People are going to be assholes, Always.
They will yell at you for standing in their way
They will insult you and your entire family if they don't like the way you drive your car.
They will try to undermine your competence at the workplace and spread rumors.
All of this has happened to me in real life before social was that big.
I'm not even going to start saying what happened to me on the Internet.
Let me just say that after what I have experienced I only upload pictures that are
guaranteed free of metadata
double and tripple checked for content (reflections, business fronts, street names,etc)
Is it okay? No!
should we just take it? No!
Should we just ban everybody and everything? Also No!
Either you can handle that or you don't
I totally agree that some things are going too far and should have consequences.
Telling somebody that they completely suck at coding is not nice but is an expression of free speech.
Telling somebody that they are a useless piece of shit and should be shot is completely over the line.
I have never really understood the extend to which people take troll comments seriously. It just seems no more than a bit annoying to me, to start reading a comment and find out halfway through it's just a bunch of insults with no real content. I won't let a few wasted seconds make my day worse than it would otherwise have been. Why do people get so invested in what others say online? Don't they realize it's nothing more than a cheap attempt to get some attention?
EDIT: Note that I am not talking about anything that actually incites violence. There's a big difference between "I hope X gets shot" and "Here's Xs address, let's all meet up at their house and actually shoot them". The latter is (rightfully) illegal in most places anyway.
How did you come to this conclusion?
In Germany survey after survey shows some deep mistrust.
Between 40%-60% depending on where and how the survey took place describe mainstream media as "not trustworthy", whilst a certain survey asked for malicious intent specifically and 20% agrees with the notion main stream media is manipulating the public with false information on certain topics.
My parents religiously watched evening news every single day for 10 years, then stopped and switched to newspapers.
People of my age range though have a much more vivid memory of info that were broke on the net and didn’t hit tv channels (specialy nuclear plant related issues, police violence), internal fights in tv channels that impacted how news got presented, and how the last years terrorist attacks were covered with horrible misrepresentation of dumb footage, borderline obstruction to police activity and so many things.
I don’t think most people would describe tv news as fair and balanced.
About the comments, here is a solution that might work: a persistent upvote/downvote score along with a default view filter based on voting.
Say you are someone who consistently spews out racist comments? as you are being downvoted, the initial vote number for new comments goes down. Any new comment you make will start with a negative number, and hence people will not see it if the number goes beyond what is the current view filter limit.
This number will go up as you are upvoted or not downvoted.
This is a terrible idea, for the following reason:
If this was the case, engaging in conversation about controversial topics would be "dangerous", as there's always a chance to say something mostly reasonable that a large group of people just doesn't like, thus getting downvoted a lot. Usually this just shows you that those people didn't like what you wrote, so you will just learn to be more diplomatic about stuff.
If, however, a single misjudgement of the situation can get your rating far below 0 pretty much overnight, without even giving you time to clarify if you think your opinion is being extrapolated to a far more extreme position than what you actually wanted to express. And this goes for both sides of the political spectrum. Even someone who accidentally stumbles into a conversation between extremists could get downvoted for speaking out against that extremism.
>Say you are someone who consistently spews out racist comments? as you are being downvoted,
Well, it is not given that a racist comment will be downvoted, that will happen only if the community is non-racist, if it is the comment will be upvoted alright.
On the other hand, you could put a test for joining, where the user will "prove" he/she is not racist.
Besides being of course subject of every kind of cheating you can think of + 1, even if it worked fine, the result would be a strictly non-racist community (which only in theory is a good thing, in practice it will become an isolated community of think-alike).
Of course you can replace racism with every other "debatable" argument in politics, behaviour, etc.
Aside from the whole echo chamber problem this wouldn't be granular enough. Imagine the perfect HN user, always giving well thought it, well reasoned and informative posts and they usually only post about topic X which is their expertise. When they then post something not so well thought out about topic Y in which they are not well versed should their comment by at the top?
I think that would incentivize ideas that conform to the community, and the community to conform to certain ideas. Reddit is a good example, they've wrongly crucified people before for things that don't fit their narrative. Persistent voting systems would solve some problems, but they certainly introduce other problems.
The general problem of voting systems is that they're based on popularity. Not truth, significance, value, enduring wisdom, true artistic creativity[1], or any number of other factors.
Truth is not a popularity contest. It is the antithesis of choice, as truth is what persists despite your preferences.
Presuming you even start with a founding cohort that does value the items I've just ticked off, the with time and growth, or even just simple attrition and replacement, you'll see regression toward the mean. And, for those who are seeking a higher grade of discussion ... they'll eventually boil off -- brain-drain induced less by reward-side than cost, fleeing the noise, aggrevation, and sheer bullshit of a typical mass platform.
This means that small sites that do happen to kick off with a particularly good founding cohort simply cannot count on that carrying them through. As much as I enjoy Mastodon, for example, the "this is such a wonderful community" comments make me cringe inside, because I know so well just how dependable that dynamic is: nil. Facebook was once literally Harvard. Now it's wrestling with whether or not it must abide by hate-and-lie-mongering asshats.
The problem is hardly new or specific to online media. Dwight MacDonald was among many who wrote of the degradation of mass culture in 1950s and earlier. There's former FCC chair Newton Minnow's "vast wasteland" epithet from 1961,[3] or Edward R. Murrow's "Lights and Wires in a Box" (1958).[4]
H.L Mencken wrote exquisitely about the underlying dynamic, and specifically what drives it, in "Bayard v. Lonheart" (1925)[5] -- concerning politics, but through the mechanism of communications, discourse, and intelligence. And traces the concept to the ancient Greeks and Aristophanes' "The Frogs".
It's when we turn to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's insight on stupidity that we realise the problem is fundamentally existential:
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.[6]
Hanah Arendt also writes of the consequence of tolerating media misuse:
The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end---is being destroyed.[7]
I'm going beyond directly answering your proposal to address several other comments asking in essense "what's the big deal", or shrugging off the problem as beyond redress. All three assertions -- your unfortunately naive moderation/reputation notion, and the other two -- are false, and in potentially explosive ways.
These are not conclusions I come to gladly, nor are they views I believed, or would even have been able to clearly express a few years ago. But as I look at both the present and the lessons and counsel of the path, they're the truth I'm forced to admit.
It's not though. The title already makes it quite clear that what follows is just an opinion. That being said, the article seemed kind of lacking in substance beyond what was already said in the title.
[+] [-] Anita_kiss|7 years ago|reply
People are going to be assholes, Always. They will yell at you for standing in their way They will insult you and your entire family if they don't like the way you drive your car. They will try to undermine your competence at the workplace and spread rumors.
All of this has happened to me in real life before social was that big. I'm not even going to start saying what happened to me on the Internet. Let me just say that after what I have experienced I only upload pictures that are guaranteed free of metadata double and tripple checked for content (reflections, business fronts, street names,etc)
Is it okay? No! should we just take it? No! Should we just ban everybody and everything? Also No!
Either you can handle that or you don't
I totally agree that some things are going too far and should have consequences. Telling somebody that they completely suck at coding is not nice but is an expression of free speech. Telling somebody that they are a useless piece of shit and should be shot is completely over the line.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DarkWiiPlayer|7 years ago|reply
EDIT: Note that I am not talking about anything that actually incites violence. There's a big difference between "I hope X gets shot" and "Here's Xs address, let's all meet up at their house and actually shoot them". The latter is (rightfully) illegal in most places anyway.
[+] [-] f_allwein|7 years ago|reply
strange comparison from a European perspective, as TV news are seen as balanced and trustworthy (at least in UK and Germany, where I lived).
[+] [-] VladTheImplier|7 years ago|reply
Source: https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Das-Vertrauen-in-Medien-ist...
[+] [-] hrktb|7 years ago|reply
My parents religiously watched evening news every single day for 10 years, then stopped and switched to newspapers.
People of my age range though have a much more vivid memory of info that were broke on the net and didn’t hit tv channels (specialy nuclear plant related issues, police violence), internal fights in tv channels that impacted how news got presented, and how the last years terrorist attacks were covered with horrible misrepresentation of dumb footage, borderline obstruction to police activity and so many things.
I don’t think most people would describe tv news as fair and balanced.
[+] [-] axilmar|7 years ago|reply
Say you are someone who consistently spews out racist comments? as you are being downvoted, the initial vote number for new comments goes down. Any new comment you make will start with a negative number, and hence people will not see it if the number goes beyond what is the current view filter limit.
This number will go up as you are upvoted or not downvoted.
[+] [-] DarkWiiPlayer|7 years ago|reply
If this was the case, engaging in conversation about controversial topics would be "dangerous", as there's always a chance to say something mostly reasonable that a large group of people just doesn't like, thus getting downvoted a lot. Usually this just shows you that those people didn't like what you wrote, so you will just learn to be more diplomatic about stuff.
If, however, a single misjudgement of the situation can get your rating far below 0 pretty much overnight, without even giving you time to clarify if you think your opinion is being extrapolated to a far more extreme position than what you actually wanted to express. And this goes for both sides of the political spectrum. Even someone who accidentally stumbles into a conversation between extremists could get downvoted for speaking out against that extremism.
[+] [-] jaclaz|7 years ago|reply
Well, it is not given that a racist comment will be downvoted, that will happen only if the community is non-racist, if it is the comment will be upvoted alright.
On the other hand, you could put a test for joining, where the user will "prove" he/she is not racist.
Besides being of course subject of every kind of cheating you can think of + 1, even if it worked fine, the result would be a strictly non-racist community (which only in theory is a good thing, in practice it will become an isolated community of think-alike).
Of course you can replace racism with every other "debatable" argument in politics, behaviour, etc.
[+] [-] flukus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Timpy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|7 years ago|reply
Truth is not a popularity contest. It is the antithesis of choice, as truth is what persists despite your preferences.
Presuming you even start with a founding cohort that does value the items I've just ticked off, the with time and growth, or even just simple attrition and replacement, you'll see regression toward the mean. And, for those who are seeking a higher grade of discussion ... they'll eventually boil off -- brain-drain induced less by reward-side than cost, fleeing the noise, aggrevation, and sheer bullshit of a typical mass platform.
This means that small sites that do happen to kick off with a particularly good founding cohort simply cannot count on that carrying them through. As much as I enjoy Mastodon, for example, the "this is such a wonderful community" comments make me cringe inside, because I know so well just how dependable that dynamic is: nil. Facebook was once literally Harvard. Now it's wrestling with whether or not it must abide by hate-and-lie-mongering asshats.
The problem is hardly new or specific to online media. Dwight MacDonald was among many who wrote of the degradation of mass culture in 1950s and earlier. There's former FCC chair Newton Minnow's "vast wasteland" epithet from 1961,[3] or Edward R. Murrow's "Lights and Wires in a Box" (1958).[4]
H.L Mencken wrote exquisitely about the underlying dynamic, and specifically what drives it, in "Bayard v. Lonheart" (1925)[5] -- concerning politics, but through the mechanism of communications, discourse, and intelligence. And traces the concept to the ancient Greeks and Aristophanes' "The Frogs".
It's when we turn to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's insight on stupidity that we realise the problem is fundamentally existential:
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.[6]
Hanah Arendt also writes of the consequence of tolerating media misuse:
The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end---is being destroyed.[7]
I'm going beyond directly answering your proposal to address several other comments asking in essense "what's the big deal", or shrugging off the problem as beyond redress. All three assertions -- your unfortunately naive moderation/reputation notion, and the other two -- are false, and in potentially explosive ways.
These are not conclusions I come to gladly, nor are they views I believed, or would even have been able to clearly express a few years ago. But as I look at both the present and the lessons and counsel of the path, they're the truth I'm forced to admit.
________________________________
Notes:
1. Whatever that is....
2. https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_and_the_Public_Inte...
4. https://youtube.com/watch?v=RHaV59RB8A8
5. http://amomai.blogspot.com/2008/10/hl-mencken-bayard-vs-lion...
6. https://religiousgrounds.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/bonhoeffer...
7. http://www.openculture.com/2017/01/hannah-arendt-explains-ho...
[+] [-] blablablerg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DarkWiiPlayer|7 years ago|reply