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

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#581

Post by apotheothesomai » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 7:44 AM UTC

timcederman wrote: post #564

scubadude wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Affordances are to imply meaning That's actually called a signifier. https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/94270

I disagree. A signifier gets into semiotics, but more explicitly. e.g. the word "push" is a signifier, but a large bar that makes it seem like you can push it is a perceived affordance.

Speaking of them as signifiers isn't useful here, but yes, these are signifiers. You said yourself they convey meaning. The implication of their use wouldn't happen without signification.

One could even write a book about the discourse of affordances. It would be boring and irrelevant, but it wouldn't be wrong.

Sorry, just defending the mechanics of meaning.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#582

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 7:48 AM UTC

hnuser1234 wrote: post #579

TeMPOraL wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I'd like to talk with you, see if you have an alternative way of keeping the society from self-destructing.

So we've got desires to identify with groups, and we've got desires to share criticisms of groups, and we struggle to find a balance. If we never criticize, we stagnate, if we never identify, we "self-destruct". We can come up with a "quick solution" as the notion of keeping more of our criticisms to ourselves, but that's certainly not a goal you want to pursue overzealously. You need to be able to share criticisms.…

> We can tell people it's not attractive to be ranty, but I'm not very comfortable going further than that, at the risk of wandering into thought policing.

I don't want to see it going much further than that either. I was thinking more along the lines of making it so being thoughtful is "sexy" and being ranty isn't, the way today owning a car is "sexy" and smoking isn't.

Free speech has its positive and negative consequences on stability and happiness; I do not want to fight free speech, I'm looking for ways to reduce the negative consequences. I'll protect your (and mine) right to rant about whatever you want, but I sure as hell would like the general policy discussion to involve less rants and more thoughtful cooperation.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#583

Post by projektir » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 7:48 AM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #550

guelo wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poisoning a conversation is a thing. And if you've participated in online discussions I don't see how you can honestly say it doesn't exist. You're implying that in every thread where a troll shows up to derail the conversation we all have to stop what we're doing and give thoughtful responses to the troll to show them the error of their ways. But then the only possible conversation is debates with trolls. But that g…

> Poisoning a conversation is a thing. And if you've participated in online discussions I don't see how you can honestly say it doesn't exist. "Poisioning a conversation" is a bad metaphor that conflates two different things which do exist, but need to be dealt with in two different ways: 1. Baiting: trying to say something horrible to anger people for their own entertainment. The proper response to this is simply to…

It's not a bad metaphor. If your community is ignoring trolls instead of banning them, it's effectively sending the message that the trolls are very welcome. I've never observed that a no-moderation community is free of trolls, and ignoring trolls often results in them just taking over because they just start talking to each other and everyone else leaves.

These things are caused poison because even a small amount can cause serious problems if left unchecked, and the effect creeps out across an area (how many people are hit) like poison spreading.

I think what you're missing is that a very large amount of people simply do not enjoy a certain style of discourse to the point that they'll opt out of a community that doesn't ban that discourse. You may not like it, you may think those people are weak or something, but the rest of us want to talk to them, and we want them to feel welcome.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#584

Post by earenndil » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 7:50 AM 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…

IMO the problem is size/scale. If you're too small, then you just have people going through the motions of talking to each other in an attempt to make the platform seem real so more people will join it. If you're too big, you won't be able to curate effectively. There's a sweet spot in the middle, you start heading up around only maybe 20 or 30 users (the point at which it becomes impractical for everyone to know everyone), and when it starts heading back down depends on the culture, but go down it will.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#585

Post by hnuser1234 » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 8:00 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #470

floren wrote: post #339

I can't wait for the word "toxic" to drop out of favor. It implies that the person is not just giving a bad opinion, but is in fact fundamentally flawed and dangerous. Arsenic isn't toxic because it had a bad day at work, arsenic is by its nature a deadly poison and you can't change it, only avoid it. The vast majority of people labeled "toxic", though, are just humans with a variety of opinions and beliefs, some you…

Poisoning a conversation is a thing. And if you've participated in online discussions I don't see how you can honestly say it doesn't exist. You're implying that in every thread where a troll shows up to derail the conversation we all have to stop what we're doing and give thoughtful responses to the troll to show them the error of their ways. But then the only possible conversation is debates with trolls. But that g…

Is it not easier to ignore trolls and let them realize they will not get attention that way, even without being censored? And if they are not ignored, then perhaps they are more than the simple trolls we imagine them to be?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#586

Post by heed » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 8:03 AM UTC

antishatter wrote: post #99

_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…

I believe the somethingawful forums involve a cost to participate, something like a one time $10 fee that was designed to remove low content or negative content participators. Might be an interesting case study of your hypothesis.

Metafilter does this as well. A one-time payment to post along with heavy moderation will remove/keep away most of the toxicity.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#587

Post by lopmotr » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 8:05 AM UTC

tmuir wrote: post #574

nkurz wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I submit to you, a subreddit I've found in the past week that is absolutely horrifying, and I think stands quite counter to the "variety of opinions" model you put forth. I'm not familiar with that subreddit, but I think I'm familiar with the mindset you are describing. Nothing in your description seems to set it apart from the "variety of opinions" model the GP proposed. Other than your feeling that these ideas are…

I don't disagree that just about any regulation of these groups will be interpreted as more conspiracy. I guess the crux of my argument is that these people are the victims of psychological warfare. I'm not throwing out the word brainwashing for emphasis, but I truly believe a lot of these people are actually brainwashed. To give context, I don't believe its controversial at all to say that boot camp in the American…

Wow. You seem to be experiencing your own conspiracy theory. Not every popular idea has some puppet master controlling it. It's completely understandable that supporters of a widely ridiculed underdog would gloat about his success. It was just another election, and just another president, not the end of the world. America hasn't collapsed.

Nonetheless, I don't want to censor your ideas. Let people make their own minds up. McCarthyism censored communist ideas because they were too dangerous and people might get brainwashed. Was that a good idea too? I though the whole free speech ideal of America was to keep political ideas out in the open where they can stand and fall on their own merits, not silenced groups of violent supporters like you get in Venezuela or Egypt which leads to revolution after revolution.

For an example of what might be a dangerous idea of the left - how about the popular one that blacks are poor because whites oppress(ed) them? That sounds like a recipe for endless failure. Don't work to improve yourself - just get angry at the bogeyman. They did it in Zimbabwe and it ruined them. They're doing it now in South Africa. And American blacks are listening to the left mantra of oppression too. All it can do it make people angry and hateful - what if it leads to race riots?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#588

Post by caveatemptor » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 8:12 AM UTC

apotheothesomai wrote: post #581

timcederman wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. A signifier gets into semiotics, but more explicitly. e.g. the word "push" is a signifier, but a large bar that makes it seem like you can push it is a perceived affordance.

Speaking of them as signifiers isn't useful here, but yes, these are signifiers. You said yourself they convey meaning. The implication of their use wouldn't happen without signification. One could even write a book about the discourse of affordances. It would be boring and irrelevant, but it wouldn't be wrong. Sorry, just defending the mechanics of meaning.

Someone did (in a manner of speaking): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#589

Post by jorleif » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 8:21 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #337

dalbasal wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an insightful analogy. To stretch it a bit, I'd say there's an important difference between a fire door and reddit. The fire door knows its job is to prevent people burning to death. Reddit... does it know it's job is to prevent outraged reaction? I think this is one of the things that made facebook so problematic on politics, it can't tell the the good likes, comments and shares from the bad ones. I'm not su…

>Reddit... does it know it's job is to prevent outraged reaction? // Ha, ha, ha. Cause that'll increase pageviews. Outraged reaction is exactly what all news media is going for because people rant and rave and in passing see more adverts. It's just they want to sanitise the topics according to their advertisers wishes. Reddit doesn't have non-censorship values, it's heavily censored; not all from the top admittedly,…

Increased pageviews, yet many users also hate constant outrage and leave the platform entirely. It is not obvious that a platform with civil, high-quality discussion would lose in the marketplace (not obvious it would win either, though).

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#590

Post by golergka » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 8:28 AM UTC

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…

If I may ask, how do you jump from posting volume:

> 100 to 1000 times the sheer posting volume

to traffic:

> 99% of the traffic

?

Also, just to clarify - do you consider porn something not legit or bad? Your tone suggests it, but I may have misread, so just want to make sure. If so, why?