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Life after an internet mob attack

pasquale.cool

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Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#21

Post by spuz »

> So what are we supposed to do in a world that’s gone mad? Our symbiotic relationship with the internet has imprinted its glitches into our minds. The internet is a collective consciousness, and its mental health remains unchecked as it accelerates beyond our control. Somewhere along the way, it feels like we left compassion behind.

I can understand why someone feeling the judgement of a mob would think this but it's clearly just a simplification of what's really going on. Each person in that mob is an individual with their own beliefs, thought process, context and so on. What can feel like an avalanche of hate may simply be many individual instances of misunderstanding or confusion. To believe the people who are against you are not individuals but a single angry entity is going to make it harder deal with psychologically and harder to come up with any possible remedy.

I don't really know what the remedy would be but I would guess that it would involve a process of divide-and-conquer while addressing each individual's specific concerns.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#22

Post by alephnan »

dvt wrote: post #3

The best solution here is to completely disconnect from social media or (at most) have an incredibly sanitized presence. Unless your job or livelihood revolves around needing to engage with a random internet audience (i.e. you're an influencer, entertainer, etc.) stay away from having a public persona on Twitter/Facebook/etc. The only community I interact with candidly tends to be this one. I don't post on Twitter, F…

> vast majority of mainstream social media users (a) don't tend to have good-faith debates

This. Thank you. I have unconsciously wondered into such debates on social media cesspools, and approaching it like I do with HN, which is atleast more logical

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#23

Post by annoyingnoob »

Happened to a friend of mine during college, before FB and Twitter. He was accused of stalking, was arrested and kicked out of school. He sued to clear his name and was reinstated at school. The lawsuit did cause the accuser and the school to issue formal apologies - but that didn't undo the damage to his reputation.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#24

Post by polote »

There are a lot of talks on HN about the toxicity of social media. And people are pretty angry against Google and Facebook.

But to me the worse is by far Twitter. There are plenty of random people who have a disproportionate number of followers compared to the quality of their posts. And as a result can do these kind of mods. Which are amplified by retweets, something that barely exists in other social media.

Random people can have too much power. As a society we should really prevent anyone to have more than a certain reach, like for example 5k people viewing a post. If you want to have a bigger reach you should apply to get a professional account and be regulated.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#25

Post by BitwiseFool »

The most disturbing and insidious sentiment of online mobs is claiming that the targets are "just being held accountable". Or that such people are just experiencing "consequences". I really can't express just how cold and bloodthirsty such statements seem to be. It's the perfect combination of justifying vicious behavior while also absolving themselves of responsibility.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#26

Post by shkkmo »

vaer-k wrote: post #9

The problem is previously we didn't listen to victims, and allowed them to be silenced. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, and we are listening unconditionally, but (occasionally) bad actors are taking advantage of our good intentions. How do we find balance?

The issue isn't bad actors taking advantage and the issue isn't listening to victims. We should absolutely keep listening unconditionally and there will always be bad actors.

The problem is how we respond to what we hear. The core casue of the issue is treating online vigilante outrage mobs as an acceptable activity.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#27

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

dvt wrote: post #3

The best solution here is to completely disconnect from social media or (at most) have an incredibly sanitized presence. Unless your job or livelihood revolves around needing to engage with a random internet audience (i.e. you're an influencer, entertainer, etc.) stay away from having a public persona on Twitter/Facebook/etc. The only community I interact with candidly tends to be this one. I don't post on Twitter, F…

> The only community I interact with candidly tends to be this one.

Same here. Even so, I make it a point to keep it positive, and about myself.

Interestingly, that gets people painting me as "stuck up," or a "goody two-shoes," and they attack me anyway.

Meh. Whatevs.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#29

Post by PragmaticPulp »

From the linked Notion "Receipts" page:

> I've struggled to understand why so many people have piled on to these absurd accusations without facts.

I watched a similar situation play out in real time. A friend had to fire an employee who wasn't submitting work or even responding to communications. The employe retaliated by using their moderately large social media presence to disparage my friend and her company.

Strangely enough, other people with zero experience in the matter were piling on to support the claims. It seemed they felt obligated to amplify and lend credence to the allegations of one of their social media friends.

The experience was extremely stressful for my friend, but ultimately the former employee cooled off and deleted many of the posts. It's hard to tell how much damage was done in the process, but I was stunned at how someone with zero evidence and an obvious axe to grind could rally such disdain for someone else with little more than a few unsubstantiated social media posts.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#30

Post by polote »

dvt wrote: post #16
drknownuffin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that would have helped OP. He wasn't called out for things he said or did on social media, barring a few people who piled on over extremely "sanitized" exchanges. I think your "best solution" aligns well with what the OP appeared to be doing, and he still burned. It's important to note that just because the mob forms on social media doesn't mean its consequences are limited to social media.

> I think your "best solution" aligns well with what the OP appeared to be doing, and he still burned. OP has a huge Twitter presence (600k+ followers), and I guess my point is when you have that kind of presence you open yourself up to being a "pseudo-public" person. Sometimes, you need to do this (if you're a politician, for example). But usually you don't. People will get more riled up when the person they're cruc…

> OP has a huge Twitter presence (600k+ followers),

He has 16k followers https://twitter.com/pasql

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