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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

#591

Post by zaarn »

tmuir wrote: post #547
jessaustin wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empirically? One suspects a different adverb would have been more correct in that sentence.

Do you contend that human beings have not empirically measured the spherical, or roughly spherical shape of the Earth?

When you build a small house, you don't account for the curvature for earth. Same for when you walk down the street.

When you build a runway for a plane or a long bridge, you do.

A model is not necessarily useful in all contexts. People still use the flat earth model in useful ways because it's simpler to assume the earth is flat in some situations. Of course, once you go beyond the capabilities of the flat earth model your numbers will wildly diverge into the realm of useless while the round or spherical models provide useful numbers for longer.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#592

Post by smsm42 »

tmuir wrote: post #580
smsm42 wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may or may not be true that they are expecting doomsday of sorts, but there are a lot of conspirologists which predict imminent doom literally for decades, and when it never comes they aren't bothered by it even a little. If that day will never come - and most likely that's exactly what would happen, if history teaches us something - there wouldn't be no other harm done than a bunch of folks wasting a lot of tim…

I guess this has been longer ago, but the Malhuer National Wildlife Refuge takeover by the Bundys was essentially a militia challenging the government to armed conflict. I'm well aware that the case against these people ended in a mistrial because of exculpatory evidence that was withheld. That doesn't change the fact that conservatives have threatened violence in recent political protest.

I suspected somebody would bring up Bundys. However, given that the whole dispute is about grazing fees in some piece of federal land, I can't really take it as a political statement. Yes, Bundys proposed some political theories as justification of their actions, but if there wasn't $1M in grazing fees, I don't think any of it would happen at all. The fact that violence was threatened is bad - but it is hard to take this as a genuine example of politically-motivated violence.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#593

Post by mozumder »

daxorid wrote: post #244
mozumder wrote: post #16

Social media sites are learning the hard way that they're media properties like any other media property, and that they have to have strong editorial control over their media property to be a proper media business. Reddit is a hive of working-class populism, which is incompatible with any advertising-oriented business. Advertisers don't want their ads next to shitty toxic content. They want their ads next to elite, w…

> Reddit is a hive of working-class populism Is this . . . I don't even know how to respond to this. Have you ever spent more than three seconds with a working-class person? I can assure you that cat memes and intersectional feminism are not mainstays of the working class. > which is incompatible with any advertising-oriented business Tell this to the ad agencies selling Busch and Coors Light.

> cat memes

Do you not have any working class friends on Facebook? Compare their meme posts to your elitist friends.

> intersectional feminism

This is the discussion about Reddit, not Tumblr

> Busch and Coors Light.

Have you ever see them advertise in anything other than pristine media property?

I would encourage you to look at people in the real world, instead of basing your beliefs on your own online behavior.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#594

Post by smsm42 »

projektir wrote: post #576
smsm42 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet we need to do it Who are "we"? And what is "it"? Do you just take on yourself the mantle of decider for the whole world who is worthy and who is not? Or how is it determined? Who is worthy to wear that mantle? I don't think any human is. > I'd claim that this is a problem Maybe human nature is a "problem". But what you're going to do, replace humanity with better species? Do you have one in mind? Beyond tha…

This post is basically saying the problem is not worth looking at because it's too scary...

No it is not. It's saying if you're looking at something as if your private point of view is objective reality and dismissing the very existence of other points then the problem may not be where you looking for it.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#595

Post by smsm42 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #568
hnuser1234 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I don't believe in trying to control people at such a low level? What if I think people should be allowed to be as ranty as they want without having to worry about being "disincentivized"?

Then I'd like to talk with you, see if you have an alternative way of keeping the society from self-destructing.

I do. I propose we do exactly what we've been doing for the last 10000 years when human society didn't self-destruct. Do you have any other proposal that has a similar or better track record?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#596

Post by notMick »

enraged_camel wrote: post #276
wufufufu wrote: post #260

You are making the problem seem worse than it actually is. Account age and inability to delete comments make an anonymous reputation pretty realistic on HN at least. Just in this thread we see examples of toxic comments being downvoted into invisibility (oblivion). Or is the problem that /r/the_donald exists? Just don't go there if you don't like it. And don't go to /r/trees if you don't like marijuana.

>>Or is the problem that /r/the_donald exists? Just don't go there if you don't like it. I think the issue with r/the_donald, and other extremist subreddits (and online communities in general) is that they generate lies, whip each other into a rage-induced frenzy over those lies and then spread that hatred elsewhere on the Internet, and some of that even spills onto real life via certain conservative news outlets. In…

Then why not remove r/politics for your same reason? Or r/latestagecapitalism. Crazies from that subteddit have the nerve to post in other parts of Reddit.

The biggest problem, imho is that there is an attempt to 'deplatform' dissenting views. (That term was coined by people on the left actually doing it)

Quite simply it boils down to vilifying your opponents, classifying dissenting views as 'toxic' or 'hatespeech', and screeching loudly and as often as you can to get the opposition removed. If they move, do the same to them on the next site.

This is big money apparently pushing for this as an 'online strategy' to remove opposition. Heck I can buy as many reddit accounts and votes as I like.

We need to push back and see it what it is - to try and remove any wrong think and get people thinking as a controllable single mass.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#597

Post by zaarn »

jjrh wrote: post #248
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.

The real issue is binary choice. I might disagree with a comment, but acknowledge it's a valid well thought out argument. On the flip side I might agree but acknowledge it's a poorly formed argument. Something might be totally off topic or funny, but if I made me laugh do I down vote it? Slashdot's model of tagging posts was a pretty good idea I think and allowed one to filter out the 'funny' or 'offtopic' comments.

I never downvote a comment, reddit or here, simply because I disgree. I find such behaviour (subjectively) wrong since it does not encourage discussion in an open, civilized manner (on reddit, all that happens is that you get 30 comments deep and you just downvote eachother's comments to 0 while being increasingly aggressive).

I reserve downvotes for when a comment is being needlessly toxic, doesn't contribute to the discussion or otherwise not helpful for an open discussion.

I think the best cure for "downvote to disagree" is to firmly hold to the principle that the opposing side of the argument has the best intentions to the extend of their knowledge and that at the end of the discussion, all participants should have learned something. You should also always be willing to change your mind on what you argue about.

Always.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#598

Post by zaarn »

dang wrote: post #542
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... downvotes are definitely abused. They're not supposed to be used to express disagreement, and they are. All. The. Time. And it stinks to be on the receiving end of that. But I'm not sure that they should be eliminated. The alternative is to leave moderation as the only way to deal with bad (abusive, off-topic, trolling, unintelligible) posts. I'm not sure that having people flag every bad post they think they…

> They're not supposed to be used to express disagreement That's a common misconception. Downvoting for disagreement has always been ok on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 I think people have the wrong idea about HN downvotes because they think Reddit rules apply to HN. It's a bit like how in Canada we think we have Miranda rights because we've seen it on American TV.

I would argue that while it's totally okay to do it, I'd find it better if people used it less for simply disagreeing. In my experience, the resulting discussion ends up being of poorer quality because of it (and less exposure due to being pushed down and hidden once it hits a certain threshold)

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#599

Post by TeMPOraL »

smsm42 wrote: post #595
TeMPOraL wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I'd like to talk with you, see if you have an alternative way of keeping the society from self-destructing.

I do. I propose we do exactly what we've been doing for the last 10000 years when human society didn't self-destruct. Do you have any other proposal that has a similar or better track record?

Human societies self-destructed plenty of times over the past 10 000 years.
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