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Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

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Re: Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

#51

Post by v21 »

DatamancerChris wrote: post #26
marvin wrote: post #12

I think everyone here is missing the point of moot's comment. I read this as commentary on anonymity and honest discussion. Ignore YouTube and 4chan's /b/ board for the moment. If you look at some of the communities at reddit, for instance, there are subjects that are discussed thorougly which would never see the light of day if their authors had to appear before their friends with their full name and picture. Some o…

I think marvin has an excellent point: people as a universal culture tend to shun certain subjects and embrace others, and these change between nations, faiths, etc.. The availability of an anonymous forum in which to address these shunned portions ideas is a useful tool when it is leveraged in the right way. There are many things people would not say if they were to be held personally accountable for their thoughts…

I don't see a way of distinguishing between bad behaviour and discussing taboo topics. They're so often the same thing - consider flat out racism or misogyny for example. An things get even more complicated when you consider /b/-like levels of irony and inversion of meaning, where it;s difficult to tell what is a incredibly subtle troll of racists, and what is actual racism.

But I'm glad that the whole internet isn't /b/. I'm glad that terrible perspectives are often shunned from conversations. It's good to remember they're there, but if someone comes along and expresses terrible things then they should feel shame. And that only happens if those perspectives are not welcome, and are made to feel not welcome.

Re: Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

#52

Post by droithomme »

404error wrote: post #45
droithomme wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspaper issue is interesting. One of the local newspapers had all sorts of vibrant debate, including a lot of discussion of which cops were corrupt, which businesses were cheating people, and which pastors were lurking at the man garden in the local park. This was intolerable to the highly connected newspaper owner, so they required all commenters be validated by phone before commenting and use their real name. Com…

In order to have more accountability you need to have less anonymity, and that is not something commenters on newspaper sites are willing to give up.

I'm not sure what you mean by accountability regarding these examples. Do you mean the ability of the corrupt police to track down and punish the people who outted their crimes?

Re: Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

#53

Post by throwaway32 »

heed wrote: post #38
marvin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a good point about people who hide behind anonymity just to cause damage. Thankfully, the latest generation of Internet forums has been able to keep these voices confined to places where they don't cause any damage, or, in the case of /b/, in an environment where they can actually generate something worthwhile. I'm not sure we will ever see a society which is so diverse and open that many of the views we see…

>In the meantime it is still very valuable to have a place where it's possible to be honest. It's also a place where you can be completely dishonest, make up stories, be someone else with almost no repercussions. I think most people are being honest on reddit or HN, but the small percent that like to make up stories, personas, etc. makes it difficult for me to fully trust many of the comments I come across.

just because you know somebody's name, doesn't make them honest either, if it did politics would be a whole different ballgame.

Re: Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

#54

Post by wetbrain »

DatamancerChris wrote: post #26
marvin wrote: post #12

I think everyone here is missing the point of moot's comment. I read this as commentary on anonymity and honest discussion. Ignore YouTube and 4chan's /b/ board for the moment. If you look at some of the communities at reddit, for instance, there are subjects that are discussed thorougly which would never see the light of day if their authors had to appear before their friends with their full name and picture. Some o…

I think marvin has an excellent point: people as a universal culture tend to shun certain subjects and embrace others, and these change between nations, faiths, etc.. The availability of an anonymous forum in which to address these shunned portions ideas is a useful tool when it is leveraged in the right way. There are many things people would not say if they were to be held personally accountable for their thoughts…

I think the community has as much to do with discussion as anonymity. r/programming, r/technology, r/hacking are pretty simmilar in topic, though with less emphasis on buisiness/econ. But the comment style is totally different.

As obvious as it is that community changes discussion quality, I think it's overlooked in the whole anonymity debate. HN's been doing just fine, for the most part.

I haven't been here for long, but isn't HN at least as anonymous as reddit?

Re: Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

#55

Post by true_religion »

throwaway32 wrote: post #53
heed wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the meantime it is still very valuable to have a place where it's possible to be honest. It's also a place where you can be completely dishonest, make up stories, be someone else with almost no repercussions. I think most people are being honest on reddit or HN, but the small percent that like to make up stories, personas, etc. makes it difficult for me to fully trust many of the comments I come across.

just because you know somebody's name, doesn't make them honest either, if it did politics would be a whole different ballgame.

It does mean that their lies can be tagged back against them.

A name, a "real name" has a certain irrevocability to it.

Re: Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

#56

Post by mcantor »

What does "Sign in with Twitter to contribute" mean? Does that mean I get to contribute to the discussion by posting a reply if I sign in with Twitter? That's what "contribute" means to me, but it seems unlikely, especially given the relative paucity of posts in this discussion.

I wouldn't bother making a comment here to ask; normally I would just sign in and see for myself. But this app wants permission to make posts to my Twitter account, and I never, ever do that. (I hate it when I sign up for something and I later find a post in my timeline that says "A-hyuk hyuk, I just joined SomeSkeezyWebsite and I'm having a blast, LOL!")

Re: Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

#57

Post by Foolness »

true_religion wrote: post #55
throwaway32 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just because you know somebody's name, doesn't make them honest either, if it did politics would be a whole different ballgame.

It does mean that their lies can be tagged back against them. A name, a "real name" has a certain irrevocability to it.

Not necessarily. I don't know of an official term but it's some form of authoritarian fallacy.

The fallacy that tagging back to people's name is in some way a key to preventing anything. Like if you ban something and there's enough demand, government agencies would somehow be able to distinguish between who are criminals and who are accidental criminals and that their regulation will serve the needs of the good guys.

Tagging identities can at most link back traces to a "guy". Doesn't mean it would ever scale to lie detection.

Especially when one considers the virtue of lie detection as not being a zero sum game. A liar can use a pseudonym and not a real name and he can just as be caught. A better liar can acquire a fake "legal reality" real name and he can be just as hard to catch.

Even in minor cases that only require modding, the name is not as important as a "history" and a history will always be there with things like IP addresses. The need for a real name is just an assurance to satisfy the fears of those who are looking less for solutions and more at assurances that an unknown environment like anonymous internet would work closer to the proximity of reality that are more known to us even though in reality, our understanding of reality is just as false. We can totally live in a world (especially for urban areas) where our next neighbors are terrorists and we wouldn't know any better even if we are friends with them and know their names. (Which is not to say they are but the issue of names is fueled by our fear of the unknown and media and service providers banking on our fears to justify such identification procedures.)

Re: Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

#58

Post by dfxm12 »

loumf wrote: post #31

Why choose? There are times I want to be anonymous, partially anonymous, totally identified. Sometimes I want to be in an uncivil discussion -- sometimes public, sometimes private. Sometimes moderated, sometimes not. Sometimes sterile, sometimes provocative. Right now, the Internet is perfect for this -- pretty much any kind of "community" I want to be in exists, and I participate in the ones I want to, following the…

I think the very premise of this "Roundtable" is flawed: Given the propensity for humans in large and relatively anonymous groups to descend into fatuous vitriol and misspelled narcissism, why bother at all?

This isn't the case. Sites like Lamebook show us that people will attach their face and names to stupid things. There are countless (semi-) anonymous webforums, etc that provide useful discussion. You are right, it doesn't matter what type of community you post in.

Re: Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

#59

Post by dfxm12 »

I think the big sticking point here (outside of the fact that most opponents of anonymity have something to gain by knowing our real identity) is that we put too much emphasis on "paying dues". We're used to having a "platform" (TV, radio, magazines, etc), and only the "best" people having access to that "platform", access being granted because of a long CV of past accomplishments. It is important to know that because you are right once, you aren't always right; people can get undeserved respect in this situation.

Now, with the Internet, everyone has a "platform". Everyone has ideas, and some of these ideas are good, despite them coming from unknown people. Steve Jobs still had a knack for design and business savvy before founding Apple, right? But we wouldn't know that. No one wants to filter through everything and think for themselves (the gatekeepers of the "platform" used to do that for us). We want to be able to point to a name and say "I agree with that person, because that person is great." How many stories get posted on HN just because of who wrote them? ahem Would HN care if someone else had said the same exact thing as Moot? Or is this just a gossip site and we only care what our celebrities have to say?

Anonymity puts everyone on a level playing field, and thus we actually have to evaluate everyone's ideas and think for ourselves which ones are good and which aren't - and there are too many out there to count because everyone has access to this "platform". We shouldn't care about who writes comments, we should care about the diamonds in the rough, because a good idea or a good comment is good, no matter who says it.

Re: Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?"

#60

Post by 404error »

droithomme wrote: post #52
404error wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to have more accountability you need to have less anonymity, and that is not something commenters on newspaper sites are willing to give up.

I'm not sure what you mean by accountability regarding these examples. Do you mean the ability of the corrupt police to track down and punish the people who outted their crimes?

What I was trying to get across is that commenters should own up and stand by their words and not hide behind the keyboard.
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