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Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

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Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#211

Post by watwut »

darkerside wrote: post #32
wpietri wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your point, but I think you take it too far here: > if there are never any negative indicators that you are the problem, rather than everyone else… there is a mathematically insignificant chance you will ever realize something might be wrong A lot of my self-improvement has come not because of explicit negative feedback, but through paying attention to people and reflecting on who I want to be in the world. Th…

What you may not realize is, some people literally don't know how to do that, or that it's even something anyone would ever do. If you dropped into an alien culture, you'd need to learn a new raft of different signals all over again.

When they blocked you, there was issue. When your messages get deleted or you are shadowbanned, there is issue.

people give feedback online.

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#212

Post by watwut »

cmckn wrote: post #35
3grdlurker wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone so you can never possibly offend anyone I'm not sure what you're talking about--I wonder if this is just your extremely subjective experience of the internet? Because I thought that the internet lately has been nothing but disagreement.

Agreed, I think this sentiment is along the lines of "political correctness run amok" which is a completely subjective interpretation of changing social norms. Whereas I think the article is discussing how some use the impersonal void of social media as an outlet for their anxiety, etc. Personally, I try to limit the amount of time I spend on such websites, and HN is really the only place I read the comments (in mode…

But political corectness run amok is literally about people being too eager to tell you when they think you do something wrong.

It is about people being more active in pushing when they disagree.

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#213

Post by watwut »

pseudalopex wrote: post #143
zepto wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of trans people in fact are mentally ill. Given the additional stresses and oppresive social experiences trans people face and are outspoken about , this is entirely unsurprising.

Lots of trans people have depression or anxiety disorders. Not personality disorders.[1] [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-...

I remember reading they are more likely on autistic spectrum. But that is not personalolity disorder either.

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#214

Post by dang »

unethical_ban wrote: post #207
dang wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't shadowban established accounts—we tell people we're banning them and why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... . That's been the case for many years. I wrote about this the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27573675 . The exceptions are spammers and serial trolls. For those we continue to use shadowbanning, for different reasons. In the case of spammers, telling them…

dang, I've said before in other comments, but I respect the hell out of you. I'd buy you a drink. I think your kind of thoughtfulness and humility are what we need in every citizen, not to mention leaders in the community. I'm not trying to bring you down. I really am talking in good faith. And I know agitators can wear you down. Perhaps I haven't come to terms with the needs to isolate or sandbox people online. Perh…

Thanks, I appreciate that! (and thank you to the other repliers too)

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#215

Post by chrismeller »

bawolff wrote: post #166
rmellow wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, immigrant here. I'm literally an "alien" from/in this planet. Canadians are very nice, but their famous agreeableness (and passive-agressiveness) often prevents me from realizing when I've committed a transgression, and makes it so much harder to integrate into the culture. Negative feedback is very useful and I would be grateful to get it instead of receiving a veiled response.

As a canadian, sorry about that ;)

You mean aboot that?

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#216

Post by CryptoPunk »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #205
CryptoPunk wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>most people with mental illness are already afraid of being blamed and targeted. On what evidence do you base this on?

Being a person with mental illness in a community of people with mental illness and routinely talking about this all day long every day

It could be that the people who have the type of mental illnesses that are associated with fear of social persecution/rejection are the kind that seek a community of people with a similar affliction, while those with anti-social mental illnesses, like sociopathy, do not.

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#217

Post by intended »

hypnoscripto wrote: post #173
PaulHoule wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spam problem started in 1993 w/ Robert McElwaine spamming all of the groups relentlessly with crackpot content from WUSTL. WUSTL did nothing for a long time because he sued them (and won) when they stopped him putting ads in the campus paper. I developed a zero day email amplification attack and launched it on a Friday; it worked better than expected and filled the disk on their VAX and the whole campus was down…

Are you talking about Washington University in Saint Louis?

Did not expect to hear wustl in this thread.

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#218

Post by dirkt »

ylee wrote: post #94

Nothing has changed since Jerry Pournelle wrote 35 years ago when discussing online forums: >I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's not always easy to do. This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The n…

> This is what killed Usenet,

Nah. If you've actually have used the (non-binary) Usenet, you have certainly come across plonks [1] and killfiles.

And how do I wish for a killfile for web discussion forums...

> This, not spam, is what has mostly killed Usenet.

What killed Usenet is that the shiny new WWW was more attractive for new users (and easier to use than a newsreader).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_%28Usenet%29

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#219

Post by LarryEt »

shard wrote: post #160
ylee wrote: post #94

Nothing has changed since Jerry Pournelle wrote 35 years ago when discussing online forums: >I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's not always easy to do. This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The n…

As someone who was on Usenet regularly until the mid 2000's, I don't think it was the trolls that killed Usenet. They were easy enough to ignore. The younger generations simply never found it, as the WWW forums were much easier to find and grew more popular. For the two dozen or so groups I visited regularly, over time they became the playground of only the old guards, and conversation slowly died out.

Absolutely. I loved Usenet in the mid 90s. Message boards just seemed like a cool upgrade to Usenet and I didn't have to bother with a reader. I doubt I even had a reader installed by 2002ish.

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#220

Post by rossdavidh »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #190
rossdavidh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your four points are all absolutely true. However, I cannot plausibly think of a reason why we _wouldn't_ have a disproportionate amount of online bad behavior from the mentally ill. There's really almost nothing in the online environment to prevent it, and quite a lot of mental conditions result in manic phases of some sort that would cause them to spew a lot of it online.

I can think of a reason, in two parts: lots of people are motivated by things other than mental health to behave negatively online; most people with mental illness are already afraid of being blamed and targeted.

Certainly not every, perhaps not even most, people with mental health issues spew venom online. However, a disproportionate amount of the invective which I hear when walking downtown in a city, comes from people with obvious mental health issues. There may be many others who are silently struggling with mental health issues who walk by me on the sidewalk, but even a few people who are very much not silent can numerically overwhelm the amount of invective said by the rest of the population. Given that the online environment gives the online equivalent of these few people a bullhorn to broadcast at a much greater scale, the problem is likely disproportionately worse online.
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