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

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201–210 of 263 posts

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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody wants to take away your right to free speech, we're just trying to create social norms that discourage, or hinder, the freedom to express views we don't like. Ignore the fact that social norms inevitably become codified in law."

Reddit does not owe you free speech. You can say whatever you want, and they can choose not to broadcast it to millions of people.

Or does it? Now, no company would owe you freedom of speech just for existing, but in the previous promises Reddit made, it did promise to be a bastion of free speech. It wasn't an explicit contract that they can be taken to court over, but do we really want to say that, unless there is an explicit contract, there cannot be any agreements?

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

#202

The situation at reddit is appalling and the death threats and egregious harassment against Pao were wrong, and likely illegal in some cases. That said, my opinion of her is that she is far from the champion that this battle needs. I believe that the most common view of Pao is not too savory, between her husbands ponzi scheme, the details that came out of the KPCB trial and the plethora of other poor decision taken b…

shorter: Pao is subject to appalling abuse but she brought it on herself because of her supposed character faults and the things her husband did.

I think that nicely proves her point. Even if you don't care for her decisions, she still shouldn't be treated the way she is.

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

#203
post #86
post #31

Does anybody remember when trolling was a term used to describe an activity in which users wielding enough understanding of other's perspectives would attempt to give other's cognitive dissonance? It seems that one of the most powerful online political classes have lumped hatred and abuse in with disagreement, mockery and satire. I don't think it's good for the conversation between the group of user's that dislike wh…

I miss those days when I was proud to be a troll, when it meant tricking people into thinking in ways that they normally wouldn't. People used to love trolls! Of course, it didn't just mean that. There were also troll raids when friends would get together and make silly comments on every thread they could find, crashing the party but having fun with it. The incendiary ones used to be called flamers, but I think that…

I think I remember the term flamers being retired as people began to misinterpret it as a negative term for homosexual individuals (based off of flamboyant). This would've been around a decade ago, maybe a bit more, so it could just be a false memory.

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

#204
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd much rather eradicate murder. Murder sucks. It needs to stop being a normal day-to-day occurrence in our lives. Someone, somewhere will be murdered today. How can you continue with your life knowing that will happen? Worse - it will be more than one person! Multiple people will be murdered today, tomorrow, and every day in the future too! Most of them are total strangers, but maybe one day it will be someone you…

With respect (because I share the feeling), that's an attitude that helps one sleep at night in a broken world, but it's inherently defeatist and decreases the likelihood of positive change. Because things can be changed. Over the work of several decades, the murder rate (along with the violent crime rate) has gone down. Why should we just assume that the same can't be said for bullying and abuse? There's plenty of q…

When people stop posting PII online their abuse rates will go down. That's my conjecture.

In fact, personal abuse online has risen online and I blame people being so open with their personally identifying information. I made a related post on this issue here [0]. The solution is not one that people want to subscribe to. They'd rather share their lives on FB and Twitter for the world to see. "The world" includes nasty people and bullies. If people don't want nasty people and bullies to have access to this information, people need to stop sharing it with the world.

It is much easier to harass someone in a credible manner when you have information about them. No information? Nothing to attack. But so many people want to shove their name, gender, sexuality, religion, age, beliefs, and who-knows-what-else in front of everyones' eyes to see. So people who dislike _____ now have something to attack. People who dislike ____ will always and forever exist. Always. Until we remove the right for individuals to hold their own beliefs or have freedom.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9898619

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

#205

What I really care about: Who gets to decide who is a troll and who isn't?

People have been trying to automate moderation and make it perfectly fair for a long time now. It's basically impossible. If you do it at all, you have to use people, which makes it suck.

If you don't do any moderation, you get a sewer, and then you get shut down. You can try to exclude only illegal stuff and stand on free speech, but in terms of content you still have a sewer. To be fair, most of the stuff that moves through sewers is not deadly poison, just crap and water. Some people like sewers, so sewer cities continue to be built for people to live in, but most people find them unattractive, so they never take over the world.

To make something more attractive out of all the crap people emit, you need a modicum of moderation, which always comes from other people. Which means it is essentially unfair, capricious, and creates incentives to endless mediocrity and pandering. But even if we accept that rather than going back to the sewers, one man's perfect moderator is the other man's little Hitler. So maybe we should just crowdsource moderation! Brilliant! But "democratic" crowd moderation is essentially a way of diffusing responsibility for censorship. The censorship of whoever happens to brigade your posts (maybe with sockpuppets, or external links) is not any more free, or pleasant, than any other censorship. Meanwhile, upvoting and downvoting takes on a massive life of its own and creates arenas for endless meta-gaming like subcommunities trying to push each other out. This takes over the site. If you manage the site, have fun managing all that effectively, and try not to get sucked in.

If what you want is fairness, all you can do is publish explicit policy (NOT legal ToS) so people know and agree to what they're getting into - then enforce that policy universally to the letter. That will be fair only in the limited sense that everyone agrees to it the same, like the rules of chess. But human-based moderation will never be fair.

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

#206
post #196
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like changing the topic of #windows to "PC users wet the bed" during a netsplit? I think you may be viewing the past through rose colored lens. Regardless, the things people are complaining about on Reddit aren't satire. I don't think a debate over word meanings is helpful.

No, not at all like that. Like holding a straight face and carefully putting forwards an extreme position which you do not hold while making use of the correct memes and language so that it appears congruent to outsiders. A humorous effect is created because a line can be drawn between those of the audience that know what you're doing and those that do not. A selection of the audience watches on as people that are no…

I use to love to do this while at college. Homosexuality was still controversial enough you would get people debating it. Of course someone would eventually compare it to something most everyone agreed was wrong. Immediately the other side would try to say why that other thing was wrong, at which point I would jump in to defend it. I became so good at it that people would approach me after class to clarify if I was being serious or not. I even wrote a paper for a class that was titled something along the lines of 'A Defense of Consensual Relationships Between Genetically Similar Adults'. I ended up Poe's Lawing myself with that paper.

Sadly corporate environment isn't anywhere near as tolerant of this.

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

#207
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were hit back by karma. Reddit has never hesitated to take advantage of the word "democracy" to refer to how their site works. It's a word that sounds very well. So there they have it: that screenshot is what democracy looks like.

Yep. Forum users and gamers are the worst sort of people.

Milgram showed that people are the worst sort of people. As did Zimbardo. And quite a few others.

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

#208
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never actually saw a post saying "ching-chong cunt". Can you point to one? I searched for [ching chong cunt reddit] and didn't find anything either. I did see lots of posts saying things like "Ellen Pao is LITERALLY Hitler", but not any overtly racist ones that I can recall.

(Edit: removed rudeness.) Here's one. There were lots of others that used the term cunt or used racial slurs. https://np.reddit.com/r/punchablefaces/comments/39dl6s/ching... I mean, it's a comment on a thread in a sub called "punchable faces", the thread links to an Imgur image of Pao labled "ching chong ding dong", has 2,400 upvotes.

People, in a moment of anger, will AGREE with something hurtful that was said? Shocking!

I would say we should not confuse an upvote with a post.

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

#209
post #13

From what i've seen on reddit, twitter, and sometimes even on hn, some are quick to label people whose opinion differs from theirs as trolls. It doesn't matter if it is a polite or well-though out comment, they are quick to shout the word harassment or whatever -ist allows them to hold some moral high ground.

also, I might be wrong, but, if you comment about an idea that doesn't conform to a sub-reddit's ideology, you can get down-voted to oblivion for no obvious reason... I used to not like Facebook's idea of not providing a dislike button, but I am not so sure anymore

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

#210
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'hate speech' has a very high bar and from the court details there is zero evidence that the defendant engaged in anything remotely approaching harrassment, never mind hate speech. by their own admission and by the evidence, the plaintiffs however did engage in a pattern of behavior and organized others into the same pattern which resulted in a person not only being harassed but also losing their job. it is not enoug…

Right, which is why we have courts to determine the validity of the claims.

Sure, but some things are self evident and it makes no sense to waste public funds on them.

If you hurt my feelings, that's neither a criminal nor civil offense.

"Sticks and stones..." silly me, I thought we all learned this in elementary school

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