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“It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

warzel.substack.com

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Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#71

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

hooande wrote: post #9

I think the issue here is human socialization and not twitter or technology. People love to play the "did you see what so-and-so said?" game in all its variants, and as far as I can tell this has been true for millenia. It has nothing to do with a trending topics feature I feel like there are many articles and books that attribute basic elements of human interaction to whatever platform the author was using to observ…

I either completely agree or completely disagree, not quite sure. On one hand, yes, it is not exposing things that don't already exist in human nature. On the other hand, I've seen lots of things said on Twitter (and other social networks) that I've just never seen people say in in-person interactions, because the normal rules of social interaction would make people feel an intense shame/embarrassment to say it face-to-face without the benefit of pseudo-anonymity.

I think this "context collapse" explanation is really accurate, because it explains that it's not just "human nature", but it's actually taking advantage of how humans have really only evolved to have back-and-forth conversations with other people who have the same conversational context.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#72

Post by Waterluvian »

eitland wrote: post #67
Waterluvian wrote: post #54

As shown with the horror movie tweets, literally anything said can offend someone. This is why I created a new social media platform for Cancel culture. https://cancel.pointless.click

Beautiful satire :-) BTW: if you own the whole pointless.click domain you could rent out subdomains, at least I instantly wanted one (or maybe you use them yourself already, I just don't find anything on pointless.click)

Thanks! It's my favourite joke so far.

My pet projects go on this domain.https://todays.pointless.click is my neglected home page.

Never thought anyone would want a subdomain on it!

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#73

Post by infoseek12 »

CivBase wrote: post #15

> Left unsaid, of course, is that ‘the conversation’ at scale is complete garbage Twitter is simply not a conversation platform. The medium is optimized for publishing small blurbs to as many people as possible. It's not designed for serious back-and-forth discussion. It rewards quips and got-ems, not nuanced debate. It's almost like a giant comments section with no subject.

I've always thought of Twitter as an indigestible enormous chatroom, that users interact with via the aid of different kinds of filters. The format and platform do sometimes exasperate negative tendencies but I think the primary design flaw is within human nature not Twitter.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#74

Post by jancsika »

What would happen if there was an app that helped victims of Twitter pile-ons start tweeting generic political hot-potato non-sequiturs when something like this happens? E.g.,

* Stop the Uyghur Genocide

* Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times

* a UK judge found U.S. detainment conditions so brutal they refused to extradite Assange to the U.S.

etc.

Now the recommendation engine can do one of two things: boost the hot-potato and bring heat from the relevant nation state actor(s), or ratchet down the noise and eat the cost of the lost engagement.

Edit: replace "app" with "static site with an unordered list of such geopolitical hot-potato non-sequiturs"

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#75

Post by test_alpha »

adzzzz wrote: post #2

In her case it was not cancel culture seeking her out to ruin her life. Assumedly no one doxxed her, sent death threats, or attempted to get her fired from her job and made a pariah so she can never support herself again. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In before it's just holding people accountable. If you want to go that route there was no red scare. Joe McCarthy was just holding people accountable.

It's still going on - a far more recent red scare that that badly fooled probably most people here and is still fresh in minds despite the awkward embarrassment to ever admit wrongdoing is the Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election conspiracy theory.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#76

Post by hintymad »

Isn't it an education failure? Somehow we educated a generation of angry people who favor "narratives" over facts, who favor mind-reading or attack-of-motives over rigorous debates, who favor what justice or righteousness in their mind over tolerance, who favor emotion over truthfulness. With growing number of such people, I don't see how a platform can help. On the other hand, the same group of people will be in charge of platform, like what see in Twitter.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#77

Post by AnimalMuppet »

xwdv wrote: post #50

Some form of this is happening to me on hackernews as we speak. A long time ago, I had a lot of karma, almost a thousand. I was a model citizen for HN. But at some point, I must have posted a controversial opinion, and then HN decided they wanted to cancel me. If it wasn’t for a downvote limit per post, my karma would be below zero by now. Instead it has dwindled and deteriorated slowly over time, trending toward not…

If you think someone is systematically downvoting you, you could email dang and ask him to look for a pattern of who's doing the downvoting. I'm sure he has the tools to do that. I'm also sure that stalking someone to downvote all their posts is against at least the spirit of HN, and probably against the letter of some of the guidelines.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#78

Post by skinkestek »

xwdv wrote: post #50

Some form of this is happening to me on hackernews as we speak. A long time ago, I had a lot of karma, almost a thousand. I was a model citizen for HN. But at some point, I must have posted a controversial opinion, and then HN decided they wanted to cancel me. If it wasn’t for a downvote limit per post, my karma would be below zero by now. Instead it has dwindled and deteriorated slowly over time, trending toward not…

> But it’s amazing that sometimes a completely mundane post suddenly has -4 downvotes out of nowhere.

Wow, just checked your history going back a while and in your case it seems to be more than usual..!

Not saying I agree or that the posts are high quality but you seem to be hit unreasonably hard at times.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#79

Post by skinkestek »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #77
xwdv wrote: post #50

Some form of this is happening to me on hackernews as we speak. A long time ago, I had a lot of karma, almost a thousand. I was a model citizen for HN. But at some point, I must have posted a controversial opinion, and then HN decided they wanted to cancel me. If it wasn’t for a downvote limit per post, my karma would be below zero by now. Instead it has dwindled and deteriorated slowly over time, trending toward not…

If you think someone is systematically downvoting you, you could email dang and ask him to look for a pattern of who's doing the downvoting. I'm sure he has the tools to do that. I'm also sure that stalking someone to downvote all their posts is against at least the spirit of HN, and probably against the letter of some of the guidelines.

Seconded. It might take a couple of days to get an answer but I always get one.

As mentioned above I took a look at the first few pages of your lates comments and I too felt there might be something in your case.

That said I also do expect HN to have scripts to detect serial downvoters and automatic voting.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#80

Post by Fricken »

hooande wrote: post #9

I think the issue here is human socialization and not twitter or technology. People love to play the "did you see what so-and-so said?" game in all its variants, and as far as I can tell this has been true for millenia. It has nothing to do with a trending topics feature I feel like there are many articles and books that attribute basic elements of human interaction to whatever platform the author was using to observ…

Media does not show all of human nature, it selects and amplifies different parts, creating a fun house mirror version of human nature.
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