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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?

#761

Post by bsenftner »

So, after a day nothing but "this is the way it is" comments I gotta say: this is not acceptable.

I've been pondering this issue for over a decade. I think the general attitude is partially right: we can't do anything about troll postings. But we can create incentives for troll (meaning nonconstructive) comments in online discussions to funnel together while non-troll conversations seeking literally any goal have incentive to maintain their conversations through something similar to the "like" mechanism.

The basic idea is rather than a single comment and reply widget for online articles and posts, the "comment reply" widget has an "attitude indicator" that declares "this post is in this attitude". Others give the post a +/- rating for how well it fits the attitude.

It is a simple mechanism that alters how online discussions are handled. It has to be simple, or it will not be adopted. The change could be significant, enabling a diversity of on-topic conversations. Just pick your attitude, your sub-culture and talk with birds of a feather. Whereas no serious conversations can take place online today without random trolls stomping on everyone's china - all because we have a single reply widget funneling all voices together into a troll happy mess.

Anyone else thinking of possible solutions?

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

#762

Post by emsign »

JohnFen wrote: post #183
kody wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When reporters on Twitter freak out about the trolls on 4chan like it's some disease infecting our precious wholesome web, I can't help but remember (through my biased lenses of course) when most of the web (that I visited) looked like 4chan. What the folks who think the web is 'degrading' don't seem to realize is how much of a wild west it used to be, and how much corporations have tried to (and somewhat succeeded i…

> 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…

I think the web used to be much more diverse, or rather heterogenic. Communities really differed a lot. They still can, but now there's this thing that has shifted from the TV and print media to the web in full: the public opinion.

In the past 10 years the public debate and public consciousness has finally been transfered to internet. Mostly because of social media. And while doing this, the "public" has changed from a moderate and gate-keeping environment of the press and TV networks, to something more wild and "liberated". And it has picked up a lot of traits that we would formerly observe in the more rough pockets of the web.

I don't think those pockets have changed or seized to exist, some of them have become more radical than ever before, it's just that what we consider to be the public space where everyone is grounded to has changed place.

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

#764

Post by anon_d »

We can't fix this.

The whole HN narrative around this presumes that this is an unnatural outcome caused by the bad incentives of tech platforms. This is just wrong.

The polarization comes directly from people being able to communicate freely.

The polarization is real. It was there before, but it was controlled by censorship, basically. The polarization isn't caused by the web, it's unleashed by it. We can't stop it without neutering the web, and we don't want that.

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

#765

Post by bsenftner »

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…

> Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone?

I believe the culprit is expecting the diversity of the world's voices to be able to converse through a single comment widget. Any online article or post has a single comment widget that mixes the voices of everyone together. This causes chaos, as we are all well aware. I believe we need to provide a mechanism for the public to self segregate when they post comments; if they can say "I am posting this to these people" or "this post is of this attitude" and the comments section beneath a post/article were a selection of conversations with different attitudes - things would be different, less heated, and (sub)-culturally richer.

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

#766

Post by jessaustin »

anigbrowl wrote: post #751
jessaustin wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people are vanishingly rare. You're vastly more likely to die in a traffic collision than to be shot because somebody doesn't like your church.

They're a lot less rare than they used to be. Likewise, few people die in wars until they're suddenly declared.

We haven't "declared" wars in my parents' lifetimes, yet somehow millions have died at our hands. "Apocalyptic" violence in USA is partly an echo of our crimes overseas, but mostly an obvious result of the constant fear-mongering and dehumanization our media performs in order to justify those crimes.

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

#767

Post by mthoms »

missosoup wrote: post #760
mthoms wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>'Toxicity' [...] means anything undesirable from the point of view of the speaker. I think it's more often the delivery than the message that gets something labeled as "toxic". Merriam Webster describes toxic (when used in this context) as "extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful" People are generally open to new ideas as long as they're presented in a friendly and factual manner.

"Extremely harsh" is entirely different from "malicious or harmful". Again the conflation of these is one of the root causes of what we're seeing today. People who use the term 'toxic' like this are people who subscribe to the mindset of "I'm being prosecuted because someone is saying something I don't like". People seem to have forgotten that having free speech necessarily means tolerating speech you disagree with,…

I literally just explained to you, in a courteous and civilized manner, that many (in my opinion - most) people don't use the term that way. That includes me.

The irony of you ignoring my comment/experience, doubling down on your claim, and then going on to preach that "refusing to engage in any dialogue is exactly how polarisation begins" would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing.

People seem to have lost the ability to listen. That makes me sad.

Edit: Grammar.

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

#768

Post by jonnycoder »

friendly_fren wrote: post #757
nmfisher wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, pro- or anti-Trump, you have to admit that he's at least symptomatic of divisive politics, right? It's probably fair to go one step further and say that he also embraces that divisiveness. That's without expressing an opinion on the underlying politics.

Did Obama not divide the country to a point where Trump could get elected?

I would say Obama divided the country more than Trump. Trumps approval rating among african americans is now over 40%. That's huge. To US citizens, Trump is less divisive in my opinion, but his character definitely sparks the opposite side into creating a new bread of louder and in your face divisive culture (Antifa, etc).

Altough I believe that to be true during the Bush years as the anti-Bush types were very loud and crazy. Now that many more people are online and are able to spread opinion via Twitter/FB/youtube/etc, the divisiveness from activists has gotten louder. Joe Rogan also observes this in how he describes the 2 minute tv news media culture where 10 people are trying to shout over one another to get their point in, and how that is a sign of a dying medium (being replaced by internet, long form discussion, etc). This seems like further proof that the traditional media is more divisive more than ever...it's the last breaths of a dying medium. Don't think that's true? Just watch local tv news in SF Bay Area and compare to a smaller city outside of a major metro (blue) area.

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

#769

Post by missosoup »

mthoms wrote: post #767
missosoup wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Extremely harsh" is entirely different from "malicious or harmful". Again the conflation of these is one of the root causes of what we're seeing today. People who use the term 'toxic' like this are people who subscribe to the mindset of "I'm being prosecuted because someone is saying something I don't like". People seem to have forgotten that having free speech necessarily means tolerating speech you disagree with,…

I literally just explained to you, in a courteous and civilized manner, that many (in my opinion - most) people don't use the term that way. That includes me. The irony of you ignoring my comment/experience, doubling down on your claim, and then going on to preach that "refusing to engage in any dialogue is exactly how polarisation begins" would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing. People seem to have lost the a…

It sounds a bit like you might be feeling prosecuted because I said something you disagree with. I'm not even sure what part of my comment upset you since none of it is harmful, malicious, or personally targeted.

Emotive language like 'preach' has no place in constructive debate.

I'm not at all upset about your viewpoint, I'm happy to debate it on any level you'd like. Keep your comment as a solid example of what I meant for the other readers.

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

#770

Post by dang »

Sorry_Rum_Ham wrote: post #756
dang wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid you've been breaking the site guidelines by using HN for ideological flamewar, personal attacks, and the like. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of which ideology they're for or against, so please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There you go, defend the bigots and ban the people fighting them. You’re fighting the good fight, mister moderator guy

Asking you to follow the rules has zero to do with defending anybody else.
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