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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

> Any medium where you invite commentary from strangers on the internet is going to be full of ignorant commentary. [...] I do not think this is a problem with the tool.

You think the design of this medium inherently attracts death threats (which the author mentions, and I assume you've generalised into 'ignorant comments') - but it's not a problem with the medium?

To me it sounds like a medium that's giving undue weight to the voices of the deranged; well adjusted people do not threaten one another with murder.

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Allowing any person to comment is the most freedom you can give people. If people are free to comment whatever they want and they choose to publish crap then that's just a commentary on human nature, not the tool.

All scenarios where anyone can comment anything are not equal, though.

F.ex. are anonymous comments allowed?

To some degree the platform defines the content it generates.

There exist no practical methods to prevent anonymous commentary on the internet.

If you do not accept the potential of being in a car crash, don't get in a car. If you are not accept the potential of strangers saying mean things to you on the internet, don't talk to strangers on the internet.

That is not victim blaming. It is threat modeling.

We can opine about how nice it would be to live in a world where we could keep all dangerous drivers off the road and all mean people off the internet, but we won't see major changes here for another century, so I don't advise waiting on those to live your life.

Let's say I create another website that allows people to share things and other people to comment on those things, pray do tell how do I prevent ignorant comments? Should only people who have Mensa certification be allowed to comment? Does Mensa alone rule out all cases of error possible in human brain? Does any metric in fact? How about the other way, how does having 87IQ prove that this person cannot say something profound sometimes?

Virtually everyone makes ignorant comments from time to time--even the most brilliant people. The issue is vicious comments--and the solution is to terminate their ability to post after the first vicious comment.

"Death threats" are so overplayed I don't take anyone claiming to get them seriously anymore.

It's often a lie and when it isn't it's a comment clearly written by a 12 year old with a Rick and Morty avatar.

It's kind of a catch-22, isn't it?

You don't take the threats seriously, nothing happens: no one notices.

You don't take the threats seriously, something happens: "why didn't you take the threats seriously? It's your own fault."

Sometimes the threats are serious and something happens.

> Sometimes the threats are serious and something happens.

Yeah that's when you hear "we were aware of the shooter" and a dozen police officers stand outside the classroom for an hour while they go hog wild.

Since we are all dead and damned either way, why worry? Giving false threats power in aggregate probably causes more harm than ignoring them, especially since the response when paying attention is so ineffective.

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