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?

#631

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

marbletiles wrote: post #427

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 data suggests that deplatforming works. Milo; Katie Hopkins; InfoWars et al have all lost their former agenda-setting influence following deplatforming. And studies have shown that banning hate sub-Reddits does _not_ cause that content to “pop up elsewhere”, it causes it to decline overall. It’s important to remember too there are incentives for people to argue and behave otherwise: FB, Twitter, hate-speech monge…

[deleted]

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

#632

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #592

djsumdog wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone leads hard left/right. Most people are centrists. So say you want to be a progressive left, but on issue "x" you don't stand with the left. You can't vocalize this because doing so will have people call you "not really left" or "a bigot" or "not seeing past your privilege." You can go two ways. You can not want to leave your political home and double down and go harder left ... or you find dissenting voi…

I’m generally pretty respectful of the idea that people are entitled to make their views public. This is healthy. I don’t think this means that everybody is entitled to have their views broadcast on every platform. Presumably we could agree there’s a line somewhere, at which point it’s acceptable for me, as a company, to refuse to allow views which I consider to be over that line to be broadcast on my platform? It’s…

[deleted]

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

#633

Post by sofal » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

TallGuyShort wrote: post #504

enraged_camel wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Extremists who espouse intolerance count on the tolerance of the opposing groups to get themselves accepted and their extremist viewpoints normalized. When they do get deplatformed, marginalized and discredited, they complain about it, which itself serves to recruit people, especially those who are unfamiliar with such tactics and mistakenly think that their side is being unfair.

My problem with this "intolerance-is-okay-against-the-intolerant" thing is I'm lumped in with some extremist politics because of my religion. I don't feel at all treated as an individual (or even treated fairly) by either the left or the right. Some people who identify as the same religion have been homophobic. Since I was of voting age, I have never been against legalizing gay marriage, or treating homosexuals diffe…

One reason why it is difficult for me to tell is that I personally know a lot of people who say the same thing, i.e. that they are in favor of gay rights, but then they donate thousands of dollars a year to an extremely powerful and wealthy religious corporation that consistently preaches against homosexuality, drives gay teenagers to suicide, and puts their financial and political weight toward preventing gay rights in multiple states.

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

#634

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #485

anigbrowl wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 behavior. Yes, extremist bigots do tend to favor deplatforming: they just want to deplatform a different group. Surely we can behave better than the bigots? >…

Yes, extremist bigots do tend to favor deplatforming: they just want to deplatform a different group.

I'm not talking about deplatforming, I'm talking about the sort of extremist bigots who advocate, organize, or engage in murdering people. You are free to present deplatforming as an equal ill to that if you wish.

If we behave like them we are no better than them. We on the left can't claim tolerance if we only tolerate people we agree with.

Tolerating disagreement and tolerating murder are not really equivalent. You're not obliged to give someone a hug if they're trying to stab you, for example.

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

#635

Post by TallGuyShort » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

sofal wrote: post #633

TallGuyShort wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with this "intolerance-is-okay-against-the-intolerant" thing is I'm lumped in with some extremist politics because of my religion. I don't feel at all treated as an individual (or even treated fairly) by either the left or the right. Some people who identify as the same religion have been homophobic. Since I was of voting age, I have never been against legalizing gay marriage, or treating homosexuals diffe…

One reason why it is difficult for me to tell is that I personally know a lot of people who say the same thing, i.e. that they are in favor of gay rights, but then they donate thousands of dollars a year to an extremely powerful and wealthy religious corporation that consistently preaches against homosexuality, drives gay teenagers to suicide, and puts their financial and political weight toward preventing gay rights…

See also The Good Place, Season 2. I confess I do eat at Chik-fil-a a lot.

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

#636

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #604

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You claim that 1) they won't have to be vaccinated because they can get tested, 2) they don't get tested because of class stratification, but 3) you present no solution to class stratification. And then you claim that it isn't a reasonable point to say that they would be forced to be vaccinated! You... um... rather failed to put together a coherent argument there. Or if you did, I failed to follow it...

Your argument would be similar to the following. 1) Some people don't vaccinate because they have to eat first. 2) Because eating is more important than vaccinations, it would be inhumane to make vaccinations mandatory. 3) Ergo, you cannot make vaccinations mandatory until you solve world hunger. At that point why do anything at all? Decision paralysis makes things impossible to solve because this arbitrary person I…

No, that is completely unlike what I am saying. But you seem rather clearly to just want to argue, rather than actually trying to understand, so I'm done.

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

#637

Post by fastball » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

duanem wrote: post #626

I'm not sure you were around for the great Gnome vs KDE wars of the 2000's. It was pretty toxic and "win-at-all-costs" back then :-) When I released my app 8-years ago, I thought support would be my most hated part of releasing a product. To my surprise, it was one of the most rewarding parts, I met some great people via email, some I will visit one day. But support has its ugly "toxic" side as well. This is particul…

Like anything else, I think a big part of this is how you are raised.

There are plenty of people that treat others terribly, in real life, without any anonymity whatsoever. Likewise, there are plenty of people that treat other anonymous posters on the internet respectfully.

As with everything, parenting and social norms just need to catch up to technology. We need to instill in our children the idea that being rude to anonymous strangers is a bad thing, just as it is a bad thing to be rude to strangers in real life, just as it is a bad thing to be horrible to people you already know.

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

#638

Post by gotoeleven » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

retromario wrote: post #545

gotoeleven wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did he do to call him a bigot? Enforcing immigration laws? Banning travel from countries where we can't vet people properly? Declining to have the military pay for people's sexual reassignment surgeries? Not letting people on welfare earn citizenship? Restricting a refugee system that was being abused? One of the sources of polarization is that the definition of hate and racism and bigotry seems to be broad and…

Maybe start in this extremely well-sourced article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump-r...

Thanks for the link. The story about the 1975 housing discrimination case does indeed look like Trump Management was racist. I think the question is was this driven by personal racial animus or by competitive business considerations? Also to what degree was Donald Trump setting these policies versus his dad Fred? (Donald was 29 or 30 at the time).

The rest of the article is just stuff that really isn't that clear cut as to whether Trump is actually racist. I think the last quote from the article is a good summary of the divide:

>>>KWAME JACKSON: America’s always trying to find this gotcha moment that shows Donald Trump is racist—you know, let’s find this one big thing. Let’s look for that one time when he burned a cross in someone’s yard so we can now finally say it. People refuse to see the bread crumbs that are already in front of you, leading you to grandma’s house.

If you don't like a guy yeah all you need is bread crumbs to crucify him. If you do, especially given the choice was Trump or Hilary Clinton, then you're going to need more than bread crumbs to convince people he's racist. So the original comment, that Trumps election means 50% of the country is fine with bigotry, is just not true. There are people who support Trump who honestly do not believe they are tolerating bigotry.

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

#639

Post by quixoticaxolotl » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

eqdw wrote: post #274

Discussions like this are frustrating to me because they always seem to skip over what feels like a crucial element: Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone? I get the feeling, in general, when people talk about wanting to "Do Something" about this sort of thing, they are always focused on managing the symptom and never focused on addressing the cause. Frequently, when I try to bring this up, the caus…

I share eqdw's distaste for knee-jerk symptom addressal without adequate understanding of the cause.

I am somewhat disappointed by the other responses to eqdw here because they each immediately proffer or refer to competing interpretations of the cause without also referencing empirical tests of those interpretations. They miss eqdw's excellent point that there's always a hand-waved explanation waiting in the wings. Interpretations (which the other comments are) are not true explanations: they add dimensions to how we think, but not certainty in our conclusions. The historical method is not a valid substitute for the scientific method, as E. H. Carr long ago demonstrated with "What Is History?"

The point I'm making is that there's got to be a higher bar for reasoning about social issues than a preferred interpretation, and that is likely going to be experiment. I'm aware sociological issues are so-called wicked problems, are hard to replicate solutions consistently with, and are difficult to have error bars over in their contribution to the end result. I don't think that means it is not possible to do experiments well enough to make reliable inferences - simulated games and follow-up interviews with participants are an effective research technique in this area, for example.

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

#640

Post by duanem » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

duanem wrote: post #626

I'm not sure you were around for the great Gnome vs KDE wars of the 2000's. It was pretty toxic and "win-at-all-costs" back then :-) When I released my app 8-years ago, I thought support would be my most hated part of releasing a product. To my surprise, it was one of the most rewarding parts, I met some great people via email, some I will visit one day. But support has its ugly "toxic" side as well. This is particul…

Two acronyms I love are "RTFM" and "TL;DR" - they are short, quick and carry a lot of meaning. I would feel stink if I asked a question and got "RTFM" as a reply, it would highlight my laziness.

I've wondered if an acronym to say "You aren't being nice" or something to that effect would help.