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Life after an internet mob attack

pasquale.cool

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Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#31

Post by version_five »

Zealotux wrote: post #8

A relevant TED Talk I always think of when reading about these stories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI Which makes me think: who are these people with enough time of their hands to be morality warriors on internet? Also who are these _friends_ who jumps on conclusion without allowing for a defense? I shouldn't be difficult, in this digitalized world, to provide solid proof of wrongdoing. I may not be the…

> Also who are these _friends_ who jumps on conclusion without allowing for a defense?

I wonder if this person is referring more to their social group. I get the impression that there are groups of "friends" that are really more of a social group and are all walking on eggshells around one another re orthodoxy and and at the same time poised to jump on anyone who is perceived to do something against their group values.

Sort of like the situation in 1984, Winston, Syme, Ampleforth, Parson, are all "friends" in some sense but effectively would denounce each other immediately for anything and feel the need to insert little "there is a war going on of course" type platitudes in conversation.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#32

Post by lloydjones »

cousin_it wrote: post #11

If/when any of my friends get attacked by the mob, I hope I'll have the courage to stand by them publicly. A good recent test was the doxing of Scott Alexander. I signed the open letter against it with my real name and was happily surprised to see the names of many people I know. We should have more of these small but visible acts of resistance that let like-minded people find you.

The post, and your comment, IMO wrongly frames this as courage .vs. cowardice in standing up for friends.

However, that fails to take into account any context of the particular “cancellation”.

eg, A situation with damning screenshots of lewd DMs are pretty ‘smoking gun’, and the barometer of “good friends would publicly support me” feels like an insane expectation when (in this hypothetical instance) the person did a bad thing.

Perhaps being cancelled isn’t the solution (because we’re all flawed) but the automatic expectation of character references come a scandal isn’t fair on one’s friends.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#33

Post by Zababa »

smoldesu wrote: post #4

This is why your identity online should never be traceable back to your real name. It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on privacy, but the internet ultimately doesn't change if you use an alias. If you do so, employers will come back empty-handed when they try Googling you, and they'll have a harder time finding "that dumb Twitter post" that jeopardizes your job. None of this is to say that you should be a bad perso…

> It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on privacy

I honestly always tought it was common sense.

> None of this is to say that you should be a bad person online, or otherwise take advantage of anonymity. Being anonymous just gives you a healthy personal shield, and the option to "cash out" and walk away from that identity, if you so desire.

I wouldn't call it anonymity. You can read all of the posts I've made on hacker news by going through my posts (although I can't really prove that to you). My identity just isn't linked to who I am IRL, and both aren't linked to my twitter, and the three aren't linked to my discord. That means that I can be appreciated and judged as an indivudal on HN, but it won't have consequences on other platforms. On the other hand, if I make a really really popular twitter post I can't profit from it here. As you said, it's of course not a reason or way to be a bad person. I just think it's important for me to separate my different identities.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#34

Post by shkkmo »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #13
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?

This is essentially why civilization has legal systems and courts. Unfortunately, legal systems and courts don't scale to internet (global) scale. You'll be "dead," metaphorically speaking, of an internet mob attack before your lawyer even calls you back.

We drastically need significant reform of our court system. We simply don't have the capacity to address the current demanda on the court system (which is why we need ao many plea deals.) We certainly don't have the slack we need in the system to be able to drastically expand the scope.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#35

Post by dvt »

polote wrote: post #30
dvt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Oops, mea culpa. I mistook another screenshot in his post to be his own account. Yeah, 16k isn't that much; pretty sad.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#36

Post by BitwiseFool »

Zababa wrote: post #33
smoldesu wrote: post #4

This is why your identity online should never be traceable back to your real name. It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on privacy, but the internet ultimately doesn't change if you use an alias. If you do so, employers will come back empty-handed when they try Googling you, and they'll have a harder time finding "that dumb Twitter post" that jeopardizes your job. None of this is to say that you should be a bad perso…

> It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on privacy I honestly always tought it was common sense. > None of this is to say that you should be a bad person online, or otherwise take advantage of anonymity. Being anonymous just gives you a healthy personal shield, and the option to "cash out" and walk away from that identity, if you so desire. I wouldn't call it anonymity. You can read all of the posts I've made on hacke…

I would love a feature where usernames get obfuscated once the posts reach a certain age.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#37

Post by shadowgovt »

smoldesu wrote: post #4

This is why your identity online should never be traceable back to your real name. It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on privacy, but the internet ultimately doesn't change if you use an alias. If you do so, employers will come back empty-handed when they try Googling you, and they'll have a harder time finding "that dumb Twitter post" that jeopardizes your job. None of this is to say that you should be a bad perso…

But in an increasingly default-online world, "employers come back empty-handed" looks suspicious and can get you passed over for candidates with robust LinkedIn profiles. And keeping oneself pseudonymous doesn't help at all if someone with an issue goes after you publicly online and the only search result for your name becomes someone else's side of the story.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#38

Post by numakerg »

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…

Having a following on social media has great benefits for regular techies, not just influencers and entertainers, etc. It lets you magnify your resume to reach people with authority who you normally couldn't connect with. It helps you get spots at conferences, seats on cool new projects or positions that you can further leverage to increase your online fame and bump up your compensation. You can also use your following to get preferential treatment with companies and authorities, have your problems solved faster. Got your app removed from the Play Store with no explanation? Raise a stink on Twitter.

That's one of the reasons why people are so quick to join the fray and throw a punch. They want to be that one quick Tweet that goes viral, gets them thousands of followers and builds their brand.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#39

Post by alpaca128 »

gotoeleven wrote: post #6
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…

Social media is pure poison that exploits every frailty of human nature. And it is optimized to be this way, even if unintentionally, because that's what makes money.

To me it shows humans simply cannot (yet?) deal with such wide-reaching communication. It's fine in neatly organised and moderated forums. But those still have some sense of privacy, similar to how people at a workplace can freely talk about things that wouldn't be fine to say on live TV.

But social media turns everything into live TV, potentially analysed with more rigor than any TV show ever witnessed, and with algorithms implicitly optimised to make the things most visible which generate the most powerful emotions. And it doesn't seem like the social media concept is going to disappear soon, it's just part of everyday life for many.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#40

Post by richardwhiuk »

smoldesu wrote: post #4

This is why your identity online should never be traceable back to your real name. It's a pretty scorched-earth opinion on privacy, but the internet ultimately doesn't change if you use an alias. If you do so, employers will come back empty-handed when they try Googling you, and they'll have a harder time finding "that dumb Twitter post" that jeopardizes your job. None of this is to say that you should be a bad perso…

I don't think that's realistic. The level of opsec required to actually do that, is realistically not going to happen for the majority of people.
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