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De-escalating social media conflict

nickpunt.com

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Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#111

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

kortilla wrote: post #100
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same goes for the Japanese. Empty apologies are empty. They need to know that the issue is "owned," regretted, a solution/amend is offered, and it won't happen again. Not a fun time. Americans, in my experience, don't care. They just find satisfaction in being a bit "better than" I am, and their reactions are purely emotion-driven. They usually would try to pile extra transgressions (that I was not responsible fo…

What profession were you in? I’ve worked at ~10 software companies throughout my career and fessing up to causing an issue was seen as much worse than admitting you fucked up.

I was an engineer and a manager of software development for a very well-known, arch-conservative Japanese optics corporation.

I worked there for just shy of 27 years. LOTS of 14-hour flights (shudder).

But I am not Japanese, so it's quite possible they treated me differently from others.

My experience was, they had a difficult time, trusting non-Japanese. They tended to pull me in, when dealing with westerners.

It was not a "peaches and cream" job. In many ways, it was quite difficult and stressful, but I was in a "silo" of extremely honorable, incredibly high-quality people for a couple of decades.

In all, it was a very different experience than many Americans have had. I am glad for the experience, but also relieved to have it behind me. Although I am an excellent manager, I am most comfortable developing software. Being good at something is not the same as being happy doing it.

I'm not-so-bad at software development, but it's a much bigger pond.

Coming from that corporation, into the modern development landscape in the US has been a...revelation.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#112

Post by jancsika »

I like this and posted a question yesterday on HN whether Twitter had such a UI. So I guess they don't.

The deeper issue IMO is that a) we're trying to squeeze every last ounce of value out of the dying "feature" that "anyone can join this service for zero effort", and b) the services that do leverage a web of trust (in the social sense) like Facebook have business models that tend to damage those social links rather than build something healthy with them.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#113

Post by memexy »

> Reply to your tweet, posting "I was wrong"

There is another option. Quote tweet and say "I was wrong". Quote tweeting is a concept extension mechanism but people mostly use it for dunking. If you make a mistake then quote tweeting is the best way to correct it because people can then search for "I was wrong" and see the wrong tweet in context.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#114

Post by acituan »

dvtrn wrote: post #104
koluna wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is the alternative you see to social media to build influence and visibility? Releasing yourself from the need to build influence and visibility in exchange for a life of genuine authenticity and virtue.

Don't consider this a personal need but a game theoretic challenge. Those who pursue influence and visibility also end up shaping public perception, policy etc. Considering how much channels like twitter tend to amplify foolish ideas than nuanced and balanced perspectives, participating in that discourse in the name of reason and wisdom becomes virtuous itself.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#115

Post by holler »

dcow wrote: post #87
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 gravitat…

agree! It’s a challenging problem to solve. Im working on a new project that’s a sort of hybrid between twitter/slack/discord, and actively thinking about these issues... Still young but my aim is both scale and nuanced convo! (example post https://sqwok.im/p/TU2ba6D-iDEYuQ)

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#116

Post by acituan »

npunt wrote: post #105
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…

I don't think twitter is not allowing de-escalation as much as they haven't figured out how to do it. The product itself hasn't changed much in a long time, and there are likely many internal reasons for that that have little to do with revenue. Meanwhile the FB misleading articles example is a much more nuanced problem that has less to do with engagement than simply being a political hot potato and a really challeng…

> I don't think twitter is not allowing de-escalation as much as they haven't figured out how to do it.

I think what they are doing is perfectly in line with their mission statement.

"Give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers" lacks functional constraints such as "let the better ideas propagate more", "put some barriers around good judgement, rationality, relevance, factuality" etc. If a human mind operated through twitter algorithms, it would be equivalent to some sort of psychosis, every voice in one's head valued equally without due discrimination on reality checks, uncontrollable, irrational, amplifying irrelevant viewpoints, unable to conform to reality. Unsurprisingly at times our collective behavior fueled by twitter (and any other social media that operate through such filtering/amplification functions) resembles mass psychosis.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#117

Post by dvtrn »

acituan wrote: post #114
dvtrn wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is the alternative you see to social media to build influence and visibility? Releasing yourself from the need to build influence and visibility in exchange for a life of genuine authenticity and virtue.

Don't consider this a personal need but a game theoretic challenge. Those who pursue influence and visibility also end up shaping public perception, policy etc. Considering how much channels like twitter tend to amplify foolish ideas than nuanced and balanced perspectives, participating in that discourse in the name of reason and wisdom becomes virtuous itself.

* Don't consider this a personal need but a game theoretic challenge*

You do you, but my intentions here were absolutely rooted in the former.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#118

Post by hliyan »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #111
kortilla wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What profession were you in? I’ve worked at ~10 software companies throughout my career and fessing up to causing an issue was seen as much worse than admitting you fucked up.

I was an engineer and a manager of software development for a very well-known, arch-conservative Japanese optics corporation. I worked there for just shy of 27 years. LOTS of 14-hour flights (shudder). But I am not Japanese, so it's quite possible they treated me differently from others. My experience was, they had a difficult time, trusting non-Japanese. They tended to pull me in, when dealing with westerners. It wa…

> I was in a "silo" of extremely honorable, incredibly high-quality people for a couple of decades

Have you written more about your experiences during this period? I would love to read them!

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#119

Post by donw »

andrepd wrote: post #89
ssalazar wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

For-profit corporations acting as a source for public good was the case for a good, long time.

The idea of "maximize shareholder value" didn't really kick off until the 80's, and it's been an absolute disaster for the country ever since.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#120

Post by jariel »

andrepd wrote: post #89
ssalazar wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Companies have competing constituents:

1) Shareholders 2) Debt-holders and financiers 3) Executives 4) Suppliers 5) Customers 6) Staff

... and may have a charter or mission, or even an established culture which sets guiding principles.

Various forms of legal power (ownership, right to collectively bargain, fiduciary/oversight responsibility, first rights to assets on liquidation), social power, market power (price negotiation), and individual intention (everyone, even bankers make decisions based on something other than just money) form, a kind of dynamic equilibrium.

So a company is going to end up being or doing whatever the combined weighted intentions of those forces imply.

It's not 'shareholders' that can do anything willy nilly. Sometimes customers have all of the power and indirectly dictate everything. Inversely maybe buyers do: Apple is a dictator to many of its suppliers. Sometimes Unions run the show or have incredible influence (auto industry, government), sometimes the debtors. Sometimes the 'CEO' particularly a founder even without 'majority shares' has considerably more influence than anyone else, with the board afraid to replace them.

A non-profit is almost the same minus shareholders.

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