Internet mob justice can easily destroy innocent lives (2019)
observer.com
observer.com
In an internet mob you can remain anonymous, you don't need to actually carry out any of the threats you make (others may do it for you, eg calling for somebody to be fired), and you aren't risk any of your own reputation.
I absolutely loath seeing mainstream media write about what happens on twitter/social media. It magnifies the mob far beyond reason. "Twttier in an outrage", "Internet blows up" it's just insane. Not only does it give the impression that vast majority of users on a platform are on the same side (they're not), it gives them pseudo-credibility. And unfortunately, the next step is for corporations to take them seriously.
The more I see these stories and see how social media has shaped and is shaping the 21st century, the more I wish it was never created. It was fun at first. But the dark side of humanity has been given a power it should never have had.
> The Santa Hat on vscode insiders and pushing of religion is very offensive to me, additionally xmas has cost millions of Jews their lives over the centuries, yet even if that was not the case, pushing religious symbols as part of a product update is completely unacceptable. Please remove it immediately and make it your top priority. To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87268
I didn't know that Santa Claus was a religious symbol, I celebrate with Santa and I do not affiliate with any religion. But the status quo is to accommodate every single person. People believe they are entitled to it: "Make it your top priority" -- OK boss! There needs to be a balance. Complete stubbornness is not good. Bending over to every single request, regardless of its merit, is not good either.
> The guy isn't real. A quick reverse image search would have shown this guy is also known as "David Shiffer" based in Norway, apparently a CEO of ServiceLayer, yet no mention of him anywhere else on the internet - including LinkedIn (strange for a CEO) and another profile of his linking to a dating site.
Really? That's a bit surprising to me. I mean, Santa Claus is specifically part of a celebration of a Christian holiday, how could it not be a religious symbol?
(This is kind of assuming we're talking about the American-style conception of Santa Claus, I believe other regions use really do use it in a non-religious way, so that could totally be the disconnect.)
Note: the original ticket is ridiculous, or at least the way it is framed. And it seems that it's a troll in the first place, which makes sense.
So, is Santa Claus a religious figure? In as much as traditions, myths and customs often have relations to religion he might be but that is taking the term 'religious figure' too far. The modern-day Santa Claus generally appears at Christmas but even that does not link him to a single religion since the Christmas holiday itself comes from the Germanic Yule - in Swedish Christmas is called 'Jul' and still retains several links to the older Yuletide.
In short, calling Santa Claus 'a religious figure' is incorrect, he is a mythological figure who was assimilated into different traditions over the span of centuries. The American version of Santa Claus - the jolly fat man in red - is more of a commercial figure than anything else.
But I'm not sure that that history is really relevant. Every religious figure or ritual that exists comes from somewhere - most "modern" religions have pagan ancestors. That fact alone doesn't make something a religious figure or not, or we'd basically have to say that almost no figure is a religious.
What matters is the symbol as seen and interacted with today. Just look at the first line of Wikipedia describing Santa Claus (aka Father Christmas in some places):
> Santa Claus, also known as Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, or simply Santa, is a legendary character originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring gifts to the homes of well-behaved children on the night of Christmas Eve (24 December) or during the early morning hours of Christmas Day (25 December).
You can't really say that that isn't tied to Christianity, at least in the US and England.
The entire industry of TV and film has been turned to shit as an endless appeal to that mob that can never be sated on social media.
Advertising plays this shit too
I've thought for a while that non-religiousneess is becoming a religion in its own right.
Certain people on the Internet keep trying to convince me I am right :-)
I don't see how you can come to this conclusion when in the preceding paragraph you accurately portray the mainstream media as the actual manipulators. The media loves to televise drama, it's what sells. When there's no actual drama to be had, they manufacture it by highlight nonsense on social media or other means.
It's all so contrived now. "X say Y on Twitter! Here's a 5 minute diatribe about why that's outrageous with sarcastic analogies and something about true <insert country> values!"
They haven't stopped swimming because of some better alternative. They stopped swimming because swimming conditions have changed and now it is a bad idea.
This story is directly analogous to the scenario described in the comment that started this entire sub-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23743161
If section 230 is repealed and social media becomes too toxic for most people to use, of course people would not stop communicating. The vast majority of human communication doesn't even occur on social media.
> to get rid of social media forever regardless of the other consequences
0: 103% of statistics on the internet are made up.
1: 2+49+245049.
That's assuming the spammers can't figure out how to effectively troll the people who came for the rage bait into propagating their spam, but they can, because spammers are Turing-complete.
Obviously the people who came for the legitimate content will be destroyed. Or take up spamming.
Meanwhile, the EU has much stricter regulations regarding employment and the conditions under which employees can be let go.
But canceling everybody is problematically increasing the number of unreasonable bosses.
I agree that Twitter cancel culture is well out of hand; in fact, I'll go further still and say that the behavior is often not meaningfully distinguishable from 4chan brigading of old. But there should still be a better option for dealing with unreasonable but not actively criminal bosses than getting fired anyway, with the chance of a bare minimum consolation prize.
This said, I totally recognize I'm quite privileged in regard that the industry I'm working in, where business tend to generally value people and such senseless human resource management is typically misaligned with both employee and employers goals (putting it simple, being an asshole doesn't bring any profits). In such circumstances, my personal perception of at-will employment is positive - it makes sense to me that we (employee and employer) cooperate because we like each other, and there's nothing that binds us but our will for a mutually beneficial relationship.
Yet, unfortunately, I know this is not the case for many people but I have no idea what could to be done to fix this. But I suspect that legal protections that prevent firing people at-will are not helping the core issue here.
Also much stricter regulations and norms around when you can leave. In the US, two weeks notice is customary but not legally required in the EU its often a three month contractual obligation. I can't help but think that may contribute to the generally lower salaries in the EU vs the US.
In which country is this? In most places I worked at it's been 4 weeks (and even this is often waived).
I don't know where this is but in my country it's 1 month and most of the time the person leaving still has vacation days to use so they leave much earlier.
Most people just give advanced notice to their employer though, it's just polite.
I am a human and I don't love mobs. This article is all about incorrect assumptions. If I am not mistaken, the parent comment just made another one.
The part about the media amplifying what is on social media I absolutely agree with. I have always thought there is some strange irony in news outlets writing about something that is, at least in the case of newspapers, killing their own business.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/columbus-statue-in-baltimore-to...
Humans love to feel like they belong and they like to feel validated in their opinions. This doesn't always play out in the form of a mob. Even just "ganging up" on a friend in a group conversation is a result of these traits. Mob mentality shows itself in many ways. Perhaps I should've been clearer about mob mentality vs. the classic "mob". What we see happening on social media is I think a result of the majority of humans being susceptible to some form and some degree of mob mentality (groupthink, if you will).
If we think of humans as variable tribalism waveform propagators, then a mob is simply an incidence of intense constructive interference.
Perhaps you emit less tribalism energy than the average human, but it's still possible that in certain scenarios you, like any of us, would contribute to the constructive interference :)
Edit: Hmmm... I think we can actually extend this model by describing social media as a transform on these tribalism emissions that tends to heavily normalize, distort and exaggerate the signal into one of a relatively small set of outputs, thus greatly increasing the odds of constructive interference.
Turns out the driver was shot at the intersection -- twice -- and was injured and was trying to escape with his life.
When the police released the factual statement, it received almost no social media attention compared to the original (and false) accusations.
He had posted a Strava ride of the trail on the 28th, 29th, and 1st. The incident happened on the 30th. To internet detectives, this clearly meant he committed the crime on the 30th, and then deleted that ride from Strava.
It's scary to see how the mob was able to take exonerating evidence (him not riding on the 30th) and spin it to be a smoking gun: An innocent man would not have hidden the ride in question. Nobody even considered the possibility that he wasn't on the trail that day.
The simplified explanation is this: the target of the attack by the group is no longer a person, but merely a target. Group members demonstrate their loyalty to the group by gradually escalating the violence they do to the target.
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That's cool for you, but others obviously disagree with you.
> Society isn't going to work under a standard where people who do bad things can't have jobs anymore.
Or people will change their actions since they want to keep being members of society.
Society is double not going to work under a standard where we don't consider bad people members of society anymore.
Because you're trying to enforce your standard of conduct. That's cool that only technically illegal actions are the standard for you, but it's totally valid for that not to be other's standards.
> Society is double not going to work under a standard where we don't consider bad people members of society anymore.
That's an argument against freedom of association. Why do people get to be free from consequences of not to the point of being illegal actions?
Like that's the nonviolent method of enacting change. If you don't allow it you end up with far worse.
Anyone here to engage in honest rhetorical exchange will have already gotten what they need. You're absolutely right. The true measure of a civilization takes into account the treatment of its least desirable, and given the practices the above poster endorses it is quite clear his concept of a society is one where it is acceptable to violently eject anyone who becomes undesirable at any time, with no consideration or room for forgiveness.
They are the one's demanding you acknowledge their right to engage in social warfare. You've clearly stated your position and rationale behind it. Just move on.
You haven't given any reasons for that other than a vague 'if we hold people accountable for their actions society will break down', when even the US court system doesn't take that view. The legal theory is very much that choices of association by members of our society are the controlling factor for the government not being able make (even abhorrent) political speech illegal.
If your views are so abhorrent that literally no one wants to deal with the fallout of being associated with you, you maybe should have reexamined your views before it got to that point.
Literally every society ever has worked under that rule, although the definition of people bad enough to qualify as excluded, and whether such exclusion was permanent or revocable, has varied.
Today, people are taught that laws are arbitrary and are made and used by the oppressor class to oppress the oppressed classes, and it is the moral mission of the oppressed classes to rise up and seize power so that the laws won't oppress then anymore. Which means that the moral principles are lost, and any weapon that finds its way in the hands of the immiserated proletariat can be legitimately used in the struggle to determine which class writes the laws.
> It's mostly the same people who say "freedom of speech only applies to government censorship".
This is a different issue and is a lot trickier logically. But it essentially is true.
Is everyone in America so ignorant that they don't know what happens when informal social standards become justifications for political suppression based on who the "public" and not the law deems to be "clearly bad" and "objectively horrible" people? You get lynchings and pogroms. You get informal show trials and massacres. You carve the stick that the next batch of self-righteous authoritarians stick up their ass to justify being inhuman, indecent, monsters.
I can already hear the response forming: "But we know that these people exist, are evil, and are harming people now! We have evidence!"
Yeah. That's what they always say.
I could list every group targeted throughout by self-righteous authoritarians through just Western history--Christians, Jews, Manicheans, heretics, lepers, Catholics, Protestants, witches, blacks, anarchists, communists, thugs, Muslims--and always find a justification that began with some variant of "But we have evidence that they were Clearly Bad People!"
All those other Devils were ridiculous, made-up nonsense. But not yours. Your Devil is real.
I have always suspected it has to do with how long we’ve maintained exorbitant privilege. We simply do not look outward, not nearly enough. Here we are marching about the racist police practices of our local cops while we routinely drone bomb innocents and starve children to death with not even a whimper from the same protesters. We fail to see how our treatment of other nations comes back to haunt us as our soldiers and companies bring the horrors of foreign wars back ro our local communities. Americans are so tired and overwhelmed with deceptive media that tells them nothing, that they can’t be bothered to learn the history and the media literacy to understand the division that separates the theater of the moving image from the reality of actual real life.
You take my position and move it forward ten slots toward authoritarianism, without any evidence or defense of your position.
You say that "as soon as the public has a collective moral standard to which they hold the community, you get lynchings". What the fuck? So, we should not have any collective moral standard? We should not have some shared sense of what is right and wrong?
My line, the line that keeps your nightmare from occurring, is very clear: We can have our shared sense of right and wrong, and yes, even shun or be angry at those who don't fit that standard - but those people are defended by the law, and the law grants equal protection to all. Vigilante justice against people is not permitted under the law, and violators will be prosecuted.
Before you tear up my analysis, please give an "affirmative" - that is, give a vision of society and government that fits your worldview without putting it in terms of what I have written.
Articles in particular:
2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion (emphasis mine), national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
29. (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
Whether this dialogue can progress further depends on whether we can agree that, despite having no official jurisdiction, a social media mob attacking an individual constitutes being charged with a criminal and penal offense worthy of legal protections as illuminated by the above. If you believe that it not being formal prosecution that such protections don't extend to the accused, then there's no point in progressing further and I reiterate my original post.
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Your definition of "mob", "attack" both would need examples. In a real world analogy: If someone on my street waves a Nazi flag and says God hates Fags, and our entire community were to shun him, refuse to interact with him, or at times, warn others of his beliefs - do you believe that is a violation of his fundamental human rights? That no person can be shunned or disliked for their beliefs?
I want to be very clear that formal consideration of the UDHR by established authorities is not my contention. If you wanted solely an affirmative vision of an ideal society, then the UDHR is it.
> Your definition of "mob", "attack" both would need examples. In a real world analogy: If someone on my street waves a Nazi flag and says God hates Fags, and our entire community were to shun him, refuse to interact with him, or at times, warn others of his beliefs - do you believe that is a violation of his fundamental human rights? That no person can be shunned or disliked for their beliefs?
I'm going to elide some details from your hypothetical.
"If someone on my street [...] and [...], and our entire community were to shun him, refuse to interact with him, or at times, warn others of [...] - do you believe that is a violation of his fundamental human rights? That no person can be shunned or disliked for [...]?"
If the elided details merely included his race for example, would you consider that a violation of his fundamental human rights? If the elided details included his colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, at what point does that become a violation of fundamental human rights? To me, the question boils down to this: is redlining a desirable and/or legal practice if the target is a law-abiding citizen in good standing, despite all other possible non-essential attributes?
From my perspective, the homophobic Nazi has done nothing unlawful or contrary to the UDHR, if we can agree that imminent harm is the baseline for where speech can infringe upon others' liberty. If we disagree that imminent harm is the baseline for acceptable speech, then we need to figure out the exact location of that disjuncture to continue.
As a further point, censorship, shunning, or suppression do not resolve the underlying processes that led to the emergence of the supposed undesirable element in the first place. If this element is a Nazi, it does not address why this person identifies as a Nazi, how he came to be radicalized as a Nazi, and what cultural or societal forces led to him falling through the cracks of the social contract to begin with. Similarly with racists, homophobes, antisemites, misogynists, and all other self-righteous authoritarians of whatever political identity.
Censorship, shunning, and suppression in fact lead to the opposite--it ignores their provenance, lets them grow in the dark, and tempers their own narratives of persecution and conspiracy. If the goal is a harmonious society predicated upon love, or at the very least brotherhood, this is not reached by excommunicating people from the very possibility of de-radicalization, de-militarization, and rapprochement.
To quote the Buddha:
"Hostilities aren’t stilled through hostility, regardless. Hostilities are stilled through non-hostility: this, an unending truth."
The whole point to a court system is to remove prejudice of any form from the beginning. It's still run by humans, so it still nuttier than a squirrel turd, but at least there is an attempt. That's why when someone has multiple charges against them, they are not immediately guilty of all when they are guilty of one. You can't willy nilly say someone is guilty of everything due to one infraction.
But your backwards comment is the actual OPENING of the floodgates of hate, not the closing. The moment you decide to systematically silence people due to your will instead of through due process, you set up an elitist, rigged system. That's kind of the thing most people are trying to stop.
― Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
There's a gap between what the state can enforce, and what the people on their own can enforce. Within that gap, justice may or may not occur, but procedure is generally absent.
I think we can agree that marching through the streets chanting nazi slogans is abhorrent, but making it illegal would be a first amendment violation. Our society relies on association choices instead of leaving all abhorrent behavior either illegal or free from social consequences.
No, people have never, as a general rule, been protected from social consequences of actual or perceived wrongdoing until proven guilty in a trial, only (and this mostly recently, historically, and adhering to far-from-universal principals of restraint) from certain (generally not all) government-imposed consequences.
I disagree with his political choice. But I defend his right to make a political choice, and not be fired because of it.
You shouldn't get fired from any job for your political choices.
I don't think this is right, but countering it takes some thought.
But that's really a distraction from the core issue. The thing about at-will employment is the it presumes that the employment relationship is largely between the employer and the employee. That assumption breaks down in the face of an Internet mob. This is part of the reason why the proof standard for how you treat complete strangers is different than the proof standard for how you treat people you know, including employees.
Furthermore, in the theory that underpins American capitalism, employment is an economic relationship. For example, if a burger flipper is sufficiently bad at flipping burgers, he shouldn't be a burger flipper, because her status as a burger flipper is predicated on her ability to do that job. Even in the most socialist systems that I'm aware of, basic competence is considered a prerequisite for holding a job. Moral qualities are usually considered less important unless they impact the job. In the American system, people are theoretically hired and fired primarily based on their ability to do their job, but Internet mobs change this equation thoroughly. Now, your political opinions affect your employability as well.
I think that this has profound implications for democracy.
Twitter, Reddit, FB, Instagram all thrive on mediocrity amplified by the loudest voices. And then these investors and founders brag about user engagement, customer acquisition, retention and such meaningless numbers. None of it maps to user value. Because this drives advertisements to their sites.
Unless there companies actively reduce this nonsense, things will never change.
There were army units ordered to report to another location. On the way there they were delayed by flooding. The penalty for being late was death. This was no different than the penalty for insurrection, so guess what they did then.
Proportionality is important.
If it is difficult to separate that question for someone who has political abhorrent views, imagine a neighbor who acts abhorrent. Their dog is barking all the time, leaves dog shits on your lawn, their car is blocking you, they play loud music late at night, and so on. Are you allowed to call their employer and try get them fired for being an awful person? If the answer is no because that would be harassment then the answer doesn't change when their abhorrent behavior is political rather than being an abhorrent neighbor.
There's a difference between 'their dog barks too much' and 'they're marching through the streets advocating for genocide'.
How many of the people contacting an employer demanding someone be fired (a) actually have any association with that employer (e.g. Amy Cooper being fired from Franklin Templeton), or (b) have any intent of actually changing their behavior if the employee is not fired (stop using Google, stop going to Starbucks, etc.)?
I mean, in your Amy Cooper example, she was a VP. Part of her job was literally to represent the values and ethics of the company. They obviously took the opinion that being associated with her was worse than what she could bring to the table.
There's a wonderful quote by Henry Ford regarding innovation which says "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have replied faster horses". I find it very appropriate in this context too. People would definitely know there's something wrong somewhere, but only knowledgeable ones would find how to act, where to act and how to do that without producing collateral damages.
People can work together, but an effective system of organization needs to be in place which allows for check and balances. The internet has bypassed many of our former checks and balances, so it's time to rework things.
Elevating one group over another never ends well. And that includes our current political system.
Just a point about how a person that is intelligent about one thing can show profound ignorance about another.
https://austingwalters.com/on-committing-suicide/
Social media is effectively amplifying the smallest segment of society. An extreme left and extreme right, neither of whom really represent the vast majority of people. Worse, I don’t think companies or representatives realize how few even a few thousand retweets really are...
Further exasperating the issue is the fact we deplatform people with opposing opinions. Now Reddit is even removing people who upvote stories or comments differ from their ideology.
It’s getting real scary. That’s why my post linked above is called “on committing suicide”. It’s a dual meaning, I think the country is murdering itself and I’m also risking my entire career to say so.
>I cannot believe you wrote a web page that reads my mind and converts it into text! This is the most amazing technology I have ever seen. It literally scanned all my chaotic thoughts and emotions over the last couple of months and distilled them into a series of coherent, well written sentences that convey exactly what I wanted to say, but didn’t know how to say it. You are either the most amazing programmer in the world, or an excellent essayist. Either way, thank you.
I agree. Thank you for that essay, I'll be sharing it with several of my friends.
1k retweets could mean as little as someone spent $30[0], think about that you could ruin someones life for $30 and you don't even have to get out of bed to do it.
I used to use one to scan for my FOSS project name so I could answer questions and help people but the scope for abuse here is huge.
Your last paragraph is a strategy I've labeled "tarpitting" (you want to avoid these environments or at least point them out).
I rarely click social links, but the Seattle hit-and-run comments on Twitter shows the noise floor levels.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ASeattleStoner/status/12796532088...
Everything about the link is NSFW, but it summarizes your comment very well.
What are the opposing opinions and the differing ideologies that you're worried about being silenced?
Deplatforming and banning doesn't happen because of some abstract whim, so defending it in abstract terms sans context seems like it's overlooking a large chunk of the conversation.
Abstract freedom of expression is a prerequisite for preventing oppression by majority rule. It's fundamental to our core as citizens in the United States.
I think that's a stretch.
The problem with Twitter isn't the moderation or the "leaning", it's the sheer size of the thing. Any sort of decent moderation is completely impossible at the scales of Twitter, and I voted with my feet a long long time ago and frankly don't feel like I'm missing anything.
On the other hand, there are plenty of smaller social spaces out there that are well moderated, do not treat all viewpoints equally, but at the same time somehow manage to prevent their users from anti-social mob justice.
In Twitter's case I think you've nailed it. They're so big that effective moderation that pleases everyone is simply unmanageable. What that signals to me is that practically they should be considered a speech platform. Otherwise any attempts to moderate will feel like social cherry-picking. Once classified as a platform we should treat them differently, both legally and colloquially. Legally platforms would be absolved of taking responsibility for the content posted by individuals. And colloquially if people understand they're a platform, and platforms come with self-service tools to make sure unwanted content doesn't show up front and center in your feed, then I think we can collectively mature in our approach towards and response to "dirty" content.
Anyway I don't use twitter either and don't expect nor am I really all that interested in a twitter solution. I'm abstractly defending the social maturity required to tolerate diverging viewpoints without resorting to censoring and banning and extrajudicial mob justice because I believe required to prevent oppressive majority rule.
I'm not really sure what problem you're solving here. The social space is too big to moderate effectively, so hamstringing what little power the company chooses to exercise over its own space is supposed to somehow make things better? I don't see it.
I lack empathy not because I disagree with their politics, but because "getting booted out of a social space on the internet" seems like a strange non-problem.
Keep in mind that Twitter moderation is a joke no matter what side of the aisle you're on, and people leave not only because they got banned, or somebody they liked got banned, but also because of the perception that the moderators are asleep at the wheel and are too slow to take action - if they ever do.
Thing is, this is the internet. There are other sites out there. Most of them are accessible from typing something in your web browser. If there is a social space out there whose moderation you find more agreeable, why would you hang out someplace you're not welcome?
> We have to continue to protect peoples' ability to express themselves universally as technology evolves and provide platforms where they can't be bullied and destroyed by a riled up mob or institutionally silenced and de-platformed for dirty content.
You're not going to find that platform on Twitter. But you shouldn't have expected to find it on corporate-owned advertiser-friendly Twitter in the first place. The revolution will not be televised; brought to you by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions.
And yeah, we also need usable and effective filtering, so everyone can choose what to see.
This is naive at best. I know of no social space on the internet that has light moderation, no moderation, or primarily user-driven moderation that isn't also a dumpster fire.
This is the internet. There are uncountable social spaces on it, and the fantastic thing is that the owners of each social space are free to enforce rules as they see fit. If you are unhappy with the moderation of a social space, or if you get booted, find another one. Or, you could even create your own.
Heck, because this is the internet, you are likely keeping up with many of the people you know from a social space through multiple other platforms, and if you want to peace out from one, you can coordinate a migration.
The Internet is way large enough for all the spaces that we want. It just happens that I primarily focus on anonymity, privacy, and resistance to censorship. Both to protect dissidents, and to protect the ~clueless from destroying their lives.
Real name requirements deter dissidents and vulnerable people, not populist bullies. They even make it worse, because you can be more easily targeted by populist bullies who have your legal name than if everyone is using pseudonyms.
If anything we should make it harder to associate internet users with real people to deter this type of in-person harassment from spilling over from the internet.
That's where I'm coming from, for sure.
There's also the element of making the reputation war bi-directional. If somebody can trash my reputation without staking theirs, that's pretty harmful and toxic, except in exceptional cases. I think a structure where people steak their reputations when attacking others by virtue of reputation not being a commodity would help "keep things real". On the flip side, a vulnerable person shouldn't be protected just because they're vulnerable. If they're being oppressed then they may steak their reputation or find someone else to do it for them, but they don't get an easy out just because they're perceived as vulnerable.
In practice starting over was. For almost all of human history, no matter how bad things turned against you where you were, you could pick up and go somewhere else. You would have to start over from nothing in a place where no one knew you, but at least you wouldn't have to deal with having negative a billion social points forever because of some slanderous allegations that were all anyone would talk about in your home town before slamming the door in your face.
Which you're obviously taking away if someone can effectively move a thousand miles away but still can't change their name, because then any slander would follow you everywhere.
> I think a structure where people steak their reputations when attacking others by virtue of reputation not being a commodity would help "keep things real".
This doesn't actually resolve the asymmetry, because there are a great many people whose reputations aren't worth anything to begin with, or who are too young to realize that they are.
You also still have the problem that reputations are community-specific. If someone is a vicious extremist in a community of vicious extremists, anti-social behavior against outsiders improves their reputation within their community. They may regret it later when they grow up and tire of that lifestyle, but that doesn't stop them at the time. It may even make it worse, because once they've trashed their own reputation among reasonable people by behaving badly, they can't get a do-over and their best option becomes to continue to behave badly and stay in the community where that gets rewarded.
> On the flip side, a vulnerable person shouldn't be protected just because they're vulnerable. If they're being oppressed then they may steak their reputation
It's not about reputation in that context, it's about safety. Democracy advocates in China get arrested or worse. Any system that rate limits pseudonyms has got to be mapping them to real people to determine whether you have one already, but the existence of that mapping is the thing that compromises their safety when their oppressors use it to find them.
> or find someone else to do it for them
So you have a dozen Democracy advocates in China. None of them can use their own name or they'll be arrested. If they use the name of one of their compatriots, they get arrested instead, so how does that help?
Also, "vulnerable persons" aren't people who feel vulnerable, as in being emotionally insecure. They're people who are vulnerable, given their circumstances. For example, Hong Kong residents who advocate independence from China. Or male homosexuals in Saudi Arabia and some African countries.
The cypherpunks list comes pretty close. I don't believe that anyone has ever been banned, and there's no censorship. But yes, there are no ~modern social media like that. Perhaps Notabug could become that, once peers exist.
Dumpster fires aren't problematic if you can filter well enough. And sometimes they're good for lulz :)
Also, mobs do go after you for your online speech, so the possibility of a platform that keeps your speech up does not preclude the possibility (and fact) of censorship
It's true that CMU researchers deanonymized onion services and their users by exploiting the relay early bug, and then produced data to the FBI. However, site owners and users would have been safe if they had protected themselves better. By reaching Tor through nested VPN chains, and by using firewall rules or Whonix to prevent leaks around Tor.
I'd be careful about mentioning filtering.
I just remembered that there was a Reddit Masstagger that helped folks with that filtering, but people got really upset about how it infringed on free speech and might have even gotten Google or Mozilla to remove it from the extension store.
I think there might have also been some for Twitter, which I imagine would have elicited a similar reaction.
Also, any software tool that can be removed by someone else is broken by design. But yeah, maybe that's why there aren't any useful tools for using Twitter :(
Simple. There's people agitating for free speech on idealistic terms, and then there's people agitating for free speech because they have an agenda and want a captive audience.
You can even see it in this comment thread. Take a look around and see if you can find any greyed-out comments that are arguing against the pro free-speech crowd. Down-voting is censorship via mob rule, so that should be twice as distasteful, but yet you see greyed out comments. The folks doing that are the latter, and not the former.
I don't want filtering that's imposed by sites or their users. I want filtering that's implemented locally. I'm OK with opt-in filter lists, such as those used by ad-block extensions, as long as they can easily be customized. But I'm not OK with server-based filter rules that prevent me from ever seeing stuff.
On HN, I have "show dead" enabled, and I occasionally vouch for dead comments.
Edit: typos
You generally gravitate towards down-voting unhelpful, out-of-place, or in some way inaccurate content not simply content you don't agree with, BTW. More often than not I see comments start to turn grey because they miss the point and/or aren't really useful contributions to the discussion. Good points, despite the position being argued, tend to remain opaque.
If one fails to stay within the boundaries of HN's Overton Window, you run a high chance of being rate-limited for "starting flame wars", regardless of whether you were the one who actually started it. What comes after that I'd rather not find out so I try to keep my opinions to myself as much as possible. Whether downvotes are used to detect instances of dissenting opinions is unknown, but it's one of the most obvious ways to discover it I'd think.
> ...not simply content you don't agree with, BTW
You do not actually know this, it is a heuristic prediction. Even getting a half-accurate feel for that would require access to voting data and a lot of time reading over downvoted comments.
People often do not even know why they themselves are doing many things, such is the nature of the human mind, that evolved to optimize for speed over accuracy.
* Slaveowners deserved to die
* John Brown is an American hero
* Police & large-corporate property constitue legitimate political targets during protests
etc.
Essentially reddit wants to restrict the scope of permissible discourse to the same region allowed on mainstream news websites: support of neoliberal capitalism with debate focused on how overtly racist the system should be.
The thing is, I don't think the solution is to force Reddit to host those kinds of subreddits - the solution it to find or create a different social space. Alternatives to those spaces exist, you just have to look for them.
He captured Harper's Ferry, with his nineteen men so few, And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru; They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew, But his soul is marching on."
Could you provide some examples please? Assertions are all very well.
(BTW "the country" is not HN. I'm a Brit)
Secondly, that story does not say what you say it does. What Reddit is doing is actually warning people that they are interacting with the site in the manner of coordinated bots. Certainly you aren't suggesting they should just banhammer at first blush, isn't a warning a nicety?
Whether or not these are botnet operators complaining that the site has developed defenses against them is a questoin for the reader, but the fact remains that something gets posted, something gets flagged, and if that happens to be coincidentally the only (or most of) the stuff you upvote, then the defenses start falling into place to your detriment.
How would you deal with the problem as I've stated it (accounts that only upvote stuff that winds up getting removed)?
I'll accept it is a bit strange that POTUS might be deemed afowl of their policies but POTUS never used to tweet, twaddle or play silly buggers beyond what was expected, until this one.
POTUS seems to have decided that despite being the leader of the free world, his message isn't getting across via the entire world's media. So he uses Twitter.
lol.
We just aren't built for this addiction to a constant global stimulus by faceless anonymous accounts sharing hot takes that can't be verified but elicit a deeply emotional reaction. We're losing our minds.
Someone should do a STTNG universe spinoff on the origin of the Borg, kind of like Caprica. "We are Borg. You will be pilled. Resistance is futile. #borg #assimilate #wwg1wga" "Borg" could start off as a fringe cult that goes viral, then someone invents direct neural connections (Neuralink?) and the members of the cult become a superintelligence and take over the whole society. They are the ones who become the first real collective intelligence because they live online and already have this cult identity that submerges the individual.
Once the cult turned superintelligence takes over, it starts venturing out to "red pill" the entire universe.
I mean what do you think is happening in all those cells on those ships? All the anons are meme-ing each other.
More fundamentally: a lot of reactionary opinion and right-leaning politics are predicated on a lack of empathy for others: I detect (armchair diagnosis) a lot of behaviour attributable to being on autistic-spectrum amongst far-right activists on the internet: it’s easy to rail against proponents of equality and doing things for a greater-good when one can’t relate to them - or be physically incapable of relating to them - but neurotypical people can end up also being unable to relate to others online, and this isn’t anything new: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/my-life-aspergers/20...
...so if there really was a collective-intelligence comprised of the worst of reactionary right-wing internet users, then I would actively encourage them to harvest the brains of the Tumblr users they troll so much: that way they would assimilate empathy and finally understand for themselves how the rest of the world operates.
Sanders was rejected twice.
* Fiscally conservative
* Against tariffs
* Actually protective of gun rights
* More interventionist in foreign affairs
* Strong law and order approach to drug policy
* Unsupportive of gay marriage
* Actually religious
It's a pretty commonly held view that Trump is more populist and "not a real conservative" even among his opponents.
Buchanan was considered one of the most right wing candidates in modern politics and he was very much pro tariffs.
Trump is also very friendly with the NRA. Reagan was all about gun control - at least when Black folks were exercising their rights (the Muliford Act)
He might support gay marriage but he also tried to remove health care from the transgender.
All Republican candidates pander to the religious right without being actually religious.
How on earth could that be possible? Exclude them from the free government health care that other people get? Prohibit them from paying for their own healthcare? That's far too extreme to be true. I don't believe you unless it was just one of his random tweets that he doesn't really mean.
> When has there ever been a seriously fiscally conservative Presidential Candidate?
> All Republican candidates pander to the religious right without being actually religious.
These aren't relevant to whether or not Trump is "extreme right." A politician who is more in line with them (like a Ted Cruz or Paul Ryan) would be more right-wing.
> Buchanan was considered one of the most right wing candidates in modern politics and he was very much pro tariffs.
> Trump is also very friendly with the NRA. Reagan was all about gun control - at least when Black folks were exercising their rights (the Muliford Act)
These are just very cherry-picked examples of other politicians whose policies were also not 100% right-wing. That doesn't change the fact that tariffs and gun control (e.g. banning bump stocks) are not right wing positions.
> He might support gay marriage but he also tried to remove health care from the transgender.
He wanted to repeal Obamacare completely, but yes, that would include coverage for transgender people.
I guess to me words still have meaning. If Trump is "extreme right", then "extreme right" doesn't mean anything except "I'm on the left and I don't like this guy." But I suppose that's the norm in 2020.
Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan both voted for the tax cut that reduced revenues but didn’t reduce spending - increasing the deficit.
He wanted to repeal Obamacare completely, but yes, that would include coverage for transgender people
It wasn’t just about repealing ObamaCare.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/12/8680730...
I mean, it's not like there's a reliable permanent definition of “right wing”, but Donald Trump was the first President to support gay marriage during his campaign, and his platform in large part reads like Bill Clinton's (especially on illegal immigration), minus the AWB and belief that China would liberalize.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/12/8680730...
Clinton never campaigned on an outright ban legal immigration for all Muslims. This was far to the right of all of the Republican candidates who actually disagreed with him.
What rights do you think he took away, or attempted to take away, from transgender people?
P.S. why is that in quotes? It's literally true. And twenty years ago, when the Supreme Court was tasked to decide whether an incidence of workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was legal, he proposed legislation to make it explicitly illegal. Furthermore, during the heyday of DADT and DOMA, Donald Trump was (consistent with today) not for them at a time when they were popular among Democrats, in 1999 saying “that's not something that would disturb me” when asked about gays and lesbians serving in the armed forces.
I linked the article in the comment you replied to.
Do you really think that he put out this guidance for any other reason than to pander to the religious right?
Switzerland has conscription which is conceptually very different from the 2nd amendment in both purpose and implementation. The US had conscription in the past but forcing people against their will to mandatory service is something which individualistic culture tend to dislike.
The effect of conscription on homicide rates is also a complex and difficult topic. There is definitive people who argue that forcing young adults into a pre-determined future is a good thing to shape young women and men into productive citizens. Others argue that robbing peoples right to choose their own destiny is very harmful to anyone who does not fit the mold.
Even with the possible benefits if, on the average, forcing young people into pre-determined destinies would produce more law abiding citizen, I would not personally be in favor of it. As someone who live in an other country with conscription, it is not worth it.
The US still has conscription. We haven’t called up a draft since the Vietnam war - but every adult male has to register, and there are consequences for failing to do so.
This includes undocumented immigrants, regardless of whether they ever had a visa or not.
I've always thought that if a non-citizen is inducted into the armed forces in any way they should immediately be eligible for citizenship. As I understand it, there's still a relatively complex process they have to navigate to get that done.
Some of us point and scoff, but these are the same sort which laugh when someone stubs their toe. Buffoons, they are.
The lion's share of us watch, concerned. Not just for ourselves, and of what might come from utter chaos to the south.
We are legitimatley concerned for what we view as family. I personally feel as if I am watching a beloved sibling, mess up their life for incomprehensible reasons.
You want to help, you want to intervene, stop the pain.. but you feel that it may only make things worse.
After all, how can you help, when you can't even understand?
I agree with what you said, the media is broken. I can think of some fixes, like a constant "this is not news, but an opinion piece" banner or some such, but I doubt that will really help.
It does seem to me, that a tiny, tiny percentage of the population is causing a HUGE disruption for almost everyone else. I mean tiny, a core of 0.001%, with all sorts of others "hanging on".
While the issues raised have some legitimacy, the media has thrown gas on the fire, and in a way which reduces chances for either side to resolve things.
Instead, we get, as you elude to, absurd, useless theatre.
It may be absurd, but it certainly isn't useless. Divide and conquer/rule has been an effective approach for ages, and the internet has made it even easier and more effective. And the beauty of it is that it seems to be almost impossible for the human mind to detect its presence, which is a big part of why it's so effective I suppose.
At worst, at the instigation of charismatic or influential people with ulterior motive. At best, missguided by fear and other emotions. Never overflowing with rational thought.
Social media websites should be able to do better than this. They have a record of everybody who saw the original post; they should be able to ensure everybody who saw the original also sees the retraction.
I'm sure they don't care though. Making people feel ashamed for participating in a mob is probably bad for "engagement."
- Despite you not being on social media, someone who very actively is can decide to take offense to something you said or did in meatspace and sic the social media mob on you, resulting in you and your family being harassed, as well as your employer to the point that they decide firing you is the path of least resistance. Example: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/08/17/54...
- Social media mob decides to take issue with something your employer/hometown local government/etc did, and the relevant entity enacts policy changes as a result to placate the outrage; these policy changes have a negative impact on your life
You can remove yourself from the day to day outrage cycle by not participating as you say, and I've done that as well. But that doesn't mean it can't negatively impact your life, sometimes in extreme ways.
The emotions and actions of mob mentality come from evolutionary social psychology - to protect the tribe from disease and death - to protect from bacteria, mould, and viruses entering and killing the whole group.
Unfortunately, because of how human emotions developed out of the survival biology - and this probably happens in other species too - anyone who is 'sick', not just a physical way but a social or psychological way - like a pedophile or a racist, etc - and/or anyone who is weak, and/or anyone who is simply different - can trigger this mob mentality in most people's brains. Kids do it at an early age at school. Kids are not inherently innocent.
We 'other' the individual carrier of the virus to protect the mob from being infected. At its most extreme, we call for the person's death or swiftly kill them.
It's disheartening. It's really difficult to live with.
I increasingly understand that my mission in life is to fight for diversity. (I run a non-profit which contributes to that.) It's not fun, or easy, but it must be done.
---
It's also really important that you 'know thyself'. Since birth I have been an 'outsider' in my brain - not a member of the 'tribe'. I constantly buck up against tribal thinking and mob mentality, and I probably always will, at least, deep inside of me. But I'm increasingly accepting both my individualism and 'the group', even if 'the group' might not return the same respect. I want to help the 'group', after all. I don't desire to be alone. Just to be accepted, and others who also are different.
People like me and other 'outsiders' are important for the healthy development of our species or other intelligent life. That gives me relief from the loneliness that I often feel, by being so 'different'.
I just use it as another RSS feed replacement but for actual people instead of sites. Reddit and HN are aggregators for sites.
Never comment on anything non-technical. There's just no reason to.
Words to live by while online. Most fail.
Both are situations with a skewed power dynamic where innocent people can be harmed.
Often both camps are comprised of the same people who act as judge, jury, and executioner.
That kind of justice goes against what I believe western justice should be about.
For some, the judgement phase lasts much longer than 8 minutes and 46 seconds too...
If you think 'innocence' matters you are part of the problem.
All internet mob's need to be stopped.
I think this author is part of the problem. It's possible they are trying a tactic of gradually disarming the internet mobs, but it doesn't feel that way.
What's more interesting to me, and a problem more befitting the intellectual horsepower of folks here, is: what are the sociological causes of this behavior? And what realistic mechanisms or release valves could we put in place so people either didn't feel the need to do this, or when they did, the ways in which we could ensure justice apart and aside from online bandwagoning?
This is a broad and complex topic. I don't claim to have any answers. But I think there are some interesting questions:
1. To what extent does this dynamic align with the political spectrum? If it doesn't align with the obvious left/right dynamic, is another way we can identify those who think it's acceptable vs. those who don't, so we can pursue appropriate policies?
2. To what extent is online outrage driven by systemic factors that prevent injustice from being addressed by other means? Arguably, the impetus behind the #metoo or #blacklivesmatter movements is the fact that the status quo systems are inherently weighted in favor of bad actors. The online bandwagon angle would likely not exist if victims felt they had any other meaningful recourse. Indeed, that's the whole point.
3. Free association is also A Thing. Shouldn't we be free to disassociate ourselves from those whose views we find distasteful, and (due to freedom of speech) encourage others to do the same? And how is this different (or the same) than an internet bandwagon?
4. Is there a difference between bandwagon driven by a (misguided or not) desire for justice, and pure spiteful trolling? Undoubtedly, both exist. But can we make a distinction without making a value judgement between various sociopolitical positions?
5. Where does online behavior "cross the line"? Is near-universal criticism and reprobation itself problematic? Or does it only become a problem when it becomes targeted harassment? Or when the harassment begins to extend from the internet to the real world (doxxing) or involve actual crimes (swatting)? What happens when a concerned entity (e.g) an employer take entirely legitimate action (firing a racist employee), but which they would not have otherwise taken?
It's not enough to rail against the dynamic. We need to seriously grapple with all the individual factors that go into it. Because (hopefully) the internet and freedom of speech on the internet is here to stay. Reductive approaches only serve you to shove you into one camp or the other. How can we try and figure out how to make this very new informational landscape both sustainable and just?
Also, in any case, I doubt seriously that any of that discussion will have any impact on the current situation.
My solution (which I admit is easier for an old ~retired guy like me) is to avoid attracting attention in meatspace. I have no social media presence, in part to avoid attracting attention from my past activities. Hopefully most of my old associates think that I'm dead ;) And now that we're all wearing masks, being ~anonymous is much easier.
I'm quite active online, however. As Mirimir and other personas. But there are absolutely no links to my meatspace persona.
So anyway, regarding "freedom of speech on the internet", ~anonymity and compartmentalization are essential.
I'm also very interested in how design decisions for social networks lead to emergent "modes" of interaction. Such factors include:
* Global by default communication
* Threaded vs. linear discussion
* Likes, reactions, and "boosting" (related to above)
* Easily forwardable/repostable content
* Anonymity and pseudo-anonymity
* Always-available communication (including photo and video)
* Moderation
In terms of controversy, in-person interactions have a natural dampening effect: if you have (for example) some crappy opinions that aren't shared by your peer group, not only are they unlikely to escape that social circle, but the tone and content of your conversations (plus other cues such as body language) might steer you in the right direction over time. On the other end of the spectrum, "global" interactions (public, threaded, boostable, relayable) can reach all of humanity in an instant, but often at the expense of the individual. Justice may be served, but the offender is crushed in the process. (Justice, as you point out, that might have never been served otherwise, as in the case of MeToo or BLM.)
Some people can't see the difference between these two modes: they post on Twitter as if they were still the first mode, only to find out that they were in the second. (That is, they were actually professing Their Ideas from a global podium.) Or maybe they want to "poke the bear" without realizing how massive that bear actually is.
It obviously goes the other way, too: a "good cop" in a bad department will find their idealism ground down over time, and terrible ideas (QAnon, climate change denial) can spread like wildfire over Twitter and Facebook.
I don't know if I have much of a point to make. I very much recognize how "global" mediums can be a force for positive change in the world, including "cancel culture." But I also miss my teenage years, when my friends and I would have endless discussions on a simple ProBoards instance, helping each other make sense of the world as the years went on. Part of me wants to go back to an internet built up of small communities and linear discussions, but social media is pushing in the opposite direction. Would the former result in a bunch of nasty echo chambers littering the web? Will the latter sap social interaction of all context and humanity, leaving only ideas and soap boxes vaguely tied to avatars? Why do so many of us consider Twitter and Facebook a "default" medium of social interaction when their impact can be so globally powerful?
I stated it differently though, in regards to how the system itself isn't currently equipped to handle it.
And for #3 and #5 I wouldn't want someone to to be criminally liable for being a "creep", but also, that they could be fired for it. Especially if it made their coworkers uncomfortable.
https://kfor-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/kfor.com/news/norman...
That would be pretty ludicrous, if true. You sure you're ready to say that? I mean, even if they were being totally cynical about it, it would be in their interests to find the culprit.
The police intentionally leaked the councilwomen's address online in retribution. Maybe they didn't expect a rape, but I bet the assaulter thought they wouldn't mind.
If you believe "the police" are a major obstacle to rape, then I encourage you to actually read the accounts of victims and see if that reflects their experience.
District attorneys conduct prosecutions.
Rape prosecutions are often difficult, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a DA who would not bring charges if they thought they had any chance at a conviction.
In military courts prosecution is mandated by law and minimum charges and sentences are set by federal law.
Well, that's certainly not the case for the people who have use the badge as a tool to rape, especially particularly vulnerable populations, with impunity.
But while all that might have been a factor in the downfall of the USSR, I think other factors have been far more important.
Your arrow of causation is pointing in the wrong direction.
At the time, intellectuals in the US believed (and many still believe) that Communism(or whatever you call the economic system that was practiced in the USSR) is the superior economic system.
The USSR rotted from within due to fundamental economic problems like the principal agent problem[1] and the economic calculation problem[2].
The US didn't really have much to do with it, with the possible exception of "forcing" the USSR to spend a lot of resources it didn't have on weapons and space flight.
___
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
In any other instance, if you described a certain adult as a person who, as they got older, continually hung out with 18-21 year olds, that fact would lend less credence to their viewpoints, not more.
To me, seeding ideas is internal to the people and society leading to chaos, as compared to external and physical forces like starvation, oppression and lack of infrastructure.
Sure, some internet-based conspiracies have lead to mob violence (5G, pizzagate etc). But how many crazy theories have been put down now that we can all check basic facts on our phones? Mayan end of the word? An asteroid on its way? Satanic cults murdering children in daycares. Orson Wells would have a much more difficult time convincing people that aliens have landed now that radio isn't the only form of real time information. At lease it is now possible to fact check the radio. While conspiracies are now more national in scope and more easily witnessed thanks to the internet, the net result imho is that fewer people are coming to actual physical harm.
Probably close to none.
>Mayan end of the word?
Plenty of people believed in that. Hell, one of the conspiracy theories around the Mandela Effect is that 2012 happened and everyone got pushed into the current universe when it did. Oh yeah, and the Mandela Effect itself. The only reason that blew up is because of an internet meme, and the internet's ability to create reality bubbles around people is the only reason it's as big as it is. The internet is the reason millions of people literally believe their false memories are the result of interdimensional leakage.
>An asteroid on its way?
We never even notice those until it's too late, so the ones we know about get reported on in the news, but speaking of that, plenty of people still think Oumuamua was a spaceship.
>Orsen Wells would have a much more difficult time convincing people that aliens have landed now that radio isn't the only form of real time information.
Far, far more people believe aliens have landed, now, than did in Wells' time. They believe reptoids wearing human skinsuits control the world. They believe the universe is a computer simulation and that most of the people around them are NPCs. They believe grey fetus-monsters suck people up into spaceships with orange beams and mess with their genitals. They believe the world is flat and all of the airlines secretly know about it, and they project holograms outside of the windows to fool passengers. They believe we never went to the moon, because obviously we'd hit the crystal spheres if we tried. They believe COVID-19 is a globalist population-control experiment, and that Madonna spilled the beans on the plan last year in Illuminati code.
You think it's hard to convince people of stupid things nowadays? Calls to poison control centers spiked after the President of the United States suggested (jokingly, allegedly) that injecting disinfectants might be a cure for coronavirus. People heard that and immediately started drinking bleach.
>While conspiracies are now more national in scope and more easily witnessed thanks to the internet, the net result imho is that fewer people are coming to actual physical harm.
Give it time. That guy who stormed the pizza parlor armed to free the nonexistent child sex slaves in the nonexistent basement comes to mind. True, no one came to physical harm in that case, but that was only by luck. Reddit and /pol/ are inspiring mass shooters. COVID denialists are threatening people in the streets at gunpoint. If anything, conspiracy-inspired violence seems on a slow upward curve.
For example, the story a few days ago about the white couple in Lake Orion who pointed guns at a black family. The couple were vilified in the press and implications of racism were made.
The couple has been charged and in my opinion (and presumably of the law) they were too quick to pull their (legally carried) guns out, and they will have to answer for this and the man was fired from his job. However watching the full video tells a very different story then the headlines implied.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZhdMcrBuDU&feature=emb_...
There was another one recently where a middle eastern grocery store in the US had their lease pulled because of tweets by the owner’s teenage daughter.
Mob justice is bad, but mob justice against people simply for association is terrifying.
Ask HN: Will you allow your children to have social media associated with their real name?
However:
1) Mobs are not perfect at positively identifying people. And once an identification mistake happens, it propagates quickly.
2) Mobs jump to conclusions very fast. If you see a bruised person claiming to have been beaten, people take for granted that it happened, and that is the wrong mindset.
I am not a MAGA person but a clear example of this was the January 2019 Lincoln Memorial Confrontation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2019_Lincoln_Memorial_...) where things were taken out of context to a ridiculous extent, and there were mobs on every social network trying to dox the kid that was literally doing nothing.
And another reason that mob justice is not justice.