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Life after an internet mob attack

pasquale.cool

81–90 of 480 posts

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#81
post #3

The best solution here is to completely disconnect from social media or (at most) have an incredibly sanitized presence. Unless your job or livelihood revolves around needing to engage with a random internet audience (i.e. you're an influencer, entertainer, etc.) stay away from having a public persona on Twitter/Facebook/etc. The only community I interact with candidly tends to be this one. I don't post on Twitter, F…

> vast majority of mainstream social media users (a) don't tend to have good-faith debates This. Thank you. I have unconsciously wondered into such debates on social media cesspools, and approaching it like I do with HN, which is atleast more logical

I think a key reason is HN has (IMO) a well-designed vote-based moderation system. Flamebait tends to get downvoted/flagged pretty quickly, burying it where it belongs.

Contrast that to pure engagement-focused social networks like Facebook or Twitter, which do the opposite: prioritize showing flamebait, because people are engaging with it and therefore it must necessarily be quality content!

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#82
post #9

The problem is previously we didn't listen to victims, and allowed them to be silenced. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, and we are listening unconditionally, but (occasionally) bad actors are taking advantage of our good intentions. How do we find balance?

I'm not particularly convinced we've solved listening to genuine victims particularly well tbh.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#83
About 10 years ago I was harassed for months. In my case I wasn't able to find out who it was but they were able do some damage to my marriage and relationship with friends but above all to my well being. When they first started I tended to take my favorite approach in life against such things which is to just ignore the emails and the messages that were being sent to me as well as to my partner but when in a relationship with someone you can't choose not to play the game.

This is all under the bridge now. Since then I've had almost zero social media presence. Internet as I learned about and explored in the 90s and 00s is long gone and what's left is a wasteland to spectate.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#85

The most disturbing and insidious sentiment of online mobs is claiming that the targets are "just being held accountable". Or that such people are just experiencing "consequences". I really can't express just how cold and bloodthirsty such statements seem to be. It's the perfect combination of justifying vicious behavior while also absolving themselves of responsibility.

> It's the perfect combination of justifying vicious behavior while also absolving themselves of responsibility.

And Twitter/Facebook/YouTube just grin, raking in the advertising dollars from "engagement." The more people "engaged" in the activity, the better!

I don't think the concept of social media is fundamentally evil. It's dangerous, certainly, but I don't think the core concept must be evil.

Public "social media companies," driven to improve revenue from injecting advertising into streams consisting of repackaging other people's content? Those seem to reliably turn evil.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post, and your comment, IMO wrongly frames this as courage .vs. cowardice in standing up for friends. However, that fails to take into account any context of the particular “cancellation”. eg, A situation with damning screenshots of lewd DMs are pretty ‘smoking gun’, and the barometer of “good friends would publicly support me” feels like an insane expectation when (in this hypothetical instance) the person did a…

I think an interesting question is: can you support people and wish the best for them even if they've done a bad thing? With the exception of some particularly abhorrent things, I'm not sure I'd consider myself a friend to someone if I'm not willing to support them even if they're in the wrong. That doesn't mean lying for them or trying to pretend it wasn't bad, but I would expect myself to push back on mischaracteri…

I’d like to think I could but it’s largely context and “acknowledgement + repentance dependent” on the part of the ‘accused’ (if they did do the bad thing).

That is, I am not going to defend somebody who won’t even be honest and open about their wrongdoing.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#87

After reading through the post on notion, I found it "impressive" that OP has dated with so many toxic persons over years. Is this normal? Or is OP self an outlier to have had so many toxic relationships?

The trappings of having a terminally online social group, it seems.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#88
post #3

The best solution here is to completely disconnect from social media or (at most) have an incredibly sanitized presence. Unless your job or livelihood revolves around needing to engage with a random internet audience (i.e. you're an influencer, entertainer, etc.) stay away from having a public persona on Twitter/Facebook/etc. The only community I interact with candidly tends to be this one. I don't post on Twitter, F…

Yeah I cut Facebook out of my life and went cold turkey after realizing it was not healthy place and now find it actively repellent to be on it. The only reason i haven't closed my account entirely is because Messenger and my D&D group uses it for scheduling. even that I use the web site and refuse to allow it a foothold on my phone.
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