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Comment by vhakulinen | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone else ever wondered how some of the numbers about internet compares to a real world? Like,

* "2.6 million tweets contained anti-Semitic speech during the US presidential election" - how many conversations there where, in real word, about the same topic and contained anti-Semitic speech?

* "26% of American users are victims of internet trolling" - how many are victims of trolling in real word? Or in schools?

* "40% of internet users have been harassed online" - how many persons have been harassed at work places? Bars?

* Governments under cyber attack? How many of them are targets of espionage? Or have many companies are targets of espionage?

I'm not saying that these are not bad things, nor that those shouldn't be addressed - I'm just wondering if these things are as bad as they might seem to be, when compared to "the real world".

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I took that to be the point -- we tend to be at our worst online, thanks to the unique combination of anonymity (I can say whatever I want with as many accounts as I want, without meaningful consequences) and absence of social cues (there's nobody around me, so I have no incentive to soften my language or weaken my opinions).

In other words, the way we talk online is not normal. Even outside of the free speech debate, it's worth noting that.

You can see the same effects of anonymity in masses. Say, you are in a concert and the crowd starts to throw tomatoes to the artist for being bad (not that I have ever witnessed such act) - would those that threw a tomato do the same thing if they were alone and had to put a "face" for their own doings (because one can easily identify them)?

This is quite philosophical comparison, but I think its on the point.

You could also see it as the inverse. Online we talk as we really are, saying what we really think, and thus the quality and depth of the discussion will inevitably be higher and deeper than in the 'real world' where we are faced with relentless groupthink, desire to conform, self-censoring to avoid unrelated career blowbacks and so on.

Moreover online people can take the time to write something good (not saying they usually do of course), whereas in-person debates usually suffer from being shallow, filled with interruptions, half baked ideas, people getting artificially upset to try and 'win' and so on.

I'd actually like to see far more experimentation and research in online commenting and discussion forums. There's really been very little movement in this space since CmdrTaco retired.

I’m still here! I wish people would try more crazy stuff. I’d even help brainstorm the crazy!

No way! That's the response I least expected! :)

I'm a huge fan of the work you did on Slashdot and Slashcode back in the day. It's still by far the best thought out moderation system I've seen.

I'd love to see a modern respin of Slashcode that reused and enhanced the moderation ideas. Unfortunately my spare time project slots are all consumed already :(

In what sense is what happens online not part of the real world?

If nobody reads a tweet, did it really happen? If nobody hears me hurl racist abuse at my lawnmower, did it really happen?

> In what sense is what happens online not part of the real world?

This is mainly the reason why the last "real world" was in quotes. When you take statistics of something, you usually want to compare them to something. For me, a natural comparison for internet statistics is some physical places like offices, public streets, schools, bars. "a real world" - I'm not saying that the internet is not part of it.

Righteo, fair enough. Thanks for taking the time to clarify.

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