Designing for evil | Hacker News Reader

Designing for evil

gaijin.com

8 pointskenrick956 comments

Fairly competent article, but it gets bogged down in the Anita Sarkeesian/GG/my face is a pedophile thing. The article could have flowed better if written with the rules for "designing for evil" first and then presenting Sarkeesian as a case study as to why the rules are relevant.

Your strategies for mitigating "evil" can be very effective, and on the whole they look very good. It's worth noting to be careful with concepts like shadowbanning and limiting features as they can disenfranchise your userbase (especially the downright Orwellian "If a new user joins your site and then their first several actions are to browse exclusively female profiles..."). The designer must be careful to avoid implementing authoritarianism.

And I feel I must provide a counterpoint. 4chan has been one of the most creative places on the Internet. Although people are harsh and obtuse, these were often just the appearances they give themselves (considered by most to be a defense mechanism). Furthermore, they have an lgbt board and plenty of women visit the site.[1] The culture and togetherness promoted by the anonymity and freedom of speech are also a powerful force. Not all of your users are evil, not even close; so why must you presume the worst?

The author provides a fairly decent (although somewhat incomplete) guide to designing social systems to allow users to defend themselves. The guide is there, although the reader must avoid the ranting to learn anything of consequence. 7/10, it wasn't a waste of time.

[1]: http://tenaflyviper.tumblr.com/post/91205424710/pokemoneggs-...

My take is that part of reason the article comes off as more than a rehash of someone else's thoughts is that the author uses their story to establish credible experience with the subject and for the reader to evaluate their own experience relative to the author's. That scale provides some readers insight into Sarkeesian's experience that would not have been possible with a simple binary representation.

Creating a better understanding the potential scale of the problem is, in my opinion, a key supporting element for the author's argument that developers should treat the potential for "evil" very seriously. It makes the list of strategies, not just another list of strategies on the internet. It anchors them viscerally.

YMMV.

A conversation with a friend a few months ago:

"So-and-so is coming to speak at my university, but there was a bomb threat."

"What?"

"Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I think her talk is going to go on anyway, though."

"Can't the FBI do something?"

"Not really."

Apparently stuff like this happens a lot. It wasn't till then that it sunk in how pervasive the problem is. The bomb threat was apparently due to the speaker's public remarks about gamergate.

I don't know. Bad situation all around.

I truly have no intention of sounding callous here, but aren't the words of trolls just... words?

The concern about trolling doesn't make any sense to me... is this simply because I predate the social justice generation? Why would I care what some random troll says or thinks?

Sticks and stones may break my bones?

Again, I intend no offense.

I also used to think like this. But some people can take those trolls personally.

Aaaaaand downtime

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