Don't let social media think for you • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#191

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #123

SamBam wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. 10,000 voices braying your name as an evil-doer itself does harm. This isn't a kid being told on a playground that "words will never hurt you," that's always been a lie. Here is a case [1] of a man being falsely doxxed for the assault on two kids on a bike path last summer. The voices calling for him to be brought to justice, calling him a racist, etc, numbered in the tens of thousands. The retractions from peopl…

I'm not so sure proof by counterexample is useful here. My point is that in most cases the people screaming at you seem like they're doing harm, but they can't actually do harm until somebody in a position of power in your life listens to them. [0] I think you can mostly forgive the cowardly behavior of these authority figures up to about a year or so ago on the grounds that the social media mob sure feels like a rea…

I think you're conflating 'getting targeted by a huge social media crowd on a false basis' with 'getting your own opinions trashed by a huge social media crowd.'

The bicyclist in the example wasn't trying to persuade anyone on Twitter of anything. It was the public authority figures who misdirected the crowd's attention to him by releasing inaccurate information about when a (real) crime had occurred.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#192

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

jjulius wrote: post #114

coldtea wrote: post #92

It's not that the people who form a twitter mob don't think or "let twitter think for them". It's that they actively enjoy hurting someone as a mob. They get a kick out of it, and it's not discouraged (as would be actually forming a mob out in the streets be). If anything, it's encouraging, and gives them not just the joy of kicking someone who is down, but also "good person" credits (because the one getting kicked i…

>... and it's not discouraged... There are a lot of people who have been speaking out against "cancel culture", would that not be a form of trying to discourage social media mobs?

A lot of people who most loudly decry cancel culture are themselves big practitioners of it and are just being hypocrites - I'm referring to celebrity pundits and other public figures, not you.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#193

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #183

young_unixer wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think those are the important differences. Reddit has most of that, and a significant amount of subs there are just cesspools of hate.

Points 2 and 4. HN is like the equivalent of a small, curated, relatively mature subreddit that avoids being discovered by other reddit users.

Accurate, but this is a somewhat imperfect strategy in many contexts. You will probably find this article interesting.

https://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#194

Post by cindarin » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

jiofih wrote: post #163

cindarin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought you believed truth and evidence were not necessary when sharing an opinion? What changed your opinion so quickly? Is it only necessary because I disagree with you? "my biggest gripe with social media. There is no room for nuance, there is no room for grey. Every interaction is based on reaction alone - reflection is rendered moot, because there will always be another scandal that needs attending to." That i…

I’ll refrain from commenting on the first point - you already accused me of “bias and reactivity” and now that I asked you to flesh out your thoughts you turn to personal attacks, just like you did with the author. That’s something to reflect on. It’s not “the negative interactions of the few” when you have thousands upon thousands of people jumping into the latest issue of the day. Usually they’re people from all ov…

Your very first words to me were an attempt at an insult, so please save the crocodile tears from having your hypocrisy mentioned. I accused you of bias and reactionary tendencies, although I was intending anyone who reacts to the existence of social media this way.

I'll attempt to be clear. I believe your bias is your agreement with the author on this topic. The reactionary tendency to which I referred is the one I believe you and the author share, that social media inherently diminishes discussions and people involved into an unthinking mass. There's no evidence of this, so I assumed it was simply a delusion borne of reaction to seeing something you didn't like. These are clearly unproved assumptions on my part, but you've done nothing to indicate otherwise.

To address the rest of what you said, it's largely false. The phrase "Flame War" originated on usenet and other early message boards. The undesirable human communication styles existed prior to any internet medium and certainly will differ in form medium to medium.

On Twitter, the people who interact with a post are a small fraction of those who see the post who are fraction of the people using the medium. Of those who interact, there are likely to be various opinions. It is quite literally the few. It can still be an easily recognizable phenomenon while being perpetrated by relatively few members of the population.

Yes, the scale of communication between individuals has continued to increase as time progresses. The internet has revolutionized that. That unfortunately does mean that you will come into contact with more individuals who say or do things you dislike. Broadly condemning people as unthinking or other baseless assumptions is not a reasonable response to this phenomenon. It's lazy.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#195

Post by mariodiana » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:54 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #153

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HANGMAN: Now, you're wanted for murder. For the sake of my analogy, let's just assume that you did it. Now, John Ruth wants to take you back to Red Rock to stand trial for murder. And if you're found guilty, the people of Red Rock will hang you in the town square. And, as the hangman, I will perform the execution. And if all those things end up taking place, that's what civilized society calls justice. However, if th…

>The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man. >And that dispassion is the very essence of justice. >For justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being justice. Based on the reporting I've read on the internal cultures of police departments and the wider "law enforcement" community (federal law enforcement, prison administration, etc) I am pretty skeptical that…

Maybe the essence of justice is its effect, and by effect we're not talking about its effect on the accused but on the rest of society.

The political science class I took back in college (over 20 years ago now) began with the Oresteia trilogy, by Aeschylus. The issue there is between "frontier justice" (actually, blood feuds) and civil justice (justice of the polis). The message there is that there can be no civilization unless the people of a society sublimate their (intrinsic?) passion for frontier justice towards civil justice.

The myth, as you call it, is there to bind us as a society — as any myth does.

I don't know what movie is being referred to above, but the idea from that passage doesn't originate with the movie.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#196

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

dharmach wrote: post #37

spadros wrote: post #3

Yes I quit social media a couple of years ago and agree with pretty much everything the author says. Social media environments encourage incendiary discussion because it fuels upvotes and general attention. Most people won't take the time to consider a more valid grey opinion because they've jumped to a conclusion and are busy attacking someone, or because it won't get as much attention. The first thing that came bac…

On the flip side, all with nuanced, grey opinions will be left with no motivation to act and the fanatic, opinionated people will act. In a war if the leader has to select an army of thinkers & intellectuals versus that of fanatics & fundamentalists, which one will he choose?

Quite true. It's also the case that some situations demand a timely response, eg when a violation of some fundamental principle is occurring and ought to be interrupted. Intellectualizing everything can become an excuse for passivity. To be clear, if one is uncertain about what's going on it's generally better to hold back, but there are circumstances where someone does comprehend an issue clearly and simply wants to shirk an unpleasant engagement with it.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#197

Post by dionidium » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:56 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #191

dionidium wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure proof by counterexample is useful here. My point is that in most cases the people screaming at you seem like they're doing harm, but they can't actually do harm until somebody in a position of power in your life listens to them. [0] I think you can mostly forgive the cowardly behavior of these authority figures up to about a year or so ago on the grounds that the social media mob sure feels like a rea…

I think you're conflating 'getting targeted by a huge social media crowd on a false basis' with 'getting your own opinions trashed by a huge social media crowd.' The bicyclist in the example wasn't trying to persuade anyone on Twitter of anything. It was the public authority figures who misdirected the crowd's attention to him by releasing inaccurate information about when a (real) crime had occurred.

Yeah, that's fair. Sometimes the mob comes for something you said on the internet. And sometimes they come for you for something you did in a viral video. Two separate issues that I don't intend to confuse. (But oftentimes the end result and the solutions are similar.)

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#198

Post by SamBam » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

cindarin wrote: post #174

SamBam wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And now you are here; is this not the same? ...no, because I'm not participating in a mob here?

It's not the actions that we need to address, just the number of people doing them?

I'm confused how this comment relates in any way to the question of whether my existing on Hacker News is the "same thing" as participating in an online mob against a person.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#199

Post by verall » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #149

unholythree wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve noticed a unfortunate conflation of word lynching with racism motivated homocide lately. Even from authorities (newspapers, lawyers, some state ACLU) that have to know they aren’t always the same. I think the nuance of these specific injustices is important because the solutions are different. A killing could even be lawful but racist and therefor unjust, but that’s a distinct (albeit important) problem from mob…

Lone Star beer used to have images under their bottle caps as puns[1]. One of them used an image of a noose as part of the puzzle, which was completely unrelated to race, or death - it was simply using the word as a similar word to "news". Someone went apeshit on Twitter[2], and now all the puns are gone while Lone Star reviews them for sensitivity. I'm politically liberal, and I'm fucking ashamed of the fact that th…

Hey, as a fellow Lone Star drinker, I really don't think it's possible to separate the noose from its history, particularly in our great state.

Sure, it's just a pun, but for many people it conjures a very particular image. They don't want to open their beer to an image of a noose, regardless its context. And really, the lone star is the emblem of the Republic of Texas which was founded in large part due to Mexico's outlawing of slavery.

The noose on a Lone Star bottle cap has this particular context. I think it's pretty gross and I'm glad they chose to remove it rather than defending it has "history" or something.

Really, though, I always buy the cans.

Re: Don't let social media think for you

#200

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #160

unethical_ban wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lone Star beer used to have images under their bottle caps as puns[1]. One of them used an image of a noose as part of the puzzle, which was completely unrelated to race, or death - it was simply using the word as a similar word to "news". Someone went apeshit on Twitter[2], and now all the puns are gone while Lone Star reviews them for sensitivity. I'm politically liberal, and I'm fucking ashamed of the fact that th…

There's no such thing as a noose that's unrelated to death. That's what they're for. The puzzle may not be related to death, but the noose is. And in the US there's no such thing as a noose that's unrelated to race. They are being used, today, as racist threats. When a noose appears, lynching is the assumed meaning, and not just by black people [1]. So it's a good thing that Lone Star is taking a look at the entire p…

[deleted]