341–350 of 859 posts
>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 active online since 2000. There was a theory in 2004, known as GIFT: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad Guess what? People without anonymity are total fuckwads too - this happens on Facebook, Instagram and Twitch, in an era where you could probably find someone's personal details if you look hard enough. I think the key is audience . Bullying feels good for a lot of people. Bullies will go…
> You see people picking on anti-vax, flat earthers, Justin Bieber, not so much because they do harm, but because they're easy targets to hold down. Your other examples were solid, but anti-vax absolutely does cause harm, and it seems inappropriate to dismiss the possibility that in the case of anti-vax people are motivated by genuine fear for our collective safety and that of our children.
This doesn't mean anti-vaxxers should be tolerated as a viable alternative lifestyle, but throwing curses at them online and spamming memes that make them out to be mentally challenged really doesn't do anything but satisfy a bully.
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That's because this conversation is occurring in the abstract - surely you can think of examples which don't fall into your supposed pattern (flat earth, pizza parlors, etc.)
But those are super edge cases, the vast super majority of things aren't clear cut at all. "Is that policy going to increase employment? Will it depress wages, and by how much?" Good luck with judging who's right and who's wrong.
>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…
The solution is the same as it was in 1991 as well: don't feed the trolls.
I believe consensus building tools could help a lot to guide toxic conversations in a more civilized direction. Check these articles for ideas how that might be accomplished: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22203937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21362182
"People compete to bring up the most nuanced statements that can win most people across" different factions.
It includes an iterative process of proposing new statements on a topic, and then voting on the statements. Over time, statements are developer which more and more of the voters agree with.
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this whole thread has nothing to do with real world threats of physical violence. online trolling is different than your extreme example.
Yeah, no, that excuse stopped working around six years ago. “Online trolling” is now part and parcel of political action and can be separated only through naïveté or disingenuity and no, there is no third option. The shitlord who chased my friend from her home was cheered on by that faceless mob of “online trolls” and encouraged other people to do likewise and worse. Similarly, Elliot Rodgers and the like got their b…
Bruh you have clearly never been to usenet lol
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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.
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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.
Limit how many media outlets any one entity can own. When all the news and all the entertainment is owned by a giant inhuman corporation whose bottom line is solely profit, they can and will act much more in their interest than in the interest of any of the individual humans that make up this corporation, never mind the humans they provide news and entertainent to.
If you have a shitload of tech money, move the fuck out of Expensive Tech City, stop giving your money to landlords, start giving it to organizations and politicians who are working to put back the barriers to this sort of thing that corporations have been relentlessly campaigning against for their entire lifespan. If you run a tech company that's making obscene profits then start sinking some of that into that sort of stuff, fuck "increasing shareholder value", have your accountants figure out creative ways to stiff your VC if you've got that to deal with instead of finding creative ways to pay less taxes. Give money to unions, unions work to make shit better for every worker, and right now part of why people are so easy to stir up is because they are broke and afraid of the fact that they are one financial crisis away from homelessness/death/etc.
Oh also I guess yeah stop trying to make another goddamn Zuckerfortune by relentlessly promoting whatever creates "engagement" in your new social media site and not giving two shits about the fact that nothing gets people to keep coming back to spend time on your hellsite like an intense argument, because all you care is how long they're there looking at the ads you've parasitized all around their human-to-human communications. Social sites are not helping but this shit has been building since before "social media" was even a thing anyone said.