91–100 of 122 posts
The internet is a voluntary vice used by some to earn a living. It's not food, shelter, clothing AND the internet. Staying away from the internet is the next health craze.
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This is exactly why I wish we'd just hire more police so the existing ones can spend a shift a week doing positive community work. Helping folks, getting to know the 'normal' folks. This is when I get to the problem: I don't know what exactly I'd ask them to do, but it would be things like: Free (or very low cost) 2-hour windows of child care on the weekends to give parents a stress break, delivering hot food to elde…
In some areas (like Sunnyvale CA) you become an Emergency Responder and can alternate from police work to fireman (or EMT) every few years. I heard it described (by someone who was a policeman at the time) as going from hero to villain and back. http://sunnyvale.ca.gov/Departments/PublicSafety/Recruiting.... I agree. I think it helps them see the people they "serve and protect" as better humans, and themselves as som…
Political censorship cleverly wrapped in a much more palatable package delivered to you for your acceptance.
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The first time I got called a "troll" because someone disagreed with my criticism of a computer program was on FidoNet. That was probably over 20 years ago. I'm not sure it's got worse intrinsically, but it has certainly got larger , so the badness has scaled along with it.
You're on to something, but even if the 'badness' on an individual basis is the same as 20 years ago, the volume has gone up more than linearly. As more people have joined and been able to find other like-minded folks, they've become emboldened to contribute more. And I don't think this has just happened in 'bad' communities - I've seen it happen in all sorts of communities - people connecting to other folks online h…
I think we'll see more stratification on the internet in the coming years with subscriptions, etc. There's probably even a market right now for a paid version of reddit or HN. The sad fact is that the internet has gradually become a shithole as the entirety of humanity has joined in. Twitter, for example, is being dragged down by low quality user accounts that add nothing but noise. It's actively hurting the stock pr…
> The sad fact is that the internet has gradually become a shithole as the entirety of humanity has joined in. In what year do you feel the Internet was better than it is now?
I have seen articles similar to this one a number of times. The thing that I wonder about is if there are certain personality types that would be less sensitive than others while still able to remain objective in terms of applying the standards. For example, would a sociopath be unaffected by the content? Just wondering if a psychological screening for the right personality type to do the job would help. BTW, thank y…
Interestingly, the rates of stress disorder in those populations that they cite in the article are kind of in the ballpark of what you see in epidemiological studies of trauma-exposed populations, like combat exposed populations, areas subject to frequent terrorism, natural disaster survivors and so forth. My impression based on what they're seeing is that it's comparable to a job with high trauma exposure rates.
It might be a prime opportunity to study trauma response and treatment, actually, in that often these things have an element of unpredictability to them. If content moderation is something that's reliably characterized by traumatic exposure, you could maybe try to study content moderators to identify predictors of and preventions for stress response.
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I would dare say nothing of worth being done stop child abuse anywhere in world would compounds the effect of being exposed.
Child advocacy groups are exasperated. The tactics that have been shown to actually help kids aren't sexy enough for law enforcement or politicians. Busting actual abusers is one bust, and its almost always of a parent or other close relative of the victim. Whereas they can get dozens of people trading pictures online in one fell swoop, and the public tends to treat that as just as useful, but research shows it just…
As a case on point, I am extremely disturbed by the way media and governments handle issues like domestic violence. 1800 respect (a government department in Australia) tried to shift the blame onto young boys in a series of heavily promoted TV commercials without any opposition from the community. When a female is caught abusing a family member (child/husband), the media's excuses flow readily "she lost her job", "she was under stress at work". The imagery on TV rarely reflect abused children, despite this being exactly what's happening across the spectrum of society. The Australian Bureau of Statistics says that about 25-33% of domestic violence victims are male (I haven't seen figures for children, but it is likely to be heavily under reported). That's a huge percentage of people who receive little or no representation by all media outlets and the government, let alone charity groups (ie. indigenous people are rarely represented, males are never represented, children are rarely represented - see the imagery as it speaks volumes).
Imagine being a young boy whose mother either mentally or physically abuses you. You turn on the TV and you only see fully grown white women who are (supposedly) the only victims. Politicians (eg. A prominent Queensland politician who should have been dismissed and charged long ago) are legislating for gendered criminal laws because fully grown white women are (supposedly) the only victims and never (supposedly) perpetrators. The people on the TV say how bad males are. The government (1800 respect) saturates TV with domestic violence ads saying "it's a boy thing". You open the newspaper and read the same message almost every week.
Even charity groups chime in. Most charity groups (about 95% of the ones I surveyed, using a public list of every charity that deals with domestic violence) won't even show images of male victims or house male victims. Some charities (like mission Australia) even go as far as to say that "men deny domestic violence happens". Which men? Where? This is almost certainly a ruse to justify almost all of their focus being on fully grown white women (even when Mission Australia say that indigenous women are 24 times more likely to be abused, they still mostly picture _white_ women as victims).
If you really want to talk about abuse and attitudes toward abuse, the problem starts at the top. Governments are prejudiced. The media is morally bankrupt. When somebody knows the government will turn a blind eye and the media will hand out a blank cheque and the courts will say "oh poor woman, she's oppressed/distressed/lost her job", you've got a complete system that's ripe to openly support child abuse.
I find some observations quite fascinating. For example, Steve Altman (Mr Y Combinator) expressed outrage because Muslims can't get on a plane. However, I am yet to see him voice outrage about domestic violence and the appalling attitudes in most media that are open for anyone to see.
The problem doesn't start with parents (although parents contribute to the problem). It starts with apathy.
I'm not under the illusion that this problem of violence and abuse is limited to one gender as that's patently not true. We need society to accept that truth and stop making excuses.
I think we'll see more stratification on the internet in the coming years with subscriptions, etc. There's probably even a market right now for a paid version of reddit or HN. The sad fact is that the internet has gradually become a shithole as the entirety of humanity has joined in. Twitter, for example, is being dragged down by low quality user accounts that add nothing but noise. It's actively hurting the stock pr…
It's comedy focused, but there's topical areas too. They remain one of the largest posting boards on the internet.