Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#161

Post by majos » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

mozumder wrote: post #49

xenihn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a media business, they can be a lot more profitable with fewer high-quality users than hordes of low-quality toxic users. A fashion magazine only has 1 million subscribers, but can make $400 million/year in revenue, basically printing money.

What fashion magazine does this?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#162

Post by timcederman » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

gdubs wrote: post #150

We tend to think we’re more in control of our behavior than we actually are. That is, our brains are operating from habit a large amount of the time, and the idea of the CEO brain consciously deciding our every action is largely an illusion. This is why emergency exit doors must open outwards. People have died in fires in theaters trying to push on doors that said “Pull”. The crash bar on an emergency exit door is wh…

Actually, it's designed to open outwards because when there's a crush of people, there's no room for the door to open inwards.

Also, affordances aren't to support habit or unconscious behavior. Affordances are to imply meaning or how to use something by their design (whether digital or physical).

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#163

Post by s73v3r_ » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #84

Would it be sufficient for every user to just have client side configurable filters? Or is this movement more about denying "toxic" people a platform to begin with? If it's the latter case, I can't get behind it. Free speech means everyone should have a platform to speak. As society transitions away from using our mouths to using our keyboards, the first amendment implies that speech should be protected on the common…

Filters can work after the fact, but they don't prevent a lot of it to start.

As for "toxic", the article is referring to things like /r/CoonTown, or brigades like the one that went after Leslie Jones on Twitter a number of years ago. The people behind those already have a platform to speak: The Internet. They're not entitled to space on another platform like Reddit or Twitter, and they're not entitled to force their speech in front of someone else's face.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#164

Post by VLM » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

For, uh, purely scientific purposes I've noticed the posting volume on pr0n subreddits like /r/gonewild and uh, a few dozen similar subreddits, is perhaps 100 to 1000 times the sheer posting volume of a controversial subreddit like /r/the_donald. The sheer volume of relatively R rated pr0n is perhaps 1000 times the volume of everything else.

There seems to be tap dancing around the issue that reddit is a 1960s Playboy magazine fifty years in the future. There's just enough excellent articles to keep the advertisers amused, but the fact has to be faced that 99% of the traffic is young men looking at scantily dressed young women. You need a little submarine PR to stay controversial about subreddits nobody on a statistical basis reads to keep things legit appearing, whereas all the traffic and money is over there at /r/randomsexiness

Just like the old saying about Playboy, I only read it for r/ama not the nekkid ladies.

I'm not complaining; I'm just pointing out that reddit is THE most successful pr0n site out there with the most brilliant strategy I've ever seen. Please don't confuse it, and its achievements within the pr0n industry, with legacy news media or anything like that.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#165

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

rexpop wrote: post #116

branchless wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite correct. We've tried: - Real identities (Facebook comments) - Voting and self moderation (Reddit, HN, etc.) - Strong moderation (Reddit, HN) All within the context of rampant financialisation, land policies returning us to feudalism and continuous lying about the banking bailout including removing the one candidate who was going to take on the banks (Bernie). Maybe it's not "the internet" that's the problem…

How can I read up on these land policies?

Here's what I know or believe I know about feudalism. It's almost entirely from the book https://www.amazon.com/Pre-Industrial-Societies-Anatomy-Pre-... , which while excellent does not deal with feudalism in any depth.

- European feudalism was an unusual system in that the government had no taxing power. The lord who owned land held the taxing power ("feudal dues") over that land, and the king funded himself by collecting feudal dues from land he owned personally, rather than e.g. by taxing the dukes. This might contrast with a more advanced state of civilization in which the caliph / emperor / whatever collected taxes directly from everywhere by virtue of being the supreme ruler, and paid a salary to his lower administrative functionaries. Or it might contrast with a system where the use of land wasn't much of a source of taxes. Or both of those latter things might be true simultaneously.

The US system of property taxes has a lot in common with the system I've described above, and some obvious differences. Similarities:

- The federal government ("king") can't assess property taxes. Only the states ("local lords") can do that.

- People other than the government cannot own land outright, but must pay the property tax ("feudal dues") for its use every year.

Of course, rather than the federal government receiving tax income based on federally owned land, it instead double-taxes the citizens of the states. (But on mercantile revenue rather than on land.) This is arguably worse than the feudal system.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#166

Post by prepend » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

knodi123 wrote: post #152

losteric wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really just need better public education, as well as clearer separation between information and entertainment. Facebook/Reddit/Twitter/etc promote a regression towards the mean understanding... viral content reflects and amplifies the "average user's" sentiment and values. Acceptable for entertainment, but inherently prone to misinformation, propaganda, and demagoguery. Education requires valuing subject matter ex…

> .../Reddit/... promote a regression towards the mean understanding... viral content reflects and amplifies the "average user's" sentiment and values Comparing the experience in a niche subreddit, vs. a default subreddit, it's clear that the real problem is allowing causals in. If people have to go out of their way to participate, you wind up with only the ones who care to do so. And they have, in their reputation,…

I’ve witnessed this in well-meaning subredddits. Lots of arcane rules for posting. No warn band and removals mean I don’t try again.

On the subreddits I manage, I allow broad participation with no barriers. But they aren’t popular enough to have enough trolling to break me down and add hoops.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#167

Post by randyrand » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

jimhefferon wrote: post #125

randyrand wrote: post #80

Does detoxify mean getting rid of mean speech?

A few minutes reading /r/The_Donald shows that there is a vast difference between saying "that guy on the internet hurt my feelings" and "this is a threat to civil society."

So what does detoxify mean exactly?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#168

Post by piptastic » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

InvisibleCities wrote: post #159

gdubs wrote: post #150

We tend to think we’re more in control of our behavior than we actually are. That is, our brains are operating from habit a large amount of the time, and the idea of the CEO brain consciously deciding our every action is largely an illusion. This is why emergency exit doors must open outwards. People have died in fires in theaters trying to push on doors that said “Pull”. The crash bar on an emergency exit door is wh…

>This is why emergency exit doors must open outwards. People have died in fires in theaters trying to push on doors that said “Pull”. The crash bar on an emergency exit door is what’s known in design as an affordance. Is this true? I always assumed it was because it's pretty much impossible to pull open a door when you are being crushed by people pressing against one another trying to escape.

I think it's true to some degree, I've seen people push on doors that say "pull" even when there is no fire.

But I think your assumption is probably more correct, past a certain point they have no option to pull anymore.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#169

Post by gknoy » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

keepper wrote: post #117

_m8fo wrote: post #46

So we've tried: - 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…

We haven't really tried "real identities". We've come close. Real identities would require verification, which sites like FB only do after the fact. I fear that a huge repercussion of the election issues is that we will get there. A real ID may be required for you to post comments in all websites. And i'm not sure how I feel about that. Reality is that it would drastically reduce comment trolling, if your real identi…

> A real ID may be required for you to post comments in all websites. [I]t would drastically reduce comment trolling, if your real identify was viewable and searchable by all you know. But at what cost?

The cost is that it would prevent people from anonymously reporting abuses, which means that fear of retaliation will have a chilling effect. We've already seen this where people get death threats, houses burned down, etc, when they do things like report sexual assault.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#170

Post by aje403 » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:46 PM UTC

wufufufu wrote: post #158

aje403 wrote: post #141

Most people are idiots. Consider that half of the population (hypothetically) has less than a 100 IQ score. Idiots did different things together 100 years ago and, 1000 years before that, groups of idiots would get together to raid and rape and pillage. They still do that in other places in the world. Now they come onto the internet to send hateful things and porn to one another. Most of the biggest idiots do not go…

"Since the early 20th century, raw scores on IQ tests have increased in most parts of the world. When a new version of an IQ test is normed, the standard scoring is set so performance at the population median results in a score of IQ 100. The phenomenon of rising raw score performance means if test-takers are scored by a constant standard scoring rule, IQ test scores have been rising at an average rate of around thre…

I suspected that I shouldn't have put that into my post or should have qualified it with a statement regarding how completely useless of a metric it is. My general point was that probably around half of the planet is humping a tree as we type at our computer and pontificate about the human potential and dignity, regardless of a useless score that slightly correlates with things.