Humans love mobs. It makes them feel empowered, and gives them greater "authority" than they would otherwise have. We have seen mobs throughout human history cause all sorts of horrible incidents. But the difference between a physical mob and an internet mob, is that in a physical mob you can be identified, you are still risking some of your own safety, and you can usually immediately see the consequences of your own actions.
In an internet mob you can remain anonymous, you don't need to actually carry out any of the threats you make (others may do it for you, eg calling for somebody to be fired), and you aren't risk any of your own reputation.
I absolutely loath seeing mainstream media write about what happens on twitter/social media. It magnifies the mob far beyond reason. "Twttier in an outrage", "Internet blows up" it's just insane. Not only does it give the impression that vast majority of users on a platform are on the same side (they're not), it gives them pseudo-credibility. And unfortunately, the next step is for corporations to take them seriously.
The more I see these stories and see how social media has shaped and is shaping the 21st century, the more I wish it was never created. It was fun at first. But the dark side of humanity has been given a power it should never have had.
Companies already take them seriously to avoid the shit storm that comes after. See the VS code "santa gate" where microsoft removed the santa hat on christmas because one person opened a issue saying the santa hat was as offensive as a swastika to them.
Wow I was not aware of this. The original github issue:
> The Santa Hat on vscode insiders and pushing of religion is very offensive to me, additionally xmas has cost millions of Jews their lives over the centuries, yet even if that was not the case, pushing religious symbols as part of a product update is completely unacceptable. Please remove it immediately and make it your top priority. To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika.
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87268
I didn't know that Santa Claus was a religious symbol, I celebrate with Santa and I do not affiliate with any religion. But the status quo is to accommodate every single person. People believe they are entitled to it: "Make it your top priority" -- OK boss! There needs to be a balance. Complete stubbornness is not good. Bending over to every single request, regardless of its merit, is not good either.
As I recall, the guy said it was a troll. The PC Police are enough to make people take shitposting seriously. Further examples include stuff like the "okay sign" being a hate symbol.
The user's first name was "Christian". He claimed to be Jewish. Most people ignored this bit of cognitive dissonance, and joined the mob. People only hear what they want to hear.
The guy's picture was also a random one from the internet. Quote from a reddit post:
> The guy isn't real. A quick reverse image search would have shown this guy is also known as "David Shiffer" based in Norway, apparently a CEO of ServiceLayer, yet no mention of him anywhere else on the internet - including LinkedIn (strange for a CEO) and another profile of his linking to a dating site.
> I didn't know that Santa Claus was a religious symbol
Really? That's a bit surprising to me. I mean, Santa Claus is specifically part of a celebration of a Christian holiday, how could it not be a religious symbol?
(This is kind of assuming we're talking about the American-style conception of Santa Claus, I believe other regions use really do use it in a non-religious way, so that could totally be the disconnect.)
Note: the original ticket is ridiculous, or at least the way it is framed. And it seems that it's a troll in the first place, which makes sense.
The tradition of Santa Claus comes from a whole host of pre-Christian Nordic, north-western European and Slavic traditions with different mythical figures which got distilled into St. Nicholas in the Netherlands and taken to the new world by Dutch settlers. There Sinterklaas - as he's called in Dutch - got bastardised into Santa Claus, mixed up with some more Nordic folklore including possibly Odin's 8-legged horse Sleipnir who got transformed into flying reindeer. While the Dutch version of St. Nicholas rides a horse which can walk over rooftops, Santa Claus rides a flying sleigh pulled by reindeer. That sleigh is also found with the Nordic 'Jultomte' (a 'tomte' can be a brownie or gnome but in this case he's usually portrayed as a human-sized long-bearded man-like figure, sometimes it is pulled by a goat ('Julbocken' or the Yule Goat) for another link towards Nordic mythology.
So, is Santa Claus a religious figure? In as much as traditions, myths and customs often have relations to religion he might be but that is taking the term 'religious figure' too far. The modern-day Santa Claus generally appears at Christmas but even that does not link him to a single religion since the Christmas holiday itself comes from the Germanic Yule - in Swedish Christmas is called 'Jul' and still retains several links to the older Yuletide.
In short, calling Santa Claus 'a religious figure' is incorrect, he is a mythological figure who was assimilated into different traditions over the span of centuries. The American version of Santa Claus - the jolly fat man in red - is more of a commercial figure than anything else.
But I'm not sure that that history is really relevant. Every religious figure or ritual that exists comes from somewhere - most "modern" religions have pagan ancestors. That fact alone doesn't make something a religious figure or not, or we'd basically have to say that almost no figure is a religious.
What matters is the symbol as seen and interacted with today. Just look at the first line of Wikipedia describing Santa Claus (aka Father Christmas in some places):
> Santa Claus, also known as Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, or simply Santa, is a legendary character originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring gifts to the homes of well-behaved children on the night of Christmas Eve (24 December) or during the early morning hours of Christmas Day (25 December).
You can't really say that that isn't tied to Christianity, at least in the US and England.
I'm further very disturbed at how that issue, and a bunch of other issues posted to their repo in response to the Santa takedown are all fully locked for discussions and reactions. It's messy all around, and I don't envy anyone being in that decision making tree. They're pretty much screwed all around, and the best they can do is pick the not-so-middle ground that happens to offend the least amount of people.
Oh yeah, for sure. I worked my comment badly. I meant that right after the media publishes a story, corporations immediately feel threatened/called to action, and actually do what the mob tells them to do. Sometimes it doesn't even take a media article. Seriously, if you "@" any company now, ask why they haven't spoken about about x yet, wait and see how long it takes them to say something.
I'm surprised there hasn't been much mention (at least for US-based folks) of at-will employment. People are getting fired for old social media posts, but people get fired for all sorts of other stupid reasons: the boss was in a bad mood, you missed work to go vote (again, US-specific because elections days aren't holidays here), the bus was late.
Meanwhile, the EU has much stricter regulations regarding employment and the conditions under which employees can be let go.
It's because at-will employment isn't the problem unless your boss is unreasonable, and if your boss is unreasonable then you should celebrate the opportunity to collect unemployment while you find a new job instead of having to quit or continue working there in the meantime.
But canceling everybody is problematically increasing the number of unreasonable bosses.
"Celebrate the opportunity to collect unemployment?" Spoken like somebody who's never done so. Even if your erstwhile employer doesn't contest the claim, the whole process is a clusterfuck at the best of times - to say nothing of these times - and typically yields somewhere around minimum wage, often approaching it from below. If you have a solid savings base, it's a trivial amount. If you don't, it's better than nothing, but usually not enough to make a meaningful difference. And that's if whoever fired you in the first place doesn't make a fight of getting it at all.
I agree that Twitter cancel culture is well out of hand; in fact, I'll go further still and say that the behavior is often not meaningfully distinguishable from 4chan brigading of old. But there should still be a better option for dealing with unreasonable but not actively criminal bosses than getting fired anyway, with the chance of a bare minimum consolation prize.
I don't understand why mobs don't form against the employers who fire people because of internet mobs. They often have a lot of supporters if it's a partisan political issue. The employers are the ones doing the actual harm while everyone else is just saying words.
One guess would be that opponents of cancellation are calm intellectuals who write kindly-worded letters that corporate secretaries chuck in the bin without anyone else taking notice of them whereas angry internet mobs are full of crazy extremists sending death threats and bomb threats, doxxing people, SWAT-ing and that sort of thing which victims often yield to in order to make it stop.
It certainly depends on employee's financial and social circumstances and the industry specifics, but it still begs a question if it's worth working for an arrogant asshole that could fire someone for a over a bad mood. Even if there's a law that says that they can't, one must be in quite dire circumstances to cling to a job where they are mistreated.
This said, I totally recognize I'm quite privileged in regard that the industry I'm working in, where business tend to generally value people and such senseless human resource management is typically misaligned with both employee and employers goals (putting it simple, being an asshole doesn't bring any profits). In such circumstances, my personal perception of at-will employment is positive - it makes sense to me that we (employee and employer) cooperate because we like each other, and there's nothing that binds us but our will for a mutually beneficial relationship.
Yet, unfortunately, I know this is not the case for many people but I have no idea what could to be done to fix this. But I suspect that legal protections that prevent firing people at-will are not helping the core issue here.
>Meanwhile, the EU has much stricter regulations regarding employment and the conditions under which employees can be let go.
Also much stricter regulations and norms around when you can leave. In the US, two weeks notice is customary but not legally required in the EU its often a three month contractual obligation. I can't help but think that may contribute to the generally lower salaries in the EU vs the US.
>in the EU its often a three month contractual obligation.
I don't know where this is but in my country it's 1 month and most of the time the person leaving still has vacation days to use so they leave much earlier.
Most people just give advanced notice to their employer though, it's just polite.
There are good arguments in favor of taking away section 230 immunity and probably better arguments against it, but the best possible argument for getting rid of the immunity is to get rid of social media forever regardless of the other consequences.
Right now peoples twitter feeds are[0] 49% spam, 49% rage-bait, and 2% legitimate content. If that changes to[1] 99.98% spam, 0.02% rage-bait, and 8.16e-4% legitimate content, most people will probably stop using twitter, thus contributing to the goal of:
> to get rid of social media forever regardless of the other consequences
0: 103% of statistics on the internet are made up.
> Right now peoples twitter feeds are[0] 49% spam, 49% rage-bait, and 2% legitimate content. If that changes to[1] 99.98% spam, 0.02% rage-bait, and 8.16e-4% legitimate content, most people will probably stop using twitter
That's assuming the spammers can't figure out how to effectively troll the people who came for the rage bait into propagating their spam, but they can, because spammers are Turing-complete.
Obviously the people who came for the legitimate content will be destroyed. Or take up spamming.
Which just means you don't build the features that are spammable: you end up with friends lists (where users have moderated their own feeds by choosing who to follow) but no discovery (which is where a lot of the dangerous stuff is coming from anyway; good riddance) and no ability to message people who don't follow you (which is the default these days anyway as frankly it is already mostly spam). This sound a like a better world, not a worse world.
Systems that only work to converse with your "friends" (which I put in quotes, as we use that term so liberally online; just like, an opt-in follow mechanism where you can't be spammed by random strangers) are still "social".
It only dies if it's out-competed by something else. When you make a change to the law that everybody has to follow, you can end up just turning everything to shit because nobody is allowed to do better.
Near a small town there was a small lake. Many people loved to swim in the lake. One year, a terrible accident resulted in harmful pollution spilling into the lake. No one swims in the lake anymore.
They haven't stopped swimming because of some better alternative. They stopped swimming because swimming conditions have changed and now it is a bad idea.
If section 230 is repealed and social media becomes too toxic for most people to use, of course people would not stop communicating. The vast majority of human communication doesn't even occur on social media.
> The more I see these stories and see how social media has shaped and is shaping the 21st century, the more I wish it was never created.
I don't see how you can come to this conclusion when in the preceding paragraph you accurately portray the mainstream media as the actual manipulators. The media loves to televise drama, it's what sells. When there's no actual drama to be had, they manufacture it by highlight nonsense on social media or other means.
It's all so contrived now. "X say Y on Twitter! Here's a 5 minute diatribe about why that's outrageous with sarcastic analogies and something about true <insert country> values!"
I am a human and I don't love mobs. This article is all about incorrect assumptions. If I am not mistaken, the parent comment just made another one.
The part about the media amplifying what is on social media I absolutely agree with. I have always thought there is some strange irony in news outlets writing about something that is, at least in the case of newspapers, killing their own business.
I made a generalization which I still think is true, regardless of specific exceptions which will always exist for all generalizations.
Humans love to feel like they belong and they like to feel validated in their opinions. This doesn't always play out in the form of a mob. Even just "ganging up" on a friend in a group conversation is a result of these traits. Mob mentality shows itself in many ways. Perhaps I should've been clearer about mob mentality vs. the classic "mob". What we see happening on social media is I think a result of the majority of humans being susceptible to some form and some degree of mob mentality (groupthink, if you will).
If we think of humans as variable tribalism waveform propagators, then a mob is simply an incidence of intense constructive interference.
Perhaps you emit less tribalism energy than the average human, but it's still possible that in certain scenarios you, like any of us, would contribute to the constructive interference :)
Edit: Hmmm... I think we can actually extend this model by describing social media as a transform on these tribalism emissions that tends to heavily normalize, distort and exaggerate the signal into one of a relatively small set of outputs, thus greatly increasing the odds of constructive interference.
This happened locally just a few days ago. Protesters were blocking the street at an intersection where a vehicle came to make a legal right turn. Viral cell phone footage showed protestors surrounding the vehicle before the driver sped through the crowd, running over several (but not killing any) individuals. Everyone on social media condemned the driver, a gentleman in his 60's who was just going home after running errands, for plowing through protesters (ironically in a "white Excursion").
Turns out the driver was shot at the intersection -- twice -- and was injured and was trying to escape with his life.
When the police released the factual statement, it received almost no social media attention compared to the original (and false) accusations.
This is the first I've heard of the incident but it sounds terrible. Even the original post on this matter, which sounds sympathetic to the motorist, says he "sped through the crowd, running over several individuals" - as I understand it, well before any shots were fired. How is that not really bad? Depending on intent that could be way worse than shooting him.
My interpretation is that he started being more aggressive / pushy once the gun was pointed in his direction (on the left at the start of the video). So even though the shots were "after", the gun being pointed was the first escalation. I too thought this incident was a borderline people being pushy with eachother type of deal where it unfortunately escalates, but this was clearly someone with a mask on walking up to the car with a gun pointed at it with the intent of intimidation/murder. Seeing that, I fully understand the motorist speeding away, and I probably would have done so even less-patiently.
The poster who said "sped through the crowd" seems to be sympathetic to the motorist. The poster who posted the video that you seem to think exonerates him (the flagged and downvoted post) is strongly unsympathetic to the motorist and may sympathise with the protestors. I don't have much sympathy for either...my opinion is still that this was violent behaviour from both the motorist and the protestors. Violence that would normally be bad, but is possibly excusable if, for example, you were in fear of your life. It's not really clear from the video who initiates the violence.
The flagged post that was attempting to justify violent and illegal behavior of shooting a motorist?
Where do I suggest "exonerates"? I plainly state he was trying to intimidate the people illegally blocking the road. Which he was. By revving his engine and edging forward.
That isn't even a shadow of an excuse for shooting and I'm actually horrified both you and OP would suggest that. My only question is why you would do so.
Generally speaking, trying to force your way through a crowd with a large vehicle is a very, very fucking bad idea and at the very least is tantamount to assault. The crowd turned violent the moment he started honking his horn and you can see in the video the individual with the gun drew it as the driver started trying to push his way through the crowd.
The person w/ the gun should not have escalated the situation like that, but the driver at minimum escalated things first.
I think you're underestimating the perspective and feelings of the driver in that situation. It's easy to safely sit in the comfort of your home with a cuppa commenting on Hacker News, but imagine you're in the situation: you're driving home as usual, and suddenly your car is surrounded by a group of seemingly angry strangers shouting at you, trying to block your car, and do who-knows-what to you.
It's not like you know who those people are, why they're there, or what they want from you.
I'd be intimidated and scared as hell.
I certainly have no interest at all in driving through a crowd of protesters, and I hope I'd resolve the situation better than this driver, but I can't honestly tell you what I'd do in that situation. Panicking would be quite a normal human response.
Incorrect. Rewatch the video. You can see the protesters only start to crowd around the vehicle as he honks and attempts to push his way through the crowd.
Regardless if someone is illegally in the road or not, that does not give you the right to run them over or attempt to push them out of the way with your vehicle, full stop. That would still be considered vehicular assault. Note that the other vehicles in the situation were being left alone.
That line of thinking only works if social order is maintained and the police come to intervene in the illegal road block. As we've seen in the last few years, that almost never happens and the police actively let the protestors block roads illegally. At this point, it's probably being argued as a "free speech" issue rather than a safety/law one. I.e. that "protestors" have the "right" to "peacefully assemble" on a road.
Yea fuck that, I hope anyone reading realizes people like you are a common part of every protest movement and are frothing at the mouth to go after people whose only crime was not wanting to die.
These road blockades have a long history of attacking drivers and should always be assumed to be violent, the movements have completely failed to police themselves and so if there's no police around assume the worst and let a jury sort it out.
Funny, considering you can read the comments on the video posted and see people almost literally frothing at the mouth wanting to run over protesters and murder people.
Especially since this comes off the heels of a person literally being murdered just like that in Seattle.
Wrong. Objectively wrong. There have been multiple updates on this situation.
> At about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, the suspect allegedly drove into a group of protesters on a section that the WSP had closed about midnight. Mead said a car drove around a series of “support vehicles” that protesters were using to block I-5 and protect themselves, and onto the shoulder of the freeway, where protesters were standing.
> “A vehicle drove through the closure and struck multiple pedestrians on the freeway,” Trooper Rick Johnson said in a tweet. [1]
Actual video of the murder in question [2]. The driver was driving on the wrong side of the road, drove past multiple barricades and swerved into protesters. He hit them and then fled the scene. I'm going to assume good faith and say you were not aware of these updates.
The Provo event didn't "come on the heels" of the vehicle plowing into protesters in Seattle.
The Provo event happened June 29. The Seattle event happened early morning July 4th.
And what in the links you post show poster to which you are responding is objectively wrong?
At this point it appears you are disregarding facts all together and arguing from some type of religious fervor. Something like a young earth creationist. I don't mean this in an offensive fashion but just as a reality check for you.
> At this point it appears you are disregarding facts all together and arguing from some type of religious fervor. Something like a young earth creationist. I don't mean this in an offensive fashion but just as a reality check for you.
That's optimistic, as the conflict between reality and their argument is probably what has elevated the fervor.
I was referring specifically to his comment calling me essentially looking for murder. He was claiming that people 'like me' are part of protest movements looking to kill people, and his comment was incredibly tone deaf considering we had another example of someone literally being murdered by someone driving a car into them. It's amazing his comment is getting upvoted, but I'm not surprised. Terrible comments are becoming more the norm every day.
Now that said, I want you to watch the video and tell me how it was an accident. The driver drove to the highway using the wrong entrance past multiple barriers (as said by the police), turned around, drove past another set of cars blocking him and then proceeded to swerve into two individuals and then drive away.
Can you tell me which part of that video indicates it was an accident?
The I-5 incident wasn't the first case. On June 7th a car was run into protesters in Seattle.
And the video shows that the car was the aggressor (and yes, revving your engine like that is assault even by itself. Assault can just be a legitimate threat of violence). It also shows that the car hit protesters, which is now aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
You don't get to run people over just because they're in the street when you start from a standstill.
> Ok, but that is the case referred to as clearly showed by the links. So it didn't "come on the heels".
They only brought the links out once a third person was clearly referencing the I5 incident and spreading falsehoods about it.
There was about a dozen recent instances of cars running through protesters prior to this.
> No it isn't.
You do know the car wasn't in a lane anymore, right? That road only has two car lanes and a bus lane. That SUV is driving through a bike lane, and probably a bit on the sidewalk.
I'm not saying the shooter was justified, but I am saying that the SUV committed assault by driving through protesters before being shot at.
This should not have been allowed to happen in the first place, and us arguing whether the driver was in the right is not entirely where we should be. People should have been arrested for:
He had posted a Strava ride of the trail on the 28th, 29th, and 1st. The incident happened on the 30th. To internet detectives, this clearly meant he committed the crime on the 30th, and then deleted that ride from Strava.
It's scary to see how the mob was able to take exonerating evidence (him not riding on the 30th) and spin it to be a smoking gun: An innocent man would not have hidden the ride in question. Nobody even considered the possibility that he wasn't on the trail that day.
If people want to understand this phenomenon better, there is no better reference I could recommend than Rory Miller's Meditations on Violence[1] - specifically what he calls the "group monkey dance"[2].
The simplified explanation is this: the target of the attack by the group is no longer a person, but merely a target. Group members demonstrate their loyalty to the group by gradually escalating the violence they do to the target.
I would say that Jon Ronson's book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" (mentioned in the article), is also excellent. I would especially recommend it for anyone building social media tech.
Technically, any justice administered by a mob is targetting innocents. At least, it used to be that things like fair trials were a requirement to establish guilt. Now is just seems like internet bullies can just bypass democratic processes and do anything they want to shout down, browbeat, hound, or destroy the people/companies they don't like. And they can get away with it as long as it has a thin veneer of the current moral issue...
Pretty much. I've started seeing a lot of people saying "innocent until proven guilty only applies to courts" as an excuse for mob justice. It's mostly the same people who say "freedom of speech only applies to government censorship".
If you look up the word "constitution" in the dictionary you will find that it is taken to mean "that which we are made of." So if we as a society do not value freedom of speech, then by definition it is not in our constitution, regardless of what a piece of paper says.
People should absolutely be free to stop associating with others for bad reasons. That doesn't mean we can't encourage people not to, or talk about the badness of the reasons.
It used to be that people were taught: there is the law, and there is the moral principle underlying the law. So while freedom of speech is a thing protected by the Constitution, it exists outside the Constitution as a principle that instructs us that it is not legitimate to attempt to silence people for expressing an opinion you dislike, with whatever means you have at your disposal (shunning, character assassination, etc.), simply because you dislike it. You are still free to shun people with opinions you dislike, it just may not be the right thing to do.
Today, people are taught that laws are arbitrary and are made and used by the oppressor class to oppress the oppressed classes, and it is the moral mission of the oppressed classes to rise up and seize power so that the laws won't oppress then anymore. Which means that the moral principles are lost, and any weapon that finds its way in the hands of the immiserated proletariat can be legitimately used in the struggle to determine which class writes the laws.
But there's tons of reasons why someone might find their behavior abhorrent that don't and shouldn't pass the bar for illegality, and want to inform their employer that the employee's behavior reflects negatively enough on the employer that they would stop doing business with them. There's all sorts of acts that are never going to be proven guilty, because they're not illegal in the first place. Generally because making it illegal would conflict with the first amendment.
I disagree. I think there are very few actions so abhorrent that you should be fired for doing them in your personal life, and the vast majority of Twitter firings I've seen aren't over the line. Society isn't going to work under a standard where people who do bad things can't have jobs anymore.
> I disagree. I think there are very few actions so abhorrent that you should be fired for doing them in your personal life, and the vast majority of Twitter firings I've seen aren't over the line.
That's cool for you, but others obviously disagree with you.
> Society isn't going to work under a standard where people who do bad things can't have jobs anymore.
Or people will change their actions since they want to keep being members of society.
I don't understand why you keep returning to people disagreeing with me as though it's a counterpoint. I know people disagree! That's why I'm posting; I hope to convince them that they're wrong.
Society is double not going to work under a standard where we don't consider bad people members of society anymore.
> Society is double not going to work under a standard where we don't consider bad people members of society anymore.
Literally every society ever has worked under that rule, although the definition of people bad enough to qualify as excluded, and whether such exclusion was permanent or revocable, has varied.
> I don't understand why you keep returning to people disagreeing with me as though it's a counterpoint. I know people disagree!
Because you're trying to enforce your standard of conduct. That's cool that only technically illegal actions are the standard for you, but it's totally valid for that not to be other's standards.
> Society is double not going to work under a standard where we don't consider bad people members of society anymore.
That's an argument against freedom of association. Why do people get to be free from consequences of not to the point of being illegal actions?
Like that's the nonviolent method of enacting change. If you don't allow it you end up with far worse.
I'm not sure where I'm failing to communicate here. I'm not trying to enforce anything! As I mentioned earlier, I agree people have every right to shun others for any reason. I just hope to convince people that they shouldn't.
Forget it Zest. You're talking to a wall. Your message was quite clear and succinctly put.
Anyone here to engage in honest rhetorical exchange will have already gotten what they need. You're absolutely right. The true measure of a civilization takes into account the treatment of its least desirable, and given the practices the above poster endorses it is quite clear his concept of a society is one where it is acceptable to violently eject anyone who becomes undesirable at any time, with no consideration or room for forgiveness.
They are the one's demanding you acknowledge their right to engage in social warfare. You've clearly stated your position and rationale behind it. Just move on.
> I just hope to convince people that they shouldn't.
You haven't given any reasons for that other than a vague 'if we hold people accountable for their actions society will break down', when even the US court system doesn't take that view. The legal theory is very much that choices of association by members of our society are the controlling factor for the government not being able make (even abhorrent) political speech illegal.
If your views are so abhorrent that literally no one wants to deal with the fallout of being associated with you, you maybe should have reexamined your views before it got to that point.
I mean, those are both really important to remember - while society needs to find its balance and have respectful, intelligent conversation about tough issues, there is no obligation to give clearly bad people the benefit of the doubt within the community, nor is there an obligation to give objectively horrible people a social media platform with which to spread hate.
It never ceases to flabbergast me that American civics has failed so utterly, for decades, to produce nominally functional adults that can somehow think that "clearly bad" and "objectively horrible" are Real Things That Exist and then say in the next breath, without a shred of self-awareness, things like True Objectivity Doesn't Exist or All Things Are Political.
Is everyone in America so ignorant that they don't know what happens when informal social standards become justifications for political suppression based on who the "public" and not the law deems to be "clearly bad" and "objectively horrible" people? You get lynchings and pogroms. You get informal show trials and massacres. You carve the stick that the next batch of self-righteous authoritarians stick up their ass to justify being inhuman, indecent, monsters.
I can already hear the response forming: "But we know that these people exist, are evil, and are harming people now! We have evidence!"
Yeah. That's what they always say.
I could list every group targeted throughout by self-righteous authoritarians through just Western history--Christians, Jews, Manicheans, heretics, lepers, Catholics, Protestants, witches, blacks, anarchists, communists, thugs, Muslims--and always find a justification that began with some variant of "But we have evidence that they were Clearly Bad People!"
All those other Devils were ridiculous, made-up nonsense. But not yours. Your Devil is real.
I wish every one of my fellow Americans could read this comment. It actually is a fairly accurate portrait of the issue that most Americans seem to naively miss.
I have always suspected it has to do with how long we’ve maintained exorbitant privilege. We simply do not look outward, not nearly enough. Here we are marching about the racist police practices of our local cops while we routinely drone bomb innocents and starve children to death with not even a whimper from the same protesters. We fail to see how our treatment of other nations comes back to haunt us as our soldiers and companies bring the horrors of foreign wars back ro our local communities. Americans are so tired and overwhelmed with deceptive media that tells them nothing, that they can’t be bothered to learn the history and the media literacy to understand the division that separates the theater of the moving image from the reality of actual real life.
So, you're bitching about my perception of "clearly bad". And you are correct! I say "clearly bad" and also know that it is my perception. I think I am right, and people who think "all atheists/jews/muslims are bad" are wrong. I hope that my view is the zeitgeist, and theirs is not.
You take my position and move it forward ten slots toward authoritarianism, without any evidence or defense of your position.
You say that "as soon as the public has a collective moral standard to which they hold the community, you get lynchings". What the fuck? So, we should not have any collective moral standard? We should not have some shared sense of what is right and wrong?
My line, the line that keeps your nightmare from occurring, is very clear: We can have our shared sense of right and wrong, and yes, even shun or be angry at those who don't fit that standard - but those people are defended by the law, and the law grants equal protection to all. Vigilante justice against people is not permitted under the law, and violators will be prosecuted.
Before you tear up my analysis, please give an "affirmative" - that is, give a vision of society and government that fits your worldview without putting it in terms of what I have written.
In the interest of good faith, here's my affirmative. In short, it can be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as adopted by the United Nations.^0
Articles in particular:
2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion (emphasis mine), national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
29. (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
Whether this dialogue can progress further depends on whether we can agree that, despite having no official jurisdiction, a social media mob attacking an individual constitutes being charged with a criminal and penal offense worthy of legal protections as illuminated by the above. If you believe that it not being formal prosecution that such protections don't extend to the accused, then there's no point in progressing further and I reiterate my original post.
I'll have to chew on it for a while. I would imagine, not being a scholar in it, that the UDHR applies more stringently to government action and use of force, rather than to a group of people without use of force or detainment.
Your definition of "mob", "attack" both would need examples. In a real world analogy: If someone on my street waves a Nazi flag and says God hates Fags, and our entire community were to shun him, refuse to interact with him, or at times, warn others of his beliefs - do you believe that is a violation of his fundamental human rights? That no person can be shunned or disliked for their beliefs?
> I'll have to chew on it for a while. I would imagine, not being a scholar in it, that the UDHR applies more stringently to government action and use of force, rather than to a group of people without use of force or detainment.
I want to be very clear that formal consideration of the UDHR by established authorities is not my contention. If you wanted solely an affirmative vision of an ideal society, then the UDHR is it.
> Your definition of "mob", "attack" both would need examples. In a real world analogy: If someone on my street waves a Nazi flag and says God hates Fags, and our entire community were to shun him, refuse to interact with him, or at times, warn others of his beliefs - do you believe that is a violation of his fundamental human rights? That no person can be shunned or disliked for their beliefs?
I'm going to elide some details from your hypothetical.
"If someone on my street [...] and [...], and our entire community were to shun him, refuse to interact with him, or at times, warn others of [...] - do you believe that is a violation of his fundamental human rights? That no person can be shunned or disliked for [...]?"
If the elided details merely included his race for example, would you consider that a violation of his fundamental human rights? If the elided details included his colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, at what point does that become a violation of fundamental human rights? To me, the question boils down to this: is redlining a desirable and/or legal practice if the target is a law-abiding citizen in good standing, despite all other possible non-essential attributes?
From my perspective, the homophobic Nazi has done nothing unlawful or contrary to the UDHR, if we can agree that imminent harm is the baseline for where speech can infringe upon others' liberty. If we disagree that imminent harm is the baseline for acceptable speech, then we need to figure out the exact location of that disjuncture to continue.
As a further point, censorship, shunning, or suppression do not resolve the underlying processes that led to the emergence of the supposed undesirable element in the first place. If this element is a Nazi, it does not address why this person identifies as a Nazi, how he came to be radicalized as a Nazi, and what cultural or societal forces led to him falling through the cracks of the social contract to begin with. Similarly with racists, homophobes, antisemites, misogynists, and all other self-righteous authoritarians of whatever political identity.
Censorship, shunning, and suppression in fact lead to the opposite--it ignores their provenance, lets them grow in the dark, and tempers their own narratives of persecution and conspiracy. If the goal is a harmonious society predicated upon love, or at the very least brotherhood, this is not reached by excommunicating people from the very possibility of de-radicalization, de-militarization, and rapprochement.
To quote the Buddha:
"Hostilities aren’t stilled through hostility, regardless.
Hostilities are stilled through non-hostility: this, an unending truth."
Clearly bad people? Once YOU decided someone is bad, they are guilty by default of anything? This is how the courts worked back in the day in Germany with Jews. Jews were clearly untrustworthy to them. Same when Japan took over China. Chinese testimonies were worthless in court because they were clearly false to begin with.
The whole point to a court system is to remove prejudice of any form from the beginning. It's still run by humans, so it still nuttier than a squirrel turd, but at least there is an attempt. That's why when someone has multiple charges against them, they are not immediately guilty of all when they are guilty of one. You can't willy nilly say someone is guilty of everything due to one infraction.
But your backwards comment is the actual OPENING of the floodgates of hate, not the closing. The moment you decide to systematically silence people due to your will instead of through due process, you set up an elitist, rigged system. That's kind of the thing most people are trying to stop.
Who shall decide who are bad/horrible people? Such things seem far from clear to me, in no small part due to the massive number of variables involved, coupled with the unfortunate reality that people's perception of reality tends to be so fundamentally error-prone, and no error correcting mechanism seems to exist.
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
You'll get short shrift trying to defend unsympathetic targets, though. Many - if not most - people think those who appear to be guilty don't need a fair trial.
There's a gap between what the state can enforce, and what the people on their own can enforce. Within that gap, justice may or may not occur, but procedure is generally absent.
> Technically, any justice administered by a mob is targetting innocents. At least, it used to be that things like fair trials were a requirement to establish guilt.
No, people have never, as a general rule, been protected from social consequences of actual or perceived wrongdoing until proven guilty in a trial, only (and this mostly recently, historically, and adhering to far-from-universal principals of restraint) from certain (generally not all) government-imposed consequences.
Well the internet has certainly made far easier than it was before to inflict "social consequences" onto total strangers. Before, if you were a enough of a jerk, the townspeople would boycott your shop. Now, if you said the wrong thing in the past decade (or voted for the wrong candidate, or supported/didn't support the wrong/right bill/proposition/amendment), a mob composed of thousands of people from various locations thousands of miles away will call for your company to be boycotted, for you to be fired, etc. or else.
Here's an example. Brendan Eich became CEO of Mozilla. Someone tweeted that he donated money to the side fighting against gay marriage. The internet mob did their thing. Brendan Eich was forced to resign.
I disagree with his political choice. But I defend his right to make a political choice, and not be fired because of it.
You shouldn't get fired from any job for your political choices.
Standard retort: if a boss suspects a minimum wage worker of underperforming for the capitalist machine, he can just fire her, no questions asked. Having our burgers flipped correctly is important enough to us that we accept collateral damage there. Now when her boss is accused of being a sexist pig, we suddenly have to be 100% sure. Why? Are women less important to us than burgers? Or is "due process" just a concern troll that powerful people throw around to protect each other? Either way, bad look.
I don't think this is right, but countering it takes some thought.
Attacking at-will employment whenever danger of Internet hate mobs is pointed out is a bit of a whataboutism. Not everyone worried about Internet hate mobs is otherwise a supporter of at-will employment.
But that's really a distraction from the core issue. The thing about at-will employment is the it presumes that the employment relationship is largely between the employer and the employee. That assumption breaks down in the face of an Internet mob. This is part of the reason why the proof standard for how you treat complete strangers is different than the proof standard for how you treat people you know, including employees.
Furthermore, in the theory that underpins American capitalism, employment is an economic relationship. For example, if a burger flipper is sufficiently bad at flipping burgers, he shouldn't be a burger flipper, because her status as a burger flipper is predicated on her ability to do that job. Even in the most socialist systems that I'm aware of, basic competence is considered a prerequisite for holding a job. Moral qualities are usually considered less important unless they impact the job. In the American system, people are theoretically hired and fired primarily based on their ability to do their job, but Internet mobs change this equation thoroughly. Now, your political opinions affect your employability as well.
I think that this has profound implications for democracy.
This is a really great point. It takes an order of magnitude more energy to come up with a thoughtful rebuttal to this, and when you're done, you'll likely end up with a wall of text that gets TLDR'd. This is why reason loses on Twitter, it takes a Paul Graham level essay to counter even the most basic immflamatory logic.
Or there's a whole host of reasons why you may not want to associate with, or associate with the employer of someone who doesn't break any crimes but who's behavior is still abhorrent.
If it is abhorrent, we must make a law to make it illegal. Otherwise, anyone that think that you make something that is abhorrent can pressure your employer to fire you.
No we shouldn't and our country is based on the idea that we shouldn't.
I think we can agree that marching through the streets chanting nazi slogans is abhorrent, but making it illegal would be a first amendment violation. Our society relies on association choices instead of leaving all abhorrent behavior either illegal or free from social consequences.
These industries are spurned by growth-hacking companies that receive a lot of VC funding to do just that: prove out "user value" which is code for "get as many users as possible".
Twitter, Reddit, FB, Instagram all thrive on mediocrity amplified by the loudest voices. And then these investors and founders brag about user engagement, customer acquisition, retention and such meaningless numbers. None of it maps to user value. Because this drives advertisements to their sites.
Unless there companies actively reduce this nonsense, things will never change.
In addition to that, they delegated moderation to users, and some platforms even actively sought certain ideas while suppressing others, thus compounding on the mob effect. Twitter is notoriously guilty of this (although not the only one): wrongthink is actively patrolled, and reputations/jobs, (sometimes even worse), are routinely destroyed.
Or -- we institute much stronger limits on advertising. We blame tech companies for being complicit, but they are following advertising dollars. Without advertising dollars, the whole thing dries up.
I think the dismissal here of the Jon Ronson piece is unwarranted, and if anyone here hasn't heard about it I'd definitely read that in preference to this post. I find it much more interesting when there are grey areas and nuance in the story rather than completely innocent people being blindsided. (And after hearing her story in full I'd argue that there the woman who told the stupid joke is effectively innocent too, if rather naive). There's a series of BBC podcasts with abridged versions of the stories in his book here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07hj31g
It reminds one of the story of the Dazexiang uprising.
There were army units ordered to report to another location. On the way there they were delayed by flooding. The penalty for being late was death. This was no different than the penalty for insurrection, so guess what they did then.
I think the only solution here is strict enforcement of anti harrassment laws. Sending threats, harrassing someone's employer, doxxing someone, etc, should result in a permanent ban on the relevant platform and possibly jail time.
I have reported many people for doxxing on twitter and of the ones that even got a follow up notification, they were all given 12 hour suspensions. Takes about a week on average for them to get to a report.
Why is informing someone's employer that their behavior is so abhorrent it makes you not want to associate with the employer anymore so bad as to be a bannable offence?
Is the purpose to cause harm to the individual? That is the common question behind anti harrassment laws. Even if a person has a legit grievance, intent to cause physical or psychological harm is still illegal.
If it is difficult to separate that question for someone who has political abhorrent views, imagine a neighbor who acts abhorrent. Their dog is barking all the time, leaves dog shits on your lawn, their car is blocking you, they play loud music late at night, and so on. Are you allowed to call their employer and try get them fired for being an awful person? If the answer is no because that would be harassment then the answer doesn't change when their abhorrent behavior is political rather than being an abhorrent neighbor.
Because this is rarely, if ever, the case. Going after employers has the single goal of getting someone fired. It's mob punishment, and nothing more. It sets a scary precedent when free speech is restricted for this reason. 'Think like us, or be unemployed' is the current state of the US. Sad.
How many of the people contacting an employer demanding someone be fired (a) actually have any association with that employer (e.g. Amy Cooper being fired from Franklin Templeton), or (b) have any intent of actually changing their behavior if the employee is not fired (stop using Google, stop going to Starbucks, etc.)?
Apparently enough that the employer takes the complaint seriously.
I mean, in your Amy Cooper example, she was a VP. Part of her job was literally to represent the values and ethics of the company. They obviously took the opinion that being associated with her was worse than what she could bring to the table.
No, they fold to faux mob voices. Twitter has far too much power behind it, currently. I can't wait until companies treat it like the cess pool it really is.
That's the reason why we should never ever ever ever give "power to the people", but rather to enlightened few who would do their best to understand common people needs and take decisions accordingly.
Giving today power to the people plain and simple means we'll have light poles holding hanged people at every street by next week.
There's a wonderful quote by Henry Ford regarding innovation which says "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have replied faster horses". I find it very appropriate in this context too. People would definitely know there's something wrong somewhere, but only knowledgeable ones would find how to act, where to act and how to do that without producing collateral damages.
And how does one determine this enlightened few and how do they get out into power? It seems like you're advocating for what would quickly become an aristocracy,
People can work together, but an effective system of organization needs to be in place which allows for check and balances. The internet has bypassed many of our former checks and balances, so it's time to rework things.
I don't think it's actually that hard to choose a set of benevolent caretakers willing to understand the needs to the common folk especially if you divide the aristocracy up into a few different branches and put checks and balances on the power the aristocracy has between each branch and preserve a core set of individual liberties upon which the aristocracy shall not tread. But we've seen that fall apart so at this point I'm more interested in a Neo-monarchist experiment myself.
Is the hierarchy in your hypothetical situation hereditary? Are there benefits to being the caretakers that the rest of society doesn't share? Obviously power is one by definition, what prevents the caretakers from beginning in benevolence but then turning to selflessness?
Yeah my comment is half a facetious metaphor—making fun of the current state of affairs, and half serious in that pure popular rule has also proven to scale poorly.
Social media is effectively amplifying the smallest segment of society. An extreme left and extreme right, neither of whom really represent the vast majority of people. Worse, I don’t think companies or representatives realize how few even a few thousand retweets really are...
Further exasperating the issue is the fact we deplatform people with opposing opinions. Now Reddit is even removing people who upvote stories or comments differ from their ideology.
It’s getting real scary. That’s why my post linked above is called “on committing suicide”. It’s a dual meaning, I think the country is murdering itself and I’m also risking my entire career to say so.
>Worse, I don’t think companies or representatives realize how few even a few thousand retweets really are...
1k retweets could mean as little as someone spent $30[0], think about that you could ruin someones life for $30 and you don't even have to get out of bed to do it.
I don't think people realise how manipulated social media is. There are so many marketing services that scan every comment posted on every social media to alert the marketing team when their product is mentioned so they can jump in and start shilling.
I used to use one to scan for my FOSS project name so I could answer questions and help people but the scope for abuse here is huge.
I'm a Canuck, but it is no secret how close our two countries, our peoples are.
Some of us point and scoff, but these are the same sort which laugh when someone stubs their toe. Buffoons, they are.
The lion's share of us watch, concerned. Not just for ourselves, and of what might come from utter chaos to the south.
We are legitimatley concerned for what we view as family. I personally feel as if I am watching a beloved sibling, mess up their life for incomprehensible reasons.
You want to help, you want to intervene, stop the pain.. but you feel that it may only make things worse.
After all, how can you help, when you can't even understand?
I agree with what you said, the media is broken. I can think of some fixes, like a constant "this is not news, but an opinion piece" banner or some such, but I doubt that will really help.
It does seem to me, that a tiny, tiny percentage of the population is causing a HUGE disruption for almost everyone else. I mean tiny, a core of 0.001%, with all sorts of others "hanging on".
While the issues raised have some legitimacy, the media has thrown gas on the fire, and in a way which reduces chances for either side to resolve things.
Instead, we get, as you elude to, absurd, useless theatre.
It may be absurd, but it certainly isn't useless. Divide and conquer/rule has been an effective approach for ages, and the internet has made it even easier and more effective. And the beauty of it is that it seems to be almost impossible for the human mind to detect its presence, which is a big part of why it's so effective I suppose.
This is exactly what's happening. Hyper-partisan extremist perspectives that are built up by a frenzy of social engagement turning people into blind attackers of whatever they deem "wrong".
We just aren't built for this addiction to a constant global stimulus by faceless anonymous accounts sharing hot takes that can't be verified but elicit a deeply emotional reaction. We're losing our minds.
There are many examples featuring extremists from all around the political landscape, but the one I find simultaneously the most fascinating and terrifying is the Qanon cult. Look into it a bit if you want to see just how deep the folie-a-deux social media rabbit hole goes.
Someone should do a STTNG universe spinoff on the origin of the Borg, kind of like Caprica. "We are Borg. You will be pilled. Resistance is futile. #borg #assimilate #wwg1wga" "Borg" could start off as a fringe cult that goes viral, then someone invents direct neural connections (Neuralink?) and the members of the cult become a superintelligence and take over the whole society. They are the ones who become the first real collective intelligence because they live online and already have this cult identity that submerges the individual.
Once the cult turned superintelligence takes over, it starts venturing out to "red pill" the entire universe.
I mean what do you think is happening in all those cells on those ships? All the anons are meme-ing each other.
But if they had a collective-intelligence, whose purpose really is to assimilate all other intelligences (and ideas, and so consequently ideals) then one would hope an honest, good-faith battle for ideas would play out inside this collective-intelligence and they would see just how indefensible that incel/MRA/redpill rubbish is compared to other ideas grounded in more substance.
More fundamentally: a lot of reactionary opinion and right-leaning politics are predicated on a lack of empathy for others: I detect (armchair diagnosis) a lot of behaviour attributable to being on autistic-spectrum amongst far-right activists on the internet: it’s easy to rail against proponents of equality and doing things for a greater-good when one can’t relate to them - or be physically incapable of relating to them - but neurotypical people can end up also being unable to relate to others online, and this isn’t anything new: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/my-life-aspergers/20...
...so if there really was a collective-intelligence comprised of the worst of reactionary right-wing internet users, then I would actively encourage them to harvest the brains of the Tumblr users they troll so much: that way they would assimilate empathy and finally understand for themselves how the rest of the world operates.
Switzerland has conscription which is conceptually very different from the 2nd amendment in both purpose and implementation. The US had conscription in the past but forcing people against their will to mandatory service is something which individualistic culture tend to dislike.
The effect of conscription on homicide rates is also a complex and difficult topic. There is definitive people who argue that forcing young adults into a pre-determined future is a good thing to shape young women and men into productive citizens. Others argue that robbing peoples right to choose their own destiny is very harmful to anyone who does not fit the mold.
Even with the possible benefits if, on the average, forcing young people into pre-determined destinies would produce more law abiding citizen, I would not personally be in favor of it. As someone who live in an other country with conscription, it is not worth it.
Conscription isn’t related to the second amendment at all.
The US still has conscription. We haven’t called up a draft since the Vietnam war - but every adult male has to register, and there are consequences for failing to do so.
I've always thought that if a non-citizen is inducted into the armed forces in any way they should immediately be eligible for citizenship. As I understand it, there's still a relatively complex process they have to navigate to get that done.
> Further exasperating the issue is the fact we deplatform people with opposing opinions. Now Reddit is even removing people who upvote stories or comments differ from their ideology.
What are the opposing opinions and the differing ideologies that you're worried about being silenced?
Exactly. Because once everything isn't protected, someone gets to choose. So what we need are systems where content can't be removed, and users can't be banned, by design.
And yeah, we also need usable and effective filtering, so everyone can choose what to see.
> Exactly. Because once everything isn't protected, someone gets to choose. So what we need are systems where content can't be removed, and users can't be banned, by design.
This is naive at best. I know of no social space on the internet that has light moderation, no moderation, or primarily user-driven moderation that isn't also a dumpster fire.
This is the internet. There are uncountable social spaces on it, and the fantastic thing is that the owners of each social space are free to enforce rules as they see fit. If you are unhappy with the moderation of a social space, or if you get booted, find another one. Or, you could even create your own.
Heck, because this is the internet, you are likely keeping up with many of the people you know from a social space through multiple other platforms, and if you want to peace out from one, you can coordinate a migration.
> I know of no social space on the internet that has light moderation, no moderation, or primarily user-driven moderation that isn't also a dumpster fire.
The cypherpunks list comes pretty close. I don't believe that anyone has ever been banned, and there's no censorship. But yes, there are no ~modern social media like that. Perhaps Notabug could become that, once peers exist.
Dumpster fires aren't problematic if you can filter well enough. And sometimes they're good for lulz :)
When people build their own platforms, the censorship minded mobs go after their upstream providers, like aws and visa. So this "you can always build your own" is not 100% true.
Also, mobs do go after you for your online speech, so the possibility of a platform that keeps your speech up does not preclude the possibility (and fact) of censorship
True enough. However, I don't believe that anyone has taken down a Tor onion service, except by first identifying the server in meatspace. And that's typically depended on OPSEC failures.
It's true that CMU researchers deanonymized onion services and their users by exploiting the relay early bug, and then produced data to the FBI. However, site owners and users would have been safe if they had protected themselves better. By reaching Tor through nested VPN chains, and by using firewall rules or Whonix to prevent leaks around Tor.
So build accountability into interactions with the internet. For example, I believe for most purposes people should use government-issued access to the internet with an identity that ties to their physical self. Anonymity should cost extra and there should be an implicit lack of trust, credibility, etc. from anything anonymous until it can be thoroughly vetted. I like the urbit model for this where short memorable addresses convey value and social reputation whilst fully anonymous entities are allowed but implicitly untrusted.
I don't think this fixes anything. Alex Jones already isn't anonymous.
Real name requirements deter dissidents and vulnerable people, not populist bullies. They even make it worse, because you can be more easily targeted by populist bullies who have your legal name than if everyone is using pseudonyms.
If anything we should make it harder to associate internet users with real people to deter this type of in-person harassment from spilling over from the internet.
It's less the real name aspect and more the fact that identity shouldn't be disposable. Anonymity is not a universal fundamental human right at least as understood historically. Perhaps today many would be interested in making it one. I, however, am more interested in preserving things like freedom of expression, formally, than suggesting that we achieve it by way of universal access to anonymity. It's one of my less popular opinions, but I think it's an important topic to discuss especially light of the whole privacy debate, and certainly in light of dismantling internet mobs.
There's also the element of making the reputation war bi-directional. If somebody can trash my reputation without staking theirs, that's pretty harmful and toxic, except in exceptional cases. I think a structure where people steak their reputations when attacking others by virtue of reputation not being a commodity would help "keep things real". On the flip side, a vulnerable person shouldn't be protected just because they're vulnerable. If they're being oppressed then they may steak their reputation or find someone else to do it for them, but they don't get an easy out just because they're perceived as vulnerable.
> Anonymity is not a universal fundamental human right at least as understood historically.
In practice starting over was. For almost all of human history, no matter how bad things turned against you where you were, you could pick up and go somewhere else. You would have to start over from nothing in a place where no one knew you, but at least you wouldn't have to deal with having negative a billion social points forever because of some slanderous allegations that were all anyone would talk about in your home town before slamming the door in your face.
Which you're obviously taking away if someone can effectively move a thousand miles away but still can't change their name, because then any slander would follow you everywhere.
> I think a structure where people steak their reputations when attacking others by virtue of reputation not being a commodity would help "keep things real".
This doesn't actually resolve the asymmetry, because there are a great many people whose reputations aren't worth anything to begin with, or who are too young to realize that they are.
You also still have the problem that reputations are community-specific. If someone is a vicious extremist in a community of vicious extremists, anti-social behavior against outsiders improves their reputation within their community. They may regret it later when they grow up and tire of that lifestyle, but that doesn't stop them at the time. It may even make it worse, because once they've trashed their own reputation among reasonable people by behaving badly, they can't get a do-over and their best option becomes to continue to behave badly and stay in the community where that gets rewarded.
> On the flip side, a vulnerable person shouldn't be protected just because they're vulnerable. If they're being oppressed then they may steak their reputation
It's not about reputation in that context, it's about safety. Democracy advocates in China get arrested or worse. Any system that rate limits pseudonyms has got to be mapping them to real people to determine whether you have one already, but the existence of that mapping is the thing that compromises their safety when their oppressors use it to find them.
> or find someone else to do it for them
So you have a dozen Democracy advocates in China. None of them can use their own name or they'll be arrested. If they use the name of one of their compatriots, they get arrested instead, so how does that help?
Which is why it must be illegal to arrest someone for an opinion in the first place. Anonymity is a tool that can help in certain circumstances, but the problem is that a vulnerable person feels vulnerable to begin with. Anonymity doesn't fix that, the cultural climate does.
I suppose, but when discussing technology for online privacy and anonymity, it's prudent to make worse case assumptions. We can't assume that people won't be arrested, prosecuted, tortured and killed based on opinions, baseless allegations, hearsay, and so on.
Also, "vulnerable persons" aren't people who feel vulnerable, as in being emotionally insecure. They're people who are vulnerable, given their circumstances. For example, Hong Kong residents who advocate independence from China. Or male homosexuals in Saudi Arabia and some African countries.
That feels a lot like saying we don't need seatbelts if we would just stop having traffic accidents. A fine argument if there haven't been any traffic accidents in the last hundred years, but there have.
I'd love to discuss this in some other context somewhere sometime (: I believe the internet is facing a type of identity crisis, so to speak and there's got to be a middle ground between a giant mass of anons and a polite dinner table gathering. But I'm not sure what the right balance is or the exact mechanisms we're lacking.
Hey, I'm pretty sure that Steve Newman would create a group for us on Podaero :)
The Internet is way large enough for all the spaces that we want. It just happens that I primarily focus on anonymity, privacy, and resistance to censorship. Both to protect dissidents, and to protect the ~clueless from destroying their lives.
> And yeah, we also need usable and effective filtering, so everyone can choose what to see.
I'd be careful about mentioning filtering.
I just remembered that there was a Reddit Masstagger that helped folks with that filtering, but people got really upset about how it infringed on free speech and might have even gotten Google or Mozilla to remove it from the extension store.
I think there might have also been some for Twitter, which I imagine would have elicited a similar reaction.
How can filtering infringe free speech? People can say whatever they want, but why should I have to hear them?
Also, any software tool that can be removed by someone else is broken by design. But yeah, maybe that's why there aren't any useful tools for using Twitter :(
> How can filtering infringe free speech? People can say whatever they want, but why should I have to hear them?
Simple. There's people agitating for free speech on idealistic terms, and then there's people agitating for free speech because they have an agenda and want a captive audience.
You can even see it in this comment thread. Take a look around and see if you can find any greyed-out comments that are arguing against the pro free-speech crowd. Down-voting is censorship via mob rule, so that should be twice as distasteful, but yet you see greyed out comments. The folks doing that are the latter, and not the former.
I advocate free speech idealistically. In case it wasn't obvious.
I don't want filtering that's imposed by sites or their users. I want filtering that's implemented locally. I'm OK with opt-in filter lists, such as those used by ad-block extensions, as long as they can easily be customized. But I'm not OK with server-based filter rules that prevent me from ever seeing stuff.
On HN, I have "show dead" enabled, and I occasionally vouch for dead comments.
Hold on, "down-voting is censorship"? Since when? The content remains. No disciplinary action is taken against anyone who's comment starts to turn grey. It's simply a feedback mechanism members of this forum use to signal to each other the quality of the content being posted. The analog would be if people here started mass down-vote campaigns against a person because they posted something off-beat, or if we all started petitioning mods to remove content we found uncomfortable.
You generally gravitate towards down-voting unhelpful, out-of-place, or in some way inaccurate content not simply content you don't agree with, BTW. More often than not I see comments start to turn grey because they miss the point and/or aren't really useful contributions to the discussion. Good points, despite the position being argued, tend to remain opaque.
> Hold on, "down-voting is censorship"? Since when? The content remains. No disciplinary action is taken against anyone who's comment starts to turn grey. It's simply a feedback mechanism members of this forum use to signal to each other the quality of the content being posted.
If one fails to stay within the boundaries of HN's Overton Window, you run a high chance of being rate-limited for "starting flame wars", regardless of whether you were the one who actually started it. What comes after that I'd rather not find out so I try to keep my opinions to myself as much as possible. Whether downvotes are used to detect instances of dissenting opinions is unknown, but it's one of the most obvious ways to discover it I'd think.
> ...not simply content you don't agree with, BTW
You do not actually know this, it is a heuristic prediction. Even getting a half-accurate feel for that would require access to voting data and a lot of time reading over downvoted comments.
People often do not even know why they themselves are doing many things, such is the nature of the human mind, that evolved to optimize for speed over accuracy.
You don't have to protect the actual calls to violence. But if you don't protect the associated ideology, you're going to end up excluding basically all politics. I've never seen a large political movement that didn't contain a few bad actors promoting violence.
Actually it does matter, if we want to be honest about why we're even having this conversation.
Deplatforming and banning doesn't happen because of some abstract whim, so defending it in abstract terms sans context seems like it's overlooking a large chunk of the conversation.
No. It doesn't. We're having this conversation because angry mobs are unjustly destroying peoples lives. If you think that's okay then we're at an impasse.
Abstract freedom of expression is a prerequisite for preventing oppression by majority rule. It's fundamental to our core as citizens in the United States.
To be clear, are you saying that if I don't agree with preserving the abstract freedom of expression on private social spaces, I am pro angry mob destroying peoples lives?
Not directly, of course. I am saying that the concession that we need to moderate "dirty" behavior is, in and of itself, the rhetoric that validates the mob behavior we're seeing. And there's a difference between dirty and illegal. We do not disagree that unlawful content can responsibly be remove by citizens from the internet. The extrajudicial removal of miscreant expression is what we're talking about.
> I am saying that the concession that we need to moderate "dirty" behavior is, in and of itself, the rhetoric that validates the mob behavior we're seeing.
I think that's a stretch.
The problem with Twitter isn't the moderation or the "leaning", it's the sheer size of the thing. Any sort of decent moderation is completely impossible at the scales of Twitter, and I voted with my feet a long long time ago and frankly don't feel like I'm missing anything.
On the other hand, there are plenty of smaller social spaces out there that are well moderated, do not treat all viewpoints equally, but at the same time somehow manage to prevent their users from anti-social mob justice.
We're probably getting closer to some ground we do agree on. It sounds like we both support the ability for communities to form around a shared set of virtues, moderation philosophy, etc. Totally. And it's okay for those communities to moderate and police themselves. What I disagree with is the idea that it's healthy for speech platforms to operate in a mode such that certain speech universally constitutes e.g. violence and must be banned. I believe that mindset is destructive towards the relatively fair playing field we've laid down at least in the US where we are supposed to protect individuals' right to express themselves.
In Twitter's case I think you've nailed it. They're so big that effective moderation that pleases everyone is simply unmanageable. What that signals to me is that practically they should be considered a speech platform. Otherwise any attempts to moderate will feel like social cherry-picking. Once classified as a platform we should treat them differently, both legally and colloquially. Legally platforms would be absolved of taking responsibility for the content posted by individuals. And colloquially if people understand they're a platform, and platforms come with self-service tools to make sure unwanted content doesn't show up front and center in your feed, then I think we can collectively mature in our approach towards and response to "dirty" content.
Anyway I don't use twitter either and don't expect nor am I really all that interested in a twitter solution. I'm abstractly defending the social maturity required to tolerate diverging viewpoints without resorting to censoring and banning and extrajudicial mob justice because I believe required to prevent oppressive majority rule.
> What that signals to me is that practically they should be considered a speech platform
I'm not really sure what problem you're solving here. The social space is too big to moderate effectively, so hamstringing what little power the company chooses to exercise over its own space is supposed to somehow make things better? I don't see it.
You seem to lack empathy for people who's content is being removed from these platforms. It may be difficult to see it and therefor find empathy, today, because these people seem radical to you--I get it. But keep in mind, no so many years ago, it was homosexuals, then trans people, etc., who were attacked and silenced and who's lives and livelihoods were threatened. We have to continue to protect peoples' ability to express themselves universally as technology evolves and provide platforms where they can't be bullied and destroyed by a riled up mob or institutionally silenced and de-platformed for dirty content. It's about supporting a voice and a platform for the counter-culture of today so that it may be liberated tomorrow just as the miscreants of yesterday are seen in a new light today. That is the problem we're solving.
> You seem to lack empathy for people who's content is being removed from these platforms.
I lack empathy not because I disagree with their politics, but because "getting booted out of a social space on the internet" seems like a strange non-problem.
Keep in mind that Twitter moderation is a joke no matter what side of the aisle you're on, and people leave not only because they got banned, or somebody they liked got banned, but also because of the perception that the moderators are asleep at the wheel and are too slow to take action - if they ever do.
Thing is, this is the internet. There are other sites out there. Most of them are accessible from typing something in your web browser. If there is a social space out there whose moderation you find more agreeable, why would you hang out someplace you're not welcome?
> We have to continue to protect peoples' ability to express themselves universally as technology evolves and provide platforms where they can't be bullied and destroyed by a riled up mob or institutionally silenced and de-platformed for dirty content.
You're not going to find that platform on Twitter. But you shouldn't have expected to find it on corporate-owned advertiser-friendly Twitter in the first place. The revolution will not be televised; brought to you by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions.
It isn't all right wing stuff. The recent banwave took out probably the largest leftist community on the internet after a long period of banning users who upvoted opinions there, such as:
* Slaveowners deserved to die
* John Brown is an American hero
* Police & large-corporate property constitue legitimate political targets during protests
etc.
Essentially reddit wants to restrict the scope of permissible discourse to the same region allowed on mainstream news websites: support of neoliberal capitalism with debate focused on how overtly racist the system should be.
And? What did people expect would happen? You cannot trust large corporations with those kinds of discussions.
The thing is, I don't think the solution is to force Reddit to host those kinds of subreddits - the solution it to find or create a different social space. Alternatives to those spaces exist, you just have to look for them.
Reddit itself was such a place not that long ago. Lust for power and money seems to frequently find a way to corrupt even those with the best of initial intentions.
"John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave,
And Kansas knows his valor when he fought her rights to save;
Now, tho the grass grows green above his grave,
His soul is marching on.
He captured Harper's Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;
They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew,
But his soul is marching on."
A comment on your blog post sums up quite well my opinion of your piece-
>I cannot believe you wrote a web page that reads my mind and converts it into text! This is the most amazing technology I have ever seen. It literally scanned all my chaotic thoughts and emotions over the last couple of months and distilled them into a series of coherent, well written sentences that convey exactly what I wanted to say, but didn’t know how to say it. You are either the most amazing programmer in the world, or an excellent essayist. Either way, thank you.
I agree. Thank you for that essay, I'll be sharing it with several of my friends.
Secondly, that story does not say what you say it does. What Reddit is doing is actually warning people that they are interacting with the site in the manner of coordinated bots. Certainly you aren't suggesting they should just banhammer at first blush, isn't a warning a nicety?
Whether or not these are botnet operators complaining that the site has developed defenses against them is a questoin for the reader, but the fact remains that something gets posted, something gets flagged, and if that happens to be coincidentally the only (or most of) the stuff you upvote, then the defenses start falling into place to your detriment.
How would you deal with the problem as I've stated it (accounts that only upvote stuff that winds up getting removed)?
With all those words you typed you could have done a whole lot of googling to find a source befitting your standards. Reddit sends you warnings, several of them, before banning your account if you upvote things it doesn't like. I know because it happened to me.
That's not a problem as I see it so I don't need a better source telling me it is a problem. And you know just as well as I do that it's not, "things it doesn't like."
Well that was quite a read. What is wrong with a content provider upholding its publicly stated policies?
I'll accept it is a bit strange that POTUS might be deemed afowl of their policies but POTUS never used to tweet, twaddle or play silly buggers beyond what was expected, until this one.
POTUS seems to have decided that despite being the leader of the free world, his message isn't getting across via the entire world's media. So he uses Twitter.
The right elected someone who is on the extreme compared to more moderate candidates in 2016. The left nominated a moderate in 2016 and 2020. I can’t help but to conclude that the extreme right is the majority of the Republican Party.
If we had an extreme left in the US, it would be doing things like advocating forcible nationalization of companies. What we have is a left that is trying to prevent people from dying in medical poverty, and generally isn't ok with black people being randomly murdered in the streets by police.
I mean, it's not like there's a reliable permanent definition of “right wing”, but Donald Trump was the first President to support gay marriage during his campaign, and his platform in large part reads like Bill Clinton's (especially on illegal immigration), minus the AWB and belief that China would liberalize.
Clinton never campaigned on an outright ban legal immigration for all Muslims. This was far to the right of all of the Republican candidates who actually disagreed with him.
> He “supported gay marriage” but then tried to take away rights from the transgender.
What rights do you think he took away, or attempted to take away, from transgender people?
P.S. why is that in quotes? It's literally true. And twenty years ago, when the Supreme Court was tasked to decide whether an incidence of workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was legal, he proposed legislation to make it explicitly illegal. Furthermore, during the heyday of DADT and DOMA, Donald Trump was (consistent with today) not for them at a time when they were popular among Democrats, in 1999 saying “that's not something that would disturb me” when asked about gays and lesbians serving in the armed forces.
Actually being seen by provider? Before the recent Supreme Court decision, a hospital could refuse treatment if they thought being transgender was a “sin”.
I linked the article in the comment you replied to.
Except the decision does not say that, it says that sex discrimination is discrimination based on sex, rather than on gender identity; however gender identity discrimination is inherently sex discrimination anyway.
This is a pretty poor argument. It's not really coherent.
> When has there ever been a seriously fiscally conservative Presidential Candidate?
> All Republican candidates pander to the religious right without being actually religious.
These aren't relevant to whether or not Trump is "extreme right." A politician who is more in line with them (like a Ted Cruz or Paul Ryan) would be more right-wing.
> Buchanan was considered one of the most right wing candidates in modern politics and he was very much pro tariffs.
> Trump is also very friendly with the NRA. Reagan was all about gun control - at least when Black folks were exercising their rights (the Muliford Act)
These are just very cherry-picked examples of other politicians whose policies were also not 100% right-wing. That doesn't change the fact that tariffs and gun control (e.g. banning bump stocks) are not right wing positions.
> He might support gay marriage but he also tried to remove health care from the transgender.
He wanted to repeal Obamacare completely, but yes, that would include coverage for transgender people.
I guess to me words still have meaning. If Trump is "extreme right", then "extreme right" doesn't mean anything except "I'm on the left and I don't like this guy." But I suppose that's the norm in 2020.
These aren't relevant to whether or not Trump is "extreme right." A politician who is more in line with them (like a Ted Cruz or Paul Ryan) would be more right-wing.
Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan both voted for the tax cut that reduced revenues but didn’t reduce spending - increasing the deficit.
He wanted to repeal Obamacare completely, but yes, that would include coverage for transgender people
> he also tried to remove health care from the transgender.
How on earth could that be possible? Exclude them from the free government health care that other people get? Prohibit them from paying for their own healthcare? That's far too extreme to be true. I don't believe you unless it was just one of his random tweets that he doesn't really mean.
That's about sex discrimination being extended to transgenderism by Obama. Removing that is not at all what you said with "remove health care from the transgender". Exaggerating something to make it sound worse than it really is is dishonest if you know it's wrong or shows your opinions are misguided if you believe it's right.
So removing discrimination with regards to health care discrimination wouldn’t be paramount to removing health care in a conservative state if a provider refused to treat someone who was transgender?
That's inherent in the definition of "mob [in]justice". The mob is driven by passion, not justice.
At worst, at the instigation of charismatic or influential people with ulterior motive. At best, missguided by fear and other emotions. Never overflowing with rational thought.
> He eventually got an apology from the woman, who wrote a retraction post (though the retraction post only got 1/50th of the views of the original post).
Social media websites should be able to do better than this. They have a record of everybody who saw the original post; they should be able to ensure everybody who saw the original also sees the retraction.
I'm sure they don't care though. Making people feel ashamed for participating in a mob is probably bad for "engagement."
Yes. The first 20 years of internet was a mob that kept me from ever commenting and the misogyny I encountered - art videos stolen and shared on boards, attacks on my work - shaped my behavior forever. I do not believe in the concept "innocent lives" - but without placing this discussion about cancel culture in context we just reproduce unequal relationships of power. A better framework would be to do what I had to do to cope - do the inner work.
Sure. It's reading. (happy to send you a reading list if you let me know your own aptitudes and interests as a point of entry ). It's learning that Western culture structures the normal as a white monyed male and any perspective that interrogates that is too 'political.' This space right here _is_ political, even when you disavow it as so. In this space my experience of working in tech as a woman - which shares many perhaps most of what you experience - but then there are the things you cannot imagine. Ask specific questions. When I post an article about a woman's experience on this site, a user flags it right away. ( see my last post here ). The good news is, all of this is becoming more and more normal. Otherwise I would not even bother here, as I have lurked for over a decade getting what I needed here and trying not to be to demoralized by the shape of content and the common fantasy that one can construct choose where, how and when the political intervenes.
Why can’t Twitter and Facebook auto moderate the most basic harassment comments? They have defined terms of service but rely on user reports where the damage is already done. Why am I even able to make such comments? Maybe it is a hard problem but even at a basic level there should be no reason certain phrases are even possible to post.
They do. And every 2 seconds people make an outrage post about how google bots locked them out by mistake or how facebook deleted their post about breast cancer. And if you are just banning certain words then these people invent new words for the old meanings.
The thing about “the internet mob” is that it doesn’t affect you if you aren’t paying attention to it. I’m not on twitter or facebook or reddit or any of these social media places. Consequently, nobody there has any influence over me. There could be someone flaming me on Twitter right now and I’d have no idea and it would have no effect on my day tomorrow. I wonder how much of these Social Media generated problems we have brought onto ourselves merely by participating?
I see where you're coming from but I don't really agree. Consider a couple of scenarios, both of which are equivalent to things that have actually happened:
- Despite you not being on social media, someone who very actively is can decide to take offense to something you said or did in meatspace and sic the social media mob on you, resulting in you and your family being harassed, as well as your employer to the point that they decide firing you is the path of least resistance. Example: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/08/17/54...
- Social media mob decides to take issue with something your employer/hometown local government/etc did, and the relevant entity enacts policy changes as a result to placate the outrage; these policy changes have a negative impact on your life
You can remove yourself from the day to day outrage cycle by not participating as you say, and I've done that as well. But that doesn't mean it can't negatively impact your life, sometimes in extreme ways.
I love the first paragraph of this article. It reveals exactly what's going on.
The emotions and actions of mob mentality come from evolutionary social psychology - to protect the tribe from disease and death - to protect from bacteria, mould, and viruses entering and killing the whole group.
Unfortunately, because of how human emotions developed out of the survival biology - and this probably happens in other species too - anyone who is 'sick', not just a physical way but a social or psychological way - like a pedophile or a racist, etc - and/or anyone who is weak, and/or anyone who is simply different - can trigger this mob mentality in most people's brains. Kids do it at an early age at school. Kids are not inherently innocent.
We 'other' the individual carrier of the virus to protect the mob from being infected. At its most extreme, we call for the person's death or swiftly kill them.
It's disheartening. It's really difficult to live with.
I increasingly understand that my mission in life is to fight for diversity. (I run a non-profit which contributes to that.) It's not fun, or easy, but it must be done.
---
It's also really important that you 'know thyself'. Since birth I have been an 'outsider' in my brain - not a member of the 'tribe'. I constantly buck up against tribal thinking and mob mentality, and I probably always will, at least, deep inside of me. But I'm increasingly accepting both my individualism and 'the group', even if 'the group' might not return the same respect. I want to help the 'group', after all. I don't desire to be alone. Just to be accepted, and others who also are different.
People like me and other 'outsiders' are important for the healthy development of our species or other intelligent life. That gives me relief from the loneliness that I often feel, by being so 'different'.
If you can't control yourself to stay in strictly technical subjects or not comment at all don't use twitter. It does nothing to you, it doesn't improve your communication with people and participating in discussions doesn't improve your knowledge either. Speak with private DMs or anonymously. You can never be sure which tweet you made will be targeted.
I just use it as another RSS feed replacement but for actual people instead of sites. Reddit and HN are aggregators for sites.
Never comment on anything non-technical. There's just no reason to.
Something similar happened to me based on false accusations.
Lately I've started thinking about the current mob justice compared to the protests against police brutality. Logically they are no different.
Both are situations with a skewed power dynamic where innocent people can be harmed.
Often both camps are comprised of the same people who act as judge, jury, and executioner.
That kind of justice goes against what I believe western justice should be about.
For some, the judgement phase lasts much longer than 8 minutes and 46 seconds too...
If you think 'innocence' matters you are part of the problem.
All internet mob's need to be stopped.
I think this author is part of the problem. It's possible they are trying a tactic of gradually disarming the internet mobs, but it doesn't feel that way.
Ok, so the HN consensus is that mob justice is bad. Great, excellent affirmation of a nearly tautological statement. Mob justice can never actually be just, except by accident.
What's more interesting to me, and a problem more befitting the intellectual horsepower of folks here, is: what are the sociological causes of this behavior? And what realistic mechanisms or release valves could we put in place so people either didn't feel the need to do this, or when they did, the ways in which we could ensure justice apart and aside from online bandwagoning?
This is a broad and complex topic. I don't claim to have any answers. But I think there are some interesting questions:
1. To what extent does this dynamic align with the political spectrum? If it doesn't align with the obvious left/right dynamic, is another way we can identify those who think it's acceptable vs. those who don't, so we can pursue appropriate policies?
2. To what extent is online outrage driven by systemic factors that prevent injustice from being addressed by other means? Arguably, the impetus behind the #metoo or #blacklivesmatter movements is the fact that the status quo systems are inherently weighted in favor of bad actors. The online bandwagon angle would likely not exist if victims felt they had any other meaningful recourse. Indeed, that's the whole point.
3. Free association is also A Thing. Shouldn't we be free to disassociate ourselves from those whose views we find distasteful, and (due to freedom of speech) encourage others to do the same? And how is this different (or the same) than an internet bandwagon?
4. Is there a difference between bandwagon driven by a (misguided or not) desire for justice, and pure spiteful trolling? Undoubtedly, both exist. But can we make a distinction without making a value judgement between various sociopolitical positions?
5. Where does online behavior "cross the line"? Is near-universal criticism and reprobation itself problematic? Or does it only become a problem when it becomes targeted harassment? Or when the harassment begins to extend from the internet to the real world (doxxing) or involve actual crimes (swatting)? What happens when a concerned entity (e.g) an employer take entirely legitimate action (firing a racist employee), but which they would not have otherwise taken?
It's not enough to rail against the dynamic. We need to seriously grapple with all the individual factors that go into it. Because (hopefully) the internet and freedom of speech on the internet is here to stay. Reductive approaches only serve you to shove you into one camp or the other. How can we try and figure out how to make this very new informational landscape both sustainable and just?
Those are all excellent questions, and I've very tempted to discuss them. But on the other hand, I didn't get much sleep last night, and I'm tired.
Also, in any case, I doubt seriously that any of that discussion will have any impact on the current situation.
My solution (which I admit is easier for an old ~retired guy like me) is to avoid attracting attention in meatspace. I have no social media presence, in part to avoid attracting attention from my past activities. Hopefully most of my old associates think that I'm dead ;) And now that we're all wearing masks, being ~anonymous is much easier.
I'm quite active online, however. As Mirimir and other personas. But there are absolutely no links to my meatspace persona.
So anyway, regarding "freedom of speech on the internet", ~anonymity and compartmentalization are essential.
I was just talking to some folks about how it's hard to move forward on this subject until we can at least agree on #2.
I stated it differently though, in regards to how the system itself isn't currently equipped to handle it.
And for #3 and #5 I wouldn't want someone to to be criminally liable for being a "creep", but also, that they could be fired for it. Especially if it made their coworkers uncomfortable.
This should be at the top of every post about “cancel culture.” It’s a complex, gradated phenomenon that sits at the intersection of a bunch of sociological, technological, and political forces, and can hardly be dismissed with a cute moniker and a tepid call to action.
I'm also very interested in how design decisions for social networks lead to emergent "modes" of interaction. Such factors include:
* Global by default communication
* Threaded vs. linear discussion
* Likes, reactions, and "boosting" (related to above)
* Easily forwardable/repostable content
* Anonymity and pseudo-anonymity
* Always-available communication (including photo and video)
* Moderation
In terms of controversy, in-person interactions have a natural dampening effect: if you have (for example) some crappy opinions that aren't shared by your peer group, not only are they unlikely to escape that social circle, but the tone and content of your conversations (plus other cues such as body language) might steer you in the right direction over time. On the other end of the spectrum, "global" interactions (public, threaded, boostable, relayable) can reach all of humanity in an instant, but often at the expense of the individual. Justice may be served, but the offender is crushed in the process. (Justice, as you point out, that might have never been served otherwise, as in the case of MeToo or BLM.)
Some people can't see the difference between these two modes: they post on Twitter as if they were still the first mode, only to find out that they were in the second. (That is, they were actually professing Their Ideas from a global podium.) Or maybe they want to "poke the bear" without realizing how massive that bear actually is.
It obviously goes the other way, too: a "good cop" in a bad department will find their idealism ground down over time, and terrible ideas (QAnon, climate change denial) can spread like wildfire over Twitter and Facebook.
I don't know if I have much of a point to make. I very much recognize how "global" mediums can be a force for positive change in the world, including "cancel culture." But I also miss my teenage years, when my friends and I would have endless discussions on a simple ProBoards instance, helping each other make sense of the world as the years went on. Part of me wants to go back to an internet built up of small communities and linear discussions, but social media is pushing in the opposite direction. Would the former result in a bunch of nasty echo chambers littering the web? Will the latter sap social interaction of all context and humanity, leaving only ideas and soap boxes vaguely tied to avatars? Why do so many of us consider Twitter and Facebook a "default" medium of social interaction when their impact can be so globally powerful?
> In general, the victim of a struggle session was forced to admit various crimes before a crowd of people who would verbally and physically abuse the victim until he or she confessed. Struggle sessions were often held at the workplace of the accused, but they were sometimes conducted in sports stadiums where large crowds would gather if the target was well-known.
This is very strange logic. You would think someone who is capable of rape would want less police so they would get away with it. Sounds like this guy just made up an excuse to rape someone. You don't just wake up one day and decide that rape is an option.
The police almost never prosecute rape, as a crime. When they do, it is an incredible ordeal for the victim, who is forced to replay the incident multiple times to convince the appropriate authorities it actually happened.
If you believe "the police" are a major obstacle to rape, then I encourage you to actually read the accounts of victims and see if that reflects their experience.
Rape prosecutions are often difficult, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a DA who would not bring charges if they thought they had any chance at a conviction.
In military courts prosecution is mandated by law and minimum charges and sentences are set by federal law.
> You would think someone who is capable of rape would want less police
Well, that's certainly not the case for the people who have use the badge as a tool to rape, especially particularly vulnerable populations, with impunity.
That would be pretty ludicrous, if true. You sure you're ready to say that? I mean, even if they were being totally cynical about it, it would be in their interests to find the culprit.
The police intentionally leaked the councilwomen's address online in retribution. Maybe they didn't expect a rape, but I bet the assaulter thought they wouldn't mind.
The previous comment said something to the affect of how the US destroyed the USSR but the problems you mentioned are all problems that are "internal" to a nation. I don't see where the jump was made to talking about individuals vs the internal problems that plagued the USSR.
Maybe I understood it wrong because they said "mindset" instead of "internal".
To me, seeding ideas is internal to the people and society leading to chaos, as compared to external and physical forces like starvation, oppression and lack of infrastructure.
Western propaganda infected minds of USSR citizens with western values. They thought that capitalism would fix their problems, they thought that Coca Cola and Mac Donalds are better than their national drinks and foods, they thought that jeans are superior to their pants. Also I think that US intelligence service funded national revolts in some republics which further undermined an Union and eventually led to its collapse and people were OK with that, because they thought that better future awaits. It was all lies. US bought Gorbachev as well, though that's a different matter, I guess.
One might interpret the yearning for prosperity, personal freedom and generally capitalist values as a toxic mindset. That then leads to unrest in the population, bringing down the government.
But while all that might have been a factor in the downfall of the USSR, I think other factors have been far more important.
Your arrow of causation is pointing in the wrong direction.
At the time, intellectuals in the US believed (and many still believe) that Communism(or whatever you call the economic system that was practiced in the USSR) is the superior economic system.
The USSR rotted from within due to fundamental economic problems like the principal agent problem[1] and the economic calculation problem[2].
The US didn't really have much to do with it, with the possible exception of "forcing" the USSR to spend a lot of resources it didn't have on weapons and space flight.
You're conflating "intellectuals" with "academic professors". Communism has been quite popular with college-bound academics for a long time, especially in professors in non-STEM fields, and especially in professors teaching undergrads. But the popularity wanes as people move away from college campuses and into other sectors.
In any other instance, if you described a certain adult as a person who, as they got older, continually hung out with 18-21 year olds, that fact would lend less credence to their viewpoints, not more.
Yeah you don't see them rounding people up in camps either. There are other Nazi-style tactics in the ol' Nazi toolbag. For example, taking a complex problem for which nobody is truly able to attribute a simple cause, and saying, But _I_ know why it's happening, I know who's responsible... AND THERE THEY ARE / THERE'S ONE OF 'EM NOW! That's a Nazi tactic.
What about all the "mob justice" that the internet has prevented? People have been forming ad hoc possies to dish out street justice for thousands of years. In the past, local authorities controlled all the information. Any civil or religious leader could leverage this control to whip up a local mob and do some real damage. Book burnings, witch trials, lynchings, pogroms... they all involve low-information people being enticed by a higher-information leader with a bone to pick.
Sure, some internet-based conspiracies have lead to mob violence (5G, pizzagate etc). But how many crazy theories have been put down now that we can all check basic facts on our phones? Mayan end of the word? An asteroid on its way? Satanic cults murdering children in daycares. Orson Wells would have a much more difficult time convincing people that aliens have landed now that radio isn't the only form of real time information. At lease it is now possible to fact check the radio. While conspiracies are now more national in scope and more easily witnessed thanks to the internet, the net result imho is that fewer people are coming to actual physical harm.
I think you're observing the pattern backwards. False rumors like the Orson Welles alien thing didn't go away - they're just so common that they're no longer worthy of note. If you made a full-time job of it, I bet you could find a false rumor with >10k tweets about it every day.
>But how many crazy theories have been put down now that we can all check basic facts on our phones?
Probably close to none.
>Mayan end of the word?
Plenty of people believed in that. Hell, one of the conspiracy theories around the Mandela Effect is that 2012 happened and everyone got pushed into the current universe when it did. Oh yeah, and the Mandela Effect itself. The only reason that blew up is because of an internet meme, and the internet's ability to create reality bubbles around people is the only reason it's as big as it is. The internet is the reason millions of people literally believe their false memories are the result of interdimensional leakage.
>An asteroid on its way?
We never even notice those until it's too late, so the ones we know about get reported on in the news, but speaking of that, plenty of people still think Oumuamua was a spaceship.
>Orsen Wells would have a much more difficult time convincing people that aliens have landed now that radio isn't the only form of real time information.
Far, far more people believe aliens have landed, now, than did in Wells' time. They believe reptoids wearing human skinsuits control the world. They believe the universe is a computer simulation and that most of the people around them are NPCs. They believe grey fetus-monsters suck people up into spaceships with orange beams and mess with their genitals. They believe the world is flat and all of the airlines secretly know about it, and they project holograms outside of the windows to fool passengers. They believe we never went to the moon, because obviously we'd hit the crystal spheres if we tried. They believe COVID-19 is a globalist population-control experiment, and that Madonna spilled the beans on the plan last year in Illuminati code.
You think it's hard to convince people of stupid things nowadays? Calls to poison control centers spiked after the President of the United States suggested (jokingly, allegedly) that injecting disinfectants might be a cure for coronavirus. People heard that and immediately started drinking bleach.
>While conspiracies are now more national in scope and more easily witnessed thanks to the internet, the net result imho is that fewer people are coming to actual physical harm.
Give it time. That guy who stormed the pizza parlor armed to free the nonexistent child sex slaves in the nonexistent basement comes to mind. True, no one came to physical harm in that case, but that was only by luck. Reddit and /pol/ are inspiring mass shooters. COVID denialists are threatening people in the streets at gunpoint. If anything, conspiracy-inspired violence seems on a slow upward curve.
The internet mob doesn't need any help from the justice system beyond maybe a little swatting. The rest just works by threatening friends, family, employer and the rest of a victims social circle. That usually suffices to destroy a person's life thoroughly.
Harassment is bad, but judges and jurors already face harassment from offline mobs, including many within living memory who actively wanted to murder them. The system's generally robust against that kind of thing.
Media have also been doing similar for a long time in search of sensationalist stories that drum up outrage.
For example, the story a few days ago about the white couple in Lake Orion who pointed guns at a black family. The couple were vilified in the press and implications of racism were made.
The couple has been charged and in my opinion (and presumably of the law) they were too quick to pull their (legally carried) guns out, and they will have to answer for this and the man was fired from his job. However watching the full video tells a very different story then
the headlines implied.
The husband getting fired is extremely disturbing and the most fucked up thing about the entire situation.
There was another one recently where a middle eastern grocery store in the US had their lease pulled because of tweets by the owner’s teenage daughter.
Mob justice is bad, but mob justice against people simply for association is terrifying.
Ask HN: Will you allow your children to have social media associated with their real name?
Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but sometimes the evidence is just overwhelming. If you are doing something wrong on camera, and it is very easy to positively identify you and what you are doing, you are very likely to be guilty.
However:
1) Mobs are not perfect at positively identifying people. And once an identification mistake happens, it propagates quickly.
2) Mobs jump to conclusions very fast. If you see a bruised person claiming to have been beaten, people take for granted that it happened, and that is the wrong mindset.
I am not a MAGA person but a clear example of this was the January 2019 Lincoln Memorial Confrontation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2019_Lincoln_Memorial_...) where things were taken out of context to a ridiculous extent, and there were mobs on every social network trying to dox the kid that was literally doing nothing.
In an internet mob you can remain anonymous, you don't need to actually carry out any of the threats you make (others may do it for you, eg calling for somebody to be fired), and you aren't risk any of your own reputation.
I absolutely loath seeing mainstream media write about what happens on twitter/social media. It magnifies the mob far beyond reason. "Twttier in an outrage", "Internet blows up" it's just insane. Not only does it give the impression that vast majority of users on a platform are on the same side (they're not), it gives them pseudo-credibility. And unfortunately, the next step is for corporations to take them seriously.
The more I see these stories and see how social media has shaped and is shaping the 21st century, the more I wish it was never created. It was fun at first. But the dark side of humanity has been given a power it should never have had.