Shame Storm • Hacker News Board

Re: Shame Storm

#211

Post by CM30 » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 2:57 AM UTC

ballenf wrote: post #108

I'd recommend people having kids give them very common names and consider giving them modifications of the last name if it's rare. It's depressing advice and a bit like paying a lifetime of insurance premiums that's likely never to be needed. Unless the concept of a search changes in the next couple decades, getting lost in a sea of similar names is the only defense against unfounded accusations. (Changing one's name…

Not just names, usernames too. People will find it much harder to dig up information on someone going by a generic sounding name like 'cat' or 'computer' compared to someone with a more unique handle.

Combine that with a generic name like John Smith, and you've got someone who's basically impossible to dox.

Re: Shame Storm

#212

Post by hnuser1234 » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 3:02 AM UTC

jf- wrote: post #103

nardi wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t have a rule against a storm, only a raindrop. Rules have to be enforced against individuals. And what rule would you make that could be enforced? That isn’t to say you couldn’t have a storm response policy. But then how would you keep the storm from happening first?

Pretty simple: Disallow posts about the subject of the storm. Do so with the explanation that it is a moral good to prevent this kind of dogpiling and that those taking part should be ashamed of themselves.

And how do you prevent the moderators from being corrupted by any influence and stay perfectly objective? You say every forum needs a moderator, I say every moderator is, or quickly becomes, unacceptably corrupt.

Maybe we could come up with some really basic rules for these popular sites, and implement them algorithmically, but good luck dealing with that PR shitstorm.

Re: Shame Storm

#213

Post by subpixel » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 3:04 AM UTC

monkeydreams wrote: post #181

This article, if written by someone else, might be more impactful for me. This is the story of a woman who fled half-way across the world from a Twitter-storm, but who, when confronted by a refugee who had been shot and tortured in his home country, that his suffering did not mean he had the right to seek asylum. This is a woman who admires Marine Le Pen and Trump, but is happy to seek her own asylum when a minor shi…

The author of this article is a cunning, dangerous person. She was not shamed as she would like her reader to believe - she was “outed” for her inflammatory political views and she only stayed in self-imposed exile until the current administration made those views vogue among a certain set of deplorables. Now she’s skmething if an influencer in Trump-world. Which is to say: shameless.

Re: Shame Storm

#214

Post by CM30 » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 3:07 AM UTC

zozbot123 wrote: post #13

The rule for how to deal with this sort of "shaming" is quite simple: no matter what you may have been 'accused' of, always double down and never issue anything that might even loosely resemble an apology or an admission of weakness, no matter what the costs might be. Then simply wait until the mob gets bored and moves on to the next easy target. There are very high profile examples of this working quite well, but me…

Same setup works well for companies too. Yes it's difficult to accept the short term PR hit, but at the end of the day, the social media mob will likely have zero influence on the success of the business or how many sales it makes.

That's arguably one reason certain games companies have gotten away with horrible, rather anti consumer behaviour for years (like EA), because they realised early on that boycotts and internet complaints do not matter. For them, it's like 'who cares if the angry mob is calling for our heads over on Reddit, because Madden/FIFA/whatever will still sell millions of copies'

At the end of the day, most drama queens and controversy fanatics don't make companies money, and those that do will give up their boycott in time. So the answer is to do nothing and just watch everything fizzle out.

Re: Shame Storm

#215

Post by gred » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 3:11 AM UTC

zestyping wrote: post #82

jerf wrote: post #47

As I've mentioned before, one of the interesting things I like to study in a casual way is the effect of social community structures on behavior. At this point it is not terribly controversial that modern social media systems encourage shame storms, via things like easy "viral" sharing, the existence of moderation systems that can be used to nuke any attempt to defend oneself out of existence, and the way modern soci…

It's weird to me that almost all posting/commenting platforms are about the same. You get a series of small boxes with text in them and a small box to type into, usually too small to fit more than a couple of sentences, perhaps a button to promote, a button to reshare, and that's it. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Medium, Disqus... all the same. We've explored so little of the design space. If I had to hazard in extrapo…

> Every comment must be approved by its parent.

Design twist: every comment must be approved by the commenter's parent -- father or mother.

Re: Shame Storm

#216

Post by subpixel » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 3:21 AM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #199

monkeydreams wrote: post #181

This article, if written by someone else, might be more impactful for me. This is the story of a woman who fled half-way across the world from a Twitter-storm, but who, when confronted by a refugee who had been shot and tortured in his home country, that his suffering did not mean he had the right to seek asylum. This is a woman who admires Marine Le Pen and Trump, but is happy to seek her own asylum when a minor shi…

I admit I am a little curious about what she thought about living in Australia.

I’m sure she found some pleasure and imspiration in the news coming out of Nauru.

Re: Shame Storm

#217

Post by jf- » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 3:24 AM UTC

hnuser1234 wrote: post #212

jf- wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty simple: Disallow posts about the subject of the storm. Do so with the explanation that it is a moral good to prevent this kind of dogpiling and that those taking part should be ashamed of themselves.

And how do you prevent the moderators from being corrupted by any influence and stay perfectly objective? You say every forum needs a moderator, I say every moderator is, or quickly becomes, unacceptably corrupt. Maybe we could come up with some really basic rules for these popular sites, and implement them algorithmically, but good luck dealing with that PR shitstorm.

What’s your point, that we can’t ensure perfect rules so let’s not have any? By extension we can’t ensure perfect government or laws so let’s not bother? I’m looking for a more charitable interpretation but there isn’t one.

Maybe some level of democratisation or at least community engagement, but there will always be people who are dissatisfied.

Re: Shame Storm

#218

Post by UncleEntity » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 3:29 AM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #115

motohagiography wrote: post #14

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." -- Cardinal Richelieu

I'm 44, and either I'm just getting old enough to notice things I never noticed when I was younger, or there's something very concerning brewing - it seems to me like a small but growing subsegment of western society is working as hard as they can to escalate civilization to an actual violent conflict. And, based on my understanding of history, the biggest losers in that conflict will be the ones pushing the hardest…

This "small but growing subsegment of western society" was rioting on the street on a regular basis a year or so ago and had an actual date set for a violent revolution (in the US at least). They seem to have petered out though, probably because they were deemed a domestic terrorist organization.

Re: Shame Storm

#219

Post by overgard » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 3:32 AM UTC

sethrin wrote: post #36

I think that the actual issue is the collective desire for punishment, and our inability to forgive others. From what I can see, forgiveness is something that we should strive to achieve as soon as possible after an offense. It's far too easy to hold people in public contempt, or prison, far longer than their just deserts.

I think forgiveness assumes that most of these “righteous“ crusaders are actually personally angry though, which is rarely the case. It’s frequently just virtue signalling in a way that sociopathically ignores that a real human beings’ reputation is at stake and the massive consequences of that.

Re: Shame Storm

#220

Post by UncleEntity » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 3:37 AM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #83

busterarm wrote: post #9

I think one of the biggest misconceptions that highly educated people have is to think that they are immune to the effects of an angry/unruly mob. As participant or as victim.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions that anti-mob people have is that there is no cost to letting people go un-shunned. There is much hand-wringing over the handful of people wrongly shunned, but many of the wringers give no thought at all to the victims who are forced out of their careers, families, and communities every day because the people around them refuse to consider the possibility that there is a wolf…

> Outside of the court system, shouldn’t we try to hit a 1:1 ratio of wrongful excommunications to failures to excommunicate?

For every valid offence some other completely innocent person should also be punished to ensure that no one ever escapes justice?

What could ever go wrong with that...