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Comment by songshu | Hacker News Reader

Misquoting Bart Simpson "If you never experience the abuse, you'll never get desensitized to it", and with that in mind, and talking here only about written abuse, these are my favorite three outcomes for, let's say, my daughter:

1) No one abuses her online 2) People abuse her, she dismisses it as noise 3) People abuse her, and she reacts and attempts to control it

I think we should be aiming for number 2.

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We absolutely should be aiming for number 1.

I think I get your point, that it is healthy to be able to deal with the world as it is, but that doesn't mean that we have to accept or embrace it as it is.

I agree with you. I dont think that that would be practical though so teaching #2 is probably going to help the most amount of people.

What her daughter may perceive as "abuse" can be very subjective. That's why censorship in general is never a good idea. Learning to "dismiss" it as noise is a more scalable and elegant approach, and doesn't limit anyone's freedoms in a subjective way.

I'm not advocating for censorship when I say that we should be aiming to not have people abusing each other. We should be aiming for a society where no one wants to abuse other people.

Maybe that's dreamy-eyed nonsense, but I think when you talk about aims you have to let ideals in, not just stick to what is practical tomorrow.

Why do you believe it's better for your daughter to receive abuse and dismiss it than not to receive it in the first place? If we're aiming for ideals, let's go for the ideal of a world in which people aren't subjected to so much abuse that they just filter it out as background noise, because that sounds like a shit future.

To be clear, I presented the options in the order that I favor them. It's just that I see 1 as unobtainable.

It can't be a great idea to aim for the "ideal" situation if it's impossible to do. So much wasted time. Surely it's a better idea to aim for something that one can control, and is obtainable, even if not easy.

While I generally agree that it's mostly (and likely even entirely) noise, I also can't ignore that there were many instances of abuse in this particular issue that would be outright criminal in most jurisdictions (death threats) if those same people said the same things in person in a public forum. The fact that its done under a practically anonymous pseudonym by a large number of people doesn't change the criminality, it just makes it impractical to enforce the law against those offender. I don't think we want people desensitized to threats on their life, even if from a source that's typically just noise.

If you want to spout hate and slurs over the internet, go right ahead, I think people do need to develop thick skin to idiots, but I wouldn't be sad if a few of the small number of people making threats of harm were tracked down and charged appropriately.

One could argue that she should never be subjected to it to begin with. It's not bad argument either.

I am not disagreeing with you, just saying you can't expect people not to pick #1 or use #3 to make a buck or two.

Agreed, you are smart. Many people won't agree, but if you can even just have your own daughter think that way, you've probably done all that really matters.

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