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De-escalating social media conflict

nickpunt.com

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Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#101

Post by npunt »

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 situations we're in can help get us out of it. It will take many changes to deconstruct the outrage engine, but I think one part is indeed finding ways to have constructive, reputation- and respect-preserving dialog.

Changing the algorithm is a much bigger task. It's a sort of 'how do you solve world peace as just one person' type question. If we lack access to change something big, we must still try to change what we can. That was why I started with a simple feature that Twitter could implement without much effort. We may as well try it and see what it does. If it works, it can help give us the momentum to tackle bigger problems, and give us the hope and concrete results to tackle larger problems.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#102

Post by ptero »

nicoburns wrote: post #60
ptero wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reasoning behind advice for accidents (in the US) is completely separate because after the accident, there are big implications of who is at fault. As the lawyers and insurance on both sides would often battle on technicalities and sometimes appearances, the advice is to let the professionals do it and not give the opponents' side extra ammunition. This has nothing to do with human emotions or reducing pa…

> this is just the nature of the (gov't regulated insurance) beast. It's cultural for it to even go to lawyers. In the UK, in most cases the person at fault would just admit it and give the other person the contact details for their insurance company.

Just to clarify -- even in the US I think the proportion of cases that do go to lawyers is pretty small. But those that do can have a major financial impact.

For example, over the last 20 years I saw maybe 10 car-related accidents in the extended family and all except one of those were simple to deal with -- never went to lawyers, just provide insurance information and move on. But one remaining case, where a school bus hit a family member walking on a sidewalk, took years for two insurance companies to litigate.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#103

Post by vharuck »

rvz wrote: post #9

> By admitting a mistake, the poster stops the runaway train of replies and amplifications of their mistake, and the reputation damage that follows. No matter the apology of the mistake, those who demand them to apologise will still reject it and push further for calls for the accused to be cancelled. The replies and amplifications will divert into real life instead of Twitter.

Remember that conversations are being read by people beyond those replying. They're less likely to be so invested as to smell blood from an admission of wrong.

And if there is no audience beyond a person you think is fighting instead of debating, then why reply?

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#104

Post by dvtrn »

koluna wrote: post #51
taborj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. By not playing, you're protecting yourself from future retribution, deserved or (more commonly) not. And not being on social media - or more precisely, not posting on social media - doesn't mean you're out of touch or lacking in influence. Not by a long shot.

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.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#105

Post by npunt »

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 challenging question of top-down authority (as well as a straight up massive cost center).

While I agree that in the short run, drama = engagement = revenue, businesses have to consider both short and long term risk. One of the biggest long term brand risks to Twitter is how toxic discourse can be. Twitter's mission is to "give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers", in other words to be a kind of global commons where everyone may participate. To preserve that position means making sure discourse is constructive, because if it is not, that represents a "barrier" that will cause people to churn and revenue to fall.

I'm glad you bring up the high friction paths of subtweeting & screenshotting. These things are still going to happen, but in design it's about how easy things are to do. We have to make the constructive things easy.

Another way to put it is: if Twitter were a friendlier place, wouldn't that increase users and engagement? If you're not completely sure this would be false, then it's worth experimenting.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#106

Post by wGeF7H8Z59y985y »

Years ago, when the cancel culture was just getting underway, I decided to help them out, and canceled myself from social media once and for all. Not only have I been happier since exiting Twitter, but I’ve also saved myself from certain destruction of my livelihood and career.

Delete your social media accounts today. I highly recommend it. Not standing daily in front of an anonymous firing squad will do wonders for your sanity.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#107

Post by wGeF7H8Z59y985y »

koluna wrote: post #51
taborj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. By not playing, you're protecting yourself from future retribution, deserved or (more commonly) not. And not being on social media - or more precisely, not posting on social media - doesn't mean you're out of touch or lacking in influence. Not by a long shot.

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’s the alternative if one is not to use Twitter? How do you publicize your findings or insights to a broad population?

Anonymity is the answer. A valid point stands alone regardless of who makes it. Don’t divulge your real name, and you’ll be rendered safe from retribution by those who cannot engage in a reasoned argument without resorting to ad hominem.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#108

Post by rmrfstar »

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.

Because we live in a society with social norms and a moral code. If anything, we should expect more morality from institutions that avail themselves of limited liability legal forms.

This "corporations should be cynical sociopaths" idea is even newer than the limited liability corporate form, which is itself a modern invention.

Before the current era of hyper-institutionalization and hyper-legalism there was a concept called "natural law". It basically meant morality, as understood at the time.

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#109

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: De-escalating social media conflict

#110

Post by pfooti »

rvz wrote: post #9

> By admitting a mistake, the poster stops the runaway train of replies and amplifications of their mistake, and the reputation damage that follows. No matter the apology of the mistake, those who demand them to apologise will still reject it and push further for calls for the accused to be cancelled. The replies and amplifications will divert into real life instead of Twitter.

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 in common though is an acknowledgement (in one form or another) that the person apologizing was legitimately in the wrong, and that they will endeavor to not do that again.

It's that last bit that is important. It's not sufficient for a company to apologize for dumping oil in the ocean or a person apologize for using a racist term. A real apology acknowledges harm caused, and shows how the entity apologizing will rectify past harm and prevent future harm.

This is why, in my opinion, at least, so few apologies legitimately improve anyone's standing. It's not that "cancel culture needs heads", it's just that people expect to say, "I'm sowwy", rub their toes in the dirt, and be let off the hook without doing anything to really undo the harm caused. People rarely even acknowledge the harm they cause, let alone do anything about it, in these so-called apologies.

So no: people who demand apologies don't just reject them after they're given. It's just that most of the time, the apology is meaningless.

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