Comment by rl3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rl3 | Hacker News Reader

YC Research project idea: Figuring out how to throw a wrench in the cogs of internet mob mentality and hypersensitivity.

There's a few ways to go about this, and some are beautiful.

One idea would be to create an entire network of fake professional personas, build social media presences for them, and eventually have them say something carefully crafted to both be perfectly defensible yet enough to draw the ire of the internet outrage machine. Then, have them be fake-fired much to the angry mob's satisfaction.

After this goes on for a while, conduct some data analysis, permanently naming and shaming everyone stupid enough to righteously attack and ruin the life of a fictitious persona.

The chilling effect is then reversed: engaging in vicious mob mentality against complete strangers might just earn them a higher ranking on the dumbass list.

The 2.0 version will then be employed by governments to silence dissent by bleeding the energy of movements before they happen.

It's a tool that cuts all ways. There's nothing in a 'positive' social movement - however defined - that makes it less vulnerable to this sort of baiting than a 'negative' one, because it's an exploit on a close-to-universal personality flaw.

>The 2.0 version will then be employed by governments to silence dissent by bleeding the energy of movements before they happen.

Governments are already adept at sabotaging movements if they so desire.

I agree with you though, it's probably not the best idea.

The Black Mirror episode "Hated in the Nation" explores a similar idea.

I watched that episode just now after your mention of it. It was quite good.

At least in my version, the victims are complete fiction. The end result would amount to merely punking half of the internet. Fortunately, it also lacked all the terrible things I can't mention due to spoilers. :)

I've this pet theory which surmises that when you try to effect change, the efficiency of the effort is inversely proportional to any resulting negativity. Thus, anything that garners any negativity at all is probably a bad idea.

Realistically, counteracting mob mentality will come down to boring things like rethinking social media architecture to account for human nature.

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