41–50 of 757 posts
The only way to detoxify the internet, is to get rid of the "social" aspect. Starting with gasp comments. My online experience has been that much better, since adding comment blockers to my browser.
It's not that the "trolls are winning", it's that people are allowing the trolls to bother them. Trolls have always existed; it's our heightened sensitivity and inability to just shrug them off or laugh in the face of their obscenity that's letting them "win".
No, trolls have not existed in the form they exist since the emergence of the internet. Self-censorship is a wonderful thing. And the way it works is: you say dumb things (especially as a kid), you get slapped by your parents/friends/people around you. By age 18 or 21, you know instinctively that what you can and cannot say around other folks. At least the vast majority of folks do. On the internet however, there's n…
It's a decentralized solution to a decentralized problem.
I am coming to think nested intranets and special purpose vpns might be a good approach to global commerce and expression. I love building massive scale no touch systems, but they’re never that perfect once they start being used. Eg. Usually you end up with more severe and harder to solve issues with one massive db vs. smaller systems with derived data and links. And on the FE a lot of hard problems go away, beyond i18n etc also cyber bullying etc become tractable.
Reddit used to be a place where you could post links to anything on the internet (kind of like this place) and comment on it (without signing up with your email). Now it's place more like Facebook with algorithms based on your personal taste, geolocation, forced email, shadow banning, banning of politically incorrect subreddits, endless political posts and "Futurology" and "Uplifting" news articles. Free speech on re…
In an age where any opposing opinions are consider "toxic" by some, I don't think trying to "detoxify" should be a goal. If you don't like the opinions of a subreddit, don't go to that one.
As long as there are no consequences to being a dick to people over the internet, "toxic internet" is here to stay.
More concerning is the large scale propaganda and marketing.
- Real identities (Facebook comments)
- Voting and self moderation (Reddit, HN, etc.)
- Strong moderation (Reddit, HN)
They all result in toxic comments, trolling, an echo chamber,or worse, a complete lack of participation. There's no real solution to this problem. However, if you create consequences or a cost to commenting you'd eliminate toxic comments and trolling at the cost of less participation and an echo chamber (though, you could argue that not all participation is equal and you're mainly removing poor participants).
There's no perfect way to do this because even if you made a subscription necessary, for instance, you may just create an echo chamber. As part of the solution you'd need to prevent the creation of new accounts to circumvent any punishment received.
I'd say the most straightforward solution is that you have a forum and you get an account. Physical mail is sent to your house in order to get a single account. Then, regular moderation practices would be taken seriously as there's no way to create another. The community would be left with those who care enough to not be banned. The problem is that the moderators themselves may be corrupt or wrong.
Thoughts?
It's not that the "trolls are winning", it's that people are allowing the trolls to bother them. Trolls have always existed; it's our heightened sensitivity and inability to just shrug them off or laugh in the face of their obscenity that's letting them "win".
Trying to get everyone to not be bothered by trolls is a massive and neverending undertaking.
That goes double when it’s two clicks to permanently dismiss someone from your attention. The best troll repellant is and always has been to ignore them.
Social media sites are learning the hard way that they're media properties like any other media property, and that they have to have strong editorial control over their media property to be a proper media business. Reddit is a hive of working-class populism, which is incompatible with any advertising-oriented business. Advertisers don't want their ads next to shitty toxic content. They want their ads next to elite, w…
Reddit initially rose to prominence because of bad decisions on Digg's part. Reddit is nothing without its users. Any decision that potentially drives users off its platform can't be made lightly.
A fashion magazine only has 1 million subscribers, but can make $400 million/year in revenue, basically printing money.
Reddit used to be a place where you could post links to anything on the internet (kind of like this place) and comment on it (without signing up with your email). Now it's place more like Facebook with algorithms based on your personal taste, geolocation, forced email, shadow banning, banning of politically incorrect subreddits, endless political posts and "Futurology" and "Uplifting" news articles. Free speech on re…
There's no money to be made with that.
HackerNews is different cause it's just a funnel and an online play ground for folks at YC. The day they decide that the signal to noise ratio has decreased past their threshold, this place will be gone faster than the Arc server can shut down.