Matz: We are mere mortals

I think this might be a mischaracterisation. Rails merged with Merb because they were accepting of new ideas, and didn't see the point of 2 groups wasting their time implementing the same kinds of stuff.

Rails is an opinionated framework in that it has strong opinions for what the default configuration should be. They realise it can't be general purpose and stay as effective. But if you're doing CRUD apps, on the web, those defaults save you a bunch of time.

That's not hostile to differing ideas, it's just saying that some ideas don't belong in rails or rails itself becomes less good.

I think it's strongly related, although I would take a different interpretation (also purely speculative of course).

The fundamental issue here is the asymmetrical one-to-many connection, where "many" is basically "gigantic anonymous blob". This creates an enormous power imbalance - not to mention makes it almost impossible for the lone individual on one side to manage the blob on the other, since it only takes a few rotten apples to completely ruin your day.

Becoming more blunt, rude or even toxic in response is basically a form of self-defense. It is a way of setting boundaries, of pushing back. In some sense it might work because it can even out the power imbalance in that one-to-many connection, at a cost of course (and it probably doesn't matter much whether or not the person already had that attitude to begin with - the result is the same).

> How does this tie in with Linus Torvalds, who himself is accused of being toxic and rude?

My kitchen sink psychology take on this would be that sometimes doing something unnice can emotionally compensate for being on the receiving end of un-niceness. You see this a lot in online games where nice players will grief from time to time after they have been griefed. Linus gets a lot of public and presumably also private criticism for basically everything he does, and writing a rude mail every couple weeks may compensate.

That being said I personally have written some (in my perception) rude mails and almost always regretted it, apologizing in some cases even.

With that in mind I don't envy anyone whose name is prominently associated with a popular open source project. I wouldn't want to be in their skin.

It's a fact that he chose the style on purpose because the diplomatic/nice approach failed horribly at least once.

I don't see any toxicity in that post either. Frustration, sure.

I see what you're getting at. I took the question as being "on whom does the responsibility lie," which I would place with the individual. Anonymity does certainly contribute, but I'd still say that an individual can choose to contribute positively or negatively regardless of the medium.

I get frustrated at times, but still never go on any twitter/social rants. I hate to break it to you, but the platform is merely allowing every individual to behave as they please. There are plenty of folks who never have their worst brought out.

Some changes simply have to be accepted by the participants en masse and implemented by them manually, and any engineering to try to force such a change generally will fail catastrophically. It's not by accident or mistake that there are no happy, prosperous oppressive police states. Society must determine its own culture, and if that's 'too messy' for those building technology, the consequences will be dire and perhaps they should have not chosen humans as their target audience.

Does it bring out the worst in us, or just make it a bit more public facing?

With random anonymous users, it's obviously hard to tell. And somebody using a dozen different accounts to evade blocks is at minimum using Twitter as a force multiplier for their terribleness. But as far as actually bringing out the worst in us? The people I've known in person who say awful stuff on Twitter are awful in meatspace too. The minor celebrities who spew hate and harass strangers on Twitter are generally also known for mistreated employees, failed partnerships, and speedy breakups.

This is something that's on my mind a lot as we talk about tech ethics. Whether it's Twitter driving harassment or Facebook driving depression, or even Cambridge Analytica manipulating specific voter segments, I think we underestimate the likelihood of "this always happened, but now it's online". Before Twitter, people were harassed in person or by phone. Before Facebook, depressed people still picked low-intensity pasttimes and felt bad about comparisons to their friends. And before Cambridge Analytica, Viguerie was using near-identical tactics by mail.

I think we agree more than disagree -- I believe the blame for abuse should go on the abuser. I think (you can correct me if I'm wrong) that you want to have the discussion "given there are abusers, what should a platform do about it?"

Would an optimally designed platform handle abuse better than Twitter (or Reddit, or the like)? Absolutely. I also don't think that that absolves anyone of the responsibility to engage in civil discourse rather than uncivil.

If you have any evidence that suggest that anonymity doesn't amplify harmful behaviors in people predisposed to them, I'd love to see it. But my long anecdotal experience says otherwise. As does internet lore [1] and a number of studies. [2]

[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

[2] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/who-is-that-th...

Imagine if everywhere you went in life there was a handful of people talking shit about you and calling you names.

Everywhere.

All the time.

Anytime you're around other people, at least two of them will be loudmouth assholes to you. Relentlessly so.

You really can't see how that would get to you eventually?

And it puts the onus on the recipient of the abuse for change rather than the source of the abuse.