731–740 of 859 posts
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Reddit also delisted the Chapo Trap House subreddit, it's not exclusively conservatives that are toxic. And Reddit's clean up wasn't about liberal vs conservatives, it was about teen-ogling perverts, overt racism, and threats of violence.
What does "toxic" even mean, if it includes CTH? Oooh, they're socialist nerds! Very scary!
Encourage people to participate in physical social gatherings that center around non-political issues, like hobbies. We need to start emphasizing what we have in common, help people see that ultimately we're really not all that different from each other. The internet lets people hide behind this isolating veneer that makes it too easy to just shout at each other and behave in extreme ways that would never be socially…
Unfortunately the problem is preexisting. The local communities can and have been the most psychotically toxic places. If something is political is only about the level of agreement and not about sanity, decency, or morality. It may be easier to (not) think about divergence of views but that doesn't solve the particular underlying issue isn't real.
A few years ago I was at a local community meeting about expanding a school (USA). Let me tell you something, online trolls have nothing on the people who were for or against the expansion.
I left totally shocked with the toxicity, outright lies and innuendo. At one point someone on the board said the school was a front for prostitution. The audience audibly gasped.
Discussions like this are frustrating to me because they always seem to skip over what feels like a crucial element: Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone? I get the feeling, in general, when people talk about wanting to "Do Something" about this sort of thing, they are always focused on managing the symptom and never focused on addressing the cause. Frequently, when I try to bring this up, the caus…
> Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone? I think it's because online, each of us is disembodied and anonymous. We're a nobody. And nobody wants that. So the quickest way to become somebody is to join a group -- ideally a group that seems to be a winner, that offers easy compelling answers to hard problems... especially answers that somehow favor you and others like you. That's populism. Populists ar…
Further I think you’re wrong in your claims that nobody wants to be anonymous. Some of us are punished for our points of view and very much want to remain anonymous, using it as a place to vent frustrations with no repercussions.
I would go as far as to say that your comment is a prime example of toxicity on the web given you assume (wrongly) that everybody hates Trump and therefore it is ok to step on the thoughts and beliefs of 1/2 of the country
This is not an answer but on a similar note, has anyone watched the latest Joe Rogan Experience with Daryl Davis. He is a black man who convinced Klan Members to leave the KKK. Amazing podcast. Maybe the only way to stop toxicity/polarity is to show real conversations with real people.
Successful persuasion stories are always interesting to me, but at over 2.5 hours I'm unlikely to watch this whole thing. Can you please list some key takeaways? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGTQ0Wj6yIg
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Unfortunately, I don't think it's as simple as "just go back to smaller groups". For companies, more users = more revenue, there isn't realy much incentive to not try and pull in as many people as possible. And then for most normal users, if they here about some big site, they're inclined to join that so they don't miss out on the the funny tik tok memes/all of their friends being on instagram/etc. For them, what ben…
...it doesn't need to be a huge company (or company of any kind) to run these things. Back in the early 2000s, a volunteer who knew about computers would set up phpBB on a church's website, or a radio station would allow one IT person to spend half their time maintaining something like this, and that would be it. No need to turn millions in advertising dollars to have an online community. I do agree with the parent c…
I don't know if I know the solution, but I know one thing that isn't the solution: silencing everyone who disagrees with you. A lot of the people complaining about "toxicity" on the internet seem to be under the impression that if we "deplatform" the so-called toxic people, that will fix things. But on the contrary, that makes things worse. If someone says something awful on the internet, and everyone either ignores…
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 referenc…
I think some radio shows etc have greater ability to be polarizing with this out of the way, and our respective bubbles freer from outside disturbance.
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No, the desire to correct other people who are wrong is the fundamental impulse of pedantry. The desire to compel others to conform to one’s ideal of correctness is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism. ...but also libertarianism, for a particular aspect of correctness.
Huh? Can you explain? My understanding is that the core value / principle of libertarianism is individual liberty. How do you derive compelling others from that?
Yes, and libertarians tend to hold that it is right and proper (and even often define “violence” to exclude this use of force) to use any degree of force necessary to get others to observe the individual liberties libertarians see as essential.
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You keep talking about "non-extremists" but you are not telling us what you mean by that.
I don't want to get political, but do you think Joe Rogan is an extremist? Jeanine Cummins? What about Ben Shapiro? These are people that the MSM is trying to cancel quite literally right now.