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De-escalating social media conflict

nickpunt.com

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Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#81

Post by dilandau »

rvz wrote: post #9

> 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.

An apology, to the cancel crowd, is merely an admission of guilt. There is no such thing as redemption. By the time someone apologizes, the mob has moved on to a fresh outrage. In their wake are ruined reputation and careers.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#82

Post by intended »

Fellshard wrote: post #2

How will this play when a mea culpa acts as blood in the water for some groups of bad actors?

It will play badly.

Its still worth testing. Not all scenarios are managed by bad actors, so if this has positive results in those situations it may lead to the creation of more tools that could help.

That said, I am sure people are currently finding ways to correct themselves. The main thing here is that the original incident itself is modified.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#83

Post by dghughes »

>as the visibility of a mistake travels across social media, the poster is subject to a constant deluge of new readers calling them out

I've certainly experienced this situation. It's not so bad when it's limited to a small geographic area like a single timezone. But if it's a topic that interests a world-wide audience even just English speakers that's when it can get nuts.

>Twitter as an example environment....1 Ignore replies and hopefully let it die out

That's all you can do you're tainted and anything you write is useless it's. Once that fuse is lit there is no plan B. Turn off notifications on your phone and walk away for a few days.

Another Twitter mistake I've made is replying to a heated topic. The responding people don't understand or is not aware of all the people attached to that Tweet. Now I deselect everyone but the one person I want to reply to unless the topic is tame.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#85

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

I think the article is missing a big point. Most discussions on social media are about values and sacred beliefs. Someone might quote an article or state some statistics, but that’s not at all part of their intent.

Their intent is to talk about their deeply held norms. What social policy is Correct and what policy is Wrong. Not because of facts but because of tribes.

These are not things you can “admit you’re wrong” about. It takes years of ego breaking life experience to realize core beliefs or values might be wrong. It simply will not happen in the span of posting in social media.

So I don’t think the trouble with admitting you are wrong is as simple as they put it. It’s not about the “no respite” aspect or social proof or digging in.

It’s just taking “us v them” tribal beliefs evolved to survive in agrarian or nomadic society millennia ago, and putting it in a megaphone.

Many of the toxic debates are not even about anything where right and wrong makes any sense. The outrage cancel people calling for blood are just as “wrong” as the person they are persecuting. It’s just one stream of subjective babble yelling at another stream of subjective babble that they’re wrong.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#86

Post by ssalazar »

noobermin wrote: post #57

I 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…

"Engagement" is the "paper clip maximizer"[1] of the modern software industry, or more generally an example of "instrumental convergence." Optimizing engagement without regard for negative externalities is a catastrophic ethical failure of the major players in the software industry, and we are finally seeing a backlash both from mainstream advertisers and widespread public outcry.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper...

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#87

Post by dcow »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #5

Even 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.

Twitter/FB just aren't the right platforms for nuanced discussion. I don't know why people keep trying to treat them that way or keep wanting them to become such. Easy for me to say as someone who has already come to this realization and has actively avoided building dependency on Twitter/FB in my daily life, I guess... But honestly I wish people who wanted to have real meaningful discourse with people would gravitate towards other forums. Maybe the reality is that no good alternative exists? I don't really know of any platforms built for "at scale" social discourse. Discords and Slacks and chats and whatnot work great for localized (in the graph-distance sense) discussion. I have yet to come across a tool built specifically around having nuanced discussion of real social issues at scale in a way that doesn't end in scorched earth.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#89

Post by andrepd »

ssalazar wrote: post #86
noobermin wrote: post #57

I 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…

"Engagement" is the "paper clip maximizer"[1] of the modern software industry, or more generally an example of "instrumental convergence." Optimizing engagement without regard for negative externalities is a catastrophic ethical failure of the major players in the software industry, and we are finally seeing a backlash both from mainstream advertisers and widespread public outcry. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In…

Why should a for-profit enterprise have any kind of ethical consideration at all? It seems that's your mistake.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#90

Post by joshspankit »

secondcoming wrote: post #76
noobermin wrote: post #57

I 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…

If there's anyone out there who wants to earn money from advertising there are two words you need to be aware of: "BRAND SAFETY" No well known advertiser wants their brand associated with something unpopular or toxic. This is why YouTube is demonetising any video that mentions Covid-19. YouTube themselves technically probably don't care, but brand safety conscious advertisers certainly do, and so YouTube must too. Th…

> if... it can be forced to allow only content that advertisers approve of.

Your comment seems to state explicitly that not only can they be forced to, but they actively are, and already have been for a while.

However, this fits with my intuition (especially in the now-advertiser-driven “news” space), so I may be jumping to conclusions.

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