Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#281

Post by moduspol » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:03 PM UTC

potta_coffee wrote: post #251

moduspol wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've already got people with the correct worldview in charge of curriculum and personnel. The problem is that there are still dumb-dumbs that sometimes think there are valid alternatives to our worldview. That's why we need better education.

"correct worldview". People like you scare me.

Sorry--it is satire, but the comment represents literally how it comes across to me when I see claims that "better education" will effectively bring about less toxic discussions. The implication is clear: If only people were rational and educated, like me, they wouldn't think the way they do, and then we would all agree.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#282

Post by branchless » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:03 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #165

rexpop wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can I read up on these land policies?

Here's what I know or believe I know about feudalism. It's almost entirely from the book https://www.amazon.com/Pre-Industrial-Societies-Anatomy-Pre-... , which while excellent does not deal with feudalism in any depth. - European feudalism was an unusual system in that the government had no taxing power. The lord who owned land held the taxing power ("feudal dues") over that land, and the king funded himself by coll…

How are devolved local states equivalent to private landlords? States capture land value via land tax and socialise this. Private landlords capture it and keep it.

Night and day.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#283

Post by bllguo » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #217

devinhelton wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We really just need better public education" I agree 100% as long as you put me, or people of my worldview, in charge of the curriculum and personnel.

Yes. In today's age of near-universal literacy, "uneducated" is just a euphemism for views disliked by the the side in control of the education apparatus. While thought-policing media, schools, churches, and any other possible venue of "indoctrination" may "work" to a superficial extent, it mostly just completely destroys the credibility of your authority and leads to stunning implosion and destabilization. See: the…

Being able to distinguish fact from fiction is not a skill that is near universal, and it should be. Seems like a straw man to attack "thought policing" and "indoctrination." We're talking about critical thinking and logical reasoning.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#284

Post by gowld » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

digitalantfarm wrote: post #25

Reddit used to be a place where you could post links to anything on the internet (kind of like this place) and comment on it (without signing up with your email). Now it's place more like Facebook with algorithms based on your personal taste, geolocation, forced email, shadow banning, banning of politically incorrect subreddits, endless political posts and "Futurology" and "Uplifting" news articles. Free speech on re…

Reddit has a common frontpage (two, actually: /popular and /all) and user-customizable list of subreddits.

> algorithms based on your personal taste,

only for recommending subs to try

> geolocation

only for recommending subs to try

> forced email

no it does not

> shadow banning

extremely rare, and per-sub, not reddit-wide

> banning of politically incorrect subreddits

extremely rare; most of why Reddit is publicly despised is because it allows politically incorrect subreddits.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#285

Post by gowld » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

devmunchies wrote: post #45

castis wrote: post #15

As long as there are no consequences to being a dick to people over the internet, "toxic internet" is here to stay.

Sticks and stones. More concerning is the large scale propaganda and marketing.

"propaganda and marketing" are "words", the kind that, as you imply, cannot hurt you.

To say otherwise is "free speech, only if I like it"

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#286

Post by KirinDave » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:09 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #272

KirinDave wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same sort of myth as "why are manhole covers round?" and there are lots of attributions for why that ignore history for a just-so story.

I don't understand the reference. Why are manhole covers round? I always thought it was to prevent the cover from falling into the hole. Is that not the case?

That is the argument but actually any lipped shape can give this guarantee. Even historically manhole and utility covers had to be somewhat flush to the ground and so they've always had to be lipped for this.

You can see lots of utility covers that are hinged, square, or other options, but all are lipped for safety. While a circular profile makes the lipping easier, it doesn't seem to influence many utility covers.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#287

Post by gowld » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:09 PM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #229

prepend wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coon town is obviously offensive, but easily avoided (ie, not a problem). I casually followed the Leslie Jones incident and don’t see the problem. The brigading seemed easily avoided by Jones and was actually amplified by media covering how bad it was. My twitter feed doesn’t show mentions by randos, so Jones should have been able to easily filter out at the client. She may have for all I know. So both your examples…

"Coon town is obviously offensive, but easily avoided (ie, not a problem)." It is until it starts to leak. "I casually followed the Leslie Jones incident and don’t see the problem." I honestly cannot see how one can see the incident, and cannot see a problem with thousands of posters telling an African American woman that she's an ape. "The brigading seemed easily avoided by Jones" That is blaming the victim. "So bot…

> It is until it starts to leak.

It doesn't really leak, not until the honeypot gets shut down and the denizens are forced to hangout elsewhere.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#288

Post by rdl » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #144

rdl wrote: post #121

Rather than censorship, just give readers better filtering tools. This was largely solved on USENET years ago, has been largely solved in email (to a great degree) -- it's just Twitter, FB, etc. which seem to have a hard time solving it. If you made certain sets of filters the default, or available in groups, and did filtering based on your best beliefs about the desires of readers (based on keywords, senders, and ma…

How would you do that in such a way as to prevent a Twitter army from piling on someone? Or at least make it so they don't feel they're being bombarded?

At some point go whitelist or raise thresholds very high (like, on twitter, only people you follow, or blue checks, show up in your timeline if abuse is detected, as a very rough pass. Could easily do something far better.)

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#289

Post by InclinedPlane » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

cpncrunch wrote: post #130

_m8fo wrote: post #46

So we've tried: - Real identities (Facebook comments) - Voting and self moderation (Reddit, HN, etc.) - Strong moderation (Reddit, HN) They all result in toxic comments, trolling, an echo chamber,or worse, a complete lack of participation. There's no real solution to this problem. However, if you create consequences or a cost to commenting you'd eliminate toxic comments and trolling at the cost of less participation…

HN generally works very well. The echo chamber problem is due to allowing downvotes IMO. In my experience that simply leads to minority viewpoints being downvoted. Instead, downvotes should be removed, and people should be allowed to flag abusive comments.

HN works very poorly, and worse by the year. I've been using HN since 2009, I've been on a wide variety of discussion platforms going back to usenet, HN has had its moment in the sun and that has largely passed.

Voting on HN barely has an effect, and I suspect that the average votes per comment on HN has gone way down year over year. People just don't vote on posts as often as you'd think, not anymore. A related problem is that commentary doesn't go on for very long. In the usenet days you could have a good thread that would last for months and months that would continue to spawn good and interesting commentary, a flash in the pan thread might only last a few days. On HN the window of commentary for a post is rarely more than a day and typically only a matter of hours. It's just people strafing comments into the void and then disengaging. Long comments typically don't get read, and don't get upvoted, don't get commented on, etc, for example.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#290

Post by tzahola » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #231

devinhelton wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We really just need better public education" I agree 100% as long as you put me, or people of my worldview, in charge of the curriculum and personnel.

We've already got people with the correct worldview in charge of curriculum and personnel. The problem is that there are still dumb-dumbs that sometimes think there are valid alternatives to our worldview. That's why we need better education.

We should incentivize them to have the correct worldview. E.g. if you’re a CEO you should make sure that your workforce holds the correct opinions by reminding them that they can be fired on the grounds of being a bad “cultural fit”.