A Small Town in the Philippines Banned Gossip | Hacker News Reader

A Small Town in the Philippines Banned Gossip

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At a small enough level, you can maintain standards of conduct that are civil and fair. Once you reach a certain size, you lose the cohesion and accountability that makes someone feel like they need to be civil. Maybe part of solving that problem is making everyone part of a group where they are accountable and then making that group accountable to a larger group and so on until the largest group is accountable to society as a whole.

Some organized crime groups work this way as a way of controlling the incidence of violence, but the bonds between the members is stronger, in some sense than the bonds between casual acquaintances in the groups we form on a day-to-day basis.

I was thinking about how Facebook and YouTube are delisting and otherwise punishing creators of “fake news” and while it certainly seems a way of punishing and silencing unpopular thoughts and opinions, I do wonder whether a tightly controlled Facebook is the solution to society’s ills. I see people on Twitter being defamed for their speech or actions and I wonder if that is where we start to get our accountability back at a societal level? Where else do we have a group where everyone can be held accountable?

You mean like a government?

Not like a government. Unless you mean to make unpopular speech illegal.

What I am referring to is a group that makes people accountable for behavior that is legal by the definition of the law, but is otherwise considered anti-social and should be discouraged through shaming or loss of status.

That group already exists, it's called "everyone," and their past efforts all Twitter harassment.

“Everyone” is too large of a group. And way too anonymous. The group would be one in which you value your membership and the opinion of others.

In the past, it would have been a church, a social club, or in a small town, the town itself.

The original comment starts with "At a small enough level". It seems tautological that "everyone" wouldn't meet this level.

"At a small enough level", though you didn't seem to read the actual comment before you spit out this statement.

I think the concept you're reaching for is mob-rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochlocracy

> At a small enough level, you can maintain standards of conduct that are civil and fair. Once you reach a certain size, you lose the cohesion and accountability that makes someone feel like they need to be civil. Maybe part of solving that problem is making everyone part of a group where they are accountable and then making that group accountable to a larger group and so on until the largest group is accountable to society as a whole.

Japan seems to be a place that has largely accomplished this. It's a slightly different topic, but this short video outlines four reasons social cohesion is breaking down in first world nations, and a few of the ways in which Japan (at 4:55) is distinctly different:

Trump’s not the problem. He’s a symbol of 4 bigger issues. | Ian Bremmer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hESLPB3FiyY

Another link that seems relevant to the topic:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/04/wh...

> Patrick Bergemann, Judge Thy Neighbor: Denunciations in the Spanish Inquisition, Romanov Russia, and Nazi Germany. A very specific, useful, and interesting account of actual denunciation practices during the above-mentioned episodes. During the Inquisition, there was general immunity given to most denouncers, you can imagine the resulting incentives. This book is becoming more relevant than it ought to be.

It's a shame reasonable perspectives rarely appear in the mainstream media, I often wonder if that is accidental.

>It's a shame reasonable perspectives rarely appear in the mainstream media...

Problem is, what's "reasonable" is completely different to a lot of people. FOX News is "reasonable" to some people, CNN is "reasonable" to others, and still others swear by the BBC. (And then you have that pitifully small group of people who watch CSPAN, and might actually be argued to be the most "reasonable" in the classic sense of the word.)

BTW, Japan's social cohesion is falling apart just like everyone else'. So even your initial point is a bit suspect. (Unless you feel things like masses of old people dying alone, unwanted and even undiscovered is a sign of great social cohesion. But even if you do hold such a belief, a contemplative individual would likely not be faulted for disagreeing.)

In a modern world, in modern societies, social cohesion just tends to fall apart. Modern societies are set up to be convenient, and when the efficiencies offered by these conveniences exceed the benefits offered by social cohesion, people, understandably, choose convenience.

It's really just human nature. I don't know how we get around it, I just know that it manifests itself all over the globe. As political strife in the EU and US, as strongman leadership in places like Russia and the Philippines, and as some rather horrible social norms that are developing in places like Japan.

> BTW, Japan's social cohesion is falling apart just like everyone else'. So even your initial point is a bit suspect.

When you say "falling" apart, what do you mean exactly? Declining? Is it falling apart to the same degree that cohesion is falling apart in Western first world nations?

> Unless you feel things like masses of old people dying alone, unwanted and even undiscovered is a sign of great social cohesion.

Ian Bremmer uses four specific dimensions of evaluation to substantiate his case. Your example uses one, but is " "masses" of old people "dying alone" " both an accurate description of current Japanese society (what is the actual degree of change in this respect over time), and caused by "social cohesion falling apart"? Demographics and the rising tendency for offspring to move away from family (in this case, it introduces complexity into what the word "alone" really means) seem like they play a substantial part as well. Epistemologically, I wonder if there's anyone who really has a good idea.

> In a modern world, in modern societies, social cohesion just tends to fall apart....It's really just human nature.

I wholeheartedly agree that this is the overwhelming norm in most modern societies, but I disagree with "it's just human nature" so will continue to agree with Ian Bremmer for the time being. I think it is largely a function of the kind of societies we choose to build, often optimizing for GDP growth with little respect for the often nuanced qualitative effects this has on our societies.

Sponsored by the Charles Koch foundation.

And therefore wrong?

I actually thought of adding a trigger warning for the sponsor but then decided against it for being too cynical.

> Maybe part of solving that problem is making everyone part of a group where they are accountable and then making that group accountable to a larger group and so on until the largest group is accountable to society as a whole.

> [...]

> Where else do we have a group where everyone can be held accountable?

Churches.

They have their problems, but when you hear conservatives lament the breakdown in organized religion, what they're upset about is the breakdown in that system of tiered social pressures and expectations.

I don't know how to reinvent that in a more egalitarian way -- or any way that avoids the problems organized religion (and plenty of other large organizations) have had.

We need more community events, but politicians like to pretend like having some festival is the end of the world and the worst possible wastage of money and employers like to pretend getting vacation time so you can enjoy those events is some ridiculous notion to even entertain.

I've typically been in support of moderating speech, but it's an easy thing to support when I'm in the large majority for whom it favours. At the same time this is only to a point: burning books to silence an opposition, for example, is no good no matter whether that book is Mein Kampf or Harry Potter.

It's harder to apply with social media: deleting the account or the post doesn't delete the person or their audience. In fact, the Streisand effect might even serve to radicalise other people as their controversial statements are broadcasted to a much wider audience to attract that precious ad revenue.

In the UK we have a so-called candidate for the UKIP part who is only serving to gain more notoriety (and therefore fame) as someone who considers talking about whether or not they'd rape someone a way of 'saying it like it is'. For every person who reads about this and becomes outraged about how this person can even be considered a representative of the UK in EU Parliament, there will be just as many who read it and celebrate the man when they had never previously heard of him. I had completely dismissed this so-called Sargon of Akkad for a long time as being irrelevant, until the media made him relevant.

People are still going to be sharing that stuff even when the accounts are banned. There'll be memes and quotes in images and other groups popping up in their wake. I have no idea how you solve this now we are ultimately connected on a global scale.

> I was just repeating something I heard from someone else. I thought it was true. That family has a lot of debts.

Advanced nations have systematized, normalized and sanitized these ancient behaviors to the extent we don't even realize we're doing the same thing on an industrial scale.

How is gossiping about a neighbor's debt morally different than a credit reporting agency?

How is a mining company giving a bag of cash to a provincial governor morally different from campaign contributions from lobbyists?

> How is gossiping about a neighbor's debt morally different than a credit reporting agency?

The problem with this example of gossip (and most gossip, IMO) isn't spreading information about creditworthiness. It's that gossip is unreliable, subject to inaccuracy, has a transmission medium that isn't content-neutral (ie lurid things get spread more often and content gets exaggerated), has no real recourse for the subjects of inaccuracies, doesn't have codified limits on content, etc etc etc. It's a very flawed method of information transmission, even when the transmission of that information is broadly good for society.

I think the credit reporting system as it stands is a huge mess, but there's value in knowing a potential debtor's creditworthiness, and more importantly, the reporting system substantially mitigates most of the issues described above by operationalizing the process. A random person can't easily "start a rumor" about someone's credit history, you can view your report and dispute it, the agencies don't randomly add to the size of your reported debt because it makes a better story, they don't randomly report on things outside of their narrow purview, etc.

> How is a mining company giving a bag of cash to a provincial governor morally different from campaign contributions from lobbyists?

No real disagreement here...

> A random person can't easily "start a rumor" about someone's credit history

I would totally disagree here, a random person can start a rummer about a random person's credit history. People who have come in contact with each other can start rumors about each other's credit history. There's no authentication.

I would argue it's really no different, it's just bigger and most of us just live with it.

I don't understand what you mean. I'm contrasting the credit reporting system with gossip, and saying that one of the differences is that anyone can gossip while only relatively tightly-controlled entities with avenues for recourse can affect your credit score.

Right, I fully understood what you where saying.

> only relatively tightly-controlled entities

As in anyone who can copy a number down? Furthermore the actual credit agencies aren't really well controlled, they're just the big version of that one (or few) person (people) who knows all the gossip.

> avenues for recourse can affect your credit score.

I haven't heard of these and seriously doubt their effectiveness.

Credit can be verified and challenged and corrected.

Gossip cannot.

There was a recent post here regarding someone who was recorded as dead by the credit agencies after the death of their father. In that case it couldn't be corrected in any meaningful sense. Gossip can be corrected, in a meaningful sense, by contacting choice people, and informing them of the correct information. Even if they don't propagate the correction, they themselves will be aware of it and act according to it. This opposed to unthinking credit agencies, liable to unlearn the correction as soon as another credit agencies re-reports the death.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19656322

That doesn't match what people who have had to deal with credit reporting agencies have told me.

Many evolutionary biologists believe that gossip is an evolutionary adaptation. The highest pressure that an individual organism experiences does not come from predators, but rather other individuals of the same species. There is always a struggle for mates, food, resources, space, etc. Even with predators, it is often not whether you can run away from it, but whether you are faster than other members of your species. Coming back to the gossip, it is basically assessment of what others are doing and where you stand. That's why gossip is so interesting for so many people, and that's why we gossip, why we have all these magazines, and all these reality shows. In some way, even fiction and drama is a sort of gossip, where we watch what happens to others and evaluate it from our own perspective.

How much would you like to bet that this became a thing because a city official didn't like a rumor spreading about them?

How much would you like to bet that that rumor was true?

Gossip, the lowest form of human interaction and yet most find it a reasonable way to get by in life. It's not laws that have to fix this, but people themselves have to figure out the value of self-respect.

How do you define what is threshold of reasonable chat on other people? How much proof do you need? Do you allow more leeway for public persons? Or do you want people to stop talking about other people altogether?

It's easier to judge others actions than it is to take responsibility for your own. That's all I am saying.

I always had your knee-jerk reaction to gossip, but after reading "How the mind works" by Steven Pinker I had to rethink my stance. I think I've been too influenced by sayings such as "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people". What Pinker argues is that gossip is a very important activity, it helps us learn more about our world, the social structures within it, and more importantly: who is trustworthy? Let's say A gossips to me about B (saying something bad). If another person C corroborates the character of B with their own experience, I can reasonably assume B is a bad actor. If C doesn't corroborate then perhaps A is the bad actor, spreading false rumours. Either way I've gained information. During our evolutionary history, learning who is trustworthy and who is not would be the difference between life and death. Just because we are far removed from lethal consequences in today's society doesn't mean gossip is any less useful. It can help you figure out if you should trust your business partner, invest in someone's business or provide a personal loan etc.

> If C doesn't corroborate then perhaps A is the bad actor, spreading false rumours.

The problem: you always suspect B of being a bad actor and maybe A. How long is enough for C to have completed his non-corroboration period?

Gossip destroys relationships with suspicion at every turn.

ETA: please don't take this as an endorsement of gossip being a criminal offense in the Philippines.

I don't think this argument makes sense. The information gossip provides is probabilistic rather than binary. You never really get a "true" answer, but that's the point -- it's just a signal. Suspicions are not created equal; perhaps a major, corroborated, founded suspicion could destroy relationships where a minor one may not.

I think it is worth noting that the word gossip has been painted with negative connotation in our society.

The moment humans realized that the world is full of information asymmetry and unknowns, they started to gossip. Gossip is a tool to transfer knowledge of others/things to someone who may not have the means to confirm it themselves. In theory, a private reference from a friend to a potential employer about you is gossip (E.g. @ARandomerDude is a trustworthy individual, you should hire him) even thought your friend may not have a full picture of who you are.

I believe (personally) that gossip is only things you would not say (or would say considerably different) when the gossiped-about-person is there to overhear it.

Also in "Sapiens", Yuval Noah Harari argues about the importance of gossip to form larger societies.

Just another confirmation the Philippines has descended into fascism.

I'd be much more afraid of a government cracking down on gossip than a little gossip...

thats not gonna happen

It's rare that I get to quote Atlas Shrugged so I'll just leave this below:

> There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

What's even more worrying in my opinion from the article:

- references to Puritanical punishment seemingly framed in a positive light

- citing of the linguistic/anthropological context of gossip without much further qualification

- the Binaloan authorities' clear lack of understanding of what merits free speech

- the mention of this law being beneficial to upcoming political candidates (of whom public discussion should be encouraged)

>It's rare that I get to quote Atlas Shrugged

I mean there's not really anything applicable in the book to reality or how people act.

> There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.

This starts with a false premise that is so broad its hard to take seriously. Well run government can do a lot for innocent people.

Well of course, it's Rand.

While I'm no fan of Rand, I think 'rule' here is meant as control and coerce, not normal beneficial government stuff. Viewed in that light, the quote makes sense - you can't get someone to inform on their friends by offering a mere tax break. But if you threaten them with jail time for some 'crime', they'll be much more cooperative.

>There's no way to rule innocent men.

This is pretty silly.

I hear it’s because of what the mayor did.

There is a paywall.

But, If the town actually tried to ban gossip, it's essentially a ban on the freedom of speech.

I'm not sure how that would be enforced anyway. You aren't allowed to talk about anything besides yourself?

God bless the United States of America.

Sometimes I feel like creating a chrome plugin that hides pay wall sites in hn.

Since I couldn't read it. Yikes how do the police handle a report of gossip... You get arrested and then what? Let's say you decide to keep gossiping, 3 strikes and they treat you like a drug dealer I bet.

Why not tweak the tool to modify the links into outline links?

I don't support this specific law, since "gossip" is a nebulous term. That said, the idea is pretty intriguing. I suspect that society would be far better off if the deliberate authoring and spread of misinformation, were made illegal. There would have to be a stupidity-waiver; anyone dumb enough to actually believe in something like Flat-Earth should be allowed to espouse it all they want. But anyone who willfully lies about witnessing things that never happened, or claims possession of evidence that they do not actually possess, should face charges for the deliberate spread of misinformation.

This is a bad idea because of the chilling effect it has on unpopular ideas and information. This is especially chilling to scrutinization of long held falsehoods.

I'm thinking of all the "facts" I was taught in school that turned out to be flat wrong.

Such as?

Pluto being a planet lol

Tastebuds. The big crunch.

That the US is a wonderful nation that never did any wrong and never helped dictatorships rise to power in it’s decades long fight against the Soviet Union.

Margarine was healthier than butter. I sure regret following that "fact".

Many countries have successfully enforced laws against libel and slander without infringing on people's ability to espouse genuinely held beliefs, and challenge popular persons/organizations. I fail to see why this is any different.

So then what's being suggested here if those laws already exist? I inferred that the suggestion is to go much further.

Libel and slander laws are only applicable in cases where specific persons can show that it caused them tangible and personal damage. My suggestion is to eliminate the above additional requirement.

If you're in favor of existing slander/libel laws, then you've already trusted the legal system to distinguish between merely unpopular opinions, and willful misinformation. This renders your previous objection moot.

If spreading falsehoods is actually punished, informal social networks might not have enough raw material to work with to maintain their structure.

I suspect spreading nonsense is like regular exercise for social groups, helping them remain fit in case they need to be put to use for some real purpose (like, say, unseating the mayor in a scandal).

>I suspect that society would be far better off if the deliberate authoring and spread of misinformation, were made illegal.

Who defines "misinformation", and who categorizes "deliberate"?

Duterte.

Many countries already have laws against libel and slander. This isn't something new.

Yes, and I have the same sorts of worries about those laws as well.

> But anyone who willfully lies about witnessing things that never happened, or claims possession of evidence that they do not actually possess, should face charges for the deliberate spread of misinformation.

I had a vision last night in which a large avian diety wearing a tophat informed me of the true nature of existance as well as nuanced details about your private thoughts and secret behaviors.

If I share these details with others, who is the authority responsible for determining their truthiness, or wether or not my subjective experience did indeed happen?

> who is the authority responsible for determining their truthiness

The same authorities who are currently responsible for enforcing laws against libel and slander. Are you also in favor of repealing all such laws?

Gossip, by definition is qualatatively different than libel or slander -- else we wouldn't be having this discussion.

The information I shared in the OP is neither libel or slander, but seems like it would be covered by gossip laws.

( is gossip a sufficiently vague term that this whole debate falls under the modern trope of creating new laws for the purposes of optics, which actually address issues that are already covered by existing legislation? )

Like I mentioned in my original post, I'm not in favor of banning "gossip". I advocated making illegal the deliberate spread of misinformation

The problem with your scheme is who gets to be the arbiter of what is misinformation, stupidity, lies, etc.

Remember what happened to Galileo? Or worse, Tyndale?

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