Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Life after an internet mob attack

pasquale.cool

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 480 posts

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#91

Post by WDCDev »

almostgone wrote: post #67

When these attacks take on a racial or gender-focused hue, I think they end up having a terribly ironic effect: further isolating the group they sought to protect (e.g., POC, women, etc). That is, they win the battle, but lose the war. Each of these stories reinforces in my mind to not associate with those that are higher on the oppression totem pole. I know it is not their fault, and I feel bad for doing so, but the…

Yes - and it's driving people further into tribes where the only way they feel "safe" is in and around their own "kind". This isn't civilization, but a regression and if it goes on for a few more generations it could be very damaging to our social fabric.

I just hope it's a weird early-21st century "intellectual" movement that eventually dies out.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#92

Post by BeFlatXIII »

lloydjones wrote: post #32
cousin_it wrote: post #11

If/when any of my friends get attacked by the mob, I hope I'll have the courage to stand by them publicly. A good recent test was the doxing of Scott Alexander. I signed the open letter against it with my real name and was happily surprised to see the names of many people I know. We should have more of these small but visible acts of resistance that let like-minded people find you.

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…

Screenshots are trivially easy to fake. Friends don’t have to be character references, just public opinion defense attorneys who play dirty.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#93

Post by v_london »

dvt wrote: 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…

Hey, since we're on the topic of better social networking, I wonder if a side project I've been working on for the past few months might be of interest to you. The website, Reason, is an app for helping people connect with others with similar interests through group chats. It's kind of like Meetups, but online and designed for people who would like to find semi-regular groups of friends and acquaintances to chat about some specific topic.

https://www.reason.so/

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#94

Post by swayvil »

Any appearance of civilized intelligence is pure imitation, as a rule. Ritual, conformity, hive-politics and gratuitous feces-throwing are still the dominant paradigm. Don't let the ability to operate complex machinery fool you.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#95

Post by hycaria »

FreakyT wrote: post #81
alephnan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 !

Reddit works the same yet does not has the same feeling at all except for niche subs maybe.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#96

Post by throw_m239339 »

polote wrote: post #24

There are a lot of talks on HN about the toxicity of social media. And people are pretty angry against Google and Facebook. But to me the worse is by far Twitter. There are plenty of random people who have a disproportionate number of followers compared to the quality of their posts. And as a result can do these kind of mods. Which are amplified by retweets, something that barely exists in other social media. Random…

Twitter is certainly the worst because of the format that drives "low quality" interaction between users. Everybody is yelling at each other, in the hope to garner a few new followers or likes. To me it's definitely the most toxic social network, far ahead of Facebook or even Reddit.

Yet driving that outrage up is what gets Twitter eyeballs thus revenue, so there is an incentive for that platform to generate this sort of behaviour. Twitter absolutely loved Trump presence, they made good money out of him.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#97

Post by 99_00 »

vaer-k wrote: 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?

Check the facts and think for yourself.

In this case the accusation is that the accused used completely anonymous means to harass the accuser. How the accuser knows that the accused is responsible is not stated.

The problems here seem obvious.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#98

Post by lloydjones »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #92
lloydjones wrote: post #32

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…

Screenshots are trivially easy to fake. Friends don’t have to be character references, just public opinion defense attorneys who play dirty.

I should have caveated my comment with “screenshots that can be proved to be real”

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#99

Post by qsort »

slownews45 wrote: post #76
dvt wrote: 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…

No kidding. Getting off facebook was game changing. I also just started blocking everyone strong on the outrage / offense scale (I used to be friends with a pretty broad section from right to left though I'm left). But everyone just lost their minds. HN is one of the better places by far, and I think it takes active action by someone at the top to hold the line. On here we also get extreme reactions still though - Th…

One of the things that IMO helps HN a lot is that it de-prioritizes politics (at least hotly debated topics,) in part due to the rules, and in part simply due to having something else to talk about.

I don't think politics in general as a topic should be banned, but there is exactly zero intellectual gratification in reading a thread where I can predict without reading what the opposing sides are going to say and the respective counter-arguments.

I just can't see how thread #32768 about affirmative action or thread #65537 about abortion can be more interesting than the previous one. You'll just be served defrosted opinions.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#100

Post by psychomugs »

While the whole ordeal is awful, it's even more depressing that this is still better-case scenario by having evidence with the conversation receipts. The cynic in me interprets this as a form of pre-pre-nuptial relationship insurance.
Post reply on HN