Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#121

Post by wxs » Thu, Jul 16, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

pdeuchler wrote: post #63

wxs wrote: post #2

I just posted this in the earlier submission[1], but I'll put it here too: I really worry that if we don't find a way to fix the abuse problem, pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood. Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online. Platforms need to take a stand and find a way reduce hate and abuse, or public opinion (and my own) wi…

So what's your definition of abusive? Who's definition do we pick? Can we vote on it? What happens when a vocal minority disagrees with a consensus? What happens if that consensus harms a non-vocal minority? What happens when no matter your decision, someone will be affected adversely? Which side do you choose?

No doubt it will be a constant complicated debate, as social norms tend to be. But we don't throw up our hands and say "we can't have social norms! Who picks them? How do we vote?!"

Unfortunately I don't think we'll come up with a simple set of universally applicable rules and move on.

I do know that my abuse-free internet experience is very much a bubble, and every time I have been given the opportunity to see the experience of a "woman with an opinion" online I get to realize this. So let's as a society say "this isn't acceptable" and then deal with the much more difficult question of "what to do about it".

In any other commercial venue if a patron started shouting racist and sexist epithets, we would be ok with the owner throwing them out. We don't get caught up in slippery slope fallacies.

I can't scientifically prove that Fat-people Hate was objectively abusive but that's the beauty of social norms, I can say "I think it's abusive" and put pressure on businesses to remove its platform. Which is what I'm doing :)

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#122

Post by DanBC » Thu, Jul 16, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

kzhahou wrote: post #107

DanBC wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pao had thousands of people calling her a ching-chong cunt. Why do you think your comment is relevant to this thread?

Hundreds of thousands strongly disagreement with firing Victoria, and the overall deterioration of the admin relationship. But let's focus on the brats instead.

In a thread that's talking about the "brats", yeah, let's focus on them.

There were plenty of other threads for you to talk about the firing (not Pao) and failing admin relationship (not Pao) or censorship (not Pao).

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#123

Post by fixermark » Thu, Jul 16, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

msandford wrote: post #105

fixermark wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does "Just don't feed the trolls" continue to work in a world where trolls know that SWATting someone is as easy as picking up a phone, and doxxing someone can have significant long-term consequences?

Should we repeal the first amendment because people sometimes used racial or ethnic slurs? Or they deny the moon landing? Or say things that your preferred political party happens to disagree with? Or maybe only things that YOU disagree with?

Nobody is recommending a repeal of the First Amendment. At best, the conversation is about whether orgs like Reddit have any obligation (moral, business, or otherwise) to allow people screaming racial or ethnic slurs to stand on (metaphorically speaking) their property and use their megaphones.

Usenet still exists, and nobody is stopping people from using it. It's just not where trolls go to be heard anymore, because nobody is there to hear them. ;)

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#124

Post by jon-wood » Thu, Jul 16, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

songshu wrote: post #29

Misquoting Bart Simpson "If you never experience the abuse, you'll never get desensitized to it", and with that in mind, and talking here only about written abuse, these are my favorite three outcomes for, let's say, my daughter: 1) No one abuses her online 2) People abuse her, she dismisses it as noise 3) People abuse her, and she reacts and attempts to control it I think we should be aiming for number 2.

Why do you believe it's better for your daughter to receive abuse and dismiss it than not to receive it in the first place? If we're aiming for ideals, let's go for the ideal of a world in which people aren't subjected to so much abuse that they just filter it out as background noise, because that sounds like a shit future.

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#125

Post by ajkjk » Thu, Jul 16, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

uptown wrote: post #115

ajkjk wrote: post #65

I wish that there was some sort of Internet-wide 'reputation system' that would accumulate one's reputation across all websites they use - while preserving their pseudonymity on each site. As an analogy, Steam and Battle.net and other gaming platforms have something going for them, maybe by accident: by using one account across lots of games, the risks incurred by cheating are amplified. If you cheat (or harass) in o…

"A lot of times I wish that there was some sort of Internet-wide 'reputation system' that would accumulate one's reputation across all websites they use - while preserving their pseudonymity on each site." There is. Unfortunately, it's the NSA that operates it.

Well, that doesn't accomplish any of the things I want, so I don't think it counts for my requirements.

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#126

Post by krstck » Thu, Jul 16, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

I'm not sure that the solution is to completely prevent trolling rather than to inoculate ourselves against it.

Part of 'trolling' (in the sense being talked about here) is knowing what to use against the victim for maximum shock value or impact. I don't think Pao was hated because she was a woman or asian. I think that she was hated, and therefore they found an easy way to disparage her by throwing slurs about her gender and race. It's shocking to see such words and that's precisely why people use them.

I don't think that the world would be a better place if it we cloned it as is and scrubbed all negative references for race/gender/other protected characteristic. I think people will be just as nasty. They'll be nasty using different words to strike at different vulnerabilities. The problem isn't "racism" or "sexism", it's people being plain, old-fashioned mean.

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#127

Post by danielweber » Thu, Jul 16, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #90

partiallypro wrote: post #74

I'm going to disagree. I've been in IRC, Forums, Newsgroups, lurked 4Chan, Reddit, and Slashdot for years. It has actually been evolving to a point, especially among the younger crowd to get bent out of shape about essentially nothing. Maybe that is because more of our lives are online than before, but if you were to go through Twitter and Tumblr and just browse around it is a huge mess of people constantly being off…

Does "Just don't feed the trolls" continue to work in a world where trolls know that SWATting someone is as easy as picking up a phone, and doxxing someone can have significant long-term consequences?

Unfortunately most humans -- and this includes the humans posting on this thread, including me -- suffer from tribalism, and "it's okay when my side does it" overrides all the other rules.

Fixing this is really hard and requires constant application of lots of energy.

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#128

Post by istvan__ » Thu, Jul 16, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

wxs wrote: post #2

I just posted this in the earlier submission[1], but I'll put it here too: I really worry that if we don't find a way to fix the abuse problem, pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood. Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online. Platforms need to take a stand and find a way reduce hate and abuse, or public opinion (and my own) wi…

You are saying we need censorship. Growing up in a country that had very strict censorship rules I can tell you two things:

- it never works because people just simply fool the censors with twisting words the right way so the censors don't understand it but the smarter readers do. Entire genre was created for this sort of stuff in my country.

- just by trying to censor people you are pushing many different groups to the same platform and they gonna overthrow the ruling class anyways because together they are stronger and they are going to get rid of censorship. Look at the history for some countries with censorship.

On the top of that, how will define what safe means? This is really a double edge sword.

Please watch this video, this sums up pretty nicely my opinion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJyDyCocGQ

Guys who disagree: I do not care about karma loss because representing a non-popular view on things, but if you take the effort to downvote please have the courage to put a comment in as well.

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#129

Post by pekk » Thu, Jul 16, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

tdees40 wrote: post #22

brotoss wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just defined SJW

SJW is just a lazy slur. It's time to retire it.

As someone with sympathy for many causes that are attacked as "SJW," I agree. I never thought the term was reasonable. It's as embarrassingly hokey and strident as Christian evangelists self-describing as "spiritual warriors." It would be just as annoying to have all Christians dismissively labeled as "spiritual warriors" for their belief.

Framing advocacy as warfare is inaccurate and unwise. Appealing to people with your arguments and example and negotiating points of agreement are huge parts of effective advocacy.

Defining people as opponents to kill, disable or dominate isn't effective advocacy - and recent wars might even indicate that they aren't focuses for effective warfare, either. Furthermore, it tells your "opponents" that the only way to deal with you is to suppress you by force. When people get locked obsessively into these conflicts beyond reconciliation, it's sick and self-perpetuating rather than cathartic and it doesn't help anybody.

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#130

Post by lfuller » Thu, Jul 16, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #51

DanBC wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pao had thousands of people calling her a ching-chong cunt. Why do you think your comment is relevant to this thread?

"Pao had thousands of people calling her a ching-chong cunt." Is this a known/established fact? I see in the article a paragraph about how she received thousands of positive notes/emails but nothing about the # or volume of hate. It may not be documented here, but I'm curious if it was actually as widespread as implied.

I've read through many of the top threads on Pao over the past few weeks, and from my experience about 30% of all posts publicly used the word "cunt" to describe Pao.