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Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

newyorker.com

251–260 of 757 posts

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We really just need better public education" I agree 100% as long as you put me, or people of my worldview, in charge of the curriculum and personnel.

We've already got people with the correct worldview in charge of curriculum and personnel. The problem is that there are still dumb-dumbs that sometimes think there are valid alternatives to our worldview. That's why we need better education.

"correct worldview".

People like you scare me.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#252
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is wildly inaccurate to call HN or Reddit “strong moderation” — the tooling alone is abysmally bad, plus Reddit can’t put the “post anything you want as long as it is not literally illegal” genie back in the bottle so easily after a decade.

I don't see the connection between the quality of the tooling and whether or not there's strong moderation. HN is pretty strongly moderated and reddit inherently allows for very strong moderation. Do you think HN is not strictly moderated or that reddit does not allow for strict moderation? I'll agree that reddit doesn't seem to expose easy to use moderating tools, though.

I feel like HN is such an echo chamber it doesn't require strong moderation.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#253
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Toxic statements = statements from a different political orientation" Wrong. Saying so is dangerously minimizing the problem.

Have you been following what’s going on in the UK with their anti-“hate” speech laws? Tweet something that someone decides is offensive to them, get a visit from the police? I’d say it’s a very rational concern that these regulations would be weaponized against “wrongthink”.

The number of actual prosecutions or even visits from the police is tiny, and when you look at the actual cases they tend to be racist death or rape threats.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#254
post #164

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 Playbo…

> 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.

Then again, these young men probably aren't paying attention to the ads (unless maybe they're porn ads!), so those subreddits aren't a target audience.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#255
post #164

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 Playbo…

That's legitimately hilarious. Thanks for sharing this tidbit.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We really just need better public education" I agree 100% as long as you put me, or people of my worldview, in charge of the curriculum and personnel.

Yes. In today's age of near-universal literacy, "uneducated" is just a euphemism for views disliked by the the side in control of the education apparatus. While thought-policing media, schools, churches, and any other possible venue of "indoctrination" may "work" to a superficial extent, it mostly just completely destroys the credibility of your authority and leads to stunning implosion and destabilization. See: the…

I understand and agree with some points of your criticism, but I disagree with the part that we can't beat undesirable views out of people. Well, we can't do it completely, but it's not a binary thing, and I believe we really can do a lot to educate people. And not a political education, but teaching them about their own biases. Teaching them to be critical, to not just ignore evidence when it goes against their views, to be fair to others, etc.

I don't know, I don't think we have actively tried yet.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN generally works very well. The echo chamber problem is due to allowing downvotes IMO. In my experience that simply leads to minority viewpoints being downvoted. Instead, downvotes should be removed, and people should be allowed to flag abusive comments.

On top of downvotes, you can say very toxic / abusive / condescending things and get away with it if you share the "correct" viewpoint, but unpopular views have to be exceptionally polite to avoid biased moderation. You can't bluntly refute or critique a questionable (but popular) argument without being accused of lacking civility...

> if you share the "correct" viewpoint, but unpopular views have to be exceptionally polite to avoid biased moderation

Where HN has been falling short (lately, in my observation) is where discussions about the ethics of certain business models get lost via the "buried" option or killed off completely.

You cannot come to HN to discuss the potentially-negative ecological or economical impact of a YC company. The voting rings will literally send your comment or post to the void: buried or killed off completely. HN does still post lots of interesting links, but for truly interesting discussion that isn't (for lack of a better word), tainted by bias, I prefer Reddit these days.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#258
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…

>Thoughts?

Imagine a blank graph. Randomly place 1 million circles on it. No two with identical boundaries. This is our hypothetical Venn diagram of people's preferences for how communication happens online. Drop another million circles to represent how those people will actually act online.

It doesn't matter what points on the graph are labeled "toxicity," "echo chamber," "uncomfortably friendly," or "sparse comments, experts only." It only matter's that the circles are not all identical.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It's the same sort of myth as "why are manhole covers round?" and there are lots of attributions for why that ignore history for a just-so story.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#260
You are making the problem seem worse than it actually is. Account age and inability to delete comments make an anonymous reputation pretty realistic on HN at least. Just in this thread we see examples of toxic comments being downvoted into invisibility (oblivion).

Or is the problem that /r/the_donald exists? Just don't go there if you don't like it. And don't go to /r/trees if you don't like marijuana.

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