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Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

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Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#531

Post by Clanan »

> “Does free speech mean literally anyone can say anything at any time?” Tidwell continued. “Or is it actually more conducive to the free exchange of ideas if we create a platform where women and people of color can say what they want without thousands of people screaming, ‘Fuck you, light yourself on fire, I know where you live’?

This comment, by Reddit's General Counsel, says a lot about their approach. They believe that minorities/women will be subjected to nonstop violent comments unless Reddit pursues proactive and forceful moderation, free speech be damned. I think (hope) that's a very cynical view. The author of the piece does a great job juxtaposing this quote with the results of r/Place, however, in pointing out that it did not devolve into swastikas and "toxic" content when left to its own devices.

But reddit moderation is not just about quality content. I think many commenters here miss this. Moderation of a hugely successful website is not just about the technical issues or the logistics. Huffman, the CEO, is quoted as saying he believes Reddit can sway elections. So now moderation is about power. Imagine the temptation: you're one click away from destroying the popular, impactful subreddit of a political candidate you detest. One click to sway an election, maybe.

Edit: spelling

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#532

Post by smsm42 »

dalbasal wrote: post #316
gdubs wrote: post #150

We tend to think we’re more in control of our behavior than we actually are. That is, our brains are operating from habit a large amount of the time, and the idea of the CEO brain consciously deciding our every action is largely an illusion. This is why emergency exit doors must open outwards. People have died in fires in theaters trying to push on doors that said “Pull”. The crash bar on an emergency exit door is wh…

This is an insightful analogy. To stretch it a bit, I'd say there's an important difference between a fire door and reddit. The fire door knows its job is to prevent people burning to death. Reddit... does it know it's job is to prevent outraged reaction? I think this is one of the things that made facebook so problematic on politics, it can't tell the the good likes, comments and shares from the bad ones. I'm not su…

> But, I think unrestricted speech may be an insufficient value

It looks like you are imagining that every speech has objective "value" which can be determined (maybe it's hard to do, but if we throw enough "big data" magic dust onto it we can get at least close) and then somehow speech can be sorted by value.

I think it's completely wrong from the premise up. The value of the speech is a subjective measure. Some people value invitation of candidate X, some people value rants of Ms Y. In fact, if salaries of talk radio hosts and late night comedians tell us something, way more people value rants than measured, polite discussion. Thus I think "value" exists only in the eye of beholder, and trying to objectify it would only mean dismissing the values of part of the audience and emphasizing values of some other part of the audience. I can see why a site may want to do it and why one may want it to happen, if he or she happens to belong to the latter part, but I see no real justification for it.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#533

Post by kakarot »

Clanan wrote: post #531

> “Does free speech mean literally anyone can say anything at any time?” Tidwell continued. “Or is it actually more conducive to the free exchange of ideas if we create a platform where women and people of color can say what they want without thousands of people screaming, ‘Fuck you, light yourself on fire, I know where you live’? This comment, by Reddit's General Counsel, says a lot about their approach. They believ…

> you're one click away from destroying the popular, impactful subreddit of a political candidate you detest

I hope they put that behind at least two clicks.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#534

Post by dang »

Torwald wrote: post #443
sbarre wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed.. Social media users don't get those tools because they are not the customers, they are the product.

The people who downvoted you are idiots.

Please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#535

Post by dang »

adamrezich wrote: post #415
mancerayder wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Hackernews' "echo-chamber-ness" is extremely exaggerated. It only feels like that if you're in the minority viewpoint in a thread (which happens to me, too). However, it's not echo-chambery if dissident viewpoints live side-by-side dominant viewpoints, even if the latter are 80% of the thread replies and upvotes. An echo chamber is arguably more when we actively suppress dissident viewpoints. Reddit is in…

I've seen a lot of very interesting, usually quite short comments on politics-related threads in the past few weeks, that were posted less than ten minutes prior and already grayed out and marked "[dead]". In each instance, the user was not using inflammatory language at all, yet HN was implicitly saying "yeah we're not going to allow discussion on this topic." I'm sure there's Very Good Reasons(TM) for this but it a…

There might be a lot of reasons for that and we'd need to see specific links to say why, or make a good guess.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#536

Post by dragonwriter »

mistermann wrote: post #481
icanhackit wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> culture of exhibitionism that takes place in real life that "strangely" seems to have so far escaped being raised in the ongoing gender wars I'm not sure what discussing a lack of clothing or dressing provocatively would achieve - it's never an adequate defence for poor behaviour or assault by a third party. Any nuanced debate about the topic is difficult and likely to be a no-win scenario. One of the few reasonabl…

> I'm not sure what discussing a lack of clothing or dressing provocatively would achieve - it's never an adequate defence for poor behaviour or assault by a third party. It might open people's eyes to some of the hypocrisy in the current public dialogue, just one of many issues being that the same action (wearing revealing clothing) is considered just fine and don't you dare even question it you victim-blamer when c…

> the same action (wearing revealing clothing) is considered just fine and don't you dare even question it you victim-blamer when committed by one gender, and sexual assault when committed by another.

Well, no, wearing revealing clothes isn't considered sexual assault when done by either sex. Though I suppose if you mean that male public upper body nudity is treated as acceptable whereas female public upper body nudity is treated as criminal and a sex offense, but were just using slightly hyperbolic language about “sexual assault”, you'd have a point.

Though that seems to be in the opposite direction of the fantasy you are trying to sell.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#537

Post by dang »

forapurpose wrote: post #395
cpncrunch wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 generally works very well After reading a few discussions over the last few days, I was thinking to my self that HN was better than ever, and very good (with one serious shortcoming). Even the echo chamber is much better than I remember. EDIT: The shortcoming, IMHO, is the abandonment of politics. HN is the ideal place to solve that problem, with s sophisticated audience open to and interested in experimentation…

> HN is the ideal place to solve that problem

That's an illusion, for reasons I attempted to describe here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16443431

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#539

Post by smsm42 »

tmuir wrote: post #528
floren wrote: post #339

I can't wait for the word "toxic" to drop out of favor. It implies that the person is not just giving a bad opinion, but is in fact fundamentally flawed and dangerous. Arsenic isn't toxic because it had a bad day at work, arsenic is by its nature a deadly poison and you can't change it, only avoid it. The vast majority of people labeled "toxic", though, are just humans with a variety of opinions and beliefs, some you…

I submit to you, a subreddit I've found in the past week that is absolutely horrifying, and I think stands quite counter to the "variety of opinions" model you put forth. This isn't anything visually graphic, but the opinions expressed in this subreddit make me believe that these people are preparing for a violent insurrection, full stop. https://www.reddit.com/r/CBTS_Stream/ CBTS stands for the Calm Before The Storm…

> the opinions expressed in this subreddit make me believe that these people are preparing for a violent insurrection, full stop.

What makes you think so? I've looked at it (admittedly, didn't spend too much time) and it looks pretty standard fare for a subreddit - or any other forum like it. It's slogan is "BE LOUD. BE HEARD.". People that are preparing violent insurrection don't want to be loud and heard. They want to be silent and invisible until they have enough people and materiel overthrow the government. People that want to be participating in a democratic debate want to be heard. There's no point in being heard by the other guy if the next thing you're planning to do is shooting him (well, maybe if you demand surrender, but I see no such demands there and if would be weird to do it on Reddit). The only point I can see of being loud and heard if you try to convince somebody, or at least gather support - e.g. for winning al election, or pressuring an elected representative into doing something by showing them how many people demand it. All that is part of the normal democratic process.

Even if people that are there hold some unacceptable views (I have no idea if they do, but even we for a minute assume they do) that doesn't mean they are planning violence. What is the evidence they do?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#540

Post by BurningFrog »

gdubs wrote: post #150

We tend to think we’re more in control of our behavior than we actually are. That is, our brains are operating from habit a large amount of the time, and the idea of the CEO brain consciously deciding our every action is largely an illusion. This is why emergency exit doors must open outwards. People have died in fires in theaters trying to push on doors that said “Pull”. The crash bar on an emergency exit door is wh…

> Now consider the fact that the primary affordance of social media is the “reaction”. Is it a surprise that content that garners a reaction will trend towards the outrageous?

Well, maybe, but is there a way it could it be otherwise?

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