I get abuse and threats online – why can't it be stopped? | Hacker News Reader

I get abuse and threats online – why can't it be stopped?

bbc.co.uk

20 pointsgadders58 comments

It is odd how much bullying goes on in real life whether at school, the playground, the workplace or among social friends.

Should we outlaw all such non-physical “bullying”?

I remember in college when the losing side in a debate called the winning side bullies.

Online bullying is a from of status seeking performative art. It is usually the bigotry of the alleged anti-bigots.

Public personas with platforms to bully like the NY Times “journalist” Taylor Lorenz lie and attack the weak. And when they are called out for their lies and attacks, they hide behind the “bullying” trope and demand censorship.

Many people avoid Twitter for example precisely because it is a cesspool of status seeking bullies and trolls. While it might seem to be a mirror of society, it is only a mirror of a small self-selected microcosm. It comes with both the good and bad.

But censorship of the “bad” is not an answer as a normal conversation to some is a trigger to others.

Of course the dominant power structure will always exploit such censorious demands to censor the weak and powerless.

Beware what you wish for - Aesops fables

On a side note she is the BBC “disinformation” specialist. The BBC just walked back on it’s fake news regarding the Syria Douma chemical attack story.

Is that bullying to point out they are publishing fake news?

https://then24.com/2021/09/06/syria-bbc-admits-dissemination...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958679/BBC-admits-...

https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514d7a457a4e32457a6333566d54/...

Conflating the use of the word bullying by people trying to deflect their own misdeeds with actual, real world bullying of people based on their race, their sexual preference or even just their perceived weakness when compared to others seems like a convenient excuse to continue to let the strong continue to bully the weak.

People have committed suicide over online bullying. Were those people liars who attacked the weak and thus deserved the harassment they received from others? Who did a person on Instagram who is made fun of because of their looks "bully", using your definition, to deserve the negative attention they received? What platform did the Star Wars kid abuse to warrant all the laughter and derision he suffered?

People who abuse a position of authority and then hide behind claims of harassment or bullying deserve to be called out; but let's not pretend they are somehow a majority and that actual bullying leading to people either harming themselves or shutting themselves off completely from society is not a real problem.

I believe only a bully would call the others "snowflakes". That's the tell-tale sign for me. Because there might be arguments for either side, but as soon as you see that labeling you immediately know to which kind of person you're talking.

I was playing Call of Duty and a 12 year old boy just told me he had sexual intercourse with my elderly mother. This is unacceptable. Why can't it be stopped?

Ask him if he dug her up first.

Bars have bouncers, for this precise reason.

If you are somehow against kicking assholes off twitter/Facebook, I guess you’re ok with having them crash your private party too?

That might be the closest real world analogue to online spaces. People turn their inhibitions way down when communicating online. A digital bouncer is especially important when you combine that with the fact that so many more people can pile on someone than can in a physical space.

It can be stopped if we changed social media to be, well social. If there was no public posts on Facebook, no public groups, there would be just your friends and you could talk with them. There could still be private groups, so that you could organize a surprise birthday party or whatever, but nothing would be public.

The issue with social media is that humans are not wired to deal with that many humans in one place, so you end up with disfunctional behaviour.

And, unlike what the media wants to sell it as, these attacks are not, per say, misogynistic. The bully doesn't care what he attacks you over, he finds what he thinks is a soft spot and then strikes. Insecurity over gender, beauty, social standing, racial identity, etc can all be used.

The goal is to get a reaction out of you, and if he gets one he wins. He does not actually care that you are fat, a woman, or whatever.

Reading the article , the part where it gets interesting is when she creates the "Barry" account and within 2 weeks Barry gets inundated with examples of hate.

That sounds like an actual broken recommendation system, rather than just the unfortunate-but-perhaps-unavoidable "keeping the noise down to a dull roar".

I don't like discussing more general problems in specific terms (in this case, misogyny). Obviously, there is much more hate against women and women are disproportionately affected by online hate.

But problem is systemic - justice system ignores all forms of hate and targeting only specific issue (misogyny) instead of holding people accountable of their actions online, feels like putting band aid on rotting wound. I used to receive death threats based on my political views (I live in strongly conservative country and I'm vocally liberal), sexual orientation and gender expression. Police didn't take any action on these, or even if action was taken, "proceedings were discontinued due to failure to identify perpetrators" (they had name and city in their Facebook profiles).

You can't undo non-intelligence of an idiot by yelling at them until they stop, I tried. They just get more confused and desperate. You can't smack someone in their face or in the back while they are performing an unwanted behavior to stop it, either. It is apparently well known in behavioral psychology that doing so reinforces the behavior, counterintuitively.

I think such a broad scoped problem as "hate against women" should be labeled as specific as being disgustingly misogynistic or prone to conspiracy. A lot of times those violent pricks are just having their small virgin brains overloaded by the internet. What they need are training and withdrawal.

This comment section is just atrocious. stopping bullying is something any institution that cares about the well-being of those in its care try to tackle. it is not about pandering to snowflakes. are we really going to call young people who get bullied for looking different, snowflakes? that's the language that we as adults want to use discussing things that drive people to suicide?

and for all those who say don't go online, humans are social creatures. they like to socialize. that's the whole point of social media. by design or not these are now virtual public spaces. and thus they have a responsibility to their users to make sure the discourse doesn't allow bullying. it won't ever work 100 percent but that shouldn't stop is from devising ever more efficient ways to stop bullying. should schools allow bullys free rein just because its their free speech right and if the victim didn't like it, they could have stayed in the class during recess?

Pardon me; did malls ever have a responsibility to stop bullying? Convention centers? Anywhere else that people hang out for that matter?

All this talk of platform policing seems to leave out one thing: the certainty of running into horrible people online approaches 1 because there are horrible people out there. It just used to be the regular person never had the potential of having to deal with all of them at once, of which a critical mass of them looking your way could be life altering.

Instead of asking for a nanny web, perhaps we should be asking for a better grade of person to people it. The last thing we need is digital nanny state that can be abusively exploited by those who run it, Make no mistake. Such an edifice would draw those seeking to abuse it to justify or entrench their own views on appropriate behavior like moths to a flame

Totally missing the main point of the article. FB is actively leading people down a dark path. Your mall or convention centre doesn’t so that, but FB’s attention-optimising algorithms do. FB must be very happy for people to bang on about free speech and hate speech because then they’re not looking at how FB actually works.

What I'm saying is bullies gonna bully. With or without Facebook's help. The only thing that keeps it in check is everyone else. Facebook is undoubtedly part of the problem, but I don't see Facebook serving ads "how to more effectively troll", "go on, doxx your friends", "hound someone to suicide".

No, that's a case of problem existing between keyboard and chair independent of what websites are visited. You can argue Facebook makes it worse, but then you can't realistically stop there. Every platform does that doesn't moderate to some $subgroup's liking.

I am sorry but you complete misrepresented my comments and are now making a straw man argument. I did not state that a state controlled many web is the answer anywhere in my comment. you seem to have come up with that on your own. so let's leave that alone

now regarding malls, the incentives are different, so yes for the most part they do. at least in the country I live in at the moment. it is in their best interest to get more people in the door and for longer, can't do that if they keep getting harrased. I don't know why you think they wouldn't.

no other business benefits from emotional dark patterns as much as these platforms

It's not my intent to construct a strawman at all. As an American, and as someone who while growing up was regularly a target for abuse by members of my peer group, I'm trying to get across the fact that creating an an organizational obligation to "control" this aberrant behavior doesn't work. Ever. The most effective deterrent, is exercising that responsibility as an individual standing up for common decency. Not one place is an effective deterrer of things, generally because while you might get a bump initially, it wanes over time. In fact, the times when bullying is most likrly is exactly where bullies know organizational blind spots exist. If you formalize a policy on it, they basically know exactly what to look out for.

I one hundred percent agree the dark patterns are an issue. The thing is I disagree with the conclusion of dark pattern use causes bullying that otherwise wouldn't happen to happen.

Awful people gonna awful. Nada's gonna change that. There's therefore a balance point between creating organizational levers to pull to compel action vs. realizable level of attainment of suppression of deleterious behavior.

I'm just saying; doing something about dark pattern use should be just that; don't conflate it with the eternal struggle against getting bullies to stop bullying.

I actually worked as a security guard through most of college, split amongst various sites including out local mall. We actually called it "harassment" not bullying, but we absolutely took it seriously and you could find yourself banned from the mall pretty easily, and none of the "boys will be boys" or "he's a good kid" that you'll often see used to excuse the behavior in schools. Frankly, my opinion is the mall probably dealt with it MORE effectively than my high school.

Growing up, the most effective anti-bullying enforcement was pretty much bystanders, and a minority thereof to boot. Don't know whether the difference was, but 90% of the time for me, official intervention was nowhere near as effective as that that just happening to see something and intervening because they felt it was wrong.

Yes.

They regularly kick assholes out.

Lookup “bouncers”.

I don't know why I expect anything better when I go into an HN comment section about anything that isn't purely tech. The comments are just disgusting. Bullying is indefensible and yet here we have people defending it!

Seriously HN, can we really not discuss this on the basis that FB could be doing better here without violating anything you find precious?

1. Don't use social media, it stops instantly.

2. If you are a public person and want to use Social-Media give your account to a public relation firm.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect journalists to be represented by PR firms online.

Given she's the BBC's disinformation specialist, it's also not reasonable to expect her to stay off social media.

Specialist sounds like they need someone with a thicker skin for that role. Most 'social media' roles are filled with snowflakes anyway, staffing failure. Stay offline.

This kind of discourse sounds very much alike to the school yard bully calling others "snowflakes". Where do we draw the line on abusive language? Should it be totally accepted online and only in school yards banned? Should it be allowed everywhere? Should we allow the president mock people with disabilities? "Stick and stones can break my bones but words never harm me" sounds a bit antiquated nowadays but should we come back to that age of disrespect for the others, only because it's not physical?

> Where do we draw the line on abusive language?

Social interactions are full of gray areas and legislation obviously doesn't and can't catch it all. Some people have rather controversial definitions of violence and abuse. Though, I think social consensus is that physical violence threats are well beyond any grayness.

I think you didn't read the article.

>BBC's disinformation specialist

aka. Propagandist

> Given she's the BBC's disinformation specialist, it's also not reasonable to expect her to stay off social media.

Why not? Why should every journalist be professionally active on Twitter? There is no reason why every journalist should be active on Twitter, they could just stop. I don't think anything bad would happen from that, rather I would even expect that the quality of articles would improve if journalists didn't obsess over Twitter so much.

Can you explain why she absolutely have to be active and post on social media on a professional account? I don't see it, she can research disinformation and write articles even if she isn't active and commenting on events in real time on Twitter.

Since she works for BBC, there is no point to throw your real name into a social network, and representing not just you but also the BBC.

If you want to brag about your work especially as a "disinformation specialist" be prepared for some stormy waters.

3. Learn to ignore it/deal with it. It's much easier to change your own mind than the minds of thousands of other people.

Then social media will keep being a place full of hate. Is this a happy ending for you?

> 1. Don't use social media, it stops instantly.

A problem with that (aside from victim blaming) is that you don't even need to use social media to be part of the overarching concern. YouTube recommends vile shit and you need to vigilantly ask it to not recommend misogynistic garbage or it will train you to feed on the drip of hate. You're always at risk of being infected with the brain worms and could set out to abuse others.

If you read through the article it becomes clear that the solution isn't to stop online abuse (difficult to distinguish between healthy dialogue) but surveillance companies need to stop training the abusers with their Skinner Boxes. And they don't because hate fuels engagement.

>A problem with that (aside from victim blaming)

I don't blame anybody, i just say:

DONT use hate filled platforms who flourish from hate and make no one happy. There is just no point in talking the world and hope that just the most civilized and humble peoples will answer you.

> Don't use social media, it stops instantly.

Not if you're already doxxed, it doesn't. These situations can easily expand into hate mail and phone calls.

Is there a safe and official way to give your account to a relation firm (and choose exactly what they can and can not do with it if possible)? Just handing a password from my Facebook/Google/whatever account to someone else doesn't sound good. Many people even use their accounts to log-in to everything and run their whole life and business so a leak can be catastrophic.

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