RIP Culture War Thread • Hacker News Board

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#201

Post by jancsika » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 6:15 AM UTC

ufmace wrote: post #14

This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, w…

> We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. I'd like to know more about the vision:

* what was the idea for combating Sybil if hundreds of thousands, millions, or billions of people arrived?

* what was the idea for combating disinformation campaigns?

* if you thought it best to maximize for globally readable and reachable ideas, what was the idea for dealing with garden variety abuse and viral content of a defamatory nature?

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#202

Post by closeparen » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 6:16 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #193

closeparen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social norm under discussion here is exactly when and to what degree those ostracism campaigns ought to be waged. If the answer is “never” we are going to see a lot of pedophilia, Nazism, and spam. If the answer is “whenever people disagree” then we are going to be a world of mutually unintelligible and isolated factions. The correct setpoint is an interesting and non-obvious question, and the limited scope of th…

Yes, but that question has nothing to do with the Internet. The correct set point of that social norm is whatever it is in the rest of society, because the Internet (at least in the US) now includes almost everyone. My point is that the folks that founded the Internet, even if they believed in techno libertarian ideas like that mentioned by OP (which I’m not sure is true—the Internet was built by a bunch of defense c…

The dinner table, the subway, and debate club each have distinct social norms around which opinions one may state and what sort of appeals may be used in their support. Why shouldn't internet communities have their own?

SSC is basically hosting a grown-up, text based debate club. Even the version that 16-year-olds encounter will ask questions like affirmative action, immigration, abortion, church & state. Kids are required not only to listen quietly through, but to competently articulate opposing views on such topics.

The social norm proposed for the internet in campaigns like this is a narrower range of acceptable opinion than in officially sanctioned activities of regional federations of public high schools. There is more going on here than "sorry, no techno-anarchist utopia for you."

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#203

Post by jackmaney » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 6:24 AM UTC

Good riddance. [spits]

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#204

Post by cm2012 » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 6:25 AM UTC

legitster wrote: post #69

komali2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>hen make some fake accounts and post something bad yourself. Write hit pieces on the owner or author and highlight those cherry-picked things. Spread those pieces far and wide, and keep writing new ones with the same theme. I've never heard of this happening - was there specific instances of this you were thinking of? I'd like to read more, if possible.

It is fairly acknowledged that for the new Ghostbusters movie, Sony Pictures deleted well-reasoned and articulated negative comments on the trailer's Youtube, but left up hateful and poorly worded ones so they could portray all negative criticism as bigoted.

Is it?

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#205

Post by intended » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 6:37 AM UTC

ufmace wrote: post #14

This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, w…

IF we say that its troubling in these days, then we are missing the many other signs that people have been yelling about for years now.

We were mistaken about humanity and the internet.

The process you describe is not necessarily how it happens either, simple error can recreate this scenario.

It is clear that the only tool moderators have at hand are variants of censorship - and thats because not all ideas are equal, and some ideas are better evolved to travel through the currents and dark gyres of the sea of human thoughts.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#206

Post by creato » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 6:45 AM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #13

What really hit home was this passage: > I acknowledge many people’s lived experience that the thread felt right-wing; my working theory is that most of the people I talk to about this kind of thing are Bay Area liberals for whom the thread was their first/only exposure to a space with any substantial right-wing presence at all, which must have made it feel scarily conservative. I moved from Western Washington where…

> in close to a decade of living and about 6 years working in the Bay area I have met exactly one co-worker that openly expressed conservative views.

In my experience in the bay area, it's very rare for co-workers to express political views at all. In fact, I find the bay area to be very politically reserved compared to the open embrace of conservative viewpoints where I'm from (I probably lean more conservative than liberal, so I don't think I'm simply being more sensitive to it).

I have encountered people that aggressively espouse liberal positions every now and then, but in my experience, this makes most other people around them (including me) uncomfortable, and the conversation usually stops quickly. While it is maybe more rare for a conservative to do this, I find it to be met with the same response.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#207

Post by masonic » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 6:48 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #177

malvosenior wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is impossible to respectfully argue for a racist or homophobic position. My point is that in 2019 this statement has no meaning because there are wide swaths of the audience (not just fringe elements) that will label nearly everything "racist". The main point of contention in this thread is whether you should ban unpopular opinions or let them stand on their own. Racist comments are and should be unpopular but w…

>. Racist comments are and should be unpopular but when the definition racism is widened to include half the population then censoring "racists" Half the population didn't vote for Trump. I think that's what we're supposed to be reading between the lines here, that half the population voted for Trump and have now been unfairly demonized as racists and homophobes and that, because of this, the terms "racist" and "homo…

  Half the population didn't vote for Trump.

More than that, in total population terms.

Then again, Trump got over 40% more votes than Bill Clinton did for his first term.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#208

Post by rgoulter » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:01 AM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #13

What really hit home was this passage: > I acknowledge many people’s lived experience that the thread felt right-wing; my working theory is that most of the people I talk to about this kind of thing are Bay Area liberals for whom the thread was their first/only exposure to a space with any substantial right-wing presence at all, which must have made it feel scarily conservative. I moved from Western Washington where…

Nicky Case & Vi Hart have a model "Parable of the Polygons", which relates to what you're saying. https://ncase.me/polygons/

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#209

Post by jplayer01 » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:02 AM UTC

intended wrote: post #191

gipp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you've left out of that idyll of the early internet, though, is that its population was - smaller, by many orders of magnitude - from a highly homogeneous distribution of cultural backgrounds - mostly of comfortable material means These are, and have probably always been, prerequisites for the kind of civil discourse you're talking about. The "heavy-handedness" of tech companies is IMO less a cause than it is a…

That’s untrue, and ignored evidence from many newer forums and their descent into madness. Take HN, gaming forums and so on - they work decently. Here’s my rules of the network from a moderators perspective 1) politics and religion are about maximally polarizing. If your forum/topic has no need for these topics, exclude them with great prejudice. 2) there are 2 types of forums. Some forums are built around goal drive…

Gaming forums? They rank up there as the worst the internet has to offer. Which one exactly are you taking about? Because all the ones I've seen are toxic cesspools unless it's a subreddit for a niche game like Factorio, which is consequently small with a very specific demographic.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#210

Post by intended » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 7:03 AM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #22

I dunno why people think moderating comments is so hard. It's obvious when someone is arguing in bad faith: repeating the same stuff over and over, condescending tone, dismissing opposing side, etc. People are afraid of being accused of censorship.

Absolutely NOT. Moderating comments is hard, and it is rarely clear if someone is arguing in good or even bad faith.

Tone of voice does not carry on the internet.

Worse, Good moderation is simply a better training environment for the next generation of harassers and bad users.

From my experience - basic rules got rid of the dumbest type of harasser currently active on the forum, but then created a medium for a more evolved and trained harasser to arise. What used to be obvious hate speech, misogyny and so on was exchanged for veiled abuse and dog whistles.

The rule of moderation is that your attackers keep moving up a Turing-like scale, till inevitably their arguments are indistinguishable from genuine comments made out of ignorance or lack of malice.

This ignores the damage done to your relation with the community, peace of mind, and the paranoia that slowly starts to grip your team as people threaten you, try to doxx you, and worse.

While you may rarely meet insane people in real life, because of the limitation of physical reality - online behavior is not regulated by the needs of actually having to use calories to move your body to interact with a person.

Instead, its a lot cheaper for people to give in to obsession and hammer away on a keyboard as they vent their frustration on someone standing between them and speaking their mind about things they feel strongly about.

God- I could write chapters on what happens when you have enough disgruntled users who decide to make a new forum, driven only to hate your team and moderation style - then spend their time attacking you.

But in the most delicious of ironies - the new forums created to target your rules and moderation style, eventually have a crisis of behavior which they fix by foisting similar rules as the one that got them banned in the first place.