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The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

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Re: The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

#131

Post by dudul »

switchbak wrote: post #122
dudul wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's gonna happen when having social media accounts in good standing is required to open a bank account, or take a loan or get an insurance?

You're getting downvoted here, but at border crossings often you'll be asked for social media access. I don't think it's that far off the mark.

Exactly. I'm surprised by the downvotes because, while it is not mandatory (yet?), I have definitely seen financial institution forms with an optional field for social media accounts.

Re: The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

#132

Post by Mordisquitos »

spectramax wrote: post #76
InitialLastName wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Publicly espousing an unpopular opinion now can be career suicide Let's not pretend this is new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist The difference now is that visibility is more uniformly distributed across the population.

This is a distraction and diversion from the original comment. Hollywood is not at the scale of the internet. Some privileged people got cancelled in Hollywood, who cares. When a hard working person gets cancelled by saying something stupid, the consequences are back breaking.

While I agree that ordinary people being cancelled for saying something stupid is a bad thing that should be condemned[0], I'll play devil's advocate: however unfair these events may be, are they truly statistically significant? Or is concern about "cancellation" of hard working people itself a moral panic amplified by the nature of modern media?

Sure, we've all heard of donglegate, or about that guy whose hand did an "OK" gesture on his car door and was accused of "far-right" symbolism, or about that teenaged girl who once said the И-word in a video celebrating her driver's licence which resulted in her rejection from university, and many many more. Yes, these things are injustices and they should not happen, and they should be stopped. But on the large scale of things, does saying something stupid really pose a significant risk of disproportionate public shaming to a normal person?

The online hatemob only has so much attention span to dedicate to its latest victim(s), and there is only so much airtime and tweets to be dedicated to the latest outrage. And, in the meantime, hundreds of millions of people live their lives as normal, with more-or-less online presence, saying, doing and posting things which may well be "cancellable" according to this or that neopuritanical value — and yet, nothing happens to them. And this is good.

Don't get me wrong, I do think that fear of "cancellation" inhibiting people's openness to express themselves and their mental well-being is itself problematic, however statistically irrational this fear may be. However, focusing attention on these rare events, even if it is to criticise the phenomenon, may only make the problem worse.

If you'll forgive the somewhat melodramatic analogy, it's a bit like terrorism. Just like disproportionately instilling fear of terrorism only serves to help the terrorists' objective to instil fear, so does disproportionately insisting on the unfairness and disproportionate consequences of "cancel culture" only serve to help the cancellers themselves in their desire to influence society.

[0] For a given meaning of "cancelled" and "saying something stupid", that is.*

Re: The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

#133

Post by ta1234567890 »

onion2k wrote: post #98
ta1234567890 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YC has a blacklist of people and companies. Not sure what will land you there, but I know they have it and use it.

If there's an actual blacklist where YC employees can just arbitrarily ban founders from working with certain companies that's quite surprising and maybe pretty bad for YC's reputation. If you mean YC has a strong community of founders who share war stories of how people and companies were difficult to work with, and the other YC founders pay attention to those stories though, well, that's not a blacklist.

There’s both.

About the blacklist, I don’t know exactly how it works, who specifically has access to it or who can add entries to it, but I know it exists, I know people who have been affected by it, know people who have been told explicitly about it and know that at least some partners have access to it.

Re: The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

#134

Post by c0m »

woodruffw wrote: post #127
c0m wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he's an open and virulent racist you should have better proof than a twitter account. I read all the tweets he made this year. He posts on Gab, posted a clip from an offensively named Danish satire film, and generally seems about as unpleasant as I'd expect for someone who owns the type of domains he owns but he does not seem to be openly racist. If you're going to label someone as an "open and virulent racist" yo…

> If he's an open and virulent racist you should have better proof than a twitter account. Sure. Here's vc calling someone who isn't nonwhite a "creature" and implying that they would discriminate against whites[1]. Here's vc hanging out with a bunch of people wearing white nationalist apparel and holding a sign that references a racist meme[2]. > It's unwise to make such extraordinary claims without evidence beyond…

> What an ironic threat to make!

Yeah, I, a third party with no horse in this race, am threatening you. lol. Reminding you of the severity of a claim is not a threat.

Re: The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

#135

Post by twiddling »

dudul wrote: post #84
wussboy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the primary reasons I stay off of social media. There is not forgetting, no opportunity to learn and grow and change and develop.

What's gonna happen when having social media accounts in good standing is required to open a bank account, or take a loan or get an insurance?

I maintain a professional account, that occasionally posts job related materials as well as shout-outs to the local sportsball franchises. Oh and puppy pictures.

Re: The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

#136

Post by [deleted] »

standardUser wrote: post #83
wonderwonder wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure we are allowed to criticize someone and if that person has voluntarily posted their content then that person opens themselves up. So much of what happens now is someone filmed without their consent and that video is then posted to social media and the person is doomed. Think of your worst moment and then imagine it was filmed and posted to social media where 100k other people shared it. Very hard to recover from…

How often does someone, let alone your potential employer, actually know (or care) the name of the person in some embarrassing viral video? It seems like a rare exception for someone to face meaningful blowback from this scenario.

[deleted]

Re: The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

#138

Post by fouric »

dudul wrote: post #131
switchbak wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting downvoted here, but at border crossings often you'll be asked for social media access. I don't think it's that far off the mark.

Exactly. I'm surprised by the downvotes because, while it is not mandatory (yet?), I have definitely seen financial institution forms with an optional field for social media accounts.

People will downvote you for any number of reasons - some good, mostly bad. Ignore it, don't comment on it - "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." Inquisitive and thoughtful HN readers will read your comment anyway, think about it, and comment on it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

#139

Post by aaron-santos »

silisili wrote: post #124
nixpulvis wrote: post #47

Let's use Gender as a quick example, why not? A few years ago, I couldn't have said I thought about it at all. For better and for worse, it wasn't part of the discourse. Now, I'm not all that different, yet it comes up again and again. I'm often forced to choose a side, even when it's all hypotheticals and virtues. I feel forced because online media is permanent, each statement is my closing argument. When the litiga…

Perhaps it's where I live, but for me - it's just the internet. It doesn't have any resemblance to my reality. As someone who's been on the internet since a teen, watched it evolve, etc, it makes me kinda sad. Because I feel forced out. But that's ok. As online communities, emboldened really by tech companies themselves, try to gain control by silencing dissent via mob behavior or 'canceling', I just find myself leav…

No apologies needed. The internet gives people a platform to speak without the same(but not necessarily less) social accountability that exists in meatspace. The change in accountability implies a change in the access that participants have to social scripts. What we are experiencing is a mismatch of social script access between meatspace and the digital space enabled by novel digital mediums and increased connectivity.

That is the current contradiction. My bet is that neither the meatspace social construct nor the digital social construct wins. The resolution is in their synthesis. That probably means that some meatspace social norms change and some digital social norms change. Finally, any resistance to those changes in inherently reactionary.

Re: The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

#140

Post by Minor49er »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #129
mc32 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically enough, A senatress from Arizona got accosted to a bathroom with video phone cameras in order to convince (bully) her into a position.

What is the purpose of using a different word for a man senator and a woman senator?

To identify their gender. Like the differences between waiter/waitress, masseur/masseuse, actor/actress, and countless of other examples.
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