421–430 of 859 posts
I don't know what internet you were using, but this does not match my experience. The internet has been a dickfighting playground since at least the 90s. The biggest difference is that comment threads are the majority of how people create content on the internet now and they weren't before.
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…
But the average left-leaning person today doesn't see bigots even as people any more. I spend the bulk of my time studying extremist discourse and communities. Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong ethnic/religious/political group are either not people or at best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that b…
I think its a few things: 1) Anonymity when its not useful. Many forums are relatively anonymous to the average user but most of the time its not useful. Theres no life or death situation on reddit. Sometimes, it can be useful, but most of the time its not. People post a lot of stuff they would never say in the real world because they have no responsibility to back it up or be associated with it. Just look at what th…
You also imply that anonymity is somehow "not useful" except in cases of extreme threats to life or liberty at the same time you conflate pseudoanonymity and anonymity on Reddit. If anything, Reddit is a great example of how _insufficient_ anonymity can lead to evaporitively-cooled echo-chambers in short order: karma and rep, coupled with persistent identities, are powerful drivers of conformism.
Why, then, you ask, is HN not quite as bad when it is also pseudoanonymous? I'd say it comes down to local culture. HN isn't as monolithic as it could be because at least some users disagree with expressing disagreement via downvote as long as a point is made in good faith. Similarly, some (almost entirely anonymous) chan boards were actually really good in terms of quality discourse, while others were shitholes. The differentiating factor is the attitude of the community and its moderation philosophy, rather than some simple "how anonymous is this site" bucketing.
That's why I'm convinced that a lot of the problems with modern social media are the result of the creation of an environment where developing that type of site/board culture that can foster discourse is impossible: if you take a global platform where moderation is often outsourced and totally divided from any of the communities it theoretically serves and populate it with people who've not been exposed to the sort of behavioral norms common in earlier Internet communities, you end up with no norms at all - just an infinite vista of shitposting.
If anything, I'd disagree with your third point even more strongly than your first: even though community-local moderation can exacerbate echo-chamber effects, it can also foster productive cultures. In other words, community-driven moderation is necessary but not sufficient for establishing worthwhile norms. Even if the ratio is 10 T_D:1 HN, I'll still take that over the global, no-holds-barred shitfight enabled by platforms like Twitter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> silencing anyone who disagrees with you. Agreed. Disagreement, tolerance, and diversity are healthy. The opposite is censorship, insecurity, and conformance.
A big problem with giving hate mongers a platform is that they do not return the courtesy. Try posting a well-written and well-thought-out criticism of Trump on /r/thedonald and see how many seconds it takes before the post is taken down and you are banned. They are not interested in disagreement, tolerance and diversity. They are only interested in having a platform to spew their hate from.
people love echo chambers it turns out. It's no surprise that all the big platforms are evolving to provide them. I think the market for well reasoned argument is smaller than OP thinks.
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 problem is the loudest groups of people are people with the strongest political opinions. Regular people are busy. They have neither the time nor desire to police internet arguments or play the counter argument game. And even if someone does, regular people don't have time or desire to wade through it.
One thing that I noticed when I had a Facebook account was that apart from a few exceptions most what I would consider well-adjusted people rarely participated in political discussions. Sure, people on average might be apolitical but there is no shortage of political content on Facebook -- it just predominantly seems to be driven by people using pseudonyms or with much less stake in their social identity.
Another issue is that both politcal parties in the US seem to believe that they can achieve their goals by shifting the Overton window and they are incentivized to polarize people and hijack online platforms to do this.
This leads to a huge black-hole of representation for any sort of average political view online which cannot be countered with the above logic.
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…
But the average left-leaning person today doesn't see bigots even as people any more. I spend the bulk of my time studying extremist discourse and communities. Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong ethnic/religious/political group are either not people or at best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that b…
Uh, well, isn't that the same that some leftwing activist advocate for those they disagree with? Deplatforming, censorship, criminalisation?
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…
It’s important to remember too there are incentives for people to argue and behave otherwise: FB, Twitter, hate-speech mongers who want easy access to large audiences — All have commercial cause to act in favour of more and more extreme speech.
People like that benefit from more and more extreme speech. They permit or encourage it on their platforms. This in turn causes the white blood cell count of the body politic to spike as it tries to counteract the bile and hate. This angry counter-speech then gets presented as “polarisation”.
The solution to ignorance _can often be_ silencing the ignorant, yes, in order that the educators can be heard.
Would we still have an anti-vax problem if FB banned it across its properties? Really?
Banning disruptive speakers works. Every pub landlord knows it.
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…
But the average left-leaning person today doesn't see bigots even as people any more. I spend the bulk of my time studying extremist discourse and communities. Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong ethnic/religious/political group are either not people or at best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that b…
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.
Sadly there are lots of reasonable-seeming right-leaning people whose discourse about 'real issues' sooner or later circles around to 'race realism' or 'the jewish question' or some other ideological Pandora's box. It's often later; a common rule of thumb among far-right extremists is that it takes at least 2 years to reliably indoctrinate a person online.
Here is an example of how these persuasion techniques are deployed, albeit a slightly offensive one. This particular example (spread across 3 pages) aims toward recruitment of people for the 'Qanon' conspiracy which is popular among some right-leaning people. While it's orthogonal to other far-right extremist movements, it is a useful example of a developing militant ideology.
https://centipedenation.com/library/red-pilling-a-general-gu...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I debated against socialism / expanding government in a thread about UBI or something similar. I was told by a mod that my comments were deleted and that they were "tedious" and "idealogical flamebait". When I complained about his moderation by saying this: >A moderator just a hair left of your current moderation approach on the authoritarianism scale would "flag and remove" PG's entire recent article about income in…
I can't find a recent article on HN containing debates on/against/about/for socialism with banned accounts in them, so it's hard to see the content/context that would then be called toxic, but I do see in your reply that you mention "tedious" and "idealogical flamebait" which is not mutually exclusive to toxic behaviour. I suppose someone could write flamebait or be tedious without being toxic.
The reason why YC seems more left-leaning nowadays compared to a few years ago, is exactly what the grandparent of this thread suggested, anyone right-leaning (or libertarian) has been harassed off the site / strongly discouraged from sharing their perspectives.