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Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity

theguardian.com

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Re: Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity

#31

Post by nsxwolf »

jstalin wrote: post #11

I think, for the most part, general news sites shouldn't have comment sections.

I have never seen comments on a news site that were worthwhile. It's always a train wreck. Any time I scroll down to look at them, I quickly ask myself "Why did I just do that?"

They give you a skewed perspective of the world. When I read Huffington Post comments, I have to remind myself that all liberals are not this obnoxiously stupid. When an article gets linked by Drudge, I have to remind myself that all conservatives are not psychotic hateful trolls.

Re: Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity

#32

Post by rtpg »

betterunix wrote: post #23
rtpg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically you lose your right to free speech when you start making death threats. If you've read the news recently you'd see a lot of very violent stuff being thrown at people. Internet or not, people are not allowed to say they are going to rape your corpse and harass you over and over. So "using the State to bludgeon the offensive speakers" seems like a reasonable reaction to these people. Some of the stuff (tha…

There are other ways: * Spam filters -- if we can spot viagra ads, we can spot rape threats. A paid moderator can review posts that are flagged by the filter but which are not actually threatening. * Charging people for the privilege to post comments on the site. You are free to make commentary on your blog if you do not want to pay, and a small fee (e.g. $5/yr) creates just enough of a speedbump to keep most trolls…

ok I don't think that the gov't should be moderating huffpo comments. Upvote/downvote stuff might be good at least for trolling stuff (but it too can be abused in the right situations).

However, actions are actions. Just because it's easier to do something on the internet doesn't make it more legal.

Obviously the seriousness of it all has to be judged , but if you're harrassing someone constantly on the internet (even if it's "just" making a bunch of online accounts and commenting extremely viley everywhere), you do not have my sympathy.

If I were putting hateful messages into your (snail) mail box every day and sending your friends photoshopped pictures of you in compromising situations, would I be pardoned? Doing on the internet shouldn't either

Re: Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity

#33

Post by rtpg »

prawn wrote: post #22
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the internet. What's going to happen on HuffPo when the nasty comments don't go away? Use the State to bludgeon the offensive speakers? Where will that end?

Don't TechCrunch encourage real names and still get snark in response to start-up announcements? There's more anonymity on HN and people are generally more civil. A karma system can help, IMO.

I feel like the culture of HN encourages people to be relatively open to their identities (probably because its small enough to where anyone can reasonably use it as their soapbox).

"Snark" is one thing (enough people are rude in this industry no matter what the medium), what I'm more concerned about are the things like the death threats, or just outright racism and bigotry out there. The really vile stuff. That needs to get stopped

Re: Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity

#34

Post by nsxwolf »

zeteo wrote: post #12
rtpg wrote: post #8

I really hope that we can figure out this whole "people being absolutely terrible on the internet" thing. A lot of people say that it's just because this is how people really are, but I'm not convinced. I know for a fact that I'm a lot ruder on the internet than I'd ever want to be in real life, regardless of consequences. I've found that "real name" policies help (not necessarily forcing a real name, but at least tr…

It's not the anonymity, it's the lack of consequences. In big cities, people are casually rude in traffic even though they can see each others' faces; but they'll probably never meet again. The clerk at the DMV treats you as shitty as they can get away with. By contrast, an anonymous seller on eBay may go to great lengths to make you happy beyond the terms of service, just because your review will stay with them.

Look at sites that use Facebook for comments. People have no problem posting utterly insane and threatening things with their real name, with a picture of them smiling with their kids.

Re: Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity

#35

Post by onebaddude »

nsxwolf wrote: post #31
jstalin wrote: post #11

I think, for the most part, general news sites shouldn't have comment sections.

I have never seen comments on a news site that were worthwhile. It's always a train wreck. Any time I scroll down to look at them, I quickly ask myself "Why did I just do that?" They give you a skewed perspective of the world. When I read Huffington Post comments, I have to remind myself that all liberals are not this obnoxiously stupid. When an article gets linked by Drudge, I have to remind myself that all conserva…

>It's always a train wreck.

I take the opposite view. When it's a disaster comment section, I see it as: this is actually how some people think. Until there were options, like comments, that gave everyone a platform, it was impossible to tell what people thought about the message being delivered. Good or bad.

Most sites, including this one, the commentary has the best insight.

Re: Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity

#36

Post by dfxm12 »

Karunamon wrote: post #28
twodim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anonymous threats doesn't harm anyone.

In the general case, this is true, but in the specific case, not so much. While a threat doesn't actually do any harm to a person, it does ruin discourse. Reason being that some people are more sensitive than others, and will not post things that they feel are controversial or personal since they feel they'll be challenged or threatened for it. Even if those threats are completely bunk and amount to nothing but troll…

If discourse is the problem, what's wrong with some sort of HN/Slashdot/Reddit-like crowd sourced moderation?

That's the way to solve that issue.

Re: Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity

#37

Post by onebaddude »

diggan wrote: post #18

Well, this happened in the biggest media company in Sweden (Aftonbladet) back in 2011 when they required everyone to login and authorize Facebook access to comment. The editor made the choice after the attack in Norway[1] and brought up that the norwegians handled the situation very good with more openness, more conversion and more democracy. He goes on saying that the hate is too much for normal people and if you wa…

I have a fake Facebook account for this exact reason.

In this world of big, perpetually stored data, I don't know why anyone would be interested in having their casual conversations tied to their real identity. I'm sure if you really wanted to, you could figure out who I am; I won't deny that. But I'm not going to hand it to you. So many things said, so easy to take them out of context.

Re: Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity

#39

Post by nsxwolf »

onebaddude wrote: post #35
nsxwolf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never seen comments on a news site that were worthwhile. It's always a train wreck. Any time I scroll down to look at them, I quickly ask myself "Why did I just do that?" They give you a skewed perspective of the world. When I read Huffington Post comments, I have to remind myself that all liberals are not this obnoxiously stupid. When an article gets linked by Drudge, I have to remind myself that all conserva…

>It's always a train wreck. I take the opposite view. When it's a disaster comment section, I see it as: this is actually how some people think. Until there were options, like comments, that gave everyone a platform, it was impossible to tell what people thought about the message being delivered. Good or bad. Most sites, including this one, the commentary has the best insight.

But if you look carefully, it's often a relatively small group of trolls burning down the entire section. Take Drudge-linked stories, for instance. There are about 6 super-trolls that aggressively post on every single linked story (the "Feds Made Sarah Palin" guy, the guy that talks like Zippy the Pinhead with all the CAPS).

The normal, level-headed people probably aren't posting at all, and they greatly outnumber the trolls who do.

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