It is possible that the Internet has increased politically motivated killings, but articles making broad judgement on all of society based on a couple of anecdotes without proper data is just sensationalist nonsense.
> It is possible that the Internet has increased politically motivated killings, but articles making broad judgement on all of society based on a couple of anecdotes without proper data is just sensationalist nonsense.
I don't see where the author makes "broad judgement of all society." I see an opinion piece, which explicitly calls out in the text it's opinionness ("that's how I've come to feel about the Internet") in which the author claims that the Internet "creates terrorists."
This is not an argument that needs statistics or data to back it up - if the Internet creates even one terrorist, then the author's statements hold. The author provides not one, but several examples to support the claim.
It's like you are refuting the headline only, or some adversarial interpretation of the article.
yup : "Robert Bowers, accused of murdering 11 Jewish Americans in Pittsburgh the morning after Sayoc’s arrest, stoked his madness and nurtured his bloody fantasies in that same online vortex."
as if there were no other, much older, much more efficient, way to become a killer. Such as : education (think about special forces training), brainwashing (think about suicide attacks), political activism (think about political terrorism in the 60's/70's in europe), etc.
problem with that kind of articles is that it makes it more acceptable to track everything on the web.
You seem to be coming from a literal reading of the headline. The absurdity of that should be pretty clear. After all, it can be disproven by a single death of one of "us" that isn't caused by or related to the internet.
Because of its absurdity, that interpretation of the headline can't be correct. So instead of cheap shots (without evidence) about the NYT, you should maybe try to find a valid interpretation, of which there are several. Personally, I'd focus on the "Us". In this reading, it laments the metaphorical death of community, and society's disintegration into autistic strangers.
War tends to increase violence. The anxieties that are reflected in elections recently as well as the people taking advantage of them to rise to power will make it easier to start one.
But there are so many things that are wrong about his opinion!
1. There was never a "hell of not being able to turn off" email. Nor is there one for social media. There are push notifications implemented as defaults in contexts where they shouldn't be, by hungry marketers and product managers. There's a war for your attention and as long as unscrupulous marketers live and breathe, there always will be. Censorship doesn't solve this. Better software does!
2. The argument that online forums create murderers/criminals is an old bogeyman in new clothes. Remember when conservative reactionaries tried to convince us that D&D promoted Satanism? And then that video games created murderers? This is the same, repeatedly disproven argument. Sane, mentally healthy people don't read incel forums and become murderers. Censorship doesn't solve this, either. Better health care and hard, frank discussion about the problems in our society do. And censorship works directly against open discussion.
3. These flawed arguments are used to call for "better policing" of ideas on the Internet. We don't need this. Policing inevitably means regulations which entrench the most well-funded incumbents and make it harder for new services to complete with better ideas. Yes, Twitter definitely needs to police itself better. So does Facebook. But in the meantime, you can deactivate your account and leave, and maybe even switch to an upstart competitor like Mastodon, which millions of people have already done. That's what needs to be easier. Censorship laws will make it harder. If we close the door now we consign ourselves to a future with largely the same incumbents as the present, and that's a recipe for failure. That really would be the death of our society.
The NYT doesn't centrally decide to embark on this or that campaign. For the columnists, it's important to remember that they don't work at NYT's offices, and they don't participate in meeting etc. Quite literally, their job is writing whatever comes into their mind, then faxing or sending it to their editor. In response, they get money.
If you see a sudden burst of articles regarding a subject, it may not be a conspiracy, but rather:
- Different people having the same reaction to some set of events
- Coincidence
- Our tendency to find more and more examples once we have noticed any sort of trend
> "It was on the internet — on Facebook, to be exact — that Alek Minassian posted a pledge of allegiance to the “incel rebellion,” which refers to the resentments of “involuntarily celibate” men who can’t interest the women around them in sex. He then used a van to mow down and kill 10 people in Toronto in April."
That is one of the most pathetic and miserable things I've ever read.
The term that seems to be used for this is "radicalisation". i.e., someone was just going about their everyday life, and then they were exposed to information that (rightly or wrongly) sent them down a path of developing strong political views and evangelising them.
One thing I always come back to when considering this, is that it's _really hard_ for me to rationalise why this should be true.
I can use the Internet without going crazy (I hope. This is obviously self-classified). I think most people can, but even if that's not true, there's certainly a large set of individuals who _don't_ form insane political views and try to push them on others.
What's different in the individuals that seem to be really strongly affected by taking part in extreme "communities", or are even drawn to them in the first place?
What makes someone want to assume the worst of their fellow man? Where does all this anger come from?
I wonder if it's a similar psychological effect to that seen in the smoke filled room experiments, where someone is sat in a room and smoke starts coming under the door. If they're on their own, they investigate. If the room is full of actors who treat it as nothing, the one subject of the experiment tends to do nothing also.
It turns out it's really hard for some people (maybe all people?) to go against the flow of a crowd. And if you combine that with the rise of clickbait, learning algorithms and social media, it suddenly becomes really easy to find yourself in a filter bubble surrounded by a very annoyed and consipiracy-believing crowd.
The anger has always been there, and we're seeing more and more of it on the internet, as more and more people are getting online.
Combine that with the fact that mental health issues seem to be on the rise, the fact that previously isolated lunatics now are able to talk to each other and validate their thoughts through various filter bubbles, and we end up with a pretty bad mess.
> . While Sayoc carved out ugly niches on Facebook and Twitter, Bowers found even safer harbor for his racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic passions on Gab, a two-year-old social network that has served as a nursery for white nationalists.
pretending people couldn't find places to air antisemitic or white nationalist sentiments before the internet, or that the internet makes it easier, is silly. if anything the internet makes it harder for these fools, because now if they show their faces or use their real names, they're doxed and harangued at every turn by an internet lynchmob.
> I don’t know exactly how we square free speech and free expression — which are paramount — with a better policing of the internet, but I’m certain that we need to approach that challenge with more urgency than we have mustered so far. Democracy is at stake. So are lives.
right, as opposed to the rosy times before the internet, with timothy mcveigh, the DC sniper, and the unabomber. or how about john wayne gacy?
why this guy is paid to spew inane opinions like this is beyond me
> [..] that the internet makes it easier, is silly
If the internet does not make it easier, nor does it make it possible, or cheaper... Then why would anybody do it?
I very much think it is silly instead to pretend that whatever Plan B these people would have had to find community with like-minded low-lifes, would, almost by definition be worse than their "Plan A".
I really don't understand why you're being downvoted. There are so many ways to be/become a crimminal, internet is just the last one. That's just part of human history (although it's a side we don't like).
Because the NYT loaths nerds, because we took away their nice, respectful, secure jobs by destroying newspaper monopolies and taking away their advertising.
So they will do everything to destroy the internet, or better yet to be the ones who control it, even turning the NYT into yellow journalism.
Ironically, author who talks about prejudices and biases uses "Russian" as synonym to false.
I should not be one who says that, but such usage simply perpetuates undeserved negative attitude to everything Russian. Which is sad, there is a lot of genuine, true and sincere in Russian culture.
From observing a lot of really crazy people on Facebook (generally people who post political stuff that is clearly false like pizzagate), I think the simple combination of communicating in memes along with the enabling of large networks of conspiracy-minded types to spread those memes is possibly the root of the problem. This is surprising, because it would have been hard to guess something so simple would have such an effect and that so many would fall on the wrong side of it.
This is a pretty pathetic piece but ends with the same question that is discussed in both Fukuyama's and Jonathan Haidt's latest books: Is liberal democracy compatible with social media? We don't know because we've never tried it before, but we're about to find out.
Social media technology is a great enabler. Arguments and positions contrary to the norm are down-voted or moderated out. The filter bubble is nearly impenetrable. This was accomplished through architecture and design.
I think the same thing was said back when the printing press was invented, and I think they were right (if you were a Catholic back then you could look at a guy like Luther like a prejudiced idealist), as there is a pretty good correlation between the first use of the printing press in Europe and the European wars of religion. I'd say that in the long term we were better off.
For all of us who recoil at the idea of any censorship at all, how do we grapple with the possibility that the Internet spreads more disinformation than truth? If that’s the actual conclusion, what do we do then?
Edit: Stated more accurately as a proposition, the Internet spreads enough disinformation to undo the good brought about by the true information that it also spreads.
I'm far, far more concerned with dying from cancer, alzheimer's, car crashes, the flu, hospital mistakes, etc., than a terrorist. Statistically, in America, terrorist killings are right down there at the bottom.
I'm concerned friction between the left and right escalates into another civil war. I'm concerned that the rise of nationalists leads to another world war.
If we continue to move in the coming decade the same direction we have the past decade, both outcomes are likely.
Luddites from the New York Times. They are part of the problem, not the solution. The problem is unfiltered and biased information/opinion that is passed as facts and the resulting information bubbles that are dividing society. E.g. the NYT played no small part in the information bubble that caused Trump to emerge and win an election.
I think I see what you are trying to do here, but I don't find it particularly effective. When people say stuff like "guns don't kill people, people kill people," in my experience they usually mean something like "what is happening to our society that (apparently) many more people are deciding to go shoot a lot of people? Isn't that a better thing to investigate than guns, given that gun control laws haven't (typically) been loosened over the years?"
In this framing, the article is analyzing exactly the same question, so it doesn't make sense to try to deflect it - it's already seeking the explanation as the deflection you are mocking.
And for what it's worth, it seems valuable to try to understand what is going on - why are there so many people that become mass shooters? Has this rate increased?
I don’t think the internet is the problem, it’s the centralisation and focus on dopamine addiction.
I mean, the internet used to be a place where people shared deep meaningful content that interested them. Sure, your rock collection or biology blog on the different frog species of some random island probably aren’t interesting to most people, but the effort spent on those digital journals and the insights they provided is the internet at its best.
Social media on the other hand is the internet at its worst. What value can you ever have within the limited confines of a twitter chat? And what value does the ability for billions of anonymous people commenting and/or liking really add to anything? I’ve been around since before eternal September, so I know it can be valuable, but that was probably the last time it was.
I think reddit speaks volumes of the status of social media these days. Almost everywhere you go, it feels like strangers waste their time trying to push whatever political agenda they have, and it works on the internet, because in the internet you don’t notice the people who ignore you and simply walk away. You’re only ever confronted by the people who respond.
I’ve noticed that over time, this simple fact destroys anonymous social media. I say anonymous but I probably should say strangers instead, because Facebook is just as bad. I’ve removed friends on Facebook that where alt-right, just like I’ve cut them out of my life because I didn’t want to debate whether holocaust was real every time I saw them, so these people certainly noticed the impact of their opinions, but all the thousands of hateful bastards and trolls who post nonsense on the few history groups I follow might as well be anonymous and will never know that I disprove of them. Because I’m not going to waste my time on them, I’ll just walk away.
It’s been a while since I’ve even been to reddit. I’ve had wonderful conversations on there, but these days you can barely make it three posts into something before it’s about some crackpot political issue. Just look at /r/technology, it used to be a slow version of HN that also featured arstechica articles, now it’s a political hellhole, and it’s getting worse, probably because I’m not the only person leaving.
I’m not sure what can be done though. Censorship isn’t a great option, but I have to agree with the NYT that it’s not working out great right now. More than a 100 people died of the measles in Europe this year because a bunch of fools got together on the internet and decided vaccines were bad, and that’s just the start of it.
I doubt we’ll really succeed though, I fully expect a lot of the less regulated countries to go full cyberpunk dystopia in the next 25 years, and I think it’ll give a huge advantage to the pro-censorship countries who don’t have to deal with the nonsense, but they’ll fit right into the cyberpunk dystopia, won’t they?
[+] [-] username90|7 years ago|reply
https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95379&page=1
It is possible that the Internet has increased politically motivated killings, but articles making broad judgement on all of society based on a couple of anecdotes without proper data is just sensationalist nonsense.
[+] [-] twtw|7 years ago|reply
I don't see where the author makes "broad judgement of all society." I see an opinion piece, which explicitly calls out in the text it's opinionness ("that's how I've come to feel about the Internet") in which the author claims that the Internet "creates terrorists."
This is not an argument that needs statistics or data to back it up - if the Internet creates even one terrorist, then the author's statements hold. The author provides not one, but several examples to support the claim.
It's like you are refuting the headline only, or some adversarial interpretation of the article.
[+] [-] wiz21c|7 years ago|reply
as if there were no other, much older, much more efficient, way to become a killer. Such as : education (think about special forces training), brainwashing (think about suicide attacks), political activism (think about political terrorism in the 60's/70's in europe), etc.
problem with that kind of articles is that it makes it more acceptable to track everything on the web.
[+] [-] matt4077|7 years ago|reply
Because of its absurdity, that interpretation of the headline can't be correct. So instead of cheap shots (without evidence) about the NYT, you should maybe try to find a valid interpretation, of which there are several. Personally, I'd focus on the "Us". In this reading, it laments the metaphorical death of community, and society's disintegration into autistic strangers.
[+] [-] drb91|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olivermarks|7 years ago|reply
Kara Swisher thread
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18341673
[+] [-] apatters|7 years ago|reply
But there are so many things that are wrong about his opinion!
1. There was never a "hell of not being able to turn off" email. Nor is there one for social media. There are push notifications implemented as defaults in contexts where they shouldn't be, by hungry marketers and product managers. There's a war for your attention and as long as unscrupulous marketers live and breathe, there always will be. Censorship doesn't solve this. Better software does!
2. The argument that online forums create murderers/criminals is an old bogeyman in new clothes. Remember when conservative reactionaries tried to convince us that D&D promoted Satanism? And then that video games created murderers? This is the same, repeatedly disproven argument. Sane, mentally healthy people don't read incel forums and become murderers. Censorship doesn't solve this, either. Better health care and hard, frank discussion about the problems in our society do. And censorship works directly against open discussion.
3. These flawed arguments are used to call for "better policing" of ideas on the Internet. We don't need this. Policing inevitably means regulations which entrench the most well-funded incumbents and make it harder for new services to complete with better ideas. Yes, Twitter definitely needs to police itself better. So does Facebook. But in the meantime, you can deactivate your account and leave, and maybe even switch to an upstart competitor like Mastodon, which millions of people have already done. That's what needs to be easier. Censorship laws will make it harder. If we close the door now we consign ourselves to a future with largely the same incumbents as the present, and that's a recipe for failure. That really would be the death of our society.
[+] [-] matt4077|7 years ago|reply
If you see a sudden burst of articles regarding a subject, it may not be a conspiracy, but rather:
- Different people having the same reaction to some set of events
- Coincidence
- Our tendency to find more and more examples once we have noticed any sort of trend
[+] [-] drb91|7 years ago|reply
What is this?
Personally, I find that lack of moderation sucks for everyone. If you want to join Gab and say whatever you want you are more than welcome.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bdndndnndnd|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ablation|7 years ago|reply
That is one of the most pathetic and miserable things I've ever read.
[+] [-] sascha_sl|7 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD2briZ6fB0
[+] [-] esotericn|7 years ago|reply
One thing I always come back to when considering this, is that it's _really hard_ for me to rationalise why this should be true.
I can use the Internet without going crazy (I hope. This is obviously self-classified). I think most people can, but even if that's not true, there's certainly a large set of individuals who _don't_ form insane political views and try to push them on others.
What's different in the individuals that seem to be really strongly affected by taking part in extreme "communities", or are even drawn to them in the first place?
What makes someone want to assume the worst of their fellow man? Where does all this anger come from?
[+] [-] summerdown2|7 years ago|reply
It turns out it's really hard for some people (maybe all people?) to go against the flow of a crowd. And if you combine that with the rise of clickbait, learning algorithms and social media, it suddenly becomes really easy to find yourself in a filter bubble surrounded by a very annoyed and consipiracy-believing crowd.
[+] [-] ahje|7 years ago|reply
Combine that with the fact that mental health issues seem to be on the rise, the fact that previously isolated lunatics now are able to talk to each other and validate their thoughts through various filter bubbles, and we end up with a pretty bad mess.
[+] [-] nemo846|7 years ago|reply
Slowly their radical beliefs peter out and that’s the end of it.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] parshimers|7 years ago|reply
pretending people couldn't find places to air antisemitic or white nationalist sentiments before the internet, or that the internet makes it easier, is silly. if anything the internet makes it harder for these fools, because now if they show their faces or use their real names, they're doxed and harangued at every turn by an internet lynchmob.
> I don’t know exactly how we square free speech and free expression — which are paramount — with a better policing of the internet, but I’m certain that we need to approach that challenge with more urgency than we have mustered so far. Democracy is at stake. So are lives.
right, as opposed to the rosy times before the internet, with timothy mcveigh, the DC sniper, and the unabomber. or how about john wayne gacy?
why this guy is paid to spew inane opinions like this is beyond me
[+] [-] matt4077|7 years ago|reply
If the internet does not make it easier, nor does it make it possible, or cheaper... Then why would anybody do it?
I very much think it is silly instead to pretend that whatever Plan B these people would have had to find community with like-minded low-lifes, would, almost by definition be worse than their "Plan A".
[+] [-] wiz21c|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjen3|7 years ago|reply
So they will do everything to destroy the internet, or better yet to be the ones who control it, even turning the NYT into yellow journalism.
[+] [-] hamilyon2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aklemm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sureaboutthis|7 years ago|reply
The Facebook Dilemma
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/facebook-dilemma/
[+] [-] krona|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjen3|7 years ago|reply
Alternatively, lets add political opinions to the list of things you can't discriminate on, we are halfway there with religious beliefs, and move on.
[+] [-] amelius|7 years ago|reply
But would we know if social media are the cause of all problems? All we have is a correlation.
[+] [-] Dowwie|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] paganel|7 years ago|reply
I think the same thing was said back when the printing press was invented, and I think they were right (if you were a Catholic back then you could look at a guy like Luther like a prejudiced idealist), as there is a pretty good correlation between the first use of the printing press in Europe and the European wars of religion. I'd say that in the long term we were better off.
[+] [-] aklemm|7 years ago|reply
Edit: Stated more accurately as a proposition, the Internet spreads enough disinformation to undo the good brought about by the true information that it also spreads.
[+] [-] Uhrheber|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skookumchuck|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twtw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charlesism|7 years ago|reply
I'm concerned friction between the left and right escalates into another civil war. I'm concerned that the rise of nationalists leads to another world war.
If we continue to move in the coming decade the same direction we have the past decade, both outcomes are likely.
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hajderr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twtw|7 years ago|reply
In this framing, the article is analyzing exactly the same question, so it doesn't make sense to try to deflect it - it's already seeking the explanation as the deflection you are mocking.
And for what it's worth, it seems valuable to try to understand what is going on - why are there so many people that become mass shooters? Has this rate increased?
[+] [-] eksemplar|7 years ago|reply
I mean, the internet used to be a place where people shared deep meaningful content that interested them. Sure, your rock collection or biology blog on the different frog species of some random island probably aren’t interesting to most people, but the effort spent on those digital journals and the insights they provided is the internet at its best.
Social media on the other hand is the internet at its worst. What value can you ever have within the limited confines of a twitter chat? And what value does the ability for billions of anonymous people commenting and/or liking really add to anything? I’ve been around since before eternal September, so I know it can be valuable, but that was probably the last time it was.
I think reddit speaks volumes of the status of social media these days. Almost everywhere you go, it feels like strangers waste their time trying to push whatever political agenda they have, and it works on the internet, because in the internet you don’t notice the people who ignore you and simply walk away. You’re only ever confronted by the people who respond.
I’ve noticed that over time, this simple fact destroys anonymous social media. I say anonymous but I probably should say strangers instead, because Facebook is just as bad. I’ve removed friends on Facebook that where alt-right, just like I’ve cut them out of my life because I didn’t want to debate whether holocaust was real every time I saw them, so these people certainly noticed the impact of their opinions, but all the thousands of hateful bastards and trolls who post nonsense on the few history groups I follow might as well be anonymous and will never know that I disprove of them. Because I’m not going to waste my time on them, I’ll just walk away.
It’s been a while since I’ve even been to reddit. I’ve had wonderful conversations on there, but these days you can barely make it three posts into something before it’s about some crackpot political issue. Just look at /r/technology, it used to be a slow version of HN that also featured arstechica articles, now it’s a political hellhole, and it’s getting worse, probably because I’m not the only person leaving.
I’m not sure what can be done though. Censorship isn’t a great option, but I have to agree with the NYT that it’s not working out great right now. More than a 100 people died of the measles in Europe this year because a bunch of fools got together on the internet and decided vaccines were bad, and that’s just the start of it.
I doubt we’ll really succeed though, I fully expect a lot of the less regulated countries to go full cyberpunk dystopia in the next 25 years, and I think it’ll give a huge advantage to the pro-censorship countries who don’t have to deal with the nonsense, but they’ll fit right into the cyberpunk dystopia, won’t they?
[+] [-] LiterallyDoge|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bdndndnndnd|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]