Obviously everyone should aim to be civil online, but at the same time if someone does become abusive when you're speaking anonymously online I would suggest you shouldn't take offence easily. There are many radically differing views in the world so we need to become adept at navigating them courteously, but also firmly and with conviction.
Also, without the verbal intonation of speech it can be quite difficult to not misinterpret the emotional sentiment of what's written online. It's for that reason emojis were invented and are useful.
What's the correct response to "justify your existence" from someone listing their location as the next town over and with a profile pic showing themself holding multiple guns?
I worked at Huffpost through all three of these phases in a technical capacity adjacent to comments and moderation, as director of technical operations and eventually as head of engineering. This study has significant questions to answer about their methods and assumptions that is summed up here:
"Second, we know that HuffPo used both manual and algorithmic moderation in all three phases, but we do not know how the policies changed under the different identificatory regimes."
Given whay I know about Huffpo's moderation system and their statement that they don't have understanding of them I'd say that nothing reported in this study should be considered valid for a few reasons.
One is that Huffpost used many different systems of moderations following many changing standards throughout their days as a big news site (#3 in the US at one point) and the biggest news-based community, which they were for several years.
They started with no moderation, then human moderation with evolving standards and practices that were overseen by a brilliant community team. Then they bought Julia in 2010(? ish) which was a very early machine learning moderation system that was trained on millions of human made moderation decisions before launch and whose training and internals were constantly updated and improved for years. Julia was dropped for Facebook comments later on, at which point Facebook did most of the basica moderation but was still assited by human moderators.
My first critique of this analysis is that the authors have no data or understanding of the moderation actions that resulted in suppression of comments or users. How can an analysis make any claims without this data? So far as they know the comment-flow was more hostile during the periods they observe as more civil, but there were just far more comments suppressed. Just one of dozens of other internal details of the operation that would invalidate their conclusions would be that Huffpost quiet-deleted comments for a significant period of time -- meaning that you could post, and you would see your posts in context when you were logged in but no one else would see them. They also silent-banned users. This and other details of implementation create a great deal of complexity and secondary effects.
I can attest that moderation was very, very active and that lots and lots of comments were moderated down and out of the comment threads... again indicating significantly less civility than any retrospective analysis would be able to discern without all the data.
I also find it interesting that this study chose Huffpost for the analysis. At the site's hights of success and profit the comment threads were the reason for their SEO dominance and were considered to be the most important secret sauce. Huffpost moderation was the best in the business by a long measure. With the methodology presented it would make sense to me to say that Huffpost would appear to be the most civil of the big sites of the time. So it is interesting that this study focuses singly on Huffpost and reports that their theories indicate this differential.
While the authors do cover some of this in their section on Limitations, they don't cover near enough to justify their results... instead this reads as another cherry-picking study where authors had a theory and found a dataset that confirmed it while being unaware of fundamental reasons why that dataset was an outlier, making it impossible for them to build in the needed controls in their methods.
My local news website sort of went through a similar set of transitions and I don't know what the moderation activities behind the scenes were.
At first they had their own accounts to sign up for on the main website, there were definitely some unsavory characters and trolling but I'd say by and large it was just normal commenting. They announced that due to abuse or moderation issues (I can't recall which) they were switching to facebook commenting, which ostensibly has a real names policy.
A month later comments were removed from the website altogether. The only users left were some of the nastiest posters ever and didn't seem concerned about their real name being up there next to the consistently awful things they had to say, possibly because they were mentally ill. I know I had no desire to interact with them and using my real name on a site full of crazy people sounded like only something a crazy person would do.
Moderation is expensive and difficult and failing to do it well will kill your community dead. The evidence of this is pretty obvious today... only niche communities have active and positive engagement so far as I can see.
Cost: the demand was made to let the human moderators and the community team go after one of several aquisitions. The SEO advantage of having these threads had evaporated by that time so there wasn't a good argument against going with the free service provided by Facebook.
The internet is moving towards the "real world", so the new people think it's the platform that matters and not the people. The truth is, the internet isn't really for content consumption, it's for meeting and talking to people and making friends. The further away we move from that, the more dystopian tech will become.
Very interesting. I'd always felt that real-name policies made for more civil but less vibrant and dynamic discussion. Moderation seems to be the key for any platform that allows for pseudonyms but the idea of stable pseudonyms makes intuitive sense.
n9 does make some excellent points about this study. So what does this boil down to? Moderate heavily and put up barriers to discourage bad actors, which is what everyone knows and is kinda boring.
We've known that since the halcyon days of USENET when everyone put their real name and university emails in their signatures. We also know it because it doesn't work on Facebook, and it didn't work when Google decided they needed to do a Facebook and they forced everyone's G+ account to merge with Youtube. People who feel entitled to their opinion and lack empathy will absolutely, with their whole chest, be an asshole and sign their John Hancock to it.
The truth is, you can't engineer civility. Anonymity? Look at 4chan. Make people pay? Now the assholes believe they've purchased the privilege to do whatever they like. Even Hacker News, a platform moderated to within an inch of its life, with both real-name and pseudonymous accounts, only tends to be civil within a small window of circumstance. Everywhere else it's as likely as not to be a dumpster fire.
My experience with Nextdoor and local Facebook groups has been mostly negative - it's not particularly civil at all.
Although I think some of that stems from the Eternal September factor - some people just do not know how to effectively communicate online. It's wild out there.
It's been years, and people are still confused about what causes online hostility. This study seems to be a good step in the right direction. A number of people believe that anonymity alone is to blame, and this just incorrect. People are even more hostile in cars, where the salient points seem to be:
- Lack of direct proximity (ie, you're not face-to-face with someone.)
- Inability to read body language cues correctly. (again, not face-to-face)
- Probably something to do with the inherently competitive nature of driving. (eg, many people see being "behind" as losing and being in "front" as winning)
In any case, people are immediately identifiable and culpable in a vehicle -- there are cameras everywhere, and everyone has a mandated government ID on the car.
Twitter seems to be another obvious example. People are horrible all over the platform, but many of the worst people aren't anonymous whatsoever. It seems to be the format more than the anonymity.
There can be 1000s, if not 1,000,000s of paid shills by bad actors present online media - whether industrial complexes or domestic-foreign enemies being paid to cause problems, to be divisive - to divide and conquer; and what % will be AI bots that can have their own unique personalities and behaviour?
I think we're going to have to be very careful-intentional in the near future of who we decide to interact with, though an ideological mob won't likely particularly care if they're being manipulated by nefarious actors who aim to weaponized a mob.
This is a good point that I hadn't considered. How can you trust mutual cooperation over time if you can't be sure you're even talking to a person? And crucially, if the ratio of malicious actors drowns out the cooperators, it may not matter how altruistically the remaining cooperators act.
We're in a global war and most don't even realize it because it's 5th generation psychological warfare; followed by a second incognito economic attack by purposefully weakening societies from within by purposeful mismanagement, going more and more into debt, increasing costs of goods and services, and where the West has been ideologically driven - consent manufactured - to eliminate CO2 or tax CO2 like in Canada, meanwhile in China - where most of our products come from, their CO2 emissions are skyrocketing; look at the incongruences and follow the money to see a fairly clear pattern.
I don't know who's all directly or indirectly involved-responsible: it's a system of corruption where many different parties, bad actors, are aligning for a common goal - where there is a synergy with the line they are toeing.
Do you think CO2 is an issue? If yes, do you think it's a problem that China's CO2 emissions are skyrocketing, whereas the Western countries have been following an ideology fuelled by climate alarmism-fear mongering?
What are the consequences in your mind, of China being able to increase how much cheap energy they are able to use because they're not constrained by CO2-related policy, whereas the West's energy costs are increasing due to CO2-related policy? How does that positively or negatively effect China and the West?
Interestingly, China's CO2 emissions seem to have stopped skyrocketing - they are set to stabilize this year, and they are currently undergoing a massive growth in manufacturing solar capacity, and as all PV that's currently being manufactured gets installed, their CO2 emissions are expected to significantly decrease already within 2-3 years.
It looks like we have passed the tipping point where switch to renewables happens not because of policy constraints but simply because it's cheaper now.
China didn't draft the West's policies. If the West openly signals its own weaknesses, that is not China's problem. Globalism destroys cultures and ultimately statehood; China understands that, but the West is still firmly in denial. Who can blame China for not wanting to enter a suicide pact?
You open with what's called a straw man argument - and then you proceed to avoid my questions.
What benefits or harms, if any, are there to China for their CO2/climate policy, and what benefits or harms, if any, are there to the West for our CO2/climate policy?
The issue is deeper than you realize or will allude to.
CSIS in Canada, for example, has stated that Canada is a very high target for the CCP - and it's quite clear there is influenced, regulatory capture, between US politicians and the CCP as well - most recently obviously evidenced by Xi's visit to San Francisco; not merely him visiting but all factors related to it.
The above is common knowledge for anyone not indoctrinated into sources of controlled narratives, indoctrinated into propaganda, where actual truthful narratives and logic will be dismissed as "conspiracy theories" etc; mob-suppression tactics as part of the censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus.
I am however curious what sources, where did you get that understanding that you shared here? Was it from friends/family, colleagues, from newspapers or news channels, etc? If so where do you live?
I don't disagree with you. China clearly takes advantage of asymmetries, and will gain more power as a result. I just don't agree with the idea that it wouldn't happen to the West if China didn't exist.
I didn't try to argue that point but in reality the most likely culprits of interfering aiding in regulatory capture for bad policies to exist in the world's #1 global power will be those who want to knock them down, who would benefit the most by doing so.
By their behavior? The same way you assess trustworthiness in real life. I might not actually care if a forum member is human or an AI, depending on the topic of conversation, if they behave usefully.
I'm a big proponent of clusters of invite-only communities combined with tracing the invite tree. It's the sweet-spot for community building: the growth rate is limited, so people get acclimated to the community. Moderation becomes easy, because good faith actors tend to invite good faith actors, and are incentized to do so by effectively staking their reputation by vouching for their invitees, and when a bad faith actor slips through the cracks their invitees tend to be suspect, too.
This also heavily addressed the bot issue: if a bot is identified, it is highly likely that most if not all of their invitees are bots, too, and there's a good chance whoever invited them is not a good faith actor, either.
Communities without barriers to entry are always going to be low trust. The trick is striking a balance between trust and isolationism.
Another way to counter bot accounts - arguably allowing inherently at least a slightly higher default trust possible - are paid subscription fees.
Even at $1/month for an account, 5 bots would cost $60 per year, and for most that is arguably increasing the cost too much to run a sophisticated bot net - though there certainly will be domestic and foreign bad actors wanting to infect a system for their censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus and will be willing to spend $ billions if not $10s of billions annually - as a war-invasion-infiltration cost - but at least then they are paying into the system that their adversary controls.
This is a problem I am going to face system design wise in the next few years as I'll want to launch my solution to many problems. A core value for the network of platforms and central platform with many feature sets, is that it will not have advertising - no ads - as I believe cheap-shallow advertising is very harmful and dangerous to society. Not only do ads capture our attention that has already been, for many if not most, been compromised, it also increases the costs of goods and services - because you're funding their advertising budget when you are manipulated to purchase from them, paying for yourself to be manipulated and perpetuating that system, it also influences design decisions.
It's going to be a very challenging and ongoing cost to strike a balance, as you say, between trust and isolationism - determining what limited "Free" accounts get access to do functionality wise vs. providing a low enough cost and a high enough value to sooner than later have the masses signup, with having a large enough % of paying subscribers to cover or subsidize the cost of the free accounts holders.
I'm most torn at whether free accounts will have any ability to publicly comment, post, etc - but my current intuition is telling me that in most circumstances, no. Doing proper moderation for posts and comments from paid subscribers alone, which will include bad actors-paid shills or uncritical indoctrinated-misguided ideologues party to a mob believing and parroting propaganda-narrative talking points, that will certainly be the most important and overwhelming task from my estimation.
I think we need to rally the awake and most conscious people of the world, who arguably will also be successful in their own right, where say paying $5/month for general access is pocket change in comparison to the importance of a well-designed and desperately needed system for our security-safety and leading the charge or holding the line for peace. Likewise, I wonder then if a version of Reddit's forum, at least one method that can be enabled to limit interference, are introducing mechanisms like say $0.25 to $1/month to be part of that forum. That could then help subsidize the cost of paid moderators, who arguably would be less likely to be bad actors attempting to inject bias, etc.
My greatest concern though is that as the tyrant wannabes with global totalitarian state wet dreams start to lose their grip, as they appear to be in certain parts of the world, that they will go "full tyrant" with major false flag attacks including manufacturing consent to have censorship capabilities for not only internet but private communications; and so then an online platform is moot.
I strongly disagree, and you can look at Twitter for an example, with bots now often using 'verified' accounts.
For someone running a bot business, paying $1000/year for some bots doesn't change anything for their business, they're already paying much more than a few bucks per month to people who post with the bots.
On the other hand, that payment will absolutely be a barrier of entry for the genuine users.
A bot with massive reach is worth paying for to the bad actor, but that is also due to the algorithms giving an outweighed reach due to their numbers. And your point is anecdotal and not from a scientifically derived process - intuitively, logically, cost does reduce the amount of bots by at least some degree.
Whether the value of allowing a "free" and open wild wild west environment, with its externalized-unpaid for costs, outweighs the limiting of access - filtering through a process before people qualify as trustworthy enough and/or contributing enough to the platform (if unable to pay yet - where bartering with oversight is a possible option, an energy exchange type program for access) would be very difficult to calculate but intuitively I'd argue slowing the actions of potential bad actors or an ideological mob who's arguably less likely to pay for a platform where truth that "hurts" them is allowed due to relatively free speech on the platform, would far outweigh the drowning that bad actors would attempt to do by weaponizing an ideological mob to interfere in critical-adult conversation, attempting to blind people by stirring up emotions, echoing-parroting propaganda narrative talking points to trigger dormant programming, etc.
I'd next propose that government fund each person a stipend to spend at the centralizing platform(s) of their choice, if society as a whole considers access to such communications-systems as a necessity; I'm not one for liberal-excessive spending on social programs, however all-or-nothing thinking isn't useful either - and certain base needs, if we're going to lift everyone up with a rising tide, getting their feedback - allowing them a voice and necessary tools in today's age - and preventing them from drowning, then a certain amount of minimal support is necessary, but no more than that so hard work and merit is what then is rewarded.
Another option, as opposed or in addition to being careful of who we interact with, is to be less reactive if our buttons are pushed. If a paid shill (or just a random Joe) says something inflammatory about a group we identify with, it would be in our best interest not to immediately lash out in response. Shrugging it off might be the better solution, especially if there is reason to suspect that there are mobs of paid shills out there with the express intention of dividing us.
We seem to have lost the ability to "live and let live", to any reasonable degree. That's what they are actually weaponizing in this case.
Not to say that doing this is easy, but I think it's something we should aspire to.
Anonymity isn't the underlying cause of hostile behavior, it's the expectation that you will not interact or need help from the person with whom you are having a negative interaction. Cooperation is evolutionarily successful because of repeated, mutually beneficial interactions.
This is antithetical to much of the internet, and anonymity is definitely a factor, but it's also just what happens when you interact with a much larger amount of people, since the chances of repeated, meaningful interactions is much lower. I would posit that road-rage would decrease if you knew that you would be driving behind/next to the same people every day - in fact, you would probably end up with some form of cooperative driving!
I think it's important to define what anonymity means with regard to cooperation. Reciprocal altruism usually requires an ongoing relationship -- ie, the two individuals will meet again, and either 1) good behavior will rewarded additional times in the future, or 2) bad behavior will be punished effectively in the future.
Large enough groups of people break this down. There's a sense in which you're anonymous in a city. The people you pass by will likely never see you again. If you treat them well, they often have no later chance to reciprocate. (unless they can reciprocate on the spot) If they "defect," you have no chance to punish them later because you don't know who they are, and have no chance seeing them again. But they're not anonymous. They're not wearing a mask, they (probably) have government ID. What they are is transient from the perspective of the individual. Someone who will never be seen again, and someone for whom you never have to develop a relationship with.
This is also key to the claims of study in the linked article -- it is the persistence of the pseudonyms which promotes more cooperative behavior. Parties are likely to build up a reputation, and that reputation carries consequences, and of course those consequences inform the behavior of someone trying to maintain the reputation.
I think an interesting addendum to that is that it doesn't necessarily break down.
If it breaks down or not depends on cultural values and individual philosophy.
Ideas like Kantian ethics, karma, honor, or religion can all act as a counter balance.
Sometimes I think that the cultural spread of hedonistic utilitarianism is eroding cooperation.
People know just enough game theory to justify bad behavior.
The theory breaks down immediately when we look at the evidence. Reality is not some Hobbesian (Randian?) struggle.
People do all sorts of good, even wonderful, extraordinary things for complete strangers they will never meet. Soldiers give lives; activists, scientists, etc. give careers. Just look at FOSS. People follow laws, are kind to strangers and especially vulnerable people like random elderly and children. In large cities, where by the Hobbesian/Randian theory we'd expect worse behavior, I often see the best behavior toward strangers. We are gregarious creatures going back to our primate ancestors, and all human cultures value morality, fairness, etc.
Humans do it personally; they do it on grand scales - entire religions, bodies of law (human rights, welfare), etc. etc.
> People know just enough game theory to justify bad behavior.
Indeed. People do have good and bad in them. What an absurdity to pick out the bad, say that's all there is, and argue for it. Why would you choose the negative outcome when you could as easily choose the positive? Do they feel smarter than thou? Lol.
Treating people like crap makes you feel like crap. Just do something nice.
>Treating people like crap makes you feel like crap. Just do something nice.
Although in general I agree, I think this might be another example of culturally implicit happiness utilitarianism slipping in.
As an anti-hedonist, I feel compelled to point out that goal doesn't even have to be about maximizing happiness!
People can and do choose to do things that are hard or painful, even in the long run, not because it feels good, but because it is the right thing to do.
I think stepping away from min-maxing happiness utilitarianism allows empathy with a broader swath of humanity, and opens up some really interesting questions.
Is it more important to be moral person or a happy person? Is it more important to promote a just society or happy society?
Yes, you are correct of course. I wasn't focusing on happiness in the philosophical utilitarian sense, just the difference between doing 'good' and 'bad', broadly. Doing good, as you say, can involve lots of hardship.
> I would posit that road-rage would decrease if you knew that you would be driving behind/next to the same people every day - in fact, you would probably end up with some form of cooperative driving!
Interesting idea! It's probably not completely impractical to test—I know that, when I used to have a long commute, I'd recognize a fair number of fellow commuters near my home and my destination. I can't be the only one in such a position. It didn't occur to me to ask myself whether or not I was kinder to those drivers than to others that I didn't recognize, but I probably was, and I'm sure a good pollster could come up with relevant questions.
With respect to road rage, it’s good to assume that other drivers are either confused little old ladies, off duty policemen, or psychotic axe murderers
> I would posit that road-rage would decrease if you knew that you would be driving behind/next to the same people every day
I agree. When I was commuting every day, there were a few people I'd see over and over. I absolutely did feel the desire to cut them more slack than I'd give in a totally random encounter. It felt like I knew them.
Cars are different. When people lose their cool in their cars it’s often due to other semi immediate pressures such as getting to work on time, picking someone up on time, etc. Mostly a time pressure. Other times it’s because of perceived slights to driving etiquette, or to their person. Why is someone weaving in and out of traffic and violating etiquette and causing potential dangerous situations? Are they just speed demons, or are they trying to “get somewhere in a shorter time”?
Online discourse is not subject to the same pressures. Yes, people get offended and some people like taking offense, and that triggers some similar reactions, but I think the dynamic is different. I could be wrong.
There are differences but there are also similarities. I think the similarities are more important, both when you're driving and interacting online, you have conflicting agendas, which could be a simple as when driving you're trying to get there as soon as possible, and when you are using an online message board you're either trying to get your point accepted or you trying to make yourself look good and smart.
The point, though, is that if you're not gonna have to interact with these people in the future, and there are otherwise no repercussions to being nasty, you're more likely to be nasty.
I think another thing is the size mixed with the stability of the community. Where you can 'know' someone and have multiple interactions. In larger communities where the people are less real a think I've seen a lot is the arguments become archetypal instead of actual exchanges, people tend towards arguing at a strawman they believe the other person represents.
When you are alone, reading text, online, you are in a kind of trance, a little bit asleep. A bit closer to your unconscious self than the usual walking-around-doing-stuff self.
This unconscious self is a bit more animal, a bit less civilized.
> Probably something to do with the inherently competitive nature of driving. (eg, many people see being "behind" as losing and being in "front" as winning)
There might be something American about this specific driving attitude: I observed drivers in the US always speed-up to merge lanes, even when braking makes more sense, such as when side-by-side with another vehicle occupying an exit lane with nothing behind it, but with barely a gap with cars in front if it.
I think a lot of the more thoughtful commenters probably stop commenting when their real name becomes involved. Even if what they are saying is not inflammatory, there is always a chance of making a misstep or just having a bad opinion without fully understanding it. In the modern age, everything is forever. There's no room to evolve. If you say the wrong thing now, you're stuck with it, even if your actual beliefs change and grow, the fragment left behind is what remains reality. The only people who want to openly comment under their real name are people who don't care or who are already intentionally inflammatory.
Agreed here. Using a real name is a deal breaker for a lot of people, and as a result you lose their contributions, which hypothetically could be more informed.
Mark Zuckerberg touted real name comments as the solution to online trolling and bad behavior. Of course he means Facebook profiles to be that identifier. Plenty of local news websites comment sections are clogged with flaming by people who are not deterred by having their meatspace name attached to their comments. There’s a lot of spam from FB comments too.
> Even if what they are saying is not inflammatory, there is always a chance of making a misstep or just having a bad opinion without fully understanding it. In the modern age, everything is forever. There's no room to evolve.
Is this actually true or is it just something people say? I feel like there's plenty of room for people to grow or change their beliefs these days, it seems like every other day someone in power or in the spotlight says something like "oh that was something I used to believe but I've changed since" and that's kind of the end of it. Rarely do I feel like someone is entirely blacklisted for some opinion they held in their past but no longer hold, unless that past behavior was either abusive or straight up mean. Maybe I'm just not tuned in enough though.
It's pretty easy for a basement dweller to link a pseudonym to your real name these days, so easy that I just don't bother with pseudonyms anymore. If I don't feel comfortable linking some statement with my real name forever, I just won't post that statement anymore. Does that stop me from hitting the "Reply" button sometimes? Sure, and the community is probably better off because of that.
The only thing I worry about is that some belief or comment could be totally benign today, but who knows in 30 years it might be totally taboo. Surely things I've said 30 years ago would get me fired in today's environment of heightened sensitivity. I don't worry too much about that because in 30 years I'll be retired and un-cancelable, if I'm even still alive.
A vicious consequence of being blacklisted/cancelled is you're no longer in the public arena to broadcast a change of heart/mind, especially if that belief was incomplete or action criminal.
It's hard to know how true "the Internet is forever" is at this point.
But that doesn't qualify in my mind as "proof you won't get in trouble on the Internet". Especially, I certainly don't want someone else dictating that what I post goes on a specific which can be linked to other things later.
just off the top of my head I can think of many people getting cancelled and/or losing their jobs due to jokes they made online many years prior, despite disavowing the opinion and/or clarifying that it was just a joke in poor taste
(if your response is that those people deserved it, then you are necessarily also admitting that, no, there isn't really room to "grow and change", if the thing you said offends the wrong people in the wrong way)
Any examples you can share? I personally have never seen or heard of this happening, but obviously that doesn't mean it doesn't. I have no thoughts about who deserves what
I don't comment a lot on some of the "controversial issues" not so much because of fear of any consequences, but because frankly, it's just not worth it. You can carefully construct a nuanced measured criticism of something or the other only to have someone come back with the most extremist interpretation of what was actually said.
I feel that "anyone can comment everywhere"-model just doesn't work for these types of discussions without heavy moderation to restrict the assholes; maybe one policy is "less bad" than some other policy, but it's still bad.
Another issue too is the possibility for online stalking. Putting out real info means that anybody across the globe who has some sort of vendetta can now track you down.
No real control for the changing population you might expect under each sign-up regime? Seems like in the first case sign-ups are super frictionless, so heavy trolling is expected. Second phase has some mild friction, so results make sense. But in the third de-anonymized phase I would assume that any FB user can comment basically by default, so presumably the circle of discourse is at its widest point. In a world where someone needs to care enough to make an account to comment presumably the quality of post is higher than when any random passerby can leave their thoughts?
It seems to me like the second phase might have introduced a slight barrier to entry (that of having to register a name) that was removed again in phase 3 (which I assume made the comment sections immediately available to anyone logged into a Facebook account).
>In the third phase, the commenting system was outsourced to Facebook
This seems to be an apples-and-oranges comparison, no? Or at the very least, there's a confounding factor here: how difficult it is to start commenting.
The average Internet user is far more likely to have a Facebook account than a HuffPo[0] account. Furthermore, Facebook does very little moderation. This means that in both the totally anonymous and Facebook real-name eras, commenting is just a matter of clicking a button to proceed, rather than registering an account, validating an e-mail, etc.
Furthermore, when you run your own comment section you can build your own moderation tools which Facebook might lack. You also have the ability to restrict signups - even if you're using Facebook as an ID provider (e.g. those "Login with Facebook" buttons). If HuffPo gets a bunch of media attention they can shut off registration and the comment section will consist entirely of people who already got in before the huge crush of spammers. Or they could heavily moderate comments posted around a specific time if they built a tool for that.
I'd like to know what would happen if, say, you had your own account system, but usernames were hidden from other commenters. Moderators could of course see and ban whole accounts if needed. I have a feeling it'd perform similarly to psuedonymity.
I can’t express how unreasonable it is to demand real identities in internet discussions. You can chit-chat with your mouth among a group of people and be mostly fine. You don’t have to weigh every word. At worst what you say will be spread in a small radius, becoming ever less reliable for every level of hearsay. But on the internet? That’s potentially omnipresent and forever.
People have different personas in real life. While going under the same name. It’s how people operate.
I just think people should be accountable for their online behavior. It's not very hard to do.
If people are accountable for what they say, act and do in public, the same rule should apply on public forums. Anonymity is good, as long as you don't abuse it, and it's being used for good reasons.
Maybe I don't have a thick skin, but honestly, toxicity is not a feature of the internet, it is a problem, and everybody knows that the internet is generally a cesspool where you can't trust anybody. That's not good.
It's not only up to media companies to sanitize their platforms, it's also up to the law to set better standards.
It doesn't have to be like that. The worst things are, the more people will want a china-style social score.
I'm pro free speech, but free speech cannot exist out of nothing, there is a certain set of condition required for free speech to work well.
I've heard from several FB moderators that prevent brand new accounts from participating until after a certain amount of time does wonder, especially if the community rules are well drawn. That will foster growth, and the fear of having to re-earn a voice keeps things civil.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadhttps://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12149
"Second, we know that HuffPo used both manual and algorithmic moderation in all three phases, but we do not know how the policies changed under the different identificatory regimes."
Given whay I know about Huffpo's moderation system and their statement that they don't have understanding of them I'd say that nothing reported in this study should be considered valid for a few reasons.
One is that Huffpost used many different systems of moderations following many changing standards throughout their days as a big news site (#3 in the US at one point) and the biggest news-based community, which they were for several years.
They started with no moderation, then human moderation with evolving standards and practices that were overseen by a brilliant community team. Then they bought Julia in 2010(? ish) which was a very early machine learning moderation system that was trained on millions of human made moderation decisions before launch and whose training and internals were constantly updated and improved for years. Julia was dropped for Facebook comments later on, at which point Facebook did most of the basica moderation but was still assited by human moderators.
My first critique of this analysis is that the authors have no data or understanding of the moderation actions that resulted in suppression of comments or users. How can an analysis make any claims without this data? So far as they know the comment-flow was more hostile during the periods they observe as more civil, but there were just far more comments suppressed. Just one of dozens of other internal details of the operation that would invalidate their conclusions would be that Huffpost quiet-deleted comments for a significant period of time -- meaning that you could post, and you would see your posts in context when you were logged in but no one else would see them. They also silent-banned users. This and other details of implementation create a great deal of complexity and secondary effects.
I can attest that moderation was very, very active and that lots and lots of comments were moderated down and out of the comment threads... again indicating significantly less civility than any retrospective analysis would be able to discern without all the data.
I also find it interesting that this study chose Huffpost for the analysis. At the site's hights of success and profit the comment threads were the reason for their SEO dominance and were considered to be the most important secret sauce. Huffpost moderation was the best in the business by a long measure. With the methodology presented it would make sense to me to say that Huffpost would appear to be the most civil of the big sites of the time. So it is interesting that this study focuses singly on Huffpost and reports that their theories indicate this differential.
While the authors do cover some of this in their section on Limitations, they don't cover near enough to justify their results... instead this reads as another cherry-picking study where authors had a theory and found a dataset that confirmed it while being unaware of fundamental reasons why that dataset was an outlier, making it impossible for them to build in the needed controls in their methods.
At first they had their own accounts to sign up for on the main website, there were definitely some unsavory characters and trolling but I'd say by and large it was just normal commenting. They announced that due to abuse or moderation issues (I can't recall which) they were switching to facebook commenting, which ostensibly has a real names policy.
A month later comments were removed from the website altogether. The only users left were some of the nastiest posters ever and didn't seem concerned about their real name being up there next to the consistently awful things they had to say, possibly because they were mentally ill. I know I had no desire to interact with them and using my real name on a site full of crazy people sounded like only something a crazy person would do.
Why was Julia abandoned?
n9 does make some excellent points about this study. So what does this boil down to? Moderate heavily and put up barriers to discourage bad actors, which is what everyone knows and is kinda boring.
I think we even get better discussions when the shy and thoughtful are allowed to speak.
The truth is, you can't engineer civility. Anonymity? Look at 4chan. Make people pay? Now the assholes believe they've purchased the privilege to do whatever they like. Even Hacker News, a platform moderated to within an inch of its life, with both real-name and pseudonymous accounts, only tends to be civil within a small window of circumstance. Everywhere else it's as likely as not to be a dumpster fire.
Although I think some of that stems from the Eternal September factor - some people just do not know how to effectively communicate online. It's wild out there.
- Lack of direct proximity (ie, you're not face-to-face with someone.)
- Inability to read body language cues correctly. (again, not face-to-face)
- Probably something to do with the inherently competitive nature of driving. (eg, many people see being "behind" as losing and being in "front" as winning)
In any case, people are immediately identifiable and culpable in a vehicle -- there are cameras everywhere, and everyone has a mandated government ID on the car.
Twitter seems to be another obvious example. People are horrible all over the platform, but many of the worst people aren't anonymous whatsoever. It seems to be the format more than the anonymity.
I think we're going to have to be very careful-intentional in the near future of who we decide to interact with, though an ideological mob won't likely particularly care if they're being manipulated by nefarious actors who aim to weaponized a mob.
Do you think CO2 is an issue? If yes, do you think it's a problem that China's CO2 emissions are skyrocketing, whereas the Western countries have been following an ideology fuelled by climate alarmism-fear mongering?
What are the consequences in your mind, of China being able to increase how much cheap energy they are able to use because they're not constrained by CO2-related policy, whereas the West's energy costs are increasing due to CO2-related policy? How does that positively or negatively effect China and the West?
It looks like we have passed the tipping point where switch to renewables happens not because of policy constraints but simply because it's cheaper now.
What benefits or harms, if any, are there to China for their CO2/climate policy, and what benefits or harms, if any, are there to the West for our CO2/climate policy?
The issue is deeper than you realize or will allude to.
CSIS in Canada, for example, has stated that Canada is a very high target for the CCP - and it's quite clear there is influenced, regulatory capture, between US politicians and the CCP as well - most recently obviously evidenced by Xi's visit to San Francisco; not merely him visiting but all factors related to it.
The above is common knowledge for anyone not indoctrinated into sources of controlled narratives, indoctrinated into propaganda, where actual truthful narratives and logic will be dismissed as "conspiracy theories" etc; mob-suppression tactics as part of the censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus.
I am however curious what sources, where did you get that understanding that you shared here? Was it from friends/family, colleagues, from newspapers or news channels, etc? If so where do you live?
This also heavily addressed the bot issue: if a bot is identified, it is highly likely that most if not all of their invitees are bots, too, and there's a good chance whoever invited them is not a good faith actor, either.
Communities without barriers to entry are always going to be low trust. The trick is striking a balance between trust and isolationism.
Even at $1/month for an account, 5 bots would cost $60 per year, and for most that is arguably increasing the cost too much to run a sophisticated bot net - though there certainly will be domestic and foreign bad actors wanting to infect a system for their censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus and will be willing to spend $ billions if not $10s of billions annually - as a war-invasion-infiltration cost - but at least then they are paying into the system that their adversary controls.
This is a problem I am going to face system design wise in the next few years as I'll want to launch my solution to many problems. A core value for the network of platforms and central platform with many feature sets, is that it will not have advertising - no ads - as I believe cheap-shallow advertising is very harmful and dangerous to society. Not only do ads capture our attention that has already been, for many if not most, been compromised, it also increases the costs of goods and services - because you're funding their advertising budget when you are manipulated to purchase from them, paying for yourself to be manipulated and perpetuating that system, it also influences design decisions.
It's going to be a very challenging and ongoing cost to strike a balance, as you say, between trust and isolationism - determining what limited "Free" accounts get access to do functionality wise vs. providing a low enough cost and a high enough value to sooner than later have the masses signup, with having a large enough % of paying subscribers to cover or subsidize the cost of the free accounts holders.
I'm most torn at whether free accounts will have any ability to publicly comment, post, etc - but my current intuition is telling me that in most circumstances, no. Doing proper moderation for posts and comments from paid subscribers alone, which will include bad actors-paid shills or uncritical indoctrinated-misguided ideologues party to a mob believing and parroting propaganda-narrative talking points, that will certainly be the most important and overwhelming task from my estimation.
I think we need to rally the awake and most conscious people of the world, who arguably will also be successful in their own right, where say paying $5/month for general access is pocket change in comparison to the importance of a well-designed and desperately needed system for our security-safety and leading the charge or holding the line for peace. Likewise, I wonder then if a version of Reddit's forum, at least one method that can be enabled to limit interference, are introducing mechanisms like say $0.25 to $1/month to be part of that forum. That could then help subsidize the cost of paid moderators, who arguably would be less likely to be bad actors attempting to inject bias, etc.
My greatest concern though is that as the tyrant wannabes with global totalitarian state wet dreams start to lose their grip, as they appear to be in certain parts of the world, that they will go "full tyrant" with major false flag attacks including manufacturing consent to have censorship capabilities for not only internet but private communications; and so then an online platform is moot.
For someone running a bot business, paying $1000/year for some bots doesn't change anything for their business, they're already paying much more than a few bucks per month to people who post with the bots.
On the other hand, that payment will absolutely be a barrier of entry for the genuine users.
Whether the value of allowing a "free" and open wild wild west environment, with its externalized-unpaid for costs, outweighs the limiting of access - filtering through a process before people qualify as trustworthy enough and/or contributing enough to the platform (if unable to pay yet - where bartering with oversight is a possible option, an energy exchange type program for access) would be very difficult to calculate but intuitively I'd argue slowing the actions of potential bad actors or an ideological mob who's arguably less likely to pay for a platform where truth that "hurts" them is allowed due to relatively free speech on the platform, would far outweigh the drowning that bad actors would attempt to do by weaponizing an ideological mob to interfere in critical-adult conversation, attempting to blind people by stirring up emotions, echoing-parroting propaganda narrative talking points to trigger dormant programming, etc.
I'd next propose that government fund each person a stipend to spend at the centralizing platform(s) of their choice, if society as a whole considers access to such communications-systems as a necessity; I'm not one for liberal-excessive spending on social programs, however all-or-nothing thinking isn't useful either - and certain base needs, if we're going to lift everyone up with a rising tide, getting their feedback - allowing them a voice and necessary tools in today's age - and preventing them from drowning, then a certain amount of minimal support is necessary, but no more than that so hard work and merit is what then is rewarded.
We seem to have lost the ability to "live and let live", to any reasonable degree. That's what they are actually weaponizing in this case.
Not to say that doing this is easy, but I think it's something we should aspire to.
This is antithetical to much of the internet, and anonymity is definitely a factor, but it's also just what happens when you interact with a much larger amount of people, since the chances of repeated, meaningful interactions is much lower. I would posit that road-rage would decrease if you knew that you would be driving behind/next to the same people every day - in fact, you would probably end up with some form of cooperative driving!
Large enough groups of people break this down. There's a sense in which you're anonymous in a city. The people you pass by will likely never see you again. If you treat them well, they often have no later chance to reciprocate. (unless they can reciprocate on the spot) If they "defect," you have no chance to punish them later because you don't know who they are, and have no chance seeing them again. But they're not anonymous. They're not wearing a mask, they (probably) have government ID. What they are is transient from the perspective of the individual. Someone who will never be seen again, and someone for whom you never have to develop a relationship with.
This is also key to the claims of study in the linked article -- it is the persistence of the pseudonyms which promotes more cooperative behavior. Parties are likely to build up a reputation, and that reputation carries consequences, and of course those consequences inform the behavior of someone trying to maintain the reputation.
I think an interesting addendum to that is that it doesn't necessarily break down.
If it breaks down or not depends on cultural values and individual philosophy.
Ideas like Kantian ethics, karma, honor, or religion can all act as a counter balance.
Sometimes I think that the cultural spread of hedonistic utilitarianism is eroding cooperation. People know just enough game theory to justify bad behavior.
People do all sorts of good, even wonderful, extraordinary things for complete strangers they will never meet. Soldiers give lives; activists, scientists, etc. give careers. Just look at FOSS. People follow laws, are kind to strangers and especially vulnerable people like random elderly and children. In large cities, where by the Hobbesian/Randian theory we'd expect worse behavior, I often see the best behavior toward strangers. We are gregarious creatures going back to our primate ancestors, and all human cultures value morality, fairness, etc.
Humans do it personally; they do it on grand scales - entire religions, bodies of law (human rights, welfare), etc. etc.
> People know just enough game theory to justify bad behavior.
Indeed. People do have good and bad in them. What an absurdity to pick out the bad, say that's all there is, and argue for it. Why would you choose the negative outcome when you could as easily choose the positive? Do they feel smarter than thou? Lol.
Treating people like crap makes you feel like crap. Just do something nice.
Although in general I agree, I think this might be another example of culturally implicit happiness utilitarianism slipping in.
As an anti-hedonist, I feel compelled to point out that goal doesn't even have to be about maximizing happiness!
People can and do choose to do things that are hard or painful, even in the long run, not because it feels good, but because it is the right thing to do.
I think stepping away from min-maxing happiness utilitarianism allows empathy with a broader swath of humanity, and opens up some really interesting questions.
Is it more important to be moral person or a happy person? Is it more important to promote a just society or happy society?
These goals are often related, but not always.
Who spit on you in the street? I don't know. He's anonymous.
The person who first spoke some ancient proverb had a name, but society doesn't know it now. She's anonymous.
Approximately no one is truly technically nameless.
Interesting idea! It's probably not completely impractical to test—I know that, when I used to have a long commute, I'd recognize a fair number of fellow commuters near my home and my destination. I can't be the only one in such a position. It didn't occur to me to ask myself whether or not I was kinder to those drivers than to others that I didn't recognize, but I probably was, and I'm sure a good pollster could come up with relevant questions.
I agree. When I was commuting every day, there were a few people I'd see over and over. I absolutely did feel the desire to cut them more slack than I'd give in a totally random encounter. It felt like I knew them.
Online discourse is not subject to the same pressures. Yes, people get offended and some people like taking offense, and that triggers some similar reactions, but I think the dynamic is different. I could be wrong.
The point, though, is that if you're not gonna have to interact with these people in the future, and there are otherwise no repercussions to being nasty, you're more likely to be nasty.
That should be "cues"
This unconscious self is a bit more animal, a bit less civilized.
I think the dangerous nature of it encourages adrenaline and fight or flight mechanisms
If the amount of deaths are anything to go by I think we have a lot of disregulated drivers
There might be something American about this specific driving attitude: I observed drivers in the US always speed-up to merge lanes, even when braking makes more sense, such as when side-by-side with another vehicle occupying an exit lane with nothing behind it, but with barely a gap with cars in front if it.
- people can be dicks
it's as if we forget that part of raising a child is civilizing them, hostility is the default.
Is this actually true or is it just something people say? I feel like there's plenty of room for people to grow or change their beliefs these days, it seems like every other day someone in power or in the spotlight says something like "oh that was something I used to believe but I've changed since" and that's kind of the end of it. Rarely do I feel like someone is entirely blacklisted for some opinion they held in their past but no longer hold, unless that past behavior was either abusive or straight up mean. Maybe I'm just not tuned in enough though.
The only thing I worry about is that some belief or comment could be totally benign today, but who knows in 30 years it might be totally taboo. Surely things I've said 30 years ago would get me fired in today's environment of heightened sensitivity. I don't worry too much about that because in 30 years I'll be retired and un-cancelable, if I'm even still alive.
"What's become clear to you since we last met?"
But that doesn't qualify in my mind as "proof you won't get in trouble on the Internet". Especially, I certainly don't want someone else dictating that what I post goes on a specific which can be linked to other things later.
(if your response is that those people deserved it, then you are necessarily also admitting that, no, there isn't really room to "grow and change", if the thing you said offends the wrong people in the wrong way)
I feel that "anyone can comment everywhere"-model just doesn't work for these types of discussions without heavy moderation to restrict the assholes; maybe one policy is "less bad" than some other policy, but it's still bad.
This seems to be an apples-and-oranges comparison, no? Or at the very least, there's a confounding factor here: how difficult it is to start commenting.
The average Internet user is far more likely to have a Facebook account than a HuffPo[0] account. Furthermore, Facebook does very little moderation. This means that in both the totally anonymous and Facebook real-name eras, commenting is just a matter of clicking a button to proceed, rather than registering an account, validating an e-mail, etc.
Furthermore, when you run your own comment section you can build your own moderation tools which Facebook might lack. You also have the ability to restrict signups - even if you're using Facebook as an ID provider (e.g. those "Login with Facebook" buttons). If HuffPo gets a bunch of media attention they can shut off registration and the comment section will consist entirely of people who already got in before the huge crush of spammers. Or they could heavily moderate comments posted around a specific time if they built a tool for that.
I'd like to know what would happen if, say, you had your own account system, but usernames were hidden from other commenters. Moderators could of course see and ban whole accounts if needed. I have a feeling it'd perform similarly to psuedonymity.
[0] I had to fight the urge to call it HuffPuff.
People have different personas in real life. While going under the same name. It’s how people operate.
If people are accountable for what they say, act and do in public, the same rule should apply on public forums. Anonymity is good, as long as you don't abuse it, and it's being used for good reasons.
Maybe I don't have a thick skin, but honestly, toxicity is not a feature of the internet, it is a problem, and everybody knows that the internet is generally a cesspool where you can't trust anybody. That's not good.
It's not only up to media companies to sanitize their platforms, it's also up to the law to set better standards.
It doesn't have to be like that. The worst things are, the more people will want a china-style social score.
I'm pro free speech, but free speech cannot exist out of nothing, there is a certain set of condition required for free speech to work well.
Free speech is priceless.
Its value is better appreciated if you are born into free speech and lose it entirely.
The “thick skin” we need is of the kind that absorbs all kind of speech - the one we like and do not like.
[0] Greenstadt, Rachel, "What is the value of anonymous communication?", 32C3 Chaos Computer Congress, December 2015
[1] Poole Chris .M, "The case for anonymity online", TED, February 2010
[2] Knott-Craig, Alan, "The power of anonymity", TEDx Cape Town, February 2012