[HN Gopher] Life after an internet mob attack
___________________________________________________________________
Life after an internet mob attack
Author : jseliger
Score : 358 points
Date : 2021-05-26 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pasquale.cool)
(TXT) w3m dump (pasquale.cool)
| newbie789 wrote:
| It's fascinating that something like this would happen without
| any context.
|
| I'm struggling to figure out what possible causes for four
| different women to draw such attention to themselves to highlight
| this.
|
| I suppose one option would be organized Mad Max-style roving
| bands of man-hating woke gangs that rove Twitter, hungry for
| blood.
|
| Another would be targeted and coordinated attacks as revenge for
| some sort of personal or professional slight.
|
| Or maybe the guy whose "proof of friendship over a decade" is
| four interactions total (half of which directly related to
| professional matters) might have given somebody a creepy vibe at
| some point. I suppose we'll never know. According to this blog
| post, the matter is settled and he has been vindicated by this
| blog post.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I wouldn't call OP's post "receipts", but rather "his curated
| receipts."
|
| What makes more sense? Some dude has been creepy and only showed
| the positive side in his defense, or three random unrelated women
| -- who he claims only ever had lovely, adoring exchanges with him
| -- decided to destroy his life for no apparent reason.
|
| I mean, the former case has a precedent for happening almost
| habitually in the past, you'd have to be willfully ignorant to
| ignore the context of the last several decades.
|
| But the latter case deserves a response by the accusers.
| Unfortunately, if some guy walks up to a woman at an event and
| acts creepy, this demands that a woman record every moment of her
| life in case she has to defend herself if she calls him out...
| rkk3 wrote:
| > three random unrelated women
|
| They may be "unrelated" but the events here weren't
| independent. He was accused of anonymously harassing someone
| thru a meme twitter account (actually run by someone else).
| This caused him to be virtually dog-piled. None of us know what
| would have happened without the initial false accusation.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| My question is, why is this any of your (or my) business? Why
| do we feel it necessary to involve ourselves in a situation we
| have neither the context nor the authority to have an opinion?
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Here's an example[1], from his blog post, about the interaction
| one of these women defined as "creepy".
|
| If this is the bar for unacceptable discourse between men and
| women, without being a mind-reader, I'm not really sure how one
| is ever supposed to win.
|
| [1] https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-
| west-2.amazo...
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| That's his receipt. Not hers.
|
| Is that really 100% of the interactions they've had?
|
| Ok, do you want to go on that even if it is the only captured
| exchange? I'll play along. How about the husband that as a
| super guy and loved by his community and his wife dotes on
| him in public, and he beats her senseless every Sunday
| morning, but he never mentions that? That exists, too. It's
| extreme and I'm not accusing OP of that, but I'm not about to
| charge ahead given his side and context.
|
| Also, "win?" What do you mean, "win?" Win a woman? Win sex?
| Win at the internet? I don't understand that statement how
| you mean it, only how other guys on the internet who use that
| statement mean it. I'd rather not assume you are like other
| guys, I don't even know if you are a guy. But statistically,
| women don't talk about harassment in those terms. I could be
| wrong, because I'm assuming.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Then she should share receipt of the alleged creepy
| messages. The burden of proof is on the accuser, not the
| accused.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| How would your perspective change, if it all, if the
| accuser came forward and said that those were in fact the
| only DMs exchanged?
| vhanda wrote:
| > Unfortunately, if some guy walks up to a woman at an event
| and acts creepy, this demands that a woman record every moment
| of her life in case she has to defend herself if she calls him
| out...
|
| We're throwing away "innocent until proven guilty" with this.
| I'm sure you agree how dangerous that can be.
|
| Though, as you point out, recording every moment is not
| feasibly or desirable. Do you have any ideas on how we could
| solve this problem?
|
| Making it easier and cheaper to file defamation suits wouldn't
| help as in this case there was no evidence.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| The women clearly aren't unrelated if they are referring to
| each other in their tweets about why so-and-so is a creep.
|
| If he is only showing the positive side in his defense,
| wouldn't it be super easy for anyone who received his creepy
| side to show it? If he says "these are the only DMs we
| exchanged", and then someone can show more DMs that were
| exchanged, wouldn't that destroy his defense? Yes, clearly the
| messages can be photoshopped, but if none of the accusers are
| pushing back against the claims, which would be simple to do,
| one could assume they are true.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Don't judge people on what your emotions tell you is most
| likely what that type of person usually has a reputation for
| doing according to the selectively reported news. That's how
| racism works, or in your case, it's sexism.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Remember what happened to ProJared?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Isn't he the dude who cheated on his wife and solicited nudes
| from fans?
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Remember what happened to Vanessa Guillen?
|
| We can go 1 for 1. You'll lose.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Jared was accused by his ex of some shitty things, then a
| bunch of randos straight up lied about him to pile on. It's
| 40 minutes but he explains what happened to him here.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBywRBbDUjA
| dvt wrote:
| The best solution here is to completely disconnect from social
| media or (at most) have an incredibly sanitized presence. Unless
| your job or livelihood revolves around _needing_ to engage with a
| random internet audience (i.e. you 're an influencer,
| entertainer, etc.) stay away from having a public persona on
| Twitter/Facebook/etc.
|
| The only community I interact with candidly tends to be this one.
| I don't post on Twitter, Facebook, etc. because the vast majority
| of mainstream social media users (a) don't tend to have good-
| faith debates on any intellectually-interesting topics, and (b)
| will always find something to rip out of context and crucify you.
|
| But this is easier said than done. Dopamine's a helluva' drug.
| numakerg wrote:
| Having a following on social media has great benefits for
| regular techies, not just influencers and entertainers, etc. It
| lets you magnify your resume to reach people with authority who
| you normally couldn't connect with. It helps you get spots at
| conferences, seats on cool new projects or positions that you
| can further leverage to increase your online fame and bump up
| your compensation. You can also use your following to get
| preferential treatment with companies and authorities, have
| your problems solved faster. Got your app removed from the Play
| Store with no explanation? Raise a stink on Twitter.
|
| That's one of the reasons why people are so quick to join the
| fray and throw a punch. They want to be that one quick Tweet
| that goes viral, gets them thousands of followers and builds
| their brand.
| ipaddr wrote:
| As a regular techie with a 16,000 person following you are
| not getting any of those perks. Your app will die. You may
| feel like you are raising a stink but a phone call would work
| better. Recruitors finding you on twitter is possible,
| submitting your resume ensures they have it is a better
| strategy. Making conference organizer friends on twitter or
| in person can get great conference speaker spots but not
| something the average developer does.
| majormajor wrote:
| You can certainly be both an "influencer" and a "techie" but
| what you describe is someone participating in the
| "influencer" side of things and no longer being just a
| "regular" techie.
|
| There are a lot of benefits of being an influencer, but it
| has its downsides too.
|
| (s/influencer/celebrity for a few decades ago...)
| [deleted]
| smegger001 wrote:
| Yeah I cut Facebook out of my life and went cold turkey after
| realizing it was not healthy place and now find it actively
| repellent to be on it. The only reason i haven't closed my
| account entirely is because Messenger and my D&D group uses it
| for scheduling. even that I use the web site and refuse to
| allow it a foothold on my phone.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > The best solution here is to completely disconnect from
| social media
|
| I've thought about that, but your reputation is being
| destroyed. You'll offer no defense? You'll let everyone who you
| value get that impression of you? You'll allow it to become
| permanent, public record for anyone who ever looks you up with
| a search engine?
| dylan604 wrote:
| People are going to believe what they want to believe
| regardless of information presented disputing. You can expend
| energy and effort and get frustrated by not changing anyone's
| mind, or not and have the same result. ???
| jiofih wrote:
| I think he's saying you should disconnect _before_ any of
| that happens.
|
| There is no defense against the barrage of a Twitter mob,
| doesn't matter how hard you try. It also seems that the
| better the reputation you have, the _more difficult_ it is to
| recover.
| standardUser wrote:
| I get my dopamine from Instagram. But I'm on Facebook because
| it is a unique source of connections and information and the
| anti-social media crowd seems unwilling to acknowledge this. I
| certainly understand if some people don't see Facebook that
| way. Maybe they don't have a need for certain niche communities
| or they don't care about keeping in loose touch with far flung
| friends and family. But I have found tremendous value in those
| things. That's fine if you don't, but at least acknowledge that
| many people do and simply saying "quit Facebook" doesn't help
| those people. And the problems persist.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| I think rejection from society at large is a fundamental human
| problem. We went from literal witch hunts to figurative ones,
| but the concept and human psychology has more or less always
| been the same.
|
| The graph of meaningful human relationships is always going to
| be small and consist only of bidirectional edges. It's a road
| to accepting that and forging self-worth based on the people
| you know and care about, and who know and care about you, not
| the people who will never know you let alone care about you.
| loopz wrote:
| Adults are, generally, prejudiced, biased and unfair. Most
| people will have no problem with favouring their friends, but
| vehemently accuse others of favouritism, nepotism, etc. By
| nature, we are suspicious of strangers, and rightly so, but
| it's also holding us back in everything.
|
| It takes active role models, introspection and life-long
| seeking of enlightened approaches, to break the mold. Few do,
| but when one do, many can follow.
| v_london wrote:
| Hey, since we're on the topic of better social networking, I
| wonder if a side project I've been working on for the past few
| months might be of interest to you. The website, Reason, is an
| app for helping people connect with others with similar
| interests through group chats. It's kind of like Meetups, but
| online and designed for people who would like to find semi-
| regular groups of friends and acquaintances to chat about some
| specific topic.
|
| https://www.reason.so/
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Social media is pure poison that exploits every frailty of
| human nature. And it is optimized to be this way, even if
| unintentionally, because that's what makes money.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| To me it shows humans simply cannot (yet?) deal with such
| wide-reaching communication. It's fine in neatly organised
| and moderated forums. But those still have some sense of
| privacy, similar to how people at a workplace can freely talk
| about things that wouldn't be fine to say on live TV.
|
| But social media turns everything into live TV, potentially
| analysed with more rigor than any TV show ever witnessed, and
| with algorithms implicitly optimised to make the things most
| visible which generate the most powerful emotions. And it
| doesn't seem like the social media concept is going to
| disappear soon, it's just part of everyday life for many.
| drknownuffin wrote:
| I don't see how that would have helped OP. He wasn't called out
| for things he said or did on social media, barring a few people
| who piled on over extremely "sanitized" exchanges.
|
| I think your "best solution" aligns well with what the OP
| appeared to be doing, and he still burned.
|
| It's important to note that just because the mob forms on
| social media doesn't mean its consequences are limited _to_
| social media.
| yoz-y wrote:
| To add on top of that. It's really the accusers' following
| that is important. The target may not even have a social
| media profile as long as they have some online identity to
| point to.
| dvt wrote:
| > I think your "best solution" aligns well with what the OP
| appeared to be doing, and he still burned.
|
| OP has a huge Twitter presence (600k+ followers), and I guess
| my point is when you have that kind of presence you open
| yourself up to being a "pseudo-public" person. Sometimes, you
| need to do this (if you're a politician, for example). But
| usually you don't.
|
| People will get more riled up when the person they're
| crucifying is famous - clout-chasing is a real thing.
| Although you (sadly) sometimes have exceptions to this rule,
| so you're right that it's not a complete solution.
| polote wrote:
| > OP has a huge Twitter presence (600k+ followers),
|
| He has 16k followers https://twitter.com/pasql
| dvt wrote:
| Oops, _mea culpa_. I mistook another screenshot in his
| post to be his own account. Yeah, 16k isn 't that much;
| pretty sad.
| craigds wrote:
| > isn't that much
|
| 16 _thousand_ people follow him. That 's way more than
| enough to be considered a 'public person'
| sneak wrote:
| Not at all. I had more than that before I quit twitter
| and I am about as minor a figure in a sub-sub-sub-
| industry as one can be; actually-famous people have
| millions. Not-quite-famous people have hundreds of
| thousands.
| kortilla wrote:
| No, 16k accounts follow his. Of that, maybe a few hundred
| actually have users behind them that look at his tweets
| with any kind of frequency.
| tolbish wrote:
| You can buy that kind of following for the price of a
| bottle of wine.
| ivanstojic wrote:
| Historically, even just a few decades ago, if you had
| reach of sixteen thousand (!!) people, you were
| incredibly publicly exposed.
|
| To think that we now file it as "not that much" is
| something I can't wrap my mind around.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| No one actually has the reach of their entire follower
| count. If there was a way to analyze your own followers
| to root out Bots and inactive people, who knows how much
| lower the number would be. That isn't counting active
| users who don't pay attention to you. And even if they
| pay attention to you, it might be in a non caring way.
| Outside of 16K being a big number. That number alone
| doesn't mean much when it comes to modern social media.
|
| A good easy contrast is the "phenom" of how flighty, not
| loyal, and weaker of a connection TikTok followers are. I
| believe it is very hard to go from being big on Tiktok to
| elsewhere. Contrasted by other social media.
|
| Also. This is all coming from some one who has never had
| more than 200 of so followers on any social media.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Not really. If you put a classified ad in a Chicago paper
| saying you were having a garage sale, you were exposed to
| a million people and had the direct attention of the many
| thousands who would actually read the ad. If you spent an
| hour putting up flyers at major intersections near the
| bar you were playing at on Thursday night, thousands of
| people per hour would see them.
|
| It's important to remember that there are as many people
| following 10K people as are being followed by 10K people.
| They aren't really paying attention to 10K people's
| photos of their lunches or stray observations on Ohio
| sports.
| methodin wrote:
| It's not much different from compute power increases over
| the same time period. Once more is the norm then less
| becomes inadequate.
| [deleted]
| alephnan wrote:
| > vast majority of mainstream social media users (a) don't tend
| to have good-faith debates
|
| This. Thank you. I have unconsciously wondered into such
| debates on social media cesspools, and approaching it like I do
| with HN, which is atleast more logical
| FreakyT wrote:
| I think a key reason is HN has (IMO) a well-designed vote-
| based moderation system. Flamebait tends to get
| downvoted/flagged pretty quickly, burying it where it
| belongs.
|
| Contrast that to pure engagement-focused social networks like
| Facebook or Twitter, which do the opposite: prioritize
| showing flamebait, because people are _engaging_ with it and
| therefore it must _necessarily_ be _quality content_!
| hycaria wrote:
| Reddit works the same yet does not has the same feeling at
| all except for niche subs maybe.
| tomerico wrote:
| Agree. Reddit has a unique ability among large social
| networks to bring up sanity and good discussion. If there
| is misinformation being being spread I'd expect
| information disputing it to be in the comments 90%+ of
| the time. (Except for the niche subreddits as you
| mentioned)
| snowwrestler wrote:
| HN does not have out-of-control mobs and flamewars because
| HN has dedicated human moderators who monitor hot
| conversations and use a variety of tools to de-escalate
| them.
|
| Voting manages the day-to-day and gives them signal to work
| with, but ultimately open communities (i.e. that anyone can
| join) need active moderation to remain stable over the long
| term.
| sequoia wrote:
| +1. I did exactly this a few years back when I saw a prominent
| member of the Nodejs community get savaged for linking to an
| article (exploring the idea that campus speech codes might
| adversely impact autistic people). I thought "if they can
| (nearly) take down _this_ guy (a Nodejs technical steering
| committee member) for linking to a blog post, what are they
| going to do to me, Joe Nobody? " I was primarily a consultant
| at the time and relied on being invited to conferences to give
| talks & trainings in order to drum up new consulting work.
| Reputational damage would have been devastating to my income as
| a freelancer.
|
| So participating "in the public sphere" was just not worth the
| risk. I had no idea what view I express today might in the
| future be deemed unacceptable. Even just being visible on there
| makes you more of a target-it's harder to have a pile-on on,
| say, someone's blog.
|
| I miss twitter and facebook at times (quit facebook for
| different reasons), but overall it's a huge relief to not be
| contributing to those ecosystems.
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> The only community I interact with candidly tends to be this
| one._
|
| Same here. Even so, I make it a point to keep it positive, and
| about myself.
|
| Interestingly, that gets people painting me as "stuck up," or a
| "goody two-shoes," and they attack me anyway.
|
| Meh. Whatevs.
| fairity wrote:
| You're assuming that internet mobs only attack based on
| misconstrued online content, but that's far from true.
|
| I think the best solution here is to speak up on behalf of
| those who are unfairly attacked, in spite of the negative
| fallout from getting involved. The worst thing that can happen
| in cases like this is when nobody supports the victim. That can
| be profoundly traumatizing.
|
| For a more in-depth look at the impacts of internet mob
| attacks, I'd recommend this TED talk:
| https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_when_online_shaming_goe...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I think the best solution here is to speak up on behalf of
| those who are unfairly attacked
|
| The reality is that there is no easy way forward, no simple
| answer:
|
| You don't know the truth any better than the mindless mob. If
| someone is accused of sexual assault or harassment, do you
| want to risk defending them, only to find out later that you
| guessed wrong? When the video comes out showing the crime, do
| you want your name permanently associated with trying to
| protect them?
|
| The witch hunt / lynching / mob attack is always the wrong
| act, regardless of what someone has done. Perhaps the best
| you can do is to point that out, but that is also difficult.
| People will not read the nuance and assume you are on the
| other side. And you only have so much social capital - when
| everyone blocks you after the first time you stand up, what
| do you do after that?
| slownews45 wrote:
| No kidding. Getting off facebook was game changing. I also just
| started blocking everyone strong on the outrage / offense scale
| (I used to be friends with a pretty broad section from right to
| left though I'm left). But everyone just lost their minds.
|
| HN is one of the better places by far, and I think it takes
| active action by someone at the top to hold the line.
|
| On here we also get extreme reactions still though - The only
| reason apple does X is because they are evil and want to spy on
| you etc.
|
| One idea you see in nature and also developing countries is
| camouflage. You basically give your kids a very generic name so
| they blend in, harder to search etc. In developing countries
| people really operate with nicknames a lot more and sometimes
| have multiple "real" names.
| qsort wrote:
| One of the things that IMO helps HN a lot is that it de-
| prioritizes politics (at least hotly debated topics,) in part
| due to the rules, and in part simply due to having something
| else to talk about.
|
| I don't think politics in general as a topic should be
| banned, but there is exactly zero intellectual gratification
| in reading a thread where I can predict without reading what
| the opposing sides are going to say and the respective
| counter-arguments.
|
| I just can't see how thread #32768 about affirmative action
| or thread #65537 about abortion can be more interesting than
| the previous one. You'll just be served defrosted opinions.
| rapht wrote:
| Cancel the mob: make platforms liable for publishing (or linking
| to) any accusations not established by a court relating to an
| individual's morals or ethics, except when those accusations are
| made by an accredited press organization.
|
| OK to call someone an incompetent, not OK to call someone a child
| abuser, or even just a sexist or a liar, except if you're making
| a stand as a media organization (which the accused individual may
| then sue under libel laws)
|
| Penalty for platforms: $10k per offense -- 100 bad tweets
| published: $1m risk.
| sneak wrote:
| There is already a mechanism for conveying liability to the
| publisher (not the platform, but the tweeter/poster, as it
| should be) when they publish false claims of fact (ie lies).
| rapht wrote:
| Precisely: this does not work in practice!
|
| I see many reasons why, the first of which is just that most
| of the time the damage is already done by the time it goes to
| court, assuming you can find the real name behind the
| usernames that professed lies, and I'm not even talking about
| bots.
|
| That's why the liability has to rest on platforms -- and
| that's _in addition_ to the publisher 's liability.
|
| Edit: formatting
| sneak wrote:
| What you described also does not work, and perhaps does not
| work much faster. Under such a circumstance, Twitter would
| not be able to afford to permit any not manually-
| reviewed/moderated tweets to be posted at all, and would
| have to shut down.
| [deleted]
| betwixthewires wrote:
| 1) be pseudonymous. People in my real life don't need to know
| what I do on the internet. Not like I'm doing anything untoward,
| but I am candidly discussing things with random strangers,
| including things some might view as beyond discussion, and you
| don't want some crusade against you for that. Your real life and
| your internet life don't need to overlap, and 99% of people get
| no benefit from them overlapping.
|
| 2) never capitulate, never apologize unless you genuinely did
| something wrong. This can be hard, but there's no other option.
| Also, never explain yourself. I've done nothing for which I owe
| anyone an explanation, least of all random people on the
| internet.
|
| 3) don't use main line social media. Nothing good comes from
| having an account on twitter or Facebook.
|
| 4) anyone who says they care about you that decides they don't
| even know who you are because some random stranger on the
| internet accuses you of something doesn't care about you really.
| At the very least they'd ask you if it is true before passing
| judgment. I know it can be hard even knowing this, the people you
| can trust are never exactly who you expect or want them to be.
|
| 5) the mob is only as powerful as you let them be.
|
| 6) sue. If someone slanders or libels you, sue them into poverty.
| The only thing keeping people from transgressing you is fear of
| reprisal. Make an example out of them. If it actually negatively
| affected your life and you have evidence that what they said
| isn't true, you may be entitled to compensation.
|
| In the age of the internet, you have to have a thick skin. It is
| required. I understand that some people take it hard and some
| even hurt themselves from the pressure, and I feel bad for those
| people, but the failure is that they let noise from the ether
| affect their emotional well being. You cannot do that. The
| internet is a resource of information and a communications
| channel. Nothing more.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| 6 is a bit difficult in the US, where access to the legal
| system requires money. Remember Smith College, where several
| employees lost their livelihood after a privileged kid set her
| Twitter army on them. Good luck to them in court, but they
| won't have it.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Well, it is important to do anyway, even if the only people
| that come out on top financially are the lawyers. People that
| want to destroy your life baselessly will only be deterred if
| they know it will destroy them as well.
| [deleted]
| koheripbal wrote:
| 1 and 6 are mutually exclusive.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Sure, if done right. But in the event it does happen, there
| are people in this world that are the reason we have prison
| as a deterrent. You must deter these kinds of people.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| Twitter is a toxic wasteland of shit eaters.
|
| I avoid Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, pretty
| much anything considered social media. In fact, the only websites
| I use are email, banking, and HN.
|
| I don't need social media. Social media doesn't deserve my
| bandwidth, advertisers don't deserve my attention, and my mind
| doesn't deserve to be manipulated.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| > In fact, the only websites I use are email, banking, and HN.
|
| and StackOverflow, I assume :-)
| tediousdemise wrote:
| How could I forget? Might as well add Google to that list
| too.
| [deleted]
| kyleblarson wrote:
| "So what are we supposed to do in a world that's gone mad? " Step
| one: leave Twitter. It is a toxic cesspool.
| Causality1 wrote:
| This is why I keep my internet and real world personas completely
| separate. Accounts that communicate with my actual friends don't
| communicate with anyone else and vice versa. I can't imagine what
| a non-celebrity has to gain by dating to put their actual name
| anywhere online.
| moosebear847 wrote:
| Guess this is a reminder why you shouldn't stick your dick in
| crazy. But imagine having to deal with someone like this after
| already getting married to them.
| dang wrote:
| Vandalizing HN threads like this will get you banned here. No
| more of this please.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| nice2meetu wrote:
| There is always another side to the story.
|
| I was friends once with someone who I later found out had
| schizophrenia. She used to say horrible stuff about what other
| people had done to her.
|
| Then came the couple of times some raging hot-headed guy would be
| banging on the front door of our house yelling at us and wanting
| to have a go because of the all the horrible things we had done
| to this poor girl..
|
| It is amusing looking back but wasn't at the time, and it was
| scary how far people are willing to go even off hearsay.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| The book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" by Jon Ronson, is an
| excellent look at this topic. He interviews a number of people
| who have been the focus of such "mob attacks", and spends enough
| time on each to show how they happen, and what the long term
| results are. It's an oddly thoughtful and reflective look at
| thoughtless and unreflective behavior.
| smoldesu wrote:
| This is why your identity online should never be traceable back
| to your real name. It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on
| privacy, but the internet ultimately doesn't change if you use an
| alias. If you do so, employers will come back empty-handed when
| they try Googling you, and they'll have a harder time finding
| "that dumb Twitter post" that jeopardizes your job.
|
| None of this is to say that you should be a bad person online, or
| otherwise take advantage of anonymity. Being anonymous just gives
| you a healthy personal shield, and the option to "cash out" and
| walk away from that identity, if you so desire.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| But in an increasingly default-online world, "employers come
| back empty-handed" looks suspicious and can get you passed over
| for candidates with robust LinkedIn profiles. And keeping
| oneself pseudonymous doesn't help at all if someone with an
| issue goes after you publicly online and the only search result
| for your name becomes someone else's side of the story.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| I don't think that's realistic. The level of opsec required to
| actually do that, is realistically not going to happen for the
| majority of people.
| qsort wrote:
| I agree it's not realistic. The backwards arrow, however
| (i.e. you can get the real name from the handle easily, but
| you can't get the handle from the real name, or at least not
| easily) isn't hard to achieve and affords most of the
| protection.
|
| If you're not going to be awful online, nobody will try to
| figure out who you are from a pseudonymous handle. But your
| employer/potential employer will certainly google your name.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It doesn't matter, man. The donglegate dudes were IRL
| cancelled.
|
| EDIT: What? You don't need to be online. Other people can put
| you online. Whether or not Donglegate was legitimate, clearly
| the mechanism exists.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| This is sometimes easier said than done. I've always tried to
| keep my social media presence far away from my real name, but a
| few years back I went to a job interview and one of the first
| questions they asked me was about my Twitch channel.
|
| I didn't have any major following, it's mostly just a couple of
| friends and I will start a stream so my buddies can watch and
| we can chat about the game. We had been doing that for an hour
| or so before my interview just to calm my nerves a bit and kill
| time. My interviewers were watching that stream.
|
| Anyways, it was pretty shocking to have the interviewer just
| straight up admit they dug me up, in detail. I felt pretty
| invaded. To their credit (or perhaps mine) they didn't feel any
| of my online activity was troubling. I did the interview, was
| offered the job and turned it down even though I was unemployed
| and pretty broke. I didn't feel comfortable working for them.
|
| To this day I don't really know how they dug me up. I tried it
| afterwards myself and I couldn't. As a result I dialed my
| online presence back quite a bit. I am semi-active here but
| almost nowhere else. I don't really stream anymore.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Did they talk to your friends as references before the
| interview? Perhaps one of your friends casually mentioned it,
| without even meaning any harm.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I like your thinking, given that people are a very common
| attack vector.
|
| I don't remember for certain, it was a few years ago. It's
| unlikely though. I don't give references by default and I
| am almost never asked for them. I don't recall if they
| asked for them, but I don't think so.
|
| Also the overlap of people who I share my online activity
| with and people I would use as professional references is
| extremely small. Maybe literally one person.
|
| It is probably something very small like accidentally
| linking an email address to an account I shouldn't have.
| danso wrote:
| It's a tradeoff. Adopting an abstract featureless identity for
| your Internet interactions can greatly limit your ability to
| cultivate relationships online, especially when it comes to
| producing and self-promoting your work/art
| Zababa wrote:
| > It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on privacy
|
| I honestly always tought it was common sense.
|
| > None of this is to say that you should be a bad person
| online, or otherwise take advantage of anonymity. Being
| anonymous just gives you a healthy personal shield, and the
| option to "cash out" and walk away from that identity, if you
| so desire.
|
| I wouldn't call it anonymity. You can read all of the posts
| I've made on hacker news by going through my posts (although I
| can't really prove that to you). My identity just isn't linked
| to who I am IRL, and both aren't linked to my twitter, and the
| three aren't linked to my discord. That means that I can be
| appreciated and judged as an indivudal on HN, but it won't have
| consequences on other platforms. On the other hand, if I make a
| really really popular twitter post I can't profit from it here.
| As you said, it's of course not a reason or way to be a bad
| person. I just think it's important for me to separate my
| different identities.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I would love a feature where usernames get obfuscated once
| the posts reach a certain age.
| Zababa wrote:
| I'm not sure I would like it here on HN but in general I
| can see why that's a good idea.
| swayvil wrote:
| Any appearance of civilized intelligence is pure imitation, as a
| rule. Ritual, conformity, hive-politics and gratuitous feces-
| throwing are still the dominant paradigm. Don't let the ability
| to operate complex machinery fool you.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| > There's irony to a progressive, fluid culture, dishing outrage
| in black and white. They're against incarceration, but enthused
| to rip people apart, with no due process.
|
| A few years ago, I read Jon Ronson's book, "So You've Been
| Publicly Shamed" which examined online mobs (I don't think the
| term "cancel culture" had yet entered public discourse). He
| started off with the belief that social media was a force for
| good, allowing the powerless to band together and "fight the
| power" but then saw how it spiralled out of control to become a
| more toxic phenomenon and hurt ordinary people. In one of the
| earlier chapters, he explores the history of shaming (a method of
| societal punishment that goes back a long way). He pointed out
| that progressives and liberals influenced by Enlightenment values
| came to view incarceration as a much more humane form of
| punishment than the stocks and similar public shamings.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| https://www.obsessivefacts.com/blog/2020-07-10-we-are-not-pr...
|
| I found this compelling as a response to the idea of cancel
| culture.
|
| It's kind of interesting, but I think if anybody wanted to cancel
| me, they'd have a hard time. I have almost no twitter/facebook
| presence, no linkedin at all, most of my close friends and family
| don't give a shit about what a bunch of Twitter randos think, and
| I work at a small enough company that I'd probably get my case
| heard.
|
| I realize that some of that is luck and not just "positioning"
| but why give yourself a larger attack surface than you need to at
| a time when one wrong comment _from 20 years ago_ can end you?
|
| Just walk away from it all.
| drknownuffin wrote:
| The issue is, as OP demonstrated, that this has _nothing to do
| with your interaction with social media_.
|
| Social media was the connective tissue that gave rise to the
| internet mob, but neither the OPs behavior on social media, nor
| his response on social media, had any impact on the outcomes.
| Nor were the outcomes limited to affecting his social media
| presence. As per the original article, OP got nailed for
| comments from a twitter account he didn't run, and whose true
| owner _publicly confessed to owning it_.
|
| That is, just because you walk away from social media doesn't
| mean that social media has walked away from you.
| vaer-k wrote:
| Cosby was (rightfully) cancelled with no presence whatsoever.
| Burying your head in the sand won't help you.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I don't know if that's a super relevant comparison, given
| that he was a celebrity with a decades-long career in the
| public eye.
|
| What other random born-in-1937 person without a social media
| account would receive that level of interest or attention?
| cityzen wrote:
| Talking about "a cancer which positively reinforces outrage and
| amplifies misinformation" and using a tweet from Scott Adams is
| quite ironic.
| alex_young wrote:
| I don't have any strong opinions about this ordeal, but the
| linked 'receipts' seemed a bit one-sided to me.
|
| Here's one of the tweets he mentions without a link:
| https://twitter.com/boop/status/1332815338820472833?s=21
|
| @boob also calls to light this write up seemingly with more
| context: https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-
| pasquale-mit...
| randompwd wrote:
| Linked receipts seem to be exactly that - receipts. I don't see
| what the confusion is.
| Zealotux wrote:
| A relevant TED Talk I always think of when reading about these
| stories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI
|
| Which makes me think: who are these people with enough time of
| their hands to be morality warriors on internet? Also who are
| these _friends_ who jumps on conclusion without allowing for a
| defense? I shouldn't be difficult, in this digitalized world, to
| provide solid proof of wrongdoing.
|
| I may not be the most aware of social cues, or maybe it's a
| cultural thing, but some of these people seems like absolute
| sociopaths.
| Zababa wrote:
| > Which makes me think: who are these people with enough time
| of their hands to be morality warriors on internet?
|
| Maybe young people? I know that when I was younger (around high
| school) and more active on twitter, I supported everything
| progressive because I thought it was the right thing to do,
| without looking too much into the facts. Fortunately I never
| had a bigger reach than a few dozen of people with the same
| ideas as me, and never directly attacked people or insulted
| them or anything, but I wonder if it's because of virtue or
| just that I'm more shy than most people.
|
| I'm glad I grew up and don't do this kind of thing anymore, but
| I can't say I don't understand why people would do this. Maybe
| education about this would help? But on the other hand voices
| that says "there are two sides to every stories" often get
| drowned in righteous fury, and I'm not sure I would have
| listened to them.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > ... some of these people seems like absolute sociopaths.
|
| Maybe shy sociopaths? They wouldn't be a sociopath face-to-
| face, but give them the disconnect of being behind a screen,
| and the sociopathy comes out.
| version_five wrote:
| > Also who are these _friends_ who jumps on conclusion without
| allowing for a defense?
|
| I wonder if this person is referring more to their social
| group. I get the impression that there are groups of "friends"
| that are really more of a social group and are all walking on
| eggshells around one another re orthodoxy and and at the same
| time poised to jump on anyone who is perceived to do something
| against their group values.
|
| Sort of like the situation in 1984, Winston, Syme, Ampleforth,
| Parson, are all "friends" in some sense but effectively would
| denounce each other immediately for anything and feel the need
| to insert little "there is a war going on of course" type
| platitudes in conversation.
| vaer-k wrote:
| The problem is previously we didn't listen to victims, and
| allowed them to be silenced. Now the pendulum has swung the other
| way, and we are listening unconditionally, but (occasionally) bad
| actors are taking advantage of our good intentions. How do we
| find balance?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I think there's another layer here with the virtue signalling
| side of it, and that depends on the exact communities/movements
| that a person is a part of. Like, where is the cancellation of
| Marjorie Taylor Greene over the absurd Holocaust comments? Matt
| Gaetz claims to be "cancelled" but could appear on multiple
| prime time cable news shows basically whenever he wants [1]. It
| was a huge battle getting Bill O'Reilly off the air, and he
| walked with a $32M severance, more money than most normal
| people see in a lifetime. These people aren't cancellable
| because they're already powerful, protected, and the audience
| they have doesn't care about this stuff (or revels in it).
|
| Maybe it's something of a reaction to these frustrations that
| some progressive circles have adopted this knee-jerk zero
| tolerance stance, where no crime or perceived crime is too
| small to attempt to silence someone for. YouTube film
| commentator Lindsay Ellis went through this recently, and
| basically dealt with it by making a one and and half hour video
| where she itemizes everything she's been accused of, and drinks
| her way through explaining and apologizing for all of it
| (including, wretchedly, sharing about her own history with a
| sexual assault). [2]
|
| [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
| politic...
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7aWz8q_IM4
| 99_00 wrote:
| Check the facts and think for yourself.
|
| In this case the accusation is that the accused used completely
| anonymous means to harass the accuser. How the accuser knows
| that the accused is responsible is not stated.
|
| The problems here seem obvious.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| This is essentially why civilization has legal systems and
| courts. Unfortunately, legal systems and courts don't scale to
| internet (global) scale. You'll be "dead," metaphorically
| speaking, of an internet mob attack before your lawyer even
| calls you back.
| [deleted]
| shkkmo wrote:
| We drastically need significant reform of our court system.
| We simply don't have the capacity to address the current
| demanda on the court system (which is why we need ao many
| plea deals.) We certainly don't have the slack we need in the
| system to be able to drastically expand the scope.
| mordae wrote:
| Nah, we just need some real mods on social media. We have
| them literally everywhere else.
| vkou wrote:
| The very same people that are complaining about cancel
| culture will without a shred of irony start to complain
| about moderator censorship.
|
| I've touched on this in another comment, in another
| thread - if we are going to assume that people have the
| right to say whatever the hell they want, how do you
| reconcile that with the rights of a mob to pigpile
| someone for speaking their mind?
|
| The short answer is: "You can't."
|
| The long answer is: "You can't, because when two groups
| are in such a conflict, you either explicitly censor one,
| or implicitly censor the other."
| Fellshard wrote:
| Reasserting and making active commitments to 'justice for
| /all/'.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The issue isn't bad actors taking advantage and the issue isn't
| listening to victims. We should absolutely keep listening
| unconditionally and there will always be bad actors.
|
| The problem is how we respond to what we hear. The core casue
| of the issue is treating online vigilante outrage mobs as an
| acceptable activity.
| nomdep wrote:
| Problem is, for every victim, there are at least 10 people
| willing to fake victimhood for the attention alone.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| I'm not particularly convinced we've solved listening to
| genuine victims particularly well tbh.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| This is why I avoid women whenever possible. Mitt Romney has the
| right idea.
| cousin_it wrote:
| If/when any of my friends get attacked by the mob, I hope I'll
| have the courage to stand by them publicly. A good recent test
| was the doxing of Scott Alexander. I signed the open letter
| against it with my real name and was happily surprised to see the
| names of many people I know. We should have more of these small
| but visible acts of resistance that let like-minded people find
| you.
| nullc wrote:
| One issue is that your friend would often not _want_ your
| public support. You throwing yourself onto the pyre will not
| rescue them, only destroy you too. In many cases it would be
| symbolic-- and really just another example of virtue signaling,
| just like the mob but signaling a different set of virtues to a
| different audience.
|
| Better that you stay employable so you can lend a financial
| hand if they aren't and protect your psychological health so
| you can be there for them in other ways.
|
| So sure, pray for the courage to throw yourself physically in
| front of an unstoppable train... but also pray for the wisdom
| to know better. :)
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| The Scott Alexander controversy isn't analogous at all. That
| was entirely due to his public writing, not alleged private
| interactions between him and others.
| lloydjones wrote:
| The post, and your comment, IMO wrongly frames this as courage
| .vs. cowardice in standing up for friends.
|
| However, that fails to take into account any context of the
| particular "cancellation".
|
| eg, A situation with damning screenshots of lewd DMs are pretty
| 'smoking gun', and the barometer of "good friends would
| publicly support me" feels like an insane expectation when (in
| this hypothetical instance) the person did a bad thing.
|
| Perhaps being cancelled isn't the solution (because we're all
| flawed) but the automatic expectation of character references
| come a scandal isn't fair on one's friends.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Screenshots are trivially easy to fake. Friends don't have to
| be character references, just public opinion defense
| attorneys who play dirty.
| lloydjones wrote:
| I should have caveated my comment with "screenshots that
| can be proved to be real"
| cousin_it wrote:
| My view is more like "a true friend would help you hide a
| body", or the short story "Friends in San Rosario" by
| O.Henry. If I abandoned a friend to the mob due to
| "screenshots of lewd DMs", I'd have a hard time living with
| myself afterward.
| lloydjones wrote:
| That doesn't feel like a worldview that would result in a
| fairer society or better personal conduct.
|
| If defending a person, in the face of prima facie evidence,
| has the result of preserving their reputation and status
| (and keeping the reputation and status of the accuser in
| their original state) then it doesn't feel useful or good.
| drknownuffin wrote:
| I have a little kid. When we watch cartoons, they might
| point at the villain of the piece - e.g., Jafar - and say
| "he's a bad man!"
|
| And I take the opportunity to nudge them and ask, "They
| did a bad thing. Does that mean they're always bad? Can
| they make things better? Should we forgive them? How do
| we know when to forgive them?" (not in a single tirade;
| these are just questions I drop over time.)
|
| Because, in anticipation of the fact that they're
| definitely going to fuck up along the way, I want them to
| learn that mistakes and failures and even doing bad
| things don't make them irrevocably bad - that ultimately,
| the most important thing is making amends / trying again
| / etc. That your worst decision is not the sum total of
| who you are.
|
| I don't see why I should try so hard to teach that to my
| kid, and then "disavow" friends who may have fucked up.
| [deleted]
| 1123581321 wrote:
| That kind of scenario doesn't seem relevant, given the kind
| of attacks this thread is about, but if shown a damning
| screenshot, I would hope that I would not not immediately
| disavow a friend before looking into it, and if the situation
| was indeed that bad, would still love my friend enough to
| help them rehabilitate and obtain forgiveness from the people
| they wronged. I believe it's possible to temporarily withdraw
| good graces to that end without permanently disavowing
| someone.
| lloydjones wrote:
| This is a good and much more balanced/nuanced outlook.
|
| However (in my hypothetical scenario which was meant to
| challenge the utility of blanket statements of support), a
| message of support does effectively act as a counterweight
| to an accusation, and unless one possesses all of the facts
| it may have the effect of laundering the reputation of
| somebody who deserves criticism (though I'd argue that in
| most instances, cancellation is very very over the top as a
| penalty).
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I think that a culture of lovingly challenging our
| friends is part of the solution to that problem of that
| counterweighting. I should be the first to uncover the
| sins, if you will, of my friend, and urge repentance and
| restitution, temporarily withholding approval to achieve
| that end, and involving more people in that knowledge to
| the degree necessary with public shaming being a last
| resort. (In this example, the problem is not one
| requiring legal intervention.)
|
| Sadly, the idea that a friend can be a loyal one, while
| insisting on good behavior, seems alien today.
| lloydjones wrote:
| This is very good. I definitely endorse this approach
| (and largely agree with your final sentence).
| somekyle wrote:
| I think an interesting question is: can you support people
| and wish the best for them even if they've done a bad thing?
|
| With the exception of some particularly abhorrent things, I'm
| not sure I'd consider myself a friend to someone if I'm not
| willing to support them even if they're in the wrong. That
| doesn't mean lying for them or trying to pretend it wasn't
| bad, but I would expect myself to push back on
| mischaracterizations of them (positive or negative!) and help
| them navigate the consequences.
| lloydjones wrote:
| I'd like to think I could but it's largely context and
| "acknowledgement + repentance dependent" on the part of the
| 'accused' (if they did do the bad thing).
|
| That is, I am not going to defend somebody who won't even
| be honest and open about their wrongdoing.
| sens_topic_x wrote:
| Somehow cruelty and hysteria have become socially acceptable. It
| is pure narcissism to make a spectacle, even in the case of
| someone with a real grievance.
|
| I'm writing this comment via throwaway because people need to
| understand others have given this a lot of thought and if you get
| cancelled, there are good people who won't put up with that
| bullshit. There is more than hope.
|
| A criminal defense attorney told me that more often than is
| comfortable to accept, accusers have a pattern of self-
| destructive relationships and the person they pick to accuse is
| just the most successful one in a line of many. The details are
| convincing because they really are true, but from other
| occurrences in their lives. The legal question is not whether or
| not the accuser is a victim of some kind, but whether the accused
| is responsible. In politics false accusations come with the
| territory and now a social media presence is politics.
|
| All this talk of believing victims is the worst idea of all
| because a person who makes a spectacle is the one who is the
| least likely to be telling the truth during their performance.
| The simple truth is that men and women often lie. Prosecutors
| lie, police lie, witnesses lie, reporters lie, managers lie,
| employees lie, lawyers lie, mothers lie, fathers lie, kids lie,
| custodians lie, and yet somehow it is acceptable to destroy
| someone's life on the word of someone (and their friends) who
| makes a public display of being a victim?
|
| Some victims are telling the truth, but everyone who makes a
| public display should be treated with extreme skepticism, and the
| louder they get, the less anyone should listen.
| temp8964 wrote:
| After reading through the post on notion, I found it "impressive"
| that OP has dated with so many toxic persons over years. Is this
| normal? Or is OP self an outlier to have had so many toxic
| relationships?
| vernie wrote:
| The trappings of having a terminally online social group, it
| seems.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Did I read the thread incorrectly? From there it seems that OP
| has dated exactly one person out of the bunch, another one was
| a friend and the rest acquaintances or passersby?
| psychomugs wrote:
| While the whole ordeal is awful, it's even more depressing that
| this is still better-case scenario by having evidence with the
| conversation receipts. The cynic in me interprets this as a form
| of pre-pre-nuptial relationship insurance.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _... weirdly, the ones who adopted the sternest and most terrible
| Old Testament moral tone were the Modern Language Association
| types who believed that everything was relative and that, for
| example, polygamy was as valid as monogamy. The friendliest and
| most sincere welcome he 'd gotten was from Scott, a chemistry
| professor, and Laura, a pediatrician, who, after knowing Randy
| and Charlene for many years, had one day divulged to Randy, in
| strict confidence, that, unbeknownst to the academic community at
| large, they had been spiriting their three children off to church
| every Sunday morning, and even had them all baptized.
|
| Randy and Amy had spent a full hour talking to Scott and Laura
| last night; they were the only people who made any effort to make
| Amy feel welcome. Randy hadn't the faintest idea what these
| people thought of him and what he had done, but he could sense
| right away that, essentially that was not the issue because even
| if they thought he had done something evil, they at least had a
| framework, a sort of procedure manual, for dealing with
| transgressions.
|
| To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy's
| fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post modern,
| politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly
| found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex
| computer system (viz, society) with no documentation or
| instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing
| running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of
| neo Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with
| any deviations from what they saw as the norm. Whereas people who
| were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators
| who, while they might not understand everything, at least had
| some documentation, some FAQs and How tos and README files,
| providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of
| whack. They were, in other words, capable of displaying
| adaptability.
|
| "Yo! Randy!" says America Shaftoe. "M.A. is honking at you."
| "Why?" Randy asks. He looks in the rearview, sees a reflection of
| the ceiling of the Acura, and realizes he is slouched way down in
| his seat. He sits up straight, and spots the Impala. "I think
| it's because you're driving ten miles an hour," Amy says, "and
| M.A. likes to go ninety." "Okay," Randy says, and, just as simple
| as that, pushes down on the accelerator pedal and drives out of
| town forever._
| 867-5309 wrote:
| >These days, I try to find the lemonade made out of the fucked up
| lemons.
|
| stealing this for my next confrontation with the in-laws
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| camillomiller wrote:
| Had me for a while, then unfortunately lost me at the quote of
| Scott Adams. Adams is EXACTLY who I think anyone should avoid
| quoting at all costs, when you're rightfully criticizing the
| Internet Morality Hordes. If you wanna know why, just scroll his
| Twitter timeline.
| prezjordan wrote:
| +1. Unfortunately saw that and couldn't help but the think the
| author was also warm to Adams's "red pill" content.
| mkishi wrote:
| > Had me for a while, then unfortunately lost me at the quote
| of Scott Adams.
|
| It's interesting to me you didn't just say "quoting Scott Adams
| is a mistake," instead you "were with them until they quoted
| Adams," implying a single quote you disagree with invalidates
| all their points.
|
| Are you saying you believe they deserved it because those were
| consequences for being the person they are, ie. someone who
| quotes Adams? If that's not the case, why did you phrase it
| like that? At best, it sounds like because of the "affiliation"
| you suddenly don't care for something you were inclined to
| care, regardless of whether they have other points or not.
|
| This seems similar to the dynamics that made it happen in the
| first place, people who didn't care about specifics or nuance
| speaking out with the most dismissive light on the situation,
| furthering the idea that they deserve the consequences because
| they are inherently bad people.
|
| I'm not saying those were your intentions, but sometimes
| wording matters, and the multiplying effect of social media
| doesn't care about intentions.
| notacoward wrote:
| I've lost as much respect for Scott Adams as anyone, so I'd
| agree that quoting him is ill advised, but _the underlying
| sentiment_ is not wrong. Mobs do cause harm, not least because
| they make redemption harder than it already is. In a way,
| treating a Scott Adams quote as an _automatic_ disqualifier is
| only making the OP 's point.
| pstuart wrote:
| The quote presents as self-deprecation but reads as a non-
| apology (at least to me, and I too must confess having lost
| respect for Adams as well).
| tootie wrote:
| They cause harm when they're wrong. Not when they're right. A
| mob went after Harvey Weinstein because after the first few
| accusations they rest realized they weren't alone.
| dhosek wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing.
| whatshisface wrote:
| On the ground level of actually quality, Scott Adams is not
| great. On the meta-level of continuing to live one's life when
| hated by the internet, he's really something.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Seriously, the dude is admittedly creepy, didn't he claim he
| has the power to hypnotize women...? wow, let's admit you
| violate consent.
| randompwd wrote:
| wow, although some of those false accusers deleted their twitter
| account - it's great to see the "Design advocacy @google" still
| active on Twitter and still employed by Google?
|
| Hopefully they can pop on here and tell us why they behaved like
| such a horrible human? or how they think their job search will go
| - i wouldn't feel safe working with someone like that - false
| accusations on a public platform against someone who was already
| being falsely accused.
|
| linked from the article
|
| https://www.notion.so/Receipts-f7b8a6a4be0b43c28bed79484f242...
| almostgone wrote:
| When these attacks take on a racial or gender-focused hue, I
| think they end up having a terribly ironic effect: further
| isolating the group they sought to protect (e.g., POC, women,
| etc). That is, they win the battle, but lose the war. Each of
| these stories reinforces in my mind to not associate with those
| that are higher on the oppression totem pole. I know it is not
| their fault, and I feel bad for doing so, but the risk/reward
| simply does not make sense. It helps that I'm a loner anyway.
|
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26612918 for the effect
| I'm speaking of. People will continue to distance themselves as
| (primarily American) society continues to be a flashpoint and
| Twitter a flashmob.
| WDCDev wrote:
| Yes - and it's driving people further into tribes where the
| only way they feel "safe" is in and around their own "kind".
| This isn't civilization, but a regression and if it goes on for
| a few more generations it could be very damaging to our social
| fabric.
|
| I just hope it's a weird early-21st century "intellectual"
| movement that eventually dies out.
| jollybean wrote:
| I see this trending on TikTok with the 'Karen' thing but often
| you have no idea what was actually said or done, just a mob. I
| honestly think the Social Media Gods need to move beyond these
| memes because it's more witch-hunt than anything at this point.
| christophilus wrote:
| My wife was called a "Karen" for telling a (white British) man
| that his big dogs were not allowed off leash at the children's
| playground. It's gotten beyond absurd at this point.
| spuz wrote:
| > So what are we supposed to do in a world that's gone mad? Our
| symbiotic relationship with the internet has imprinted its
| glitches into our minds. The internet is a collective
| consciousness, and its mental health remains unchecked as it
| accelerates beyond our control. Somewhere along the way, it feels
| like we left compassion behind.
|
| I can understand why someone feeling the judgement of a mob would
| think this but it's clearly just a simplification of what's
| really going on. Each person in that mob is an individual with
| their own beliefs, thought process, context and so on. What can
| feel like an avalanche of hate may simply be many individual
| instances of misunderstanding or confusion. To believe the people
| who are against you are not individuals but a single angry entity
| is going to make it harder deal with psychologically and harder
| to come up with any possible remedy.
|
| I don't really know what the remedy would be but I would guess
| that it would involve a process of divide-and-conquer while
| addressing each individual's specific concerns.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Happened to a friend of mine during college, before FB and
| Twitter. He was accused of stalking, was arrested and kicked out
| of school. He sued to clear his name and was reinstated at
| school. The lawsuit did cause the accuser and the school to issue
| formal apologies - but that didn't undo the damage to his
| reputation.
| polote wrote:
| There are a lot of talks on HN about the toxicity of social
| media. And people are pretty angry against Google and Facebook.
|
| But to me the worse is by far Twitter. There are plenty of random
| people who have a disproportionate number of followers compared
| to the quality of their posts. And as a result can do these kind
| of mods. Which are amplified by retweets, something that barely
| exists in other social media.
|
| Random people can have too much power. As a society we should
| really prevent anyone to have more than a certain reach, like for
| example 5k people viewing a post. If you want to have a bigger
| reach you should apply to get a professional account and be
| regulated.
| throwkeep wrote:
| I agree, Twitter is the most destructive of the lot. It drives
| mob behavior and low quality interaction like nothing else.
|
| It doesn't get as much scrutiny in the press though, because
| it's the home of journalists.
| smlss_sftwr wrote:
| This is just a conjecture, but I think the 280 character
| limit on Twitter (or whatever it is now) is one of the key
| culprits behind the trend of deteriorating discourse not just
| at the societal level but even at a personal level. It's
| simply impossible to express nuance in a 280-character span
| and if you can't win over an audience within that limit,
| they'll just scroll past whatever else you have to say. Even
| if you personally have a more intricate perspective on the
| matter, you're forced to play by majority rules if you want
| to reach an audience and that quickly becomes a race to the
| bottom in a system that rewards whoever can come up with the
| best one-line mic drop instead of the best formulated ideas.
| I've noticed in my very limited experience with Twitter that
| it seems to drive "engagement" from opposing sides more so
| than Facebook's echo chamber, which is a breeding ground for
| confrontation (whereas long-form Facebook rants seem more so
| geared towards getting people on "your side" to egg you on).
| In theory our society needs that sort of cross-aisle
| engagement to reverse the trend of political fragmentation,
| but if all you have is 280 characters to make your case that
| just simply doesn't work. I wonder if there is a solution
| that could make it work, but given the trend of social media
| culture being driven by the lowest common denominator I'm
| inclined to think you'd need some sort of centralized
| moderating authority and that just brings us back full circle
| to traditional media outlets
| kokanator wrote:
| >Random people can have too much power.
|
| So the common persons voice should be rate limited? Only those
| 'qualified' should be able to have a larger impact?
|
| Who makes the rules in this situation?
| koheripbal wrote:
| The issue is that the people in society with the most free
| time seem to have the most influence on social media.
|
| Rate limiting people so that they could only post/vote/etc
| once per day, for example, or perhaps amplifying the vote by
| the account age might work to bring more attention to more
| mature voices.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > So the common persons voice should be rate limited? Only
| those 'qualified' should be able to have a larger impact?
|
| Yes, to both. To go along with what the OP was saying, the
| common person should have to get the attention of someone
| with a "professional account" in order to get their voice
| amplified. Of course, that's assuming "professional accounts"
| actually mean something and aren't handed out like blue
| checkmarks on Twitter.
| sethammons wrote:
| starting to sound like a republic :)
| mordae wrote:
| Mods. You say something nasty, you get banned. You make
| sense, you get slightly promoted.
| lkbm wrote:
| "Random people" doesn't mean "common people". It means people
| with no connection to the situation, or to the people
| involved.
|
| On Faceobook, the only people who can flood my notifications
| are people have I as friends, or maybe friends of friends. On
| Twitter, it's everyone, including people who are just there
| to be abusive.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Random person could just as well be Trump or Biden. It
| doesn't have to be common persons. Twitter gives too much
| power to _anyone_.
| throwitaway78 wrote:
| Read this comment earlier and nodded in agreement. Somehow
| ended up on Twitter looking at the trending topic "people
| questioning need for more Ted Bundy content." Oh ha, I agree,
| I'm sick of serial killer true crime murder ugliness too. Click
| the link. Immediately see this:
|
| https://twitter.com/OhNoSheTwitnt/status/1397629835757883395
|
| "No thanks, Ted Bundy movie. If I want a story about a white
| guy who murders women I'll just watch the news."
|
| Right. White guys, they are the worst. Why is it that I can go
| on Twitter and within 2 minutes find hate speech attacking the
| group I've been assigned to? Btw, this is pretty tame. I could
| find worse with very little effort.
| bostik wrote:
| Oh good, so now I can silence a critical voice by unleashing a
| horde of bots and I don't even need to drown their voice?
| fouric wrote:
| AFAIK Twitter already considers bots impersonating people (if
| not just all bots) to be against their TOS and actively works
| to hunt them down or remove them. The fact that they're
| imperfect and so your strategy _might_ work _some_ of the
| time has nothing to do with the proposition that OP is
| making.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Twitter is certainly the worst because of the format that
| drives "low quality" interaction between users. Everybody is
| yelling at each other, in the hope to garner a few new
| followers or likes. To me it's definitely the most toxic social
| network, far ahead of Facebook or even Reddit.
|
| Yet driving that outrage up is what gets Twitter eyeballs thus
| revenue, so there is an incentive for that platform to generate
| this sort of behaviour. Twitter absolutely loved Trump
| presence, they made good money out of him.
| legitster wrote:
| Facebook obviously gets a lot of crap but they way they default
| your conversations to your localized pool of contacts certainly
| acts like "baffles" around an online persona.
|
| Twitter generally discourages anonymity but also has almost no
| protection against your content being instantly thrust into a
| national spotlight.
| fouric wrote:
| > As a society we should really prevent anyone to have more
| than a certain reach, like for example 5k people viewing a
| post.
|
| Why? What benefit does this provide to everyone? How is this
| not just going to silence minority opinion?
| yonixw wrote:
| Anti-Vax are also a minority, and we should block them. I
| guess his intentions are to make the spread slow enough so
| the target of harassment could respond before being piled on
| OR for doctors to respond to Anti-Vax claims fast enough. So
| maybe a reach of 1K/Day would be a better approach to slow
| down harassment while allowing minorities to speak up (and
| the compromise is that it will take more time for their voice
| to be heard).
|
| WhatsApp did something similar where you cannot share a
| popular message to more than one, since it was used to spread
| a call to violence in India. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/7/21211371/whatsapp-
| message-...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Facebook does have a 5000 person limit on how many people can
| follow your personal account, after that you need to start a
| fan page.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| The most disturbing and insidious sentiment of online mobs is
| claiming that the targets are "just being held accountable". Or
| that such people are just experiencing "consequences". I really
| can't express just how cold and bloodthirsty such statements seem
| to be. It's the perfect combination of justifying vicious
| behavior while also absolving themselves of responsibility.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _It 's the perfect combination of justifying vicious behavior
| while also absolving themselves of responsibility._
|
| And Twitter/Facebook/YouTube just grin, raking in the
| advertising dollars from "engagement." The more people
| "engaged" in the activity, the better!
|
| I don't think the concept of social media is fundamentally
| evil. It's dangerous, certainly, but I don't think the core
| concept _must_ be evil.
|
| Public "social media companies," driven to improve revenue from
| injecting advertising into streams consisting of repackaging
| other people's content? Those seem to reliably turn evil.
| zxzax wrote:
| So how could responsibility be ensured? Make a social media
| site where people can't criticize each other at all? Subject
| all posts to third party fact checkers?
|
| To put it another way: If, in your opinion, twitter users are
| not subject to accountability based on the chaotic randomness
| of public opinion, then who are they being held accountable to?
| throwkeep wrote:
| Well said. And notice how the refrain changed. For years it was
| complete denial with "cancel culture doesn't exist". Now the
| response is, "it's just consequence culture".
| zxzax wrote:
| Just to be clear, is it "cancel culture" or "consequence
| culture" when the legal system puts people in jail, or
| employs capital punishment? Or are those considered something
| different entirely?
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| It shows that witch trials haven't gone away; they never really
| did. They just became more technologically savvy in their
| influence, both publicly and politically.
| philwelch wrote:
| Whenever the talk of "consequences" starts, I'm reminded of a
| quote:
|
| "There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom
| after speech." --Idi Amin
| fxtentacle wrote:
| What shocked me the most was his listing of "the quality of my
| relationships with people" and what looks like people pretending
| to be friends towards him while sacrificing him for publicity
| behind his back.
|
| I'd say the main point to be learned from this story is that you
| need to be very careful whom you consider a true friend, as
| opposed to just an acquaintance. Because they might not care as
| much about you as you care about them.
| baby wrote:
| This ^ your friends will have your back.
| falcolas wrote:
| I wish this kind of behavior was new. It's not, it's just the
| latest version of Vigilantism. It's the result of people
| believing that the rule of law is insufficient; of thinking that
| they are a better enforcer of what they perceive as the rule of
| law.
|
| I'm not sure humanity as a whole can get away from this. Just
| being different is enough to trigger people's feelings of
| "other", to become the target of a mob fueled by hatred and fear.
| And everyone is capable of being different.
|
| But, while we're not going to get away from it as a people, we
| can get away from it as individuals. Don't join the mobs. Don't
| react to the initial outrage that we feel when reading something.
| Sleep on it, and prefer to let the law deal with it (or work to
| change the laws so it can deal with it) over taking it into our
| own hands.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Protip: quoting Scott Adams, noted mediocre cartoonist turned
| right-wing gadfly, is not a good idea to convince me that
| multiple women accusing you of improper behavior are, in fact,
| full of shit.
| Zababa wrote:
| That's an expression of your biais against right-wing people
| rather than a failure of the author.
| [deleted]
| myko wrote:
| Right, and nothing really exonerated him beyond the one set of
| Twitter DMs which didn't seem suspect (assuming those were
| actually the only messages between them). Nobody backed down
| from their claims.
| [deleted]
| erulabs wrote:
| Guilt should not be related to associations or political
| beliefs. This is a genuinely dangerous comment. Reserve your
| judgment for when you're called for the jury.
| jeffgreco wrote:
| Agreed, regardless of political leanings Adams is clearly not
| someone to cite regarding civil or non-inflammatory
| participation in society.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| From the linked Notion "Receipts" page:
|
| > I've struggled to understand why so many people have piled on
| to these absurd accusations without facts.
|
| I watched a similar situation play out in real time. A friend had
| to fire an employee who wasn't submitting work or even responding
| to communications. The employe retaliated by using their
| moderately large social media presence to disparage my friend and
| her company.
|
| Strangely enough, other people with zero experience in the matter
| were piling on to support the claims. It seemed they felt
| obligated to amplify and lend credence to the allegations of one
| of their social media friends.
|
| The experience was extremely stressful for my friend, but
| ultimately the former employee cooled off and deleted many of the
| posts. It's hard to tell how much damage was done in the process,
| but I was stunned at how someone with zero evidence and an
| obvious axe to grind could rally such disdain for someone else
| with little more than a few unsubstantiated social media posts.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| To be completely honest, the whole thing reads like high school
| drama completely blown out of proportion.
|
| > I've struggled to understand why so many people have piled on
| to these absurd accusations without facts.
|
| The same thing happened with RMS. All they could get against
| him were anonymous blog posts and someone vandalizing the door
| of his office.
| WDCDev wrote:
| > I was stunned at how someone with zero evidence and an
| obvious axe to grind could rally such disdain for someone else
| with little more than a few unsubstantiated social media posts.
|
| I feel that this is due to the weird place victimization
| occupies in our culture combined with how anti-social social
| media is.
|
| It's extremely easy to issue accusations and threats and have
| them be read by literally millions of people. You would never
| dare vocalize these same threats and and accusations publically
| - and even if you did, in the pre-internet days, it would reach
| far far fewer people.
|
| At some point we to start thinking about strengthening our
| libel laws to act as a deterrent to this type of online
| behaviors. It's depressing to consider MORE litigation as the
| solution here, but I don't think we can depend on the good
| nature of people and rationality to ultimately prevail.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > strengthening our libel laws
|
| This nearly always advantages businesses and the wealthy,
| especially in false or ambiguous situations, and
| whistleblowers of all kinds. Litigation is incredibly
| expensive and slow. Do people really want to spend a house
| worth and several years on this kind of fight?
|
| (This is why the US felt it necessary to pass laws against UK
| libel judgements being enforced, it was infringing on US
| standards of free speech)
| WDCDev wrote:
| Whistleblowers have plenty of protections and can be
| exempted. Libel can be stated such that they only apply to
| private matters between individuals, where accusations that
| do not reach the felony level - which is exactly what is
| going on here. I have no doubt we could protect all
| interests, while limiting the power of the wealthy and
| powerful.
| Vektorweg wrote:
| > I don't think we can depend on the good nature of people
| and rationality to ultimately prevail.
|
| least not with the current common education.
| bhk wrote:
| "It is absolutely _essential_ that we believe Jussie Smollett.
| If we don't, other people who haven't been attacked might not
| have the courage to come forward."
|
| https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/4/wokes-on-you
| krmboya wrote:
| Social media companies seem to optimize for virality. In such
| circumstances there are users who will learn to wield such
| capabilities to suit their goals
| mc32 wrote:
| The unfortunate tendency of people _not in the know_ is to pile
| on righteous indignation for the sake of peer brownie points.
|
| It's often clear they're just taking a birdshit on something
| that looks like it can earn them internet kudos.
|
| Dynamically it doesn't seem far removed from a lynchmob.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| If you are confident, next step is to sue.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| If you sue and not a successful, you could create a case law
| against online mob incitements.
| drknownuffin wrote:
| Reading the list of "receipts" in the "wrongfully accused" link
| is heart-breaking. I can't imagine having to dig through my
| personal correspondence to submit to the court of public opinion,
| "see?! I wasn't a creep!"
| mr_brobot wrote:
| It's over, it's done \ The end is begun \ If you listen to
| fools... \ The Mob Rules
|
| (RIP Dio)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3__NN16uoXk
| murat131 wrote:
| About 10 years ago I was harassed for months. In my case I wasn't
| able to find out who it was but they were able do some damage to
| my marriage and relationship with friends but above all to my
| well being. When they first started I tended to take my favorite
| approach in life against such things which is to just ignore the
| emails and the messages that were being sent to me as well as to
| my partner but when in a relationship with someone you can't
| choose not to play the game.
|
| This is all under the bridge now. Since then I've had almost zero
| social media presence. Internet as I learned about and explored
| in the 90s and 00s is long gone and what's left is a wasteland to
| spectate.
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