Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

nonrandomstring

Gaslighting has some quite subtle meanings that we can see in relation to tech.

It isn't merely undermining someone's sense of sanity by disagreeing, or pointing out their logical missteps or forgetfulness. Gaslighting is the deliberate manipulation of reality and expectations so as to lead a person to themselves doubt their own sanity. Like hiding someone's car keys just before they are to leave.

Back in the '10s we had a saying going around Shoreditch tech scene, "Creepy is the new cool". Suddenly finding ads on your phone for the things you were just talking about. Having gadgets "automagically" sync your documents to other devices without your say-so. That feeling of "did I really copy that to the iThing?" was simultaneously exciting and unnerving.

There is such a thing as "the warm thrill of confusion" [1].

At a certain point that becomes gaslighting. When Amazon deleted "Nineteen Eighty Four" from Kindle, that was a seminal tech gaslighting moment.

As "AI" is integrated into more services and users are robbed of agency under the auspices of "convenience", we can expect to see more people feeling "gaslighted" by tech, or by others via technology.

It is also a hallmark of narcissistic manipulators who like to cultivate dependency by undermining the agency of others, so it sits well with many present tech powers such as advertisers. Remote control amplifies this possibility. In the limit, gaslighting is a soft word for a some particular activities in psyops; demoralisation and discombobulation (which should be the all-time word of the year :)

[1] https://www.davemcnally.com/album-lyrics/the-wall/pink-floyd...

Amazon deleting 1984 is not gaslighting. Gaslighting has a specific meaning, and part of it is refusing to acknowledge an action.

I'm not so sure syncing is a great example, either. Not like they hide it

Though adtech tracking and topics stuff sure feels like gaslighting. They say they're not listening, and I can kind of believe a stochiastic thing of "well you're actually friends on FB with the other person and they looked at this product so...." but there's a lot of times where it really feels like the only explanation is mics everywhere listening to conversations, even though I know it's not that! But is it?

Google Reads deleting 1984 might be gaslighting, if they chose to do it only for users who hadn't opened the book on any device in >6 months, and who had purchase notifications sent to a gmail address, which they could also retroactively delete or modify emails referencing their purchase from.

> part of it is refusing to acknowledge an action.

Algorithms are not great at acknowledging their actions, so I think that's very much part of peoples' experience with big-tech. Examples of an update breaking things, or an account getting deleted, and a responsible person quickly admitting "yes we did that, and here's why", are rare. The usual response is to deflect or stonewall. It's practically on page one of the PR playbook.

> I'm not so sure syncing is a great example, either. Not like they hide it

I think you are seeing this from the developers' viewpoint. There's been plenty of examples where this stuff is on by default and users have been unaware of it.

> explanation is mics everywhere listening to conversations, even though I know it's not that! But is it?

It's that doubt which is the seed of soft, pervading anxiety, that does the damage.

I dig “creepy is the new cool.”

I think we’ve evolved from that to “being gaslit is the wallpaper for most conversations.”

Seemingly any point will be contradicted by someone, no matter how untruthful or outright wrong to malicious the counterpoint. It’s as though people are live action role playing the worst of the internet in person at times.

Edit-source for the 1984 deletion: https://slate.com/technology/2009/07/how-amazon-s-remote-del...

> I think we’ve evolved from that to “being gaslit is the wallpaper for most conversations.” Seemingly any point will be contradicted by someone, no matter how untruthful or outright wrong to malicious the counterpoint. It’s as though people are live action role playing the worst of the internet in person at times.

I’d start questioning your own circles if that’s your experience of “real life”. Can’t say I’ve ever experienced anyone I consider a friend, family, or a colleague of note acting like that.

Something is very wrong with the people around you.

maybe, maybe they're just the religious/dogmatic kind.

Rural ‘merica.

Abraham Lincoln intentionally filled his cabinet with people who held different and opposing perspectives. What's the point in surrounding yourself with people who only think like you?

Arguing for argument's sake is annoying, but echo chambers that reinforce agreement are force multipliers for inaccuracy, falsehood, and extremism. I'd rather be questioned than told I was wrong with no agency in my defense.

Isn't there a difference between ianai was describing and constructive discussions with people holding opposing perspectives? I feel like I am surrounded by people with different opinions from my own, which I'm thankful for, but none of them engage in the types of malicious behaviors that "the worst of the Internet in person" brings to mind.

Discounting any literal intent in their superlative, yeah, but aren't opinions relative?

The worst people of the internet differ based on who you ask. For me, moral absolutists and people who spew out hot takes and twisted arguments for likes are pond scum on the rational discourse totem pole, tied with ad folk.

For others, it's whomever fails their loyalty tests by not agreeing with every view they may hold at any given time.

Malice implies intent, and a lot of people don't see what they're doing as intentionally causing another harm. I find the most annoying people usually think that their behavior is excluded because they believe that they're /helping/.

Half of my family is conservative, watches only fox news, and considers all liberals to be "wrong about everything" because they have an entirely different set of basic facts about the world, different heuristics, different opinions, different ways of confirming those opinions, different understandings of fundamental topics, etc. Any time these two groups have a conversation it will probably feel like gaslighting because if you have any thought that relies on any base assumption, they will deny it and claim "that's not how the world works" and insist they know how things "actually work" and you will not be able to convince them differently even if you could demonstrate things right then and there.

If you are unwilling to accept scientific discovery as a significant indicator of something, then no amount of scientific work will convince you, and will just feel like someone trying to disprove your entire world view, while if you are unwilling to accept ideology and dogma as significant influences, you will feel like you are taking crazy pills as a large group denies reality in front of their very eyes

> I think we’ve evolved from that to “being gaslit is the wallpaper for most conversations.

No, not really. Unless you're surrounded by bad people

It is time we developed something like an professional ethic in the developer sector including shunning people that break it.

Sadly finding people who will actively make the world worse if it pays enough (also on this site) is not hard. What is hard, is finding people who have the guts and the self respect to say "No" when they are asked to do creepy, destructive or evil things.

And if ethics won't work, let's introduce laws and enforce them. Free speech, sure, but what about informational self-determination?

> say "No" when they are asked to do creepy, destructive or evil things.

You'll be pleased there's almost a whole chapter of "Ethics for Hackers" devoted to that problem. Analysis of about 30 different psychological rationalisations, self-deceptions and logical fallacies that help people knowingly do bad things. One problem is that people in tech are mostly smart and logical, and therefore the most vulnerable to certain mind-tricks.

It's also worth remembering that what is "ethical" is more complex than bare acts. There are many hackers quite justified doing "creepy, destructive or evil things" against enemies. I've written much on defence, "lethality engineering" and cyber-offense work.

The disgusting thing about some big-tech work is that we're doing it to our own families and children.

I have regularly described the process of debugging a complicated and unforseen issue as "being gaslit by the machine". You "know" that the code is supposed to flow "this way" or that the data "should" look like "that" or your ten years of experience makes you think computers should act one way, but this code is obviously violating those assumptions. You feel like maybe you don't actually know how computers work, like they are mere magic black boxes that you've tamed occasionally. You feel like the rules of your reality don't actually exist, as the computer continues to do things that make no sense in your normal understanding.

I feel this every time my girlfriend asks me "why did <computer thing> break in <unpredictable and unexplainable> way?" and I have to answer "I have no idea how that could possibly happen but every experience I've had fixing code tells me that there's often no rhyme or reason to anything that goes on under the hood of a computer in the modern world.

No need to go that far. Washing machines regularly gaslight people, making socks appear and disappear.

> You feel like the rules of your reality don't actually exist, as the computer continues to do things that make no sense in your normal understanding.

I am tenacious and usually get my bug, eventually. What you're describing is a priceless moment pregnant with opportunity to learn. That exact moment you feel it's beyond all understanding often comes seconds before you expand the frame "out of the box" and see how you've been "so stupid all along".

With machines it's a moment of mastery. But when that realisation is about a person, or organisation that's betrayed you, or you've fundamentally misunderstood for some time, the emotional shock is flooring.

It's a stereotype to say that hackers prefer machines to debugging human psychology, because they are more predictable and less painful. But what's changed along with the complexity and uses of computers as socially manipulative tools is that the possibility that the thing might actually "be against you" is increasing, Malicious code does not have to be "malware" in the strict sense - it just needs to carry the values of a malevolent author.

I don't think deleting 1984 was a gaslighting moment, though it was an ironic act of censorship (even if there was a capitalist/corporate reason rather than a propaganda reason, the effect was the same).

Gaslighting would've been if they'd changed the text so that Big Brother had been the good guy all along, and when you looked at the text again you decided you must have just misremembered it.

Absolutely this.

For how well OP's comment was written, they seem to have missed the point of understanding what the word 'gaslighting' actually means.

I have a completely unfalsifiable conspiracy theory, call it a "curious hand-waving intuition"... that the post-facto explanation Amazon gave about "publishing rights" is a little too clean and slippery for my linking.

Do not the choices of Ayn Rand and George Orwell, both of whom deal with themes of authoritarianism, from amongst all possible book titles and authors, seem a little interesting?

Almost as if someone, an insider perhaps, had wanted to remind the public that Amazon's capabilities were not those of your friendly local bookstore.

I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. That some Amazon employee decided to delete everyone's copy of 1984 as an obscure jab at their employer and then Amazon, instead of saying it was an error and reversing it, just ran with it and made some bizarre cover-up?

You're playing the "conspiracy theory" game all wrong :)

When it's your turn you have to come up with even more outlandish figments of overactive imagination, paranoia and grandiosity.

The winner gets to say something like "This goes all the way to the top", or "We're through the looking glass now people"... etc.

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