[HN Gopher] Building Kind Social Networks (2018)
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Building Kind Social Networks (2018)
Author : rfreytag
Score : 41 points
Date : 2020-08-08 04:48 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (postlight.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (postlight.com)
| moksly wrote:
| I think the obvious solution is to give users power over who can
| comment on their stuff. My Facebook feed could easily pass as a
| "kind social network" because I only follow blood bowl interest
| groups and only have friends I actually like in the real world.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I too had a friendslist full of anyone I'd
| ever met, I followed news and stuff like that. And it drove me to
| the point where I was ready to quit Facebook. Then I got into
| blood bowl and needed Facebook for our national league, and I had
| to figure out how to make social networking not suck. The answer
| was to remove all the people I didn't actually care about.
|
| These days my feed is relatively slow, and usually rather boring,
| but I use Facebook more than ever because of my blood bowl
| interest groups. These groups too are moderates in a way that
| would get the average Twitter commenter banned by their first
| post. Sure we might as well use some phpBB thing, and we might as
| well use IRC instead of discord, would be nice for a privacy and
| anti-advertising concern, but Facebook is where people are.
| iamcasen wrote:
| The double edged sword here is groupthink. If you are trying to
| have a discourse about being gay in a social network comprised of
| people from Saudi Arabia, they might flag your very loving and
| helpful posts as being hostile. Thus banning you from their
| network.
|
| In the end, I think it would result in even tighter bubbles where
| all information we find uncomfortable is eventually filtered
| away.
|
| I think a better angle would be to figure out how to create an
| environment that encourages open mindedness and willingness to
| let others be themselves without forcing anyone into our own
| views. Easier said than done, I know.
| newman8r wrote:
| My experience with podaero.com has been that things are very
| civil in small groups where everyone gets to know each other -
| regardless of whether real names are used (users there have the
| option between real name or pseudonym).
|
| I think it's when the groups get so large that nobody really
| knows each other - that's when things become less civil.
|
| edit* - here's an invite link to take a look if anyone wants to:
| https://podaero.com/info/hacker-pod
| cosmojg wrote:
| Isn't this true in real life as well? Humans don't behave well
| in large groups both online and off.
| newman8r wrote:
| Yeah, I'm reminded of the bystander effect and diffusion of
| responsibility. Then there's also the phenomenon of
| lynchings, which I believe are still a big problem in some
| countries.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Real name policies may (or may not) foster civil discourse, but
| they do so in a way that favors the already privileged. It's a
| burden for marginalized people and a barrier to them resolving
| their issues.
|
| I was molested as a child and women generally tend to have less
| agency over their lives than men. When I first got online, I used
| my real first name and last name. I eventually moved to _middle
| name and place_ as my default semi anonymous handle for privacy
| reasons because my first name plus last name is so distinctive. I
| 'm back to using my full name online, though my handle in most
| places is first name plus middle name.
|
| It was a long journey of getting there. It included a divorce,
| figuring out how to talk publicly -- which I think men tend to
| get inculcated with early and women don't -- and assorted other
| factors.
|
| The perfect is the enemy of the good. If you only want civil
| discourse in your space and that's all that matters to you, you
| can achieve that by limiting it to very privileged people with no
| serious personal problems. Insisting on real names is a polite
| means to exclude anyone for whom speaking publicly under their
| real name might be a problem, so I'm sure it can help keep things
| superficially civil in your little corner of the universe.
|
| I am also sure it helps further narrow the lives of people with
| already narrow existences by ever so politely silencing them
| online in ways they are already silenced offline. Which isn't
| actually all that kind, imo.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| Thank you for this perspective.
|
| I've been reading Mike Monteiro's Ruined by Design. In one of
| the chapters he points out how tech companies' policies for the
| communities they create are set by "tech bros" - predominantly
| white privileged males, who have never experienced life as a
| poor person, or as a woman or as a person of color, or as a
| non-heteronormative person or a combination of the above.
|
| He quotes a conversation with a female designer friend of his,
| discussing twitter's anti-abuse policies added a few years ago.
| She said that if there were any women on the team, Twitter
| would've never had launched without tools to solve abuse.
|
| But that problem never existed in the universe of the original
| decision makers.
| raywu wrote:
| I am interested to hear more about Ruined by Design. I read
| the sample chapter on Uber on the website [0] after reading
| your comment. The author seems very biased against any sort
| of good that might come out of Uber. Is the entire narrative
| anti-VC and anti-SV and deems the issue a systemic problem,
| or does the author provide counterpoints and examples where
| good decisions are made and can be made?
|
| [0] https://www.ruinedby.design/sample-chapter
| [deleted]
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I think that boys are encouraged to express their opinion from
| a younger age as a "show of strength". As a young man, you're
| supposed to be strong enough to withstand disagreement and
| occasional social shaming. The pressure for girls is the
| opposite, be more like the others, don't stand out.
|
| No doubt that people make assumptions about you if you make it
| known you are a woman online, but, I it's not necessarily just
| about privilege in the social justice sense. I am a minority,
| and I am very uncomfortable with identity politics, but I know
| I have to be careful with that I say online, because my current
| and future employers might be watching.
|
| Forcing people to use their real names will favor discourse
| that's more mainstream, that fits in the overton window[0].
| Anyone can be bullied online if they disagree with the
| mainstream, whether they use a nickname or their real name, but
| if your real-world identity is known, that bullying can
| translate into the real world, you could lose your job, etc.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I'm plenty opinionated and I've always been comfortable
| expressing my opinion. It gets perceived differently than
| when men do the same and people react differently to a woman
| doing it.
|
| I had other issues rooted in being female. I've concluded
| that the world typically teaches boys from an early age how
| to have a public reputation and public relations and girls
| generally don't get the same info to the same degree. It
| becomes a self reinforcing problem because a woman behaving
| "normally" is behaving in a way that is more appropriate for
| private spaces and personal relationships and the rest of the
| world will expect that of her.
|
| I've had a really hard time figuring out why I had such an
| extremely hard time interacting with the public. It took a
| long time to get any kind of handle on that.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| > I've concluded that the world typically teaches boys from
| an early age how to have a public reputation and public
| relations and girls generally don't get the same info to
| the same degree.
|
| That would be contrary to popular wisdom, which says that
| girls are taught to be much more social from an earlier
| age, and as such, they generally have a better
| understanding of social dynamics, whereas boys tend to be
| more socially obtuse.
|
| > I've had a really hard time figuring out why I had such
| an extremely hard time interacting with the public. It took
| a long time to get any kind of handle on that.
|
| Just my two cents but: just being different from the norm
| will often get you weird, unfriendly looks.
|
| From what I read in your discourse, I get the impression
| that it seems to you like boys have it easy/better,
| socially, but I can tell you, having been on the other side
| of the fence, that when boys are "out of line", they
| literally get beat up, repeatedly... And society somehow
| accepts this, "boys will be boys".
|
| Being opinionated is not always well-received, both for men
| and women. Generally, people like opinionated if those
| opinions are just reinforcing their own... I do agree that
| men can get away with being more opinionated in some
| situations, but I don't think it's just a free pass. It
| only works if you're at the top of the social hierarchy.
| Maybe this is where we are in agreement. Society has
| difficulty accepting women being opinionated because it has
| difficulty accepting women being at the top of the social
| hierarchy. To fix that, it helps to fix gender norms, but
| we should also strive to live in a society where everyone
| can express their opinion, not just those at the top of the
| hierarchy.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _That would be contrary to popular wisdom_
|
| I'm not talking about social skills. I'm talking about
| _public relations_ skills. They are different skill sets.
|
| I'm not saying boys have it easy. I'm saying boys
| generally get expected to have a real career and they are
| shaped accordingly. Women are generally not expected to
| have a real career. We are expected to be defined by
| being a wife and mom. And we get shaped accordingly.
|
| That doesn't mean men have it better. It does mean the
| topmost positions of power in the world are male
| dominated and that pattern gets reinforced by the way we
| teach women to interact with other people and continue to
| expect them to interact with other people at every step
| of the way.
| bccdee wrote:
| I don't think that a use-real-names policy is conducive to good
| conversation, because it means that everything you say has to be
| something you would be comfortable saying in front of your family
| and your employer and the whole rest of the world. That takes a
| lot of topics off the table -- sex, politics, anything that is
| controversial, anything that might become controversial in the
| next ten years... Discussions become very bland when everything
| you say has to be designed to protect your real-life reputation
| from every audience that will ever have power over you.
|
| It's better to create a system of reputation independent of real-
| world identity. If new users have limited privileges until
| they've been around for a certain amount, or if only one account
| is permitted per IP, even an anonymous account with a name like
| XxX_FakeName_XxX becomes an identity with value and a reputation.
| By engaging in bad behaviour, that identity would lose
| reputation, and might even be banned. Because of the loss of
| privilege or technical challenge associated with creating a new
| account, bad behaviour is disincetivized without actually
| attaching real-world identity to anything online.
|
| There's a balance to be found between lowering barriers to entry
| and raising barriers to re-entry, but if the balance is done
| properly it can make a big difference.
|
| Of course, none of this works without moderators doing the
| legwork of throwing out bad actors, but this is the difference
| between effective moderation and token moderation that is too
| swamped to actually do anything.
|
| This also works better in smaller communities, but I think
| smaller online communities are just healthier in general. This is
| part of why monoliths like Facebook and Twitter are so toxic --
| there is no "Twitter community," rather there are a thousand
| Twitter communities all of which are bumping into each other
| constantly because they occupy the same space.
| grawprog wrote:
| So, a forum with a complicated sign up process, IP filtering
| and effective moderation?
|
| Lots of communities like that used to exist. Some still do, but
| for some reason everyone thought they needed to tell everyone
| on the internet their name and personal information.
|
| So here we are.
| hellbanTHIS wrote:
| I've seen news articles that Drudge has linked to that have
| Facebook comments where people use their real name. This may
| surprise some people but -- they're not usually very polite!
|
| And every evil subreddit I've come across was the result of
| "effective moderation", they moderated everyone who isn't evil.
|
| Lax moderation, the good ole downvote button & find some way to
| discourage circle jerks, that's probably all you can do. You're
| never going to make the Internet not be a sewer though.
| news_to_me wrote:
| Evil people are allowed to have communities. In an evil
| community, it's probably the "good" user who is usually a
| troll, so it makes sense for them to be unwelcome.
|
| What's interesting about Reddit is, to what extent is a
| subreddit its own community vs part of the Reddit community?
| Probably better for evil people to set up their own forums,
| or preferably to not be evil at all.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > means that everything you say has to be something you would
| be comfortable saying in front of your family and your employer
| and the whole rest of the world. That takes a lot of topics off
| the table -- sex, politics, anything that is controversial,
| anything that might become controversial in the next ten
| years...
|
| different suggestion: learning how to talk about that stuff
| with your family is a better long term solution. I don't know
| if this is a cultural thing but in my country talking about sex
| or politics with your family is pretty normal, if you don't
| have a raging political discussion over family dinners it's not
| a good conversation.
|
| I think anonymity or pseudo identities are pretty broken. We're
| social animals, our identity is what gives us stake and it
| keeps us responsible.
|
| I don't think anonymous opinions are more "real" because they
| are unfiltered, I think they are more likely to be thoughtless.
| If we don't stand for something with our name I don't think
| we're more intelligent but rather we just care less about what
| we say, I don't think the youtube comment section is known for
| its great insights.
|
| The only reason I don't have my real name here and on a few
| other sites is because in the past I repeatedly ended up with
| angry people who had an axe to grind spamming me on my personal
| mail, so I feel you can't really unilaterally disarm, but I
| think collectively we'd be better off.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| > different suggestion: learning how to talk about that stuff
| with your family is a better long term solution.
|
| I agree, but unfortunately, for many people that's just not
| an option. Think abusive or mentally ill parents. Think
| people living in the middle east. It's normal for people to
| seek spaces where they can speak more freely, without needing
| to change the whole world to make that possible first.
| klyrs wrote:
| ... think Evangelicals, Mormons, Witnesses, Catholics...
| muyuu wrote:
| Trying to enforce characteristics for the network at the global
| scale is incompatible with the most basic degrees of freedom of
| expression. However, at some point all large corporations - so
| far - want to weaponise their control of the network to steer its
| characteristics at a global scale. This is why all large social
| networks suck so badly. They all try to be a one-size-fits-all
| social overlay to the Internet, and this is a fool's errand.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I helped build a (acquihired and now defunct) startup in this
| space. Totally agree that if you care about kindness / civility,
| you have to bake it into the design from the get-go.
|
| We ended up sticking with a real-name policy, which does have
| some downsides (examples like the one in OPs post where someone
| can come out as gay in a country where it's illegal obviously
| wouldn't fly), but having people use their real names meant less
| ability to hide behind anonymous identities.
|
| Obviously, that wasn't enough on its own, so we tested a few
| other dynamics that also helped. For example, you had to commit
| to a pledge before writing anything. It did end up being really
| civil and thoughtful, but we never got beyond thousands of active
| users and never figured out a business model.
| marban wrote:
| I'm currently working on a new thing that works invite-only and
| if a user tries to game the system, the one who invited them
| will be banned as well.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| Something like https://lobste.rs/ ?
| searchableguy wrote:
| Real names have little effect imo otherwise why my dad's
| facebook feed is so crazy.
|
| Compare github/hn/discord to places where people use their real
| names.
|
| It's a moderation problem. As networks grow, moderating them
| becomes harder and why popular things end up becoming toxic.
| They just don't have enough people to set a community
| expectation or tone.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Yes, on its own real-name policy doesn't work. But in
| connection with other choices, it can help a lot.
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