Just flock off?
Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
81–90 of 859 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#82> Even niche sites like HN are not immune.
I've not noticed a difference over the years TBH. HackerNews is substantially worse than most other sites IMO as well. Ironic that I'm disagreeing with you! Ha!
I just mean - maybe you're at the part of your life where those extremes are apparent and that a degree of humility, understanding & conversation goes a lot further than most people think.
> Or is this more of a social problem that code can't solve?
More of a social problem I think.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#83What? What's wrong with it? The arrogance behind thinking "how do we fix the way everyone behaves"... jesus holy eff. Vigorous debate is good, even if you get manic israel vs palestine or weirdly spergy tabs vs spaces spats as a side effect. Writing is the tip of the iceberg. I used to run a forum, and the write versus read rates are enormous. 1 to 20+ ratios. Argument brings out the best ideas. That energetic passio…
You should all downvote harder. It might make you right! :D
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
We found a lot of lies during the UK election last month. Not difference in opinions, not beliefs about whay may or will happen, easily proven lies, posted across community forums, copied and pasted to other ones, and repeated in an increasing cresendo People then believe those lies, they repeat them, and even if they don't those lies sink into their subconcious and change their behavior, not necessarily today or tom…
You might find that the people you see posting and repeating these lies see the things that you post and repeat as lies.
And one of the sides has to be right. Sometimes the facts are difficult to ascertain, but so many of the lies spread via social media are easily disproved by consulting primary sources.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#85Our voices are nuanced. Our facial expressions are nuanced.
Text is not, unless your a 1% top tier writer.
Would love to see more experiments with video and voice to bring back the subtleties of human communication.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#86Stop responding to it. No seriously, just stop. This isn't a "complex problem that needs nuanced technical and legislative solutions". Back in the old day, there was this saying. "Do not feed the trolls". Sadly, we've forgotten that. Our current approach is, "create rigorous 30 minute point by point take down videos to defeat their point of view". Our urge to debate and correct people who are wrong just fuels them ma…
Part of the problem is that social platforms online are built around heavily optimising for engagement. Content that gets engagement must be better, so it gets promoted more heavily, and algorithms show you personally the content it thinks you're most likely to react to. You can't leave because it's messily wrapped up with your social connections to your friends.
Until this system dies, we won't solve this problem. It's not good enough to instruct people to stop feeding the trolls: there are huge troll-feeding dopamine farms feeding and nurturing trolls by the millions. Until we shut them down the situation will continue to get worse.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#87Stop responding to it. No seriously, just stop. This isn't a "complex problem that needs nuanced technical and legislative solutions". Back in the old day, there was this saying. "Do not feed the trolls". Sadly, we've forgotten that. Our current approach is, "create rigorous 30 minute point by point take down videos to defeat their point of view". Our urge to debate and correct people who are wrong just fuels them ma…
This is like saying "Just ignore the problem until it goes away," which is cute, but very naive. This is a systematic problem with huge economic incentives pushing things to the extreme. There is massive funding from state and political institutions amplifying and promoting extreme political views. This is come a long way from some lonely dweeb in his basement just looking to get a rise out of someone online.
hmm, I think that in this particular case ignoring it will make it go away.. because in the end, the problem is that people pay attention to it.
suppose nobody paid attention to such content in the first place, would it really be a problem in that case?
I think the tricky part is that if I ignore it, but no one else does, the problem is still there.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
We found a lot of lies during the UK election last month. Not difference in opinions, not beliefs about whay may or will happen, easily proven lies, posted across community forums, copied and pasted to other ones, and repeated in an increasing cresendo People then believe those lies, they repeat them, and even if they don't those lies sink into their subconcious and change their behavior, not necessarily today or tom…
You might find that the people you see posting and repeating these lies see the things that you post and repeat as lies.
They frequently do see things in that way - and they're wrong. In fact, they're worse than wrong, because many people see the dueling assertions of fact and give up on knowing the truth of a situation altogether. This is a classic disinformation technique.
We do have the ability to determine truth from fiction, it just takes more work than cynically throwing up your hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
We found a lot of lies during the UK election last month. Not difference in opinions, not beliefs about whay may or will happen, easily proven lies, posted across community forums, copied and pasted to other ones, and repeated in an increasing cresendo People then believe those lies, they repeat them, and even if they don't those lies sink into their subconcious and change their behavior, not necessarily today or tom…
You might find that the people you see posting and repeating these lies see the things that you post and repeat as lies.
The biggest problem from the last 10 years is the spread of "everyone's entitled to an opinion". It seems that objective truth no longer exists in the eyes of the population.
This is both a cause and a consequence of the defunding of journalism and the change of the profession from news to views.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#90Sounds like "Naive Realism" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology... "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" - George Carlin. Funny... but what's even funnier is that EVERYBODY THINKS THIS. People dont realize that it's not that there are a group of bad drivers out there, but that everyone drives badly sometimes.…
But this is possibly a kind of a fallacy in itself: it's possible that there is bad behaviour out there, and that it's associated with one particular group as opposed to another; there's points to be scored by pushing a particular position online if it influences reality. In my experience on some forums, mention anything about Brexit and a flood of anti-Brexit comments appears; either there were hundreds of lurkers that just happened to be online and spot the comment, or there was organisation behind it.