Not all actors are participating in online conversations in good faith. Meaning, a big part of the problem are trolls and propagandist antagonizing and encouraging division. Part of the solution has to be stopping them.
Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
241–250 of 859 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#242>I've noticed a huge uptick in the toxicity online in the last 5-7 years. You're crazy my dude(tte). I've been on the interbutts since 1991 and Usenet days, and it's exactly as it always was. The big difference is we have reporter ding dongs on Twitter thinking Twitter, aka the comments section they removed from their web presence, is the real world. Also old people on Facebook who never learned the lessons of being…
But it is the real world now ... People form their beliefs and make decisions in the world based on what they consume online. I frequently see Twitter memes spoken from people's mouths in person. I mostly abstain from it, but like it or not, Twitter does matter. I've also been online since 1993, and used Usenet for many years. Back then you could compartmentalize some argument as a bunch of nerds, but now it's just "…
Yes. Encountering the Apache Helicopter joke on 4chan is par for the course, but I just really don't want to hear it out loud from a coworker who is senior to me in a meeting room, and have everyone else laugh along with it.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I definitely wasn't cynically throwing up my hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying. All I intended to do was demonstrate how cheap it is to call someone a liar on the internet. It costs nothing to the reputations of you or your "lying friend" to call one another a liar and thats why it doesn't mean anything. The sooner people realize this the better off we'll be.
> I definitely wasn't cynically throwing up my hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying.
Apologies, I didn't mean to insinuate that you were. My point was that this is the usual (and often intended) consequence of your argument, as I understood it and have seen it in the world.
Calling someone a liar doesn't help by itself, but if we can bring clear and irrefutable evidence to a discussion, I think we can reasonably reject outright incorrect views.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other words, except for the scale, and the fact that it's infected the mainstream media, and the accelerants making it even worse, it's the same old thing? So we can summarize as "there's been a huge uptick in the toxicity online (which was always there)?"
The quantity has increased, if the quality is still basically the same. Also, I bet the average education/intelligence of the typical user has shifted as the internet user looked more and more like the typical population.
Bingo. In the 90s, you had to be pretty smart (and wealthy or near a decent school) just to know what the internet was, how to get access, and then do something useful or fun with it. Now, everyone uses it to pay their taxes, order soap, and use facebook. However the quality, while always full of trolls, has dropped imho.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#245The web mirrors people.
How do you stop people from behaving like they do..? And why would you want to? Who should decide how people should behave (beyond established laws, of course)?
If people don't do something illegal that should be reported, they're being people. You have nice people, assholes, politically correct, politically incorrect, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s the same old same old. People used to heckle in theatres, because the audience lent them anonymity. Mobs are mobs because in a mob you are the mob. Lift the social contract by granting anonymity and we fairly instantaneously resort to slinging faeces at one another. I think the GP has nailed it, however - we are reporting theatre hecklers as news, and instead of watching the play, everyone is now watching the pu…
Anonymity isn’t it, or isn’t all of it. YouTube comments were deanonymized but that didn’t improve discourse. Look at Facebook and some of the “discussions” about politics there. Newspapers tried running comment sections, but either they’re a cesspool, real names or no, or they just gave up having comment sections entirely. Even locale isn’t a help - NextDoor is full of the same, or worse, combative vitriol. Sure, ch…
For some groups, if they are large enough, powerful enough, or vicious enough, deanonymized is not an issue because they are the majority. For smaller groups, where having an opinion will lead to death threads etc, deanonymization will extinguish their voices.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other words, except for the scale, and the fact that it's infected the mainstream media, and the accelerants making it even worse, it's the same old thing? So we can summarize as "there's been a huge uptick in the toxicity online (which was always there)?"
It’s the same old same old. People used to heckle in theatres, because the audience lent them anonymity. Mobs are mobs because in a mob you are the mob. Lift the social contract by granting anonymity and we fairly instantaneously resort to slinging faeces at one another. I think the GP has nailed it, however - we are reporting theatre hecklers as news, and instead of watching the play, everyone is now watching the pu…
Well one difference is the scope of participation, which was only slightly mentioned (old people on FB) - even in the lat 90's the internet was still mostly the domain of a relatively homogeneous technical-skewing audience; the composition has probably flipped since then.
Judgement of whether this is good or bad aside, it is definitely easier to maintain peace and harmony when the socio/economic/cultural differences are smaller. Those days are long gone.
I'm finding the only winning move is not to play (i.e. "don't go to the theatre; stay home and read a book")
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#248As an intellectual exercise,since you seem so passionate about the subject of anti-vaxxers... Are all vaccines good? If not, who chooses? The government? What about when Gov. Rick Perry tried to force the HPV vaccine on all teenage girls in TX, even though it was suspected he had financial incentive to do so? Is it ok for the state to force you or your kids to receive a medical treatment? Even when there are multiple…
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I really get why herd immunity is important to you. It's not academic to you; instead, it's life and death.
But, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that you can't get vaccinated, because you have adverse reactions. That is, there are greater than zero persons who have significant negative effects from vaccinations.
And you would be seriously harmed if the state required - forced - vaccinations, at least unless they allowed a medical exception.
Look, claytongulick may in fact have an axe to grind. That doesn't mean that every point he raised is nonsense.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#249It's a big problem without one simple solution. One thing we can do, though, is not enable it when possible. One big thing I have zeroed in on recently is comments. When I redesigned my blog/website last year, I intentionally removed Disqus and all commenting ability. In fact, what prompted the redesign was that I wanted to add a box pleading with people to not use comments for tech support for various open source pr…
Hmm, as someone who's run communities for a while, I'd have to say that the quality of a comments section is very heavily dependent on the topic, audience and how well you moderate it.
Over on YouTube for instance, I've had very few negative comments on my videos, and usually found the comments section under them to be a mostly civil place where I can help out people who had trouble with a walkthrough or guide.
Same goes with the comments on blog articles I wrote in the past too. The comments have generally stayed on topic, were always free of personal attacks, etc.
Comment sections can certainly be hellholes, and for large media outlets they usually are. We all know how bad they are on stuff like the BBC, Daily Mail, Guardian, etc.
But they don't necessarily have to be, and they can be entirely valuable if moderated well and related to a topic people don't treat like its the end of the world.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s the same old same old. People used to heckle in theatres, because the audience lent them anonymity. Mobs are mobs because in a mob you are the mob. Lift the social contract by granting anonymity and we fairly instantaneously resort to slinging faeces at one another. I think the GP has nailed it, however - we are reporting theatre hecklers as news, and instead of watching the play, everyone is now watching the pu…
Anonymity isn’t it, or isn’t all of it. YouTube comments were deanonymized but that didn’t improve discourse. Look at Facebook and some of the “discussions” about politics there. Newspapers tried running comment sections, but either they’re a cesspool, real names or no, or they just gave up having comment sections entirely. Even locale isn’t a help - NextDoor is full of the same, or worse, combative vitriol. Sure, ch…
Anonymity doesn’t necessarily mean namelessness - it means being a voice in a crowd, it means being seemingly removed enough from your target that you, personally, won’t be the target of retribution. It hearkens back to really primal primate behaviour.
Group dynamics are crazy - you can use them to get people who might be drinking buddies to instead get into tin cans and try to murder each other, because you’re using the ultimate anonymity of a battlefield to let slip the dogs of war.