By not perpetuating it. Thats all we can do. But the most important step.
If enough people don't perpetuate it, that turns down the gain in the echo chambers. That cuts down on the feedback, and the noise becomes a lower fraction of the total.
Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
11–20 of 859 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
>outside the overton window I feel like what you describe here ... is the noise.
Not everything outside the overton window is noise. It sure isn't all signal, though. It almost certainly has a higher proportion of noise. But it's also where the new directions for society are going to come from, for good or ill.
There's a "outside the overton window" description (and similar descriptions) I hear folks talk about when it comes to the value of internet un-moderated discussions and .... honestly I've found it mostly to be poorly thought out at best, often painfully ignorant as far as the motivations go.
There seems to be some folks who talk about really valuing novel ideas and how they can't show up on moderated discussions but I just see a lot of noise that might not be "overton window" but are mostly pithy garbage.
I find that anything mildly thought out usually fits inside even the heaviest of moderated type discussions.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#13Still on the tech side of things HN is doing quite well, with clever mechanics to downrank incendiary stuff, killing troll comments asap, etc. Combined with excellent, consistent moderation (courtesy dang et al). With growing awareness + press coverage, those platforms who deliberately implemented bad algorithms to harvest maximum attention (FB, YT, TW) increasingly find it damages their brand image. There is an ince…
I think one of the things with HN compared to FB et al is that HN isn't a for-profit company. It's essentially a public service of YC. They don't make a dime off of this, as far as I can see. Because of that, they don't have to do evil engagement-boosting tricks to try to make more dimes.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#14Disclaimer: I acknowledge that "toxic" is a loosely-defined term that can be thrown around at people that really aren't... I'm mostly meaning people that go out of their way to be negative/harmful in unnecessary ways, harmful forms of trolling, the inability for people to have a discussion without it dissolving into attacks/etc extremely fast... that kind of thing
I think we're looking back at history with rose-tinted glasses here. Toxicity has always been around. Maybe in recent years it has grown, but I think that's just the nature of the technological beast.
It doesn't mean that on a broad scale technology always actively contributes to making things more toxic- but just that it amplifies and contributes to all sorts of things, and that includes the negative. We're more connected than we've ever been, and the unfortunate side-effect is that the degrees of separation between us and those that are toxic have been significantly reduced. Anonymity is maybe a small part, but there are plenty of openly toxic people, both online and off.
Toxic people are just toxic people and I think it's a social issue that is just always going to exist at some level. Maybe there are ways to use technology to assist in fighting against it and maybe not. I think it's just a potentially-unsolvable complex problem that will always arise in society.
I don't know the most effective ways to fight it. However, I'm trying my best not to contribute to it, and maybe personally fighting it within myself will have an outward effect on others. While I wouldn't say I'm mean/toxic/etc online, I do try to stay self-aware of my actions/reactions/emotions and what I post online (and have failed to do this sometimes) because it's very easy to get caught up in negative news/misery and then it's easy to branch off from there into an unhelpful level of anger/negativity.
I try to do my best not to assume the worst of others, to realize there are beings with entire lives unknown to me behind every screen name (if it's not a bot) and to realize it's sometimes difficult to properly infer the tone of what someone is saying online. It's still an internal work-in-progress, but I think I'm far more mindful of my behavior now than in years past.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#15There are many pervasive, interconnected issues and trends to it, so there's no simple or complete answer: 0. Behavior online doesn't arrive out of a vacuum. If people are miserable because they're working harder, making less and their society is in retreat, they're probably going to take out their frustrations out on the easiest targets. 1. Unplug from social and mainstream media because it doesn't have much value.…
Re 3: I wonder if part of it is that many people don't have an identity. So they make a tribe their identity.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everything outside the overton window is noise. It sure isn't all signal, though. It almost certainly has a higher proportion of noise. But it's also where the new directions for society are going to come from, for good or ill.
There's a "outside the overton window" description (and similar descriptions) I hear folks talk about when it comes to the value of internet un-moderated discussions and .... honestly I've found it mostly to be poorly thought out at best, often painfully ignorant as far as the motivations go. There seems to be some folks who talk about really valuing novel ideas and how they can't show up on moderated discussions but…
> I find that anything mildly thought out usually fits inside even the heaviest of moderated type discussions.
Depends on the moderation. Here, if it's well thought out (and expressed in a non-antagonistic way), it usually fits. Not every moderated place will that be true, though. And even here, certain topics may not run afoul of the moderators, but users may still downvote them to oblivion. (For example: There is some suggestion that autism may be caused, in at least some cases, by gut bacteria. But if I were to link that idea to the suggestion that the measles vaccine might, in some cases, cause gut issues, I would expect to be destroyed by downvotes, no matter how good of an argument - or even evidence - I had.)
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#17That's a highly complex problem, IMHO; since it involves lots of variables and variability. And, quite honestly, I doubt there's ever going to be a proper way to solve it.
But here are some of my observations:
- Everyone's online. Everyone. That includes people a) who had a less than stellar upbringing (whatever that means to which one of us); b) with mental illness (some of them untreated and/or self-diagnosed); c) from other cultural background (which don't necessarily align with western point-of-views); d) who are underaged; e) who are (very) bored (and some find entertainment in provoking chaos); f) who lack proper education; g) who simply do not care about educating themselves and others; and h) who are naturally antagonistic for whatever reason.
- Bots. There are also a good number of botnets out there (the "like" economy comes to mind) or subverted systems (smartphones, routers, PCs, etc) which act without the owner's knowledge;
I'm convinced there's also botnets out there that purposefully amplify certain controversies online (websites' comment sections come to mind). Now, understand, this doesn't apply to every controversy. But I've seen some weird stuff on YouTube, for example. And, quite frankly, it's not that hard to extrapolate that since there are "like" bots there are equally "hate" bots as well. The end game is, in most cases, visibility. In others, it's probably social engineering for whatever reason. Mostly political.
Unfortunately, media outlets have fallen into this scheme as well. I mean, it's not like the concept of clickbait is new. Attractive headlines are as old as newspapers/journalism.
- Highly progressive opinions will always clash with the status quo;
- There's a fundamental and unavoidable loss (or lack) of signal whenever people communicate in short sentences, or when they do not have enough time to fully understand what's being said, or when they communicate with people who they don't know;
If I have a friend who's a prankster/jester I might be used to their shenanigans and tolerate them--a stranger might not find them funny. Maybe the stranger will find it funny after they know my friend, but that would depend on a lot of other variables as well.
- There's also the problem of the person who transmits information not expressing themselves properly (for whatever reason) which will unavoidably lead to miscommunication;
- Social networks are fundamentally designed for engagement--now that everyone is online there will be a clash of ideas. Tribes will organically form (just like offline). And - with few exceptions - what was meant as a benign message ends up in a declaration of war from the other tribe.
So, in sum, I just scratched the surface of the problem. It's very hard to make sense of all the noise and coming up with a proper solution to this problem.
Is it an education problem? Is democracy the root cause? Would a totalitarian (regardless it being Right-Wing or Left-Wing) system work? Is it something fundamentally ingrained into our human condition that makes it impossible to solve this problem? (Look at bees, for instance, they're ruthless and yet highly efficient at what they do.) Is it a fundamental purpose (or lack thereof) that each and everyone of us has defined - through whatever heuristic and for whatever reason - that's to blame for all this chaos? Is it its visibility?
Yeah. It's a hard problem to solve. Maybe lots of compromise would help.
I honestly don't know.
The quote
"All models are wrong, but some are useful." --George Box
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#18Still on the tech side of things HN is doing quite well, with clever mechanics to downrank incendiary stuff, killing troll comments asap, etc. Combined with excellent, consistent moderation (courtesy dang et al). With growing awareness + press coverage, those platforms who deliberately implemented bad algorithms to harvest maximum attention (FB, YT, TW) increasingly find it damages their brand image. There is an ince…
I think one of the things with HN compared to FB et al is that HN isn't a for-profit company. It's essentially a public service of YC. They don't make a dime off of this, as far as I can see. Because of that, they don't have to do evil engagement-boosting tricks to try to make more dimes.
>They don't make a dime off of this, as far as I can see.
Maybe not directly, but every YC company advertises themselves and their projects here, and HN is known as the hub for the SV tech and startup scene, which gives YC an automatic amount of "street cred" and visibility in all of the discussions had here. I'm sure Hacker News has made YCombinator more than a few dimes indirectly from all of that.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think one of the things with HN compared to FB et al is that HN isn't a for-profit company. It's essentially a public service of YC. They don't make a dime off of this, as far as I can see. Because of that, they don't have to do evil engagement-boosting tricks to try to make more dimes.
>They don't make a dime off of this, as far as I can see. Maybe not directly, but every YC company advertises themselves and their projects here, and HN is known as the hub for the SV tech and startup scene, which gives YC an automatic amount of "street cred" and visibility in all of the discussions had here. I'm sure Hacker News has made YCombinator more than a few dimes indirectly from all of that.
Well, perhaps. But if you're right, then HN makes them more dimes by not turning into a sewer.
The point is, HN has different incentives from FB. That matters in the culture of the resulting community.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#20This is not an algorithm problem. It's a people problem. Start with yourself: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
An algorithmic solution would be to rigorously hide everything that looks like mere unproductive outrage from public discourse. However, not only would that amount the severe censorship but it'd probably also not be exactly easy to implement.
Besides, platforms such as Twitter or good old-fashioned news thrive on outrage. If you take that from them there's probably not much left, which is why it's not in these platforms' interest to do something against the issue.
So, it's back to square one: Yourself. Keep your identity small and try not to perpetuate outrage on the Internet.