Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#81

Post by mindslight » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

ssully wrote: post #56

ScipioAfricanus wrote: post #8

It's not that the "trolls are winning", it's that people are allowing the trolls to bother them. Trolls have always existed; it's our heightened sensitivity and inability to just shrug them off or laugh in the face of their obscenity that's letting them "win".

Yeah this is bullshit. Trolls have always existed, but shrugging them off was never a solution. In message boards I used to frequent trolls were suspended without question and banned for repeat offenses. Now when trolls get banned there is an out cry from the troll and those in line with them about censorship and violation of their free speech. The problem is trolls are given too much room to play and speak.

The conflict is that reddit originally touted itself as a meta-community, where such moderation was applied per-subreddit. If you didn't like the topics/policies of one community, then start another right alongside.

But the desire of investors for widespread palatability and the media's latest push for censorship have perverted the site into creating unified "community standards", across what should be considered independent communities.

Reddit itself gained much of its popularity due to the mass exodus from Digg over their censorship of one simple number! Users inherently do not want to be censored in what they can communicate about, and so the cycle will be with us until we finally scrap this hack of using centralized websites in lieu of end-user software - centralized structures can never remain free of top-down control.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#82

Post by krashidov » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

ASalazarMX wrote: post #54

overcast wrote: post #2

The only way to detoxify the internet, is to get rid of the "social" aspect. Starting with gasp comments. My online experience has been that much better, since adding comment blockers to my browser.

Reddit has a large user base and a myriad of subreddits where different solutions have been tried. So far, the best I've seen is strong moderation: clear rules and swift enforcement. AskScience is a shining example of a high quality subreddit, although the comment section usually looks like a graveyard with 90% of the comments removed.

I'm surprised there isn't a moderation as a service business out there.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#83

Post by adpirz » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

Nadya wrote: post #69

adpirz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's described in the article... EDIT: I misunderstood OP, I thought the comment was saying there was zero proof of Huffman's ability to tamper in the first place. Agreed there's no way to prove he can't do this anymore.

Mind quoting the passage that describes the measures in place? I just read the entire article and absolutely zero proof is provided that Huffman can no longer edit things. It mentions Spezgiving, followed by Huffman's apology, and then moves onto banning subreddits, to the meeting about banning subreddits, and ends at /r/Place and the worry it'd be nothing but swastikas. Absolutely nowhere is anything described about…

Thanks for clarifying, I misunderstood OP's comment, just updated my own.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#84

Post by randyrand » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

Would it be sufficient for every user to just have client side configurable filters? Or is this movement more about denying "toxic" people a platform to begin with?

If it's the latter case, I can't get behind it. Free speech means everyone should have a platform to speak. As society transitions away from using our mouths to using our keyboards, the first amendment implies that speech should be protected on the common medium - whether verbal or text.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#85

Post by Slansitartop » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

devmunchies wrote: post #45

castis wrote: post #15

As long as there are no consequences to being a dick to people over the internet, "toxic internet" is here to stay.

Sticks and stones. More concerning is the large scale propaganda and marketing.

Exactly, but only as long as you take precautions that no one can escalate online harassment to something that's a real-life problem.

I'm pretty comfortable online, but mainly because I only post under frequently-changed pseudonyms and never leak much personal info. If someone gets obsessively mad at me, I can just abandon the account and be done with it.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#86

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #63

ScipioAfricanus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so some random person is saying something you find offensive or hurtful. You can block them so you don't have to see what they post. It's a decentralized solution to a decentralized problem.

You don't seem to have any clue about how prolific trolls can be, and how persistant their threats are.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#87

Post by Slansitartop » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #38

overcast wrote: post #2

The only way to detoxify the internet, is to get rid of the "social" aspect. Starting with gasp comments. My online experience has been that much better, since adding comment blockers to my browser.

I've been kicking a design around in my head for the past few weeks which retains most of the outward form of something like Reddit, on the grounds that it has proved to be a model that can attract users, but redefines the upvote and downvote process such that an upvote now means "I want to see more of this poster's comments, and transitively (and weaker as the links go out) what that user sees" and a downvote now me…

IIRC, Advogato did something like that a million years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advogato

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#88

Post by rhcom2 » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

ScipioAfricanus wrote: post #26

salvar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the old "We just need to change human behaviour" solution. Yeah, that would definitely work if it worked.

No one needs to change anything. The internet existed for years without this being an issue. If you encounter someone on the internet who is annoying you, most platforms give you the option to block them. You do that, then move on with your life. It's not hard.

That is an incredibly naive view of harassment in an era of doxing, swatting and revenge porn.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#89

Post by jerf » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

Slansitartop wrote: post #87

jerf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been kicking a design around in my head for the past few weeks which retains most of the outward form of something like Reddit, on the grounds that it has proved to be a model that can attract users, but redefines the upvote and downvote process such that an upvote now means "I want to see more of this poster's comments, and transitively (and weaker as the links go out) what that user sees" and a downvote now me…

IIRC, Advogato did something like that a million years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advogato

Well, it wouldn't be the first time someone had the right idea decades before the world was ready. (No sarcasm; fully serious.)

Though you'd want to open it up to people beyond open source developers. And it's possible the idea of using the "up/down arrows" that everyone is familiar with may still be worthwhile; it's been too long since I've seen the advogato interface to remember if they had that. And finally, a "likeability" metric that was less mathematical and a bit more rough & ready might be a good thing; mathematical constructs are really good at maintaining the properties you design in, but are often extremely fragile. I'd want an algorithm with some knobs I can twist, not a single algorithm. But by all means read the papers in question; why rediscover those things the hard way?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#90

Post by taurath » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

skrowl wrote: post #44

digitalantfarm wrote: post #25

Reddit used to be a place where you could post links to anything on the internet (kind of like this place) and comment on it (without signing up with your email). Now it's place more like Facebook with algorithms based on your personal taste, geolocation, forced email, shadow banning, banning of politically incorrect subreddits, endless political posts and "Futurology" and "Uplifting" news articles. Free speech on re…

Reddit only used free speech as a draw until it got enough user to make money by pushing agendas. It's been agenda-pushing high censorship for years now, but some people just started noticing around the 2016 US election where they didn't even try to hide their obvious bias anymore. In an age where any opposing opinions are consider "toxic" by some, I don't think trying to "detoxify" should be a goal. If you don't lik…

Its been relatively rare that unpopular opinions offered in good faith are punished with anything other than downvotes on reddit. People don't post opinions with the intent to convince, they post with the intent to deceive or create a reaction, IE trolling. That has been the big wave that has taken over, its just taken the conservative political sphere over far quicker.

The other wave is the circle-jerk - a relentless and all-encompassing embrace of confirmation bias, institutionalized to keep a fundamentalist purity of thought. This is beyond a normal echo chamber, these are high powered ideology amplifiers.

We've never had the concept of unlimited freedom of speech, and most of the time that its been curtailed, it has been to protect against those who use it in bad faith (fire in a crowded theater, etc). That is the toxicity - IMO Reddit is going to learn this lesson far too late, and allow a group that doesn't want to be there anyway take down the whole site when they leave.