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Did the early internet activists blow it?

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Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#41

Post by mikedilger »

chillacy wrote: post #26
v7x wrote: post #10

I agree with most of the article, but the author faltered in the area I predicted he would before I began to read. He expresses fear that without some restraint that sites might become "like 8chan". To which I have to ask, why is that a problem? Because its a hotbed for hate speech? What is hate speech? I'm sure I dont need to elaborate further on what I see wrong with that. What people seem to forget/ignore is that…

> Let it be an outlet for those who choose to partake in such content I normally don't argue for censorship but I will throw out that if you believe the following things: 1. There exist thoughts and beliefs which are dangerous to (my) society 2. These thoughts and beliefs are normally tempered through social pressure in the dominant culture 3. Through the internet you can create your own subculture which reinforces y…

You certainly may _want_ to eliminate such places and/or such beliefs. But stamping out places or beliefs doesn't really work. People find or create new places, and what is left is just ill-will and further political division. Beliefs become martyred and the Streissand effect draws more people in to investigate.

The way to reduce bad beliefs is to, IMHO:

1. Ingratiate and investigate. Respect the people, become their friend, listen to their full arguments (don't imagine straw men), understand their motivations. You might even discover the belief isn't so bad. If you don't, continue on to:

2. Suggest alternate ways of viewing the situation. People will always argue their point and appear to not accept your view. But I've found they almost always actually move slightly towards your point, oftentimes after the conversation, even if they won't admit it. It takes time for a worldview to shift.

Arguing makes no sense prior to ingratiating yourself, because if you are an enemy your view will not be appreciated.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#42

Post by worble »

mjcohen wrote: post #37
worble wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been on the internet since a young age, I've always found it strange the internet is, well, so "srs business" these days. The internet has never, and as you say, will never be a harmonious place where everyone will be nice to each other. We can't even achieve this in physical spaces which can actually enforce these kinds of rules! Maybe I'm lucky, but I find it really easy to just disasociate with online comme…

What would your reaction if information about you or your loved ones was posted and people were encouraged to do nasty things to you or them?

Well I mean, like I say, I'm pretty careful not to let out personal information online (Although I'm sure someone could probably track me down if they really tried). Without being in that situation it's pretty hard to say. People say lots of things on the internet but it very rarely translates into reality, not without some kind of actual reason to do so. It's easy to say while not being in that sitatuation, but unless I believed that there was an actual reason to target me, someone wouldn't bother putting their own life at risk just to follow what some other random person on the internet said. Luckily I live in a pretty safe place, so I'd probably inform the police and let them take it from there.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#43

Post by hitekker »

ggm wrote: post #14
hitekker wrote: post #5

It sounds like Godwin is trying to distract public attention away from his selling-out of .org to a private equity corporation. https://domainnamewire.com/2020/01/15/vint-cerf-and-mike-god... https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200115/11301343739/techd... https://prospect.org/power/private-equity-corporate-takeover...

He can discuss multiple things at once. You think the world is single threaded? He has a life outside of his board role (I also think the board stuffed up, btw)

A man who styles himself an internet visionary while abdicating his responsibility to the future of the internet is likely to have an ulterior motive when talking about the internet.

However I also recognize that our community, like other communities, tend to forgive high status community members, as long as their lies aren’t too obvious.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#44

Post by eropple »

heartbeats wrote: post #29
eropple wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There certainly are anodyne parts of 4chan--but they're obviously, to the point where your post comes off as disingenous, not the problem. Hell, they could migrate back to Something Awful, like a lot of us who grew up ended up doing. (Which, just recently, torpedoed FYAD, the last vestige of the edgelord era. The FYAD types seem to have fucked off to 4chan and elsewhere. Nobody was surprised.) Hate speech is abhorren…

But they already are. The crazy screamer on the street corner causes an actual harm to you. To avoid 8chan is trivial; just don't go there. That people get radicalized going there seems like a poor argument. If I understand you correctly, the principle is the following: 1. Someone holds acceptable views. 2. They visit 8chan. 3. They now hold abhorrent views. Why should 8chan be blamed for this, or rather, what did th…

Radicalization is not about opinions, it is about convincing the radicalized to undertake acts of violence and threats thereof for a political purpose. You get, yeah, that these are also places where these little shitheads gather and decide who to brigade (the aforementioned "oh, hmm, that lady has opinions about video games, let's try real hard to destroy her life" dreck that the various chans indulge in when they're bored), that geek each other up to the point where somebody thinks sending a SWAT team at somebody is a great idea? And that the management is shockingly hands-off about letting them do it and have been for years now?

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#45

Post by whiddershins »

mjcohen wrote: post #37
worble wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been on the internet since a young age, I've always found it strange the internet is, well, so "srs business" these days. The internet has never, and as you say, will never be a harmonious place where everyone will be nice to each other. We can't even achieve this in physical spaces which can actually enforce these kinds of rules! Maybe I'm lucky, but I find it really easy to just disasociate with online comme…

What would your reaction if information about you or your loved ones was posted and people were encouraged to do nasty things to you or them?

Expressing opinions vs making specific threats is a very clear thick line for me, and yet somehow whenever I read about takedowns and such it seems many people have trouble making the distinction.

“I hate x and wish they had never been born”

Is not

“I am coming to your house tomorrow with a weapon”

Yet people treat them similarly.

From there it just becomes “anything that scares me is a threat.”

Then, it becomes obvious that people are in general scared of cultures and attitudes very different from their own.

And so there’s no tolerant chaos anymore.

It’s a Motte and Bailey argument.

Very few people support doxxing and/or incitements to violence.

But it is amazing how much censorship happens in the pursuit of curbing such threats.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#46

Post by zozbot234 »

eropple wrote: post #44
heartbeats wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they already are. The crazy screamer on the street corner causes an actual harm to you. To avoid 8chan is trivial; just don't go there. That people get radicalized going there seems like a poor argument. If I understand you correctly, the principle is the following: 1. Someone holds acceptable views. 2. They visit 8chan. 3. They now hold abhorrent views. Why should 8chan be blamed for this, or rather, what did th…

Radicalization is not about opinions , it is about convincing the radicalized to undertake acts of violence and threats thereof for a political purpose . You get, yeah, that these are also places where these little shitheads gather and decide who to brigade (the aforementioned "oh, hmm, that lady has opinions about video games, let's try real hard to destroy her life" dreck that the various chans indulge in when they…

Swatting is quite illegal anyway - and so is plotting a 'swatting' online, by the "clear and present danger" standard. Free speech is irrelevant to this. Brigading might be a problem but both sides are doing it, so why blame only 4chan and the like while letting Twitter and Tumblr off the hook?

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#47

Post by Mirioron »

whiddershins wrote: post #45
mjcohen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would your reaction if information about you or your loved ones was posted and people were encouraged to do nasty things to you or them?

Expressing opinions vs making specific threats is a very clear thick line for me, and yet somehow whenever I read about takedowns and such it seems many people have trouble making the distinction. “I hate x and wish they had never been born” Is not “I am coming to your house tomorrow with a weapon” Yet people treat them similarly. From there it just becomes “anything that scares me is a threat.” Then, it becomes obvi…

I would like to echo your statement. I've always found it bizarre how people conflate insults with threats. In the vast majority of cases we can draw a very distinct line between the two. On top of that, it's not like this has any less ambiguity in meatspace.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#48

Post by iamnothere »

Barrin92 wrote: post #40
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #25

Freedom is the right to be wrong. If I am free as long as I only do it "The Right Way", I'm not free. People need to try different things, make mistakes, be foolish. Without that freedom, we become a(n at least metaphoric) theocracy. Society's disapproval cannot be incorporated into law in a free society.

>. If I am free as long as I only do it "The Right Way", I'm not free This is a shallow definition of freedom, the sort of idea of freedom that children instinctively have when they're told to go to bed and start throwing a tantrum and it is largely what the internet was built on, maybe not accidentally by people who in many ways were juvenile adults. There's a deeper version of freedom, a more adult one, that recogn…

> Likewise an internet without hierarchies, without controls and without enforcement of social taboos, be that by law, by gatekeepers or through exclusion incentivizes the very worst actors to run amok. Social approval should be incorporated into law, (either literal or culturally) because places that don't do it become uninhabitable. (as the current public internet increasingly is).

"Uninhabitable?" To me it seems like the web is plenty full of people, especially in the gated communities of the social networks. Small community forums are still running as they always have. I would even say that things have improved noticeably since 2016, which was a low point.

When you say "uninhabitable", I suspect that is actually code for "uninhabitable to me." I also find certain parts of the web distateful, and I avoid them. There are other places where I spend quite a bit of time, and I don't find them uninhabitable at all, nor do I find them becoming generally worse off.

The problem with your statement about taboo enforcement is the question of which taboos do you select? There is no such thing as an impartial viewpoint here. Creating a moral arbiter with actual power is just creating another cultural battlefield that will oscillate between left-wing and right-wing control. In that, it will further entrench the current two-party duopoly and prevent meaningful change. It will also force businesses to be dragged further into the conflict, and may eventually lead to explicitly partisan companies--something I hope to never see.

Frankly I find the mores of contemporary society to be awful. I wouldn't want their taboos enforced on me. In fact, I would actively resist it using whatever measures I could muster. But since I have the option of moving to spaces where dissent and nonconformism is allowed, I choose to do so.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#49

Post by Mirioron »

mikedilger wrote: post #41
chillacy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let it be an outlet for those who choose to partake in such content I normally don't argue for censorship but I will throw out that if you believe the following things: 1. There exist thoughts and beliefs which are dangerous to (my) society 2. These thoughts and beliefs are normally tempered through social pressure in the dominant culture 3. Through the internet you can create your own subculture which reinforces y…

You certainly may _want_ to eliminate such places and/or such beliefs. But stamping out places or beliefs doesn't really work. People find or create new places, and what is left is just ill-will and further political division. Beliefs become martyred and the Streissand effect draws more people in to investigate. The way to reduce bad beliefs is to, IMHO: 1. Ingratiate and investigate. Respect the people, become their…

One very important thing to counter hate is to try to have everyone in society involved in society somehow. People are much less willing to wish ill on others in society (or society itself) if they feel that they are part of it. A lot of stories about people being radicalized start with a person feeling at end of the rope and alone.

This isn't something that you can really do online, but it is something that can be done in real life and should probably done more. Friends are a powerful force.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#50

Post by [deleted] »

mikedilger wrote: post #41
chillacy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let it be an outlet for those who choose to partake in such content I normally don't argue for censorship but I will throw out that if you believe the following things: 1. There exist thoughts and beliefs which are dangerous to (my) society 2. These thoughts and beliefs are normally tempered through social pressure in the dominant culture 3. Through the internet you can create your own subculture which reinforces y…

You certainly may _want_ to eliminate such places and/or such beliefs. But stamping out places or beliefs doesn't really work. People find or create new places, and what is left is just ill-will and further political division. Beliefs become martyred and the Streissand effect draws more people in to investigate. The way to reduce bad beliefs is to, IMHO: 1. Ingratiate and investigate. Respect the people, become their…

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