[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity f...
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Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
Hey HN, I've noticed a huge uptick in the toxicity online in the
last 5-7 years. Before, around 2010-2012, people who disagreed
would usually leave it at that and walk away respectfully. Now, it
seems like everyone treats everything as an argument or debate to
be won at all costs. Even niche sites like HN are not immune. So
how do we fix this? I've heard some talk that upvote systems and
algorithms might be at fault. Do we ditch them and go back to a
literal timeline? Or is this more of a social problem that code
can't solve? Let's hear some input on this, because I can't shake
the feeling that tech isn't totally innocent in this mayhem.
Author : dabockster
Score : 301 points
Date : 2020-01-29 07:27 UTC (2 days ago)
| cjfd wrote:
| There should be boundaries to what is considered respectable
| opinions that exclude both the extreme right and the extreme
| left. If people do not express these off-limits opinions they
| should be considered respectable and treated as such in
| discussions. An example of off-limits extreme right opinion is
| anything promoting racial or ethnic inferiority of one group or
| another. An example of off-limits extreme left opinion would be
| attempts to stake all differences in society on discrimination.
| Anything less extreme than that should be considered fair game in
| the market of ideas. The extreme left and right ideologies have
| cost tens of millions of people their lives in the twentieth
| century and should not be considered respectable. Anything less
| extreme might, depending on the circumstances, actually be a
| solution to some problem that is right now occurring somewhere in
| the world and should at least be considered.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| I was hoping that cannabis legalization was going to mellow
| people out but that seems to be taking longer than anticipated.
| In the absence of widespread cannabis use around the world, I'd
| like to see people getting to know about people unlike themselves
| and discovering everything they have in common. The easiest way
| to destroy an enemy is by becoming a friend.
| tacocataco wrote:
| Start with ending the class war in favor of the 99%.
|
| The .000001% is heavily invested in keeping everyone divided and
| conquered.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I think the only winning move is not to play :/.
| scott_paul wrote:
| It's worse than the Eternal September. It's definitely more toxic
| than it's ever been, and people are definitely more polarized.
| The 2016 election news cycle got a lot of otherwise normal people
| really radicalized and hostile. Sure most of the old-timers among
| us remember, often fondly, the constructive insanity of usenet.
| And the younger generation remembers the torrent of pure id that
| was 4chan in the early days, and 8chan later.
|
| Here's the thing. It's leaking. This stuff used to be contained,
| kept in a little secret segmented-off piece of your world that
| was 'the internet'. Now it's invading your real life, your real-
| world friendships, your workplace, even your family.
|
| Think of the Greater Internet F-ckwad Theory: "Normal Person +
| Anonymity + an Audience => Total F-ckwad". Now run that function
| over the entire populace, map/reduce style. Now take that
| F-ckwad, and remove the Anonymity by requiring them to use their
| real name. And bingo, now you live in Interesting Times.
| aquabeagle wrote:
| _Now take that F-ckwad, and remove the Anonymity by requiring
| them to use their real name. And bingo, now you live in
| Interesting Times._
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/insanepeoplefacebook/ would like to
| disagree.
| ilikepi wrote:
| It used to take some knowledge and effort to fill the Audience
| portion of that equation. The further back in time you go, the
| more was required of you to find and maintain it. Now the
| audience is delivered to you _and everyone else_ via a handy
| little device we all carry around and reflexively stare at
| whenever there 's a pause in our lives.
|
| EDIT: clarity
| fastball wrote:
| I think people are over-emphasizing the anonymity aspect of it.
| If the only think causing someone to behave morally is the idea
| that they are being watched by other people who know who they
| are, then their parents/religion/society has failed them.
| vitaflo wrote:
| >Now it's invading your real life, your real-world friendships,
| your workplace, even your family.
|
| I fully expect in the future for there to be a segment of the
| population that chooses to "drop out" of the always-connected
| digital social life for these reasons. And I don't just mean
| giving up Facebook, but going back to analog social circles
| only, as well as ignoring those who are still connected (and
| hooked) digitally.
|
| I like to compare it to smoking. Imagine everyone got addicted
| to smoking, but you eventually wanted to quit because you
| realize how bad and addicting it is. Even if you quit though
| you'd still be hanging out with other smokers mostly, and
| breathing in that 2nd hand smoke. The only true way out would
| be to both quit and only hang out with non-smokers.
|
| This won't be everyone of course. Like smoking, toxicity and
| polarization are too addictive, but I can see there becoming a
| counterculture that simply rejects all of it altogether.
| mjpuser wrote:
| I don't think we can do anything about it, so why don't you take
| your stupid question and shove it up your loose butthole?
| kgwxd wrote:
| A bunch of personal rules I try to be conscious of, but usually
| break: Respond/listen to ideas, not people. Try for a top-level
| quality comment instead of a reply. If a reply makes better
| sense, don't direct it at the person. Minimize the use of names,
| personal pronouns, partisan terms, adjectives, and adverbs.
|
| It's probably already been attempted, but a forum that had some
| understanding of language structure and could programmatically
| provide some feedback by adding a "Review" step to posting would
| be interesting. The system would have full access to the context
| a post is being made in and checks could be built around it. The
| less checks that are ignored, the better the rank.
| justizin wrote:
| > Before, around 2010-2012, people who disagreed would usually
| leave it at that and walk away respectfully.
|
| Bruh you have clearly never been to usenet lol
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Honestly, I think the large-scale nature of communities is a
| factor.
|
| Moderators now are also more willing to ban accounts that are
| non-spam. Certain views are "harmful" and apparently people
| cannot be asked to _not react_ to seeing things, or even ignore
| people, whether via some tool or just by saying "Oh, it's her
| again, I'll just skip over that." This places pressure upward on
| the moderators to make certain people go away.
|
| Folks love gaming the algorithms to decide what will and will not
| be read and algorithms come into play because of the
| aforementioned large scales. Face it, the Internet runs on ad
| money and that can be tight, so everyone gets the bright idea to
| either let the algorithms do the moderation or to let people who
| have free time on their hands and the motivation to do it.
| Usually the motivation is expressed in some seemingly-altruistic
| manner but it always boils down to pushing their own views.
| Eventually some views become acceptable, others anathema, and you
| get that ghastly distillation where more moderate voices are
| driven off until finally you get a kind of ghost-town.
|
| This is a pretty tough nut to crack from this vantage point.
|
| One of the ways I see out is the admittedly computationally-
| intensive tack of making the algorithms only affect a user's
| _personal_ view rather than making it site-wide. You can still
| run into the echo chamber issue, only in this case it is a bunch
| of people in their own private speech bubbles in one _large_
| chamber.
|
| I've spent a lot of time thinking about this because I have
| watched this sort of thing kill communities for the past thirty
| years now.
| jp555 wrote:
| Sounds like "Naive Realism" -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology...
|
| "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an
| idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" - George
| Carlin.
|
| Funny... but what's even funnier is that EVERYBODY THINKS THIS.
|
| People dont realize that it's not that there are a group of bad
| drivers out there, but that everyone drives badly sometimes. It's
| always different people.
|
| The toxicicity online is similar. There's just a lot more people
| online a lot more hours per day, and everybody is a jerk
| sometimes.
| growlist wrote:
| But this is possibly a kind of a fallacy in itself: it's
| possible that there is bad behaviour out there, and that it's
| associated with one particular group as opposed to another;
| there's points to be scored by pushing a particular position
| online if it influences reality. In my experience on some
| forums, mention anything about Brexit and a flood of anti-
| Brexit comments appears; either there were hundreds of lurkers
| that just happened to be online and spot the comment, or there
| was organisation behind it.
| jp555 wrote:
| There may be groups of bad actors coordinating, maybe. But
| you remind me of this Alan Moore quote:
|
| "The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is
| that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy
| because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is
| that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish
| banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot
| reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The
| truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is
| rudderless."
|
| The more I learn about probability and complexity, as well as
| the lack of general knowledge of ergodicity leading us to
| make fallacious conclusions, the more this rings true.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| Right but like...There are organized movements by
| governments to do horrific things. China is doing it, Nazi
| Germany did it, America has and is and will do it.
|
| Random quotes from counter-culture writers doesn't negate
| that bad actors have coordinated, they weren't bothered by
| sunlight, and when they got enough power they did truly
| horrific things.
| notadev wrote:
| I am basing this on nothing but my own opinion. This has been
| going on for a while. Sometime around 2010-2012 many news sites
| started removing their comment sections. While most people
| thought many of these comment sections were "cancer", it was a
| still way to comment on, add context to, or dispute something
| posted to a news site. The claim was that "trolls" were causing
| too many problems. This was around the same time the definition
| of troll changed to mean anyone who disagreed with the OP or the
| content of a news article.
|
| Once that happened, more and more opinion pieces started to be
| passed around as "news" articles. As opinions are biased, those
| biases got more and more apparent over time. With a lack of a way
| to respond, people turned to Twitter and other services.
|
| Add to that, a continual redefining of what speech is
| "appropriate" and what speech is "problematic". This was a
| further attempt to control the discussion/debate by defining what
| tools could and could not be used when discussing/debating. This
| is seen by many who do not consider themselves "liberal" or
| deeply concerned with social justice issues as another attempt to
| exert power and control the narrative by silencing any
| opposition.
|
| That's where it's all coming from. Toxic, problematic, etc. Are
| just synonyms for those who exert power, namely those few who are
| given a voice...the self-described journalist's, to label stuff
| they don't like. They use other terms like racist, mysoginy,
| Nazi, Alt-right, all synonyms for people who hold ideas contrary
| to their own.
|
| As soon as we have a level playing field online, where all voices
| can be heard, not just blue checkmark, then maybe we'll make
| progress. Until then, things will get so worse and when they have
| the power to do so, these avenues of expression...FB, Twitter,
| will just be more places where you can express yourself freely as
| long as you say what you are allowed to say.
| hughpeters wrote:
| You don't. Instead you teach to identify trolls / toxic
| commenters and ignore them.
|
| Just like bullies, they're a fact of life, and the key to dealing
| with them is to not take them seriously. A bully's goal is to get
| a reaction out of you so to win - don't react.
|
| Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me
| - this applies online and offline.
| netcan wrote:
| There's a Bernard Cornwall book where an Arthurian warrior
| collaborates with the druid Merlin. It takes place in Britain
| during the Saxon invasion period.
|
| At one point Merlin's in a library. We learn that Druid's are not
| allowed to write. Once you write something down, it becomes
| fixed. Fixed on paper. Fixed in your mind. Rigid and
| unalterable... this is not conducive to magic, which cannot work
| under such rigidity.
|
| It reminded me of Socrates & Phaedrus' conversation on reading &
| memory. Words in a book don't work the way words in your head do.
| Reading about a conversation isn't like discussing a topic in
| Socrates' garden. When writing replaces memorisation as a method
| of learning, things are lost as well as gained. The ideas
| themselves change.
|
| It's particularly interesting as Socrates was famous for his
| conversational philosophical methods, where allegory and flexible
| style make the case. His student is famous for his writing, and
| the more precise, detail-oriented, reductive and uhm... platonic
| in his method.
|
| Anyway... the internet has made us all writers. We write whatever
| enters our head. Then it becomes fixed. Then we defend it... like
| cranky old academics defending pet theories they wrote in their
| youth.
| ianai wrote:
| I'd say the fix then is to remove the words. Ie leave social
| media or make it too decentralized to attack.
| ebg13 wrote:
| > _Before, around 2010-2012, people who disagreed would usually
| leave it at that and walk away respectfully._
|
| I don't know what internet you were using, but this does not
| match my experience. The internet has been a dickfighting
| playground since at least the 90s. The biggest difference is that
| comment threads are the majority of how people create content on
| the internet now and they weren't before.
| cr0sh wrote:
| > The biggest difference is that comment threads are the
| majority of how people create content on the internet now and
| they weren't before.
|
| Were you not around for newsgroup flame-wars of the early 90s
| (and probably long before that, if you were among the lucky few
| that had access)...?
| jandrese wrote:
| The term "flamewar" predates all social networks except Usenet.
| It was not an isolated occurrence in the early days of the net.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Not to be pessimist but more realistic of an approach: I do not
| believe there is any way to stop the polarization now; especially
| as any attempt to stop the polarization appears to only increase
| the polarization.
|
| And, well, polarization isn't exactly the end of the world.
| Polarization has occurred throughout human history and is only
| occurring once again, and is a seemingly integral part of the
| human condition.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Based on the way I see some comments on HN voted on in an
| obviously ideologically way, I'm not so sure HN hasn't jumped the
| shark in the same way.
| chestermacwerth wrote:
| The current state of things is result of
|
| (1) Normie-fication of internet. Regular people who aren't
| necessarily enthusiats have a tendency to want or expect the
| internet to mirror their daily life; they're not escaping into
| something better, they're just using internet as extension of
| their normal life.
|
| (2) An obsession with the self. Everything on social platforms
| today is self-promotion. "Showing off," to put it simply.
| Naturally, when the bulk of your internet activity is focused on
| self-promotion rather than pursuing an intellectual interest, you
| are naturally exposed to criticism. Some of that criticism will
| be harsh or inconsiderate, but frankly, that is just to be
| expected and it's always been this way.
|
| In terms of practical, "what can we do," there's only one thing I
| can think of: getting rid of identities. The identity-obsessed,
| self-promotional social platforms will always be doomed. There is
| no way to "make people be nice." There is only a means to control
| the extent to which identity is exposed.
| [deleted]
| zzo38computer wrote:
| Use user-defined kill-files (although if you want to publish them
| you can, in case someone wants to copy and modify for their own
| use, or they might decide not to use it at all if that is their
| preference). Allow anyone to comment and to reply to anyone but
| remember someone might set up a kill-file to hide messages from
| someone who does not want to see your messages (whether or not
| you are an administrator of the service, or police, or whatever).
| We need more freedom of speech, not less. But, freedom of speech
| should not mean to force everyone to listen to you if they do not
| want to listen. (Kill-files could also be based on whatever
| criteria you want, not necessarily only based on the author of
| the message, although that would probably be the most common
| case.)
| ativzzz wrote:
| The answer is heavy handed moderation. You need active moderators
| who discourage toxic comments and commenting patterns, and give
| out punishments to repeat offenders. I don't know the the guys at
| HN do it since there are so few of them, but I like their method
| of leaving a comment why someone's comment is toxic (usually
| against guidelines).
| ionforce wrote:
| More moderation. More value judgements (and actions) need to be
| taken against content that is deemed unsavory. Bans, etc.
|
| Higher barriers of entry. The right to comment and occupy mind
| space is given away too easily. Penalize new accounts, start with
| limited capabilities, disallow short comments, etc.
|
| Highlight exemplary content.
| teleclimber wrote:
| > More moderation.
|
| Agreed. However moderation power is something that needs to be
| considered carefully. I think moderation power should be
| distributed broadly to the users who have shown good
| stewardship of the community via their participation, and not
| to a few chosen individuals.
|
| > Higher barriers of entry.
|
| Yes this is the key. It should take work to occupy mind-space.
| Your first comments should be shown to very few people,
| probably experienced users in the community, and their approval
| or disapproval will determine how much visibility your next
| comments get.
| maxk42 wrote:
| I think the rising sense of division is caused by social
| networking sites that are increasingly interest-based or focused
| on small communities. When every interaction is focused around
| people who already agree with you, it begins to feel like the
| whole world agrees with you on everything. This is a pretty
| pleasant feeling. But then when someone wanders in to your sphere
| with a different point of view, the interactions are vitriolic.
| This is most notable on social networking sites like Twitter
| where you mostly follow / interact with people who agree with
| you, but randos can jump in out of nowhere and stir the pot.
|
| I believe that we, as a society need to engage with one another
| better. Be less quick to judge. Be less quick to mock. Learn to
| get along with people that hold views that are antithetical to
| our own -- just like we have to in the real world. And when
| someone comes in to your community with the explicit intent of
| disruption, simply ignore them.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Sharply curtail the ability of companies to pour money into
| politics. Revoke the "Citizens United" decision that means that
| corporations are "people" whenever it pleases them to be so,
| especially for purposes like pouring a lot of money into a
| reactionary politician who stirs up a lot of hate and makes lots
| of regulatory decisions in the favor of corporations.
|
| Limit how many media outlets any one entity can own. When all the
| news and all the entertainment is owned by a giant inhuman
| corporation whose bottom line is solely profit, they can and will
| act much more in their interest than in the interest of any of
| the individual humans that make up this corporation, never mind
| the humans they provide news and entertainent to.
|
| If you have a shitload of tech money, move the fuck out of
| Expensive Tech City, stop giving your money to landlords, start
| giving it to organizations and politicians who are working to put
| back the barriers to this sort of thing that corporations have
| been relentlessly campaigning against for their entire lifespan.
| If you _run_ a tech company that 's making obscene profits then
| start sinking some of _that_ into that sort of stuff, fuck
| "increasing shareholder value", have your accountants figure out
| creative ways to stiff your VC if you've got that to deal with
| instead of finding creative ways to pay less taxes. Give money to
| unions, unions work to make shit better for every worker, and
| right now part of why people are so easy to stir up is because
| they are broke and afraid of the fact that they are one financial
| crisis away from homelessness/death/etc.
|
| Oh also I guess yeah stop trying to make another goddamn
| Zuckerfortune by relentlessly promoting whatever creates
| "engagement" in your new social media site and not giving two
| shits about the fact that nothing gets people to keep coming back
| to spend time on your hellsite like an intense argument, because
| all you care is how long they're there looking at the ads you've
| parasitized all around their human-to-human communications.
| Social sites are not helping but this shit has been building
| since before "social media" was even a thing anyone said.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Stop responding to it.
|
| No seriously, just stop. This isn't a "complex problem that needs
| nuanced technical and legislative solutions".
|
| Back in the old day, there was this saying. "Do not feed the
| trolls". Sadly, we've forgotten that.
|
| Our current approach is, "create rigorous 30 minute point by
| point take down videos to defeat their point of view". Our urge
| to debate and correct people who are wrong just fuels them making
| more content. A troll needs reactions to survive. Just downvote
| and move along.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Back in the old day, there was this saying. "Do not feed the
| trolls". Sadly, we've forgotten that._
|
| It has never worked. Put yourself in the position of someone
| who is being maliciously harassed by trolls and getting no help
| from anyone else. It's like telling a weak kid that is being
| bullied to just ignore it; the reality is that bullies are
| determined and tend to escalate rather than abandon their
| aggressive behavior. _At best_ they will move on to picking on
| some other weaker person.
| watwut wrote:
| Do not feed the trolls made Kathy Sierra go out of Internet. It
| blames victims for daring not to be silent. It is like telling
| bullied kid to "avoid attackers" or "not be shy" or "do what
| they want".
|
| Ultimately, it rewards trolling behavior.
| ryandvm wrote:
| Absolutely. I'm afraid to admit how long it took me to figure
| out that you shouldn't argue with people that aren't willing to
| change their mind.
| rayuela wrote:
| This is like saying "Just ignore the problem until it goes
| away," which is cute, but very naive. This is a systematic
| problem with huge economic incentives pushing things to the
| extreme. There is massive funding from state and political
| institutions amplifying and promoting extreme political views.
| This is come a long way from some lonely dweeb in his basement
| just looking to get a rise out of someone online.
| naringas wrote:
| hmm, I think that in this particular case ignoring it will
| make it go away.. because in the end, the problem is that
| people pay attention to it.
|
| suppose nobody paid attention to such content in the first
| place, would it really be a problem in that case?
|
| I think the tricky part is that if I ignore it, but no one
| else does, the problem is still there.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Suppose cancer didn't have any negative effects, then
| getting cancer wouldn't be a big deal.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Stop responding is a fools argument. The game has changed a lot
| since the days of your average internet trolls because the line
| between internet and reality has become increasingly blurred.
|
| For example, I don't use Facebook. But my parents do. I've had
| to talk with them on more than one occasion because they would
| get caught reading objectively wrong things spread on Facebook
| by bots. Thankfully my parents trust me enough that I can be an
| authority on those sorts of things, but it's not something I
| can simply ignore. If I were to let it fester, eventually it
| could turn into things like 'vaccines contain brainwashing
| bleach' or 'the government wants to take away your spleen'
| levels of nonsense.
|
| At a certain point it's a good idea to stop platforming people
| like anti-vaxxers but it's also irresponsible to say it's
| possible to just ignore it.
| claytongulick wrote:
| As an intellectual exercise,since you seem so passionate
| about the subject of anti-vaxxers...
|
| Are all vaccines good? If not, who chooses? The government?
| What about when Gov. Rick Perry tried to force the HPV
| vaccine on all teenage girls in TX, even though it was
| suspected he had financial incentive to do so?
|
| Is it ok for the state to force you or your kids to receive a
| medical treatment? Even when there are multiple demonstrated
| cases of drug companies breaking the law and corruption?
|
| My point isn't to fall on either side of the debate.
|
| My point is that it's wrong to silence the debate and to
| label people who are thinking about these things so simply as
| "anti-vaxxers" and dismiss them.
|
| Reality is complex. As soon as you're 100% sure you're right,
| it'll bite you.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| There's no need to lie about your position. I can take a
| look at your post history and immediately see the stances
| you've taken, so please don't try and act like your point
| is to be a neutral arbiter, because it just becomes obvious
| that you're lying. I will gladly stand by my position that
| vaccines are a generally good thing regardless of what
| exceptions or issues you might drudge up, because as
| someone who has had a severe allergic reaction to them in
| the past maintaining herd immunity is important for people
| like me.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I really get why herd immunity is important to you. It's
| not academic to you; instead, it's life and death.
|
| But, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that
| you can't get vaccinated, _because you have adverse
| reactions_. That is, there are greater than zero persons
| who have significant negative effects from vaccinations.
|
| And you would be seriously harmed if the state required -
| forced - vaccinations, at least unless they allowed a
| medical exception.
|
| Look, claytongulick may in fact have an axe to grind.
| That doesn't mean that every point he raised is nonsense.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Except no one when talking about mandatory vaccinations
| is saying people with allergic reactions or medical
| conditions would be forced into being vaccinated.
|
| Creating a massive strawman in attempt to discredit my
| argument does not a good argument make, especially as I'm
| making it from the PoV of someone that has had such an
| experience in the past. I feel no need to engage with
| such a point because it has zero bearing in reality.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Accusing someone who is trying to engage with you in good
| faith of creating strawmen _also_ does not make a good
| argument.
|
| Not everyone who has an allergic reaction to a
| vaccination is going to have medical documentation of
| that. Maybe their parents couldn't afford to take them
| back to the doctor for confirmation. Maybe they couldn't
| take the time off work. That happens, especially among
| the poor.
|
| Or was the "strawman" the idea that people would be
| forced to be vaccinated? claytongulick said that Gov.
| Perry did exactly that; you responded by saying that he
| was lying about his position, but you never actually
| refuted any of his claims. Did Gov. Perry actually force
| people to be vaccinated? If so, that's not a strawman.
| (Requiring people to be vaccinated in order to attend
| school, when there are truancy laws on the books, counts
| as "forced" in my book.)
|
| Look, I'm not an anti-vaxxer. I'm vaccinated, and so are
| my kids. I understand why herd immunity is important -
| especially so for you, but for everyone else, too. But
| when you call your opponents liars, it makes _your side_
| look bad, especially when they say something that at
| least appears reasonable. (At least you called him a liar
| _based on his posting history_ , which gives unbiased
| observers a place to go to evaluate your claim.)
| fzeroracer wrote:
| > Not everyone who has an allergic reaction to a
| vaccination is going to have medical documentation of
| that. Maybe their parents couldn't afford to take them
| back to the doctor for confirmation. Maybe they couldn't
| take the time off work. That happens, especially among
| the poor.
|
| This is what allergy testing is for. If you don't have
| the paperwork, then you can get tested. The fact that
| people don't have time to get tested is an entirely
| separate issue relating to the class stratification in
| the US
|
| And I told you what the strawman was. You were
| insinuating that people with allergies would be forced
| against their will to be vaccinated and risk a deadly
| reaction. You tried to claim that was a reasonable point
| and I disputed that.
|
| And I said exactly what he was lying about. Which was
| that specifically he was claiming to not take any sides
| in this argument, when his post history shows clearly
| that he has taken a stance. That's lying at the minimum
| and gaslighting at worst. Which is also why I have
| trouble believing he came to the table to argue in good
| faith. This is without mentioning his leading sentence.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You claim that 1) they won't have to be vaccinated
| because they can get tested, 2) they don't get tested
| because of class stratification, but 3) you present no
| solution to class stratification. And _then_ you claim
| that it isn 't a reasonable point to say that they would
| be forced to be vaccinated!
|
| You... um... rather failed to put together a coherent
| argument there. Or if you did, I failed to follow it...
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Your argument would be similar to the following.
|
| 1) Some people don't vaccinate because they have to eat
| first.
|
| 2) Because eating is more important than vaccinations, it
| would be inhumane to make vaccinations mandatory.
|
| 3) Ergo, you cannot make vaccinations mandatory until you
| solve world hunger.
|
| At that point why do anything at all? Decision paralysis
| makes things impossible to solve because this arbitrary
| person I made up doesn't have time for anything so you
| have to solve this completely irrelevant issue in order
| to free up time first so that they can then get to the
| point of order.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Yes, vaccines proven effective against the spread of
| disease are good. The current body that judges this is the
| FDA, which is part of the government. The corruption of the
| people administering the vaccine have no bearing on the
| effectiveness of the vaccine. For HPV in particular, it
| looks like we're going to eliminate new infections next
| generation thanks to this, which is unquestionably good.
| I'd have preferred it to be administered to everyone, not
| simply who the government deems worthy. (EDIT: Sorry,
| forgot how medical costs were allocated in the states.)
|
| I don't really think it's inaccurate to label anybody
| against vaccines as "anti-vaccine", since... that's their
| position. If I wanted to be vitrolic and hyperbolic, I'd
| call them "pro-disease", "baby-killers", or "complicit in
| the largest outbreaks of preventable death of children".
| "Anti-vaccine" is merely a summary of the position.
| knowuh wrote:
| 'responding to it' is engagement, and there is a financial
| incentive for that.
|
| So the algos are boosting controversy, to boost engagement, to
| boost financials.
| cjslep wrote:
| Some family members that once said "don't believe what you read
| on the internet" and resistent to the early internet are now
| some of the biggest sharers of hyperpartisan alarmism online.
| CM30 wrote:
| I'd agree in some cases, and disagree in others.
|
| In terms of things like 'fake news' and media outlets peddling
| absolute lies, ignoring it altogether may not be the wisest
| move. Might in those cases be better to calmly deconstruct the
| lies and prove the stories are wrong.
|
| In terms of things like personal attacks, political toxicity on
| Twitter, etc? Ignoring the trolls is 100% the best thing to do.
| The folks that send threats and mock others online want a
| reaction, and the more reactions they'll get, the more the
| person reacting will get targeted by even more of them.
| fredley wrote:
| Part of the problem is that social platforms online are built
| around heavily optimising for engagement. Content that gets
| engagement must be better, so it gets promoted more heavily,
| and algorithms show you personally the content it thinks you're
| most likely to react to. You can't leave because it's messily
| wrapped up with your social connections to your friends.
|
| Until this system dies, we won't solve this problem. It's not
| good enough to instruct people to stop feeding the trolls:
| there are huge troll-feeding dopamine farms feeding and
| nurturing trolls by the millions. Until we shut them down the
| situation will continue to get worse.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| You don't have to leave, although I think most people
| overestimate how much it would hurt their social connections
| if they did. You just have to refuse to engage with toxic
| content when you see it, the same way you avoid debating with
| an obnoxious friend. (Newer social media platforms,
| unsurprisingly, are designed to make this easier; it's much
| easier to avoid dumb arguments on Instagram or Tiktok than
| Facebook or Twitter.)
| fredley wrote:
| It's you against a whole bunch of bright, motivated, and
| very smart people trying to keep you commenting, clicking,
| and getting involved. It's not that easy.
| jfengel wrote:
| Not feeding the trolls is good advice for one's personal
| emotional health, but it has never made the trolls go away.
| There's too much infrastructure supporting them: they know what
| works, and they broadcast to everybody. It only takes one
| response to give them the burst of dopamine they're looking
| for.
|
| Responding makes it worse for you. It gives them a second
| chance aggravate you, this time with more precision. Downvote
| and move along is excellent advice -- especially if you're on a
| platform that helps you filter them out in the future. But
| don't fool yourself into believing that they'll go away, or
| that people aren't listening to their misinformation and
| incorporating it into their belief system -- even if they know
| it's false.
| mmhsieh wrote:
| yes, not feeding the trolls is like "don't respond to spam."
| doesn't really solve either.
| godshatter wrote:
| I'm only responsible for me. These people won't change, no
| matter how eloquently I phrase my fact-filled take-down of
| their arguments. I'll sometimes argue just for the audience,
| but I can't fix everyone that believes something (I think is)
| wrong. It's not my place, anyway. People are slowly becoming
| more "street-wise" on the internet. This is just one of those
| traps people can only avoid after they've learned their
| lesson first-hand.
| kody wrote:
| "Don't feed the trolls" has been my strategy for as long as
| I've been on the web, but what disconcerts me the most these
| days is the doxing and death threats. A reporter can simply
| _retweet a news article_ and instantly be flooded with death
| threats and see their address posted to the web. There 's no
| way I could tell that person "don't feed the trolls". That's a
| real problem with real life consequences, and I have no clue
| how you could begin to solve it, aside from total anonymity.
| epx wrote:
| +1. These days, if someone tries to steer me into some sort of
| polarized political discussion, I give my hourly rate and ask
| to be paid upfront.
| asjw wrote:
| When you stop responding, AKA reacting, you are not solving the
| problem, you are making it worse.
|
| In fact I would say that "don't feed the troll" is the root
| cause of the huge spike in trolling that we have now.
|
| Do not feed the troll meant, from what I understood back then,
| kill it, not let it grow somewhere else where it's protected.
| jandrese wrote:
| Exactly. "Don't feed the troll" means report it to the
| moderator so they can ban them. Letting trolls spew their
| message unopposed is how you lose your community.
| Jaygles wrote:
| I think its a fallacy at this point to assume the people
| pushing toxic or objectively wrong viewpoints are trolls. If it
| ever was 100% trolls, that time has passed and their target
| audience is expanding their work in earnest.
|
| We now have people who 100% believe objectively wrong things
| and have an obsession to spread their belief as fact.
|
| Edit: If there is a solution to this issue, it will depend on
| the ratio of these people who are willing to change their mind.
| A real solution might involve a procedure to move people from
| the more stubborn camp to a more open minded camp.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| >We now have people who 100% believe objectively wrong things
| and have an obsession to spread their belief as fact.
|
| That's not remotely a new thing. Ever since bits could be
| sent over the wire we've had Dale Gribbles trying to spread
| their weirdass conspiracies using the web. Only difference is
| that back then it existed in the form of homemade webpages
| with remarkably bad color theory rather than the poorly
| punctuated social media posts of today.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I think the difference is that it's not fringe obsessives
| but rather everyday people spreading bad info. Stuff like
| QAnon, white nationalism, anti-vax, GamerGate and so on
| might be mostly started and kept well alive by fringe
| obsessives but plenty of normal people are sharing their
| memes, lies and content in an uncritical manner in a way
| that's very different to personal websites. Social networks
| have made it much easier for these lies to be spread and
| repeated whitewashing their true origins and becoming
| accepted.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think it's worth expanding your definitions, eg
|
| trolls: people who say absurd or mean things for lulz fools:
| people who truly believe absurd or mean things because they
| are naive or gullible scammers: people who say absurd or mean
| things for profit, and may present as fools or absurdist
| trolls when challenged
| cameronbrown wrote:
| > We now have people who 100% believe objectively wrong
| things and have an obsession to spread their belief as fact.
|
| There's usually enough truth behind every lie - enough to
| make it compelling enough to believe in. I'm sorry but I
| don't think it's as obvious as you're making it out to be. We
| all probably believe something that's objectively wrong. The
| truth is really in the middle, but all I see is people going
| further towards fringe opinions.
| crmrc114 wrote:
| When someone on the street corner tells you the world is
| ending you ignore them. You dont need a complex technical or
| social solution.
|
| When someone tells me that xyz plant oil cures cancer or the
| earth is flat... I ignore them. If I want to be a troll I may
| play along or challenge them if its fun.
|
| That's the internet. There have always been nutters- they
| just found other nutters to talk with and you get a loud
| feedback loop. You can happily mute them still.
| slg wrote:
| >When someone tells me that xyz plant oil cures cancer... I
| ignore them.
|
| What happens when you see that same person talking to a
| cancer patient trying to sell them plant oil?
| jandrese wrote:
| When you ignore them you tacitly endorse their position.
| Their propaganda is being broadcast uncontested, there will
| be people who believe it. Those people will spread it to
| other people. Pretty soon whooping cough is back and people
| are dying.
|
| The truth can't advocate for itself.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| 'The world _as we know it_ is ending and people like
| crmrc114 are to blame. There s /he goes right now, messing
| up the world _as we know it_!. You know what to do people.
| '
|
| Added _as we know it_ because it 's actually quite easy to
| persuade people that what they like about the world is
| under dire threat, as opposed to the objective existence of
| the planet or life thereon. People's individual worlds tend
| to be quite small and it's easy and socially/politically
| profitable to market to them with threats rather than
| inducements to expansion with all the unpredictability that
| entails.
|
| Now, imagine that you've been identified to or by an angry
| group as the cause of their dissatisfaction. This is a very
| different dynamic from 'someone on a street corner' that
| you can usually safely ignore, and against whom you
| probably feel you could defend yourself if necessary. I
| don't think you'd be so dismissive of nutters in groups if
| you were negatively impacted.
| SolaceQuantum wrote:
| What happens when your child, sibling, friend, parent, or
| lover is saying those things that they got from the
| internet?
| manish_gill wrote:
| The problem is when people with such beliefs acquire
| position of power or influence, which sadly has already
| happened.
| Jaygles wrote:
| I don't think ignoring the nutters is viable. Enough people
| are believing anti-vax lies to start bringing back deadly
| disease which affect more than just themselves. Enough
| people are believing climate change propaganda which is
| slowly harming the habitability of our planet for our human
| race.
|
| What was once contained on the internet is leaking out onto
| the streets and is already affecting you and I in many
| ways.
| pnw_hazor wrote:
| Propaganda has always been there.
|
| During the Golden Age of broadcast TV and Radio (pre-
| internet), the big networks broadcasted plenty of
| unchallenged lies. The difference now is that laymen can
| fact check the content put out by the big players. But
| the price for this is that every troll or nutter has
| access to the some of the same tools to spread their own
| lunacy.
|
| I far prefer the current situation over the previous.
| While it may have felt more comfortable when people
| believed that news readers were telling the truth or
| reporting truth, it never was that way.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| Trolls (either human or bots) are way more dangerous that
| TV propaganda because the act as legitimate actors in the
| public discourse.
|
| It gives them the ability to hide between other people
| and manipulate the conversation.
| claytongulick wrote:
| It's interesting that you mention climate change in this,
| I agree that it's ground zero for demonstrating the
| phenomenon of expressing things as objective truth, or
| fact, that are much more complex than a simple binary.
| roynasser wrote:
| This!!!
|
| There was even a "emoji" of beating a troll back in the days o
| ubb and vbb
| iso1631 wrote:
| We found a lot of lies during the UK election last month. Not
| difference in opinions, not beliefs about whay may or will
| happen, easily proven lies, posted across community forums,
| copied and pasted to other ones, and repeated in an increasing
| cresendo
|
| People then believe those lies, they repeat them, and even if
| they don't those lies sink into their subconcious and change
| their behavior, not necessarily today or tomorrow, but for the
| next 30 years
|
| Ignoring them doesn't fix the problem.
| tengbretson wrote:
| You might find that the people you see posting and repeating
| these lies see the things that you post and repeat as lies.
| watwut wrote:
| In the root, there are people who knowingly lie. Hitler
| knowingly lied. Stalin knowingly lied. Many many people lie
| being fully aware they lie.
|
| The hell, average maanger lies.
| organsnyder wrote:
| And one of the sides has to be right. Sometimes the facts
| are difficult to ascertain, but so many of the lies spread
| via social media are easily disproved by consulting primary
| sources.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Even more than this- the desire to silence and destroy
| those who disagree, sometimes physically.
|
| Some have called this increased polarization.
|
| I see it as a slide towards violent authoritarianism.
| ideonexus wrote:
| > but so many of the lies spread via social media are
| easily disproved by consulting primary sources.
|
| I wish this were true. I used to post snopes links and
| primary sources to Baby Boomer posts on Facebook, but
| it's hopeless. They either don't trust the fact-check,
| can rationalize it away, or just don't care. One of the
| most shocking realizations of my adult life has been
| learning that a very large portion of my otherwise high-
| functioning friends will believe anything, no matter how
| crazy or self-contradictory, if it reinforces their sense
| of self-righteousness.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Oh, no doubt. Easily disproving something is very
| different than _convincing_ someone that it 's disproven.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| And a whole bunch of people that see the minority or
| unpopular opinion as more valid because of it.
| pnako wrote:
| Why exactly should they trust Snopes in particular, as
| opposed to Washington Post, Fox News, RT, the North
| Korean news agency, etc.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| > _And one of the sides has to be right_
|
| Not necessarily. In the US one of our presidents taught
| us a long time ago that "both _may_ be " wrong, and "one
| _must_ be " wrong.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| Perhaps the following is obvious, but other possibilities
| may exist:
|
| - both sides are wrong
|
| - the participants are unwittingly talking past each each
| other
|
| Etc.
| JackFr wrote:
| But the thing is, while facts are objectively true or
| false, a policy choice can't be objectively right. What
| you often see is, policy masquerading as facts.
|
| "If you accept X then we need to do Y."
|
| "I don't think we should do Y"
|
| "Then you reject facts."
|
| Something everyone seems to have forgotten is that
| intelligent, well-informed, people of good will can look
| at the same facts and come up with different policy
| prescriptions.
| claytongulick wrote:
| As I've gotten older, I've started to doubt the idea that
| there are any objective facts at all, or at least if
| there are, the human brain has a limited capacity to
| comprehend and communicate them.
|
| (Edit) This doesn't mean I don't believe in truth,
| right/wrong etc... it means that I'm constantly balancing
| what's _most likely to be trueish_ - subject to higher
| quality information at a later time.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _a policy choice can 't be objectively right_
|
| A policy choice is the linkage of a fact to a particular
| goal; while few policy choices are so simple as to admit
| of a binary choice, you can certainly rank them on a
| gradient.
|
| Of course, it helps if your goal is clearly definable and
| you maintain awareness of consistency. Otherwise, a goal
| of, say, improving life expectancy might be satisfied by
| a eugenics policy which made unpersons of those with
| medical conditions that would lower life expectancy.
| JackFr wrote:
| But a goal cannot objectively be right or wrong. It
| _could_ be agreed upon, but it can never be true in the
| sense that objective facts are true.
|
| To go even further, people may agree on the 'what' of a
| goal, but disagree on the 'why' of a goal, which very
| much inform what policy choices they are amenable.
| gbrown wrote:
| They frequently do see things in that way - and they're
| wrong. In fact, they're worse than wrong, because many
| people see the dueling assertions of fact and give up on
| knowing the truth of a situation altogether. This is a
| classic disinformation technique.
|
| We do have the ability to determine truth from fiction, it
| just takes more work than cynically throwing up your hands
| and smugly concluding all sides are lying.
| tengbretson wrote:
| I definitely wasn't cynically throwing up my hands and
| smugly concluding all sides are lying. All I intended to
| do was demonstrate how cheap it is to call someone a liar
| on the internet. It costs nothing to the reputations of
| you or your "lying friend" to call one another a liar and
| thats why it doesn't mean anything. The sooner people
| realize this the better off we'll be.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| My prediction is that this is what will, in the end,
| change; technology will advance far enough to severely
| de-anonymize online interaction, at which point one's
| reputation again comes into play and people will find
| there are consequences for thoughtless shitposting.
|
| It has begun to happen, with phenomena such as people
| being fired for Facebook or Twitter posts. It doesn't
| seem impossible to tie a sufficiently-advanced pattern-
| recognition network to the firehoses of data on YouTube,
| Facebook, Twitter, et. al to automatically tie together
| the scraps of personal info people accidentally leave
| behind and severely compromise online anonymity.
|
| Be interesting if it happens.
| tengbretson wrote:
| Economically I think this will be huge. Reputation based
| economies are incredibly more efficient than regulatory
| ones. Theres no amount of regulatory compliance that can
| tell consumers the information they want in the way a 2
| star average uber driver review does.
|
| On the social side I can't even imagine how destructive
| it could be. People (especially on HN) love to lament how
| restrictive and oppressing the "everyone knows everyone"
| small town life can be. So now that we have the anonymity
| online we can escape to, we've all turned around and
| started building the biggest "small town" imaginable! One
| with no escape.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Exactly. Mostly because we've discovered that the small
| town is oppressive, but the Wild West is full of
| gangsters. ;)
| gbrown wrote:
| > I definitely wasn't cynically throwing up my hands and
| smugly concluding all sides are lying.
|
| Apologies, I didn't mean to insinuate that you were. My
| point was that this is the usual (and often intended)
| consequence of your argument, as I understood it and have
| seen it in the world.
|
| Calling someone a liar doesn't help by itself, but if we
| can bring clear and irrefutable evidence to a discussion,
| I think we can reasonably reject outright incorrect
| views.
| makomk wrote:
| They're not necessarily wrong. For example, one of the
| big anti-Brexit talking points beloved of both Corbyn and
| social media users before the election was that a trade
| deal with the US would mean maggots in orange juice. This
| also, as I recall, became part of the narrative about
| Brexit supporters being mislead, with the line being that
| they were sold all those false dreams and would get
| maggots instead. It was a complete and utter lie:
| https://fullfact.org/health/maggot-orange-juice-USA/
|
| And I really do mean a complete lie. This wasn't a
| dispute over creative redefinitions of terms like Boris'
| NHS funding claims, or some nitpick about a minor detail.
| Corbyn and a worryingly large chunk of the press took an
| example of US food safety regulations being unambiguously
| stricter than EU ones - of them placing all the same
| restrictions on food manufacturers that the EU does, plus
| more - and falsely claimed their regulations were weaker
| instead, using graphic, emotive, memorable language, and
| everyone believed and repeated this total inversion of
| the truth.
|
| The thing that gets me is that on some level, people
| must've known that US food isn't really unsafe. There's
| not some big movement of people who refuse to eat US food
| - by and large, everyone trusts food there as much as
| they would food here. The other thing is that despite
| this pretty much the entire press dropped the ball on
| this lie. (It is not even close to the only prominent
| anti-Brexit or anti-Tory lie they left unchallenged or
| outright made themselves.) Even Full Fact did initially -
| they actually helped spread the false claim themselves,
| and only came back to it a month or so later after it had
| spread across the internet multiple times and been used
| by Corbyn repeatedly in his campaigning.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > We do have the ability to determine truth from fiction,
| it just takes more work than cynically throwing up your
| hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying.
|
| It also takes more work than "But I'm right!"
|
| If you've done the research, if you know that you're
| correct, it's one thing. (Even then, not everyone who is
| incorrect is lying.) But it's a real temptation to say
| "I'm right, they're wrong, they're lying" when you
| haven't actually done the work to be sure you're right.
|
| I am prone to that temptation. You almost certainly are,
| too. So be careful. _You_ can be the one in the wrong.
| gbrown wrote:
| I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I often
| find myself in situations where I have gone out and tried
| carefully to understand what's true. When you've done the
| research, it's very frustrating to be confronted with
| exactly what you're describing.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Sure. But even then, knowing that in other circumstances
| it can be you behaving that way can give a bit more
| empathy for the other person. That doesn't make it less
| frustrating, but it may help you handle it a bit more
| gracefully.
| etangent wrote:
| The desire to "correct" other people who are wrong is the
| fundamental impulse of authoritarianism.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, the desire to correct other people who are wrong is
| the fundamental impulse of pedantry.
|
| The desire to compel others to conform to one's ideal of
| correctness is the fundamental impulse of
| authoritarianism.
|
| ...but also libertarianism, for a particular aspect of
| correctness.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Huh? Can you explain?
|
| My understanding is that the core value / principle of
| libertarianism is individual liberty.
|
| How do you derive compelling others from that?
| Jamwinner wrote:
| Yeah, I agreed until his comment went off the rails
| there. I have noticed a movement to try to brand libs as
| 'crypto-republicans' recently for whatever reason. Its
| okay, and rational to not only think along 2 (or 3 or 5)
| party lines.
| mmhsieh wrote:
| also puritanism
| mwcampbell wrote:
| > The desire to "correct" other people who are wrong is
| the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism.
|
| Maybe, but it's also the impulse of people who rightly
| care about the future of our shared world.
| throwaway8879 wrote:
| Rightly according to your subjective experience.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Furthermore, it is rationalism which exists as the first
| non religious justification of hierarchy. Read Plato.
| luckylion wrote:
| "People are lying" - "They'd say that you are lying" -
| "BUT I AM RIGHT".
|
| That's not rationalism, that's just saying "I'm right,
| they are wrong, end of discussion".
| gbrown wrote:
| That's because this conversation is occurring in the
| abstract - surely you can think of examples which don't
| fall into your supposed pattern (flat earth, pizza
| parlors, etc.)
| luckylion wrote:
| But those are super edge cases, the vast super majority
| of things aren't clear cut at all. "Is that policy going
| to increase employment? Will it depress wages, and by how
| much?"
|
| Good luck with judging who's right and who's wrong.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| These "super edge cases" are happening _monthly_. THAT 's
| the problem. The examples given weren't a historical
| review, they're a sampling of what happened in 2019! If
| these were in any way rare or outside the norm, I'd feel
| safe ignoring them, but even in cases of absolute truth
| and fact (jade in your vagina does not cure anything) we
| get a _netflix series_.
| luckylion wrote:
| > These "super edge cases" are happening monthly.
|
| Yes, in a world with literally billions of people, you
| have a few millions who believe outlandish things. If
| that was the extent of the problem with
| polarization/toxicity on the internet (or public debate
| in general), I doubt we'd talk about it, and I'd be very
| happy with the state of the world.
|
| Those people have no large base, no stable membership, no
| money, no power. Focusing on them is like decrying the
| fall of science because 6yo Timmy still believes in Santa
| Clause.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| You say "millions of people believe foolish things", and
| then completely disregard exactly how many there are and
| how concentrated they become. I disagree with the
| assertions at the end that "a few million" do not
| constitute a large following, and allow me to provide a
| few counterexamples:
|
| * the Flat Earth Society has a very stable membership and
| patreon. Mark Sagent's youtube channel alone has 58k
| subscribers. Social media influence is the source of
| money, and a power all on its own. * Gweneth Paltrow's
| pseudoscience has a facebook group with 500k members. She
| has a netflix series and a reliable income from her
| online storefront. The facebook group came first, then
| the netflix series. * QAnon is a persistent conspiracy
| theory with no basis in fact. Regardless, tripcodes (a
| public hash of the password used for identity
| verification on 4chan) denote a persistent online
| identity, so he's got a following... and the following is
| what _causes_ power.
|
| Power in its purest form is asking someone for something
| and getting it. This looks different in the modern age
| than it did previously, but saying that celebrities don't
| have power belies the entire concept. These are
| celebrities, either advocating obviously false things, or
| _due to their advocation_ of obviously false things, and
| millions of people are taken in.
|
| In contrast, the expected Iowa caucus turnout numbers are
| going to be around 60,000. Or, in other words: There are
| more people believing in flat earth than there are
| democrats caucasing in Iowa. How in the world is this not
| a problem.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Or, in other words: There are more people believing in
| flat earth than there are democrats caucasing in Iowa.
| How in the world is this not a problem.
|
| I mean, isn't the answer already in these sentences? The
| world vs Iowa.
|
| It's not that I don't believe pseudoscience and cults are
| a problem, it's just that they are a small problem on the
| grand scheme of things. Increasing polarization of
| society at large is a problem on a different scale. It's
| something that has very tangible effects for most people,
| some guy believing that the earth is flat and having 60k
| people watch his videos really doesn't.
| [deleted]
| gbrown wrote:
| So... would you consider that an argument against the
| sanctions levied against, for example, doctors who lie
| and fake data to stoke fears about vaccines and autism?
| What about fighting against conspiracy theories about the
| deep state and pizza parlors?
|
| There's a tendency to wishfully think that people are
| rational and should be expected to sort out their own
| information environment with no governmental influence
| whatsoever, but I don't buy it at all. We're predictably
| manipulable, emotional creatures, and we can decide
| rationally to improve our information environment without
| falling into your implicit slippery slope.
| iso1631 wrote:
| The biggest problem from the last 10 years is the spread of
| "everyone's entitled to an opinion". It seems that
| objective truth no longer exists in the eyes of the
| population.
|
| This is both a cause and a consequence of the defunding of
| journalism and the change of the profession from news to
| views.
| antepodius wrote:
| That's not a novel phrase, and it's also at least
| partially a peace treaty between worldviews with
| fundamental differences.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Isn't everyone entitled to an opinion though? What you're
| hitting on, I think, is that the so-called "toxicity" of
| the internet is just broad disintermediation. Previously,
| a few people controlled the public narrative. Now,
| everyone does. Turns out most people don't very much like
| the worldview that the media elite pushes.
|
| Journalism is dying because it's become not only useless
| as a means of information dissemination --- new media is
| better at that --- but also because journalists have
| become contemptuous of the public. They have only
| themselves to blame.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Erm... defunding journalism by who?
|
| Private funding is making the situation worse.
|
| Public funding is the instrument of authoritarian
| regimes- state sponsored media.
|
| I think the root cause is lack of objective, critical
| thinking skills, and the glorification of "how it makes
| you feel" being more important than "is this reasonable".
|
| I.e. emotion driving reason, rather than reason driving
| emotion.
| iso1631 wrote:
| By society. We don't want to fund people to separate fact
| from fiction, yet we lack the time and ability as a
| population to do it ourselves, so we latch onto outlets
| (especially celebrities) that seem to match our world
| view, and we treat what they say as gospel.
| lukifer wrote:
| I think the vast majority of humans are simply
| disinterested in objective truth, except to the extent
| it's actionable in our day-to-day lives; otherwise, our
| sense-making is driven largely by the utility of social
| signaling: https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/
|
| See also: Donald Hoffman's experiments in truth-
| maximizing vs. fitness-maximizing:
| https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25450
| [deleted]
| xiphias2 wrote:
| The problem with lies in politics for me is that every
| politician needs to do them to stay competitive. Also every
| party has politicians with different objectives, which makes
| things even harder. Also a good leader should be well
| compensated, at the same time people are envious of
| politicians who make a lot of money legally, which makes
| corruption for politicians necessary.
|
| The only improvement I see is decentralization, which is a
| very slow, but powerful process. The Gutemberg printing press
| showed that it is possible, and Bitcoin is doing the same
| thing right now, but I think superior technology for
| organizing people and resources is the only solution.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I don't know if ignoring lies is necessarily a problem.
| Because what are the realistic chances that anyone responding
| to non factual information, is responding with factual
| information? Probably pretty low on the net if we're being
| honest.
|
| That said, yes, we absolutely cannot ignore the toxicity in
| its entirety. Ignoring it entirely is how little old ladies
| at church bible studies wind up dead. There are certainly
| classes of toxicity that it's just military sense not to
| ignore. Religious and ethnic extremism, etc. Basically
| anything that is going to cause issues with physical
| violence. To my mind, violence is the line.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I have trouble seeing responding as much of a fix, although
| it depends a bit on the platform. On Reddit, Facebook, and
| the like, there is a pattern where you have highly
| upvoted/liked posts, where the top comment is about how the
| thing is obviously wrong.
|
| Most people just glance at headlines, image, or whatever, and
| don't read articles or examine comments. Those comments about
| it being wrong only help inform the subset of people who
| bother to look at comments.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > Ignoring them doesn't fix the problem.
|
| "The problem". What problem are we talking about again here?
| Is the problem that people are believing wrong things, or the
| spread of polarization and toxicity?
|
| I don't care if people believe "wrong things". How's that old
| song go? "All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants
| to hear, and disregards the rest"? People will always believe
| whatever they want to, regardless of "evidence", regardless
| of history, regardless of persuasion. "Post-truth" society is
| such a ludicrous term. There was never a "truth society" to
| begin with. Never. If someone doesn't want to change their
| mind, you're tilting at windmills. __Doubly so if this person
| is an anonymous account. __
|
| What I care about is stopping the spread of toxic and
| divisive stereotypes.
|
| Look at the front page of Reddit. Every other post is a
| screenshot of an outrageous anonymous tweet, or a picture of
| a receipt with a nasty note on it, or a text message
| conversation. Look at how the public receives this: "Who
| cares if it's real or fake? The point is that it reinforces
| my stereotype of 'them'. We know 'they' exist, and we must do
| something about 'them'."
|
| That's what's driving polarization and toxicity. The urge to
| respond with outrage to anonymous trolls. This is a problem
| we can fix by down voting and moving on.
| TheFiend7 wrote:
| Honestly that's somewhat nonsense. People don't just
| believe whatever they want to believe, education and
| diffusion of information has radically changed humanity
| over the last few centuries and you're fooling yourself if
| you think that somehow improved communication and
| discussions didn't drive that. Schools have improved
| reading and mathematical literacy of the general
| population, that isn't just some made up statistic.
|
| Humans are incredibly social beings, they hide in each
| other, as well as grow in each other. People absolutely can
| and do change their minds on all sorts of things every
| single day, and it's a "throw my hands up in the air and
| quit" to say otherwise.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Yes... and also no.
|
| Yes, people change their minds. But the more passionately
| they care about something, the less likely they are to
| change their minds about it. On the big questions that
| people care deeply about (politics, religion, vi vs.
| emacs), evidence doesn't seem to change peoples' ideas
| nearly as much as it should.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| > I don't care if people believe "wrong things".
|
| But those beliefs lead to actions, which have negative
| consequences, which can affect us all.
| banads wrote:
| Indeed, but attacking that with anger, outrage, and witch
| hunts rather than tact is not only ineffective, it may
| even create a positive feedback loop.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Actually, it is rather effective. Your immune system
| doesn't rely on tact once a particular foreign body
| proves to be hostile or dangerous; rather tt initiates
| inflammation and countermeasures.
| banads wrote:
| We must be careful when using microbiological metaphors
| to propose solutions for macro social problems; such
| language has often been used to justify genocide (i.e.:
| "hygenic cleansing of parasites"). Besides, what we're
| talking about here is more akin to autoimmune
| disfunction, and not healthy immune function.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Besides, what we 're talking about here is more akin to
| autoimmune disfunction, and not healthy immune function._
|
| No it isn't. Responding to toxicity or an external insult
| is precisely what the immune system does. An autoimmune
| disorder would be an activation of the immune system
| against some other bodily system that is healthy and
| functioning.
| banads wrote:
| An autoimmune disease is a condition arising from an
| abnormal immune response to a normal body part. People
| having different opinions is normal.
| loopz wrote:
| What's new is the political Echochambers.
|
| Stop feeding partisan BS. You are not Left nor Right!
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Even those have been around on the internet since the dawn of
| the internet.
| claytongulick wrote:
| And the Roman empire.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Completely off topic, but I _love_ your HN handle!
| Animats wrote:
| _" Stop responding to it."_
|
| Then they win elections.
| forgottenpass wrote:
| Stolen from reddit
| https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastpsychiatrist/comments/70rbuu...:
|
| > ten years ago Steve 'Asshole' Jobs played a hilarious prank on
| all the digitally-illiterate 20th century luddites by pick-
| pocketing their ol' trust, reliable telephones and replaced them
| with computers instead. Tee-hee! Let's see if they notice the
| difference! And then he promptly died.
|
| > The result, we see today, is a stratified understanding of "the
| internet".
|
| > One level consists of everyone who really knows what the
| internet is. The internet's early adopters were a bunch of nerdy
| white males out of touch with society, guilty as charged.
| Annoying athiests and such. The thing is that this group (which I
| count myself among) knows how communities online function because
| they've been part of them for decades. They've lived the
| lifecycle of growth and collapse of forums (platforms) again and
| again. They see how technology brings people together, but not
| the people in their immediate life. Rather, safely brings
| anonymous groups of people who hide behind pseudonyms and avatars
| together through common interest and lively discussion and
| debate. [...] They see the new digital medium for what it is:
| connections between individual users spread across many different
| forums and platforms which are ever-changing, rising and falling.
| friends/strangers/communities first, platforms/sites second.
|
| > Another level, the social media level, is what Fruit Juice Jobs
| foisted onto the unsuspecting public who now think they
| understand current technology and the state of the art of digital
| communications. Of course, they don't. They are sold a bill of
| goods and put all their identities into profiles which are used
| to sell them shit. And of course now they are vulnerable to a)
| people who spend hours arguing on the internet and tearing
| stranger's ideas apart (me right now) and b) actual trolls who
| love exploiting psychological vulnurabilites to make their
| victims squirm and squee and cry and through tantrums for the
| sake of drama (4chan, etc.). This decade-young group has no
| experience in what the internet actually and take no personal
| responsibility for their own online safety. For instance, they
| assume or act like a) Twitter will be around forever and
| b)Twitter can just block the bad guys and create a peaceful,
| harmonious online community. They cede all personal
| responsibility to a corporate hiearchy, like they were customers
| in a fast-food joint demanding to speak to a manager or some
| shit. They see and use the old medium in the new one, as McLuhan
| would say. Like how every town they visit has the same half-dozen
| franchises, their internet consists of the same top-5 "apps" and
| Google. Platforms and friends first, strangers/communities
| second.
| jf22 wrote:
| > Before, around 2010-2012
|
| Eh, people were being jerks to each other on usenets and bbs's
| way before this.
|
| Godwin's law is 30 years old at this point.
| themagician wrote:
| Make it harder to use, like it was.
|
| Doing things on the internet used to be harder. It used to be a
| network of loosely interconnected websites. You wanted to have a
| voice you made a website. You wanted to talk to others you joined
| a chat room or newsgroup or message board.
|
| Then we invented comments. Now we have apps with SSO. You don't
| even need to make a username anymore. The entirety of the
| internet congealed into 50 or so web properties.
|
| Slashdot is still around. It's relatively hard to use. Their
| moderation system brutally punishes trolls and rewards good
| behavior. It also allows for jokes and sarcasm.
| krick wrote:
| There is nothing to fix, except for the attitude of those who
| think there is something to be fixed, because essentially it's
| they who demand something unreasonable: censoring of the free
| speech. It is unreasonable, because that assumes somebody (the
| person or group, who "fixes" the problem) can and must decide,
| what is good and bad in regards of what you are saying. And
| unless this person is you, you always will be dissatisfied with
| the results to say the least.
|
| Instead, you should try to accept the truth: free speech is ugly,
| deal with it. There always are _some_ people, who are nice, but
| _all people_ are never nice. A lot of different people with
| different opinions freely voicing their opinions in the public
| space will always be ugly.
|
| Ok, now let's assume you don't care and get to actually answering
| your question. In order to remove "ugly" you need to remove some
| of the elements:
|
| 1. Different opinions. People with different opinions are removed
| from society, everybody in the community must be as similar as
| possible. There are multiple ways to achieve that to multiple
| degrees, but the key is closed communities, since banning faster
| than they appear (or find a way to return, which is relevant for
| the web) is a hard work.
|
| 2. Freely voicing them. Again, multiple ways: good old moderation
| of the content, make everybody have a stake in what they are
| saying (reputation systems, goods exchange, game mechanics
| enforcing cooperation), etc.
|
| 3. Public space. Move all discussions to PM, so they still argue,
| but you don't see it and feel good about yourself and your
| platform.
|
| 4. Speech. Just don't let people communicate. Easiest to achieve
| on a given platform, and the most effective.
| TomMckenny wrote:
| Does free speech include yelling down other speakers? In the
| physical world this rarely happens. But spamming and
| vandalizing an intelligent conversation with sock-puppets and
| intentionally disingenuous posts is trivial and universal on
| the web.
|
| Consider a parallel phenomenon: I notice there is outrage among
| gamers when cheating happens. But ironically cheating in
| conversation causes less active outrage. Both of these
| behaviors happen easily on the web but are difficult in real
| life. Maybe because conversation destroying behavior is less
| well understood or more stealthy. Maybe because it's so
| unimaginable in real life, people aren't used to dealing with
| it. Whatever the cause it's absurd that for games the problem
| is solved more zealously than in conversations that have
| serious impact.
| krick wrote:
| Because in the "physical world" rarely anybody speaks freely,
| they always restrain themselves being afraid of
| reprecussions.
| freehunter wrote:
| There definitely is something to fix, and it has nothing to do
| with free speech. Something about text communications makes
| people much more aggressive than they would be face to face.
| People wouldn't say half the things they say online if they had
| to say them out loud.
|
| PM, public forum, real names on Facebook, it doesn't matter.
| Something inherent to text communications makes people more
| toxic than they would be in person. It's not a free speech
| issue.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's simple; there are few-to-no costs for doing so (at
| worst, getting banned and making a new account), but the
| emotional benefit of upsetting someone else, while
| attenuated, still deliver significant satisfaction to those
| who seek it.
|
| For simple trolls (as opposed to political actors), the
| dynamic is simple to model; you spend time and some effort to
| create accounts and say antagonistic things while people
| respond with abuse (to which the troll feels immune), and
| then harvest (via screenshots) examples of the saltiest tears
| for sharing with ones troll peers for lulz in other forums.
|
| People do the exact same thing in real life, but it's more
| time-consuming and expensive to establish and maintain
| physical groups, both in economic terms and direct costs
| (legal or physical sanctions).
| awb wrote:
| > Something about text communications makes people much more
| aggressive than they would be face to face. People wouldn't
| say half the things they say online if they had to say them
| out loud.
|
| I do think you have a point, but also remember how public
| hate can be: slavery, segregation, genocide, Inquisition,
| witch trials, terrorism, violent crime, etc.
|
| Unfortunately, humans have a history of willingly and
| publicly spreading hate without hiding behind text.
|
| This is a huge topic with many possible solutions, but one
| option is to choose how we respond to it and how we let it
| affect us. Just knowing that someone might be more aggressive
| through text than in person might help to dampen the impact
| we let text have on us.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Alternatively: culture. If people just feel that proving how
| evil arbitrary strangers are is just _not done_ , they just
| won't decide to have such arguments in the first place, and if
| they disagree they'll tend to do so civilly, and so will be
| more inclined to listen to their opponents.
|
| So long as a community doesn't grow too quickly, culture is
| mostly conserved. Ideals of tolerance and productive discussion
| would probably help, too, but ask a sociologist.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _It is unreasonable, because that assumes somebody (the person
| or group, who "fixes" the problem) can and must decide, what is
| good and bad in regards of what you are saying._
|
| That is a wholly reasonable assumption; it's the same one that
| underlies courts and jury trials.
| pid_0 wrote:
| I think its a few things:
|
| 1) Anonymity when its not useful. Many forums are relatively
| anonymous to the average user but most of the time its not
| useful. Theres no life or death situation on reddit. Sometimes,
| it can be useful, but most of the time its not. People post a lot
| of stuff they would never say in the real world because they have
| no responsibility to back it up or be associated with it. Just
| look at what they say on T_D
|
| 2) There are objectively a lot of instances of "censorship" of
| "wrongthink". There just is. Not all opinions are good,
| important, etc, but the more you shut them down, the more people
| will intentionally become toxic. This is especially made worse by
| point 1.
|
| 3) Radical moderation of communities. User moderated areas like
| reddit are shaped by the mods. T_D is largely the way it is due
| to rabid people shaping what is and is not allowed. Same with
| twitter.
| livueta wrote:
| I think at this point in time the "anonymity makes people
| assholes" argument is pretty dead - look no further than
| Facebook during the 2016 election for a fantastic example of
| real names and faces being exactly zero inhibition to every
| sort of nasty behavior imaginable. Attacks on anonymity as an
| inherently flawed concept, only useful in specific niches like
| dissidents and reporters and inimical to quality discourse,
| should be ignored like the Facebook "one authentic self"
| gaslighting propoganda they are.
|
| You also imply that anonymity is somehow "not useful" except in
| cases of extreme threats to life or liberty at the same time
| you conflate pseudoanonymity and anonymity on Reddit. If
| anything, Reddit is a great example of how _insufficient_
| anonymity can lead to evaporitively-cooled echo-chambers in
| short order: karma and rep, coupled with persistent identities,
| are powerful drivers of conformism.
|
| Why, then, you ask, is HN not quite as bad when it is also
| pseudoanonymous? I'd say it comes down to local culture. HN
| isn't as monolithic as it could be because at least some users
| disagree with expressing disagreement via downvote as long as a
| point is made in good faith. Similarly, some (almost entirely
| anonymous) chan boards were actually really good in terms of
| quality discourse, while others were shitholes. The
| differentiating factor is the attitude of the community and its
| moderation philosophy, rather than some simple "how anonymous
| is this site" bucketing.
|
| That's why I'm convinced that a lot of the problems with modern
| social media are the result of the creation of an environment
| where developing that type of site/board culture that can
| foster discourse is impossible: if you take a global platform
| where moderation is often outsourced and totally divided from
| any of the communities it theoretically serves and populate it
| with people who've not been exposed to the sort of behavioral
| norms common in earlier Internet communities, you end up with
| no norms at all - just an infinite vista of shitposting.
|
| If anything, I'd disagree with your third point even more
| strongly than your first: even though community-local
| moderation can exacerbate echo-chamber effects, it can also
| foster productive cultures. In other words, community-driven
| moderation is necessary but not sufficient for establishing
| worthwhile norms. Even if the ratio is 10 T_D:1 HN, I'll still
| take that over the global, no-holds-barred shitfight enabled by
| platforms like Twitter.
| yters wrote:
| Let's argue in a polarized, toxic manner about the polarization
| and toxicity of the web!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| While driving the marginal cost of communication to zero would
| seem to bring people together, what it really does is bring
| _similar_ people together but also exposes significant
| differences between people.
|
| The essential reason for the toxicity is the contestation of
| online spaces, which are virtual territory over which proxy wars
| can be fought as a low-cost substitute for physical violence
| (although there is a direct nexus to physical violence, and the
| threat thereof, by both individual and state actors, is a factor
| in the aforementioned contestation.
|
| There are 3 basic approaches to encroaching toxicity:
| a. ignore it aka 'don't feed the trolls. b. implement
| technical solutions to manage it. c. Fight it aka flame
| wars.
|
| Ignoring it doesn't work. It just tells the most vulnerable
| members of a community that they don't matter and that if they
| are repeatedly harassed other community members will sympathize
| but not really do anything to help.
|
| Technical solutions originate with the California preference for
| systems thinking, and are reflective of the legislative and
| administrative technology in which they've been incubated. They
| are somewhat effective, but any system can be gamed. Most sites
| opt for a mix of technical means and hands-on moderation by a
| benevolent* dictatorship __which works moderately well but is not
| responsive or effective against determined attack.
|
| * benevolent in terms of close alignment with the ethos of the
| forum, whatever that happens to be
|
| __dictatorship in terms of being arbitrary rather than
| mechanistic, semi-transparent, and unilateral
|
| Flame wars are upsetting to everyone, and people in the first 2
| camps view as the worst-case outcome because they take over the
| thread/forum/platform where they occur and are destructive of
| comity, much like their real-world analogs. However, they can be
| effective in repelling invasive toxicity - if a sufficient
| majority of the forum regulars participate cooperatively. If too
| few participate or forum norms inhibit or punish participation,
| then toxicity will prevail or advance.
|
| Here's some empirical evidence supporting this based on data
| collected from raiding behavior on Reddit, which is similar
| enough to HN to serve as a useful comparison (includes links to
| papers, slides): https://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/
|
| Cross-platform raiding behavior has existed as long as bulletin
| boards, and has been systematized and refined in line with the
| systematization and refinement of game and software development
| strategies. Here's a (somewhat offensive) overview from some
| years ago of trolling strategies, summarized near the end in a
| convenient flowchart: https://digitalvomit.wordpress.com/the-
| ultimate-guide-to-the...
|
| The sophistication of raiding tactics, documentation, and so on
| has increased significantly since that was published. Ultimately
| toxicity online is neither a product of technology or the
| exposure of an inherent flaw of human nature, but the visible
| manifestation of multilateral information warfare, which is
| itself preliminary maneuvering and battlespace preparation for
| more overt forms of conflict like cyberwarfare, open economic
| warfare, and kinetic warfare.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| A thought that's been sitting in my Evernotes for a while:
|
| "I wish I could code because I have an idea for something I think
| would be valuable. Basically I think debate is a good thing, and
| especially online debate, where you can meet & talk with so many
| different people and learn so much you might have otherwise
| missed (and teach, too).
|
| But the problem with the platforms people debate and converse on
| (Facebook, reddit, YouTube) is that they're essentially
| popularity contests. They reward being visible and playing to
| people who already agree with you, which means many good ideas
| get steamrolled by enthusiastic trolls.
|
| So I was thinking that maybe instead of relying on the "wisdom"
| of the mob, I mean crowd, to determine what's noteworthy and
| important and productive - which inevitably leads to a constant
| churn of middle school student council-like dynamics - I thought
| maybe you could flip it.
|
| Don't ask people who are like you if you're making a good point.
| Ask the people who AREN'T like you. If a bunch of gun owners look
| at what a gun control advocate has to say and think, "You know,
| they're onto something," maybe that's more valuable than getting
| support from other advocates.
|
| So I imagine a debate space where people can talk with each other
| in a structured fashion. Other people can watch. Somehow we have
| an idea of the "way" people lean politically, identity-wise,
| etc., or at least how they compare to others. Isn't this
| something that NN-driven text analysis would be good at? And at
| the end, you can rate someone's ideas and performance, and how
| much your opinion counts is weighted by how you compare to them,
| and then the system's understanding of who you are is adjusted
| accordingly. It need not even assign human-readable tags to a
| given personal value; all we'd know is that this person is very
| or not very similar to a given other. Maybe this helps to disarm
| trolls and to push thoughtful, respectful voices to the top.
| Maybe it allows voices that would usually get drowned out on any
| given issue to have a say. Maybe it helps us get to the heart of
| what debate truly gives us, which is understanding and compromise
| and solidarity."
|
| tl;dr Keep upvotes/downvotes but weight them based on how similar
| the person voting is to the person being voted on.
| epicgiga wrote:
| What? What's wrong with it?
|
| The arrogance behind thinking "how do we _fix_ the way everyone
| behaves "... jesus holy eff.
|
| Vigorous debate is good, even if you get manic israel vs
| palestine or weirdly spergy tabs vs spaces spats as a side
| effect.
|
| Writing is the tip of the iceberg. I used to run a forum, and the
| write versus read rates are enormous. 1 to 20+ ratios.
|
| Argument brings out the best ideas. That energetic passion, that
| desire to win, makes people give it all they've got. And people
| read. And people can detect between wisdom and dumbassery. And
| they learn and benefit from it.
|
| It's a key factor in educating the next generation. It's good. Go
| clutch your pearls elsewhere.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > And people can detect between wisdom and dumbassery.
|
| Nope
| epicgiga wrote:
| Guess you should intern them at your I'm Super Smarter Than
| You reeducation camps then.
| dang wrote:
| You've unfortunately been breaking the HN guidelines a lot
| by posting in the flamewar style, snarking, and being
| nasty. That's not a legit use of this site. We ban accounts
| that post that way--we have to, because they poison the
| well and push the site further down the classic internet
| forum path to heat death. HN from the beginning has been an
| experiment in whether we can stave off that perhaps
| inevitable decline. See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html and https://h
| n.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
|
| On the other hand, you've also posted some substantive and
| interesting comments, so I don't want to ban you. Would you
| please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN
| in the intended spirit? The idea is: if you have a
| substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you
| don't, please don't comment until you do. When you know
| more than someone else, share some of what you know in a
| respectful way, so we all can learn something. Don't just
| put others down.
| epicgiga wrote:
| You should all downvote harder. It might make you right! :D
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| You gotta see the irony in being censored on the thread about
| this topic with one of the most correct responses! Typical!
| tboyd47 wrote:
| What we calling polarization and toxicity is actually 2 problems.
| Disagreement and bad manners.
|
| Disagreements are always solved the same way. Either by coming to
| an agreement or agreeing to disagree.
|
| Bad manners is a much bigger problem that has a variety of
| solutions that may or may not work, and are totally up to the
| individual. Bad manners also prevents problem #1 (disagreements)
| from being resolved.
| Jamwinner wrote:
| By not perpetuating it.
|
| Thats all we can do. But the most important step.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If enough people don't perpetuate it, that turns down the gain
| in the echo chambers. That cuts down on the feedback, and the
| noise becomes a lower fraction of the total.
| [deleted]
| scottlocklin wrote:
| >I've noticed a huge uptick in the toxicity online in the last
| 5-7 years.
|
| You're crazy my dude(tte). I've been on the interbutts since 1991
| and Usenet days, and it's exactly as it always was. The big
| difference is we have reporter ding dongs on Twitter thinking
| Twitter, aka the comments section they removed from their web
| presence, is the real world. Also old people on Facebook who
| never learned the lessons of being on Usenet in the early 1990s,
| aka arguing on the internet is a lame and addictive hobby.
|
| There are minor accelerants for this; youtube really did have
| some kind of pathological radicalization rabbit hole in its
| recommendation engine for a while (now it's just boring and
| useless and shows you "more of the same" on "blue checked"
| accounts). And of course, the other media encourages polarization
| and demonization of the other for dumb short term. That's a
| purely American phenomenon, and nothing's going to change it
| until the people pushing this swill on MSNBC, Fox and CNN decide
| to change it.
| samatman wrote:
| In other words, except for the scale, and the fact that it's
| infected the mainstream media, and the accelerants making it
| even worse, it's the same old thing?
|
| So we can summarize as "there's been a huge uptick in the
| toxicity online (which was always there)?"
| amylene wrote:
| The quantity has increased, if the quality is still basically
| the same. Also, I bet the average education/intelligence of
| the typical user has shifted as the internet user looked more
| and more like the typical population.
| uptown wrote:
| Also different is the velocity. It's easier than ever
| before to spread something far and wide.
| Jamwinner wrote:
| Bingo. In the 90s, you had to be pretty smart (and wealthy
| or near a decent school) just to know what the internet
| was, how to get access, and then do something useful or fun
| with it. Now, everyone uses it to pay their taxes, order
| soap, and use facebook. However the quality, while always
| full of trolls, has dropped imho.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| It's the same old same old. People used to heckle in
| theatres, because the audience lent them anonymity. Mobs are
| mobs because in a mob you are the mob. Lift the social
| contract by granting anonymity and we fairly instantaneously
| resort to slinging faeces at one another.
|
| I think the GP has nailed it, however - we are reporting
| theatre hecklers as news, and instead of watching the play,
| everyone is now watching the punch-up in the aisles, and
| placing wagers.
|
| The problem is that the theatre is on fire, but that hasn't
| quite yet eclipsed the spectacle of a good old fashioned
| confrontation.
| Udik wrote:
| I used to agree fully with what you say. But only a few
| days ago it occurred to me that in the early days of the
| web (let's say late '90, early 2000s) I thought that the
| internet was going to make the world a more peaceful place:
| everybody would have talked directly with one another,
| irrespective of distances and languages; we would have
| understood each other better and disagreements would have
| been smoothed out.
|
| Well, that didn't happen. What happened instead is that the
| ongoing discussions seem to stir up even more disagreement;
| and people are not really talking to each other, they
| rather signal their belonging to this or that faction.
| Also, the internet has been weaponised: leaving aside the
| organised "troll factories", any group that feels strongly
| about something can try to impose it to everyone else just
| by occupying as much space as possible. And then, if others
| express publicly their own ideas, don't you want your idea
| to be represented too? Then it becomes a shouting match,
| where each faction tries to fill as much public space as
| possible by shouting at the top of its lungs.
|
| Part of this is the traditional media's fault. We thought
| newspapers and tv networks were going to die, drowned in
| the huge amount of available information sources. Instead,
| the web is still hierarchical: few media outlets shape the
| conversation deciding what to report on and how, then
| everyone else has the choice of closing ranks around the
| proposed narrative or in opposition to it. The dream of
| global peer-to-peer conversations didn't really come to be.
| kingludite wrote:
| Its a war over controlling the narrative. The little
| people seem clueless about what will, can and probably
| should happen when the status quo loses their grip on
| them. If people had half a clue about the prosperity that
| awaits them the narrative would effortlessly flip 180
| degrees. We should all be as mad as General Smedley D.
| Butler about it.
| fragmede wrote:
| Anonymity isn't it, or isn't all of it. YouTube comments
| were deanonymized but that didn't improve discourse. Look
| at Facebook and some of the "discussions" about politics
| there. Newspapers _tried_ running comment sections, but
| either they're a cesspool, real names or no, or they just
| gave up having comment sections entirely. Even locale isn't
| a help - NextDoor is full of the same, or worse, combative
| vitriol. Sure, child porn and death threats don't go
| unpunished like "back in the day", so things are
| infinitesimally better, but we still have a very _very_
| long way to go.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Anonymity doesn't necessarily mean namelessness - it
| means being a voice in a crowd, it means being seemingly
| removed enough from your target that you, personally,
| won't be the target of retribution. It hearkens back to
| really primal primate behaviour.
|
| Group dynamics are _crazy_ - you can use them to get
| people who might be drinking buddies to instead get into
| tin cans and try to murder each other, because you're
| using the ultimate anonymity of a battlefield to let slip
| the dogs of war.
| ticmasta wrote:
| The deciding factor seems to be if the internet group (as
| in characteristics defining cohesion) has strong enough
| mores to demand acceptable conduct. wide-open commenting
| (anon or not): NO. Neighbourhood FB group: you'd hope so,
| but not always...
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| I'm on one forum where the only rules are "leave family
| other than spouses out of it" and "no n-word". It is a
| hobby interest forum with a gender homogeneous user base.
| It's one of the most civil places on the internet if you
| can get past the fact that any mistake will be remembered
| and you will be made fun of for it. There are definitely
| some people who hate each other over ideological
| differences but they seem to tire of arguing and just
| ignore each other. I think small enough group size for
| people to remember each other and no reason for people
| without the shared interest to stick around matter more
| than anything else.
| tayo42 wrote:
| > Anonymity isn't it, or isn't all of it.
|
| I think people have realized what the real line of what
| will be tolerated in society. There isn't any
| repercussion for being a pos in real life or online. I
| think we're to polite to the people being rude.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| For some groups, if they are large enough, powerful
| enough, or vicious enough, deanonymized is not an issue
| because they are the majority. For smaller groups, where
| having an opinion will lead to death threads etc,
| deanonymization will extinguish their voices.
| ticmasta wrote:
| Well one difference is the scope of participation, which
| was only slightly mentioned (old people on FB) - even in
| the lat 90's the internet was still mostly the domain of a
| relatively homogeneous technical-skewing audience; the
| composition has probably flipped since then.
|
| Judgement of whether this is good or bad aside, it is
| definitely easier to maintain peace and harmony when the
| socio/economic/cultural differences are smaller. Those days
| are long gone.
|
| I'm finding the only winning move is not to play (i.e.
| "don't go to the theatre; stay home and read a book")
| grumple wrote:
| You're asserting that it's worse like that's a fact. It's
| not. It's much better than the old days now that many
| accounts are tied to your real name, and since enforcement of
| community standards became commonplace.
|
| The US political polarization is more widespread, on and
| offline, but online discourse is still pretty mild compared
| to the old days of greater anonymity.
| godshatter wrote:
| I'm not sure that's true. I remember when "netiquette" used
| to be a bigger thing than it is now. People would lurk for
| a while before posting to get a feel for the community.
| Flamewars would happen if someone top-posted instead of
| bottom-posting. Debate still happened, and some of them
| would spiral out of control, but I wasn't nearly as afraid
| to mention my opinion about such a wide range of topics
| both on the web and in real life as I am now.
| rezeroed wrote:
| What accounts are tied to your real name? I don't use any
| facebook products so don't know about that, but don't know
| of any other that are tied to my name.
|
| Enforcement of community standards has backfired in the
| form of weaponised censorship.
| distances wrote:
| There's Google that uses your name but doesn't enforce
| its authenticity.
|
| Anyway, I don't comment on any services that use a real
| name policy. I'd prefer that my name didn't appear on the
| Internet at all, but don't fight against it when it
| inevitably happens via some participant lists and
| whatnot.
| devmunchies wrote:
| I remember the AOL instant messenger days and people being
| super derogatory and vulgar for kicks. Even xbox live of 2007
| was just as vulgar as today. I don't think its that the
| internet is more toxic, its that we are more sensitive (more
| easily offended).
|
| A strong immune system is the best defense. If it rolls off
| your back, is it really toxic?
| chc wrote:
| I used to think this way. If I just ignored toxicity and
| suppressed my reaction, everything would be fine. But the
| dose makes the poison. Over time, it wears you down. I spent
| years letting things roll off my back, and all it got me was
| a bunch of metaphorical back pain that I could have avoided
| if I'd either moved out of the way or plugged the leak.
| eropple wrote:
| Shitlords don't just "meme". They radicalize themselves and
| others. I had a friend ask to crash on my couch during
| GamerGate because a guy on 4chan took a picture of himself
| with a knife in front of her apartment building and it's the
| people who _aren 't_ shitlords who are the problem here?
| What's your proposed "immune system" response to that,
| exactly? Or to an Elliot Rodgers, he who was cheered on by
| exactly this crowd?
|
| "These people are attempting to incubate a culture where you
| might get swatted for being vocally not a straight white man,
| but it is _we_ who are _too sensitive_. " Nah. The problem
| isn't the people who have the misfortune of being downrange
| of scumbags, and never is.
| devmunchies wrote:
| this whole thread has nothing to do with real world threats
| of physical violence. online trolling is different than
| your extreme example.
| swampangel wrote:
| If 10 people on the internet tell you they want to kill
| you, how do you tell if 1 of them is serious and is
| actually going to show up physically?
|
| The answer is that you can't, and there isn't a firm line
| where all trolling is on one side and harassing/violent
| behaviour is something different.
|
| Many of us can heuristically decide that trollish
| behaviour aimed at us won't extend to our
| person/home/workplace, and doesn't need to be taken
| seriously. That doesn't mean it's a rule for everyone or
| an excuse for that behaviour.
| eropple wrote:
| Yeah, no, that excuse stopped working around six years
| ago. "Online trolling" is now part and parcel of
| _political action_ and can be separated only through
| naivete or disingenuity and no, there is no third option.
| The shitlord who chased my friend from her home was
| cheered on by that faceless mob of "online trolls" and
| encouraged other people to do likewise and worse.
| Similarly, Elliot Rodgers and the like got their book
| from "online trolls" who happened to also be virulent
| misogynists who were ecstatic that somebody took what
| they advocated and put it into action.
|
| What you call "extreme" is the reality for people less
| privileged than you being subject to these fucks' weird
| jollies. What's your just-ignore-it stuff going to do for
| them?
| [deleted]
| Jamwinner wrote:
| That esclated quickly. I think your extreme examples are
| not really the norm, nor an accurate representation in
| general. This just makes the radicalization worse.
| watwut wrote:
| What exactly is or was strong immune system response to
| treatment Kathy Sierra got? Cause weev later became basically
| folk hero for a while before he managed to be forgotten.
|
| The just roll it off, ignore the trolls collective strategy
| back amounted to enabling and whitewashing weev.
| RuleOfBirds wrote:
| Um, yes. A toxic environment is toxic.
|
| Whether someone who isn't as threatened by the toxicity
| "bucks up" and lets it roll off their back or even
| participates or not. It's still toxic.
|
| E.g. don't tell me "racism isn't toxic except that you're
| sensitive and choose to be offended by it."
| devmunchies wrote:
| > toxic environment is toxic.
|
| agree. but online trolling or banter isn't a toxic
| environment so its not toxic.
|
| you would censor them? now THAT is a toxic environment.
| noir_lord wrote:
| BBS in the early nineties and internet mid-90's.
|
| Always been a toxic element, it's just the echo chamber got
| louder to the point where it drowns out the normal people.
| gota wrote:
| > Twitter, aka the comments section they removed from their web
| presence
|
| Oh my, I never thought about it but this is absolutely true
| stanferder wrote:
| > [T]he other media encourages polarization and demonization of
| the other for dumb short term. That's a purely American
| phenomenon...
|
| I don't think that's true. The tone of American political news
| nowadays doesn't seem that different than British newspapers in
| the 1990s. "It's the Sun wot won it" was an explicit boast
| about The Sun's polarizing influence... in 1992.
|
| Of course both The Sun and Fox News in the US are part of
| Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. But if anything this style of news
| seems like it arrived in the UK ten or twenty years before it
| was manifest in the US.
| platz wrote:
| Right, It's not a technology problem.
|
| Not everything can be reduced to a technology problem.
|
| This is an American, and even worldwide problem.
|
| Everyone is writing about polarization right now.
|
| Ezra Klein, who I normally loathe, has been doing the
| podcasting rounds lately about his new polarization book, which
| has a pragmatic take on the problem.
|
| He doesn't see a way out right now. Sean
| Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture,
| Arts, and Ideas Ezra Klein on Politics, Polarization,
| and Identity
|
| https://pca.st/huei9let The Weeds: The road
| to polarization
|
| https://pca.st/izsley78
|
| According to Ezra, part of the reason we have this now is
| because our personal identities are now stacked in line with
| our political identities.
|
| Why this stacking occurs might just be a natural process.
|
| As for the media, It's not only the media's fault.
|
| There was a feedback loop between media and audience.
|
| When media was unbundled from the national model, only slightly
| more polarized people could be reliable customers and so media
| had to compete over them, which polarized the media, which
| polarized the audience etc...
| Domenic_S wrote:
| > _our personal identities are now stacked in line with our
| political identities._
|
| Even stronger than that, for many people their political
| identity IS their personal identity, and those folks can't
| see anybody else any other way.
|
| I was a child when Clinton was elected. We lived in a
| conservative neighborhood, and I remember there being
| disappointment but as far as I can recall everyone resumed
| their normal lives after that.
|
| Then when GWB was elected, I lived in a more liberal town and
| there was some angst, maybe a bit of protesting, but by and
| large everyone went back to their lives.
|
| Trump has been interesting. For many people, if you voted for
| Trump, you are a Nazi. As far as they're concerned, your
| political identity IS your personal identity. And let's be
| fair to both sides, for a lot of Trump supporters, being a
| MAGA-hat wearer is their personal identity.
|
| We're on the road to something, and it's not good.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| So basically, people are assholes and always have been.
|
| Something stuck with me a long time ago when I was watching tv
| a lot, there was a character on Scrubs named "Dr Cox" who said
| people are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.
| mcantelon wrote:
| The severity has grown but the scale of the toxicity's grown in
| the "human flesh search engine" era.
| krilly wrote:
| I can assure you the YouTube rabbit hole is still there. I am
| constantly recommended right wing, feminist b& type vids
| scottlocklin wrote:
| Not for me; it just tries to show me Joe Rogaine videos all
| day. One damn video did this! I want to punch the guy who
| sent it to me. Oh wait, guess I've been radicalized.
|
| FWIIW all the chimping in the threads about death threats:
| these were extremely common in the old days of Usenet too.
| I've lost track of them; from all kinds of arguably insane
| people, satanic cults even; more recently lunatic grad
| students mad I made fun of their field on my blog. So was
| doxxing. Nothing ever happened, and I have no respect for
| people who report them like it's news. While it's probably
| happened by now that someone's internet beef turned into
| actual violence, the ratio is absurdly low. If you can't
| abide some idiot being mad at you, stay off the internet I
| guess.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Concur with this.
|
| Flamewars have always been with us and a bb or forum flamewar
| was always something to watch (often annotated with a flame gif
| on the thread header).
|
| As with everything web, it's just scaled as the web has scaled.
| banads wrote:
| >the other media encourages polarization and demonization of
| the other for dumb short term. That's a purely American
| phenomenon
|
| Nope, tribalism and _divide et impera_ is a _human_ phenomenon
| nardi wrote:
| Yes, the internet's always been toxic, but the audience has
| changed. It used to be a small subset of the world population
| that had the money, time, and know-how to get on the internet.
| Now it's the entire world, and it seems to me that the average
| media-consumption sophistication has gone way down. Trolls used
| to be a smaller fraction of the whole, and easier to ignore.
| Now, the signal-to-troll ratio is all out of whack.
| awb wrote:
| > It used to be a small subset of the world population that
| had the money, time, and know-how to get on the internet. Now
| it's the entire world
|
| This. It's not that polarization and toxic ideas didn't
| exist, it was arguably much worse in the past with slavery,
| genocide, etc.
|
| You had entire countries publicly advocating for violent
| racism and citing sources that they claimed supported their
| views. It's pretty harsh to call us post-truth but not them.
| Their lies led to brutal consequences for millions.
|
| And it used to be the media was a pretty strict funnel (pre-
| Internet, pre-TV) where you had to be interesting to someone
| with power like a politician or an editor to get mass
| exposure for your ideas. Everyone else was relegated to
| preaching in the park. Now, we have virtual parks (websites)
| and preaching can reach millions.
| el_cujo wrote:
| This is my experience as well. In the early/mid 2000s I mostly
| browsed sites with a small, dedicated group of regular users.
| These sites were (mostly) civil and had a "small town" feel
| where you kind of knew everyone or at least recognized their
| username. Even back then though, I went on a few sites where
| the userbase was big enough that you'd be mostly interacting
| with people who you may never see again on that site, and as a
| result it was quite a bit less civil than the small sites.
|
| I think the big difference between today vs. back then with
| respect to toxicity, is now that the web is so centralized,
| most sites the average person probably visits (twitter, reddit,
| etc) involves them interacting with strangers who they may
| never interact with again, so there is less of a feeling like
| they need to "hold back" like you might when talking to someone
| you know you'll meet again.
|
| Probably the only exception to this (for me at least) was
| Facebook, because back when I used it I almost exclusively
| interacted with people I knew, so there was still that same
| incentive to not be an asshole because you'd actually meet
| these people again later. These days a lot of people interact
| with strangers in the comments of pages/groups for like
| politics and other stuff, and I feel like that's where most of
| the nastiness is.
| rstupek wrote:
| I'm really tired of mainstream articles which are essentially a
| reporting finding 3 people on twitter who are for/against
| something and saying "internet is in uproar about whatever"
| CM30 wrote:
| Same here. And it's not just based on Twitter posts either.
| I've seen a depressing number of news articles (especially
| gaming related ones) which are based on random internet
| petitions signed by maybe three people.
|
| Anyone can set up an internet petition about anything. The
| presence of one does not meant there's some gigantic audience
| clamouring for some game idea/casting idea/etc.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| There's quite a lot of formulaic pieces written in UK media
| where the news outlet comment section has more outraged
| commenters than the original issue.
|
| If you use dailymail.co.uk and search for "outraged" there's
| quite a few examples of this formula being used.
|
| I suppose it increases impression time of adverts which means
| higher price earned for them. I'm not criticising the
| business accumen.
| iron0013 wrote:
| This pattern happens so often that you'd think people would
| start to catch on. A story about one person supposedly
| being "outraged" about something leads to a huge vigorous
| CJ of folks eager to express their anti-outrage-outrage at
| the straw man in front of them.
| throwaway122619 wrote:
| Adding to your point, I'm wondering if OP has ever had a
| religious group show up at their doorstep. It's the same idea;
| "Our ideas are right, yours are wrong." There are no laws
| stopping them from doing this, (short of solicitation statutes)
| and there's certainly no convincing them they are wrong. Just
| smile politely and ignore them.
|
| Really, it's the same problem just dressed up differently. Now
| the issue just has these new buzzwords attached to it like
| "algorithm" and "data privacy" and whatnot. Nothing will change
| until people learn to leave their pride on their desktop, but
| that's not the way of some cultures.
| ping_pong wrote:
| Exactly this. On Usenet there were still moderated groups,
| because there were assholes that were willing to start flame
| wars. The term "flame war" came from Usenet, as did "trolling".
| The original meaning of "trolling" was making a post that
| provoked a huge number of responses, be it good or bad. Now it
| has morphed to meaning you say something shitty.
|
| > That's a purely American phenomenon
|
| This is wrong. Europe turned nationalistic and right wing much
| earlier than the US. Look through the last 10 years and it's
| been something they've struggled with for the entire decade and
| earlier.
| kazinator wrote:
| I've been on dial-up bulletin boards since 1983, Usenet since
| around the same 1991.
|
| Though in some ways it's the same, here is the difference: it
| has become more diverse.
|
| In 1991, the people you might have conversed with on Usenet
| were a lot similar to you. Of course, if we go to some
| comp.lang.* newsgroup or whatever, people are similar even
| today.
|
| But I mean that if you went into any newsgroup whatsoever in
| 1991, on any topic, everyone there would probably have been
| some sort of professional in a STEM field, academic or
| university student. Go to, say, rec.pets.dogs, and it wasn't
| just any dog lovers from any walk of life, but mostly
| engineers, programmers and sysadmins who are into dogs.
|
| That's way different from going into Reddit today, where it's
| now any Tom, Dick and Harry from any walk of life, who only
| have a certain topic of interest in common and that's it.
|
| People have social interactions online which they wouldn't have
| in real life. In real life, if you run into someone who is
| from, say, a "lower" social class, they have it written all
| over them, and it puts them in their place more effectively
| than any downvoting system.
|
| For instance, in real life, you would either never argue
| politics with an obvious "despicable", or else you'd
| immediately attribute everything they say to the limited scope
| of their background and just nod your head politely.
|
| Basically, there is no _new_ divisiveness; the quiet
| divisiveness we already have just comes out when people get
| together and hide behind aliases and avatars.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah I've been online since ~92 and have been saying
| approximately the same thing as well. Back then you hop onto
| IRC and you're generally talking with academics and
| programmers from around the world. Browse any web directories
| and it's extremely information-rich.
|
| There was a real technical or situational hurdle to even be
| present on the net back then, and I think most users had a
| sense of wonder and perhaps respect for the platform they
| were privileged to even get a glimpse into and partake in.
| Maybe? Today the amount of low-effort/low-value thoughtless
| vitriol makes up a much much larger percentage of the
| communication and web content than "back in the day". Spend
| but a few moments and you will encounter some
| flamebait/sensationalistic noise. It used to be a lot harder
| to be subjected to such stuff. Tragedy of the internet
| commons, or something.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _since ~92_
|
| Thus you would remember a bit of the tail end of the era
| before Eternal September.
|
| Normally, September was the time when a crop of new
| students would get accounts at universities and step into
| the world of Usenet for the first time, behaving like
| asses.
|
| In September 1993, AOL connected to Usenet. That became
| known as Eternal September.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
|
| The online world we have today is basically the
| continuation of Eternal September, reaching further depths
| of deterioration.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| I agree. Big centralized platforms (youtube, Reddit, the
| chans, HN to some exent) mean that the internet riff raff
| (i.e. people with no interest in the niche and who may feel
| like trolling) are free to show up in any given niche area of
| the platform (e.g. a subreddit or someone's channel) and then
| shit all over it. A community that would have been perfectly
| peaceful on a newsgroup, IRC channel or forum now has to
| contend with literally anyone from anywhere else on the
| platform. The old 4chan quip about /b/ leaking is now the
| default state on basically every platform because the
| platforms are so big even a small trickle of trolls is a full
| on flood of crap. People are getting fed up. I think there
| will be some decentralization in our future.
| quotemstr wrote:
| I don't think it's that at all. People have always been
| able to visit different websites. It still happens today.
| The rise of mega-platforms is concerning, but not for the
| reason you cite. It's always been possible for "riff-raff"
| to notice a community.
| rlucas wrote:
| The corollary to this that remains unspoken about the OP's
| thesis is: because of the mass reach of the major
| platforms, the "toxic" effects now have escaped being an
| internet-only phenomenon and now are manifesting in
| meatspace.
|
| It's overly reductionist to attribute Trump and Brexit just
| to online trolls, but it's folly to ignore their effect at
| the margins (because both Trump and Brexit were relatively
| close calls, influencing a 5% middle ground definitely
| mattered).
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| "meatspace" : what an apropos description
| kazinator wrote:
| On traditional Usenet there is a kind of unspoken rule
| about never taking online disputes offline. Everyone was
| supposed to understand that it's just a game.
|
| A good portion of the ragamuffins who are overflowing the
| online world have not such concept. Everything is
| personal.
| chubot wrote:
| But it _is_ the real world now ... People form their beliefs
| and make decisions in the world based on what they consume
| online.
|
| I frequently see Twitter memes spoken from people's mouths in
| person. I mostly abstain from it, but like it or not, Twitter
| does matter.
|
| I've also been online since 1993, and used Usenet for many
| years. Back then you could compartmentalize some argument as a
| bunch of nerds, but now it's just "people".
|
| FWIW I also agree that the wisdom of "don't feed the trolls"
| has been forgotten. So in that way it's gotten worse too.
| Mangalor wrote:
| But weren't "nerds" always just "people"? It's the
| interpretation of the culture that's changed as well.
| chubot wrote:
| To clarify, in 1993 or even 2000, you could see a bunch of
| flame wars on Usenet, and you could ignore them because
| they "meant nothing". You could dismiss it as a nerd
| argument that's not connected to your life in the real
| world.
|
| That was usually accurate. (Although I should say there
| were very intelligent people on Usenet, and that's why I
| used it. I learned a lot there.)
|
| It's harder to do that now. You can ignore certain
| channels, but they spill out into the "real world" quite
| frequently.
|
| To give a different example, UFC fighters pick fights with
| each other online, often on Instagram or YouTube. So what
| happens online is critical to the entire sport, which has
| grown a tremendous amount in the past decade. It determines
| whether they get paid $100K or $1M. Real life happens
| online now.
|
| That's a somewhat random example but there are many many
| subcultures / industries where what happens on social media
| determines what happens in the real world.
| [deleted]
| lotyrin wrote:
| Yes. Encountering the Apache Helicopter joke on 4chan is par
| for the course, but I just really don't want to hear it out
| loud from a coworker who is senior to me in a meeting room,
| and have everyone else laugh along with it.
| iron0013 wrote:
| Yikes, if that happened at your workplace I hope you talked
| to HR about it. That's a "joke" in the form of a death
| threat.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I've been on the interbutts since 1991 and Usenet days, and
| it's exactly as it always was.
|
| Quality-wise _maybe_ but nowhere near the same in numbers. Back
| in 1990-2005 it took expertise to reach the Usenet. Facebook,
| Reddit et al. changed the game by essentially giving every
| village idiot without technical knowledge the "freedom" to
| troll on FB, Youtube, whatever. Conspiracy theories had their
| own niche usenet spaces, today there are FB groups for all
| kinds of utter _bollocks_ with hundreds of thousands of members
| and absolutely no quality or sanity control.
|
| Additionally, for newsgroups you needed some kind of client,
| most people could only access them after work, further reducing
| the user base, and there was nothing remotely similar to
| "likes" - today, people do everything for likes, with
| instantaneous feedback and no limits (practically everyone has
| a smartphone with FB and notifications), driving an ever faster
| and faster "news" cycle.
|
| > And of course, the other media encourages polarization and
| demonization of the other for dumb short term. That's a purely
| American phenomenon, and nothing's going to change it until the
| people pushing this swill on MSNBC, Fox and CNN decide to
| change it
|
| No, this is not US-only. It may be most expressed in the US
| (and amplified by its two-party system), but us Europeans see
| the same issue. Brexit is the most obvious, but France, Poland,
| Hungary, Austria and Germany also have problems with
| polarization and (mostly) the far right using outright lies to
| further it, with Russian financing / backing suspected and
| proven everywhere.
|
| The thing that must change is to get rid of Russian money in
| politics, and to enforce neutrality and fact based reporting in
| media.
| ksec wrote:
| This. The cost of going on Internet used to be quite high,
| and requires some skills and knowledge. Nowadays anyone can
| troll, and they get repeated by other trolls, the percentage
| of it "may" be the same ( although I doubt it ), but the
| "absolute" number of those are much much higher.
|
| Remember before the iPhone, the internet was a much smaller
| place, and accessed mostly in front of a computer. With
| Smartphone you now have 4.5 Billion Internet user all using
| it at any time of the day. The Internet is also much faster.
| Creating content is easier. We are may be 10 - 100x more in
| online content consumption then in the 2000s.
|
| And I agree this is not US only.
|
| So yes it is definitely a social AND psychological problem.
| Not a technical one, no blockchain, Distributed Social Media,
| Machine Learning, new AI, Cloud, Servless, (WhatEver)aaS etc
| will solve it.
| godshatter wrote:
| FWIW, I find reddit to be one of the more pleasant places to
| converse. Just stay off of the main subreddits.
| eitland wrote:
| 5 years layer than what you describe but what I remember from
| the 1995 to 2000 was relatively peaceful, even the newsgroups I
| visited (mostly technical ones). There were dark corners but
| you mostly knew if you stepped into one.
|
| Then again I was mostly looking for html tutorials, facts for
| physics and history projects etc.
| kody wrote:
| When reporters on Twitter freak out about the trolls on 4chan
| like it's some disease infecting our precious wholesome web, I
| can't help but remember (through my biased lenses of course)
| when most of the web (that I visited) looked like 4chan. What
| the folks who think the web is 'degrading' don't seem to
| realize is how much of a wild west it used to be, and how much
| corporations have tried to (and somewhat succeeded in)
| sanitizing it.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> When reporters on Twitter freak out about the trolls on
| 4chan like it's some disease infecting our precious wholesome
| web
|
| Without making excuses for 4chan, perhaps the reporters
| should freak out about their own behavior first? So much of
| the news-media has an incredibly narrow focus, almost to be
| lying by omission. For a minority member of society,
| reporters _are_ the 4-chan.
|
| One of thousands of examples:
| https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-
| harvey-20170829-story.h...
| watwut wrote:
| However, this factor is better now then it used to. If
| anything the previously less represented groups have much
| more ability to make themselves heard then before. The mass
| media used to be more uniform before the internet got
| popular.
| hooande wrote:
| if most of the web that you visited looked like 4chan, you
| should have been going to different sites
| GrayTextIsTruth wrote:
| The subtle shaming and holier-than-thou policing, like in
| your comment, is more harmful and toxic than the trolling.
| It's what is fueling the polarization IMO.
|
| Look now I'm doing it, it's contagious.
| [deleted]
| GrayTextIsTruth wrote:
| This is my experience and perception as well. I don't
| understand people who think it's always been some civil
| gathering.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| > I don't understand people who think it's always been some
| civil gathering.
|
| In the early days of social media, the idea was to create
| engaging communities, which I felt for the most part
| happened. I was on a LOT of social media platforms in the
| mid aughts and really got a lot of it with the people I
| connected with. For me, it was actually quite positive and
| healthy then.
|
| In the last eight years or so? I had to get off. The
| overwhelming negativity, the weaponization of the
| platforms, the "cancel culture" and a rash of other things
| just make a majority of the platforms completely unusable
| now. On top of that, you add in the incredibly poor track
| record these platforms have with user data and privacy, the
| non-stop tracking, and the thousands of ads in your feeds?
|
| It used to be a joy to use these platforms. Now it's gotten
| to a point where I'm not sure what the point of social
| media is anymore.
| thrower123 wrote:
| This aligns very much with what I remember of the old PHP and
| BBCode forums in the early 2000s. Things were all over the
| place, and flamewars ran rampant. Most of them were run by
| people where modding was not their real job, just a fun
| hobby, and a fair number ended up going a little Stanford
| Prison Experiment.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I can't help but remember (through my biased lenses of
| course) when most of the web (that I visited) looked like
| 4chan.
|
| Interesting. I don't remember the web (or the pre-web
| internet) generally looking like 4chan in the earlier days.
| Pockets of it always did, of course.
|
| But we are both engaging in a statistical error here -- we're
| using sample sizes of one. Your experience and mine may
| differ quite a lot simply because we hung out in different
| parts of the internet.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| I also have a quite ambivalent memory of the Internet from
| around 1998 on. Of course the standard content is more
| readily accessible. But more toxic stuff ranges from weird
| chat experiences on the IRC for instance to disturbing
| content. What changed probably is that a lot of stuff moved
| from various places of the Internet (Usenet, IRC, Torrents,
| Tor-like networks...) into the Web. Speaking of
| discussions, now they happen right at the entry doors of
| the Internet: at the online presences of big news outlets.
|
| In any case, I'm quite happy with normal discussions and
| normal content though...
| kody wrote:
| It really is interesting that our anecdotes can be so
| different. I'm assuming you're older than me (25) since you
| mention the pre-web internet, so I'd also guess that by the
| time you were on the web/pre-web internet you would've had
| a more developed filter than I.
|
| My introduction to the web progressed roughly with watching
| my dad use BBS -> playing Neopets and Runescape -> becoming
| very involved with Runescape forums -> running a Runescape
| forum (first introduction to moderating user-submitted
| content at the age of 10. Yeah...) -> getting involved with
| video game modding communities, which meant I was spending
| all my free time browsing forums, following every link,
| completely absorbed by everything the early web's computer
| game communities churned out.
|
| My experience probably would've been very different if I
| hadn't been able to get around the parental controls my
| parents used, or if I had been interested in different
| hobbies with a more approachable web presence.
|
| I've been nostalgic for the "old web" lately, but I'm also
| very, very grateful that I haven't clicked on an
| inconspicuous URL that turned out to be a jumpscare, virus,
| weird porn, or gore in quite a while.
|
| EDIT: I don't want to imply that the Disturbing Web ==
| Videogame Web; that just happened to be my experience.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I'm assuming you're older than me (25) since you
| mention the pre-web internet
|
| This is an excellent point. You're younger than my eldest
| child, and I was active on the internet from way back
| when it wasn't available to the general public. That has
| to color our experiences -- even if only in that what you
| consider the "old days" and what I consider the "old
| days" are entirely different eras.
| tayo42 wrote:
| What video game forums compared at all to 4chans /b/?
|
| Every where banned you for gore, child porn, harassment,
| encouraging suicide.
|
| I really don't think you should be trying to normalize
| 4chan as thats just the way the internet is.
| gjs278 wrote:
| no they didn't. you could tell someone to kill themselves
| on basically any forum and would not get banned.
| kody wrote:
| We definitely had different experiences, then! I would
| say _most_ forums, even a lot of the mainstream ones,
| tolerated some level of 4channess. Facepunch forums ~2009
| was the first time I thought "wait, are these guys
| _actually_ Nazis or just think it 's hilarious to act
| like they are?" Stickpage.com forums ~2005 taught me an
| important lesson in not clicking URLs from domains I
| don't trust -- ESPECIALLY if they end in 'hello.jpg'.
|
| Like I said in my original post, that's the lens through
| which I viewed the internet. It could be different from
| yours.
|
| I'm not trying to 'normalize' 4chan but, honestly, I've
| bounced from plenty of Discord servers that are
| indistinguishable from 4chan. I think it's OK to
| recognize that at least some part of the non-4chan web is
| still very 4channy.
| tayo42 wrote:
| People messing around with goatse pics is pretty
| different then what 4 chan is or was. The internet in
| general was nothing like the 4chan community.
|
| Discord is very new. I think the point of the post is the
| current internet has gotten worse. The web wasn't like
| /b/,its becoming like that though.
| noirbot wrote:
| There is/was also a profound difference between /b/ and
| most of the rest of 4chan though. Not all of the site is
| /b/, that's just the most famous. It definitely set some
| of the culture of the other boards, but not to that same
| degree.
|
| The video game/tabletop game boards on 4chan were fairly
| normal for boards at that time, and it's not like
| everyone who was active on 4chan was there to post or
| read /b/. You might dip into it for a laugh or dare now
| and then, but at least when I was younger it was more
| like the internet equivalent of sneaking into the
| abandoned house down the street: a "dangerous" thing that
| felt cool to do.
| kody wrote:
| Good point. I was framing the conversation with 4chan as
| a whole, not just /b/. Big difference.
| adultSwim wrote:
| They were right to freak out. Swastikas and the n-word being
| tolerated as "jokes" for years was a breading ground from
| which militant fascists emerged.
| throwawaysp376 wrote:
| The suppression of speech you dislike is a much clearer
| indication of fascistic behavior than that of the people
| vocalizing such speech.
| x3haloed wrote:
| I recently logged into CS:GO to play something familiar and
| holy cow, the toxicity! Just like the old days. Online gaming
| has always been extremely toxic, and most internet discussion
| has been that way since the beginning. It reminded me of just
| how little of that I see in day to day internet browsing these
| days. I think the veracity of the toxicity is tamer, but the
| reach and impact is so much wider.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| The solution is the same as it was in 1991 as well: don't feed
| the trolls.
| praptak wrote:
| This was shown repeatedly not to work. The only troll-free
| forums are those with good moderators.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| By what metric was this shown to not work?
|
| I've been on lots of forums where the only rules were "no
| personal attacks and no porn" and they worked just fine. If
| the forum has a topic, then moderating to keep on topic is
| reasonable. Polite disagreement and discussion is the
| hallmark of a healthy forum.
|
| There is of course more to curating a community than its
| moderation policy.
| jxramos wrote:
| Its true those trolls have been around for some time. Its human
| nature to rear an ugly face under the auspices of anonymity.
| Makes me think about the real world vs the internet joke on Red
| vs Blue https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I0grFFAxySw
| mattrp wrote:
| I would agree with the gp that it seems no one who lived in
| the age of Usenet flame wars would see the current state as
| new. Remember when people would All CAPS each other?
|
| I would also say I've never thought of myself as a troll ....
| but given the number of downvotes I get on hn, I probably am
| at least troll-ish. So with that in mind, here's the troll-
| ish take:
|
| When people post something online it's often in anticipation
| of something good coming from it. At this point there's
| nothing any system or protocol can do to make this person
| less impacted if anything less than a unicorn floats pout of
| the sky dropping little unicorn turds over their one little
| contribution to discourse. We simply can't change the super
| enormous personal expectations that one builds up as a result
| of commenting.
|
| At the same time there's this real world trend that is
| starting to reflect the virtual world. People talking to each
| other face to face using the same etiquette they would in a
| virtual setting.
|
| I would suggest it's not just tribal... it's that
| increasingly we are unable to turn off and disconnect from
| the virtual world... we are literally interacting through a
| pseudo-real dimension in the mind precisely because we cannot
| put our phones down.
|
| I recently read through the post about inner monologues and I
| was surprised a) there were so many people who have entire
| theoretical conversations in their head and b) that post had
| so many comments - maybe it was the most comments in a single
| post ever.
|
| So here's the deal - humans talk to themselves as a matter of
| being human. Now, a sizable portion of a humans daily
| interactions are online where societal norms have been
| adjusted, there's simply no way the inner dialogue in the
| real world isn't being impacted by this - just look at how
| teenage life has been decimated over recent years.
|
| As for what to do about it. #1, you personally have
| responsibility for making sure your inner dialogue is healthy
| and isn't 100% from online sources, #2 you have to unplug for
| much more of the day than you think, #3 a good book wouldn't
| hurt, #4 you need to learn more about history than you think
| -- a good book that explores the topic of mob mentality in US
| politics is Six Frigates by Ian W Toll. You literally won't
| believe how the period between the revolutionary war and the
| war of 1812 mirrors modern day until you read this, #5, have
| some empathy for other people regardless of their viewpoints,
| #6 realize that no matter who is in charge, it's going to be
| ok.
|
| I can't tell you how many people I know literally went
| apeshit when Obama got elected, sold all their stocks, bought
| gold and prepared for Armageddon. I also can't tell you many
| people literally went apeshit when trump got elected, sold
| all their stock... to both groups, I say how'd that work out
| for you? Not very well and yet life goes on.
|
| You kind of have to be a little meh about everything...that's
| my view anyway...
| sebow wrote:
| If you think the web used to be "sanitized" before 2010-2012,
| you're very mistaken. The web arguably got way more "friendly"
| after the 2008 boom of internet users.Before that it was truly
| the wild-west (outside of developer spheres that obviously used
| to be percentage-wise, bigger).
|
| You might not like to hear this, but you need to grow up a thick
| filter. People like to post mean/offensive stuff precisely
| because it is not the real world.
|
| This has a purpose in society and it is deeply rooted in western
| ones.Romans did this during games in amphitheaters, in the latest
| centuries we had football, and now the medium shifts again where
| human speech and thought can be less restricted. Humans need such
| mediums to "vent" themselves,otherwise they do it through
| action.When they do this,most of the time,pragmatically speaking,
| it has not ended too well.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| It has always been a problem, but I agree it has gotten worse.
| The problem is that it has gotten worse in the real world too.
| Ive had friends family and strangers yell at me over minor
| political disagreements, and its not primarily coming from any
| particular side or group. You would think they were trying to
| fight about something important like emacs or vim.
|
| But why is this happening recently? I think the rise of smart
| phones has facilitated way more people engaging on the internet
| instead of just browsing. This in turn has opened up people to
| the vast amount of viewpoints in the world, and unfortunately
| people tend to get angry at people that are different.
|
| Another thing that has become a problem is people being paid to
| support or attack a cause. These professional rabble rousers are
| stirring up shit inside of people that would rather just have a
| sandwhich.
| kangnkodos wrote:
| Of course. If you're the type of person who is willing to
| entertain the possibility that emacs is an acceptable text
| editor, you should expect face to face shouting matches.
|
| There may be a small number of paid partisans, but I think a
| bigger problem is people who are paid in internet points.
| There's some kind of psychological flaw that drives people to
| get more points. Then the combination of the way web sites are
| set up, and the people inside of them leads to the extemists
| "winning" by getting more points. Then the whole mess feeds on
| itself to get more and more extreme.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > The problem is that it has gotten worse in the real world
| too. Ive had friends family and strangers yell at me over minor
| political disagreements, and its not primarily coming from any
| particular side or group.
|
| I've heard this said quite a bit, but I have yet to experience
| it, and I live in a major metropolitan area. I hope I'm not
| just one of the lucky ones, and this stuff is more limited IRL
| than most people think.
| dclusin wrote:
| We're essentially feeling negative effects produced by sorting a
| list of items. Currently they are sorted based on friend
| interactions and other criterion; mainly popularity. They sort
| this way because it increases engagement. What we've also found
| out is that this is also negatively effecting peoples emotional
| health.
|
| My personal feeling is that reverse chronological order with
| maybe throttling your chronic over-sharing friends would probably
| go a long way to helping blunt some of the negative effects we
| see today. But it would also lower engagement and lead to revenue
| losses so they probably haven't earnestly considered it. Kinda
| like how the cigarette companies don't want you to know that
| smoking is bad for you, because you might smoke less.
| brlewis wrote:
| That's exactly how FriendFeed worked, and it was great.
| LemPop wrote:
| This is a systemic issue to facebook and it starts with decisions
| made at the top. The best quote I've heard recently is all
| massacres start with 'a word'. Because Zuckerberg refused to
| accept responsibility for the power of word, he allowed the
| genocide of 7,000 Rohingya including children. The UN reported
| that Facebook was 'instrumental' in disseminating a message by
| those who spread hate. The solution is moderators, in every
| language, with impeccable credentials, and if facebook is still
| refusing to invest even this much then decentralize the whole
| damn social media space, because Discord self-moderates, Slack
| self-moderates, Stackoverflow self-moderates. Because no one
| wants to be stuck in a room with hateful bigots but Zuck has
| forced it on you.
| The_mboga_real wrote:
| Just flock off?
| geocrasher wrote:
| By turning it off.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| I don't think anything really changed. Only the scale of things,
| with platforms like Twitter that can be extremely viral.
|
| Everybody remember the collective insanity of the Covington
| Catholic school fiasco where journalists and celebrities were
| publicly wishing for the death of a bunch of kids wearing MAGA
| hats or at the very least getting them doxxed or hurt all because
| of a one minute video taken out of context. And those who
| approached the story in a cautious manner were called out by the
| rest for being to soft or accused of being part of "the bigots",
| Ironically, the account that initially twitted the video snippet
| was banned after a few days.
|
| I don't think the population is more deranged than before though,
| I mean the 70's were pretty violent politically, more than today.
|
| The solution is to quit social media or join smaller communities
| free of wedge issues and identity politics. Twitter, Facebook or
| Reddit aren't going to fix themselves, they make money off
| outrage and petty divisions.
|
| And finally you don't owe activism on a specific cause or an
| opinion to anyone. It's OK not to have an opinion or not wanting
| to get involved in a political debate. Anybody that attacks you
| for refusing to take a stance on any issue should probably be
| muted/blocked or removed from your life, that person isn't your
| friend and will try to make you look bad at the first opportunity
| just get brownie internet points for themselves.
| beardedman wrote:
| > Even niche sites like HN are not immune.
|
| I've not noticed a difference over the years TBH. HackerNews is
| substantially worse than most other sites IMO as well. Ironic
| that I'm disagreeing with you! Ha!
|
| I just mean - maybe you're at the part of your life where those
| extremes are apparent and that a degree of humility,
| understanding & conversation goes a lot further than most people
| think.
|
| > Or is this more of a social problem that code can't solve?
|
| More of a social problem I think.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman.
|
| You will realize that Social Media is designed in such a way
| intentionally to draw toxicity from society.
|
| No technology is neutral. Technology gives and technology takes
| away. Medium is the message. Communication evolved because of the
| medium. For every evolution, it gives something and it takes away
| something. From oral communication to the printing press to
| telegraph to TV to the internet to social media. Every evolution
| gives birth to something and destroys something.
|
| For example, TV makes everyone reachable (what it gives), but
| makes everything into entertainment (what it takes), even
| important topic such as politics, religion, war, poverty,
| pestilence, etc science becomes pure entertainment, juxtaposed
| between endless drama, reality show, and ads, coupled with
| background music and personas that manipulate the minds. The more
| "entertainer" you are, the better, regardless whether you are a
| dumb scientist or a dumb lawmaker that will affect many people's
| lives using your policy.
|
| Social media such as twitter, for example, everyone now has a
| voice (what it gives), but with its char limit (what it takes)
| doesn't give critical thinking and rational debate a highlight,
| therefore it spirals down into madness. The more outrageous you
| are, the better, because it will go viral and people will react
| in such a predictable way.
|
| A good example of a person who knows exactly how TV audience and
| social media audience will behave in a predictable way, and took
| advantage of that, is President Trump.
|
| You want to design a medium/platform in such a way so that the
| pros outweigh the cons. But I think the hard part is knowing how
| will people use the platform. Those social media giants started
| out with good intentions, and only later and later down the road,
| and here we are right now, that we discover its true effects.
| growlist wrote:
| > A good example of a person who knows exactly how TV audience
| and social media audience will behave in a predictable way, and
| took advantage of that, is President Trump.
|
| Trump wasn't the first though, and contrast the coverage:
| Obama's digital strategy was lauded for its tech-savvy genius
| by the media, whereas Trump's campaign was linked by the same
| to white supremacists wrt Pepe the Frog etc.
| christiansakai wrote:
| He wasn't. I'm just pointing out he is doing a good job at
| it. It is no secret for people who work in the media industry
| that "entertaining" and "outrageousness" is a recipe for
| success.
| cr0sh wrote:
| > Social media such as twitter, for example, everyone now has a
| voice (what it gives), but with its char limit (what it takes)
| doesn't give critical thinking and rational debate a highlight,
| therefore it spirals down into madness.
|
| Twitter has a hard, small limit. Most other platforms either
| have no limit, or the limit is fairly large.
|
| The problem is, people don't use it.
|
| Worse, those that do use it are ridiculed, or their words are
| ignored (TL;DR anyone?)...
|
| Thinking about this, I wonder if any of it has to do with
| people's "inner monologue" that was discussed yesterday here on
| HN? If you didn't see it, the gist was that there are some
| people who don't have such a monologue, and it came as a
| surprise to one person. Similarly, those without such a
| monologue are often surprised that others have it; one person
| commented that they often wished that the voiceover of
| characters in a movie, expressing their inner thoughts, was a
| real thing - and were shocked to find out that for most people
| - it is!
|
| Anyhow - does this play into how people write online? Do they
| tend to write less or smaller messages, because their inner
| monologue is too loud or constant? Do those without such
| monologue write more thoughtful and longer posts? Then I think
| of myself; I have an inner monologue, but I tend to write long
| things (case in point - this post?) - but I don't find my inner
| monologue a burden.
|
| But some do - I know I have read of people who either must
| always have some noise around them to drown out their "inner
| monologue", or if left in silence, even for small moments, will
| declare themselves "bored", perhaps because their inner
| monologue isn't perceived as interesting (whereas I and others
| have no problems thinking and pondering things, in silence,
| with no boredom)...?
|
| Does this effect how people compose and type their messages?
| Does it help or hinder understanding? Does it facilitate or
| does it block meaningful conversations?
|
| Twitter may have tapped into something that was always there to
| begin with, and in essence has helped foster that communication
| style - making it acceptable widely - conversation as "sound
| bites" - which has perhaps led to our present situation.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Twitter is just an example. If you read that book, the gist
| is basically Social Media makes it easy to brain dump and
| leave that brainfeces all over without having to look it back
| again (paraphrasing mine). Anyone in the world can post
| anything, without any accountability, without the need to
| carefully revalidate and be validated/invalidated.
|
| I saw the post about inner monologue but didn't read it. But
| I believe it could be related.
|
| I highly suggest reading the book because I'm doing a
| disservice trying to explain about it. It basically explained
| how oratory, printing press, telegraph/telephone and
| television really changed society a lot, but in subconscious
| ways that most of us don't think.
| cletus wrote:
| The problem here is people. People are easily prone to fear,
| anger and hatred. They want their views legitimized. It's virtue
| signaling to likeminded people and alleviate anxieties on a
| changing world.
|
| The problem with the internet is that it's simply too easy to
| spread nonsensical views that have no basis in fact, like the
| anti-vaxxers and White supremacists.
|
| People also want to blame others for what's wrong with their
| lives ("[ethnic group X] are stealing our jobs"). Worse, is just
| as easy for opposing views to do the same. This makes the first
| group feel like they're under attack.
|
| These people are easy to manipulate and they are manipulated
| through the politics of fear. Look no further than Fox News and
| Donald Trump.
|
| So this Is only an Internet problem in the sense that the barrier
| to saying stupid unfounded shit is not so low and motion can (and
| does).
| mcantelon wrote:
| Corporate media has done a lot to promote polarization (and even
| violence). Social media is making corporate media redundant to
| some degree, but those who run social media are also influenced
| by the same forces influencing corporate media. And, of course,
| "woke" ideology hasn't helped given it's similar in some ways to
| Maoism.
|
| Until the cold war between globalism and nationalism finds some
| resolution this atmosphere will likely persist.
| jes5199 wrote:
| it almost doesn't matter whether the content is polarizing or
| toxic - people form mobs whether their opinions are reasonable or
| not. Even reasonable criticism gets converted into harassment
| campaigns, thanks to the dynamics on twitter. (I mean, like 75%
| of it is awful content too so idk)
| rapnie wrote:
| Still on the tech side of things HN is doing quite well, with
| clever mechanics to downrank incendiary stuff, killing troll
| comments asap, etc. Combined with excellent, consistent
| moderation (courtesy dang et al).
|
| With growing awareness + press coverage, those platforms who
| deliberately implemented bad algorithms to harvest maximum
| attention (FB, YT, TW) increasingly find it damages their brand
| image. There is an incentive to (at least marginally) improve
| their features / biz models.
|
| Then there is digital literacy. We used to have netiquete and
| that can be taught. If you read the (very entertaining) article
| The Internet of Beefs [0] you'll see there is a solution by not
| getting involved in a beef, or extracting yourself if you got
| baited. Similarly it helps to know how to avoid trolls [1].
|
| It will not be easy to change cultures large-scale. Many people
| just like to beef (there is a similarity with road rage too;
| people forget themselves online). Others enjoy starting beef wars
| for the lolz, or - more sinister - with strategic objectives.
|
| At least we should be able to create more safe harbours, where
| people thrive from uplifting experiences online. Changing culture
| bit by bit.
|
| [0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/
|
| [1]
| https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Avoiding_Tr...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think one of the things with HN compared to FB et al is that
| HN isn't a for-profit company. It's essentially a public
| service of YC. They don't make a dime off of this, as far as I
| can see. Because of that, they don't have to do evil
| engagement-boosting tricks to try to make more dimes.
| krapp wrote:
| >They don't make a dime off of this, as far as I can see.
|
| Maybe not directly, but every YC company advertises
| themselves and their projects here, and HN is known as the
| hub for the SV tech and startup scene, which gives YC an
| automatic amount of "street cred" and visibility in all of
| the discussions had here. I'm sure Hacker News has made
| YCombinator more than a few dimes indirectly from all of
| that.
| blululu wrote:
| In general internet communities face a trade off between
| monetization and quality. The more you monetize a community
| the crappier it becomes. In the long term, the key to
| running a healthy online community is to find a good
| balance, which essentially means figuring out how to not
| make too much money.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, perhaps. But if you're right, then HN makes them
| _more_ dimes by _not_ turning into a sewer.
|
| The point is, HN has different incentives from FB. That
| matters in the culture of the resulting community.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| All the more reason to keep HN from becoming a cesspit, as
| the negative costs would be internalised by negative
| reputation.
| kangnkodos wrote:
| I saw a recent study that said frequent posters on twitter are
| likely to be on the extreme left or the extreme right.
|
| I don't have any data on how this has changed over time, but my
| guess is that social media polarization has increased over time.
|
| People who are in the middle, or have some beliefs on each side,
| or are willing to seriously consider points from both the left
| and the right just don't post much anymore. On the rare occasion
| that they do, they get downvoted to the point that they are
| invisible.
|
| So yes, when you look at social media you see the extreme left
| and the extreme right lobbing insults at each other. Or you might
| catch a glimpse of the extremists working to silence the
| moderates, if you dig deep enough.
|
| I don't think it used to be as bad as it is now.
|
| The polarization is continuing to get worse and worse.
|
| How do we stop it? I wish I knew.
| alexandercrohde wrote:
| It's not your problem to solve. It's likely not a problem at all.
|
| I think it's just a reflection of our nature -- we all claim to
| seek boring stability, yet actually thrive on drama. People who
| don't want drama have no trouble avoiding it online.
| rapnie wrote:
| OT: I notice that this Ask HN thread is suddenly revived and
| timestamps of original comments are reset. My other comment is
| not 5hrs old but from 2days ago when this item did not reach
| front page. Just curious how this works..
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Before, around 2010-2012, people who disagreed would usually
| leave it at that and walk away respectfully
|
| That's never (even before the internet) been true in unmoderated
| open online fora, and it's still true in closed and heavily
| moderated fora that seek that outcome.
|
| Unmoderated open fora have probably become more dominant because
| effective moderation doesn't scale.
| shaneprrlt wrote:
| > Before, around 2010-2012, people who disagreed would usually
| leave it at that and walk away respectfully.
|
| I literally lol'd.
| pier25 wrote:
| It has always been like this as far as I can remember.
|
| It's probably more annoying now since:
|
| 1) There is a lot more people online now than 10 years ago. We've
| gone from being in the far west to the industrial phase of the
| internet.
|
| 2) Since the web 2.0 thing there are now comments everywhere. It
| became even worse with social media.
| ljm wrote:
| I think it's a matter of what you choose to engage with, too. You
| could surround yourself with toxic 'friends' and start wondering
| why the world seems so angry now. So it is with websites and
| communities that you consider toxic to your wellbeing.
|
| There are plenty of parts of the web that aren't toxic or
| polarising; you've just got to find the ones you enjoy
| interacting with.
| hadiz wrote:
| It's a problem IRL, too. I am astonished by how much
| disinterested people are in each other. I am very good at keeping
| a conversation going, I become genuinely interested in the person
| and ask as many follow-up questions as possible. Unless I know
| what we're talking about falls into my experiences, I'd refrain
| from talking about myself.
|
| But what I see constantly is that people have gone from a "what
| about you" mindset to "what about me" mindset. My conversations
| end as soon as the person is done answering my questions about
| them. Like, zero reciprocation, which is god awful.
|
| If these people participate online, where they can mainly get
| away with being a shitty personality, then this toxicity is not
| that surprising to see.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| User experiences are crafted to make the user the center of
| attention, or gives them the levers to do so (Instagram and
| Facebook, for example). The result, while depressing (and what
| you observe), should be of no surprise to anyone.
|
| I have no solution, only a small piece of advice: seek out
| others with empathy and active interest in others. Avoid
| narcissists like the plague. Be humble.
| learnstats2 wrote:
| How is this fixed, truthfully? By censoring or oppressing one
| side of the argument, so that divergence from the status quo
| becomes invisible or perhaps illegal.
|
| People disagree; people have always disagreed. The fact that we
| are now repeatedly being told this is "toxic" is part of an
| ongoing campaign to suppress dissenting voices.
|
| It seems often to be the case that speech which oppresses people
| is "free"; while speech which identifies that oppression is
| "toxic".
| aantix wrote:
| Our voices are nuanced. Our facial expressions are nuanced.
|
| Text is not, unless your a 1% top tier writer.
|
| Would love to see more experiments with video and voice to bring
| back the subtleties of human communication.
| adultSwim wrote:
| Meaningful political change could make people happier and
| generate a greater sense of community.
|
| Take for instance climate change. Young people are asking
| politely for implementing needed solutions. At some point they
| will stop asking so nicely..
| aurizon wrote:
| The ability to be an anonymous troll has enabled the microminds
| that inhabit trollspace. The loss of accountability did it. Since
| the first days of the web this disease has festered - look at how
| many people have been harmed and hounded to suicide on FB and
| similar. Private chat circles where all are know have the
| inherent ability to defeat this - I belong to a number of them. I
| have no wish to troll, and I do not, but if I did the admins
| would soon kick me out. China deals with this with strong reles
| on ID that limit the true anonymity that enables trolls - does it
| work over there? I have no direct knowledge as I am not a mamber
| of any. The ability to create throwaway accounts on FB will make
| this hard to control. I suppose they could make each person allow
| new contacts as well as deny offenders would work - it would add
| a threshing aspect and multiply traffic as these trolls created
| new logins, begged their way into acceptance by a person, then
| offended them and got the boot. I think FB thrives on the
| unhindered traffic, protecting people would reduce their cash
| flow = will not do it unless large goverment stick used - as in
| China. I handle it, as I learned, by total non engaging trolls.
| As they say:- dot not roll in the mud with pigs, you will get
| dirty and the pig likes it!! No offense to pigs intended,,,;)
| danbolt wrote:
| I came of age in the late 2000s, but "flame wars" were already a
| thing then, correct?
|
| I think the big thing that's changed is that internet access and
| computing's audience has increased a lot over the past two
| deceased and it includes people that would normally be polarized
| in public.
| irascible wrote:
| ITT racists and bigots making pseudointellectual arguments in
| defense of evil.
| hartator wrote:
| Welcome to the Internet. :)
| banner2018 wrote:
| A co-worker suggested me to be "blindly optimistic", I scoffed at
| the suggestion. But it seems to be helping me. Hope it helps
| others too, so sharing here.
| tacocataco wrote:
| It sounds to me your coworker is pushing a faith based belief
| system on you.
| vuldin wrote:
| Another related (possibly identical) question: How do we stop
| polarization/toxicity (or general negative attitude) IRL?
|
| One possible answer: Disconnect, ignore, and avoid it while at
| the same gravitate towards positive, solution-oriented
| actions/people.
|
| Stop banging your head against the wall, it's not going to work.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I don't know if I know the solution, but I know one thing that
| _isn 't_ the solution: silencing everyone who disagrees with you.
|
| A lot of the people complaining about "toxicity" on the internet
| seem to be under the impression that if we "deplatform" the so-
| called toxic people, that will fix things. But on the contrary,
| that makes things worse.
|
| If someone says something awful on the internet, and everyone
| either ignores them or politely presents a counterargument, they
| either move on because they feel they've been heard, or they
| engage in a polite discussion. Maybe they change their mind,
| maybe they don't. If they really can't engage in polite
| discussion, then they come across as making their ideas look
| worse, so they aren't really doing much harm.
|
| If someone says something awful on the internet, and everyone
| rails about how awful it is and gets them banned, then that
| person is angry, and that anger motivates them to keep posting
| about it everywhere and spreading their idea. Meanwhile, they
| will integrate that idea into their identity, which makes it far
| harder to change their mind. And if you actually manage to get
| them to go away, they will go to cesspools like Voat, where they
| are even less likely to be exposed to ideas that change their
| mind, and where in fact they are likely to be exposed to even
| worse ideas.
|
| Let's get some perspective: what you're complaining about is
| people saying things you don't like on the internet. Yes, what
| they are saying spreads ignorance, but the solution to ignorance
| isn't silencing the ignorant, it's education.
|
| MLK and Harvey Milk both recognized that the source of the
| bigotry they fought against was fear borne of ignorance. But the
| average left-leaning person today doesn't see bigots even as
| people any more. All it takes nowadays is for someone to say one
| of a list of banned phrases and they're completely written off as
| even human. If we're going to bridge the gap here, we on the left
| have got to consider that we might be the toxic ones.
|
| I've found that when I actually talk to so-called "toxic" people
| politely, they are willing to listen. It's not them that are
| causing the polarization.
| ookblah wrote:
| mmm i'll have to disagree with this.
|
| sure, in person i think treating people politely will often
| allow you to come to some kind of middle ground or the very
| least help you to understand each other.
|
| the anonymity of the internet makes it impossible. this isn't
| even taking into account people are actively just trolling or
| state sponsored/bots/whatever people trying to muddle a
| discussion.
| urbanjunkie wrote:
| You literally have no fucking clue, and have decided to
| generalise from a sample set of 1 autistic person.
|
| Fucking pitiful.
| streb-lo wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| The problem is the loudest groups of people are people with the
| strongest political opinions. Regular people are busy. They
| have neither the time nor desire to police internet arguments
| or play the counter argument game. And even if someone does,
| regular people don't have time or desire to wade through it.
|
| One thing that I noticed when I had a Facebook account was that
| apart from a few exceptions most what I would consider well-
| adjusted people rarely participated in political discussions.
| Sure, people on average might be apolitical but there is no
| shortage of political content on Facebook -- it just
| predominantly seems to be driven by people using pseudonyms or
| with much less stake in their social identity.
|
| Another issue is that both politcal parties in the US seem to
| believe that they can achieve their goals by shifting the
| Overton window and they are incentivized to polarize people and
| hijack online platforms to do this.
|
| This leads to a huge black-hole of representation for any sort
| of average political view online which cannot be countered with
| the above logic.
| lobotryas wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| The rhetoric now is even worse because some people maintain
| that "words = violence" and real violence is needed to shut
| down this "wrong think".
|
| I think some people would be amazed if they realized that it's
| OK when people disagree[0] and doubly OK when people have
| different opinions on how to fix something[1].
|
| Finally it's become hard or impossible to stand up for the
| RIGHT of people to express marginalized opinions lest you
| yourself get accused of having those opinions. Wonder if the
| ACLU could ever "get away" with defending free speech even for
| bigoted groups in 2020.
|
| [0] - Some people have genuine and compelling (for them, at
| least) reasons to be pro life despite society as a whole
| disagreeing with them.
|
| [1] - Plenty of people agree that global warming is a problem,
| but disagree with the popular narrative on how (or even how
| fast) they need to fix it.
| bonaldi wrote:
| The data suggests that deplatforming works. Milo; Katie
| Hopkins; InfoWars et al have all lost their former agenda-
| setting influence following deplatforming. And studies have
| shown that banning hate sub-Reddits does _not_ cause that
| content to "pop up elsewhere", it causes it to decline overall.
|
| It's important to remember too there are incentives for people
| to argue and behave otherwise: FB, Twitter, hate-speech mongers
| who want easy access to large audiences -- All have commercial
| cause to act in favour of more and more extreme speech.
|
| People like that benefit from more and more extreme speech.
| They permit or encourage it on their platforms. This in turn
| causes the white blood cell count of the body politic to spike
| as it tries to counteract the bile and hate. This angry
| counter-speech then gets presented as "polarisation".
|
| The solution to ignorance _can often be_ silencing the
| ignorant, yes, in order that the educators can be heard.
|
| Would we still have an anti-vax problem if FB banned it across
| its properties? Really?
|
| Banning disruptive speakers works. Every pub landlord knows it.
| wisty wrote:
| A lot of people are skeptics of "anti-racism" and "feminism".
| Not everyone thinks that racism is causing black people to be
| poor (IMO a lot of current anti-racists are like people who
| see a snake-bite victim, and start screaming out that we have
| to kill the snake - the snake might have caused the problem
| but treating a snake bite is not just chasing after snakes),
| and not everyone thinks that essentially every difference
| between men and women is part of some vast conspiracy to keep
| women down (this is reductionist - both because it tries to
| make everything a stupid "on balance, stuff is worse for
| women" argument, and because it's reductionist to say biology
| is not a factor).
|
| If relatively mild critics of these things are shut out of
| the mainstream media, then they get fans on mainstream social
| media platforms. If they're banned from mainstream social
| media, they'll find some other place. These fans haven't all
| been bitten by reactionary zombies, they often come up with
| their own doubts about the mainstream left, and look for
| people discussing the questions they have.
|
| Here's an article suggesting that 'alt lite' speakers or
| skeptics of social justice aren't necessarily creating some
| 'rabbit hole' effect, but may actually sap views away from
| hardline extremists - https://www.wired.com/story/not-
| youtubes-algorithm-radicaliz...
|
| Even if you think that critics of social justice are wrong,
| they exist (in large numbers). If you don't want the
| moderates on mainstream platforms, a number will go to darker
| corners of the internet where there is a genuine danger they
| will be radicalised.
|
| I guess maybe that's OK? Extreme right-wing radicals might
| tend to hurt the right. Maybe the goal is to drive away
| moderate anti-feminists or moderate anti-social justice types
| (e.g. Milo who seems to me to be a bit of a jerk, but is
| hardly radical), and if a few end up becoming alt-right then
| maybe that's OK (and "it's their fault" anyway).
| djsumdog wrote:
| You realize Voat exists right? And Gab? I wrote this about
| how Voat grew:
|
| https://battlepenguin.com/tech/voat-what-went-wrong/
|
| Deplatforming was a big part of that. Deplatforming didn't
| stop Milo. His base dropped him because he started defending
| hebeaphiles & pedophile / men being attracted to teens/pre-
| teens/boys (there's actually something sadder here; with Milo
| not realizing he was himself abused ... there's an entire
| tragic story lost there people don't seem to understand or
| pick up on because they're too busy hating him).
|
| They might leave the platforms you like, but they move over
| to Voat, Gab or startup their own Pleroma/Mastodon instances
| (that get banned from everywhere). Deplatforming doesn't
| really work in the way you thin it does. It literally gives
| people more drive to stand up for and behind what Capital-T
| "truth" they think got themselves banned.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| What you're describing is "that heap of Nazis over there".
| It doesn't matter if the deplatformed people pop back up in
| marginal, poorly connected hate-tolerant sites. That
| actually helps. They have been successfully "sent to
| Coventry" in a place where their cultural impact is nil.
| jessaustin wrote:
| So we don't have to worry about Nazis anymore? I'm glad
| to learn that; somehow I had been misinformed by the
| newspapers.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I don't know on what basis you think that their cultural
| impact is nil.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Because they're left in a situation where the only people
| they're able to talk to are already-committed Nazis.
|
| Some of those have indirect diffusion paths back out into
| the mainstream culture. But the direct ones are
| blockaded.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Is the voting booth not direct enough for you?
| [deleted]
| bonaldi wrote:
| Deplatforming doesn't work by silencing people, and the
| environment that you'd have to create to make it otherwise
| is not an enticing one. So yes, you can often cause the
| creation of spaces like Voat as a result of deplatforming.
|
| Sure, something like Voat pops up. But Reddit improves. And
| Reddit is where all the people are.
|
| There will always be dive bars, there will always be rough
| online neighbourhoods. But start by cleaning up the civic
| square.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| More and more, as time goes on, people are leaving the
| MSM including reddit for these off-shoots and it risks
| creating separate bubbles for every group-think out
| there. This is what de-platforming and cancel culture
| does.
|
| It's also not black and white. Sure 99% of us can agree
| that banning or de-platforming such horrendous stuff like
| NAMBLA is good. But MSM starts to push out and group non-
| extremists into the same bucket and ban them all, and you
| get where we are today, with a good chunk of society that
| doesn't listen to or trust the MSM.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > And Reddit is where all the people are.
|
| All the people in your echo chamber, that is.
| tptacek wrote:
| If what you mean to say is that "the subset of spaces
| that does not include Voat and Gab is an echo chamber",
| you are probably saying something about your own views
| that you might not mean to say.
| ar_lan wrote:
| It's blatantly true that Reddit still holds echo chambers
| though, and the majority are far-left leaning. r/politics
| is as much of an echo chamber as r/The_Donald (but one is
| a default sub, with a deceptive name).
| tptacek wrote:
| That's why I was particular about what I was taking them
| to be saying. I'm not looking to litigate whether there
| are echo chambers on Reddit. There clearly are. The
| question, now tacitly answered, is whether the person I
| replied to believes _any_ space that excludes Voat and
| Gab is definitionally an echo chamber.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| How so?
|
| To be clear, I definitely _don 't_ agree with most of
| what is said on Voat, and I'm not really familiar with
| Gab.
| tptacek wrote:
| You might want to familiarize yourself more with services
| before making sweeping arguments about what excluding
| them means for the discourse.
| NathanKP wrote:
| Voat is tiny. Sure there is always going to be a
| population of die hard edgelords who are determined
| enough to move to a new site, but in general the vast
| majority of people are lazy. And most likely it takes the
| bot / disinformation account owners a while to move all
| their activity over to a new community
| potatoz2 wrote:
| This is akin to an argument that you shouldn't fire your
| nazi-sympathizing coworker when they discuss their support
| for an ethnonationalist state because they may join neo-
| nazi groups and "radicalize" as a result.
|
| Yes, they may. But while they do the workplace where most
| people interact is a livable place for the rest of us. We
| shouldn't make it easier to be heard if you have despicable
| views just because of the implied threat it might get
| worse.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Yes, and for truly horrendous viewpoints it's ok to ban
| them outright. But society isn't black and white, and
| when you start lumping non-extremists into the same
| bucket and banning them all you end up where we are
| today: distrust of MSM but a big chunk of society.
| ceres wrote:
| You keep talking about "non-extremists" but you are not
| telling us what you mean by that.
| im3w1l wrote:
| There are many ethno-nationalist states around. It's a
| fairly normal thing to want for many peoples.
| potatoz2 wrote:
| We can disagree about the wisdom of ethno-nationalist
| states in general (in my opinion they lead to deciding
| that some group is a different ethnicity and using that
| to justify their ouster, see Myanmar, China or recent
| Indian laws).
|
| Either way advocating for an ethno-nationalist state in
| the U.S. is akin to supporting the forced removal of at
| least a third of the population, which is a despicable
| view to have.
| thebokehwokeh2 wrote:
| I'd argue that in this case, it deplatforming absolutely
| worked in the way intended. There are 2 factors at play
| here. People who are willing to argue in good faith, and
| people who are simply trying to put forth an agenda
| regardless of what anyone says.
|
| Those who likely moved to Gab and Voat and 4/8chan are
| likely persons that fit the latter description. There is no
| need to even have discussions with people like these on the
| internet. The best is for them to be deplatformed and
| continue their self flagellation. They are simply too far
| gone. If anything, these sites will probably radicalize,
| but it will also be easier for authorities to keep tabs on
| particularly dangerous accounts.
|
| The concept of deplatforming is to protect the integrity of
| good faith discussion. The key idea there is "good faith".
| Persons like the aforementioned Milo clearly do not engage
| in any concept of good faith discussion. IMO there is no
| need for any discussion base like reddit or facebook to
| protect these types.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > People who are willing to argue in good faith, and
| people who are simply trying to put forth an agenda
| regardless of what anyone says.
|
| I think that it would be wise to doubt one's own ability
| to differentiate between these two groups.
|
| I also think that the purpose of public debate is not to
| persuade the person you are debating with: that's almost
| never possible. It's to persuade the audience. Bad faith
| arguments, if they really are bad faith arguments, are
| usually pretty easy to shoot down, so I don't think that
| we have anything to fear from bad-faith arguers.
|
| In fact, _deplatforming benefits bad-faith arguers_
| because their bad-faith arguments look more reasonable
| when nobody confronts them.
|
| At another level, _deplatforming is a bad faith argument_
| , by your own definition. Aren't you trying to put forth
| your agenda, regardless of what anyone says, by
| deplatforming people? Your agenda may be good, but that
| doesn't justify bad faith actions to support it.
| panzagl wrote:
| Deplatforming can't work- otherwise the world would now
| be as white-bread homophobic and misogynistic as it was
| in the 50's when blacks, gays, and women were
| deplatformed.
| thebokehwokeh2 wrote:
| Wasn't the civil war a country destroying war about
| deplatforming slave ownership? Had the confederates truly
| been wiped off the face of the earth, we likely would not
| even be having this discussion in the first place.
|
| How about WW2 which was essentially about deplatforming
| the nazis? That worked out quite well for many MANY parts
| of humanity.
|
| Deplatforming is a new word that has been weaponized by
| people of a certain political persuation, but the reality
| is that it is simply the nipping of a perceived organized
| destructive idea in the bud.
|
| I realize this may cut both ways but I am of the belief
| that too many people exist in a fantasyworld where good
| faith arguments are the majority of discussion on the
| internet. Bigots rarely ever actually want to partake in
| good faith discussion.
| ceres wrote:
| This isn't same thing and you know it. Deplatforming
| someone for being racist, homophobic and sexist is and
| should continue to be encouraged.
|
| In your example, what they were doing was fundamentally
| wrong and if you asked any good person today they would
| tell you as much.
| tmh79 wrote:
| Deplatforming totally works, it quarantines the toxic
| people/ideas and doesn't allow them to spread further. Its
| fine if they move to voat or whatever, voat has orders of
| magnitude less people who use it casually, so there is a
| much lower opportunity for their message to spread.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > The data suggests that deplatforming works. Milo; Katie
| Hopkins; InfoWars et al have all lost their former agenda-
| setting influence following deplatforming. And studies have
| shown that banning hate sub-Reddits does _not_ cause that
| content to "pop up elsewhere", it causes it to decline
| overall.
|
| This is simply not an accurate representation of history.
|
| Milo Yiannopoulos fell out of popularity because of repeated
| issues with pedophilia, which even the right doesn't condone.
|
| Katie Hopkins was financially ruined Monroe v. Hopkins[1].
|
| InfoWars still has a larger readership than The Economist or
| Newsweek[2], so I'm not sure where you get the idea that they
| have lost influence. It sounds like you might be inside of an
| echo chamber.
|
| You may be looking at a different study, but the only
| study[3] I know of on the banning of hate sub-Reddits showed
| that content didn't pop up elsewhere _on Reddit_. It doesn 't
| show that the hate didn't just move over to Voat, which is my
| theory as to what happened. Yes, the study was publicized as
| "deplatforming works", but only because people didn't know
| where the people who were deplatformed went.
|
| The rest of your post follows suit with claims that aren't
| based in reality.
|
| [1] by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_v_Hopkins
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars (top section)
|
| [3] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-
| contro...
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| When they ban the "extremists" the "moderates" thrive
| making youtube/reddit/etc posts about the obvious double
| standards, and the impossible to pass purity tests created
| to ban those "extremists". The logical inconsistency of
| both sides of the current "culture" war parties in the US
| create a near unending supply of "gotcha" moments, which
| are just fuel for the fire.
|
| If anything, banning extremists makes these ideologies more
| palatable to a larger group of people by creating a more
| gradual on-ramp at the entry level. I believe this is
| becoming more obvious as we see the middle ground position
| in the current "culture" conflict (which would still
| probably get you banned from facebook) rapidly becoming
| acceptable. The pendulum keeps swinging, and not many
| people involved seem very interested in stopping the broken
| cycle and finding a more sustainable solution.
| bonaldi wrote:
| Your stat on the reach of InfoWars is based on claims from
| 2017, _before_ the de-platforming. More recent reports
| point to considerable slumps, eg:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/alex-jones-
| inf...
|
| Voat is discussed elsewhere here, too. In short, the point
| was precisely to get the speech off Reddit because it was
| poisoning Reddit. People said it wasn't worth them trying
| because it would move to other subreddits. It didn't, it
| moved offsite entirely.
|
| De-platforming worked for Reddit. OP asked for tech
| contributions to reducing the amount of polarised speech in
| online spaces. There is one.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > Your stat on the reach of InfoWars is based on claims
| from 2017, before the de-platforming. More recent reports
| point to considerable slumps, eg:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/alex-jones-
| inf....
|
| Thank you for responding with actual data. I'll have to
| read the article.
|
| > De-platforming worked for Reddit. OP asked for tech
| contributions to reducing the amount of polarised speech
| in online spaces. There is one.
|
| I'm not sure how one can look at Reddit being more
| consistently liberal, and Voat being... Voat, and see
| this as "reducing the amount of polarised speech in
| online spaces".
| Pxtl wrote:
| Reddit also delisted the Chapo Trap House subreddit, it's
| not exclusively conservatives that are toxic. And
| Reddit's clean up wasn't about liberal vs conservatives,
| it was about teen-ogling perverts, overt racism, and
| threats of violence.
| iagovar wrote:
| I'd like to see that data.
| [deleted]
| brlewis wrote:
| > Milo; Katie Hopkins; InfoWars et al have all lost their
| former agenda-setting influence following deplatforming
|
| When did they ever have agenda-setting influence? I need more
| specific citations for these claims than "the data" and
| "studies".
|
| > Banning disruptive speakers works. Every pub landlord knows
| it.
|
| I'm no expert on pubs, but my understanding is that
| "disruptive speakers" in that context are ones who make it
| hard for others to speak.
| kabouseng wrote:
| And then something like Trump or Brexit happens, and the left
| had no idea it was coming because a lot of people's
| viewpoints were silenced / deplatformed....
| [deleted]
| mrits wrote:
| Banning speech might fix anti-vax but it also might have
| caused vaccines to never be legal to begin with.
| kodablah wrote:
| > The data suggests that deplatforming works
|
| Well of course. That's like a prohibitionist using the
| reduced alcohol consumption overall as justification. Data
| often suggests that prohibiting <thing> means less of
| <thing>.
|
| The question is not whether the goal of the silencing is
| mostly achieved, the question is whether that goal is worth
| the precedent. If your goal is to silence at all costs, it
| will always seem worth it. You'll find the less forceful
| actions (e.g. ignoring, dissuading, etc), when possible, have
| less slippery trade offs.
| HeroOfAges wrote:
| You only say that because you don't agree with the agendas of
| the people you've listed. Would you trust me to choose when
| to deplatform the people who drive the agendas you agree
| with?
|
| _edited because of grammar_
| roenxi wrote:
| On the one hand it is a reality that leftist ideologies
| gained a comfortable ascendancy in the major cultural engines
| of America and that is going to be leveraged as political
| power. Particularly education, the tech industry and
| Hollywood.
|
| On the other hand, there is the ongoing background corruption
| of power afoot. Taking power, utilising it and branding
| anyone who disagrees as 'toxic' is going to cause a great
| deal of unnecessary suffering, as it has in the past every
| time a group uses power in an unchecked fashion.
|
| Revolutions are often started by people who were
| deplatformed, it doesn't help when the situation is serious.
| If I recall correctly; Hitler, Stalin, Galileo and Gandhi are
| all people who were deplatformed and imprisoned. Jesus was
| deplatformed rather violently. Deplatforming is not a tool
| with a particularly proud history of success and prudent
| implementation; and its failures tend to be spectacular. Two
| sides sticking to reasoned debate, explanation, moderation
| and compromise has a much better track record of not-so-bad
| outcomes.
| pnako wrote:
| Would we still have a pro-vax problem if FB banned it across
| its properties?
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Yes, obviously. Do you think there aren't any anti-vaxxers
| with the ability to build a website?
| bonaldi wrote:
| "A website" that can get the reach among parents of FB's
| newsfeed? Yes, I think there are few anti-vaxxers who can
| build such a thing.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| True, but it doesn't have to have as large a reach,
| because it's presenting a more consistent anti-vax
| opinion.
|
| An anti-vax post on a FB newsfeed is quite likely to have
| counterarguments. An anti-vax website is unlikely to run
| into such problems.
|
| And going back to the original post: does "vaxxers on FB,
| anti-vaxxers elsewhere" sound like more polarisation, or
| less?
| deepspace wrote:
| Do you think that the average person sharing false stores
| on Facebook is capable of (a) finding and (b) sharing a
| website created by some random anti-vaxxer?
|
| The ubiquity of the platform and the ease of sharing
| massively amplifies the problem.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > Do you think that the average person sharing false
| stores on Facebook is capable of (a) finding and (b)
| sharing a website created by some random anti-vaxxer?
|
| Yes. Why would they not be?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| If you de-platform people they still think the way that they
| think, you just don't see what they're thinking and have no
| ability to challenge it.
|
| Then they turn up and vote...
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| However, what they don't do is convert loads of other
| people to their way of thinking.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| What makes you think this?
|
| Do you think that Voat, Fox News, InfoWars, etc are
| somehow less effective platforms?
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Those are also things we should eliminate.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| What you're proposing sounds uncomfortably like
| totalitarianism.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Which is the end-goal of the far left.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| No it doesn't. I'm just totally comfortable with a world
| in which people are educated enough to no longer have to
| consume these industrial lie factories.
| [deleted]
| djsumdog wrote:
| Not everyone leads hard left/right. Most people are
| centrists. So say you want to be a progressive left, but
| on issue "x" you don't stand with the left. You can't
| vocalize this because doing so will have people call you
| "not really left" or "a bigot" or "not seeing past your
| privilege."
|
| You can go two ways. You can not want to leave your
| political home and double down and go harder left ... or
| you find dissenting voices. If those voices aren't
| centrists, they're going to be hard right, and people
| will start to shift their entire political leanings
| because they want a political home.
|
| People need to be okay with others believing things they
| don't agree with. Even controversial things. I've noticed
| people on the left who refuse to be friends with or hand
| out with people who have different beliefs about certain
| things .. and that's insane! How do you learn and grow if
| you cut off everyone with a different opinion than
| yourself? We're probably all wrong about something.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| I'm generally pretty respectful of the idea that people
| are entitled to make their views public. This is healthy.
| I don't think this means that everybody is entitled to
| have their views broadcast on every platform. Presumably
| we could agree there's a line somewhere, at which point
| it's acceptable for me, as a company, to refuse to allow
| views which I consider to be over that line to be
| broadcast on my platform?
|
| It's a position of some security to be able to complain
| that "people on the left who refuse to be friends with or
| hand out with people who have different beliefs about
| certain things .. and that's insane". I belong to at
| least one minority group. I'm not even what you'd call
| "left", but I'd certainly refuse to be friends either
| someone whose belief was that a group to which I belong
| should be denied some rights. I'd probably refuse to be
| friends with people who had certain other views I find
| particularly offensive too. Is that strange or unhealthy?
| I'd find it really weird to be friends with someone who
| held beliefs I find to be grossly offensive.
| [deleted]
| potatoz2 wrote:
| There's no problem with wildly differing views. The
| problem is dehumanizing speech. Taking reddit as an
| example, there's a thriving r/Libertarian and r/guns
| together with Sanders supporting or communist subreddits.
|
| Don't conflate strong disagreements with toxic speech.
| notadev wrote:
| Some get woke, others get red-pilled.
| MadWombat wrote:
| > And studies have shown that banning hate sub-Reddits does
| _not_ cause that content to "pop up elsewhere", it causes it
| to decline overall.
|
| Could you provide a source for this?
| Pils wrote:
| Probably this Georgia Tech article:
| http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf
| notadoc wrote:
| > The data suggests that deplatforming works.
|
| And how will you feel when whatever you personally have
| interest in gets deplatformed because someone else finds it
| to be disagreeable?
|
| If you don't think power will eventually be applied against
| you, you haven't read enough history.
| burnte wrote:
| > I don't know if I know the solution, but I know one thing
| that isn't the solution: silencing everyone who disagrees with
| you.
|
| I'm not a fan of trying to SILENCE anyone, however as a private
| entity, no corporation is required to allow anyone to use their
| platform for (nearly) any reason. Twitter can ban me today
| because they don't like my shoes. Facebook can ban me because
| Mark Zuckerberg thinks I look funny. Google can ban me because
| I prefer my Alexa to Google Home. Youtube can ban Alex Jones
| because he spews hate. Cloudflare can ban whoever those white
| supremacists were for being racist. Taking away their right to
| choose their customers is just as much an affront to free
| speech as government censorship.
|
| Several years ago Sprint kicked off a small number of customers
| because they were costing the company lot of resources due to
| their behavior with the company. I absolutely agreed with them,
| and that's their right. Same with social media, hosts, etc.
| Nothing stops these people from finding another way to get
| their message out, but my company nor anyone else has to help
| them.
| yoz-y wrote:
| > I don't know if I know the solution, but I know one thing
| that isn't the solution: silencing everyone who disagrees with
| you.
|
| I found that ignoring people on IRC who would sprinkle any
| conversation with racist or misplaced remarks helped me quite a
| bit. Of course it only affects me, but even after polite
| attempts to steer the conversation it never changed. Same on
| Twitter, at some point there is one of me and many of them, the
| cost to engage is just too high.
| deepspace wrote:
| The counterpoint to that is that allowing platforms for toxic
| views to exist and grow (a) "normalizes" these views and (b)
| makes it very easy for them to recruit new members, since they
| have a "legitimate" platform to spread their hate from.
|
| Personally I am fine with them isolating themselves in
| cesspools like Voat. While they are not being exposed to
| contrary views there, they are also not exposing large amounts
| of other people to their views.
|
| Another factor is that toxic views are massively amplified by
| bots (and the bad actors behind them) and not providing these
| with an easy-to-exploit platform is a good thing in my opinion.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| (a) Bigotry is already normalized in the United States. The
| president is a bigot and almost half the country voted for
| him. This is another negative effect of deplatforming: if you
| live in a liberal city and only frequent Reddit/Facebook, you
| live in an echo chamber where you don't have any visibility
| into what's normal.
|
| (b) The legitimacy of a platform is based on what is said
| there, not the other way around. You view Voat as less
| legitimate than Reddit because you disagree with what is said
| on Voat more than you disagree with what is said on Reddit.
| If someone said something bigoted on Reddit, would you view
| it as more legitimate? No? Then why do you think anyone else
| sees it that way?
| krapp wrote:
| >The president is a bigot and almost half the country voted
| for him
|
| That's not entirely true. About half of the pool of
| eligible voters who participated in the election voted for
| Trump[0], but they accounted for around 20% of the
| population[1].
|
| Not that I disagree about bigotry being normalized in the
| US, it has been since the founding of the country. But I
| think the evidence of that isn't Trump's election so much
| as Trump even making it to the primary. His election,
| arguably, came about due to a system designed to meet the
| interests of the parties, and not the will of people at
| large.
|
| [0]https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-eligible-
| voters-vot...
|
| [1]https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-the-population-
| vote...
| gotoeleven wrote:
| What did he do to call him a bigot? Enforcing immigration
| laws? Banning travel from countries where we can't vet
| people properly? Declining to have the military pay for
| people's sexual reassignment surgeries? Not letting people
| on welfare earn citizenship? Restricting a refugee system
| that was being abused?
|
| One of the sources of polarization is that the definition
| of hate and racism and bigotry seems to be broad and
| expanding on the left, while on the right it is narrow and
| static.
| urbanjunkie wrote:
| fuck off and die, you trump supporting cunt.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| there's that reasoned debate everyone is clamoring for
| thebokehwokeh2 wrote:
| Prime example of a bad faith actor right here. Although
| it is likely you are a Trump true believer, in the spirit
| of good faith I will post a rebuttal to your false
| ignorance of the President's racism and bigotry.
|
| There is an entire Wikipedia article called "The Racial*
| Views of Donald Trump"
|
| Some examples are:
|
| "In 1973 the U.S. Department of Justice sued Trump
| Management, Donald Trump and his father Fred, for
| discrimination against African Americans in their renting
| practices."
|
| MORE
|
| Taking out a full page ad calling for the death penalty
| of 4 falsely accused black teenagers who allegedly
| committed a violent rape. The evidence that they were
| innocent was and still is overwhelming. When they were
| exonerated, Trump didn't back down. In October 2016, when
| Trump campaigned to be president, he said that Central
| Park Five were guilty and that their convictions should
| never have been vacated, attracting criticism from the
| Central Park Five themselves and others."
|
| MORE
|
| "In a 1989 interview with Bryant Gumbel, Trump stated: "A
| well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a
| well-educated white in terms of the job market."
|
| MORE
|
| In his 1991 book Trumped! John O'Donnell quoted Trump as
| allegedly saying:
|
| I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and at Trump
| Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. [...] And
| it's probably not his fault because laziness is a trait
| in blacks."
|
| MORE
|
| "During the early 1990s, competition from an expanding
| Native American casino industry threatened his Atlantic
| City investments. During this period Trump stated that
| "nobody likes Indians as much as Donald Trump" but then
| claimed without evidence that the mob had infiltrated
| Native American casinos, that there was no way "Indians"
| or an "Indian chief" could stand up to the mob, implied
| that the casinos were not in fact owned by Native
| Americans based on the owners' appearance, and depicted
| Native Americans as greedy."
|
| MORE
|
| "In April 2005, Trump appeared on Howard Stern's radio
| show, where Trump proposed that the fourth season of the
| television show The Apprentice would feature an
| exclusively white team of blondes competing against a
| team of only African-Americans."
|
| MORE
|
| "In 2011, Trump revived the already discredited Barack
| Obama citizenship conspiracy theories that had been
| circulating since Obama's 2008 presidential campaign,
| and, for the following five years, he played a leading
| role in the so-called "birther movement""
|
| MORE
|
| Here are a FEW examples of his racism during and after
| his campaign and presidency.
|
| "At a rally in Birmingham, Alabama on November 21, 2015,
| Trump falsely claimed that he had seen television reports
| about "thousands and thousands" of Arabs in New Jersey
| celebrating as the World Trade Center collapsed during
| the 9/11 attacks."
|
| MORE
|
| "In August 2016 Trump campaigned in Maine, which has a
| large immigrant Somali population. At a rally he said,
| "We've just seen many, many crimes getting worse all the
| time, and as Maine knows -- a major destination for
| Somali refugees -- right, am I right?" Trump also alluded
| to risks of terrorism, referring to an incident in June
| 2016 when three young Somali men were found guilty of
| planning to join the Islamic State in Syria."
|
| MORE
|
| "Prior to and during the 2016 campaign, Trump used his
| political platform to spread disparaging messages against
| various racial groups. Trump claimed, "the overwhelming
| amount of violent crime in our cities is committed by
| blacks and Hispanics," that "there's killings on an
| hourly basis virtually in places like Baltimore and
| Chicago and many other places," that "There are places in
| America that are among the most dangerous in the world.
| You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime
| numbers are worse. Seriously," and retweeted a false
| claim that 81% of white murder victims were killed by
| black people."
|
| MORE
|
| "During the campaign Trump was found to have retweeted
| the main influencers of the #WhiteGenocide movement over
| 75 times, including twice that he retweeted a user with
| the handle @WhiteGenocideTM."
|
| MORE
|
| "Trump also falsely claimed that, "African American
| communities are absolutely in the worst shape they've
| ever been in before. Ever.""
|
| MORE
|
| "Trump also suggested that evangelicals should not trust
| Ted Cruz because Cruz is Cuban and that Jeb Bush "has to
| like the Mexican illegals because of his wife," who is
| Mexican American."
|
| "Speaking in Virginia in August 2016, Trump said, "You're
| living in your poverty, your schools are no good, you
| have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed -
| what the hell do you have to lose by trying something
| new, like Trump?""
|
| MORE
|
| "On January 27, 2017, via executive order, which he
| titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry
| into the United States, President Trump ordered the U.S
| border indefinitely closed to Syrian refugees fleeing the
| civil war. He also abruptly temporarily halted (for 90
| days) immigration from six other Muslim-majority nations:
| Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen."
|
| MORE
|
| "In June 2017, Trump called together a staff meeting to
| complain about the number of immigrants who had entered
| the country since his inauguration. The New York Times
| reported that two officials at the meeting state that
| when Trump read off a sheet stating that 15,000 persons
| had visited from Haiti, he commented, "They all have
| AIDS," and when reading that 40,000 persons had visited
| from Nigeria, he said that after seeing America the
| Nigerians would never "go back to their huts.""
|
| MORE
|
| "The U.S. Department of Justice concluded that Arizona
| sheriff Joe Arpaio oversaw the worst pattern of racial
| profiling in U.S. history. The illegal tactics that he
| was using included "extreme racial profiling and sadistic
| punishments that involved the torture, humiliation, and
| degradation of Latino inmates". The DoJ filed suit
| against him for unlawful discriminatory police conduct.
| He ignored their orders and was subsequently convicted of
| contempt of court for continuing to racially profile
| Hispanics. Calling him "a great American patriot",
| President Trump pardoned him soon afterwards, even before
| sentencing took place."
|
| MORE
|
| "In his initial statement on the rally, Trump did not
| denounce white nationalists but instead condemned
| "hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides". His
| statement and his subsequent defenses of it, in which he
| also referred to "very fine people on both sides",
| suggested a moral equivalence between the white
| supremacist marchers and those who protested against
| them, leading some observers to state that he was
| sympathetic to white supremacy."
|
| MORE
|
| "On January 11, 2018, during an Oval Office meeting about
| immigration reform, commenting on immigration figures
| from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and African countries,
| Trump reportedly said: "Those shitholes send us the
| people that they don't want", and suggested that the US
| should instead increase immigration from "places like
| Norway" and Asian countries."
|
| MORE
|
| "In August 2018, Trump sent a tweet stating that he had
| ordered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into land
| seizures and the mass killing of white farmers in South
| Africa, acting on a racist conspiracy theory."
|
| MORE
|
| "In May 2019, the Trump administration announced that
| there was no plan to replace the portrait of Andrew
| Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill with that of Harriet
| Tubman, as had been planned by the Obama administration."
|
| MORE
|
| "On July 14, 2019, Trump tweeted about four Democratic
| congresswomen of color, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna
| Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. This group,
| known collectively as the Squad, had verbally sparred
| with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a week earlier:
|
| MORE
|
| I HAVE NOW EXCEEDED THE REDDIT COMMENT WORD COUNT.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| You listed the 'very fine people' hoax so I don't think
| your judgement is very well calibrated here. There's a
| bunch of quotes with no context and some things that not
| even the most expansive definition of racism would cover.
| Tweeting about the squad? Leaving andrew jackson on the
| $20? Are you saying that land seizures and killing of
| white farmers don't actually happen in south africa? If
| the only source is 'the new york times reported' then Im
| sorry I just dont believe it after the russia nonsense.
| thebokehwokeh2 wrote:
| Whattaboutism is not a good rebuke of any of what I have
| listed above. The truth that your idol is a racist is
| very unfortunate as it is uncomfortable for you, isn't
| it.
|
| There are certainly a far greater example of racism
| exhibited by your emperor, but I can see a bad faith
| actor when I see one.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| There is no whataboutism in my response. Im honestly not
| sure what you're talking about. Maybe you mean the thing
| about south africa? The point is: how is it evidence of
| bigotry to be worried about land seizures in south
| africa? Thats not whataboutism, that's pointing out a non
| sequitur. The rest of your post is ad hominem.
| retromario wrote:
| Maybe start in this extremely well-sourced article: https
| ://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump-r..
| .
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Thanks for the link. The story about the 1975 housing
| discrimination case does indeed look like Trump
| Management was racist. I think the question is was this
| driven by personal racial animus or by competitive
| business considerations? Also to what degree was Donald
| Trump setting these policies versus his dad Fred? (Donald
| was 29 or 30 at the time).
|
| The rest of the article is just stuff that really isn't
| that clear cut as to whether Trump is actually racist. I
| think the last quote from the article is a good summary
| of the divide:
|
| >>>KWAME JACKSON: America's always trying to find this
| gotcha moment that shows Donald Trump is racist--you
| know, let's find this one big thing. Let's look for that
| one time when he burned a cross in someone's yard so we
| can now finally say it. People refuse to see the bread
| crumbs that are already in front of you, leading you to
| grandma's house.
|
| If you don't like a guy yeah all you need is bread crumbs
| to crucify him. If you do, especially given the choice
| was Trump or Hilary Clinton, then you're going to need
| more than bread crumbs to convince people he's racist. So
| the original comment, that Trumps election means 50% of
| the country is fine with bigotry, is just not true. There
| are people who support Trump who honestly do not believe
| they are tolerating bigotry.
| Sorry_Rum_Ham wrote:
| If you're asking this question after everything over the
| past four years, you are either:
|
| a.) Not asking the question in good faith
|
| b.) Weapons-grade stupid
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Please keep the discussion civil.
| Sorry_Rum_Ham wrote:
| *Please stop pointing out obvious bad faith actors and
| their bigotry. It makes me feel cognitive dissonance
| about the fact that I agree with them about a lot of
| things.
|
| FTFY
| pnako wrote:
| Isolation / segregation / echo chamber (whatever you want to
| call it) is amplifying toxicity.
|
| We used to socialize in the streets, in the marketplace, in
| towns. Maybe the town's butcher was known to be a bit of a
| racist hick, but he was still a decent shopkeeper and his
| kids went to the same school as yours, so you tolerated his
| antics. There was the town slut, the town's drunk, the guy
| who was a known communist sympathizer, etc. People with their
| flaws, and qualities, and somehow we managed to make it all
| work.
|
| What happens when those people now each socialize on their
| own online social network with people exactly like them? That
| can't be good.
| deepspace wrote:
| As I mentioned in another comment, what happens today is
| that they already socialize in their own online social
| networks with people exactly like them. They do not
| tolerate one iota of dissent or open discussion, and will
| ban anyone with contrary views or criticism.
|
| If we allow them space on our open platforms, without
| demanding that they tolerate our views, that does not
| result in any kind of real conversation, it just allows
| them to spread their toxic views around.
| luckylion wrote:
| Have you ever actually talked to people who are unlike
| you, or hold extremely different view points? Because
| this whole "the do not tolerate one iota of dissent or
| open discussion" is very far from my experience.
|
| It's true, you usually can't engage people when they are
| pumped up on adrenaline shouting at each other on
| Twitter, but that's like jumping into the middle of a
| brawl and saying "those people will never be able to have
| a conversation" when they don't immediately stop fighting
| and listen to you. I've talked to people from far left to
| far right, from vegans to conspiracy theorists, and with
| very few exceptions, all of them were happy to explain
| their ideas and viewpoints and were pretty accepting when
| I expressed a different opinion. They may well believe
| that I'm wrong, but they didn't mind talking to me after
| learning where I disagree with them, and they didn't
| become combative either.
|
| I believe a very important part about "open discussion"
| is to be honest and compassionate. Don't talk down to
| people, don't mock them, don't tell them they are scum,
| or evil, or destroying humanity etc and then say "they
| don't tolerate dissent" when really they just don't react
| kindly to hostile behavior.
| Multicomp wrote:
| > I believe a very important part about "open discussion"
| is to be honest and compassionate. Don't talk down to
| people, don't mock them, don't tell them they are scum,
| or evil, or destroying humanity etc and then say "they
| don't tolerate dissent" when really they just don't react
| kindly to hostile behavior.
|
| I feel like this is the goal online communities would
| like to see of their users. Be polite, accept good faith,
| etc. HN tries to have it in its own guidelines.
|
| The startup that manages to motivate users to, while
| disagreeing vehemently on a given argument, remain
| (civil|good faith|each side remembering that the other
| side IS human) on target without descending into flame
| wars or otherwise, would stand to make a TON of money.
|
| I feel like perhaps that is an impossible ideal to pursue
| though.
| enobrev wrote:
| ...with _only_ people exactly like them.
| TomMckenny wrote:
| >silencing everyone who disagrees with you
|
| That is not remotely what is being suggested.
|
| Toxicity is when a site devoted to people mourning a synagogue
| massacre is overwhelmed by spamming neo-nazis.
|
| Toxicity is annihilating a site's function: a site where
| climate scientists discuss findings needs to be free of an
| flood of spam from climate change deniers and paid petroleum
| sock puppets. Such a site exists for people to do their job not
| waste every day repeating the same basic information available
| elsewhere easier to people who came intentionally to disrupt.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _But the average left-leaning person today doesn 't see bigots
| even as people any more._
|
| I spend the bulk of my time studying extremist discourse and
| communities. Extremist bigots take it as read that people of
| the wrong ethnic/religious/political group are either not
| people or at best inferior people, and direct their efforts to
| promoting those views, planning how to eliminate those they
| dislike, and normalizing that behavior.
|
| You are, essentially, projecting the characteristics of bad
| actors onto other actors who are warning and complaining about
| said bad actors.
|
| _I 've found that when I actually talk to so-called "toxic"
| people politely, they are willing to listen. It's not them that
| are causing the polarization._
|
| That's a tactic known as 'entryism' designed to leverage your
| nice, conflict-averse personality as a vehicle for
| normalization and possible future recruitment.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Exactly. Extremists who espouse intolerance count on the
| tolerance of the opposing groups to get themselves accepted
| and their extremist viewpoints normalized. When they do get
| deplatformed, marginalized and discredited, they complain
| about it, which itself serves to recruit people, especially
| those who are unfamiliar with such tactics and mistakenly
| think that their side is being unfair.
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| My problem with this "intolerance-is-okay-against-the-
| intolerant" thing is I'm lumped in with some extremist
| politics because of my religion. I don't feel at all
| treated as an individual (or even treated fairly) by either
| the left or the right. Some people who identify as the same
| religion have been homophobic. Since I was of voting age, I
| have never been against legalizing gay marriage, or
| treating homosexuals differently in the law at all. But I
| get flak for my religion from the tolerant left. They
| stereotype me every bit as much as the right stereotypes
| Islam. But they sure think they're being tolerant, by
| supposedly shunning intolerance.
| sofal wrote:
| One reason why it is difficult for me to tell is that I
| personally know a lot of people who say the same thing,
| i.e. that they are in favor of gay rights, but then they
| donate thousands of dollars a year to an extremely
| powerful and wealthy religious corporation that
| consistently preaches against homosexuality, drives gay
| teenagers to suicide, and puts their financial and
| political weight toward preventing gay rights in multiple
| states.
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| See also The Good Place, Season 2.
| Udik wrote:
| > Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong
| ethnic/religious/political group are either not people or at
| best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting
| those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike,
| and normalizing that behavior.
|
| Uh, well, isn't that the same that some leftwing activist
| advocate for those they disagree with? Deplatforming,
| censorship, criminalisation?
| jessaustin wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to call this phenomenon "leftwing".
| My perception is that those who advocate
| deplatforming/censorship are centrists who call themselves
| "progressives". They do this mostly in order to support
| existing power structures that they fear are threatened by
| free speech. Very few actual leftists in the American
| context are against free speech.
| Udik wrote:
| I wanted to stress that I didn't mean it as a _leftwing_
| phenomenon. It 's just that the GP seemed to describe it
| as a rightwing one, and I think we've seen instances on
| the left as well (particularly recently). And while the
| left is generally much more averse to physical violence
| than the right, it's also more socially accepted and
| mainstream, so the outrage storms are more pronounced and
| the calls for censorship and sometimes criminalisation
| meet much less resistance.
|
| One example: https://theoutline.com/post/2202/climate-
| change-denial-shoul...
| metrix wrote:
| I really like your comment, I don't know what the end goal
| is? Does that mean we should never try to give our opinion?
| Maybe I don't understand.. I think it would be a good thing
| if every individual with their beliefs is slowly normalizing
| others to their feelings and beliefs.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| >I spend the bulk of my time studying extremist discourse and
| communities
|
| Do you also study how to reform extremists? Or are you just
| studying how to identify and silence them?
|
| >planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and
| normalizing that behavior
|
| This sounds like de-platforming to me.
|
| >That's a tactic known as 'entryism'
|
| What you are doing here is called "vilifying." Where you
| identify that someone is disagreeable to you and attribute
| everything they do to bad faith.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong
| ethnic/religious/political group are either not people or at
| best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting
| those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike,
| and normalizing that behavior.
|
| Yes, extremist bigots do tend to favor deplatforming: they
| just want to deplatform a different group.
|
| Surely we can behave better than the bigots?
|
| > You are, essentially, projecting the characteristics of bad
| actors onto other actors who are warning and complaining
| about said bad actors.
|
| Yes, but it's not just projection: the shoe fits.
|
| If we behave like them we are no better than them. We on the
| left can't claim tolerance if we only tolerate people we
| agree with.
|
| > That's a tactic known as 'entryism' designed to leverage
| your nice, conflict-averse personality as a vehicle for
| normalization and possible future recruitment.
|
| LOL at me being conflict-averse. Check out my post history.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Yes, extremist bigots do tend to favor deplatforming: they
| just want to deplatform a different group._
|
| I'm not talking about deplatforming, I'm talking about the
| sort of extremist bigots who advocate, organize, or engage
| in murdering people. You are free to present deplatforming
| as an equal ill to that if you wish.
|
| _If we behave like them we are no better than them. We on
| the left can 't claim tolerance if we only tolerate people
| we agree with._
|
| Tolerating disagreement and tolerating murder are not
| really equivalent. You're not obliged to give someone a hug
| if they're trying to stab you, for example.
| thebokehwokeh2 wrote:
| > Yes, extremist bigots do tend to favor deplatforming:
| they just want to deplatform a different group.
|
| > Surely we can behave better than the bigots?
|
| In a vacuum, I'd agree. As in, in the real world, I would
| agree. If this were a true human contact based forum, the
| voice of many regular, busy people will always trump the
| voice of a few raging bigots. Culturally, we've moved past
| that; at least in urban centres where this sort of
| discussion could actually happen.
|
| On the internet, it is different. Posting on the internet
| is gamified. The rules are simple. To get more influence,
| you need to be upvoted/favorited/hearted. If your opinion
| sucks, you are downvoated/blocked/etc.
|
| It's simple, right? But it's also very easily gamed via
| astroturfing/botting/upvote-downvote farming/influence
| manipulation. Case in point, any political subreddit prior
| to the general election in 2016.
|
| Because of this fact, any attempt at good faith discussions
| in popular forums simply do not exist anymore. Just take a
| look at how many garbage posts are at the top of any
| popular subreddit vs actually insightful posts.
|
| Politicians who use these to gain grassroots support have
| learned to game the system. And enterprising individuals
| from all over the world are flocking to them. There is big
| business in upvote/downvote farms, botnets, and influence
| manipulation via social engineering. Clearly none of these
| is done in good faith.
|
| Places that have been deplatformed are not always simply
| people who harbor alternative opinions from the norm. They
| are places or groups of people who wilfully try debase
| discussion via the aforementioned methods.
|
| There are bad actors on all sides of any discussion, but it
| seems to me like organized bad faith is always at the core
| of the most toxic, polarized places on the internet.
|
| To fix polarization, we must fix the gaming mechanics of
| these places. More moderation for cheaters is priority
| number 1.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Why is this suddenly a discussion about extremism? Not
| everyone who is bigoted is an extremist, but maybe it's
| easier for you to argue as though this is the case.
|
| > Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong
| [...] group are either not people or at best inferior people,
| and direct their efforts to promoting those views, planning
| how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that
| behavior.
|
| Funny, this is a pretty good description of cancel culture.
| "Warning" and "complaining" is one thing, but advocating for
| the complete social and professional ostracization of people
| for increasingly arbitrary reasons is happening, and has been
| happening. _That_ sounds like extremism to me.
|
| Assuming constant bad faith on the part of people, _most_ of
| whom don't have any control over the views they hold, is not
| how this problem gets solved.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > Not everyone who is bigoted is an extremist, but maybe
| it's easier for you to argue as though this is the case.
|
| How is "I don't consider you human" not an extreme
| position?
| HeroOfAges wrote:
| Who do we trust to be the arbiters of extreme positions?
| I would consider the dismissal of using biological
| science to define male and female as an extreme position,
| and yet I could be banned from Twitter by saying as much.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Not all bigotry is "I don't consider you human".
| breuleux wrote:
| While that's true, I think it's worth pointing out that
| it is a mirror of your own statement that "the average
| left-leaning person today doesn't see bigots even as
| people any more." Neither statement is true. They are the
| same kind of hyperbolic/uncharitable extrapolation of a
| group's inner thoughts.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > How is "I don't consider you human" not an extreme
| position?
|
| Most bigots do not believe that.
| irascible wrote:
| Oh pray tell us what exactly bigots believe?
|
| Can't believe I'm seeing this on HN.
| djsumdog wrote:
| The trouble is, not everyone is saying that. A few people
| here and there are, but what about some mode nuance
| things? For example, what if someone says they're fine
| with trans-people and think everyone should live their
| lives whoever they want, but trans M2F shouldn't
| participate in professional sports because it's not fair.
|
| That's an incredibly polarizing statement, and one who
| makes it is immediately labeled as a bigot. Some go as
| far as to say such an individual is "denying trans people
| exist."
|
| There is a lot to unpack there, and people can have
| reasonable debates about both sides of that statement.
| Adam Conover and Joe Rogan have had such a conversation
| (it's a really good episode of the Rogan podcast), but
| many people refuse to even listen to it because they
| consider Rogan a bigot/alt-right-adjacent/etc.
|
| You have to be careful because there is so much room in
| the details and someone not accepting 100% of x world
| view doesn't immediately make them a terrible human
| being.
|
| In the past, controversial views converge over time.
| Heidegger talked about extreme ideas as a thesis, those
| trying to keep things as they are as antithesis, and
| eventually society moves together with some kind of
| synthesis. All that feels like it's been thrown out the
| window for extreme left or extreme right ideology.
| mpalmer wrote:
| > That's an incredibly polarizing statement, and one who
| makes it is immediately labeled as a bigot. Some go as
| far as to say such an individual is "denying trans people
| exist."
|
| Great point. A huge part of the problem is language.
| Subtlety and nuance gets stripped away (especially
| online), so that everything you disagree with is an
| unconscionable violation. It's the language of clickbait.
|
| I'm sure the idea is to break through the noise and
| mobilize people against perceived injustice, but all it
| does is make the noise that much louder.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Why is this suddenly a discussion about extremism?_
|
| Because that is my area of expertise and I wish to
| contribute to the discussion. While not all bigots are
| extremists, all extremists are bigots.
|
| _" Warning" and "complaining" is one thing, but advocating
| for the complete social and professional ostracization of
| people for increasingly arbitrary reasons_
|
| I'm not making an argument for cancel culture, which has
| flaws of its own. When I talk about extremists I have
| narrow and specific criteria for inclusion in that
| category, most importantly the advocacy of genocide.
|
| _Assuming constant bad faith on the part of people, _most_
| of whom don 't have any control over the views they hold_
|
| You seem to be assuming that most people are mindless, and
| further that I'm talking about the broad mass of people.
| keenmaster wrote:
| If InfoWars says Sandy Hook never happened, and they have
| millions of followers, ban them. That's a really low bar for
| banning. Same with Milo. Not only did he repeatedly lie in a
| very verifiable way, but he did it with the vigor of a bully.
| These are toxic people and institutions that don't care about
| the facts. They're after your amygdala, and we are, to some
| extent, slaves to our amygdala. You can get a PhD and still
| retain a lot of your most basic instincts, for better or worse.
|
| If we are slaves to our amygdala, how do we have civilization
| at all? We externalize cognition, just like we've done since
| the dawn of time. Culture is externalized cognition. Standards
| are externalized cognition. They are ways of protecting us from
| ourselves. If you let anyone get on the world's largest
| platform, with the world's largest megaphone, and shout
| whatever they want, what do you expect other than the
| devolution of society? And why should we throw our hands up and
| say "we built the platform. We built the megaphone. Anyone can
| use it." That's not a mythological embracement of freedom.
| That's stepping back from your responsibility to set standards.
| djsumdog wrote:
| Who decides who's lying and who's telling the truth? Who is
| the arbitrator of an obvious lie. Declaring something an
| "obvious lie" has historically been used to keep other people
| down as well.
|
| This goes down a very dangerous road. Banning speech is not
| the right way to deal with this. When you do, you give the
| speaker more energy. When people in the civil rights movement
| in the US was slapped down, it gave speakers like MLKing a
| source to inspire his people; to stand tall in the face of
| adversity.
|
| The line should be violence. Speech is speech. Speech is not
| violence (unless is specifically advocates violence and
| that's been defined in US court cases as not-protected
| speech). Diablo Valley College ethics professor Eric Clanton
| was basically let off the hook with a slap-on-the-wrist
| conviction for hitting someone in the head with a bike-lock
| .. basically because the person he hit was alt-right. That is
| fucked up and totally not acceptable. All violence, no matter
| who it is against, should be the hard line .. and it's not,
| and that's the real issue.
| keenmaster wrote:
| "Who is the arbitrator of an obvious lie[?]" Easy. The
| final arbitrator is the owner of the platform. It is just
| _one_ platform. If a platform becomes ban-happy, you can
| simply walk away, even if you weren 't personally banned.
| Hacker News has plenty of rules and standards, and it will
| quickly mute and ban someone who violates even a subset of
| them. That is absolutely not a problem, and the platform is
| better off for it. It probably has a much larger userbase
| as a result, so the population of Hacker News users is
| dynamic, and HN can make decisions that benefit a lot of
| future users at the expense of a few current users. Why
| shouldn't HN be viewed negatively for that, but other
| platforms should? Isn't that arbitrary?
|
| ~ _Thought exercise_ ~: Let's say you were the mayor of a
| large city. There are multiple areas in the city where you
| can shout whatever you want during certain hours. Would you
| let someone hook up an internet-connected megaphone in each
| area and pipe in hate speech everywhere simultaneously? And
| what if we were in a future where there were physical bots
| indistinguishable from humans that crowded into those
| public spaces, vociferously indicated their agreement, and
| cheered him on?
|
| That future is now.
|
| In reality, Facebook owns those public spaces. No one
| actually goes to that spot in the park anymore. Mark
| Zuckerberg is the mayor. Oh, and it's not just one city,
| he's everyone's mayor, everywhere. If you don't use
| Facebook but you're on Whatsapp, you're still in his
| jurisdiction. As for the "during certain hours" part? Nope,
| those internet-connected megaphones are blasting 24/7.
| Those bots are nodding their heads 24/7. Our mayor also
| collects megaphone usage fees for himself. He gives you
| dopamine points, likes, and social validation each time you
| come back for more. Freedom, yeah.
| jmhnilbog wrote:
| If you're going to argue that truth is relative, fine. Let
| each person decide their own truth and broadcast it. Let
| each person decide what to believe and decide what is good
| and what is evil and let them constantly fight. Constant
| misery.
|
| Science was a good idea for civilization to adopt as
| defining truth.
|
| Hey, I did this, and then THAT happened! You try! Wow, it
| happened again! Let's see if it always happens! It does!
| Don't believe me? Try it yourself!
|
| Eventually, yes, you have to trust specialists, because
| there's too much to try on your own. So you vet the
| specialists, and the specialist specialists. You don't just
| throw everything away and listen to the first fat idiot who
| says everything that happens is a lie and paid actors
| staged Sandy Hook.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > but I know one thing that isn't the solution: silencing
| everyone who disagrees with you
|
| this assumes that the people on the internet are arguing in
| good faith. they aren't in a lot of cases. the problem i have
| is willful ignorance and the associated culture that promotes
| the people that spread lies.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| That actually doesn't matter.
|
| Remember, the point of debating publicly isn't to persuade
| the person you are debating, it's to persuade the people
| reading the debate.
| cthor wrote:
| I don't think this is that important because there are far
| more people reading than posting. Even if the person you're
| responding to isn't arguing in good faith, there are people
| reading the discussion with an inquisitive mind.
|
| or, see this comic: https://imgur.com/T8egYQl
| Udik wrote:
| Good comic!
|
| But isn't the number of people reading a problem per se?
| The "deniers", those who keep shifting their arguments
| until they've gone full circle to the starting point, are
| not trying to convince you- nor you are trying to convince
| them. They're competing with you for the attention of the
| reader, trying to fill the space with the illusion of an
| argument.
| austincheney wrote:
| > silencing _anyone_ who disagrees with you.
|
| Agreed. Disagreement, tolerance, and diversity are healthy. The
| opposite is censorship, insecurity, and conformance.
| deepspace wrote:
| A big problem with giving hate mongers a platform is that
| they do not return the courtesy.
|
| Try posting a well-written and well-thought-out criticism of
| Trump on /r/thedonald and see how many seconds it takes
| before the post is taken down and you are banned. They are
| not interested in disagreement, tolerance and diversity. They
| are only interested in having a platform to spew their hate
| from.
| pnako wrote:
| That's a problem with reddit, whose narrow-focused
| subreddits encourage groupthink. It's not specific to
| Trump, I'm sure doing the same in pro-Sanders or pro-Warren
| subreddits will have the same effect. Or indeed pro-Rihanna
| or pro-Metallica subreddits.
|
| You'll have better luck with 4chan. People will call you a
| lot of bad words for sure, but they will also debate your
| point to death.
| hasbot wrote:
| I remember when /r/politics was full of conservatives,
| right-wingers, the tea party, what have you. People would
| ask them to elaborate on their position, ask for
| references, or point out the flaws in their logic. The
| response? Moving the goalpost. Or "both sides do it."
| After a while, I ignored them because it wasn't worth my
| time to debate them. We won in a way; conservatives
| eventually stopped bothering to comment in /r/politics
| and retreated to their safe spaces.
| im3w1l wrote:
| So on the one hand we have a group that wants to have one
| (1) subreddit for themselves. And on the other we have a
| group that wants all subreddits for themselves. Seems like
| two different things entirely.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| well to be fair r/thedonald exists because this exact thing
| happens to trump supporters in r/politics
|
| people love echo chambers it turns out. It's no surprise
| that all the big platforms are evolving to provide them. I
| think the market for well reasoned argument is smaller than
| OP thinks.
| thepangolino wrote:
| R/the Donald is a self described circlejerk community.
|
| Your well thought long essay should be posted on R/ask
| the Donald.
| austincheney wrote:
| That is why moderation and balance are important. _r
| /thedonald_ is an echo chamber lacking balance, and
| therefore lacking tolerance, diversity, and mutual respect.
| asdf21 wrote:
| The "toxic" people are trying to be honest about real issues,
| and they tend to get shouted down for it. Then the real issues
| persist, decade after decade, but they cannot be talked about,
| it's too politically incorrect. A few more people try, get
| shouted down, rinse and repeat the process.
|
| Then people wonder why a segment of the population is extremely
| cynical and bitter and polarized when it comes to any sort of
| debate on controversial issues...
|
| >I've found that when I actually talk to so-called "toxic"
| people politely, they are willing to listen. It's not them that
| are causing the polarization.
|
| Agree 100%.
| oneplane wrote:
| Hardly; toxic isn't a word for 'people speaking their minds'
| or 'speaking up about problems'. It's someone who is abusive,
| unsupportive, or unhealthy emotionally towards others and in
| some forms themselves. Or so the dictionaries say.
| asdf21 wrote:
| As someone who had a seven year account banned from YC
| previously for debating against socialism, you're wrong.
| Regular debate is labeled toxic all the time if you are
| anywhere to the right of pure Marxism on the political
| scale.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _The "toxic" people are trying to be honest about real
| issues_
|
| Sadly there are lots of reasonable-seeming right-leaning
| people whose discourse about 'real issues' sooner or
| later circles around to 'race realism' or 'the jewish
| question' or some other ideological Pandora's box. It's
| often later; a common rule of thumb among far-right
| extremists is that it takes at least 2 years to reliably
| indoctrinate a person online.
|
| Here is an example of how these persuasion techniques are
| deployed, albeit a slightly offensive one. This
| particular example (spread across 3 pages) aims toward
| recruitment of people for the 'Qanon' conspiracy which is
| popular among some right-leaning people. While it's
| orthogonal to other far-right extremist movements, it is
| a useful example of a developing militant ideology.
|
| https://centipedenation.com/library/red-pilling-a-
| general-gu...
| oneplane wrote:
| It makes you wonder what cool stuff we could have done
| with the time and resources that are currently being put
| in to that. But I suppose that the people that are
| putting their time and resources in to that are
| categorising it internally as 'cool stuff' already.
| creato wrote:
| > Sadly there are lots of reasonable-seeming right-
| leaning people whose discourse about 'real issues' sooner
| or later circles around to 'race realism' or 'the jewish
| question' or some other ideological Pandora's box. It's
| often later; a common rule of thumb among far-right
| extremists is that it takes at least 2 years to reliably
| indoctrinate a person online.
|
| I think an equally large problem is reasonable-seeming
| left-leaning people who hold some opinions so
| spectacularly absurd in the name of ideology that it
| generates very fertile ground for right wing commentary
| to resonate.
| watwut wrote:
| Maybe the part of problem is blaming left wing for right
| wing actions and opinions, bit never blaming right wing
| for left wing opinions.
|
| Some peoples actions are excused and excused and
| explained, others are not.
| oneplane wrote:
| Just because people mislabel things doesn't mean the
| meaning of the word suddenly changes. While languages
| evolve, it's not as simple as having a bunch of people on
| a website re-declare a word at will.
|
| Regarding debate or YC or socialism: unless people get
| abusive I find it hard to believe that it would be called
| toxic. If you could link to it or provide an except of
| content that would be called 'toxic' without that content
| being 'abusive' that would be helpful.
| asdf21 wrote:
| I debated against socialism / expanding government in a
| thread about UBI or something similar. I was told by a
| mod that my comments were deleted and that they were
| "tedious" and "idealogical flamebait".
|
| When I complained about his moderation by saying this:
|
| >A moderator just a hair left of your current moderation
| approach on the authoritarianism scale would "flag and
| remove" PG's entire recent article about income
| inequality with a note calling it "tedious ideological
| posturing."
|
| For that comment, my entire six-year account was banned
| and I was told to email ycombinator to have it restored.
|
| When I emailed to have my account restored, I was told
| this:
|
| >We're happy to unban accounts when people give us reason
| to believe that they won't repeat the things that led us
| to ban them. In your case it's a little less clear what
| that reason might be, since you've expressed how much you
| dislike a bunch of things about HN, our moderation, and
| me. But if there's something we could do to help you have
| a change of heart about those things, let me know.
|
| So basically, since I complained about his moderation, he
| took it personally, and only if I was willing to revoke
| my criticism of his moderation could I be unbanned..? I
| was never able to get clarification on what exactly
| needed to happen for me to get unbanned. The gist was, if
| you argue consistently in favor of free-market approaches
| to anything economic, you will be accused of "tedious
| idealogical flamebait" and eventually be banned.
|
| Take it for what it's worth, but I was never what you
| would call toxic by any standard definition, and those
| were my results.
| oneplane wrote:
| I can't find a recent article on HN containing debates
| on/against/about/for socialism with banned accounts in
| them, so it's hard to see the content/context that would
| then be called toxic, but I do see in your reply that you
| mention "tedious" and "idealogical flamebait" which is
| not mutually exclusive to toxic behaviour. I suppose
| someone could write flamebait or be tedious without being
| toxic.
| asdf21 wrote:
| How would you know? You can't see any of the comments
| because the mods generally remove them all..
|
| The reason why YC seems more left-leaning nowadays
| compared to a few years ago, is exactly what the
| grandparent of this thread suggested, anyone right-
| leaning (or libertarian) has been harassed off the site /
| strongly discouraged from sharing their perspectives.
| oneplane wrote:
| I wouldn't know in an absolute sense, which is why I
| wrote "I suppose". To determine if some text could be
| described as toxic you do have to read it at some point,
| and without that (if they are deleted as you wrote
| earlier) it becomes much more theoretical.
| 0x8BADF00D wrote:
| Haven't been banned yet, but there is definitely a
| brigade that will instantly downvote you if you try to
| explain libertarian/free market ideas. Never thought that
| would happen, since Silicon Valley was founded with
| similar ideas.
| richk449 wrote:
| > As someone who had a seven year account banned from YC
| previously for debating against socialism...
|
| Did you win?
| kabouseng wrote:
| Or... toxic might be someone who is oversensitive, unable
| to accept other people have different viewpoints, and
| retreats to their safe space whenever someone disagrees
| with their world view...
| oneplane wrote:
| I have not seen that definition anywhere, or a definition
| like that for any other specific word.
| Disruptive_Dave wrote:
| The world does not operate on definitions.
| oneplane wrote:
| Communication and language works on shared concepts and
| wording, which can be collected as a set of definitions.
| If we were to not do that, language and communication
| would not work very well, and with that there would be no
| foundation for sensible discourse. Or at least, that is
| what I have seen and experienced so far.
| awb wrote:
| > If we were to not do that, language and communication
| would not work very well, and with that there would be no
| foundation for sensible discourse.
|
| You're right, but we misunderstand each other and
| disagree all the time because language can be subjective.
|
| Take your definition of toxicity: "abusive, unsupportive,
| or unhealthy emotionally towards others and in some forms
| themselves". All of those words are subjective.
|
| Abusive is in the dictionary as "harsh or insulting".
| Harsh is defined as "excessively critical". Excessive
| means "going beyond the usual, necessary, or proper
| limit". Now define "usual". Language is a circular logic
| that at some point you just have to know for yourself
| what you mean.
|
| When someone labels someone else as "toxic", they're
| using their own subjective interpretation of "normal",
| "harsh" and "abusive". And in these situations language
| doesn't work very well like you mention.
|
| What can help is something less subjective like "I felt
| angry when you did X". It's more vulnerable and takes
| more responsibility, but it is less subjective than
| calling someone "toxic" and can't really be argued, which
| leads to better understanding and better discussions.
| oneplane wrote:
| Adding personal context in subjective writing does indeed
| help instead of assuming one's local interpretation is
| the same as the reader's.
| kabouseng wrote:
| This might sound mean because it is text, but it isn't,
| it's just answering your question. But the word (actually
| term) you're looking for is social justice warrior.
| oneplane wrote:
| I can't find a good definition from credible sources but
| WikiPedia and the cited references
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior)
| refer to it as a pejorative term for an individual who
| promotes socially progressive views, not
|
| > someone who is oversensitive, unable to accept other
| people have different viewpoints, and retreats to their
| safe space whenever someone disagrees with their world
| view
|
| But the article does mention:
|
| > they are pursuing personal validation rather than any
| deep-seated conviction, and engaging in disingenuous
| arguments
|
| and
|
| > unreasonable, sanctimonious, biased, and self-
| aggrandizing
|
| which does seen to have plenty overlap with the general
| definition and notion of someone who would exhibit toxic
| behaviour.
|
| Ironically, it seems to be a term (SJW as well as
| 'toxic') that was invented (SJW) or re-applied (toxic)
| just to have one group of people label another group of
| people. Which is double-ironic because neither the
| labeling nor the behaviour validates ones own point or
| invalidates the other's point, yet doesn't further any
| conversation or discussion. It's practically just
| inflammatory filler.
|
| (by the way, no, it didn't sound mean and I do like to
| review the popular labels and circular discussions from
| time to time -- much healthier for me than to be in the
| middle of it all the time)
| kabouseng wrote:
| >>In reply to child post by oneplane
|
| Hey welcome to the culture war :D The trick is not to
| take it too seriously. Also South park is an amazing
| resource / commentary on it... :D
| jmhnilbog wrote:
| If you have so little skin in the game that you can
| maintain that attitude, you should probably stay out of
| the discussion.
| databus wrote:
| Communicating financial or medical lies can lead to
| repercussions. The same should be true for communicating false
| political information.
| smrq wrote:
| I don't know, there's still a lot of dialogue about healing
| crystals and essential oils out there.
| MadWombat wrote:
| Agreed. As I have said previously in a similar discussion, I
| don't think censorship works very well beyond a few specific
| cases (yelling "Fire!" in a theater and things like that). I
| would rather racists and misogynists and all sorts of other
| assholes were free to express their opinions and engage in
| debate with the rest of us that that they were hiding in some
| dark web, invite only circle jerks. Because however distasteful
| I find the prior, I find the later outright scary.
| sdinsn wrote:
| We don't, and we shouldn't. This is natural human behavior.
|
| > Before, around 2010-2012, people who disagreed would usually
| leave it at that and walk away respectfully
|
| I can tell you've never played Call of Duty.
| hinkley wrote:
| Honestly I don't think we're the people to do it. Software
| developers are grossly susceptible to the Principle of the
| Excluded Middle. We spend so, so much time arguing about extremes
| (see also the post yesterday about Monoliths being the future),
| while those calling for moderation only see modest amounts of
| support.
|
| If we want to be those people, the answer is 'personal growth',
| and lots of it.
| tacocataco wrote:
| Considering how much the overton window has shifted since the
| 80's, I find your "moderate" position extreme.
| deltron3030 wrote:
| >Or is this more of a social problem that code can't solve?
|
| Absolutely, because it's wrong to regard the web as a thing
| that's separate from the real world and it's effects. We're
| talking about people's identities in the sense of how they see
| themselves, and that's shaped by their environment (what they
| see, hear and do), online and offline.
|
| What happened is that people are able to find a tribe, whereas
| before the web was a thing, finding a tribe was more difficult
| and often exclusive to cities.
|
| People living in rural areas were likely to adapt to existing
| "big village tribes", branching off wasn't viable or a matter of
| circumstances because of a lack of different subcultures within
| those rural areas.
|
| The web changed that, everybody can socialize and find a tribe
| online, it's like a big city full of subcultures, and subcultures
| provide identity.
|
| Early people on the web were often already part of urban tribes I
| think, and took position of views within those, so if they
| encountered a rival group online (think about poppers and rockers
| stereotypes from the 80's) toxicity was almost ensured. So what
| happ[ens if a mainstream culture that's fed with stereotypes
| through hollywood etc. is let loose on the web?
|
| The before tribeless population which was forced into a tribe by
| circumstance is basically discovering the world and is going
| through their teenage years.
|
| That's my explanation of what's happening.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| The toxicity is seeping in from real life, and really popular
| social networks and media treatment of these is creating a
| feedback loop.
|
| The real problems are:
|
| A) real life sucks unless you are part of the subset of the rich
| or have good support structures,
|
| B) toxic behaviors helps you get ahead in certain situations in
| life and people with low or no resources often resort to them,
|
| C) there's no cost to joining certain social networks so it
| attracts those with no resources and/or the lowest common
| denominator, including people who have been damaged by life and
| only know toxic behavior as a norm,
|
| D) people are interesting and useful when doing something
| productive or creative, but not otherwise.
|
| It's hard to say if the category of people who fall in C is
| increasing in absolute number or only due to popularity of
| certain social networks.
|
| Social networks that aren't dedicated toward doing something
| productive or creative, or who are open to everyone for free,
| will be overtaken by toxic behavior as a result. They should be
| avoided, or new ones developed in their place.
|
| Another factor is the downfall of respect for the news media in
| the US, this makes discussions of news events attract comments
| from the type of people in C as they think their opinions are
| more important than they should be.
| GhostKnight wrote:
| we don't, we just don't
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > So how do we fix this?
|
| Do not participate in forums where this type of behavior happens.
| And participate actively in moderation (flag/upvote/downvote) to
| keep forums civil and interesting.
|
| I'd say forums aren't well-suited to discuss political issues.
| But I agree that tech could help. For instance, Stack Exchange
| Politics is readable but last time I checked, it didn't really
| provide much value. Mostly, arguing about politics is a waste of
| time, on a forum or anywhere else.
| SubuSS wrote:
| I think it is a result of the network effect. The same window
| also marks the rise of social networks. So the toxicity is more
| in your face and you almost have no way of escaping it. Even if
| you're not on facebook, your friends are talking about it /
| hackernews has articles on political issues and so on. It
| permeates all your 'safe spaces'.
|
| I also think we have non-cs folk entering the internets en masse
| and are there by changing the rules and norms, which generates
| mania over things which were just ignored before.
|
| How do we stop it? I don't think we stop it. We build resistance
| to it. Every generation has its detractor and for us it is the
| bad effects of this network. Over time, we will start ignoring
| the noise and use these for what they are actually useful for (or
| the next detractor takes over).
| jcims wrote:
| I told my daughter about the brief respite we had after 9/11. It
| gave me the impression that if shit really hits the fans we got
| each other's back. Now of course history is littered with extreme
| counterexamples but those don't help my cynicism go away sooo.
| jeffrom wrote:
| Here's the idea that imo needs to reach critical mass in our
| industry in order to make progress on this issue
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| meekstro wrote:
| I think you need to acknowledge human nature and profit from it.
|
| Human's love observing an argument.
|
| Twitter is too concise to form decent arguments.
|
| If there was a website called Dual where people could register a
| username then post on the forum that they are stirring the
| argument to verify their dual account then continue the argument
| on a platform set up for settling written arguments with external
| references.
|
| People would talk less smack or have to back up their smack on
| duel and write at a level that convinces the masses. No swearing
| on dual. The disagreements would actually educate everyone and
| the voting and following would tell you what to advertise.
|
| If someone was talking smack on a forum and didn't register on
| dual you could assume they were a coward or a troll. If followers
| could supply duelers with arguments we would get to the truth in
| an entertaining way very quickly and any misunderstanding would
| be highlighted and documented.
|
| People often do great thinking in the heat of an argument. We
| should harness the arguments. Politicians should accept duels
| instead of televised debates.
|
| Limit responses to 300 words and six attachments or something.
|
| I wish I had the money to clone twitter and do it but someone
| should do it and get rich from it. Both sides have to watch the
| argument unfold so that it brings people closer to the truth
| rather than polarising them.
|
| The tricks in the trusted auto verification of the duelers and
| getting enough duels and spectators to make dueling a thing.
| veeralpatel979 wrote:
| The Internet lets people say things you wouldn't say in real life
| because you can be anonymous.
|
| I myself have some opinions that are controversial and not
| politically correct and for reference I'm a well-educated
| software engineer. There are people out there with far more
| extreme opinions than me, and the Internet gives them the
| opportunity to share them.
|
| And the reward of angering and fighting with people who disagree,
| with no real consequences.
| whatsmyusername wrote:
| Take all the people out of it.
| ssivark wrote:
| While there is definitely an uptick in polarization, I think the
| more important and insidious trend is the increasing _ubiquity of
| bullshit_. We are flooded with information online, most of which
| is irrelevant or counterproductive to our interests. Needing to
| constantly wade through that in triage mode (with a judgmental
| attitude) has the general effect of wearing down people's psyche
| and making them feel exhausted, anxious and on the edge. In that
| mindset, of course small things are going to set them off -- but
| that is just the symptom, not the root cause. This is also a much
| harder problem to wrangle with because it is less specific. The
| causes of this problem are deeply embedded inside the incentives
| we have set up on the web over the last two decades -- to
| challenge those will require answering some hard questions. At
| some level, people realize this (hence small efforts like the
| slow tech movement, digital detox, etc), but they are yet to find
| the right balance of convenience and sanity (for lack of a better
| word).
| 0xff00ffee wrote:
| We don't.
|
| It is a feedback loop. The American ideal of rugged individualism
| has mutated into anti-neighbor and is exactly the model for echo
| chambers (not neighbors with diverse opinions but cultural
| clones!), which are facilitated by technology. The ease at which
| our culture Balkanizes is backed up by trillion dollar profits
| from a handful of companies, which then pay politicians to look
| the other way.
|
| This online toxicity is a reincarnation of the populist hate that
| has driven wars for millennia. It is a cancer that has been given
| super-steroids because of the intersection of huge amounts of
| cash and limitless political control. Not to mention the
| propaganda that idolizes billionaires and strongmen.
|
| I think the crash and burn of America would be a solution: the
| collapse of trillion dollar companies and monopolies that own the
| government. Unfortunately this is infecting other countries where
| the top 1% want's to be as rich as America's, hence their urgency
| to imitate what is happening here for their own profit.
|
| There's no cure: the tech monopoly and insatiable greed of the
| top 0.1% will be the main drivers of global poverty and
| oppression, and to get there they need to keep us hating each
| other and divided. They even picked wedge issues like race and
| religion, which are almost 100% irreconcilable.
|
| I would give the top-tier credit, but I think stimulating base
| beliefs for profit isn't really that hard, you just need a
| country-sized platform.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Calling this "toxicity" seems itself to be a polarizing
| exaggeration.
|
| Dealing with the new users eternal September was a Sisyphean
| task. I assume that was an earlier stage of fake toxicity.
| Everyone complained about it then, too, even though there was
| usually heavier human moderation. No one could agree about how to
| handle the "problem."
|
| Want to put controls on the damage software can do to society?
| Regulate. Maybe even force us to be real engineers. I would like
| to think that software killing people (e.g. 737 Max) would be a
| bigger factor in that legislation than social networks
| encouraging meanness. The economics of the two seem to favor the
| former more, too.
| cagenut wrote:
| I largely agree with most of whats already been posted. Many of
| these things have been true since dial-up BBSs and usenet. We're
| mostly just seeing them apply to more and more of the population.
|
| But for a moment consider another factor, a broader scope. One of
| the ways I like to describe the internet, and its effect on the
| first generations to adopt it, is "we can share notes now".
|
| What I mean by that is: previously a combination of physical
| barriers, geography, institutions, power structures, and
| communication constraints made it such that the vast vast
| majority of us really only got information from, and discussed
| information with, people within a day's-walk radius of where we
| lived. On the upside that meant lots of it was face-to-face and
| rooted in your family and community. On the downside that meant
| we were _all_ incredibly isolated and living in an almost
| completely false understanding of the world.
|
| The internet has pierced (or broken) that. I can watch in near
| realtime as the forest fires drive the people of Sydney from
| their homes. I can watch the chart of the wuhan flu grow
| exponentially every day. I have seen high def video of the slums
| in india, nigeria, and sacramento.
|
| People of the past had far more first-hand experience with
| suffering than I do, but they hadn't the slightest inclination of
| the _scale_ that we are all as aware of as we choose to be now.
|
| I think that combination of your brain reeling at the vastness of
| "the problems" in conjunction with the powerlessness you feel
| about it leads to a sortof emotional shrieking in horror that
| plays out as "toxic" posting.
|
| Which is in part to say, I don't think its going to get better
| anytime soon. As a matter of fact, as the challenges and
| constraints of climate change add pressure every year, it seems
| very very likely to get worse.
| kup0 wrote:
| _Disclaimer: I acknowledge that "toxic" is a loosely-defined term
| that can be thrown around at people that really aren't... I'm
| mostly meaning people that go out of their way to be
| negative/harmful in unnecessary ways, harmful forms of trolling,
| the inability for people to have a discussion without it
| dissolving into attacks/etc extremely fast... that kind of thing_
|
| I think we're looking back at history with rose-tinted glasses
| here. Toxicity has always been around. Maybe in recent years it
| has grown, but I think that's just the nature of the
| technological beast.
|
| It doesn't mean that on a broad scale technology always actively
| contributes to making things more toxic- but just that it
| amplifies and contributes to all sorts of things, and that
| includes the negative. We're more connected than we've ever been,
| and the unfortunate side-effect is that the degrees of separation
| between us and those that are toxic have been significantly
| reduced. Anonymity is maybe a small part, but there are plenty of
| openly toxic people, both online and off.
|
| Toxic people are just toxic people and I think it's a social
| issue that is just always going to exist at some level. Maybe
| there are ways to use technology to assist in fighting against it
| and maybe not. I think it's just a potentially-unsolvable complex
| problem that will always arise in society.
|
| I don't know the most effective ways to fight it. However, I'm
| trying my best not to contribute to it, and maybe personally
| fighting it within myself will have an outward effect on others.
| While I wouldn't say I'm mean/toxic/etc online, I do try to stay
| self-aware of my actions/reactions/emotions and what I post
| online (and have failed to do this sometimes) because it's very
| easy to get caught up in negative news/misery and then it's easy
| to branch off from there into an unhelpful level of
| anger/negativity.
|
| I try to do my best not to assume the worst of others, to realize
| there are beings with entire lives unknown to me behind every
| screen name (if it's not a bot) and to realize it's sometimes
| difficult to properly infer the tone of what someone is saying
| online. It's still an internal work-in-progress, but I think I'm
| far more mindful of my behavior now than in years past.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't think OP is claiming toxicity is new, but the extreme
| polarization of everything is.
|
| Look into the lives of politicians in the 1950's and 1960's.
| They frequently socialized together and worked together. They
| were able to find common ground. Every victory for one party
| wasn't necessarily a loss for the other. How often do you think
| Mitch McConnell goes out for a drink with Bernie Sanders?
|
| Tribalism, especially in relation to things like sports, is
| super-old. But it's spread to all parts of our lives. Often
| it's semi-friendly (are you a vi or emacs person?), but it can
| get out of control.
|
| So how do you fix it? That's tough, especially when every news
| story seems to have two equal but opposite sides.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| "Look into the lives of politicians in the 1950's and 1960's.
| They frequently socialized together and worked together. They
| were able to find common ground. Every victory for one party
| wasn't necessarily a loss for the other. How often do you
| think Mitch McConnell goes out for a drink with Bernie
| Sanders?"
|
| That's the problem with transparency and constant scrutiny.
| In the 50s and 60s you could hide affairs like Kennedy did.
| Or you could have a drink with people from the other party,
| discuss things openly and find a deal without anybody
| knowing. If McConnell met with Sanders today there would be a
| huge uproar. There is something to be said for the ability to
| make backroom deals.
| criddell wrote:
| It isn't necessarily about making backroom deals. The tribe
| mentality is so deep that I'm not sure that Sanders and
| McConnell would recognize that the other person is trying
| to do what they think is best for the country. I'm not sure
| they could sit down and talk about their families or their
| favorite place to travel.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I just think the tribe mentality got informed by the
| constant news cycle now. A lot of sane people have
| probably left congress and now you have a lot of
| hyperpartisans who like fighting for its own sake.
| dubcanada wrote:
| People in 2010 didn't get into arguments online?
|
| I don't think any of that is true, there were tons of arguments
| on forums and IRC and stuff.
|
| I believe this is purely a "now we see it all" where as before it
| was hidden behind private invite only communities and
| hidden/private chat rooms.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| The problem with trying to 'fix the problem' is that most people
| seem to think that the solution to polarization is to silence the
| 'crazies' that disagree with them, and who are 'causing the
| polarization'.
|
| In a diverse society it is normal to have a wide spectrum of
| opinions, and a lot of them are going to seem wrong. Wrong ideas
| are not a threat, so long as we accept that they are just
| opinions. What is dangerous is giving a small group the power to
| decide which ideas are valid and which ones are not, because that
| small group will be taken over by opportunists who will use the
| power to control speech to further their own agenda.
| bvinc wrote:
| I agree that there's been an uptick in toxicity and polarization.
| I think it's partially due to more people being on the internet,
| the decentralized information sources on the internet, combined
| with human nature and generational and cultural reasons why it's
| difficult for some people to determine what is factual.
|
| But the single biggest factor that's driving this, in my opinion,
| is recommendation systems. Every source of information now
| follows the same pattern to increase engagement: Fill up the
| screen with as many different links and recommendations as
| possible, and determine the links shown by a machine learning
| algorithm to increase engagement.
|
| If you have an app to communicate with friends, don't show them
| their friend list, show them a "news feed". A video player? Put
| recommendations on the side, and at the end of the video, and pop
| up recommendations when they hit pause, and autoplay the next
| recommendation. Sort all comments and replies based on
| engagement.
|
| This increases income, but it makes people go crazy. Because what
| kinds of content increases engagement? For a lot of people, it's
| crazy inflammatory content. Women insulting all men, men
| insulting all women, Black Lives Matters, Back the Blue, flat
| Earth, vaccines, conspiracy theories... eventually the algorithm
| will find what triggers you to click or stay engaged. And once it
| figures it out, you're hooked in a crazy polarized hatred cycle.
|
| And it doesn't help that people and companies and Russian troll
| farms realize this and push inflammatory content for clicks and
| followers.
|
| How do you stop this? I have no idea. On a personal level, I use
| uBlock to clean up all recommendations on sites that I visit, and
| I make an effort not to respond to engage in any of the toxicity.
| But that doesn't really solve the problem.
|
| Companies don't want to solve it because they'll lose money.
| Legislation doesn't seem like the solution. Individuals will
| complain if you took away recommendations. No one really wants it
| to stop.
| throwaway29303 wrote:
| That's a highly complex problem, IMHO; since it involves lots of
| variables and variability. And, quite honestly, I doubt there's
| ever going to be a proper way to solve it.
|
| But here are some of my observations:
|
| - Everyone's online. Everyone. That includes people a) who had a
| less than stellar upbringing (whatever that means to which one of
| us); b) with mental illness (some of them untreated and/or self-
| diagnosed); c) from other cultural background (which don't
| necessarily align with western point-of-views); d) who are
| underaged; e) who are (very) bored (and some find entertainment
| in provoking chaos); f) who lack proper education; g) who simply
| do not care about educating themselves and others; and h) who are
| naturally antagonistic for whatever reason.
|
| - Bots. There are also a good number of botnets out there (the
| "like" economy comes to mind) or subverted systems (smartphones,
| routers, PCs, etc) which act without the owner's knowledge;
|
| I'm convinced there's also botnets out there that purposefully
| amplify certain controversies online (websites' comment sections
| come to mind). Now, understand, this doesn't apply to _every_
| controversy. But I 've seen some weird stuff on YouTube, for
| example. And, quite frankly, it's not that hard to extrapolate
| that since there are "like" bots there are equally "hate" bots as
| well. The end game is, in most cases, visibility. In others, it's
| probably social engineering for whatever reason. Mostly
| political.
|
| Unfortunately, media outlets have fallen into this scheme as
| well. I mean, it's not like the concept of clickbait is new.
| Attractive headlines are as old as newspapers/journalism.
|
| - Highly progressive opinions will always clash with the status
| quo;
|
| - There's a fundamental and unavoidable loss (or lack) of signal
| whenever people communicate in short sentences, or when they do
| not have enough time to fully understand what's being said, or
| when they communicate with people who they don't know;
|
| If I have a friend who's a prankster/jester I might be used to
| their shenanigans and tolerate them--a stranger might not find
| them funny. Maybe the stranger will find it funny after they know
| my friend, but that would depend on a lot of other variables as
| well.
|
| - There's also the problem of the person who transmits
| information not expressing themselves properly (for whatever
| reason) which will unavoidably lead to miscommunication;
|
| - Social networks are fundamentally designed for engagement--now
| that everyone is online there will be a clash of ideas. Tribes
| will organically form (just like offline). And - with few
| exceptions - what was meant as a benign message ends up in a
| declaration of war from the other tribe.
|
| So, in sum, I just scratched the surface of the problem. It's
| very hard to make sense of all the noise and coming up with a
| proper solution to this problem.
|
| Is it an education problem? Is democracy the root cause? Would a
| totalitarian (regardless it being Right-Wing or Left-Wing) system
| work? Is it something fundamentally ingrained into our human
| condition that makes it impossible to solve this problem? (Look
| at bees, for instance, they're ruthless and yet highly efficient
| at what they do.) Is it a fundamental purpose (or lack thereof)
| that each and everyone of us has defined - through whatever
| heuristic and for whatever reason - that's to blame for all this
| chaos? Is it its visibility?
|
| Yeah. It's a hard problem to solve. Maybe lots of compromise
| would help.
|
| I honestly don't know.
|
| The quote "All models are wrong, but some are
| useful." --George Box
|
| comes to mind.
| honkycat wrote:
| I can't speak for this site, but for the internet overall: There
| will always be teenagers and trolls.
|
| Teenagers will always find it amusing to say naughty things and
| being transgressive. Trolls never bother finding something more
| interesting to do.
|
| It is like a prank call. You used to call the local pizza joint,
| and ask for orange chicken, annoying the manager until they flew
| into a rage. Now you get on a comment section and annoy people.
| FlowNote wrote:
| You can't.
| pjkundert wrote:
| Solution: K-means clustering of accounts, with _long_ _term_
| effect.
|
| Everyone starts out as a "noob", seeing the unfiltered cesspool,
| and nobody with significant grouping weight sees their comments
| (except other noobs, and people who've categorized themselves as
| "noobs" by Liking inflammatory nonsense and Disliking reasoned
| debate.
|
| In the year or so it takes for your identity to begin to develop
| weight toward your cluster, you see less and less "noob" content,
| and more "cluster" content.
|
| If you like one-sided (eg. dismissive statist left/right, or
| aggrieved libertarian, ...) or perhaps reasoned principled
| respectful debate -- that's what you'll see.
|
| Everyone wants to see debate they're comfortable with. If you
| want garbage, that's what you'll see. If you want understanding
| of opposition views in a reasoned, respectful environment, that's
| what you'll see.
|
| What you won't see is -- trolls. They'll all be busy trolling
| eachother, and we won't see their garbage.
|
| The idea that we can use single-axis rating to create a
| universally acceptable online environment is just, well, crazy.
| And yet, since the mid-80's, that is what literally every online
| "social" tool has been trying, vainly, to accomplish! It's
| stunning, really.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Birthing into the sewer seems counterproductive.
|
| That fared poorly for physical health, we learned.
| peckrob wrote:
| It's a big problem without one simple solution. One thing we can
| do, though, is not enable it when possible. One big thing I have
| zeroed in on recently is comments.
|
| When I redesigned my blog/website last year, I intentionally
| removed Disqus and all commenting ability. In fact, what prompted
| the redesign was that I wanted to add a box pleading with people
| to not use comments for tech support for various open source
| projects I've created and to file Github issues instead.
|
| But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how bad
| comments have really gotten. Trolling, bullying, racism, sexism,
| homophobia, transphobia, abuse, and general mean behavior have
| become such a rampant problem that "don't read the comments" has
| become an Internet meme on par with "don't feel the trolls."
| Think about it: when was the last time that you changed your
| opinion because of a comment you read on a blog or news article?
| More than likely it just make you mad or made you sad.
|
| I have been low-key nursing this idea for awhile now that the
| Internet would be better off if a lot of sites killed off
| comments. When comments become a breeding ground for the worst
| aspects of human behavior, why should we continue to enable it?
| Why should we host it and give it a voice? Why should we
| implicitly endorse it under our brand? Because that is what we do
| when we host comments.
|
| Commenting should probably still exist on social media sites
| (Facebook, Reddit, HN, etc.) But most sites would be a lot better
| off if they just dropped comments entirely and reallocated those
| resources to more productive uses, and I think their users would
| be better off for it as well.
|
| Yes, I am just one person with a small blog about programming.
| But if this is the position that I want to take, I should be the
| change that I want to see in the world. Thus, the removal of
| commenting. And I've been pushing this idea a bit in other areas
| that, just maybe, users don't need to be able to directly comment
| on things.
| CM30 wrote:
| Hmm, as someone who's run communities for a while, I'd have to
| say that the quality of a comments section is very heavily
| dependent on the topic, audience and how well you moderate it.
|
| Over on YouTube for instance, I've had very few negative
| comments on my videos, and usually found the comments section
| under them to be a mostly civil place where I can help out
| people who had trouble with a walkthrough or guide.
|
| Same goes with the comments on blog articles I wrote in the
| past too. The comments have generally stayed on topic, were
| always free of personal attacks, etc.
|
| Comment sections can certainly be hellholes, and for large
| media outlets they usually are. We all know how bad they are on
| stuff like the BBC, Daily Mail, Guardian, etc.
|
| But they don't necessarily have to be, and they can be entirely
| valuable if moderated well and related to a topic people don't
| treat like its the end of the world.
| anonsivalley652 wrote:
| There are many pervasive, interconnected issues and trends to it,
| so there's no simple or complete answer:
|
| 0. Behavior online doesn't arrive out of a vacuum. If people are
| miserable because they're working harder, making less and their
| society is in retreat, they're probably going to take out their
| frustrations out on the easiest targets.
|
| 1. Unplug from social and mainstream media because it doesn't
| have much value.
|
| 2. Stop demonizing, hating on groups of people and falling for
| the unthinking of mob tribalism, even rhetorically. Hate bad
| ideas, not people.
|
| 3. Realize that we're divided-and-conquered if we're going to let
| a few rich people and their corporate media keep us set against
| to each other. Solidarity is the only way.
|
| 4. Anonymity is good in small doses, but it's too easy for people
| to act unreasonably hiding behind it (cyberdisinhibitionism).
| DHH's company wrote a blog article about improving the quality of
| discussions with profile pictures and real names.
|
| 5. Stop and use every instance of it as a teachable moment, where
| feasible. It only works though if people have shame and can be
| brought around to the Golden Rule/empathy... it seems to me most
| parents these days aren't as involved in active parenting, so
| their kids run ferrel and so more people grow up to act more
| brutally and sociopathic. Furthermore, the current prevalence of
| parasitic vulture capitalism valuing myopic greed and selfishness
| above all else reinforces a disinterest in the concerns and well-
| being of others... which is antithetical to community and
| civilization.
|
| 6. There's nothing yet so far to replace the community function
| filled by religion, and so many people aren't interested in
| behaving themselves or doing right by their neighbors or
| strangers if they can get away with it.
|
| 7. More people have lost most of their hope about the future. For
| example, no healthy society has mass shootings/suicides nearly
| every day that no longer make the news.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Re 3: I wonder if part of it is that many people don't have an
| identity. So they make a tribe their identity.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| Probably fixing the root cause of political divisions would have
| the biggest effect.
|
| Stuff like ranked choice voting and open/no primaries that would
| result in more moderate politicians winning and less need for
| political parties.
|
| Also a UBI might help diminish an "us vs them" mentality. The
| more good policies we have, the more we ALL benefit.
| ineptech wrote:
| 1. Amazon releases MyOneServer, the first AWS product aimed at
| non-tech end users. M1S is a VM that runs apps (like, from an app
| store) for server-side use cases like running a blog or hosting a
| minecraft server.
|
| 2. M1S gains traction from hackers who don't want to be part-time
| sysadmins, but the first widely-used killer app for it is a
| social media front-end combined with a CDN. Self-hosted files and
| "publish once, syndicate everywhere" starts to flourish and
| Facebook begins to lose its position as middle-man to the web's
| social activity.
|
| 3. Bezos buys Keybase with spare change from his couch cushion
| and integrates it in to M1S; now all server-side apps, and the
| users thereof, natively have cryptographic identities.
|
| 4. Users begin to demand M1S integration from businesses that
| used to hold (and resell) their data. Widespread adoption from
| webapps cyclicly drives further adoption by users, making a M1S
| identity (if not heavy usage) almost ubiquitous.
|
| 5. With most client/server use cases sharing a single
| cryptographic auth network, the last vestiges of anonymity
| disappear from the web as peoples' username, real name,
| cryptographic identity, and checking account melt into a blob.
|
| 6. With their real identity attached to online activity, online
| activity becomes "activity", and, while toxicity is not
| eliminated, it is at least no worse than the real world.
|
| (Crazy? maybe. But I am honestly surprised every day that I wake
| up and find out that Amazon hasn't made something like step 1
| yet...)
| sjf wrote:
| I really thought this was going somewhere until I got to the
| punchline: the expectation that having online identity linked
| to real identity will reduce toxicity. Real names policies have
| already been tried by several huge social networks and don't
| seem to be having any impact.
| CM30 wrote:
| Truth be told, the most practical solution is to stop
| centralising everything and using these giant social networking
| sites that force people with nothing in common together. The
| bigger your audience gets and the less focused on any one topic
| it is, the harder it is to moderate/keep under the control, and
| the more drama you'll inevitably have when groups clash there.
|
| Smaller internet forums, subreddits, Discord/Slack groups, etc
| tend to be a lot more civil than the likes of Twitter or YouTube
| are.
|
| So a revival of those types of sites and communities will help a
| lot.
|
| As will returning to the days of multi pseudonyms for different
| websites. Because people are not one sided. They don't always act
| the same way in every setting.
|
| No, their behaviour depends on the company they're with. They
| might act one way with family, another way with friends, another
| way at work, etc.
|
| That's how society stays together to some degree. People don't
| know how others act in other settings, and they don't care. Your
| coworkers likely have a whole mix of political opinions, but
| since it likely doesn't come up during work, it doesn't really
| matter.
|
| Social networks seem to be trying to demolish this sense of
| separation between sides of people's personalities, and that's
| making society more and more fragile, as one wrong move means
| someone's entire life gets destroyed by the internet mob.
|
| Oh, and decent moderation too. Unfortunately for Facebook and co,
| you can't automate moderation and expect it to work well, and you
| can't outsource it to a bunch of full time employees in a distant
| office somewhere. It has to be done by people with a real
| investment in the community, which is again where a well run
| small community shines.
| grawprog wrote:
| >As will returning to the days of multi pseudonyms for
| different websites. Because people are not one sided. They
| don't always act the same way in every setting.
|
| I never stopped doing this. The problem is, a lot of younger
| people were never taught to or never learned they should do
| this and a lot of older people same thing sort of.
|
| I was kind of lucky I suppose, years ago I had a friend say
| something on a work Facebook page that caused some trouble, I
| realized Facebook wasn't a place I could have people like that,
| so since I've kept Facebook or any other social media website
| with personal information and concersations on it strictly
| professional or Christmas dinner at grandma's house level.
| Which pretty much means, no politics, no getting involved in
| other people's arguments, no posting things I wouldn't want an
| employer or my grandma seeing, no friends that post ridiculous
| things on my feed etc.
|
| Then i've got my forum and other online site accounts that
| lack, for the most part, studd that could easily identify me,
| though I'm sure someone with lots of time and dedication(dunno
| why though), could figure it out, that use a different email
| than my 'real' email, where I can talk about things without
| worrying that I might randomly piss off someone I know.
|
| If I want to have potentially divisive conversations with
| people I know in person, I'd rather do it in person or at least
| not on what might as well be the community billboard.
| el_cujo wrote:
| Unfortunately, I don't think it's as simple as "just go back to
| smaller groups". For companies, more users = more revenue,
| there isn't realy much incentive to not try and pull in as many
| people as possible. And then for most normal users, if they
| here about some big site, they're inclined to join that so they
| don't miss out on the the funny tik tok memes/all of their
| friends being on instagram/etc. For them, what benefit is there
| to a smaller site where you can't get as many followers or
| where your friends/favorite celebrity isn't a member.
|
| I agree with you that size is one of the main contributing
| factors to the problem, I just don't think smaller sites is a
| practical solution for the public at large. That being said, if
| you don't care about "fixing" the public problem, then you're
| right on the money. If you personally don't want to experience
| toxicity, get off the big sites, it's that easy. I just don't
| see that being a fix for the average teenager/college
| student/boomer
| gyulai wrote:
| ...it doesn't need to be a huge company (or company of any
| kind) to run these things. Back in the early 2000s, a
| volunteer who knew about computers would set up phpBB on a
| church's website, or a radio station would allow one IT
| person to spend half their time maintaining something like
| this, and that would be it. No need to turn millions in
| advertising dollars to have an online community.
|
| I do agree with the parent comment, that we may well see a
| resurgence of small and medium-sized online communities, for
| the simple reason that more fragmentation could be a good
| thing. When a community has its eternal september, people can
| move elsewhere.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| > stop centralising everything
|
| Even federated approaches like mastodon also have big issues
| with toxicity.
| luckylion wrote:
| Just making a smaller Twitter won't change the nature of the
| Problem. It's less about the size of the community than the
| amount of topics, I believe. If you have a community that is
| about trains, and trains only, you may get a heated
| discussion about some train stuff, but you won't get a brawl
| about the political issue de jour.
| rayuela wrote:
| Encourage people to participate in physical social gatherings
| that center around non-political issues, like hobbies.
|
| We need to start emphasizing what we have in common, help people
| see that ultimately we're really not all that different from each
| other. The internet lets people hide behind this isolating veneer
| that makes it too easy to just shout at each other and behave in
| extreme ways that would never be socially acceptable in the real
| world. Interacting in real life significantly moderates people's
| behaviour and when social media and the internet facilitate
| segregation and amplification of extremes, spending more time in
| person might really do us a lot of good.
|
| We need to put people in a context where politics is irrelevant
| and a shared interest has the opportunity to bond people who
| would otherwise not meet. It's the only way I see of countering
| Identity Politics that try to be all consuming.
|
| It would also be helpful to encourage people to focus on more
| positive events. Outrage culture is a thing, only exacerbated by
| social media, where rage = clicks/views = money. We need to
| change the economics of this equation. We would really benefit
| from a culture that gave more attention to people doing good
| rather than just focusing on the villains in society.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Unfortunately the problem is preexisting. The local communities
| can and have been the most psychotically toxic places.
|
| If something is political is only about the level of agreement
| and not about sanity, decency, or morality. It may be easier to
| (not) think about divergence of views but that doesn't solve
| the particular underlying issue isn't real.
| aernthrowaway wrote:
| the dream of every authoritarian government.
| schnevets wrote:
| Agreed wholeheartedly. Some hobbies have become more chic
| because of the analog "in-person" aspect (like tabletop
| gaming/role-playing and adult sports leagues), but culture is
| still losing the fight against isolation.
|
| I optimistically think people are appreciating face-to-face
| time more, and I hope we think of a lot of new excuses to meet
| up over the next decade.
| [deleted]
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Encourage people to participate in physical social gatherings
| that center around non-political issues, like hobbies._
|
| I think there is a lot more to this than many people think.
|
| If more people participated in hobbies, then they would spend
| less time on the internet. The time they do spend would be more
| targeted and focused instead of mindlessly scrolling and
| scrolling and getting baited and agitated.
|
| They would also form communities, as you suggest, with common
| interests and get to know people better. It's basic
| socialization.
|
| Part of the problem is that for some reason there is a notion
| that everything has to be a business today. There's a Fidelity
| Investments TV commercial running right now where a daughter
| says to her retired mother, "Did you paint this [painting]? You
| know you can sell these!" And a business is born. Why? Why
| can't she just enjoy painting for painting's sake. For her own
| enjoyment? Why is money what decides if something is valid or
| not?
|
| I encourage people to start hobbies. And be bad at them. Be
| terrible at reading, stamp collecting, woodworking, gardening,
| model railroading, brewing, or whatever. Do it because you like
| it. If you happen to be good at it, great! If all of your
| carrots die, that's OK, too. You got to spend quality time with
| yourself, which is more important than all the carrot sales you
| could possibly make.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Damn, this is a great idea... I'm going to try woodworking
| and make the shoddiest set of chairs one can imagine, but
| they'll be my chairs. Could take up to a year maybe of
| practice but who cares!
| slx26 wrote:
| I raised the same point about businesses in a comment a few
| days ago, among other issues
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025971
|
| [warning, cynic paragraph ahead] We don't have time to
| socialize, we obviously live to work. We might be stressed as
| we don't get to disconnect much, but you know, that would be
| so wasteful! Streets are not for people to socialize, they
| are for cars and for going somewhere else to do business.
| Spaces can only be there for money, otherwise they are an
| inefficiency which we'll have to fix. If you are good at
| something, you should be earning money from it. We live in a
| global world. We have so many hobbies! But only so many
| people fits in an area, so matches are unlikely. Anyway, if
| you are willing to go out for socialization any hobby is ok.
| If you are interested in finding interesting people... sorry,
| they are busy at the moment. That's what interesting people
| do. Be stressed and busy trying to fix the world from
| crashing by hitting harder the accelerator. Ah, the beauty of
| an efficient market. Perfecting time and spaces.
| [deleted]
| overcast wrote:
| Do not respond, block, then report.
| dcchambers wrote:
| Several sites I used to enjoy have been ruined by this toxic
| polarization.
|
| Everything is an echo chamber these days. No one wants to be
| wrong or look foolish online. People don't want to even read
| opinions other than their own. There is no more civil discourse.
|
| It's not just online - I'm noticing the same thing in real life.
|
| I don't know how to fix it...but I hope someone does. Whatever
| the case, we need to treat the cause, not just the symptoms.
| eqdw wrote:
| Discussions like this are frustrating to me because they always
| seem to skip over what feels like a crucial element:
|
| Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone?
|
| I get the feeling, in general, when people talk about wanting to
| "Do Something" about this sort of thing, they are always focused
| on managing the symptom and never focused on addressing the
| cause. Frequently, when I try to bring this up, the cause is
| waved away with "oh they're just stupid/ignorant/angry" or some
| other such explanation. The current-year favourite is "they just
| believe fake news", and I'm sure next year there will be a
| political explanation, and then the year after that we'll loop
| back to generic ones. (The irony of denouncing other people as
| causing polarization "because they're just angry and stupid" is
| lost on most people)
|
| I don't know why this is happening. But I do know that until the
| why is address, and done so with care and respect, this problem
| will be papered over at best but never solved.
|
| Also
|
| > Do we ditch them and go back to a literal timeline?
|
| If I got one wish to change the world, but I had to give up a
| bunch of great things, I would sell out all technological wonder
| in order to get literal timelines back. As soon as other people
| decided they knew what I wanted to see better than I did, the
| problem started. And as soon as they got tired of doing that and
| made computers do it for them, it got worse
| koheripbal wrote:
| If we're talking about _online_ conversations only, then I
| personally believe that the reduction in AGE of participants
| online has had a massive influence.
|
| Teenagers simply do not have the maturity to have mature
| conversations.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I could find countless examples of why this is completely
| inaccurate, but i'll submit one: members of Congress.
| AkshatM wrote:
| I share eqdw's distaste for knee-jerk symptom addressal without
| adequate understanding of the cause.
|
| I am somewhat disappointed by the other responses to eqdw here
| because they each immediately proffer or refer to competing
| interpretations of the cause without also referencing empirical
| tests of those interpretations. They miss eqdw's excellent
| point that there's always a hand-waved explanation waiting in
| the wings. Interpretations (which the other comments are) are
| not true explanations: they add dimensions to how we think, but
| not certainty in our conclusions. The historical method is not
| a valid substitute for the scientific method, as E. H. Carr
| long ago demonstrated with "What Is History?"
|
| The point I'm making is that there's got to be a higher bar for
| reasoning about social issues than a preferred interpretation,
| and that is likely going to be experiment. I'm aware
| sociological issues are so-called wicked problems, are hard to
| replicate solutions consistently with, and are difficult to
| have error bars over in their contribution to the end result. I
| don't think that means it is not possible to do experiments
| well enough to make reliable inferences - simulated games and
| follow-up interviews with participants are an effective
| research technique in this area, for example.
| Sorry_Rum_Ham wrote:
| I believe the reason for the uptick is two-fold.
|
| 1.) In general, this is a reactionary movement from the elite
| class of society(straight, white, cis people) to keep a death
| grip on the social and systemic power they see being taken from
| them in the form of diversity, equality, feminism, etc. This
| has been happening for a long time now, but it got real, real
| bad after...
|
| 2.) ...Trump was elected. Him winning the election was a shot
| of weapons-grade steroids into the ass of these regressive
| movements. He validated and emboldened them. He made them feel
| not only okay about being bigoted, but morally good for it.
|
| That's my thoughts, at least.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The internet went from subculture to being the mainstream
| culture, especially for politics. Roughly the point at which
| everyone started participating in sharing memes on Facebook as
| the successor to email forwards.
|
| This made it valuable enough to be worth destroying.
|
| So all kinds of bad actors started creating appealing,
| emotional, and false or misleading content aimed at this kind
| of sharing.
|
| Polarisation is deliberate. Some of it from the media, some of
| it from parties, some of it from random bored channers, some of
| it from the unemployed and upset, and some from intelligence
| agencies and their contractors.
|
| (This has had even worse effects in countries where democracy
| and media are young and fragile.)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The centuries-old conflict between egalitarianism and
| hierarchism, driven by economic and environmental pressures and
| to which technology is a a revivifying input.
| hnaa wrote:
| _In the Swarm_ by Byung-Chul Han does a good job explaining why
| this happened.
|
| In retrospect, it's perhaps more of a miracle that we got a
| decade or two of relatively low toxicity from the Internet.
| neogodless wrote:
| https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html
|
| This might not be a perfect resource. Among other things, he
| likes to use a lot of words to explain his point. But he offers
| up his theories on the Why behind polarization, including
| several contributors. Even if he doesn't get everything right,
| I think this is a solid place for someone who's serious about
| understanding it to start, and find plenty of references to dig
| into.
| throw90 wrote:
| > Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone?
|
| Lookup Overton Window Shift.
| randcraw wrote:
| > Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone?
|
| I think it's because online, each of us is disembodied and
| anonymous. We're a nobody. And nobody wants that. So the
| quickest way to become somebody is to join a group -- ideally a
| group that seems to be a winner, that offers easy compelling
| answers to hard problems... especially answers that somehow
| favor you and others like you. That's populism. Populists are
| fearless and decisive and sure they know what's true and right.
| They also know that everybody who's not on their team doesn't
| get it. So the quicker you join them, the sooner you become a
| somebody, a player. And if everyone else like you joins that
| team and you don't, you could degenerate into something worse
| than a nobody... an enemy.
|
| Combine that with where fame (and leadership?) seems to have
| evolved in our culture -- where becoming famous is the result
| of doing whatever it takes to attract attention. Even if if you
| lack any substance at all, if you somehow stand out, now you're
| no longer a nobody. You can't be ignored any more. And in the
| echo chambers of today's hollowed-out media and bored internet,
| that seems to be enough for most folks-who'd-rather-not-think
| to see you as outstanding, and an opinion leader.
|
| Those two phenomena don't sound like much, but they do help
| explain how an empty angry bombastic boob could become
| President of the United States of America and split the country
| like nothing has since slavery.
| fergonco wrote:
| > Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone?
|
| I don't _know_ but my take is that media makes more money if we
| get angry, and this anger-inducing style is permeating in the
| population.
| narag wrote:
| _Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone?_
|
| That is obvious. No idea how to solve it, but the cause? Sure.
|
| There's people _determined_ to make it happen. They 're called
| activists. From both sides. They're determined to make anyone
| in between to choose sides.
|
| Look no further than this post. See comments attributing the
| problem to the right, the left, old people, young people...
| mnemotronic wrote:
| Responsibility. Because of the inherent remote and anonymous
| context of on-line dialogs or exchanges, they don't have the same
| level of personal contact as direct person-to-person exchanges.
| People say things on-line that they would not, or wouldn't dare
| to dare to, say in-person. So some of the greatest advantages of
| the internet, it's anonymity and remote nature, can be turned
| into it's greatest threats.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| It is so much easier to hold and propagate a false / misleading
| view.
|
| Anger pushes us to action more than agreement.
|
| Truth us hard to find and difficult to defend.
|
| When the world is right we're not driven to action, nothing needs
| fixing.
|
| I don't know the answers but the odds are stacked against
| civility and truth right now.
| barryaustin wrote:
| There's no straightforward fix because this behavior is something
| that emerges from mass psychology, like war. In a sense this _is_
| war, with new platforms to amplify and direct weaponized ideas.
|
| If war is politics by other means (Clausewitz), we can turn that
| around and say that politics is war by other means. See: the
| Russian concept of hybrid warfare.
|
| What ends war is when enough people in a society are convinced
| it's not worth it. And that happens when enough people are
| exposed to the horrors of war, when they see what it does to
| their own lives and to the lives of people they care about.
|
| Now we're in a period when most people haven't been exposed to
| that level, so this is unfortunately an upswing.
|
| The way through is for some number of us to keep our humanity
| toward others (in the positive sense), to act accordingly, to
| carry that through until conflict blows over, and to rebuild
| society afterwards.
| decibe1 wrote:
| I don't think we should try to stop it. I like discussion groups
| where the only thing moderated is spam. Yes, you'll get a lot of
| noise - but they can also be the only source of discussion that
| lies outside the overton window.
|
| I've found it easy to ignore content I don't like, but it is
| getting harder to find open discussion forums.
| duxup wrote:
| >outside the overton window
|
| I feel like what you describe here ... is the noise.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Not everything outside the overton window is noise. It sure
| isn't all signal, though. It almost certainly has a higher
| proportion of noise. But it's also where the new directions
| for society are going to come from, for good or ill.
| duxup wrote:
| There's a "outside the overton window" description (and
| similar descriptions) I hear folks talk about when it comes
| to the value of internet un-moderated discussions and ....
| honestly I've found it mostly to be poorly thought out at
| best, often painfully ignorant as far as the motivations
| go.
|
| There seems to be some folks who talk about really valuing
| novel ideas and how they can't show up on moderated
| discussions but I just see a lot of noise that might not be
| "overton window" but are mostly pithy garbage.
|
| I find that anything mildly thought out usually fits inside
| even the heaviest of moderated type discussions.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > I find that anything mildly thought out usually fits
| inside even the heaviest of moderated type discussions.
|
| Depends on the moderation. Here, if it's well thought out
| (and expressed in a non-antagonistic way), it _usually_
| fits. Not every moderated place will that be true,
| though. And even here, certain topics may not run afoul
| of the moderators, but users may still downvote them to
| oblivion. (For example: There is some suggestion that
| autism may be caused, in at least some cases, by gut
| bacteria. But if I were to link that idea to the
| suggestion that the measles vaccine might, in some cases,
| cause gut issues, I would expect to be destroyed by
| downvotes, no matter how good of an argument - or even
| evidence - I had.)
| MattyRad wrote:
| It's worth reposting the related thought piece from last week
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| It helps to realize that much of it is intentional, especially on
| behalf of companies like Facebook. Once you realize this it has a
| sort of spell-breaking effect. Ask yourself if you would say the
| same sort of thing to someone if you were face to face. If the
| answer is no, think twice about posting it online.
| arman_ashrafian wrote:
| This is not an answer but on a similar note, has anyone watched
| the latest Joe Rogan Experience with Daryl Davis. He is a black
| man who convinced Klan Members to leave the KKK. Amazing podcast.
| Maybe the only way to stop toxicity/polarity is to show real
| conversations with real people.
| brlewis wrote:
| Successful persuasion stories are always interesting to me, but
| at over 2.5 hours I'm unlikely to watch this whole thing. Can
| you please list some key takeaways?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGTQ0Wj6yIg
| ccsnags wrote:
| I think it is more of a social problem we can't solve with code.
|
| As methods of communication get cheaper and more accessible, it
| opens the world up to see what humanity is, not what humanity
| wants itself to be.
|
| People that maliciously attack those online are broken people.
| Broken people exist in reality, thus broken people will exist
| online.
|
| Google and Facebook can write code to stop harassment, but they
| can't do so without marginalizing people who are already on the
| fringes of society. Plus, their system can be gamed. The output
| of such changes would mean that it would stop some harassment at
| the cost of losing accessibility for everyone and a meta game
| playing in the background that costs the corporations engineering
| resources.
|
| The best answer right now, in my opinion, is to create tools to
| fight harassment, but give those tools to the users of the site
| rather than automated algorithms. A good example of this is a
| mute feature. Other tools like customized word filters, block
| lists and safe lists can also help empower users.
| ianai wrote:
| I've got a solution. Have each domain need to reflect the
| nation of its authorship. Ie a U.K. vlog has to post to a .uk
| domain. Really only meant for the big media platforms like
| YouTube, Twitter, FB, etc. What they would see at the .com site
| is all of their local content maybe with a trending globally
| section.
| missosoup wrote:
| Polarisation and 'toxicity' are two completely different things.
|
| The fact that people have increasingly divergent views (or
| rather, are voicing them, they probably always held those views)
| is just a fact of life. It's not unique to any online community
| or even any country. It might be simply the fact that too much
| diversity is inherently destined to collapse.
|
| 'Toxicity' is a made-up new meaning for the word, which means
| anything undesirable from the point of view of the speaker.
|
| Labelling the former as the later is one of the root causes of
| the feedback loop you're describing.
|
| The first step is for both sides of polarising issues to
| acknowledge each other, that both think they're doing the right
| thing, and that neither is 'toxic'. Without that common ground,
| dialogue can never begin.
| notadoc wrote:
| It's far beyond the web, polarization/toxicity is now all over
| politics, media, outrage mobs, protests, etc. It's growingly
| reminiscent of cultural revolutions and other negative historical
| events, which is not a good thing.
|
| To start:
|
| - Stop using social media
|
| - Don't use services that have public digital scorekeeping and
| other vanity metrics centered around ego and narcissism
|
| - Recall that the 1st Amendment is the first amendment for a very
| good reason
|
| - Recall that it's perfectly OK to disagree with others, no
| matter the subject
|
| - Recall that the more difficult a subject often the more nuance
| is required
|
| - Reject divisive political and social movements
|
| - Reject identity politics
|
| - End outrage mobs
|
| - End PC policing nonsense
|
| - End cancel culture
|
| - Don't engage in 'call out culture' or 'woke' nonsense which
| incentivizes toxicity, division, and mob behavior both online and
| offline.
|
| As for future generations, perhaps k8-12 schools should have
| mandatory studies of inquisitions, mob mentalities, lynchings,
| witch burnings, and cultural revolutions, and the tremendously
| negative outcomes associated with those types of behaviors.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Too many people cannot turn off social media. Also, our 'elected'
| officials and the media continually drive the polarization that
| you see - they don't want any middle ground, they want to force
| us into an us or them choice and its working. The solution is
| finding middle ground where we can agree, we need to come at the
| problem from a place of mutual respect rather than a desire to
| obliterate the other side.
| throwaway55554 wrote:
| It's far easier to be negative than to be positive. I think
| people who would normally try to be more positive have just given
| up trying. Everything has gone downhill; there's virtually no
| serious journalism anymore (it's all ad-money seeking with link-
| bait headlines), people who claim to be "leaders" are not setting
| good examples (they act like bad children!), etc. So people just
| have accepted this is the way it is.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Rational thinking, manipulation techniques (you have to know them
| to be able to detect them), emotional awareness and stuff like
| that should be taught at every school. Everybody should be
| conscious of the fact 99% of what you find online (let alone see
| on TV) is bullshit, designed to troll and manipulate you and
| absolutely not worth taking serious (and if something really
| seems important - check the proofs and don't forget to question
| their legitimacy). I would even call for the governments to fund
| efforts to educate every person (adults included) this way - this
| clearly is a matter of national security nowadays.
|
| I believe there is no sane way (an insane way is to deanonymize
| and watch everyone - China and Russia implement this) to stop the
| polarization/toxicicity in the first place, all we can do is
| develop immunity.
| TruthSHIFT wrote:
| Also, it should be noted that foreign governments are actively
| trying to polarize us.
| jedberg wrote:
| You really can't.
|
| The only fix is aggressive moderation, and even that isn't great,
| because you'll be shaped by the ideas of the moderators.
|
| The internet is a wonderful tool. It magnifies reach of all
| thoughts and facts and opinions. Sometimes that's a good thing,
| sometimes it's a bad thing, and what each person considers good
| or bad is different.
|
| We've always had "crazies" with strange ideas. Back in the day
| they just stood on street corners shouting. Then they passed out
| leaflets. Then they got on public access cable.
|
| And now they have the internet, where they can reach the whole
| globe at once.
|
| The one thing I can tell you that won't work is pure democracy.
| Something I learned at reddit early on is that pure democracy
| just doesn't work, because the trolls have far more time and
| patience than everyone else, and they _will_ manipulate the
| system.
|
| Also, a lot of people just don't want to think for themselves.
| They will just follow the loudest voice assuming it is correct.
| This also makes democracy not work well.
|
| But democracy is still the best system we've got.
| CodiePetersen wrote:
| You're not going to. There is real incentive to divide people
| into categories. People in the grey are hard to deal with and
| hard to manage.
|
| Massive tech companies like google have perfected how you are
| supposed to move someone from unaware and not caring into the
| firmly aware caring and loyal brand consumer. They extend that
| ability to anyone willing to pay for it.
|
| All the twitter ads all the Facebook ads all the Google ads.
| Doesn't matter if it's for potatoes or Trump, they have the same
| ability to subtly move you into their camp. Even a basic search
| engine in reddit or google will constantly feed you the same bs
| day in and day out based on what you already search for. Take
| Google news. They aren't going to show you too much out of your
| region, even in world news as an American you are usually going
| to see American policy and any topics the engine thinks is
| important to you based on your previous views.
|
| The whole of Internet technologies is meant to divide and feed
| you the confirmation bias info you love. Only stuff that already
| aligns with your views. You take that and couple the fact that ai
| algorithms are literally designed to take non linear data and
| plop them into definite categories and you'll get
| independent/grey thinkers slowly being pushed to one side or
| another no matter how complex the data.
|
| Unless there is a way to forcefully break the feedback loop, you
| won't stop it. If you sat day in and day out twirling a butterfly
| knife or painting or whatever, you would be an expert eventually.
| That's what is happening now but not with a useful skill, just
| information aligned with what you already believe. Then after
| years of programming someone comes along from the other category
| and tries to break your beliefs, of course you'll get toxicity
| because it's hard to unlearn how to paint. The brain is not meant
| to unlearn constantly practiced behavior.
| slumdev wrote:
| I think most people would be less toxic if their posts and
| comments were both (1) public and (2) linked to their real name.
|
| Someone posting anonymously or under a pseudonym has nothing to
| lose. He might not intend to offend, but he has no reason to
| guard his tone or consider how his audience will receive him.
|
| Someone who posts under his real name on Facebook but only shouts
| into an echo chamber filled with like-minded "friends" also has
| nothing to lose.
|
| Shame is a great motivator. Fear of loss of friends or career
| prospects is also a great motivator.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| I think exactly the reverse. Posting anonymously (without a
| pseudo-identity even) means that you are more likely to speak
| your mind and less likely to try to win internet points. It
| also helps with making sure that your community will not become
| an echo-chamber.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| > _I think most people would be less toxic if their posts and
| comments were both (1) public and (2) linked to their real
| name._
|
| Counterargument:
|
| https://www.facebook.com
|
| Q.E.D.
| jowday wrote:
| The massive amount of toxicity and drama among Twitter users
| with accounts linked to their real identity is strong counter-
| evidence to this. When I think of "polarization and toxicity on
| the web", I think of Twitter arguments that spill over into
| real life precisely because of this connection between online
| identity and real identity.
| rv-de wrote:
| Few weeks ago I read Heinrich Boll's "The Lost Honour of
| Katharina Blum" [1] which is a literary reflection on how society
| and media treated RAF [2] sympathizers.
|
| What struck me was how much the described trolling and toxicity
| resembled what we observe nowadays. The book and the setting is
| the 70's so the anonymous bullying and hysteria just materialized
| via letters, newspapers and the phone instead of social media.
|
| Also it has been mentioned on HN several times that society
| didn't become more toxic - possibly even less. But more and more
| people gained access since the 90s and take the opportunity for
| abusing it in such ways. Also there are now troll farms and a
| single person without a job can spread poison like a gatling gun
| bullets.
|
| 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Honour_of_Katharina_B...
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
| naringas wrote:
| we will have to understand how culture (i.e. original definition
| of memes: cultural attitudes, bits of knowledge, generalized
| narratives) is a collective action in which we all participate.
|
| In essence it works by mimicry. we mimic our peers and our peers
| mimic us. we just gotta be careful about what we mimic.
|
| the tricky part is that this process is largely (but not
| entirely) subconscious. and also it takes a lot of focus and well
| applied effort to change previously learned behaviors. specially
| when "everyone else (within you social circles) does this"
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| To my mind, this is a little like people being depressed about
| The News. The News tends to be negative stuff and it used to be
| available for an hour or two on the TV. Now, you can access The
| News 24/7 via TV, internet, radio, etc.
|
| Some folks find that really depressing because they get so much
| more negativity in their headspace than they used to. A primary
| approach to not being depressed about The News is to stop letting
| it take up so much of your time and attention. Actively seek to
| tune it out and focus on other things.
|
| Similarly, the internet is bigger than it used to be, so some of
| this is perceptual and/or a numbers game. It's easy to find
| fightiness and feel like "It's everywhere." It's relatively easy
| to take good things for granted and underappreciate them.
|
| Some things I find helpful:
|
| 1. Actively seek constructive engagement. For me, this involves
| declining to indulge the knee-jerk reaction to rebut anything and
| everything that directly disagrees with some comment I made (ie
| replies to me that tell me "You are wrong!" or similar). This is
| a bad habit of mine that just makes things worse and no amount of
| trying to justify to myself why I tend to do this makes it not a
| bad habit.
|
| 2. If I do choose to reply to people who disagree with me or who
| are being negative, think about what my goal is and what I'm
| trying to accomplish. Is there particular information I would
| like to put out as a result of their comment? Can I do it without
| just going down that path of "No, you!"?
|
| 3. Grow a thicker skin. I don't absolutely have to have every
| single person who replies to me on the internet like me, be nice
| to me, be my friend, blah blah blah. It's okay for other people
| to disagree with me and to talk about what they think. I can
| decline to take it so freaking personally that the entire world
| doesn't always agree with me.
|
| 4. Keep in mind that people are much more likely to reply to you
| online if they disagree. There isn't a whole lot to say if you
| agree and HN in particular actively discourages low value
| replies. So you aren't going to see a lot of vacuous "Me toos"
| here. That doesn't mean people here hate me.
|
| 5. View some of it through the lens of "HN/The Internet is bigger
| than it used to be. It's a numbers game. Multiple replies
| disagreeing with me say more about that fact than about me, this
| opinion, etc."
|
| 6. Work on my communication skills. This is an ongoing effort.
| Some phrases or framings tend to get knee-jerk negative
| engagement. Learning to say it better helps reduce the nonsense.
|
| At the same time, I try to make my peace with the fact that no
| amount of effort on my end will ever completely put a stop to
| other people choosing to do whatever the heck they choose to do.
| "You can't please all of the people all the time" and that sort
| of thing.
|
| (This comment is not intended to be comprehensive. It's just an
| off-the-cuff forum comment, not a PhD thesis.)
| austincheney wrote:
| There are two forms of toxicity. This is vitally important to
| understand before suggesting any solution.
|
| * single user - evidenced by harassment, trolling, attacks
|
| * group - evidenced by an echo chamber, which is typically
| present from down votes drastically outnumbering replies or
| replies suggesting silencing or solicitations for recruitment
|
| Both forms are equally toxic, but they are not equally
| recognizable or distinguishable. An example a lone attacker is
| typically repulsive and starts out as a bold violator to most
| users in a well moderated environment and so they rarely attract
| supporting attention from other users.
|
| Contrarily, group attacks are typically benign, at first, but
| misery loves company. The negative attention grows on itself
| drawing in users with insecurities how tend to fear diversity.
| While group toxicity may start out benign the toxic nature of it
| becomes starkly apparent as it is allowed to fester resulting in
| comments that are direct and hostile attacks claiming
| justification of group support or agreement to a premise.
|
| Toxic groups do occur on HN, but they are rarely able to grow
| wildly out of control in any measurable way because downvotes to
| any contribution are capped at -4. The only evidence of group
| attacks in an online environment like this are the quantity of
| down votes and the nature of the reply comments present.
|
| It is my opinion toxic group behavior is a more serious concern
| and the lone wolf, because the lone wolf flamer is easier to
| identify. In many cases users have no idea they are contributing
| to group toxicity as conformance without explanation may feel
| natural. It's also serious because it is substantially harder to
| correct.
|
| Either way the nature of toxic behavior is about attention
| whether it's to draw attention to a single user's contribution or
| to silence a disagreement.
| forgottenpass wrote:
| Remember back when we used to have concepts like "flamebait" and
| "flamewars"? When we would openly talk about conversations to not
| get involved in? Right in direct proximity to those conversations
| themselves? We'd acknowledge that no-one was above getting hot
| under the collar, and that while we'd try to avoid it we might
| have to go bicker at eachother in the corner for a while?
|
| What changed? My rough list is:
|
| 1. News bloggers got online and turned flamebait into their
| business model.
|
| 2. Normies got iPhones and started posting online. They never
| read an netiquette guide. If they had heard of the concept at all
| they dismissed it as computer nerd nonsense. They don't think
| about online communication systematically and expect every
| interaction online to be like talking to customer service: they
| get to say whatever they want, and only hear a very constrained
| window of things back. This backfires in all the obvious ways.
|
| 3. "Platforms" with KPIs based on engagement are incentivized to
| enable the largest flamewars possible and put it in as many
| people's faces right up to the point they start causing bad PR.
|
| 4. People with basically zero forethought thought they could fix
| society by being paternalistic to strangers.
| abootstrapper wrote:
| Not all actors are participating in online conversations in good
| faith. Meaning, a big part of the problem are trolls and
| propagandist antagonizing and encouraging division. Part of the
| solution has to be stopping them.
| ianai wrote:
| Lots of other comments here say it's just the old trolls at
| scale, but I agree with you. There is propaganda at such a
| scale that it's hard to miss and some is very hard to spot. I
| don't remember people in the US being so likely to repeat
| Russian propaganda in the past. I routinely have people repeat
| Russian-twisted, false accounts of historical facts to me! This
| isn't the old problems at scale.
|
| Edit-just this morning the news reports Republican senators
| being afraid for their families well beings if they counter
| Trump. Unthinkable just 4 years ago.
| makomk wrote:
| The trouble with this solution is that not all actors wanting
| to stop people from participating in online conversations are
| doing so in good faith, even if they frame it in convincing-
| sounding language about trolls and propaganda. In fact, I'd say
| that this is probably a massive magnet to every single bad-
| faith actor out there, and given the us-vs-them climate it
| produces there's probably no way of stopping those bad actors.
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| Thanks for asking!
|
| Just wanted to point out to the thread: this is a question that
| is a great fit for VC3 (https://vc3.club). I started VC3 to try
| and bring together people to answer questions like this (and
| others) that pertain to building more meaningful community
| through the Internet. If you're interested in discussing this,
| you'd be a great fit! Send us an application and we'll get you in
| the discussion!
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I am not a believer in things being better back in the day. I
| think that is nostalgia. Flame wars have existed since the
| beginning of the internet.
|
| What we can to do make it better is to invest in teaching
| critical thinking, media literacy, and actual argumentation.
|
| And it is important to know when to walk away. There are a lot of
| times when I see someone respond to a comment in a way that is
| shitty or just plain wrong and I would love to try to correct
| them. However, I try to resist. If it is reddit or something I
| will look at their post history. If they mostly post on certain
| subreddits I know that there is no point in my continuing the
| conversation. Nothing I can write is going to change this
| person's mind so I stop engaging with that person. I'm not always
| successful in resisting the urge to tell them how wrong they are
| but I try.
| tmaly wrote:
| I think good moderators and a code of conduct that is out front
| and visible helps.
|
| Back when I first got online there was this idea of internet
| etiquette. I am not sure where that disappeared to.
|
| It helps if the online communities can meet in person. I remember
| we did this with the first indiehackers meetup and it was great
| to see real people and make a connection.
| cannedslime wrote:
| I rarely see threats, I do see that dialogue is rarely actually
| happening, its usually just shit flinging with buzzwords like
| cuck, biggot, xenophobe, leftist, commie, nazi etc. Rarely do I
| see people make arguments, and even rarer do I see people
| actually arguing as in exchanging ideas and answering each others
| questions.
|
| The more mainstream a site gets, the worse it seems to be.
| Especially where voting is involved (reddit, facebook etc).
|
| Add to this "grassroots" efforts to "takeover" public internet
| forums, which has been going on for decades by both far left and
| right wingers. Applying for moderator roles, not because they
| want to moderate discussion, but have complete control of it..
| fortran77 wrote:
| This is nothing new. There were flamewars on USENET in 1989.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| This is not an algorithm problem. It's a people problem. Start
| with yourself: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
|
| An algorithmic solution would be to rigorously hide everything
| that looks like mere unproductive outrage from public discourse.
| However, not only would that amount the severe censorship but
| it'd probably also not be exactly easy to implement.
|
| Besides, platforms such as Twitter or good old-fashioned news
| thrive on outrage. If you take that from them there's probably
| not much left, which is why it's not in these platforms' interest
| to do something against the issue.
|
| So, it's back to square one: Yourself. Keep your identity small
| and try not to perpetuate outrage on the Internet.
| banads wrote:
| Let's not pretend algorithms optimized for "engagement" don't
| feed on hate. Is there any other emotion which is so easily
| evoked, manipulated, and engaging as anger/hate?
| lukifer wrote:
| CGP Grey: "This Video Will Make You Angry"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
| lukaszkups wrote:
| I was thinking about a solution that could be implemented by big
| players like Disqus - I've took some ideas from StackOverflow
| reputation idea - here you can read about it:
| https://lukaszkups.net/notes/what-disqus-can-learn-from-stac...
|
| &tldr; limit comments per day, require minimum amount of positive
| reputation to leave a comment, make it customizable per website
| by its owners.
| nkkollaw wrote:
| The web mirrors people.
|
| How do you stop people from behaving like they do..? And why
| would you want to? Who should decide how people should behave
| (beyond established laws, of course)?
|
| If people don't do something illegal that should be reported,
| they're being people. You have nice people, assholes, politically
| correct, politically incorrect, etc.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| And mirrors change behaviours. You don't find people preening
| before blank walls or open spaces. The mirror informs and
| provides feedback.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| A good first start would be to teach the old maxim, "don't
| believe everything you read," in schools more. Most kids have
| only heard this phrase a few times in their lives and never
| really process it in their everyday lives. It would do a lot of
| good.
| jejei992o wrote:
| Convince 7 billion people harm reduction should be seen as the
| ultimate motivation of society.
|
| The web has nothing to do with it.
|
| For a while we thought more people were getting cancer. Turned
| out cancer detection rates were low and lots of mysterious deaths
| in history were probably just cancer.
|
| The web has helped illuminate in the US how big the political
| ideology gap always was. It was papered over by information
| manipulation of the corporate press for decades, coddling
| sensibilities of luddites, innumerate, and nesters who preferred
| to stay home rather than see for themselves. They also made up
| the biggest voting block for years.
|
| I grew up in Trump country and left two decades ago. Was shocked
| to find coasties really were convinced it was Leave it to Beaver
| land while rural folks were convinced urban areas are universally
| slums. Those are REAL narratives I get from people today. Shocked
| about how ass backwards the other cohort feels about life.
| Ridiculously sheltered attitudes on both sides. Complete
| disinterest in negotiating. As we see in Congress.
|
| Consider that perfect rural life and urban police dramas are
| common fiction tropes and it's not hard to see why those
| emotional descriptions are knee jerk go to for the masses
|
| Free speech doesn't oblige anyone else to abide the embedded
| semantics of the speech in question. Emit whatever syntax you
| want, no one has to put their agency into the behaviors the
| speaker thinks achieve the outcome they seek with their speech.
|
| Good luck.
| johndjos wrote:
| I think it's simple: money. Take away the financial incentive to
| create viral/outrage content.
| cubano wrote:
| I remember being a part of a very early forum called "Plastic" in
| the mid 2000's and, believe me, there was PLENTY of
| polarization/toxicity there, so I'm not really buying that this
| is a new thing.
|
| I remember being VERY active in that forum, but eventually I quit
| and sent an email to the owner ( I know I know ), his name was
| Carl I think?...saying that I could no longer deal with the
| absolute political polarization (anti-Libertarian) I found on the
| site.
|
| So yes...you "fix" it by being the change you want to see. There
| is really nothing else one can do.
| blippage wrote:
| Progressives think that the alt right is toxic, and vice versa.
|
| So then the question is: whose view of toxicity is right? The
| answer we have so far is: whoever protests the loudest or whoever
| controls the medium.
|
| Although it's the answer we've got, it's far from obvious that
| it's the right answer.
|
| Progressives seem to have gained the upper hand at this point.
| leoh wrote:
| They're both right. Both positions are often not contingent
| upon kindness, compassion, and a desire to maintain or increase
| everyone's wellbeing.
| wonderment wrote:
| It seems to me that each side is right about the other.
| ddebernardy wrote:
| Tech isn't innocent but you can't blame it all on tech either.
| Polarization has been a thing for decades upon decades. In the US
| a major shift occurred around the Civil Rights movement, after
| which Southern voters basically drifted away from the Democrat
| Party and coalesced towards the Republican Party. US politics has
| been polarizing along party lines ever since.
|
| IMHO you won't fix it with technology as it runs much deeper. But
| you can remove comments to sweep a big part of the toxicity under
| the rug.
|
| If you'd like a good overview of the longer story, Ezra Klein,
| who just released a book on the subject, was on Chris Hayes' "Why
| is this Happening?" podcast earlier this week ("Why we're
| polarized, with Ezra Klein").
| dx87 wrote:
| I don't think you can fix it, it's just the nature of the
| Internet. I was talking to some older coworkers who were adults
| before the Internet became mainstream, and they said that before
| the Internet, your social circle was neighbors and co-workers, so
| being an ass would have direct, and sometimes physically painful,
| ramifications. They said that on the Internet, there's no real
| ramifications for being a horrible person, and you'll always find
| a group of people that agree with what you say, whereas before
| you'd get ostracized, or worse, for treating your neighbors/co-
| workers poorly. I think the best you can do is encourage people
| to interact outside of the Internet, and hope that the manners
| required to function IRL stick with them when they go online.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| It's not just that, it's the fact that most interaction on the
| net is text based so you miss out on tone and body language. I
| feel like some discussions escalate too high on the net due to
| the text based format.
| dx87 wrote:
| Definitely. I remember one time a manager from another group
| at work asked me a question about when a project would be
| done, and I responded along the lines of "I'm working on it,
| and I don't know when it'll be done." because it was the
| truth, and there was nothing else to say about it. They
| interpreted my single sentence reply as rude and dismissive,
| then complained to my manager about it. When my manager
| talked to me about it, he said something like "Oh, ok, your
| reply is fine, dont worry about it."
| rob74 wrote:
| See also: https://feld.com/archives/2019/10/the-miasma.html
| harrisreynolds wrote:
| Empathy is the one word that I think sums up the solution to this
| problem. And it is beyond just the web. It is a broad cultural
| problem in the US.
|
| Speaking generally we've lost our ability to put ourselves in
| someone else's shoes.
|
| This is the result of rampant tribalism and surely several other
| contributing factors including the gasoline of social media
| magnifying the issue.
|
| We gotta just start empathizing more!
| john_moscow wrote:
| I think, the problem is actually deeper in the society. From what
| I could observe, once the our basic food/shelter needs are
| satisfied, we humans have an inherent need for long-term goals.
| Like slowly progressing one's career, or growing one's small
| business. Self-actualization, something to put your passion into.
|
| For instance, I myself am running a bootstrapped software
| business, draw immense positive energy from seeing satisfied
| customers and feeling that I'm the person that made it possible.
|
| As far as I can see, due to commoditization of most labor (better
| organization, moving of production offshore), it is becoming
| harder and harder for people to self-actualize professionally.
| It's hard to draw personal satisfaction from driving Ubers all
| day or being a cog in a corporate machine. You perfectly know
| that one day you can be replaced by a fresh graduate with a
| minimal training who would do just as fine. You can no longer
| have a self-identity as "the best baker in town", because most
| people buy bread from a supermarket. There are certainly artists,
| video bloggers, etc, but it's a tiny percentage of the population
| and it pays a fraction of what the soul-crushing corporate jobs
| do.
|
| So, since people cannot self-actualize professionally, they seek
| it elsewhere. Since the West has a culture of openness and
| acceptance to all kinds of minorities and subcultures, many
| people's self-identity becomes their belonging to a certain
| social group and their feeling of self-growth comes from having
| others acknowledge their point of view. Except, this is a zero-
| sum game: instead of creating value for those who need it, people
| begin competing for other's attention and alignment.
|
| For instance, if I am selling ice cream and the guy across the
| road is selling chocolate cakes, we're at peace with each other
| because whoever wants ice cream will come to me and whoever wants
| chocolate cakes will come across the road. But if I go on a
| crusade trying to convince everyone that ice cream is the only
| _correct_ desert, while my neighbor does the same for chocolate
| cakes, we quickly become political enemies intolerant of each
| other.
|
| To sum it up, if you want to fix it for yourself, put your
| passion into something that creates value rather than aims at
| redistributing it, and you will feel much better. This would be
| extremely hard in the current economy though, and yes, it feels
| sucky because the previous generations sort of had it for
| granted. I've no idea how to fix it globally.
| muzani wrote:
| I've been active online since 2000.
|
| There was a theory in 2004, known as GIFT: Normal Person +
| Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad
|
| Guess what? People without anonymity are total fuckwads too -
| this happens on Facebook, Instagram and Twitch, in an era where
| you could probably find someone's personal details if you look
| hard enough.
|
| I think the key is _audience_. Bullying feels good for a lot of
| people. Bullies will go for low hanging fruit where they won 't
| be struck back.
|
| You see people acting this way even in once helpful sites like
| Stack Overflow; downvotes will pull bullies in like a magnet. You
| see people picking on anti-vax, flat earthers, Justin Bieber, not
| so much because they do harm, but because they're easy targets to
| hold down.
|
| Viral algorithms amplify this effect. It highlights bad news that
| everyone can join in and rage on. It's not a new thing; news
| channels have done this for decades.
|
| We can't really fix it. I'm more a community nomad these days.
| It's easy to move on to other new and old communities, away from
| this effect. I've been happy with HN, Discord, and IRC lately..
| IRC has picked up back to 500 people per channel, and it's
| probably no coincidence.
| jandrese wrote:
| In the old days you only ever saw that embarrassing uncle with
| the extreme views on Thanksgiving. Now he's on your
| Facebook/Twitter feed every day.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > You see people picking on anti-vax, flat earthers, Justin
| Bieber, not so much because they do harm, but because they're
| easy targets to hold down.
|
| Your other examples were solid, but anti-vax absolutely does
| cause harm, and it seems inappropriate to dismiss the
| possibility that in the case of anti-vax people are motivated
| by genuine fear for our collective safety and that of our
| children.
| pdpi wrote:
| Even if you don't feel strongly on the topic of vaccination,
| going out of your way to bash anti-vaxxers is great at
| signalling how you are scientifically woke. The GP is
| positing that people who bash anti-vaxxers do so
| overwhelmingly out of this motivation rather than true pro-
| vaccine activism.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| I understand the GP's take. I think it's both incorrect and
| uncharitable. People care about their kids more than
| imaginary internet points.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| I disagree. The loudest activists too often tend to be
| younger people who either don't have kids, or are
| /r/childfree types who actively disdain the concept.
|
| Of course, by "activists", there's a difference between
| the genuine voices, versus the Reddit or HN meme-
| slingers. The latter group seems louder due to style.
| While they happen to be on the right side (from my POV),
| they're still quite awful as people.
| ars wrote:
| > to dismiss the possibility that in the case of anti-vax
| people are motivated by genuine fear for our collective
| safety and that of our children.
|
| People who are genuine in that NEVER bash. For the simple
| reason that bashing doesn't work. What they do do is
| respectfully argue with any false data.
|
| But you'll never see someone like that insult people or call
| them stupid, ignorant, or doubt the love of an anti-vaxxer
| for their own children.
| el_cujo wrote:
| I'm not anti-vax, but this is a discussion on toxicity on the
| internet, and I see plenty of people who take great pleasure
| in just unloading on anti-vaxxers because they know it's a
| target nobody will scold them for being cruel to. It's pretty
| obvious these types don't really care about changing the
| minds of the anti-vaxxers either, people usually don't have
| an epiphany about their life just because somebody was mean
| to them online. If anything, it's an opportunity for anti-
| vaxxers to band together against people who are cruel to them
| and probably even more deeply ingrain their beliefs.
|
| This doesn't mean anti-vaxxers should be tolerated as a
| viable alternative lifestyle, but throwing curses at them
| online and spamming memes that make them out to be mentally
| challenged really doesn't do anything but satisfy a bully.
| rexer wrote:
| The claim wasn't that they're harmless, but that they're easy
| targets.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The claim was that people were motivated to argue by the
| ease of the target rather than by the genuine threat of
| harm. In the case of anti-vax, I don't agree. I think
| people see a threat to their kids and react accordingly.
| LanceH wrote:
| It goes beyond hash criticism into gleeful joy making
| jokes about kids dying.
| will4274 wrote:
| Anti-vaxxers are only a threat to kids who have another
| health condition that prevents them from being vaxinated.
| So, in most cases, it's a threat to somebody else's kids
| (who isn't even present in the conversation) not a threat
| to the anti-anti-vaxxer's kids.
| abhorrence wrote:
| This is not true. Vaccinations are not 100% effective.
| They're usually in the range of 90% to 99% effective.
| Protection also wanes over time. Because of this, herd
| immunity protects everyone, not just those who are unable
| to be vaccinated for health reasons.
| thdrdt wrote:
| I also think the lack of consequences makes it very easy for
| people to post all kinds of shit.
|
| On HN this is greatly reduced by the point system and the
| opacity of bad posts. A bad post fades away so it doesn't look
| as important as other posts.
|
| In real life you can get a punch in the face if you say nasty
| things to someone.
|
| But on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube most trolls wont ever
| learn because they just can say whatever they want.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| > On HN this is greatly reduced by the point system and the
| opacity of bad posts. A bad post fades away so it doesn't
| look as important as other posts.
|
| I really dislike that. But, I have put in CSS so that bad
| posts don't fade away, and enabled show dead so that all
| messages can be seen. But at least we have the choice!
| wool_gather wrote:
| Worth considering that this isn't simply mechanical: to make
| those posts fade away requires humans clicking the downvote
| button. Which requires some kind of culture that includes
| clicking the button on "bad" posts, for whatever the
| definition of "bad" is. If there _were_ downvoting on say,
| YouTube, I 'm not sure that it would produce the same results
| that it does on HN.
| blululu wrote:
| Hacker News is indeed a special place on the internet and
| it would probably be difficult to reproduce its style of
| discussion. That being said I think it is worth considering
| why HN has succeeded and to what extent is this a function
| of the presentation algorithm (upvotes/downvotes)?
|
| It is worth remembering that the visible part of an
| internet community is a small part of the total possible
| community. Following the classic 90-9-1 rule there are a
| lot more people who could participate than people who do
| participate. This means that the visible face of an online
| community has a lot of room to change.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > On HN this is greatly reduced by the point system and the
| opacity of bad posts. A bad post fades away so it doesn't
| look as important as other posts.
|
| The problem is, this functionality is popularity based. Yes,
| posts that get downvoted are usually bad posts. However, some
| are simply disliked by the majority of people who wanted to
| vote on them and are not actually "bad" by the standards of
| this discussion. Similarly, I have seen toxic posts (that I
| have downvoted and flagged) _upvoted_ (at least once) when
| the target of the toxicity was "acceptable".
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I think consequences are an illusory deterrent personally.
| People thought real name policies would help. Even with
| people losing jobs over posting the needle didn't move.
|
| In truth consequences can be an incentive for bad actors. To
| them saying offensive things and getting a burner account
| banned is boring compared to tricking people into getting
| banned.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > People without anonymity are total fuckwads too
|
| Hell, go read any "opinion" article from any newspaper since
| the dawn of the printing press. They were well-written
| fuckwads, but they were pretty much all fuckwads.
| euroPoor wrote:
| Intimidate the really wild groups ie Neonazis and ignore the
| rest. The ones who do harm need to realize that society will
| defend its values and the other ones are just wasting their own
| time on the web.
| scrollbar wrote:
| I just got my preordered copy of Ezra Klein's "Why We're
| Polarized" which professes to study this topic in detail, in
| particular how it relates to politics in the US
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49930783-why-we-re-polar...
|
| I have a feeling this issue is pretty complex. Looking forward to
| reading more about it soon.
| interlinkedcell wrote:
| Everyone in the anglosphere is always online and can talk to each
| other now. Meanwhile our culture is pretty polarized.
| Conversations that could never be had in the time of top down
| privately owned broadcast & newspaper media are now unavoidable.
|
| I don't think it's a "problem" and I don't think there is or
| should be a technocratic solution.
|
| This is new normal, where political struggle has evolved into a
| prolonged people's posting war, and civility is not respected.
| This is freedom of expression, and it's a reflection of ourselves
| and society, you can break the mirror if it upsets you but it
| won't change the underlying truth.
|
| It's probably going to be like this for a while, and that's okay.
| rotrux wrote:
| GREAT POINT NERD.
| interlinkedcell wrote:
| stfu nerd
| growlist wrote:
| > people who disagreed would usually leave it at that and walk
| away respectfully. Now, it seems like everyone treats everything
| as an argument or debate to be won at all costs. Even niche sites
| like HN are not immune.
|
| You seem to be assuming a. that these are real people and not
| bots and b. that these people are not paid shills etc. - yet we
| have ample evidence to the contrary on both points. If you ask
| me, we are in the midst of an information war that is crossing
| over with a culture war. I wish it would blow over but we seem to
| be stuck with it until the people behind it either win or become
| demoralised. The only solution that springs to mind is the
| complete removal of anonymity online, but that would bring its
| own problems.
| codingmess wrote:
| "yet we have ample evidence to the contrary on both points"
|
| People on HN believe that? The web has changed...
| growlist wrote:
| ? The original poster said 'how do we stop toxicity', and I
| am saying how can we tell the toxicity isn't at least
| somewhat down to bots and shills, the presence of either of
| which is hardly controversial, is it? I mean we've had people
| trying to convince us for years that it was the Russian bots
| that put Trump in the White House, unless I've seriously
| misunderstood.
| tnel77 wrote:
| I won't act like I have the answer, but I do have a complaint
| about the state of our news sources (specifically focused on the
| USA).
|
| A lot of people like to throw around the term "fake news" when
| they see an article from the news source that is opposite their
| side of the aisle. While fake news does exist, CNN and Fox News
| are not fake news. They produce heavily biased news. There is a
| major difference. While both news sources have been caught lying
| before, both of them are usually telling the truth. It may only
| be half of the truth and purposely mislead the viewer, but that
| doesn't mean the information being shared is fake or false.
|
| I'm relatively young so I don't know if there has ever been
| anything remotely close to "unbiased news," but just presenting
| the public with facts that aren't tarnished by bias would go a
| long way to helping people become more informed and, potentially,
| less worked up.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I totally agree with your premise. I'd agree the term "fake
| news" is not an exact term, but I'll say that everything from
| Fox News (on the right), to the NYTimes (on the left), and
| everything in between lie by omission (lack of coverage) and by
| framing (e.g., "disturbed man" vs "terrorist"; "hungry" vs
| "looter"; etc). There may not be a term for it, but the
| phenomenon is real and has caused people to want to drain the
| system all-together and look for alternate public squares, ones
| where they have a voice.
| cr0sh wrote:
| What you may or may not know is that at one time, there was a
| doctrine by the FCC known as the "Fairness Doctrine":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
|
| "The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required
| broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing
| controversial matters of public interest, and to air
| contrasting views regarding those matters."
|
| This doctrine was eliminated in 1987, after a series of
| lawsuits about it.
|
| Arguably, it's part of what started this whole mess we now find
| ourselves a part of.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It appears to me that the web is is reflecting the insane level
| of polarization and toxicity in real life. Unless we can find a
| way to dial that down, I don't think there's anything effective
| that can be done about the same thing on the web (without having
| to engage in actions that are even worse, anyway).
| rlucas wrote:
| If you're working on this in a for-profit context, I'm a Seattle
| VC looking to invest in solutions for this particular problem,
| and my phone/email/etc. are in my profile.
|
| My most recent investment was on this thesis:
| http://blog.rlucas.net/vc/exchanging-thoughts-on-a-thoughtex...
| msms01 wrote:
| "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I
| am wise, so I am changing myself." -Rumi
| logfromblammo wrote:
| "We" don't fix it.
|
| This hasn't been going on for 7 years; it has been happening for
| at least 40.
|
| The rage stems from the wage, which has stagnated for the working
| class for as long as I have been around to see it. People are
| trying to telegraph that unpleasant things will be happening
| soon, if all the people who are constantly dumping on their
| inferiors don't at least start handing out some umbrellas.
|
| I think the tech has actually been a mitigating factor. Online
| mobs can't throw real-life firebombs. When people go out to
| actually _do_ something, there are fewer people in the same
| physical place to pump each other up.
| duanem wrote:
| I'm not sure you were around for the great Gnome vs KDE wars of
| the 2000's. It was pretty toxic and "win-at-all-costs" back then
| :-)
|
| When I released my app 8-years ago, I thought support would be my
| most hated part of releasing a product. To my surprise, it was
| one of the most rewarding parts, I met some great people via
| email, some I will visit one day.
|
| But support has its ugly "toxic" side as well. This is
| particularly prevalent in 1-star reviews for trivial issues. All
| the reviewer sees is a box to vent their thoughts without
| considering that there is a real person on the other side. But
| I'm a real person who cares and some comments do stir bad
| emotions. This has brought some of my lowest and darkest days of
| app development.
|
| Sometimes I will make contact with the reviewer and as soon as
| they get to know me as a real person, they are friendlier and
| more respectful.
|
| The faceless nature of the internet causes people to treat others
| poorly. In the real world where we meet people in face-to-face,
| our initial and natural position is to treat each other with
| respect.
|
| So here are a few ideas: 1. imagine a person, someones face, not
| a textbox, website or company - add a persona to him or her. 2.
| Ask this simple question "Would I treat or talk to someone (my
| friend) like this in real-life?" 3. Would you be proud of the way
| you're conversing if people you admire were watching, e.g.,
| respected colleagues, friends, parents.
|
| This will change the way you write.
| fastball wrote:
| Like anything else, I think a big part of this is how you are
| raised.
|
| There are plenty of people that treat others terribly, even in
| real life. Likewise, there are plenty of people that treat
| other anonymous posters on the internet respectfully.
|
| As with everything, parenting and social norms just need to
| catch up to technology. We need to instill in our children the
| idea that being rude to anonymous strangers is a bad thing,
| just as it is a bad thing to be rude to strangers in real life,
| just as it is a bad thing to be horrible to people you already
| know.
| duanem wrote:
| Two acronyms I love are "RTFM" and "TL;DR" - they are short,
| quick and carry a lot of meaning. I would feel stink if I asked
| a question and got "RTFM" as a reply, it would highlight my
| laziness.
|
| I've wondered if an acronym to say "You aren't being nice" or
| something to that effect would help.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Tech companies are loathe to hear it, but the only thing that
| works is ruthless human moderation.
|
| There's a reason that reddit and twitter developed Nazi problems
| while other old fashioned human moderated forums didn't.
| reportgunner wrote:
| Stop using social networks.
| eterps wrote:
| I believe consensus building tools could help a lot to guide
| toxic conversations in a more civilized direction.
|
| Check these articles for ideas how that might be accomplished:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22203937
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21362182
| kangnkodos wrote:
| These articles describe the vTaiwan system, developed in Taiwan
| to build consensus.
|
| "People compete to bring up the most nuanced statements that
| can win most people across" different factions.
|
| It includes an iterative process of proposing new statements on
| a topic, and then voting on the statements. Over time,
| statements are developer which more and more of the voters
| agree with.
| menacingly wrote:
| Virtually everyone can agree that toxic voices are undesirable,
| it's the equivalent of saying "evil people should be in jail"
|
| Well, of course, but it's our inability to mutually agree on the
| terms "bad" and "toxic" that makes this policy fundamentally
| impractical, and freedom of expression the only workable
| solution.
|
| These are not new problems, they're old problems in a new suit.
| oneplane wrote:
| The difference is in being abusive or not, just like freedom is
| not absolute or in one direction; i.e. in the example of your
| freedom ending where someone else's freedom begins.
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