Designing for the Guest/Host Relationship As Part of A More Prosocial Web

[osteophage]

For those interested in creating a less toxic, more communal, more courteous web, part of that process should involve supporting the guest/host relationship. The guest/host relationship involves a certain set of obligations — obligations of mutual courtesy — that platforms can encourage by granting their users the power of host veto. This may sound counterintuitive for those used to more individualist thinking, since it's easy to imagine hypothetical scenarios where this feature could be used unfairly. Even so, the alternative is worse, and here's why.

Crossposted to Pillowfort and Neocities.

When platforms and software deprive their users of host veto power, they end up creating more leeway for toxicity. Such is the case on Mastodon, as I recently learned from a post by Jamie Zawinski (shared via 32-Bit Cafe), in that Mastodon users have no option to delete problem replies off of their posts. So while individual users may block each other, those nasty replies — whatever form they might take — remain online, at risk of negatively affecting other visitors and even baiting them into a fight. This leaves users powerless to properly fulfill the role of host and do right by their other guests.

To strengthen the guest/host relationship, platforms can empower the host to remove comments from the view of everyone, not just themselves. This feature enables users to look out for each other, and it creates an incentive for guests behave accordingly if they don't want their comments to be removed. In this way, host veto power can support users in encouraging more cooperative, prosocial behavior.

Despite these benefits, the prospect of host veto can raise concerns about people getting overzealous and applying faulty judgement. What if someone deletes something that doesn't deserve to be deleted? What if the original poster, not the commenter, is the one in the wrong? This is an understandable question to ask, since that's a scenario that does happen, but it's not a sufficient reason to remove the feature.

Roughly speaking, there are two types of scenarios to deleting comments: 1) In the scenario that's just a matter of disagreement, a user can go post their thoughts to their own blog instead. This may be socially disappointing, but it's the kind of outcome we can live with. 2) In the scenario where the problem is more exceptionally egregious (such as a post that encourages fractal wood burning), objecting in the comments wouldn't be enough anyway. That kind of scenario is why platforms need hands-on moderation that's willing to employ host veto themselves. Anything less severe can fall back on this general principle:

If two users can't find a way to navigate conflict in a way that is tolerable to them both, then no one is entitled to remain the guest of an unwilling host. In this respect host veto power is similar to the block feature: we can dream up all sorts of scenarios in which a person might use the feature unfairly, but taking it away entirely would still be worse because the worst-case scenario online isn't people refusing to talk to each other; it's people refusing to stop.

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