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

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

#781

Post by otakucode »

lovemenot wrote: post #771
otakucode wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a confluence of factors, but primarily it has become much more visible due to the rise of social media. And by that I specifically mean that social media enabled far more people to actively contribute and communicate online to wider audiences than previously. Most of the people communicating undesirable ideas have not formed them recently. They have held them and repeated them very often, they simply ha…

>> Human beings have a natural tendency to wish to categorize things in a binary manner... Assume you're human too. You've illustrated your point, whilst stating it. My comment is flippant. Sorry for that. Important thing I wanted to say is: not all humans conform to that pattern. Indeed, many entire cultures do not. Including the majority of people in the place where I live now. I suggest you get out more. You may f…

I suffer no illusions that I am myself immune to any of the common pitfalls of being human. I imagine if you shared where you live now, either your community has learned to resist the tendency I describe (which I am guessing you misunderstood, that may be mostly my fault as I didn't go very deeply into it) or else they simply express it in different areas, perhaps demonizing the microwaves of wifi or the evils of certain chemical compounds and their tendency to give people 'unearned' happiness, etc.

I am curious, though... how is saying that humans have a certain tendency an illustration of categorizing things in a binary manner?

I would suggest you make fewer assumptions about the people you're having discussions with. You don't seem to be skilled at sussing out at least my own background. And of course the world is 'less fully specified than [I] imagine' or how you believe I imagine it. That's one of the reasons I studied philosophy, and why I continue to study different cultures, history, and current events. Even the most primitive cultures center their thinking around categorizing things, and they begin with two categories, then split them from there. It's practically the essence of human reason and even pattern recognition.

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

#782

Post by AgentME »

krick wrote: post #319

There is nothing to fix, except for the attitude of those who think there is something to be fixed, because essentially it's they who demand something unreasonable: censoring of the free speech. It is unreasonable, because that assumes somebody (the person or group, who "fixes" the problem) can and must decide, what is good and bad in regards of what you are saying. And unless this person is you, you always will be d…

I find such blanket statements against censorship perplexing on a heavily moderated site like this. If someone replied to this post in a very toxic way -- say they got mad at an argument of yours, and posted embarrassing personal info about you to make you look bad, or they very uncharitably and purposefully misinterpreted something in your post to mean that you were a pedophile and then they posted contact info of your co-workers' families so others could warn them -- would you complain if a moderator or even some kind of system on this site applied some degree of censorship so that the reply wouldn't be displayed prominently?

(Yes, I'm counting the fact that this site has a downvote button which lowers/obscures/hides posts as a censorship system. That system exists in the first place not only to raise good posts, but also to try to solve the problem of bad posts by slightly censoring them or more.)

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

#783

Post by toyg »

rayuela wrote: post #51

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…

I would honestly struggle to do that. When one side of the argument is effectively arguing for my own removal / loss of rights / loss of dignity, I don’t see how I can have a dialogue with them about anything, since they clearly see me as inferior / unworthy.

Brexit effectively ruined a few experiences for me, like pycon UK, and I’m really not looking forward to picking them back up or risk being in that position again, sorry. I respect everyone’s opinion until it starts making me an unperson, there I draw a line.

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

#784

Post by fuzzfactor »

eqdw wrote: post #274

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…

It's been said many times, _you can't change human nature_.

Seems like it's really "inhuman nature" that would need to stop.

In the wider world man's inhumanity to man has always been a prominent factor, and appears to have been on the increase in recent decades as the world grows.

There is also the possibility that this is a destructive reversal.

Regardless, In online areas where polarization/toxicity has not been traditionally represented, mainstream influence would require the web negativity to increase at a faster rate than the mainstream in order to catch up and eventually equalize.

The more the rest of the world catches up with the web, the more the web catches up with the rest of the world.

The web just seems like it's getting worse faster than the rest of the world because it actually is.

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

#786

Post by snthd »

eqdw wrote: post #274

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…

> Frequently, when I try to bring this up, the cause is waved away with "oh they're just stupid/ignorant/angry" or some other such explanation. The current-year favourite is "they just believe fake news", and I'm sure next year there will be a political explanation, and then the year after that we'll loop back to generic ones. (The irony of denouncing other people as causing polarization "because they're just angry and stupid" is lost on most people)

I think what you're describing is attribution bias - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias

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

#788

Post by cotelletta »

scott_paul wrote: post #214

It's worse than the Eternal September. It's definitely more toxic than it's ever been, and people are definitely more polarized. The 2016 election news cycle got a lot of otherwise normal people really radicalized and hostile. Sure most of the old-timers among us remember, often fondly, the constructive insanity of usenet. And the younger generation remembers the torrent of pure id that was 4chan in the early days, a…

"The UVA rape was real" - Rolling Stone

"That ESA guy's shirt is sexist." - Too many to count

"That nobel prize winner made inappropriate jokes because one person said so and should be sacked." - The BBC

"That Covington kid is a nazi and is guilty af." - Too many again, even after contradicting material came out.

"Jussie Smolliez was nearly lynched by MAGA hats!" - A US presidential candidate.

"Zoe Quinn is a credible game developer with no track record of either scams or BPD at all, and certainly no blood on her hands." - The Guardian

None of the people behind these lies were anonymous, in fact they were quite proud they got to broadcast then.

And their audience loved being given permissable targets for their 2 minutes hate.

Almost no one wants to acknowledge that before the right radicalized online, the left radicalized both offline and on and pretended this was civilized.

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

#789

Post by singularity2001 »

Am I the only one who did NOT notice a significant increase in toxicity?

The only incident I can remember was playing a game with chat mode where kids went full scale anti-Semitic etc.

PS: I mostly avoid Facebook, reddit or wherever toxicity normally pops up

Oh I completely forgot the most toxic place on earth: stack overflow, but I completely removed any activity there almost 10 years ago

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

#790

Post by snthd »

We're evolved to be in a social environment (the physical world) that regulates our social interaction.

The internet abstracts that all away. If there are natural limits on what and how you engage with online they're vastly different.

We need to make the internet closer to what we can cope with.

From my light understanding of "non violent communication" I think the NVC creator would take the view that the internet just amplifies our existing deficiencies. I think it would be worth trying forums that impose NVC patterns; perhaps NLP could be applied to automate this?

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