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

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#171

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

ASalazarMX wrote: post #54

overcast wrote: post #2

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.

Reddit has a large user base and a myriad of subreddits where different solutions have been tried. So far, the best I've seen is strong moderation: clear rules and swift enforcement. AskScience is a shining example of a high quality subreddit, although the comment section usually looks like a graveyard with 90% of the comments removed.

> clear rules and swift enforcement.

But then somehow a few "bad guys" get to become moderators and everything goes back to s*it. As someone has said above, it's all about the incentives. No-one has enough reasons or available resources to want to take over an obscure sub-reddit with almost no real-world influence, but when there are State actors involved you can be sure that things will turn sour. My most recent such experience is with /r/syriancivilwar, which used to be decent enough two or three years ago (even if some of the posters had actual ISIS flares), but since the troups-on-the-ground involvement of both Russia and Turkey the sub-reddit has become an echo chamber for those interests.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#172

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #77

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your suggestion would lead to an echo chamber. Take a look at metafilter and how samey they've gotten. One thing to remember is that even small barriers implicity give mods much more power.

Within a narrow community, a little bit of "echo chamber" is worth the quality of commenting online. I'd rather get downvoted a little and have to debate my minority opinion than it be drowned out with spam and bots here.

Well your comment presupposes you can trade between a little echo chamber for a lot of spam. Sure, but my comment is more about moving beyond pure spam to stuff like trolling - call it low-level bad-faith behavior. I'm okay with some of that in exchange for a community which is a bit more diverse.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#173

Post by s73v3r_ » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #80

Does detoxify mean getting rid of mean speech?

There was a post on /r/The_Donald not long ago calling for shooting all refuges in the US on sight. Do you feel that is just "mean speech"?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#174

Post by oreo81 » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

favorited wrote: post #62

wnevets wrote: post #47

Reddit has zero problem leaving post that threaten the lives of an entire religious group on their frontpage. If they were serious certain subs would be nuked.

Yeah – until it affects their PR or advertising, they don't care. There are some vile, disgusting subs out there.

People might think the subs that you frequent are vile and disgusting. Which is fine, they don't have to go there, just like you don't have visit the subs that you don't like. Just because you consider them vile and disgusting doesn't mean you get to decide that for other people.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#175

Post by aje403 » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

rexpop wrote: post #153

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…

The human brain is a fantastic computer. Most people are geniuses, constantly crunching stochastic phenomenal trajectories, and navigating ever-changing real and virtual terrains. The problem isn't how smart we are, but on what we focus.

Great point. Then perhaps we should aspire to be like gorillas, instead. Instantaneous, implicit martingales and brownian motion calculation in their minds subconsciously, exactly like us, except, they don't shitpost on the reddit.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#176

Post by s73v3r_ » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:50 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #81

ssully wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is bullshit. Trolls have always existed, but shrugging them off was never a solution. In message boards I used to frequent trolls were suspended without question and banned for repeat offenses. Now when trolls get banned there is an out cry from the troll and those in line with them about censorship and violation of their free speech. The problem is trolls are given too much room to play and speak.

The conflict is that reddit originally touted itself as a meta-community, where such moderation was applied per-subreddit . If you didn't like the topics/policies of one community, then start another right alongside. But the desire of investors for widespread palatability and the media's latest push for censorship have perverted the site into creating unified "community standards", across what should be considered in…

The other problem is that several subreddits were known to "leak," where the subscribers to some subreddits would go out and spread that kind of thing across the rest of the site. If the racist content stays in their subreddits, it's still terrible that it's there, but at least it can be firewalled off. But when the users of those subreddits start spreading that content through the rest of the site, it's much more difficult to avoid it.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#177

Post by s73v3r_ » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

ScipioAfricanus wrote: post #26

salvar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the old "We just need to change human behaviour" solution. Yeah, that would definitely work if it worked.

No one needs to change anything. The internet existed for years without this being an issue. If you encounter someone on the internet who is annoying you, most platforms give you the option to block them. You do that, then move on with your life. It's not hard.

And how do you do that when they come at you by the thousands?

And do so in a way that doesn't boil down to a blame the victim solution of simply leaving the platform?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#178

Post by Angostura » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:51 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.

Don’t worry about that. Just retweet it as a fact, pronto.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#179

Post by notatoad » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC

_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…

The only real consistency i've seen between toxic communities and healthy ones is size. When you try to call 100k people a "community", it's a bad community where the toxic people have a louder voice than the good ones. If the community is a core group of The only way i see to save reddit is to set a maximum size for a subreddit, and shut down or otherwise isolate every subreddit that grows bigger than the maximum threshold.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#180

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:52 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…

[deleted]