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

warzel.substack.com

91–100 of 116 posts

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

#91
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…

"HN decided they wanted to cancel me."

I've never heard of you. What does it mean that "HN decided"?

Looking at your comments over the past 14 days, every one that's grey can be explained by enough people legitimately disagreeing with you to make them grey.

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

#92
It’s not Platform Failure, it’s culture failure.

I never have and never will use twitter as it it too toxic for any well adjusted human to use. This applies to all social media: facebook, instagram, twitter, tik tok, ... If people just stop using these abhorrent apps all of these issues will be diminished as never in the history of humanity has each single human had so much access to ... other humans which are not well composed together and are ready to jump and argue on anything for a bit of dopamine (same as me actually right now, arguing against twitter. I’m part of the problem)

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

#93
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…

My anecdotal experience, HN upvotes informative, constructive, and positive comments. And it downvotes negative/cynical, political, or unsubstantive comments. I have had comments with very similar arguments, but different delivery receive very different treatment.

Also, if you are trying to recover karma, stick to the less controversial topics. It is near impossible to get downvoted when providing informative comments on more tech/programming oriented topics. Alternatively, create a throwaway account for the controversial threads. Added bonus is that switching accounts will give you a nice pause to rethink whether commenting on said thread is really worth it in the first place.

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

#95
post #86
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who wake up and say "I'm gonna get involved in some gossip today". I'm not sure how much the algorithms create this behavior, or just facilitate them doing what they already wanted to do Algorithms don't choose stories that appeal to the lowest common denominator. People do that. The algorithms just reflect what people are already talking about

To some extent, yes, it's people choosing to do that. Just like people choose to eat sweets. If you keep people in an environment where there are always sights and smells of sweets, they'll probably end up eating more. Obviously you could blame the people for having poor impulse control, but certainly the environment has an effect. Going back to social networking, the algorithms end up reinforcing the bad habits, lea…

The environment is omnipotent compared to us. It's also superficial, reactionary and lacking introspection. Humans have potential to overcome some of it.

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

#96
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…

[deleted]

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they accomplished anything else? Does that justify BLM as a political organisation? How transparent are they, and who runs it? Assumptions aren't always good. BLM is not new, and i've been disturbed by the attitudes of some supporters going back a few years.

We've banned this account because it has primarily posted unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments and ignored our requests to use the site as intended.

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

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming BLM is a force for good.

Please don't delete-edit your posts like that. It leaves the thread incoherent and isn't fair to the reader or to the commenters who replied.

Edit: you did that on half a dozen different posts. That's basically vandalism and is not cool. Please don't do it again.

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

#99
post #7

Implicitly, this piece is making an argument for a return to gate keepers/taste makers of yore. I'm not sure that's better. For better or worse, would the BLM movement have the power and reach it does today if it were filtered through establishment news sources?

[flagged]

Please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. This is just garden-variety flamewar and not what this site is supposed to be for. Please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

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

#100
It's interesting that naively you can't prevent "context collapse" and "filter bubble" at simultaneously: you must allow for people to be exposed to and engage in topics they don't really know anything about or contribute constructively in, or wall them off only into the communities that they participate in.

There are probably nuanced and ingenious solutions to this, but nothing straightforward.

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