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Life after an internet mob attack

pasquale.cool

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Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#451

Post by shkkmo »

nomdep wrote: post #177
shkkmo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't bad actors taking advantage and the issue isn't listening to victims. We should absolutely keep listening unconditionally and there will always be bad actors. The problem is how we respond to what we hear. The core casue of the issue is treating online vigilante outrage mobs as an acceptable activity.

Problem is, for every victim, there are at least 10 people willing to fake victimhood for the attention alone.

This is absolutely not true. You are so far from correct that you do not seem to be operating in good faith. If you are operating in good faith, please go do some basic research.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#452

Post by bendbro »

krapp wrote: post #421
bendbro wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you think I disagree with the idea of liberalism. I simply think if someone is a liberal, they should believe purely disagreeable speech should not have consequences; else, they are an idiot. There are of course more complexities where speech should result in consequences, but in general, if someone says something than another otherwise unrelated person simply disagrees with, the speaker should not h…

>There are of course more complexities where speech should result in consequences, but in general, if someone says something than another otherwise unrelated person simply disagrees with, the speaker should not have their relationship with their friends, family, employer, customers, businesses they use, etc harmed. So you do agree that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences after all. This is exactl…

Yes, I totally agree that the argument should be about "... what speech should be considered 'purely disagreeable' (which is a purely subjective term) and what consequences are valid". As I said in my very first comment, "... the argument should actually be about what consequences are warranted in response to speech".

> I personally believe hateful speech should have consequences, even when it isn't explicitly and immediately threatening harm on a specific individual

My problem with that is it makes large swaths of modern left politics uncriticizable, since any criticism of those politics will be construed as hate. Right wing politics were also once uncriticizable, in the "war on christmas" days, but that has since faded.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#453

Post by vkou »

shkkmo wrote: post #450
vkou wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very same people that are complaining about cancel culture will without a shred of irony start to complain about moderator censorship. I've touched on this in another comment, in another thread - if we are going to assume that people have the right to say whatever the hell they want, how do you reconcile that with the rights of a mob to pigpile someone for speaking their mind? The short answer is: "You can't." Th…

Please don't make assumptions about what people believe like you are doing here. It limits your ability to engage in any sort of meaningful discussion and encourages more of the pointless partisan bickering that is causing such great harm to our country. You can make the same sort of point without such language. Rather than asserting that "everyone who beleives X also believes Y and that is contradictory", you should…

You're right, I should have used different language to make this point.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#454

Post by jhayward »

WDCDev wrote: post #188
pjc50 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> strengthening our libel laws This nearly always advantages businesses and the wealthy, especially in false or ambiguous situations, and whistleblowers of all kinds. Litigation is incredibly expensive and slow. Do people really want to spend a house worth and several years on this kind of fight? (This is why the US felt it necessary to pass laws against UK libel judgements being enforced, it was infringing on US sta…

Whistleblowers have plenty of protections and can be exempted. Libel can be stated such that they only apply to private matters between individuals, where accusations that do not reach the felony level - which is exactly what is going on here. I have no doubt we could protect all interests, while limiting the power of the wealthy and powerful.

Whistleblowers have functionally no protections, I don't know how anyone could have knowledge of whistleblower cases and claim otherwise.

Any attorney will tell you - if you are going to blow the whistle on some entity that is powerful, you will lose your job, your home, your ability to work in your field, and your life will be in legal hell for decades.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#455

Post by dntrkv »

nullc wrote: post #121
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.

One issue is that your friend would often not want your public support. You throwing yourself onto the pyre will not rescue them, only destroy you too. In many cases it would be symbolic-- and really just another example of virtue signaling, just like the mob but signaling a different set of virtues to a different audience. Better that you stay employable so you can lend a financial hand if they aren't and protect yo…

I know of two people that went through the whole social media mob thing. The most hurtful thing to them was the lack of friends actually standing up for them. They felt completely alone. And with nobody taking their side, it feeds the narrative that they really are as bad as everyone claims. So no, I think you're completely wrong and what you are suggesting is cowardly.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#456

Post by mcguire »

fastball wrote: post #326
mcguire wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to point this out, but this isn't a "regression" and it's been part of our civilization since our civilization became a civilization. It's just a change in who the targets are.

I think it is entirely plausible that social media / attention mining / etc are absolutely making society less civil than it could be / has been.

Than it could be? I dunno. Humans gotta human.

Until relatively recently, women and people from racial and ethnic minorities were pre-cancelled. And if they got too noisy, there was far worse on the menu---the first year in US history without a lynching was something like 1952, and that's literal torture, mutilation, and death; not having people say bad things about you on the Internet.

Was it more civil? Yeah, sure. It would only be spoken about in public rarely and the better classes of people would certainly never face it. It would certainly be more civil, as long as everyone stayed in their place.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#457

Post by mcguire »

lordloki wrote: post #436
mcguire wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picture someone you really dislike, for some good reason. Now imagine you hired that person before they did whatever, or before you found out. Now you're stuck with them. Now your company is known primarily for what they did and you are losing business.

If everyone knows the company can't fire them, then why target the company in the first place?

The company is paying George the Putrescent Person to do nothing, because nobody there wants to work with him, either?

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#458

Post by goto11 »

xbar wrote: post #257
renewiltord wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a Titania McGrath quote. She’s fictional. A parody.

Clearly. Effective parody exaggerates reality, which she does. The quote works because it sounds like a large number of similar, genuine ones.

I see this so often with fake news. People spread it because they want to believe it because it confirms their worldview. So when you point out the story is fake, they insist that it might as well be true.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#459

Post by fastball »

mcguire wrote: post #456
fastball wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is entirely plausible that social media / attention mining / etc are absolutely making society less civil than it could be / has been.

Than it could be? I dunno. Humans gotta human. Until relatively recently, women and people from racial and ethnic minorities were pre-cancelled. And if they got too noisy, there was far worse on the menu---the first year in US history without a lynching was something like 1952, and that's literal torture, mutilation, and death; not having people say bad things about you on the Internet. Was it more civil? Yeah, sure.…

An entirely different class of bad behaviors that were commonplace in the past has absolutely no bearing on whether or not social media makes us worse people and just confuses the issue for no reason.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#460

Post by Kye »

prawn wrote: post #363
tediousdemise wrote: post #120

Twitter is a toxic wasteland of shit eaters. I avoid Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, pretty much anything considered social media. In fact, the only websites I use are email, banking, and HN. I don’t need social media. Social media doesn’t deserve my bandwidth, advertisers don’t deserve my attention, and my mind doesn’t deserve to be manipulated.

I think this must be true of Twitter in specific places (USA) or circles. I find it to be largely positive and can't think of the last time I saw a polarised debate on there. Not on FB so can't comment about that. Instagram is important for one of my lines of work and I find it a positive place.

There might just be a lag post-adoption in a place, or require some initiating event. It was great in the US for years until around 2008 when people who are professionally political got on for the election. Until then it was mostly hobby talk, like a bunch of small subreddits that occasionally talked to each other.
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