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Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

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Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#291

Post by at-fates-hands »

Since the dawn of social media, as an anthropologist, I find the way it has evolved to be incredibly fascinating.

The original point of social media was to bring people together and build communities. Now, more than a decade removed from it's inception, it is doing the exact opposite. It's tearing people's communities apart, making people more polarized, and driving huge wedges into the very foundation of this country.

And yet, with all the privacy concerns, people continue to use it more and more, seemingly unaware of the consequences of doing so. It's like a train wreck you see coming a mile away. Yet you continue to stare, thinking or hoping its going to get better.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#292

Post by sf_rob »

munificent wrote: post #235
gricardo99 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m amazed at how much trolling there is on Nextdoor. It’s not hate speech level, and most posts seem pretty cordial but considering the community venue aspect I’m just floored at how reflexively shitty people can be the minute there’s a divergence of opinions.

Yeah, Nextdoor is astonishingly vile given the non-zero chance of actually running into one of your fellow members at the grocery store. My hypothesis is that Nextdoor primarily appeals to those who already have that kind of territorial "they're all out to get us" mindset since territoriality is literally what the app is about. It's the angry "get off my lawn" old man of social networks and it attracts exactly those…

It's a virtual home owners association in my experience.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#293

Post by mulmen »

enraged_camel wrote: post #267
Tiktaalik wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is not actually strong moderation. Forum communities with actual strong moderation, eg. Something Awful, ResetEra have near zero issues with hate speech, Nazis and other things that reddit has let fester.

I'm a regular on Something Awful. One of the major factors that keeps it relatively clean is that user registration costs $10. That's a strong financial disincentive against trolling, bots, etc. I really believe that successful online communities of the future will have paid signups.

I believe you are correct. If I pay for something that suggests I am the customer and not the product.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#294

Post by cookiecaper »

bllguo wrote: post #283
cookiecaper wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Being able to distinguish fact from fiction is not a skill that is near universal, and it should be. Seems like a straw man to attack "thought policing" and "indoctrination." We're talking about critical thinking and logical reasoning.

This argument is completely disingenuous. Your average person is capable of critical thinking and logical reasoning -- those who aren't are either wards under the care of another person. Normal people just think logically and critically in reference to local optima, and that's not something that we can or should try to program out of them.

That quality is also known as adaptability and it's crucial to successful survival and prosperity, for exactly the same reason that it's useful in mathematics: global optima are generally difficult to deduce, if they can be conclusively and authoritatively determined at all.

Saying Side X is "not being logical" or "can't think critically" is virtually always just a cop-out. It says you either a) don't understand or b) don't want to admit the validity of some of their concerns.

Most of the time when the other side's argument is understood, the disagreements are a matter of priority and/or credibility, not nonsensical thinking. And those priorities are usually determined intrinsically; values as such can't really be programmed or taught. They're the result of the years of experience each individual has endured in the real world.

A good example of this is that many engineers are known for a just-the-facts, no-frills approach. This is because engineers tend to prioritize facts and correctness over aesthetic and emotional value. Other people who don't do this aren't objectively wrong -- they just put different weights on the considerations, leading them to different conclusions.

Another example is outlet credibility. Your average Fox News viewer may believe that MSNBC is propaganda secretly dictated by the shadowy figures in the background, and vice versa. If you believe this, the logical conclusion is to dismiss or at least discount the perspective of the propagandist.

You cannot "prove" that one side is propaganda and the other side isn't, because it is impossible to definitely deduce the intentions and motives of other people. Reports that say reports from MSNBC were more frequently errant are of no value because you can just say "Oh yeah, says who? The same shadowy figures?" to that.

It is important to understand that humans hold a variety of totally non-falsifiable beliefs -- things that cannot be definitively proven one way or the other, even if you try, like the state of mind of the speakers we're around. These have to be approached from the subterranean to be understood, let alone addressed.

All we can do is understand that our own perspective is not the default or de-facto correct one, and that other people are entitled to their own assumptions and unfalsifiable opinions just as we are. They're entitled to their own credibility heuristics and decisions about who is worth trusting. People are free to make their own decisions and conclusions, whether we agree with them or not.

Understanding that is critical to learning that it's OK to disagree with people, without having to pretend that they're insane just to preserve your own ego and self-worth.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#295

Post by bluGill »

mulmen wrote: post #272
KirinDave wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand the reference. Why are manhole covers round? I always thought it was to prevent the cover from falling into the hole. Is that not the case?

They are only round when they cover a round hole. I've seen a number of covers that are other shapes, often square.

There are engineering reasons to prefer a round hole, but there are sometimes other considerations which push a different shape.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#296

Post by Balgair »

nooron wrote: post #196
Balgair wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relate 'karma' to the ability to post at all? More karma, more posting; less karma, less posting. Everyone starts every month/week/day with only so much, no roll-over per timeframe. Modify it so that 'popular' threads cost more to post in. You can give karma to others too via the upvote and take it away with a downvote, but still no roll-over. Troll/shill accounts would still get upped around en masse , but less so a…

The NRA has its own social network where users must perform certain tasks before the user can post or comment. You have to tweet at your legislator or share things to your personal Facebook in order to show fealty to the community, in order to get enough karma to talk to others in it. If you're curious: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-01/the-nra-h...

Jesus, that is effective.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#297

Post by InclinedPlane »

wufufufu wrote: post #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.

The problem is that reddit is one site. You can live in other "neighborhoods" on reddit that are not /r/the_donald, but you are still forced to live in the same city. That means people from there will show up in all of the other sub-reddits, voting and commenting away and twisting every single part of the site to be what they want. It's exhausting to put up with, and if you don't notice it then count yourself lucky. There are many regional city/state/province sub-reddits that have come under concerted "attacks" by /r/the_donald posters. Folks from there will re-post links (or share via chat) to "controversial" posts in other sub-reddits to coordinate brigading, for example.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#298

Post by Balgair »

nicolashahn wrote: post #108
Balgair wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relate 'karma' to the ability to post at all? More karma, more posting; less karma, less posting. Everyone starts every month/week/day with only so much, no roll-over per timeframe. Modify it so that 'popular' threads cost more to post in. You can give karma to others too via the upvote and take it away with a downvote, but still no roll-over. Troll/shill accounts would still get upped around en masse , but less so a…

Are you saying this would create less of an echo chamber?

I'd think so. More popular threads would 'cost' more to post in and there would then be less posters in it as a result. 'Brigading' would be difficult.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#299

Post by dalbasal »

With the benefit of hindsight, I think “free-form platforms” like reddit or youtube may be the road to mediocrity.

Youtube is still the major player even though twitter, Facebook & netflix grew around them. It is less opinionated on how video should be consumed. Less opinionated on what should be consumed. Anyone can post. Anyone can see it.

Problem is, youtube doesn’t really have a purpose that it is trying to serve. At least not an obvious one. It has a lot of content. It’s searchable (I hate that the web is no longer searchable..). It’s the obvious place to put stuff. It’s everywhere. But…

The platform does not distinguish between the lazy mashup with a clickbait headline and the youtuber making original content for people who would really miss it, and could not get it anywhere else. No preference. No values. No taste. No goal. Just views. One content is as good as the next. Monetisation reinforced this, as did the partial rollback.

Go to the youtube homepage now. Is the content good? Read the comments. If the conversation interesting?

In the middle is Facebook. It started off highly opinionated. Use real names (big deal at the time). Connect to your real friends. Watch their videos and read their posts.

Over time though, Facebook has lost opinions. Stuff is stuff. Views, likes, pokes, plays and comments. Features that get users doing more stuff, they win. This caused their political pickle. Political baiting gets lots of views, likes, pokes, plays and comments. So, as they “optimized” for more stuff, that’s the stuff they got.

On the other end of the spectrum are wikipedia and stack overflow (for example). Highly opinionated. Wikipedia is for XYZ. Stackoverflow is for ABC. If you want something else, go someplace else.

HN is opinionated too. It takes effort to avoid comment threads full of bullbaiting an even more to avoid a flood of one liners.

So Reddit… Reddit did avoid uniformity, that’s a nice way of putting it. It has values. It has things (e.g. censorship) that it does not want to do. But, I feel it still lacks purpose. What does Reddit actually want, what’s the ideal comment or post or sub reddit?

Personally, I would love more HN-like places, more wikipedia like places, places with a job to do.

gdubs has an excellent comment about what Reddit is doing wrong (promoting impulse gut reactions), and I suspect it’s related. When you don’t have an opinion about what you are trying to do or be, and so you’ll tend to end up with whatever is cheap. It happened to youtube and it happened to Facebook.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#300

Post by cwkoss »

I think, somewhat counterintuitively, the ability to "anti-like" or "Report as bad take" could actually make the internet a much more positive place.

The insulation from negative perceptions of those outside your in-group causes polarization and rewards unpopular but extreme opinions.

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