearing antisemitism the congregation wanted to not spark outrage in America.

Today Jews or anyone who cares about stopping the bigotry towards others speaks out.

One of the airline corporations in the last 24 hours put out a plea not to video disturbances on aircraft. Saying that people get worse when a camera is taking footage.

That of course is not true. There are African Americans in this country protected by cellphone footage. There are women protected by cellphone coverage as well.

What is true? The airlines face more evidence when things are videoed.

The only solution to racism bigotry and stereotypes is to face those who would harm us. It is very easy to do online.

The bit you wrote about moderators. That is a two-way street. On X I report them endlessly. There are rules besides free speech being all-encompassing. Besides the same sociopaths want to be on FB and IG. I got after them about 30 minutes per day.

I politick on SM as well. I actually think very successful.

And praise be most of us are now standing up to them on those platforms. The platforms have become a springboard toward a major consensus against such menaces.

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We’re in agreement! It’s essential to not let it just slide for ‘an easy life’. The passivity and conflict-avoidance of an audience is what enables the most dreadful people. (This thread itself is an example of not just ‘letting it slide’).

I currently spend about 2-3 hours of my own time in the average week writing brief evidenced written reports for instances of racial hatred, gender hatred, antisemitism, trans hatred, sexual harrassment, and other forms of harrassment / general bullying that I see while playing online multiplayer games.

Most game companies run a 3 strike system, ‘formal warning and chat ban for a few days, chat ban for a month + loss of in-game awards, finally, account ban’ and will almost always follow up on an evidenced report and hand out punishments in-game.

I would guess in a typical year I manage to get in-game punishments doled out to maybe 500 of the most horrifyingly spiteful, toxic bullies I encounter while online gaming.

Keep in mind that those people spend $$$ on these games to buy features for their accounts, and it’s also how they hang out with their friends. Being firmly told ‘NO’ by the system and put in the sin bin for a few weeks does seem to have an decent effect on moderating people’s online behaviour.

When players get punished by in-game systems, they usually get presented with a copy of the game chat records showing them how they were behaving at the time to other people, and what exactly broke the rules and earned punishment.

Before reporting people, I also spend time chatting in the game trying to engage with these folk socratically and investigate why they’re angry and wanting to lash out at whole groups of other people, suggest other ways they can deal with their problems in life besides passing it on with bullying and hate. If they’re having a difficult game, maybe point out some things they’re doing well in their gameplay, suggest they relax and try to have fun and not spoil the game for other people when they get a bad game.

7/10 times, that results in a massive 5-10 minute torrent of the most vile racist/sexist/antisemitic crap you can imagine, trying to ‘show off’ just how bad they can be ‘without punishment’, which often seals the fate for their account permanently taking them straight to strike 3.

2/10 times, they apologise and admit they were just being a …

1/10 times they assume I am a woman and start trying to chat me up. :frowning:

I also try to contact any players that were bullied during or after the game, and reassure them that the gaming community they’re in won’t tolerate them being verbally abused or hated, and that the bad guys are going to get punished.

Separately, I also spend a few hours a week calling out and reporting similar stuff on various internet forums. However I find it is much, much harder to get admins/site operators to do anything about hate speech in chat forums unless it’s really appalling and obvious.

So, I’m with you all the way when you say we’ve got to face down the bad guys.

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Also, I forgot to add - my respect to you for fighting against hate speech on a daily basis.

It’s really easy to get worn out by it too, because the worst people are just so relentlessly nasty, every single day, and they do not like hearing ‘please stop’. :neutral_face:

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I do not debate them. adding by not debating them it feels to them the system shuts them down when I report them. I work on the crowd as they are. Meaning psychologically one person fighting the mob the mob will win. The system fighting one bigot the bigot loses in his own mind. He might object. He might flip. I am not here to care. I am here to crush his intentions with the system and now a lot of other people are speaking up.

I do not know what game(s) you monitor or what game company. I do not need to know. Online mentioning an employer you or at least I need to THEN only represent the employer. Not cool to me, so I do not disclose.

I will ask how many players your games have in total. Is it that small that a bigot dropping out matters? Small might be the wrong word for it but materially how much of a difference does it make?

The other helpful to me question can I use AI for my company to do my monitoring job?

Is your position under threat by AI?

I hope not but have some sense it might be.

adding after your comments on Unity and UE I switched to UE. Thanks.
I have completed 20 small lessons in CPP. I have begun some lessons on UE design. My design is unique but the tools needed are universal. I have done a lot of 3D modeling in Blender. That won’t be a problem.

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I’ve never seen an unmoderated online community that didn’t devolve into a cesspool.

But this might be the exception. Pretty much all of the posters over there are long time TMFers and long BRK owners. TMF would have booted the worst actors years ago, and the remainders mostly just want to talk about stocks. So, might work.

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Reading on the statesmanship of the founding fathers in Hamilton.

It boils down to local politics everything is always not good. Global goals are different.

In that, a moderator has larger goals. The squabbling gets put out if it is outrageous.

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I think 500 people per year (ish) being directly prevented from spreading hate speech in public forums, and some % of them maybe rethinking their approach in life, is a useful and material difference. I don’t need to justify or quantify any outcomes to anyone, for me it’s satisfying to know hundreds of baddies were prevented from doing bad things.

Anyway - the topic and problem this thread is addressing, relates to the ‘NZ pub’ problem. What do you do when a useful finance site has one person setting all the rules, with absolute veto on all aspects of discussion (and on the existence of the site itself), then they suddenly announce out of the blue that they vigorously support NZ myths / hate speech being published there? For me, I think the answer is: I don’t think I want to hang out there now, and I want to raise an alarm for anyone else who may find that kind of thing troubling.

I posted the warning here because of the huge historical overlap of posters and the past discussion in this specific forum of ‘where to go / what to do’ when TMF changed the site style.

The other helpful to me question can I use AI for my company to do my monitoring job? Is your position under threat by AI?

Maybe we can let this thread keep its own topic without being about jobs or AI or whatever. Have you considered asking TMF for a forum for AI in the industries section? It’s surprising there isn’t one already. Other than that, no comment here, but happy to discuss with you on a more appropriate thread.

adding after your comments on Unity and UE I switched to UE

Again probably best if we can keep the thread for its topic, which isn’t unity. Thanks. Happy to discuss with you on the Unity thread on the other board if you post the relevant bit of this comment there. Otherwise, no comment.

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That is horrible.

The press gives it to Elon Musk that way but what Musk is doing is radical free speech. There is a big difference. But it harbors horrible things. I think those who have the bigotted points of view need exposure to those who definitely do not.

That said in your context that is useless. He will throw you out in all likelihood.

I will start a game AI thread on all topics related to that. Thanks.