Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

I wanted to stress that I didn't mean it as a leftwing phenomenon. It's just that the GP seemed to describe it as a peculiarly rightwing one, and I think we've seen instances on the left as well (particularly recently). And while the left is generally much more averse to physical violence than the right, it's also more socially accepted and mainstream, so the outrage storms are more pronounced and the calls for censorship and sometimes criminalisation meet much less resistance.

One example: https://theoutline.com/post/2202/climate-change-denial-shoul...

I think you need to acknowledge human nature and profit from it.

Human’s love observing an argument.

Twitter is too concise to form decent arguments.

If there was a website called Dual - where people could register a username - then post on the forum where they were arguing to verify their dual account and then continue the argument on a platform set up for settling written arguments and integrating external references.

People would talk less anonymous smack or have to back up their smack on dual and then write at a level that convinces the masses they know what they are talking about. No swearing on dual. The disagreements would actually educate everyone and the voting and following would tell you what to advertise.

If someone was talking smack on a forum and didn’t register on dual you could assume they were a coward or a troll. If followers could supply duelers with arguments we would get to the truth in an entertaining way very quickly and any misunderstanding would be highlighted and documented.

People often do great thinking in the heat of an argument. We should harness the anonymous arguments. Politicians should accept duels instead of televised debates.

Limit the responses to 300 words and six references or something effective.

I wish I had the money and health to clone twitter and do it but someone should do it. Both sides have to watch the arguments unfold so it brings observers and duelers closer to the truth rather than polarising them.

The trick is in trusted auto verification of anonymous duelers and getting enough duels and spectators to make internet dueling a thing.

Agreed. If you have a bad upbringing and treat people poorly, when you enter a new environment, e.g., a workplace, the new environment would quickly teach the new person the proper way to act.

Likewise, on the internet, we need to encourage people to behave nicely and discourage bad behaviour. And we do, this is what this post is about. I guess we need more of it.

Yes, I spend a great deal of time thinking about that. In general, the best antidotes to extremism is getting a girlfriend (most extremists are male and heterosexual), having a kid (more so a daughter), settling down and ageing out. Socioeconomic conditions are a major driver of extremism, which is one reason it tends to flourish in adversity, when there is a large supply of pessimists available for recruitment.

There are of course many other approaches to deradicalization. Personal contact and bridge-building is ideal, but it's slow, expensive, and scales poorly for much the same reasons as why it's not practical to solve all social problems by telling everyone to go to therapy.

>planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that behavior

This sounds like de-platforming to me.

When I say 'eliminating' people I specifically mean killing them, and no I don't think that's the same thing as de-platforming people.

What you are doing here is called "vilifying." Where you identify that someone is disagreeable to you and attribute everything they do to bad faith.

It is not. I haven't identified anyone in particular as being disagreeable or practicing entryism, but rather pointed out the existence of such a rhetorical tactic that can be used in bad faith. You seem to be confusing my suggestion that the person I was responding to is a victim of such a tactic with their being a user of it.

It's too late - the web already "democratized" communication, meaning that not just people with writing skills, credentials, connections or experiences capable of impressing some gatekeeper get to have a voice. People with absolutely nothing worthwhile to say get to talk to everybody now. Sound elitist? Then the desire for "no toxicity" is elitist. (It's basically expressing a bias against Shitty People.)

EDIT: Possibly against my better judgment I'll take the question a bit more at face value. I think it's all about the climate or culture of a place. As an engineer I've tended to dismiss talk of "culture" esp. where a company or workplace is concerned, but in recent years I've changed my mind. For example, one message or pronouncement by the CEO can change people's entire experience of working there. Same thing for a website, which is a virtual place. And what kind of culture do you expect will develop in a place where the incentives, motivations, values etc. of the people running the site are actively hostile to yours? A place where the very premise of being there is already a hostile act against other humans? It's a corrupt and fundamentally dishonest (not just incidentally dishonest, I would argue) place where the social order has already broken down before a word is even said.

Yeah okay, being a surveillance platform that optimizes for dark patterns and "engagement" doesn't guarantee that it'll be full of trolls. But it's not exactly a surprise when it turns out to be that way.

Steve Jobs was obviously pretty shitty in some ways, but at the height of Apple's revolutionizing of the UI (before it turned shitty) it made you feel like there was something noble about it and you felt better and more of a sense of decorum just by being there. Meanwhile Twitter refuses sensible and awesome ideas for UI/UX over and over for years because they get more engagement by keeping it shitty. And shittiness has a way of spreading. If the place is shitty you will act shitty. But if you suddenly get invited to go have lunch with the Queen of England or something, you probably behave better despite yourself, even if you're Johnny Rotten.

We don't "behave better" because, fewer and fewer of us are getting invited to lunch with the Queen, and because we're not the (U)ser whose (X) the ones running the place care about, and because we can tell we're being taken advantage of, and the nearest person available to take out our grievances on, is each other.