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Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

theguardian.com

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Re: Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

#21

Post by douche »

FilterSweep wrote: post #12
thex10 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we jumping to the conclusion that the whole internet would follow the same rules though? I imagine some sites would want to cultivate certain kinds of humor (it might allow abuse, but at least not everyone's walking on eggshells), and others don't (and would rather enforce some rules in the hopes of cultivating an abuse-minimized environment). Why wouldn't each individual service be able to make its own trade…

>Back in the day they had to close their eyes and ignore. Now in the day they craft software that ignores and filters out toxic behavior before it even gets to their eyes. ;) You think we're regressing? Yes, I do. Software could have been, and always can be, improved at the "regex level" (finding bad worse, slanderous words, etc.) but the money is now in catering an experience to where things one simply disagrees wit…

I sort of miss the old days of the "clbuttic" obscenity filters you found on so many message boards...

Re: Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

#22

Post by sliverstorm »

FilterSweep wrote: post #3

I had considered a much longer criticism of this article, but I soon realized that there was no sense in complaining about a service which is no longer " ours ." The internet of today (Internet 2.x), is little more than an advertising space , a vehicle through which users mistakenly approach as an encyclopedia housing the world's information, while in actuality, the user is product. So I'll just touch on one point in…

Back in the "good old days" During the 90's and the 00's, the onus was on the user his-or-herself to ignore and filter out toxic behavior.

Which is exactly why I lament the proliferation of spam filters. The onus is on you to ignore and filter spam.

My (snarky) point is that as the internet grows, toxic behavior also grows. The proportion might not have changed, but toxic people tend to be very assertive about it, and you can wind up utterly awash in it. Much like spam.

Re: Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

#23

Post by dang »

dominotw wrote: post #17
unics wrote: post #2

Censoring the internet, what could go wrong?

HN routinely censors articles critical of their own startups. Yet you are here.

Completely false. We routinely don't do that. I've posted about this many times.

Re: Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

#24

Post by dominotw »

dang wrote: post #23
dominotw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN routinely censors articles critical of their own startups. Yet you are here.

Completely false. We routinely don't do that. I've posted about this many times.

Do know why 'AirBnb' was removed from the title ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763732

Re: Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

#25

Post by adiabatty »

pjc50 wrote: post #20
FilterSweep wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard worse from a pull request on an open source project.

That's not great though, is it? Do you think this might discourage people who don't like death threats from getting involved in open source?

That's the risk of putting yourself out there on the Internet — someone might threaten to kill you/rape you/make you unemployable.

I tend to keep a low profile for this reason.

That said, what's p(murdered and/or raped by someone who sent you a murder and/or rape threat|got sent a murder and/or rape threat while contributing to an open source project)? How does it compare to p(raped and/or murdered)?

My hunch is that people who get sent these things don't get any physical harm from the people who send them. Psychological harm is another matter, but if people can recognize bluster for what it is, we'd all be better off, especially the death-threat recipients.

(In case you're wondering, I already have persistent stalkers with subordinates. Mine are the reason why I never had a public Twitter account back when I used the service. I also take other measures to minimize my exposure to both rage-filled randos and the long-term creeps.)

Re: Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

#26

Post by sillysaurus3 »

dominotw wrote: post #24
dang wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely false. We routinely don't do that. I've posted about this many times.

Do know why 'AirBnb' was removed from the title ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763732

http://hnrankings.info/10763732/

If any censorship was going on, it would have fallen off the front page. As it stands, it stayed above #10 for 16 solid hours.

The title was edited to remove clickbait.

Re: Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

#27

Post by anon4 »

benten10 wrote: post #11
unics wrote: post #2

Censoring the internet, what could go wrong?

>>You f\ king w\ \ re, I'm going to ra\ e you, and kill your family and pet, and tort\* you till you beg for mercy, and I'm going to feed your pieces to your dogs, if you dare talk anything on this issue again. As you see, this works both ways. Above, it should have been clear I was clearly using threatening language for elucidation process. And yet, something _must_ have 'jumped' in you. Even if a little bit. Even a…

Wao. Much hate. Such speech.

I mean, the threat is empty because there are no people like that. Everybody hates and everybody has some choice words to say in moments of anger but nobody will just go out and hurt another over a few words on the internet. And if you would, you're an unstable inhuman psychopath who can no longer be considered a person. You would have gone and killed people no matter what age you live in and no matter what words are said to you, because you are fundamentally not a person. Animals like you are why the second amendment exists.

In closing, What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo

Re: Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

#28

Post by adiabatty »

anon4 wrote: post #27
benten10 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>You f\ king w\ \ re, I'm going to ra\ e you, and kill your family and pet, and tort\* you till you beg for mercy, and I'm going to feed your pieces to your dogs, if you dare talk anything on this issue again. As you see, this works both ways. Above, it should have been clear I was clearly using threatening language for elucidation process. And yet, something _must_ have 'jumped' in you. Even if a little bit. Even a…

Wao. Much hate. Such speech. I mean, the threat is empty because there are no people like that. Everybody hates and everybody has some choice words to say in moments of anger but nobody will just go out and hurt another over a few words on the internet. And if you would, you're an unstable inhuman psychopath who can no longer be considered a person. You would have gone and killed people no matter what age you live in…

For the uninitiated: the last paragraph of the parent post is a fairly old copypasta (chunk of text that gets copied and pasted into different places).

The substantive — or at least original — portion of the comment is in the first two paragraphs.

Re: Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

#29

Post by dang »

Nadya wrote: post #18

Correction. If you're a lying, abusive, or manipulative woman on Twitter you'll get drowned in "harassment" (a redefining of the word "disagreement") . Then you can turn around and pretend to be the victim because of your gender and/or sexual identity and useful idiots will lap it up and defend you. Regardless if you're a known pedophile, a spouse beater, a harasser from the Something Awful forums, or known scam-arti…

Please stop turning HN threads into the same old tedious flamewars. This site is for conversation, not pre-recorded rants.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11184341 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour

#30

Post by dang »

dominotw wrote: post #24
dang wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely false. We routinely don't do that. I've posted about this many times.

Do know why 'AirBnb' was removed from the title ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763732

I think we thought that bit was linkbait. We routinely take out baity "you" phrases from titles. The story itself stayed on the front page, as you pointed out at the time. There have been many negative Airbnb stories on the front page of HN—indeed there was one today.

FWIW, "don't censor stories for being negative about a YC startup" is literally the #1 rule of HN moderation: it's the first thing PG said to me when showing me how to moderate HN. I don't even think I had time to sit down before he said it.

That doesn't mean we don't moderate such stories; we may, if they break the HN guidelines (such as by being linkbaity). It means that we consciously moderate them less than we normally would, and we're pretty meticulous about it.

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