Look at some of the comments in this HN discussion, and you can see what Rochko means.
I'm not trying to be mean when I say this: don't kid yourself into thinking you're in a club with the cream of the crop, anywhere - you're just setting yourself up for disappointment in the best case and horror in the worst case.
Needless to say, even "intellectuals" can be racist.
Not "even" intellectuals. Eugenics and racial superiority were progressive intellectual concepts less than 100 years ago, with people writing self-important letters to each other about it.
Feels very much like a "you become what you hate situation," in my case, interacting with Black folks with whom I share probably like 97% similar views on just about everything -- and yet, (it's mild, no worries, but) I have been on the receiving end of the literal worst behavior I've ever experienced via strangers on social media. E.g. some mild doxxing, you aren't really Black etc.
(And for those curious/interested/familiar, yes it was "Bad Space" aligned people)
That's exactly the problem, though. Political echo chambers with no diversity of thought ultimately cultivate the expectation that everyone must agree on every topic, at all times.
As soon as you dare disagree with what the majority has decided is the "correct" opinion, you will be seen as the enemy.
So we make our own choices about where we spend our time, and some of us simply disconnect.
And you can have whatever opinion you want, but also be prepared for me to tell you that your opinion is stupid, and when you assert that a falsehood is in fact opinion instead of a lie, I will point out that facts are not opinions and opinions are not facts.
Too many of y’all get this confused.
Maybe because you say things like that? In what world is people's skin color related to their views?
There are Black people on Mastodon, myself included. In my interactions with them, to me, it appears as of the (very tiny) subset of Black folks who are also on Mastodon, I have observed and interacted with them on views and issues about the world.
Presuming, for example, they vote - we would vote similarly. We would support the same causes, we would likely react similarly to things in real life -- and yet...etc see above.
Point being, it's not like I was in with like Black MAGA or some other group who I'd be unlikely to associate.
I though they were applying an overly-restrictive definition of “agree with 97%,” and was trying to point out that what you actually wrote “97% similar,” left plenty of room for reasonable interpretations (like the one you posted).
I think in the US there is 'black culture' and having a black skin, and I understand your point that skin color should not be assumed to be related to a view. But I don't think that's implied here.
that's WHY I said "with whom I shared views" and not BLACK PEOPLE GENERALLY.
so many feelings people get into.
What do you mean?
Was it well meaning? Yes. Did it end up being childish, overblown and power-trippy? Also yes.
I find that most everyone on Mastodon focuses properly, but too much on "Black people aren't much into Mastodon because of the racism," and not "Black people aren't much into Mastodon because it's boring as hell."
>I find that most everyone on Mastodon focuses properly, but too much on "Black people aren't much into Mastodon because of the racism," and not "Black people aren't much into Mastodon because it's boring as hell."
It's sad to say but I think black people aren't big in the tech space or similar spaces in general and not just in the US. Fosdem is one of the most pasty conventions out there in a rather international city.
As an outsider looking in I think just like with the lack of women in tech it's not primarily a barrier problem. And this is a different subject but I in factthink some of the weird campaigning towards women to join has had the opposite effect (Think 'barbie and her pink laptop entering the male dominated field' type stuff just reinforcing pointlessly gendered preconceptions.)
like, the 4chan tech board is a great source of information and also a disgusting cesspool of casual racism. C'est la vie.
Very often what any group outside the mainstream does do to address their concerns is called 'overblown', etc. by people in the mainstream. 'They make too big a deal of it', you'll hear. The 'overblown' perception is a strong signal of the problem at work (and also condescending).
It goes to what is often the heart of the cause of the problems: The mainstream doesn't experience it directly, they only see it peripherally, and they can easily ignore it, which they mostly do. Doing anything effective about the problem therefore challenges the mainstream's norms.
If you are studying Ada programming, you talk to Ada programmers, not to people who read about Ada somewhere - the latter would be absurd; what do they know? If you want to know about the experiences of Black people, conservative Christians, etc., you need to talk to those people and listen to them. It's not overblown to them.
And on one hand I understand that for very many issues, black folks get unfairly percieved as making too big of a deal of things etc.
But no, I'll stand firm here. The Bad Space people are genuinely a bunch of weirdos. So much so that I feel compelled to call them out as such because I understand that for a lot of Mastodon, they're a point of contact for "Blackness" for a lot of people who are not black. And frankly, I find them embarrassing in a way that I literally never have ANY other black folks in real life. I do not want non-black people to believe that their behavior is normal or appropriate.
As in, I never found "oh, they're just playing the race card" to EVER be valid.
Until I went to Mastodon.
And especially in practice.
> I am black as well
I don't know that it gives too much legitimacy to the argument. There are ~~ 40 million black people in the US; lots of different ideas and perspectives. If I went by all the black people who try to shock me by saying they like Trump, he would have gotten 70% of the black vote. Frankly, lots of people online claim to be black after they say something critical - and especially something racist (you didn't say anything racist, afaik) - as if that somehow justifies it. It's a well-worn troll tactic to turn the tables on racism, etc.
> And frankly, I find them embarrassing in a way that I literally never have ANY other black folks in real life. I do not want non-black people to believe that their behavior is normal or appropriate.
Doesn't that take on the too common perspective toward black people (and lots of other groups), that each black person is like a spokesperson of a universal Black Persons Association and speaks for / represents every other black person?
Freedom is the freedom to be outrageous, wrong, disagreeable, etc. (Not that disagreeing with you or me is 'wrong'.) Look at what white people do.
Which is to say, to some extent, innocently, people on all sides often DO have in their heads some-kind-of uBPA, and I just wanted to make sure that people knew that in the pure opinion (again, opinion) jrm4 very much thinks the Bad Space is very far from any putative uBPA.
I worry that HN is too much an echo chamber itself: People criticizing perspectives like Bad Space supporters are commonplace here; the Bad Space people might never have space to make a serious argument.
And yes, I can say that, because white people aren’t impacted in a significant, systematic way by my statement about white people as a whole being used to shape policy and practice across Western society. And no, the very brief moment in which white men had to think twice before saying racist things doesn’t count, nor does affirmative action, of which white women were the primary benefactors.
And I don’t worry how non-Black people perceive those annoying and exhausting Black people, because if I can treat white folks individually after the shit I’ve been through, white folks can learn how to treat Black folks like individuals, and if they can’t they weren’t my kind of people anyway.
Would not tolerate otherwise.
Then again, Mastadon is basically social media for people who can't handle normal social media, so I guess some elevated sensitivity goes with the territory.
Mastodon reminds me a lot more of those old-school internet hangout spaces, like IRC channels and web forums, than it does Twitter, despite wearing its artifice.
If preferring community spaces to habit-forming social media firehoses is somehow cast as "not being able to handle social media," then...guilty as charged, I guess, though it continues to escape me why anybody would consider that a bad thing.
I don't see people who are addicted to social media but starving for real social connections as some other side of a debate. I see them as victims of an insidious social experiment created by some of the most anti-social and immoral people on the planet.
Social Media is corrosive to society by design, and I think that we will look back on the era of cramming everybody into one of a few shared social spaces that all go out of their way to anger you people monetary gain as an enormous mistake. But I don't blame the social media users themselves for falling into the trap.
I don't think acting indignant rather than trying to reach understanding is in good faith. If we want to raise the level of conversation, we should listen to each other.
> I don't see people who are addicted to social media but starving for real social connections as some other side of a debate. I see them as victims of an insidious social experiment created by some of the most anti-social and immoral people on the planet.
This really condescending. They are addicts and victims. You are not.
> Social Media is corrosive to society by design, and I think that we will look back on the era of cramming everybody into one of a few shared social spaces that all go out of their way to anger you people monetary gain as an enormous mistake. But I don't blame the social media users themselves for falling into the trap.
My point was: I don't think making money from engagement means much, though maybe it exacerbates the existing tendencies of socializing online. Mastodon makes no money but it's often even more toxic than the more widespread networks. I don't think size is the predictor. Lobsters and Bluesky are smaller than HN and Twitter but they both have plenty of toxicity.
I think the point is that once you combine the property of creating an online space disconnected from real life signals and give people a way to stay constantly connected to it (smartphone, always on internet), then reality for these folks erode. I think engagement algorithms can change the incentives on these networks but even a purely chronological forum has the same issues. The reason forums of old were less toxic (and they often were just as toxic, I remember many old flamewars) was just that the participants had to turn off the internet and go outside and interact with the offline world. They could only separate for so long.
Not everybody who drinks is an alcoholic. Not everybody who gambles is a gambling addict. I was quite specific about who I was talking about.
> The reason forums of old were less toxic (and they often were just as toxic, I remember many old flamewars) was just that the participants had to turn off the internet and go outside.
In my experience, the toxic conversations stopped because a moderator stepped in and gave them a time out, forcing them to touch grass.
And that's ultimately the problem. All spaces can be toxic. Social media sees toxicity and thinks to themselves, "This is drawing eyeballs and engagement. Let's double triple and quadruple down on it.". The incentives of social media are totally maladjusted for creating good social spaces on a fundamental level. Not every old-school social space was run well, but at least the possibility was there and not being actively subverted.
The idea of having user-run social spaces without populism-driven moderation is thankfully an idea that is coming back. Discord has quietly become a 10,000 pound gorilla based on that exact model. I have also found that VRChat is also quietly amassing a following of VR enthusiasts, as it turns out that there is value in maintaining long-distance relationships with a sense of presence you don't get out of group chats and video meetings.
On the other hand, I don't really get the point of BlueSky. It suffers from the same underlying incentives as Twitter, and we all know how that story ended.
I have a FB account since, what, 16 years or so. It has helped me to connect with people, it helped me to partially break out of my (disability-inflicted) social isolation. Heck, it even brought me and my partner of 14 years together. Yes, it also tiggered some rage at some times, but that does normal social interaction as well. People are people, and some people are plain assholes. I dont need facebook to be triggered by people.
Not everyone who drinks alcohol is an alcoholic. Not everyone who gambles is a gambling addict.
> Yes, it also tiggered some rage at some times, but that does normal social interaction as well.
Anywhere can be toxic. The difference is that social media is incentivized to drive engagement, and the way most social media is set up leads to the kinds of anti-social behavior that is rampant on most social media sites these days.
Not all of them. Discord has quietly become the 10,000 gorilla of functioning communities due to the fact that servers are invite-only and moderated by humans, without any populism-driven moderation. Most of the folks I know from the oldschool forum and IRC era ended up there, and I've met loads of new people simply through connections and friends of friends.
I suppose I hope that future generations will consider social media in its current form to be a vice in the same way that alcohol or gambling are, but I don't claim to know what an actual society-wide solution would look like.
All I can do in the here and now is point out how fake social media is, try and articulate why, and gently guide people who might want off the ride towards spaces where they can connect with actual human beings.
In a way, I feel sorry for terminally online social media addicts. I never understood the appeal of sites like Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram in the first place. Facebook seemed neat until the artifice of real people + real names + real pictures turned out to be smoke, then I stopped bothering with it. Reddit was probably the closest to being appealing that social media ever got, but it had some serious systemic issues with community-building that only got worse as moderators went from community curators to doing janitorial work for a large company >for free.