Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 413 posts

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#371

Post by intertextuality »

simion314 wrote: post #222
intertextuality wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "toxic" has no meaning anymore, because it's all relative to the person using it. For example, in the game Overwatch, "toxic" got mostly used as "this person does not play with the characters currently recognized as the most optimal". Just playing the game differently than the pros/current metagame was literally considered toxic by a non-negligible amount of people. When someone says "ban this person for bei…

You are still using some extreme example and generalizing. Say the word online, troll it has a well known definition, I don't care if you or that dude there is using it wrong, the definition is clear and the majority of humans are using it right. Second if a community decides that behavior X is not allowed then that community will ban X and fck your freedom of speech or whatever , on the community forum,sub-reddits,…

It is not trolling. If it was trolling, I would have said "trolling". The reason I used that example is because in someone's arbitrary definition of "toxic" they extended it to mean "not playing exactly how I think someone should play".

A normal word with an accepted definition doesn't get randomly abused like this.

No, within games and on twitter "toxic" is used in a variety of ways by a variety of people. I used one somewhat common example but not everybody agreed on that, because they had different arbitrary definitions of what being toxic is.

It has no standard meaning anymore. What's toxic to me isn't toxic to a random person on reddit or on twitter, and that's what the problem is. I'm not discussing "trolling".

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#372

Post by wpietri »

0815test wrote: post #108
wpietri wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's contextual. Many slurs have been reclaimed by the communities that they have been applied to. E.g., as a mild example, terms like "nerd" and "geek" were pejoratives that were adopted and reworked. E.g., Geek Pride: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Pride_Day As with most of these slurs, positive in-group use is ok, but negative out-group use is still generally seen as abusive. I might talk about my geeky ways o…

> The N word is of course much more extreme given America's ugly, unresolved history around race, but it's the same rough deal. I think this is quite dubious. "Nerd" and "geek" or even "freak" were never pejoratives in the way that the other word was. You could sympathetically say of someone, even as an outsider "He's a bit of a nerd/geek". But it would make no sense for one who was sympathetic to say something like…

> "Nerd" and "geek" or even "freak" were never pejoratives in the way that the other word was.

No, it was the same way, not just the same degree. E.g., a geek was originally the sideshow circus freak who bit heads of chickens and ate live insects. That comparison was not favorable, especially in the 50s and 60s, when conformity was strongly enforced.

I'm guessing you are young enough that you have only experienced the rise of tech. For some flavor of the early days, try Levy's "Hackers": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003PDMKIY

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#373

Post by wpietri »

0815test wrote: post #150
intertextuality wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nerd, geek, and freak are nowhere near as utterly vile as the n word. They are in completely different leagues. The first step to understanding the reclamation is understanding just how offensive the n word was and is today. And the culture that surrounded it. For non-Americans this topic is a difficult issue to get into because it involves unpacking and understanding so much history and culture.

> Nerd, geek, and freak are nowhere near as utterly vile as the n word. They are in completely different leagues. Yes, which supports what I said, contra what GP said. You can't just take such a vile word with such vile connotations attached and "rework" it harmlessly like you could with "geek"-- that's just not how human psychology works, and an IAT or such would easily bear this out. You'd have to wait for the whol…

> You can't just take such a vile word with such vile connotations attached and "rework" it harmlessly like you could with "geek"-- that's just not how human psychology works, and an IAT or such would easily bear this out.

Your belief that you know way better than marginalized people what their experience is and what is good for them? That has a name.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#374

Post by wpietri »

intertextuality wrote: post #91
wpietri wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds perfectly consistent to me. Stuff that doesn't matter gets ignored. Stuff that does gets the attention of staff, who then apply rules. It also sounds reasonable to me. At small scales, especially with novices, it's good to let people experiment, find their voices, build the right audience. But once something's of a certain size, it's unlikely to change its character much.

> it's good to let people experiment, find their voices, build the right audience. That's not how subreddits work, though, since they require a a name and almost always have mods that shape the content. /r/waterniggas at 300 people is basically the same at 20,000 people. So if the rule is subreddits should not have "nigga" in the title, then all subreddits with that name should be quarantined (or not allow the names…

For this specific example, sure. For most things that would make a community bad, I think it's worth giving something a chance to develop. And given finite staff attention, I think the economics of Reddit's business means that they're not going to bother with the small fry.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#375

Post by mercer »

pmarreck wrote: post #94
sagichmal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It "worked" only if the definition is "it removed it from Reddit". As the article mentions, these people did not just disappear or change their mind. They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored. What about all of the new people who would have more easily stumbled into those cesspools, but now have to take quite a bit more effort, an…

I would like to see evidence that “deplatforming” actually reduces hate globally instead of simply moving it elsewhere, because I haven’t seen any, and until then this is simply an unfounded belief (i.e., “bullshit”)

I don't necessary disagree with you, and generally lean towards the 'marketplace of ideas' / free speech side of things. But a few thoughts that make me hesitate:

1. not deplatforming is based on a belief ("sunlight is the best desinfectant, etc.) that, as far as I can tell, isn't supported by much evidence either, at least as far as it's larger-scale effects.

2. it's possible, for example, that having these ideas out in the open and easily accessible actually increases the effect of them radicalising/convincing people who previously didn't have much of an opinion on or care about these issues. This might outweigh the effect of those already radical being exposed to alternative ideas.

3. building on this, I find that generally the 'better' and less hateful ideas are more nuanced and complex, and thus much harder to convey. Especially in online environments like reddit/twitter/etc.

4. there's the 'bullshit asymmetry principle'. it's much easier to produce bullshit arguments for bad ideas than it is to counter them. it also strikes me as much easier to get ensnared by hateful and/or bad ideas than it is to 'escape' them. A bit like how cults work.

5. access to these ideas via Reddit and the like removes one rather important element: collective shaming and having to accept the consequences of particular ideas. While in theory this is a good thing, in practice it can easily lead people down dark paths in isolation.

Having grown up deeply religious, and having spent a lot of time in all sort of fringe communities, I suspect that the net effect of not deplatforming is negative. Ideas are perhaps kind of like viruses. With the internet and places like Reddit, they can propagate freely without the mediating effects of interpersonal contact and various degrees of ostracism or other consequences. They also have a reach that they never had before.

Despite all that, I'm not arguing that we should do something about it. I don't know, and still lean towards accepting this new reality with all its consequences, or at least making sure we have a better understanding before we 'curb' things. But I'm much less optimistic about this new, internet-enabled state of things than I used to be.

Apologies for all this being a bit of a ramble.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#376

Post by aetherson »

snowwrestler wrote: post #356
aetherson wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is less racist now than it was in the past. What mechanism do you posit for this?

The world is less racist because people have chosen to suppress racist speech and policies. Are individual people any less racist than in the past? Who knows? Probably unprovable. But our perception of the world is not governed by how people are , it is governed by what people do. And every person has a choice to promote, tolerate, or suppress racism. Choosing the latter is what makes the world seem less racist.

What made people choose to suppress racist policies?

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#377

Post by matz1 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #304
matz1 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously for the people who posting it and maybe many more people, it is not shit. Well, its trash for you but treasure for others. To them you are the assholes for calling it trash or wanting to get rid of it. Its all have to do with agreeing and disagreeing. To them proper places of discussion is the place where you can have comments like that. Its all matter of prespective.

Will you be saying it is all a matter of perspective when they are executing black people?

Yes, why it isn't?

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#378

Post by pmarreck »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #354
clucas wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a much better argument than I thought you were making, so my apologies for misunderstanding. I still disagree though - I think Reddit probably agreed with you for most of its existence, but evidence indicated that rationality and clear arguments weren't winning, and the virality of these ideas was too potent to be overcome by a few people who were willing to wade into the cesspool. So they drained the cesspool…

> I think Reddit probably agreed with you for most of its existence, but evidence indicated that rationality and clear arguments weren't winning It's even darker than that. There is an organized effort to destroy any public forum that is a place of discourse. For the people and organization paying for the bots, troll farms and social media influencers discourse is exactly what they paying to get rid of. Considering t…

Evidence for this?

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#379

Post by pmarreck »

meko wrote: post #270
pmarreck wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that you can get rid of it. I’ve rationally argued against racism with some success. (And often while getting comments autoblocked for hate speech. Can’t clean up manure without getting your hands a little dirty, unfortunately.) “Bullshit” is taking the easy way out by mass-automatic-deplatforming instead of addressing the bad thought head-on.

You're assuming that the basis for their hate is rationality. If they were rational people, they wouldn't be racists/fascists/hate groups/etc. Assuming you're correct that having "some success" removed people from such a path, it's still just drops in a bucket. Recycling the contents of a dumpster won't stop climate change.

This might shock you but speaking as a person that has rationally argued with racists, they have plenty of empirical data to back them up and they believe their position is rational. That does not mean it isn’t an arguable position, such as criticizing their data as being cherry-picked.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#380

Post by pmarreck »

Retra wrote: post #300
pmarreck wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that you can get rid of it. I’ve rationally argued against racism with some success. (And often while getting comments autoblocked for hate speech. Can’t clean up manure without getting your hands a little dirty, unfortunately.) “Bullshit” is taking the easy way out by mass-automatic-deplatforming instead of addressing the bad thought head-on.

The best way to get rid of bad ideas is to not give a megaphone to the people who want to spread them. The fundamental fallacy you're making is that you're conflating the act of judgement with the act of sentencing. What a fine world it would be if your justice system were forbidden to sentence people under the expectation that the purpose of a trial were simply to convince the accused to never do it again. It is irr…

You’re conflating “bad ideas” with “bad sctions.”
Post reply on HN