De-escalating social media conflict • Hacker News Board

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#161

Post by rexgallorum2 » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #29

I've always had a policy of promptly admitting when I'm wrong. It worked great, when I worked at a Japanese company. The Japanese respected it. The Americans, on the other hand, looked at it as a sign of weakness, and tended to "go for the jugular" (Carpe Jugulum) . I think that explains why so many folks "double down," when asked to correct statements. Also, lawyers. A standard piece of advice at American accident s…

Very good observation. The significance of an apology is entirely dependent on the cultural context.

The fallout from BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill comes to mind. British executives failed to provide the gushing (but meaningless) apology the Americans expected until it was too late, and they were skewered in the American press for it. And that particular example concerns two closely related cultures. The results are often more jarring when quite dissimilar cultures are involved.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#162

Post by tenuousemphasis » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #91

andrepd wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Inadvertently, this is a great argument for government as the public needs a coercive force able to require companies to internalize costs.

Companies only exist as legal fictions granted privileges by governments.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#163

Post by tenuousemphasis » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

nullc wrote: post #128

andrepd wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In a world of pure capitalism without ethical considerations at all... these sorts of issues can be "resolved" through assassination markets against the owners and operators of enterprises that become too great a public nuisance. Is that what you want, or would you instead prefer that ethical considerations be back on the table?

Honestly we could use an assassination market right about now.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#164

Post by sqldba » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

This is brilliant.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#165

Post by dragontamer » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #97

dcow wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words: self-censor. Sorry not my style. I believe you have good points about keeping your work and personal lives as separate as possible and I believe your advice is very pragmatic. I don't, however, think it should be necessary nor is it realistic. Let's all go into sterile work environments for 8+ hours a day where we have to self-censor based solely on observations of how other people fucked up and anger…

I don't think he was implying that you have to live by what he perceives as an out to the social quagmire to be found in social media. Let the screaming masses have it and they'll eventually destroy themselves or move on to another quagmire.

> Let the screaming masses have it

Ultimately, those "screaming masses" will vote and determine the future of this country. And by "eventually", I mean in less than 4 months.

> they'll eventually destroy themselves

Not before Election Day.

The social media groups have proven themselves to be powerful coalitions of voters, capable of coordinating mass movement and determining the future of our country.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#166

Post by julianj » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:54 AM UTC

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #163

nullc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world of pure capitalism without ethical considerations at all... these sorts of issues can be "resolved" through assassination markets against the owners and operators of enterprises that become too great a public nuisance. Is that what you want, or would you instead prefer that ethical considerations be back on the table?

Honestly we could use an assassination market right about now.

Reminds me of Black Mirror Season 3e6. It's all fine until you mess up and piss off the mob.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#167

Post by davesque » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 5:54 AM UTC

This is brilliant. I actually was pondering just the other day how it seems like people have lost the ability to forgive in the public sphere. Unfortunately, I think a lot of world leaders are setting incredibly bad examples on this front. But maybe the design of social media is just as much of a problem. There's a bit of a chicken and egg thing there. Improving social media platforms is almost certainly the easier side of that problem to address.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#168

Post by zestyping » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 6:02 AM UTC

npunt wrote: post #131

pfooti wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can distinguish apologies into two top-level categories: meaningful and meaningless. Meaningless apologies can be further subdivided ("I'm sorry you were offended", or "It's just my culture to be a jerk"), but I'm not interested in that - they're all meaningless. Meaningful apologies can be easily found via the search engine of your choice, "How to apologize" brings up lots of hits. The thing they all have…

One of the explicit design choices in this was to limit people's tendency to screw up apologies in the heated moments when they haven't yet internalized the outside world's perspective of their message. I'm glad you brought up the searching of how to apologize - it's one of those super important life skills that we haven't done a good job of teaching people about. We have to design with this constraint in mind. One o…

The awareness of the user's emotional state leading to the possibility of self-sabotage is a brilliant aspect of this design. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate that line of thinking in this context. It's lovely to see consideration of the user's emotions modelled as a practice that should be more common, as, after all, social media is a form of computer-mediated human interaction and all human interaction leads to emotions.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#169

Post by zestyping » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 6:06 AM UTC

npunt wrote: post #101

ve55 wrote: post #30

The idea that a feature like a 'forgive' button to forgive someone for acting out of line is so important that it's being suggested is..harrowing, in my opinion. I see how these features can seem like a good idea, but my issue is that these seems like patches onto a broken system instead of trying to fix things that have contributed to the brokenness. Instead of creating outrage and then trying to patch it later, we…

Yeah, I'm a bit surprised nobody has picked up on the forgiveness part. The more I worked on this, the more it's necessity became clear. I think it's a more subtle point, but it's a powerful way to restore relationships and even potentially forge closer ties. I get that many people think Twitter or social media in general is a broken system. It's my belief though the same power of design to get us into the toxic situ…

The word "forgive" is a loaded one. I wonder if it wouldn't be easier for people to understand and accept if presented as a "heart" on the mea culpa itself, since that's already a familiar button and the use of the heart symbology gives it a touch of tenderness.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#170

Post by guerrilla » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 6:06 AM UTC

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…

> fascists on both the far-left

While I appreciate your comment otherwise, fascism is universally agreed to be a far-right ideology and claiming otherwise at this point in history can't really be taken as anything but inflammatory, which isn't what belongs here in an otherwise insightful comment.