Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

#291

Post by rlucas » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #277

kazinator wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on dial-up bulletin boards since 1983, Usenet since around the same 1991. Though in some ways it's the same, here is the difference: it has become more diverse. In 1991, the people you might have conversed with on Usenet were a lot similar to you. Of course, if we go to some comp.lang.* newsgroup or whatever, people are similar even today. But I mean that if you went into any newsgroup whatsoever in 1991, o…

I agree. Big centralized platforms (youtube, Reddit, the chans, HN to some exent) mean that the internet riff raff (i.e. people with no interest in the niche and who may feel like trolling) are free to show up in any given niche area of the platform (e.g. a subreddit or someone's channel) and then shit all over it. A community that would have been perfectly peaceful on a newsgroup, IRC channel or forum now has to con…

The corollary to this that remains unspoken about the OP's thesis is: because of the mass reach of the major platforms, the "toxic" effects now have escaped being an internet-only phenomenon and now are manifesting in meatspace.

It's overly reductionist to attribute Trump and Brexit just to online trolls, but it's folly to ignore their effect at the margins (because both Trump and Brexit were relatively close calls, influencing a 5% middle ground definitely mattered).

Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

#292

Post by ryandvm » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #32

Stop 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…

Absolutely. I'm afraid to admit how long it took me to figure out that you shouldn't argue with people that aren't willing to change their mind.

Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

#293

Post by ksec » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #150

scottlocklin wrote: post #77

>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…

> I've been on the interbutts since 1991 and Usenet days, and it's exactly as it always was. Quality-wise maybe but nowhere near the same in numbers. Back in 1990-2005 it took expertise to reach the Usenet. Facebook, Reddit et al. changed the game by essentially giving every village idiot without technical knowledge the "freedom" to troll on FB, Youtube, whatever. Conspiracy theories had their own niche usenet spaces…

This. The cost of going on Internet used to be quite high, and requires some skills and knowledge. Nowadays anyone can troll, and they get repeated by other trolls, the percentage of it "may" be the same ( although I doubt it ), but the "absolute" number of those are much much higher.

Remember before the iPhone, the internet was a much smaller place, and accessed mostly in front of a computer. With Smartphone you now have 4.5 Billion Internet user all using it at any time of the day. The Internet is also much faster. Creating content is easier. We are may be 10 - 100x more in online content consumption then in the 2000s.

And I agree this is not US only.

So yes it is definitely a social AND psychological problem. Not a technical one, no blockchain, Distributed Social Media, Machine Learning, new AI, Cloud, Servless, (WhatEver)aaS etc will solve it.

Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

#294

Post by bsanr2 » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

A thought that's been sitting in my Evernotes for a while:

"I wish I could code because I have an idea for something I think would be valuable. Basically I think debate is a good thing, and especially online debate, where you can meet & talk with so many different people and learn so much you might have otherwise missed (and teach, too).

But the problem with the platforms people debate and converse on (Facebook, reddit, YouTube) is that they're essentially popularity contests. They reward being visible and playing to people who already agree with you, which means many good ideas get steamrolled by enthusiastic trolls.

So I was thinking that maybe instead of relying on the "wisdom" of the mob, I mean crowd, to determine what's noteworthy and important and productive - which inevitably leads to a constant churn of middle school student council-like dynamics - I thought maybe you could flip it.

Don't ask people who are like you if you're making a good point. Ask the people who AREN'T like you. If a bunch of gun owners look at what a gun control advocate has to say and think, "You know, they're onto something," maybe that's more valuable than getting support from other advocates.

So I imagine a debate space where people can talk with each other in a structured fashion. Other people can watch. Somehow we have an idea of the "way" people lean politically, identity-wise, etc., or at least how they compare to others. Isn't this something that NN-driven text analysis would be good at? And at the end, you can rate someone's ideas and performance, and how much your opinion counts is weighted by how you compare to them, and then the system's understanding of who you are is adjusted accordingly. It need not even assign human-readable tags to a given personal value; all we'd know is that this person is very or not very similar to a given other. Maybe this helps to disarm trolls and to push thoughtful, respectful voices to the top. Maybe it allows voices that would usually get drowned out on any given issue to have a say. Maybe it helps us get to the heart of what debate truly gives us, which is understanding and compromise and solidarity."

tl;dr Keep upvotes/downvotes but weight them based on how similar the person voting is to the person being voted on.

Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

#295

Post by krilly » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #77

>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…

I can assure you the YouTube rabbit hole is still there. I am constantly recommended right wing, feminist b& type vids

Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

#296

Post by JohnFen » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

kody wrote: post #287

JohnFen wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't help but remember (through my biased lenses of course) when most of the web (that I visited) looked like 4chan. Interesting. I don't remember the web (or the pre-web internet) generally looking like 4chan in the earlier days. Pockets of it always did, of course. But we are both engaging in a statistical error here -- we're using sample sizes of one. Your experience and mine may differ quite a lot simply bec…

It really is interesting that our anecdotes can be so different. I'm assuming you're older than me (25) since you mention the pre-web internet, so I'd also guess that by the time you were on the web/pre-web internet you would've had a more developed filter than I. My introduction to the web progressed roughly with watching my dad use BBS -> playing Neopets and Runescape -> becoming very involved with Runescape forums…

> I'm assuming you're older than me (25) since you mention the pre-web internet

This is an excellent point. You're younger than my eldest child, and I was active on the internet from way back when it wasn't available to the general public. That has to color our experiences -- even if only in that what you consider the "old days" and what I consider the "old days" are entirely different eras.

Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

#297

Post by makomk » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

gbrown wrote: post #88

tengbretson wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're not necessarily wrong. For example, one of the big anti-Brexit talking points beloved of both Corbyn and social media users before the election was that a trade deal with the US would mean maggots in orange juice. This also, as I recall, became part of the narrative about Brexit supporters being mislead, with the line being that they were sold all those false dreams and would get maggots instead. It was a complete and utter lie: https://fullfact.org/health/maggot-orange-juice-USA/

And I really do mean a complete lie. This wasn't a dispute over creative redefinitions of terms like Boris' NHS funding claims, or some nitpick about a minor detail. Corbyn and a worryingly large chunk of the press took an example of US food safety regulations being unambiguously stricter than EU ones - of them placing all the same restrictions on food manufacturers that the EU does, plus more - and falsely claimed their regulations were weaker instead, using graphic, emotive, memorable language, and everyone believed and repeated this total inversion of the truth.

The thing that gets me is that on some level, people must've known that US food isn't really unsafe. There's not some big movement of people who refuse to eat US food - by and large, everyone trusts food there as much as they would food here. The other thing is that despite this pretty much the entire press dropped the ball on this lie. (It is not even close to the only prominent anti-Brexit or anti-Tory lie they left unchallenged or outright made themselves.) Even Full Fact did initially - they actually helped spread the false claim themselves, and only came back to it a month or so later after it had spread across the internet multiple times and been used by Corbyn repeatedly in his campaigning.

Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

#298

Post by jes5199 » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

it almost doesn't matter whether the content is polarizing or toxic - people form mobs whether their opinions are reasonable or not. Even reasonable criticism gets converted into harassment campaigns, thanks to the dynamics on twitter. (I mean, like 75% of it is awful content too so idk)

Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

#299

Post by kangnkodos » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

I saw a recent study that said frequent posters on twitter are likely to be on the extreme left or the extreme right.

I don't have any data on how this has changed over time, but my guess is that social media polarization has increased over time.

People who are in the middle, or have some beliefs on each side, or are willing to seriously consider points from both the left and the right just don't post much anymore. On the rare occasion that they do, they get downvoted to the point that they are invisible.

So yes, when you look at social media you see the extreme left and the extreme right lobbing insults at each other. Or you might catch a glimpse of the extremists working to silence the moderates, if you dig deep enough.

I don't think it used to be as bad as it is now.

The polarization is continuing to get worse and worse.

How do we stop it? I wish I knew.

Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

#300

Post by alexandercrohde » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

It's not your problem to solve. It's likely not a problem at all.

I think it's just a reflection of our nature -- we all claim to seek boring stability, yet actually thrive on drama. People who don't want drama have no trouble avoiding it online.