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Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

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411–420 of 757 posts

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#411

Post by lopmotr »

Back 15-20 years ago, forums didn't like personal abuse or being off-topic. Now, the problem seems to be "dangerous ideas" or "might influence people to believe something I don't". It's changed from staying reasonable to trying to influence real world politics by silencing dissent. Why not have freedom of political ideas on a political forum? Stop worrying about influencing voters in the "wrong" way and meddling in elections and all that nonsense.

Even on HN, there are "wrong" ideas that you can't even hint at, even when they're on topic and you're being non-abusive. It's dominated by aggressively enforced political opinion.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#412

Post by dragonwriter »

cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #406
wmf wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds great for people who are already invested in Reddit but terrible for newcomers who don't want to do a bunch of work to get Reddit into a usable state.

Reddit has default subreddits. It could easily have default filters that users could change/augment if they wanted to.

> Reddit has default subreddits.

Didn't it get rid of them a year ago?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#413

Post by exergy »

VLM wrote: 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…

Porn is not a banned word.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#414

Post by mattdeboard »

switch007 wrote: post #365

Just the past week: - New Yorker publishes this article - Mayor of London at SXSW called for tighter tech regulation. - UK Culture Secretary declares social media "broken", states he wants to time-limit children's access to social media and "impose stricter checks on the age limits when children can first set up a social media profile" - Tim Berners-Lee said "we must regulate tech firms to prevent 'weaponised' web" -…

Yep, I agree. Politicians & their PR firms are getting the bee hive stirred up, swaying public opinion. It's the governmental version of http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#415

Post by adamrezich »

mancerayder wrote: post #199
cpncrunch wrote: post #130

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.

I think the Hackernews' "echo-chamber-ness" is extremely exaggerated. It only feels like that if you're in the minority viewpoint in a thread (which happens to me, too). However, it's not echo-chambery if dissident viewpoints live side-by-side dominant viewpoints, even if the latter are 80% of the thread replies and upvotes. An echo chamber is arguably more when we actively suppress dissident viewpoints. Reddit is in…

I've seen a lot of very interesting, usually quite short comments on politics-related threads in the past few weeks, that were posted less than ten minutes prior and already grayed out and marked "[dead]". In each instance, the user was not using inflammatory language at all, yet HN was implicitly saying "yeah we're not going to allow discussion on this topic." I'm sure there's Very Good Reasons(TM) for this but it always feels like wasted opportunity for interesting, out-of-the-box discussion.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#416

Post by skookumchuck »

> Reddit was also an important part of Trump’s strategy. Parscale wrote—on Reddit, naturally—that “members here provided considerable growth and reach to our campaign.”

So were Hillary's and Bernie's campaigns, who each had a major presence on Reddit, both much more than Trump's.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#417

Post by skookumchuck »

DanBC wrote: post #396
skookumchuck wrote: post #392

> which brand themselves as strongholds of free speech and in practice are often used for hate speech. Um, hate speech is free speech.

Hate speech is used to silence people. Hate speech is not free speech.

You're referring to threats, which are not free speech. Hate speech is free speech.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#418

Post by mwfunk »

anigbrowl wrote: post #323
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…

Now consider the fact that the primary affordance of social media is the “reaction”. Questionable.

Ironic!

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#419

Post by mistermann »

cookiecaper wrote: post #294
bllguo wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 surv…

> 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.

Oh please, you think the average person has sufficient critical thinking skills to read the newspaper and pick out the parts that are "stretching the truth", use specious reasoning or various other logical fallacies, etc? You must roll with a different crew than I.

> Your average Fox News viewer may believe that MSNBC is propaganda secretly dictated by the shadowy figures in the background, and vice versa.

If they had critical thinking skills, wouldn't they be able to get a pretty decent handle on the degree to which they are propagandists?

It sounds to me like what you're saying is, most things within this realm are not knowable, except for the parts that are. The world is complex and confusing, but I don't think it's that confusing.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#420

Post by mistermann »

moduspol wrote: post #398
mistermann wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this: first teach advanced critical thinking skills, so people have the skills (if not the will, that's another problem) necessary to see through propaganda from both sides. I have a feeling a lot of people would have issues with this approach though.

How do you teach critical thinking?

I would start with someone who is skilled in both critical thinking and education, or am I misunderstanding the question?

Logical fallacies would be one place to start, you can see examples of this all day long on reddit for example.

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