Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Silicon valley has a history of producing things that initially don't have a lot of restrictions that get a lot of traction that then turn all corporate and sterile as soon as big money gets involved.

Lack of fun is one reason. User generated content is risky. It needs moderation. Somebody might express themselves in ways that are inappropriate for the widest possible meaning of that word. And that might lead to legal consequences. Which adds cost. Fun and edgy things are typically bordering on inappropriate; or flat out inappropriate if you have no sense of humor. The difference is not relevant. If somebody might get offended, it's risky. Which makes the lawyers nervous.

Another reason is the obsession with building walled gardens and claiming full ownership of everything inside those walls. It leads to locked down experiences where creativity is basically not welcome unless sanctioned from the top down. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. used to have APIs and an ecosystem of people building stuff on top of that. As they grew, all of that went away.

Facebook is a good example as something that started out to enable some wildly inappropriate and immature behavior. Mark Zuckerberg actually started out building a platform for rating girls called facemash. Controversial, even at the time and it got him in trouble. Facebook is what he did next.

The first point isn’t an argument for fun but for individualism, almost to an extremist extent. If you want to publish your thoughts for others to see you’re going to have to accept the fact that some people are just going to take it differently because it human experiences are diverse, and you must be mature enough to be accountable for what you say. It’s people’s problem that they see conflict with others as an inherent negative when the disagreement with others is what itself brews creativity, because it challenges your point of view.

People criticize the media for being “biased” but then crave echo chambers of their own.

The medium is the message. We are no longer in the literary age. The power is in the hands of the mob. You can make some carefully thought out post and try to be accountable for what you say. I can show up in your comment forum, shit all over everything and leave.

In the old days you would've had to publish a book to get your message out, and if I saw it a bookstore it wouldn't register, I wouldn't pay money for it, and I wouldn't bother writing an angry letter to send to in the mail because it would have zero capacity to take you down a notch in a public forum.

You're talking about old ideas from a more civilized age. Tribalism is back and in charge. The internet isn't here so that we can all get along and better understand one another's point of view. It's here so that we can take turns bashing one another.

> In the old days you would've had to publish a book to get your message out, and if I saw it a bookstore it wouldn't register, I wouldn't pay money for it, and I wouldn't bother writing an angry letter to send to in the mail because it would have zero capacity to take you down a notch in a public forum.

Ha, if only. If you take a look at the actual history, people often were outraged about books and would destroy or burn them - and that's in the happy case when they weren't explicitly censored by the government. Even as we speak there are people banning books from school libraries and pressure businesses not to carry them.

There are many historical cases of actual mobs forming to protest the presence of a book in a library, or even about a ship known to bring some particularly hated book from overseas!

Not to mention, try to run a book shop even today in a more conservative corner of the USA without carrying the Bible at all, see how long it takes until people start complaining to you.

I wonder if the "banned books" line is earnestly trying to fool anybody. Is it just for internal self-deception? Shibboleth? Mood affiliation?

Maybe it can be said it succeeded in changing the topic from "What's in those books, exactly, and who puts them within kids reach, exactly, and why, exactly?" to arguing about their being or not banned. Was that the play?

That wasn't ever the topic to begin with, but good job proving the point that books aren't immune from righteous vitriol, now or then.

One other thing common between now and then is the pulpit beating about public decency and protecting the children.

Children will discover truths whether you try in vain to shield them or not. It's the duty of parents and communities to guide and teach children throughout that growth process, not to be lazy and bully other parents and communities into sharing and enforcing all their same values in depth.

And don't forget resolving differences with duels! Typing on the Internet pales in comparison.

There have always been books that are inappropriate for school libraries because they are patronized by children, not the general population. Many adults, often those who are not in the process of raising children, seem to forget that. Instead of allowing children to have room to master foundational knowledge it seems people with a particular agenda are more concerned with distracting children and pushing wildly inappropriate content into educational spaces.

> In the old days you would've had to publish a book to get your message out

In the old days, there was also strong tradition of people putting out their own pamphlets, newsletters, indie comics, etc. You didn't have to publish a book to get your message out. The early days of the web largely modeled that sort of activity.

Pretty much, we got from network of blogs and forums to all-encompassing massive social networks that impose same rules and sensibilities on everyone regardless of sense and reason, regardless of local culture or really anything else.

Like recently here in Poland we had cause of someone's motorization-related facebook page (basically diary of him building his tuned car) got banned after he posted a poll that dared to contain the word "czarny" (black).. someone else got banned for posting pic of their kids on vacation etc.

Are you saying that that’s a problem with people nowadays? How do we know for a fact that you’re not complaining about human nature as it has always been, say, even during the time of Socrates? How do we know that people are actually being too easily offended, or that it is you who’s being offended by people disagreeing with what you say?

I'm saying what Marshall McLuhan said: the medium is the message.

If you put human nature in one kind of medium it will react one way, and in other mediums people will react a different way. We tend to not be aware of how the media we are immersed in affects us. It takes a deliberate, contrived effort to notice such a thing.

McLuhan was extraordinarily prescient:

> McLuhan: The closer you get together, the more you like each other? There’s no evidence of that in any situation that we’ve ever heard of. When people get close together, they get more and more savage, impatient with each together….The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations.

He said that in 1977!

https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2017/02/16/marshall-mclu...

That’s not been my experience on HN, out of thousands of comments and interactions with hundreds of different users, maybe a total of a dozen turned out to be random ‘bashers’.

That's because if you fall too far out of line you get !Banged by !Dang.

HN is a heavily moderated forum. And I don't mind that one bit.

I think this holds even on places with much less moderation, even if you write a lot of controversial opinions, even if your a fairly well known figure.

Take PG's X/twitter posts for example, I would estimate not even 50% of the replies count as 'bashers'.

That's how you know you're in an echo chamber. We're all here to pretend like it's still the early days of the internet, before it had come into it's own as a medium, when it was still a skeuomorphic throwback to the literary era.

> That's how you know you're in an echo chamber.

No, how you know you're in an echo chamber is that you rarely hear any opinions that you disagree with. The absence of bashing doesn't mean you're in an echo chamber, it means there's a pleasant lack of assholes.

I hear opinions I disagree with every time I come to HN, so it doesn't seem like a total echo chamber to me. HN does serve a particular subculture, though, and in that broad sense is a bubble -- but there's still a huge variety of differing opinions on any topic.

I completely disagree with your comment but I have no need to bash you.

Why is the positive experience the echo chamber but the negative experience is a result of the inherent nature of the medium?

Because we are inherently tribal. We like being with our tribe. We are suspicious and wary of other tribes.

I know I'm weird, but I get very suspicious and wary of expressions/demonstrations of tribalism itself. It's the main reason why I have a strong dislike of sports, for instance.

Einstein didn’t seem particularly tribal, not about being a physicist, speaking German, being jewish, being smart, etc…

If your talking about the median human then sure, they’re more likely to be tribal.

>Written between October 1922 and March 1923, the diaries see the scientist musing on his travels, science, philosophy and art. In China, the man who famously once described racism as “a disease of white people” describes the “industrious, filthy, obtuse people” he observes. He notes how the “Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.” After earlier writing of the “abundance of offspring” and the “fecundity” of the Chinese, he goes on to say: “It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/...

Did you quote the wrong section? How are opinions on the living conditions and dispositions of peasants in rural China circa 1922-1923 relevant?

yah, Einstein would have the same assessment of you

Huh, looks like my other comment disappeared, anyways that seems remarkably unlikely, at least compared to random 'bashers'.

What does this comment mean? The internet is a commodity (well strictly speaking, it's not, but people agree that it _should_ be one), of course we're talking about the median person.

The median person doesn't post on HN?

I think it's a bit defeatist to think that the current vitriolic state of the internet is as sweeping and undefeatable as a "new age" when almost all of that vitriol can be traced to a few engagement-maximizing algorithms, held in place by a handful of megacorporations. Even a little antitrust enforcement and legislation would cut it down massively.

On Twitter it's not merely that you get a "different" interpretation, you have to deal with the most hostile interpretation possible of both your words and what you "didn't say". A little bit of disagreement is interesting; constant spurious repetitive negativity is exhausting and un-fun. Which is why people are leaving Twitter.

It’s rather remarkable how strong of a tendency Twitter replies have to find something to be angry about once a tweet gets big. The original message can be something as neutral and innocuous as possible and it’ll still receive inflammatory responses.

As you say, disagreement isn’t the issue, it’s a lack of basic civility and anybody who isn’t addicted to flameposting will get worn down by it quickly.

It's not even lack of basic civility - it's also a complete lack of intellectual honesty and utter disregard for truth. Civility and intellectual honesty are correlated; being just rude doesn't get you anywhere near the level of typical Twitter outrage bait.

> you have to deal with the most hostile interpretation possible of both your words and what you "didn't say".

Not just on Twitter, or even on the internet. I see this happen all the time in real life. It's perhaps the primary reason why substantive discussions have become rare: they're often impossible because you can't have real communication when everyone is misinterpreting everyone else.

Those are not very clear parameters as to what is allowable disagreement and what is not, and easily lends to supporting echo chambers.

Echo chambers are unavoidable.

The particular problem the internet has (though other mediums quite often have also) is people arguing in bad faith. Lets say I'm against X which could be any number of things (religion, race, politics, sexual orientation, etc). Actually, lets say I hate any one of the people involved in the aforementioned categories, not just against. Do you think I'm going to have a rational disagreement on this in a manner where my mind could be changed by new information? Doesn't seem likely. Is my constant stream of bad faith arguments going to ruin the experience for everyone else? Seems very likely.

This falls under the paradox of tolerance. Let the intolerant take over and you'll push out the tolerant that don't want to put up with their shit.

The hard part, no I say the impossible part, is the demarcation between figuring out who is there just to be an asshole against the group and who is really having a discussion. Every person in the group will have a different definition and tolerance level.

> The hard part, no I say the impossible part, is the demarcation between figuring out who is there just to be an asshole against the group and who is really having a discussion. E

This is an illusion. All are there to have discussions. They, like you, have some expectations about how the conversation will go, and like you, they preemptively position themselves to avoid being humiliated with the fallacies the other will undoubtedly attack with.

Someone from either side could break the cycle. But an outsider doing that only does so that he might be inducted into the group (he doesn't want this though, already has one), and an insider doing so would be a traitor to the group.

Thus no one can speak honestly. But both engage, at least initially, in the hopes that something will happen to break the cycle for them, and become frustrated when the miracle doesn't occur.

> All are there to have discussions.

I get what you're saying and I don't completely disagree, but I also don't think everyone is there to have discussions. A discussion is a mutual attempt at understanding each other.

Some people are there to try to change minds and opinions. That's evangelism, which is a very different thing from having a discussion.

This is such a naive take that I'm pretty flabbergasted by it.

In an individual conversation most of what you way is true, you can at least expect to have a somewhat honest back and forth, and shut down the conversation cordially if its not going anywhere.

Group dynamics do not allow this. If, for example, your groups decides to be an asshole about it, there isn't shit my group can do about it other than submit to your crap flood. Moreso, if I'm a 'true believer' it's commonly an "acceptable" practice to poison the well and make any discussion online completely toxic in order to keep reasonable conversation from occurring.

If I choose violence then you have the option of choosing counter violence (defense), running away (shutting down ones forum), or death (letting the forum turn into a toxic brew).

> Group dynamics do not allow this. If, for example, your groups decides to be an asshole about it, t

Look at what you just wrote here. Somehow, you've decided that we're a hivemind and telepathically colluding to "collectively be an asshole". Or maybe, you imagine that we do it the old-fashioned way with some side-channel communication.

You don't believe this about your own group though. And it's obvious why... because you know you're not a telepath, and that there's no side-channel communication going on where you all decide to collectively be assholes. When someone from your side is an asshole (are you willing to admit it happens once in awhile), it's just because that one guy is an asshole, and you probably don't even know him. He just showed up.

Your beliefs are driven by an information disparity here, and some natural biases. Because they're all mostly pseudonymous, it's easy to not look closely and see that it's only one being an asshole, rather than the whole group. You're also biasing them up nicely, the non-assholes already anticipate being treated that way, so they lean into it. The same is happening on your side too, you're just oblivious to it, and there's no reason to explore this... what would you do with it anyway? Bringing it up would make you seem like a group traitor, and mulling it over yourself just makes you feel bad. You can't defect, you're on the good side after all.

They're seeing the same as you from the other side. Thus each side believes the other to be disingenuous, but know that they themselves are just victims of the disingenuity.

> Moreso, if I'm a 'true believer' it's commonly an "acceptable" practice to poison the well and make any discussion online completely toxic in order to keep reasonable conversation from occurring.

From the other side, of course. Your side never does this. You're the good guys. Only the bad guys do that.

Of course, if your side did do it, it would only be for the best reasons. And only the other people in your group would do it, you never do that yourself.

The issue here, as it always is when censors argue that their methods are simply the will of the masses, is that individuals aren't being given the freedom to decide for themselves if they like content or not. It's always the censor that determines what content others are allowed to see. The censor makes the decision on behalf of everyone else and claims their views represent everyone's views and their tastes represent everyone's tastes.

> you must be mature enough to be accountable for what you say

OP isn't talking about personal accountability but about platforms being afraid to lose advertising dollars or being sued and thus restricting the platforms.

You’d lose advertising dollars just the same by establishing an ill reputation because of what you say, even without getting and losing a lawsuit.

Yik Yak was one of the funnest things to come out in the last decade but it was too wild and dangerous to be allowed to thrive.

Damn, that's a memory unlocked there. I forgot it existed completely. It was huge during my university days, and led to some very entertaining posts about things happening around the campus.

In hindsight though, a huge amount of the posts on there were misogynistic. I keenly remember "slut-spotting" being a trend, with people commenting on girls walking home still dressed up from the night before, telling people to look out for them. Led to a lot of jeering out of windows and the like. Plenty of racist threads also. Targeted cyberbullying too; calling out various people by name and publicly insulting them under anonymity. I distinctly remember having to console a friend who was in hysterics because someone posted a thread about something relatively harmless that she had done, and she was publicly shamed.

It was an entertaining way to spend a few minutes at it's best, but at it's worst was a social weapon for a lot of people who shouldn't have had that level of reach nor anonymity.

Yep, that about sums up my experience with the app too. You could also remove any post automatically once it hit -5 points, so me and some friends got together and downvoted every new yak off the platform. People were big mad.

So was Facebook Live. I had so much fun just perusing around the globe, seeing events play out in real time. But too many crimes were committed live, including a mass shooting in New Zealand. I get why it couldn't continue, but it was one of the only genuinely cool things Facebook has ever built.

I'm confused by this comment - Facebook Live still exists, doesn't it? If I open Facebook and click "What's on your mind?" I can choose "Live video."

There used to be a globe-type UI that made it really easy to see what's happening live across the world. I'm not sure what Live offers today, but I imagine it's more restrictive. Here's an article about it:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/facebook-qui...

I see, thanks. I never saw that UI, but it sounds really cool. I have similarly had fun bouncing around the "Snap Map" in Snapchat before.

Yik Yak was too good and pure for this world. Or maybe too bad and degenerate. Either way I guess.

But the reboot was just sad! Who in their right mind thought they would be able to revive that cultural moment and moderate the shit out of it?

Oh holy shit, I forgot about that.

I work in higher education. You cannot genuinely imagine the heartburn that app gave college administrators across the country. It was amazing. Like a wave of anxiety washed across the country as Deans and Vp's all saw the statistics for bullying and suicide wash across their consciousness.

You just reminded me of the time my house party made it onto Yik Yak in college. That was a wild night.

An European clone called Jodel is very popular here and hasn't had such a negative reception.

Imagine how much extra racist Yik Yak would have been during the summer of 2020 and today during the Gaza war

My only reaction is: so?

Silencing people isn't going to make them stop thinking things and preventing discussion won't make them Good(TM) people.

The entire internet doesn't need to be sanitized.

I agree with your concluding statement, but I don't think that the goal of moderating discussions is to get people to stop thinking particular things or to make them "good people."

The goal is to encourage actual communication.

I don't think you can pile everyone into a handful of platforms and get good communication. There's too many opposing viewpoints, too much crossover, and too much intermingling.

Forums didn't have the same issue because they were often single/few topic websites and you could just aggressively remove everything off topic.

Yes, I agree with that completely. Above a certain threshold, it all just becomes noise.

I really can't imagine how it could have been any worse than it was in its hayday. Having 4chan but I'm sure it's someone I probably know and not a distant internet stranger made it so much worse.

Ultimately, there are always a few assholes that will ruin it for everybody else. This is why we can not have nice things.

Every time there is a platform that touts its love of freedom and hatred of censorship it is flooded with neo-nazis and pedophiles.

It’s not that the nazis are some outside group “invading” the platform—they are the existing, initial audience.

Whenever someone decides they are tired of getting censored on Platform X and creates their own “Free speech alternative to Platform X”, who is the audience? Cast-offs from Platform X. In other words, everyone who got kicked off for being racist, sexist, homophonic nazis. These free speech alternatives will never have a wholesome membership list.

>These free speech alternatives will never have a wholesome membership list

Indeed, I’ve noticed with ‘rights’, that the very people fighting for them are invariably going to be on the side of some repugnant individuals.

After all, the boundary of your right to do/say X will never be touched by average and inoffensive people. They will not push the limits. The people that do push the limits will be pushed back on by society, and then they lawyer up and take the fight to the legal system, and ultimately a Supreme Court who judges that “yea/nay you have the right to do/say X, and here are the clear demarcations”

At the end of the day they all have a profit motive and the most profitable thing they have found is ads. The type of advertisers allowed to advertise on social media, aka to lots of children, don't want to be next to anything controversial.

But they have all done a terrible job of this, banning algorithmically people who have done nothing wrong (or in the case of X saying something that makes Elon mad) while allowing widespread truly harmful misinformation

Reply on news.ycombinator.com