OT: I notice that this Ask HN thread is suddenly revived and timestamps of original comments are reset. My other comment is not 5hrs old but from 2days ago when this item did not reach front page. Just curious how this works..
Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
181–190 of 859 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#182> Before, around 2010-2012, people who disagreed would usually leave it at that and walk away respectfully.
I literally lol'd.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#183>I've noticed a huge uptick in the toxicity online in the last 5-7 years. You're crazy my dude(tte). I've been on the interbutts since 1991 and Usenet days, and it's exactly as it always was. The big difference is we have reporter ding dongs on Twitter thinking Twitter, aka the comments section they removed from their web presence, is the real world. Also old people on Facebook who never learned the lessons of being…
When reporters on Twitter freak out about the trolls on 4chan like it's some disease infecting our precious wholesome web, I can't help but remember (through my biased lenses of course) when most of the web (that I visited) looked like 4chan. What the folks who think the web is 'degrading' don't seem to realize is how much of a wild west it used to be, and how much corporations have tried to (and somewhat succeeded i…
> I can't help but remember (through my biased lenses of course) when most of the web (that I visited) looked like 4chan.
Interesting. I don't remember the web (or the pre-web internet) generally looking like 4chan in the earlier days. Pockets of it always did, of course.
But we are both engaging in a statistical error here -- we're using sample sizes of one. Your experience and mine may differ quite a lot simply because we hung out in different parts of the internet.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
When someone on the street corner tells you the world is ending you ignore them. You dont need a complex technical or social solution. When someone tells me that xyz plant oil cures cancer or the earth is flat... I ignore them. If I want to be a troll I may play along or challenge them if its fun. That's the internet. There have always been nutters- they just found other nutters to talk with and you get a loud feedba…
I don't think ignoring the nutters is viable. Enough people are believing anti-vax lies to start bringing back deadly disease which affect more than just themselves. Enough people are believing climate change propaganda which is slowly harming the habitability of our planet for our human race. What was once contained on the internet is leaking out onto the streets and is already affecting you and I in many ways.
It's interesting that you mention climate change in this, I agree that it's ground zero for demonstrating the phenomenon of expressing things as objective truth, or fact, that are much more complex than a simple binary.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#185I came of age in the late 2000s, but “flame wars” were already a thing then, correct?
I think the big thing that’s changed is that internet access and computing’s audience has increased a lot over the past two deceased and it includes people that would normally be polarized in public.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#186Stop responding to it. No seriously, just stop. This isn't a "complex problem that needs nuanced technical and legislative solutions". Back in the old day, there was this saying. "Do not feed the trolls". Sadly, we've forgotten that. Our current approach is, "create rigorous 30 minute point by point take down videos to defeat their point of view". Our urge to debate and correct people who are wrong just fuels them ma…
Not feeding the trolls is good advice for one's personal emotional health, but it has never made the trolls go away. There's too much infrastructure supporting them: they know what works, and they broadcast to everybody. It only takes one response to give them the burst of dopamine they're looking for.
Responding makes it worse for you. It gives them a second chance aggravate you, this time with more precision. Downvote and move along is excellent advice -- especially if you're on a platform that helps you filter them out in the future. But don't fool yourself into believing that they'll go away, or that people aren't listening to their misinformation and incorporating it into their belief system -- even if they know it's false.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#187Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
When reporters on Twitter freak out about the trolls on 4chan like it's some disease infecting our precious wholesome web, I can't help but remember (through my biased lenses of course) when most of the web (that I visited) looked like 4chan. What the folks who think the web is 'degrading' don't seem to realize is how much of a wild west it used to be, and how much corporations have tried to (and somewhat succeeded i…
if most of the web that you visited looked like 4chan, you should have been going to different sites
The subtle shaming and holier-than-thou policing, like in your comment, is more harmful and toxic than the trolling. It’s what is fueling the polarization IMO.
Look now I’m doing it, it’s contagious.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
They frequently do see things in that way - and they're wrong. In fact, they're worse than wrong, because many people see the dueling assertions of fact and give up on knowing the truth of a situation altogether. This is a classic disinformation technique. We do have the ability to determine truth from fiction, it just takes more work than cynically throwing up your hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying.
I definitely wasn't cynically throwing up my hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying. All I intended to do was demonstrate how cheap it is to call someone a liar on the internet. It costs nothing to the reputations of you or your "lying friend" to call one another a liar and thats why it doesn't mean anything. The sooner people realize this the better off we'll be.
My prediction is that this is what will, in the end, change; technology will advance far enough to severely de-anonymize online interaction, at which point one's reputation again comes into play and people will find there are consequences for thoughtless shitposting.
It has begun to happen, with phenomena such as people being fired for Facebook or Twitter posts. It doesn't seem impossible to tie a sufficiently-advanced pattern-recognition network to the firehoses of data on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, et. al to automatically tie together the scraps of personal info people accidentally leave behind and severely compromise online anonymity.
Be interesting if it happens.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#190Calling this "toxicity" seems itself to be a polarizing exaggeration.
Dealing with the new users eternal September was a Sisyphean task. I assume that was an earlier stage of fake toxicity. Everyone complained about it then, too, even though there was usually heavier human moderation. No one could agree about how to handle the "problem."
Want to put controls on the damage software can do to society? Regulate. Maybe even force us to be real engineers. I would like to think that software killing people (e.g. 737 Max) would be a bigger factor in that legislation than social networks encouraging meanness. The economics of the two seem to favor the former more, too.