This only highlights that any substantive discussion of anything controversial should be pseudonymous.
De-escalating social media conflict
61–70 of 350 posts
Re: De-escalating social media conflict
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. By not playing, you're protecting yourself from future retribution, deserved or (more commonly) not. And not being on social media - or more precisely, not posting on social media - doesn't mean you're out of touch or lacking in influence. Not by a long shot.
To that, genuinely curious - what is the alternative you see to social media to build influence and visibility? One of the key benefits of Twitter is that you can make your work, be it in the arts, software or literally anything else, visible to a large audience. What’s the alternative if one is not to use Twitter? How do you publicize your findings or insights to a broad population?
> What’s the alternative if one is not to use Twitter? How do you publicize your findings or insights to a broad population?
If you can, you do it behind the shield of a faceless corporate entity (that you own) doing the promoting, rather than tying statements to your own personal identity. You don't stop using Twitter or Instagram et al., you stop using them to project your personal opinions out into the world. Your opinionated discussions are reserved to people you trust and to smaller in-person environments where you can have a real dialogue of understanding and exchange.
If you want to build value in your own identity, you take on the risks to chase the rewards. I'd suggest strictly talking about work, and never deviating from that. If you leave that lane, these days everyone knows the risks they're taking, it's blatantly obvious.
You publicize your findings, you don't spout off about such and such highly charged partisan social cultural revolution topic that is just begging to get you in trouble if you twitch the wrong way. I think that's really plainly obviously the way you handle it. What's so hard about that? Oh I just couldn't help throwing out my meaningless 2cents on BLM while discussing my work on using machine learning to recognize giraffes standing next to stop signs; I just had to get my opinion about black-white relations out there in the open, because what I have to say about BLM is super important and could change the world. No, just publicize the findings.
Re: De-escalating social media conflict
#63Even increasing the content limit will go a long way towards deescalation. I find that, on Twitter, one often has to resort to oversimplified hyperbole and sarcasm because it's very difficult to fit more thoughtful and nuanced messages in the content limit. Yes it's possible to write multiple tweets. But that takes significantly more effort.
It doesn't take an essay to convey nuance.
Re: De-escalating social media conflict
#64The only winning move is not to play.
I think that is indeed true on the individual level, but when a large percentage of people are on Twitter such that cancellations lead to actual real world circumstances, it in fact matters that people who are not you do in fact play because it might affect you.
I mean, maybe that is a sign that Twitter should be cancelled.
Re: De-escalating social media conflict
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. From what I have seen an apology only makes things worse.
A badly-executed apology divorced from change makes things worse.
Apologising to people who would consider it an acceptable political outcome if you lost your job and killed yourself tends to embolden those partifluar people.
Appeasing bullies doesn't work. They want to see you squirm and beg, because it's fun make someone grovel before you. The object-level discussion is secondary.
Some people call this dichotomy good and bad faith, right?
Re: De-escalating social media conflict
#66> By admitting a mistake, the poster stops the runaway train of replies and amplifications of their mistake, and the reputation damage that follows. No matter the apology of the mistake, those who demand them to apologise will still reject it and push further for calls for the accused to be cancelled. The replies and amplifications will divert into real life instead of Twitter.
The nice thing about this proposal is precisely how it replaces the problematic "apology" dynamic with a neutral retraction. Apologies may or may not be rejected as insincere, but a retraction is simply a factual statement that the user no longer stands behind what they wrote, while preserving the content itself (unlike tweet deletion, which in practice tends to escalate reposts) for the sake of transparency.
Well, if you have someone determined to go after someone else, the most nuanced approach is not going to get you much. The attacker just rephrases it as they wish.
Which is to say, when you have a medium like Twitter, where the entire world can march in and get involved with conversation X, a proposal for de-escalation seems futile and a bit absurd. Among other things, a lot of media personalities have built their engagement by not letting go of opportunities for kicking whoever when they are down - giving this up would literally cost them money.
It seems like plans for de-escalation would do much better in situations where the participants are actually building a community, a group sharing values, a part of a reasonable forum/medium, not a stand-alone thing.
Re: De-escalating social media conflict
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
A badly-executed apology divorced from change makes things worse.
Apologising to people who would consider it an acceptable political outcome if you lost your job and killed yourself tends to embolden those partifluar people. Appeasing bullies doesn't work. They want to see you squirm and beg, because it's fun make someone grovel before you. The object-level discussion is secondary. Some people call this dichotomy good and bad faith, right?
I think at the same time there are circumstances in which the acceptable outcome is indeed a loss of job. (And to some moral codes, a loss of life- see advocates for the death penalty.)
EG. A Manager who pressured people into sexual favors for promotions should lose the job of being a manager.
Re: De-escalating social media conflict
#68> By admitting a mistake, the poster stops the runaway train of replies and amplifications of their mistake, and the reputation damage that follows. No matter the apology of the mistake, those who demand them to apologise will still reject it and push further for calls for the accused to be cancelled. The replies and amplifications will divert into real life instead of Twitter.
Damn straight. Never pay the Dangeld.
For the benefit of any who may not know the reference:
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_danegeld.htm
Re: De-escalating social media conflict
#69> By admitting a mistake, the poster stops the runaway train of replies and amplifications of their mistake, and the reputation damage that follows. No matter the apology of the mistake, those who demand them to apologise will still reject it and push further for calls for the accused to be cancelled. The replies and amplifications will divert into real life instead of Twitter.
Usually I don't actually see this, but I do seem to see a pile of "You shouldn't have apologized! They'll make you apologize for everything else once they know you're weak!" comments (which certainly don't help anything).
I think there is a disconnect between people in different communities because reasonable people naturally avoid the places where extremists congregate, so you only encounter them if you either venture into their den (which reasonable people rarely have any incentive to do) or you become one of their targets. If neither of those describes you, you may scarcely be aware of their existence.
This also explains why both sides commonly feel victimized. Each only sees reasonable people on their side and not vicious extremists because they don't hang out with the vicious extremists and the extremists on their side are out victimizing the other side and not them. But they can see the extremists on the other side when they come to attack.
Re: De-escalating social media conflict
#70I think this work is great and interesting, and I respect it. One of the things I feel like it lacks is a discussion of the broader context: we all sort of suspect that one of the reasons Twitter does not generally allow for de-escalation (like FB not censoring misleading news articles) is that such escalation is in fact part of their revenue stream (escalation=more engagement), so while I think ideas like this would…
The earth is still flat, the moon landing never happened, Darwin denied evolution.
What I mean is, when a thing is said, a recant usually doesn’t matter. Even if the recant is from a subject matter expert.
(Not debating truths of the above examples, they’re just examples)