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

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

#391

Post by gyulai »

el_cujo wrote: post #353
CM30 wrote: post #21

Truth be told, the most practical solution is to stop centralising everything and using these giant social networking sites that force people with nothing in common together. The bigger your audience gets and the less focused on any one topic it is, the harder it is to moderate/keep under the control, and the more drama you'll inevitably have when groups clash there. Smaller internet forums, subreddits, Discord/Slack…

Unfortunately, I don't think it's as simple as "just go back to smaller groups". For companies, more users = more revenue, there isn't realy much incentive to not try and pull in as many people as possible. And then for most normal users, if they here about some big site, they're inclined to join that so they don't miss out on the the funny tik tok memes/all of their friends being on instagram/etc. For them, what ben…

...it doesn't need to be a huge company (or company of any kind) to run these things. Back in the early 2000s, a volunteer who knew about computers would set up phpBB on a church's website, or a radio station would allow one IT person to spend half their time maintaining something like this, and that would be it. No need to turn millions in advertising dollars to have an online community.

I do agree with the parent comment, that we may well see a resurgence of small and medium-sized online communities, for the simple reason that more fragmentation could be a good thing. When a community has its eternal september, people can move elsewhere.

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

#392

Post by kody »

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…

"Don't feed the trolls" has been my strategy for as long as I've been on the web, but what disconcerts me the most these days is the doxing and death threats. A reporter can simply retweet a news article and instantly be flooded with death threats and see their address posted to the web. There's no way I could tell that person "don't feed the trolls". That's a real problem with real life consequences, and I have no clue how you could begin to solve it, aside from total anonymity.

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

#395

Post by deepspace »

kerkeslager wrote: post #359

I don't know if I know the solution, but I know one thing that isn't the solution: silencing everyone who disagrees with you. A lot of the people complaining about "toxicity" on the internet seem to be under the impression that if we "deplatform" the so-called toxic people, that will fix things. But on the contrary, that makes things worse. If someone says something awful on the internet, and everyone either ignores…

The counterpoint to that is that allowing platforms for toxic views to exist and grow (a) "normalizes" these views and (b) makes it very easy for them to recruit new members, since they have a "legitimate" platform to spread their hate from.

Personally I am fine with them isolating themselves in cesspools like Voat. While they are not being exposed to contrary views there, they are also not exposing large amounts of other people to their views.

Another factor is that toxic views are massively amplified by bots (and the bad actors behind them) and not providing these with an easy-to-exploit platform is a good thing in my opinion.

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

#396

Post by 0x8BADF00D »

asdf21 wrote: post #381
oneplane wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly; toxic isn't a word for 'people speaking their minds' or 'speaking up about problems'. It's someone who is abusive, unsupportive, or unhealthy emotionally towards others and in some forms themselves. Or so the dictionaries say.

As someone who had a seven year account banned from YC previously for debating against socialism, you're wrong. Regular debate is labeled toxic all the time if you are anywhere to the right of pure Marxism on the political scale.

Haven’t been banned yet, but there is definitely a brigade that will instantly downvote you if you try to explain libertarian/free market ideas. Never thought that would happen, since Silicon Valley was founded with similar ideas.

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

#397

Post by temptemptemp111 »

epicgiga wrote: post #34

What? 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 gotta see the irony in being censored on the thread about this topic with one of the most correct responses! Typical!

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

#398

Post by ineptech »

1. Amazon releases MyOneServer, the first AWS product aimed at non-tech end users. M1S is a VM that runs apps (like, from an app store) for server-side use cases like running a blog or hosting a minecraft server.

2. M1S gains traction from hackers who don't want to be part-time sysadmins, but the first widely-used killer app for it is a social media front-end combined with a CDN. Self-hosted files and "publish once, syndicate everywhere" starts to flourish and Facebook begins to lose its position as middle-man to the web's social activity.

3. Bezos buys Keybase with spare change from his couch cushion and integrates it in to M1S; now all server-side apps, and the users thereof, natively have cryptographic identities.

4. Users begin to demand M1S integration from businesses that used to hold (and resell) their data. Widespread adoption from webapps cyclicly drives further adoption by users, making a M1S identity (if not heavy usage) almost ubiquitous.

5. With most client/server use cases sharing a single cryptographic auth network, the last vestiges of anonymity disappear from the web as peoples' username, real name, cryptographic identity, and checking account melt into a blob.

6. With their real identity attached to online activity, online activity becomes "activity", and, while toxicity is not eliminated, it is at least no worse than the real world.

(Crazy? maybe. But I am honestly surprised every day that I wake up and find out that Amazon hasn't made something like step 1 yet...)

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

#399

Post by freeone3000 »

luckylion wrote: post #361
freeone3000 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "super edge cases" are happening monthly . THAT's the problem. The examples given weren't a historical review, they're a sampling of what happened in 2019! If these were in any way rare or outside the norm, I'd feel safe ignoring them, but even in cases of absolute truth and fact (jade in your vagina does not cure anything) we get a netflix series .

> These "super edge cases" are happening monthly. Yes, in a world with literally billions of people, you have a few millions who believe outlandish things. If that was the extent of the problem with polarization/toxicity on the internet (or public debate in general), I doubt we'd talk about it, and I'd be very happy with the state of the world. Those people have no large base, no stable membership, no money, no power…

You say "millions of people believe foolish things", and then completely disregard exactly how many there are and how concentrated they become. I disagree with the assertions at the end that "a few million" do not constitute a large following, and allow me to provide a few counterexamples:

* the Flat Earth Society has a very stable membership and patreon. Mark Sagent's youtube channel alone has 58k subscribers. Social media influence is the source of money, and a power all on its own. * Gweneth Paltrow's pseudoscience has a facebook group with 500k members. She has a netflix series and a reliable income from her online storefront. The facebook group came first, then the netflix series. * QAnon is a persistent conspiracy theory with no basis in fact. Regardless, tripcodes (a public hash of the password used for identity verification on 4chan) denote a persistent online identity, so he's got a following... and the following is what causes power.

Power in its purest form is asking someone for something and getting it. This looks different in the modern age than it did previously, but saying that celebrities don't have power belies the entire concept. These are celebrities, either advocating obviously false things, or due to their advocation of obviously false things, and millions of people are taken in.

In contrast, the expected Iowa caucus turnout numbers are going to be around 60,000. Or, in other words: There are more people believing in flat earth than there are democrats caucasing in Iowa. How in the world is this not a problem.

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

#400

Post by dcchambers »

Several sites I used to enjoy have been ruined by this toxic polarization.

Everything is an echo chamber these days. No one wants to be wrong or look foolish online. People don't want to even read opinions other than their own. There is no more civil discourse.

It's not just online - I'm noticing the same thing in real life.

I don't know how to fix it...but I hope someone does. Whatever the case, we need to treat the cause, not just the symptoms.

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