The Rise of Righteous Online Bullies | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of Righteous Online Bullies

newsweek.com

74 pointsthrowkeep43 comments

The term "bully" just doesn't seem to capture the behavior described in this piece. To send threatening images, organize wide-scale negative reviews of a person's online properties, doxx, etc with the intent to silence someone needs some other word. "Online terrorist" is too strong, but something closer to that term seems more appropriate.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that more high-profile court cases are needed to keep this sort of psychopathy in check. That's, of course, easier said than done.

I think "bully" is actually overblown for someone typing mean words into a comment field.

The tendency for people to get super aggressive over minor divergences from accepted tribal orthodoxies is... baffling and appalling. It should be addressed from within their own in-groups as the rude, antisocial, and, most importantly, ineffective behavior it is.

Partisan duckspeak does not reinforce the ingroup, does not educate or enlighten the outgroup, and ultimately does little but waste time.

If we were just talking mere personal attacks or incivility I'd agree, but we're talking about getting people cut off from their support networks, their livelihoods, etc. That goes a lot farther than reading some unpleasant words on a screen. If you can't escape it by turning the screen off, we're talking about something much more serious and harmful.

> cut off from their support networks, their livelihoods, etc.

Yeah, but that's all legal, and those doing the cutting are doing so voluntarily. That's freedom of association working as intended.

To me, to cross into "bullying", someone has to do something beyond their rights. Saying that someone is bad for having certain opinions is in-bounds, even if you say it loudly to a lot of people. You're within your own rights to express an opinion of disgust.

You ultimately aren't forcing anyone to do anything, and thus aren't "cutting off" anything.

Consider that broadcasting the crimes someone was arrested for has a similar negative impact, and is seldom remedied by acquittal. Similarly, consider how this blasé attitude works when incorrect accusations are getting thrown around.

If you weaponize social networks against someone, you don't get to stand back, wash your hands of the matter and shrug with "freedom of association" as if it's some force of nature where you had nothing to do with what happens next. You lit the fuse or helped burn it.

You can't "weaponize" social networks, as they are comprised of living, thinking human beings each with their own agency and decisionmaking ability. They're not passive objects.

The fact that laws on things like libel and slander and blackmail exist means that the legal system has recognized that living, thinking human beings with agency still react in certain harmful ways when told certain things. "Agency" is not an escape hatch from the responsibility of understanding the reasonably predictable consequences of your actions.

Libel and slander are, at least in most of the USA, largely a civil matter, and aren't actually illegal, FWIW. The twenty-odd states that do have laws on the books about it don't frequently enforce, and it's usually just a misdemeanor. The civil liability is what keeps most large public lies in check.

We aren't talking about lies, though, we are talking about negative opinions, which aren't lies and thus aren't slander or libel.

Spreading your own negative opinions about someone or someone's actions is not illegal.

I wonder if this is mainly the enabling effect of the internet (a lot of people who, in real life, would never dream of abusing another person, feel able to do so on the internet); or its multiplying effect (a few people -- and there are always a few, who in the past would write poison pen letters and the like) are able to spread their bile _everywhere_. I imagine it's a combination.

The Internet also enables bad actors to participate anonymously. Obviously plenty of the people screaming on the Internet are “real” people. But how many are paid to manipulate and agitate? What percentage of inflammatory posts on both sides of the divide are the product of paid influence?

It sounds like conspiracy theory lala land, but I knew people 10+ years ago who were writing reviews and engaging in product discussions professionally. It’s only gotten more sophisticated and widespread. It feels like today we’re living in a political landscape akin to fake review bullshit land on Amazon.

just a few bad actors can and will conspire to create between 8 million and 18 million fake identity comments on a single page...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/biggest-isps-pai...

or https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/ny-ag-report-finds...

it's conspiracy - not theory at this point.

> A stone hit her on the side of the head.

Shirley Jackson, "The Lottery"

I always loved that the first one waa anonymous, disembodied, as if no one (or everyone all at once) threw it.

I always wondered about the type of person who could start such a thing.

Later, when I read Granovetter's theory on behavior thresholds, it suddenly made sense that there are thousands - millions - of people just itching for a reason to throw a stone.

There is always someone with a riot threshold of zero.

> Online terrorist" is too strong, but something closer to that term seems more appropriate.

Activist? Activism is often thought of as "soft" but has a long history of crossing legal boundaries to varying degrees so it seems to fit.

Regan called Al Queda "freedom fighters". Bush called them "terrorists". Activists are people the speaker agrees with, bullies are people he disagrees with. I would rather have a discussion about the issues without needing to get into semantic debates and call out rhetorical non-arguments.

> The term "bully" just doesn't seem to capture the behavior described in this piece

Harasser?

I prefer the more apt term "class enemy". It fits their behavior quite nicely and explains why they receive so much protection from the media.

I'd rather avoid terms that immediately identify the user as part of a particular political group, whether intentionally or otherwise. Naming things is a tricky enough topic without additionally chumming the waters for all-but-guaranteed ad hominem attacks.

I don't know why anyone would have a problem correctly identifying people engaged in class warfare for their own benefit. There's nothing tricky about naming people openly engaging in class warfare... except on the part of people who don't want their activities exposed to public scrutiny.

Subscribing to the notion of "class warfare" in general is the political marker I was just speaking about.

There are no politically neutral labels. Every word ultimately contains within it an implicit affiliation with one group or another, and an implicit judgement upon others. I prefer to call a spade a spade no matter who it offends. In fact, seeing who it offends is often quite instructive.

In the good old days leaving a severed horse head on someone’s bed was just “intimidation,” “mafia tactics,” and perhaps a bit of extortion or blackmail.

We regarded intimidation as a criminal behaviour rather than a political strategy to be rewarded.

This is separate from standover tactics where you would physically invade another person’s “personal space”.

“Bullying” was low grade psychological and physical abuse. Still unwanted and discouraged but at no point we’re you worried that you would die, lose fingers or find severed animal heads in your bed.

"Whenever someone like me gets called a "white supremacist" for defending someone's right to post a job opportunity without being subject to attack, it devalues a term whose meaning is indispensable to retain so that genuine instances of racism can be identified and rightfully addressed."

Wow, this is basically what all us "crazy alt-right" people have been worried was going to happen since day 1.

Second and third order consequences are not always that hard to foresee.

They called too many people "racist" and so it became mundane. They had to up the ante to "white supremacist." It's become nothing more than a dog whistle.

What is the secret meaning of "white supremacist" and who are the only ones that hear that meaning when the term is used?

EDIT: ok. Yea I agree the term is used very broadly. I thought something else was being said.

The secret meaning is "anyone I disagree with and wish to hush up", and the ones who hear are anyone who also wishes the interlocutor would hush up

"Proletariat" and "bourgeoisie", respectively. Identity politics becomes real easy to understand when you recognize that the supposed 'good guys' are bourgeoisie (and their apologists) trying to take self-sufficient peoples and reduce them to proles, and blaming those peoples for all the things the bourgeoisie(-apologists) do themselves. In other worlds, all identity politics is projection on the part of the perpetrators against one group of victims for the purposes of dividing and conquering their victims, lest they rise up against them and string them up.

I dont think the Palestinians are mad at Jews for being bourgeoisie. The identity issue is at the heart of that conflict, its not a proxy for class. If the Palestinians had more money they wouldn't get Israeli citizenship. I guess some identity politics could be proxies for class struggle though.

Edit: That makes literally no sense earlking. If Israel Palestine is a struggle between two bourgeoise then it isn't a class struggle. Its an ethnic struggle like I said above.

The issue at hand in Syria-Palestina is who owns the land and who can be there. It's one group of bourgeoisie slugging it out with the other. That's why it doesn't look like a class issue to you.

Heh, I wonder about the relation to the ever increasing usage of superlatives and exaggeration in advertising and media. There was a short discussion on it yesterday and it got me thinking.

Media/news used to be pretty dry/neutral when reporting anything, and old advertising was more focused on practical aspects of the product it seems.

Now it's all OUTRAGE, person 1 SLAMS new proposal to make DRUGS more accessible to CRIMINALS!

So buy our INCREDIBLE super phone, it's not a phone, it's A FULL INTELLIGENT BEING in your pocket with the GREATEST features IN THE WORLD!

This isn't an entry level janitor position, you are a CLEANING MANAGER, you will be FIGHTING MICROBES EVERY DAY LIKE A HERO, so apply now by telling us WHAT EXCITES YOU ABOUT THIS JOB. An interview with HR and the CTO is mandatory.

Is it any wonder words are losing their meaning? Tbf, someone's probably going to come up with new ones :)

Isn't that what they call the euphemism treadmill?

You can think of it as a difference in vocabulary.

What some phrase as "I disagree" other say "you're racist!".

Both things can be true. The alt-right is batshit crazy, but "woke" keyboard warriors on Twitter are also assholes.

This is a crucial distinction and I don't get it why it's so hard for people to understand it. Both extremes of the spectrum are toxic and at the same time have the "if you're not with us, you are against us" attitude. A stable central position is needed to protect the society from extremes.

And if you try and explain how throwing around labels dilutes the meaning of words, you'll get told "languages evolve" and "stop being a prescriptivist".

They don't care. Words are just a means to an end, a compliance tool that doesn't have to make any sense as long as it works on enough people, and enough people are willing to pat them on the head for repeating them. You're not talking to people who deal in principles, which is also why they're eerily unmoved by even the most glaring double-standards.

Cancel culture (and the nastier more vicious personal threat / personal attack) is an artifact of how the internet empowers populism. When it comes to running a non-anonymous social media account, there's simply only two choices:

(1) You run a low profile and nobody cares what you post unless you're unlucky. If your sphere is small enough, or maybe you run a Facebook group with only a few thousand people on a relatively uncontroversial topic you're probably okay. Probably. For now.

(2) You need to have a consistent take and defense with respect to every social issue and culture war that exists in the entirety of online discourse. You build your sphere into one that agrees with you, and you're always up-to-date on the latest issues, so you don't get cancelled. You might end up cancelled anyways, if a much larger social circle gets unleashed on you (e.g. a content creator 10x or 100x your size does a video about your bad take on XYZ and tarnishes your brand)

I think extreme response to disagreement is unfortunately becoming a standard communication style. We see this pattern of speech constantly reinforced on the internet and TV. It feels very satisfying. It comes across as decisive and effective (qualities of a leader!) and we keep emulating it. Each time we repeat it we get that dopamine hit of getting a "win". Over time it just becomes a go-to, automatic response. Even among people who theoretically disagree with that behavior.

I am constantly exhausted by this in-vogue communication style. I see this at work where a minor difference of opinion on whether to round a number becomes a battle where one side is framed as "real science" and I guess the other is anti-science. Minor things get immediately reframed as a fight to be won. I see members of my family adopting this, where even mundane conversations about what freeway to take are an opener for some political jab. Baiting for disagreement to get that dopamine hit of "winning". I also see this among friends, where many conversations just seem to be continuous, defensive reinforcements of identity.

Yup. There's a lot of noise about semantics in the comments, but this is one of the actual issues plaguing all people, regardless of whether the progressives or conservatives are yelling "bully" louder at any given time.

I appreciate the author's courage and her willingness to offer a solution but this standing-up to bullies thing isn't going to be the way forward. The situation is less a schoolyard bully and more a roving gang which, contrary to the moral sensibilities of normal folk, doesn't mind wielding knives and bludgeoning weapons. Far too perilous for the casual good samaritan. Besides being outclassed miltarily, the normal folk have livelihoods to protect, carrying vulnerable children and mortgages into the fray making theirs an uphill battle with the mob on high ground standing only to gain.

My favorite solution so far is delete social media and take away the audience.

When you own the group, you just kick those toxic people out like any other online community.

"You are in violation of our community guidelines, kick"

And then you ignore them. Nothing is worse than trying to hurt someone remotely, and they don't even notice you.

The media class deliberately created these narratives about how "the other side" are unredeemable monsters and the only solution is to vote for one of the two corporate-backed political parties (and certainly not the other one). So I don't sympathize with Katherine Brodsky getting bitten by her industry's own polarization tactic.

Are you saying that because Brodowski is a writer, it’s hilarious that this is happening to her?

It is very difficult to hold even slightly counter opinions due to people like these. Moreover coming from a country whose politics is very different unlike the easier left vs right / libertarian vs regulation preferred compass in the states, everything is very grey in the rest of the world. A lazy Western media which does not give nuance to discussions not involving itself and new generations who hold up influencers and practice the same cancel culture as in the West have really made the political discourse among young people even here devoid of anything meaningful.

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