8 ms·
How the online hate mob set its sights on me
- Chris2048 11y agoJust a point - let's not call 'shaming' what might be 'harassment' or worse. Shaming someone attempts to make them feel bad about their actions. Attempting to get someone fired, and spamming them with threats is not shaming...
- Kristine1975 11y agoThis seems to be a follow-up to his earlier article http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-shaming-lindsey-stone-jon-ronson http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-s... (and also his book "So you've been publicly shamed").
- reitoei 11y agoMy wife is currently reading that book, she says it's great.
- garrettgrimsley 11y agoDiscussion of the that piece [0] and a much larger discussion [1] of the excerpted chapter of his book. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085680 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039274
- musesum 11y agoWhat is twitter's TOS for General AI? Would like to enlist a brutalironybot for trending shame tweets.
- dennisnedry 11y agoSocial Media seems like the adult version of high school all over again. You have the bullies and popularity contests. Jon Ronson was one of the unfortunate who tried to tell the crowd that they shouldn't judge, and instead became one of the kids being picked on.
- AndrewKemendo 11y agoHigh school, or middle school is not materially different than the rest of the world. The idea of "The adult version of high school" for situations that involve bullies, ingroup/outgroup and pettiness etc... is silly because it assumes that those things are only relegated to children. Case in point: The G20 in Australia[1]. All the cool kids sit with Obama, Putin ate lunch alone and was on the outside of the class photo. If the highest level of political diplomacy is also "the adult version of high school"...well then I guess the whole thing is just high school. [1]http://www.pbs.org/video/2365401766/ http://www.pbs.org/video/2365401766/ time:50:08
- Kristine1975 11y agoExcept for Dilma Rousseff, president of Brazil, by the way: http://www.stefan-niggemeier.de/blog/wp-content/g20_2.jpeg http://www.stefan-niggemeier.de/blog/wp-content/g20_2.jpeg (the picture belongs to an article of a German journalist about misleading pictures in the media: http://www.stefan-niggemeier.de/blog/19865/super-symbolbilder-putin-einsam-und-verlassen/ http://www.stefan-niggemeier.de/blog/19865/super-symbolbilde...)
- ptaipale 11y agoI had nothing of the kind in high school. Maybe on 7th grade of our system (when we were 13-14). It looks like that's the mental age of SJW's.
- omginternets 11y agoMy rule for social media is the following: only go when you know exactly what you're looking for. The academic community on twitter is very active and the content is very good, so I go to twitter to keep up with the latest cogneuro trends. This having been said, I'm now clearly in a professional environment, so I think about what I'm writing. I walk through twitter in the same way I walk through the ghetto: mouth shut and head on a swivel. I'm not going to start disseminating my political opinions as if the average twit gave a damn.
- drcongo 11y agoSome of your political opinions just disseminated out right there.
- garrettgrimsley 11y agoThis is not Twitter, and the poster is utilizing a pseudo-anonymous handle, perhaps unlike on Twitter. They don't care about disseminating their beliefs here because they won't be attributed to their "real" identity.
- jschwartzi 11y agoOr maybe they're willing to disseminate some of their opinions because they trust HN to not hang, draw, and quarter them.
- garrettgrimsley 11y agoHN is not a black hole, information can flow out of it just as easily as it flows in. If they are careful to not disseminate their personal views on one public internet forum they should be just as cautious about voicing them on another. I believe that the pseudo-anonymity is far more important than the platform.
- omginternets 11y agoOpining about twitter isn't the same as commenting on AIDS in Africa. It's a stretch to call the former "political".
- nefitty 11y agoTwitter, Reddit, 4chan... They're all starting to look more like each other every day.
- nih0 11y agoNobody on 4chan would roast you for writing "Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get Aids. Just kidding. I’m white", they roast SJWs, feminists...
- mcherm 11y agoQuickly denouncing anyone who expresses certain sorts of opinions thus preventing certain sorts of discussion seems much the same to me regardless of which opinions it is aimed at.
- Kristine1975 11y ago4chan isn't really for discussion, though. It's for pictures, palaver and pissing matches.
- garrettgrimsley 11y agoAnd Twitter, with its 140 character limit, is for discussion? I've seen far more productive discussion on 4chan than on Twitter.
- forgetsusername 11y ago>Quickly denouncing anyone who expresses certain sorts of opinions thus preventing certain sorts of discussion The same occurs on these very boards. Everything looks copacetic when you're an insider.
- aikah 11y agoI disagree, saying something outrageous on Reddit or 4chan is almost without consequence, given the anonymity on these forum. The problem is people on Twitter putting their real name out and expecting no consequences for their actions everytime they tweet something. Twitter is open AND people chose to reveal their true identity ... what could go wrong ? Twitter is a wonderful tool for businesses to create channels. If you have something to sell yes you should absolutely be on Twitter, if not, at least stay anonymous while going on rants or when saying questionable things. She should have.
- rl3 11y agoI will relish the day when the Internet Outrage Machine becomes sloppy enough to fall on its own sword, repeatedly. When that happens, we might see a countervailing trend wherein the internet largely turns against that type of behavior—likely via way of directing outrage and shaming towards those who engage in outrage and shaming. Ideally, the dynamic would be kind of like a snake eating its tail.
- bertil 11y agoI have the feeling that it does, regularly — although it does not really solve anything.
- rhizome 11y agoNot going to happen, it's like saying "I hate paparazzi, I can't wait until all cameras break."
- zo1 11y agoIt will fall the day that we're able to link the comments and accounts across multiple sites/services together to actual individuals. The "shaming" mentioned will continue for the culprits, just like it did for the victims, into their real-life. I am actually torn about this. On the one hand, I understand and value that anonymity (at least, superficially) is big part of what makes the internet great. But on the other hand, I can't help but believe that we'll be in a completely better society if people didn't have a space to vent their rage in some sort of wide-reaching, public arena. Leaving their only recourse for dealing with such rage to be actual manifested "rage/hate/racism/sexism/other-ism", which is pretty darn easy to point out concretely, and to ostracize.
- Chris2048 11y agoHmmm. You know how people claim that anonymity is the reason people act shitty on the internet? It seems to me what they fail to mention is "If they weren't anonymous, we would be free to attack them - that would shut them up". I'm not so sure everyone would shut up. Some people are bold wrt their opinions. We might even create more such people.. Then people would eventually ignore the mere threat of repercussions. Now, we'd actually have to attack them, to make the repercussions real - and this is where it starts...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tarsinge 11y agoI dont't see how there is more outrage and shaming on social media than in the real world. Empathetic and benevolent behaviour could be expected when Twitter was a small community. Would everyone get Justine Sacco "joke" if she was yelling it in the streets ?
- alextgordon 11y agoYou wouldn't get death threats, that's for sure.
- bertil 11y agoThe people who would hear it would be her friends, who would laugh at the intended irony; anyone around over-hearing would grasp that is was meant as self-deprecation.
- smt88 11y agoSocial media has far more vitriol and shaming because it is radically different in very important ways: 1. Anonymity 2. Mixing of cultures that rarely (if ever) meet in the real world 3. Loss of nuances when speech is converted to text 4. Loss of context due to text constraints (can't write many complete, complex thoughts in 140 characters) 5. Less potential for physical consequences
- lmm 11y agoBut the same people who compare this to yelling in the streets then turn around and tell the sealion analogy. One of the many problems with twitter is that some people perceive it as private dinner conversation and others as public soapbox, and it can very rapidly shift between the two.
- rhizome 11y agoYou can't temper the mob with a look of opprobrium (or disinterest) across the internet.
- wisty 11y agoShe only had a handful of followers. But the way twitter works, one of your followers can retell the "joke" to all their friends, and they can tell it to all their friends. The system breaks down when they're not sharing something they agree with, but something they think is so harmful that no-one (except all their followers) should ever have to see it. If the joke is "problematic", I'm not sure why sharing it isn't also problematic. Maybe a 140 character broadcast system is a good medium for a nuanced analysis of when jokes are funny (and a circuit breaker in a sometimes uncomfortable discussion) or so harmful that they can't be justified, and where the line is.
- bertil 11y agoI am really bothered by the expression ‘the online hate mob’, as if this was a consistent and coordinated group of people who have an active and positive role in hatred. It’s just a set of people who a. had a bad day; b. disagree; c. have arguments, or agree with people who do, and resent the fact that those arguments were openly dismissed. “Troll” was an expression used by feminists (Ellison) 20 years ago, when they switched from presence-based meetings to on-line forum. They were confronted to dissent for the first time, didn’t know what to do with it. And roll all dissent into a intentionally de-humanised collective, where counter-arguments were gladly mixed with abuse to discredit them. That kind of conflation became so prevalent, that is –ironically– also what drove people to miss Sacco’s cynicism.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago> “Troll” was an expression used by feminists ... The way I remember it, trolling started out on usenet as a way to, well, here's probably the best example : https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.startrek.tech/mw0DWYlchrM%5B1-25%5D https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.startrek.te...
- bertil 11y agoThe on-line forums 20 years ago that I mention were on Usenet. My understanding is that the criticism and grief were less welcome on feminist channels than on Star Trek fan boards.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoHow many early 90s trekkies (sorry, "trekkers") did you actually know.
- bertil 11y agoTrekkies? Many, but not one that would call you a rapist for disagreeing with them, i.e. none that think that is it appropriate and fair to you put you in jail, where you’d get beat and raped on a daily basis for a decade, with no possible recourse, for suggesting that their point of view might be partial. Did I mention suicide rates? I know: That got very real very fast, didn’t it? De-humanising your dissenters can have such strangely overwhelming consequences. I mean, just look at every conversation the original article quotes: death-threats are hardly the worst. That’s why when someone claims (proudly) to have invented the key-word for empowering something like that, I pay attention. I couldn’t find the reference where she did, though.
- randycupertino 11y agoSometimes shaming is good. The drought shaming in California actually helped the biggest wasters cut down on their water use more than any fines would (they are too rich to be disuaded by fines).
- ttctciyf 11y agoMaybe stating the obvious, but it's fascinated me for a while how online interactions with high affect content are almost exclusively aimed at the interactors' imaginary constructions of each other - there's so little of a person in their tweets or forum posts that imagination ('fantasy', 'projection', or whatever) is required in considerable degree for there to be any realistic sense of the interactee in the interactor's mind. And yet, perhaps especially in online 'shaming' or targeted critique, the shamer is (presumably) unable to discern that they are really tilting at an imaginary person they have constructed themselves from rather scant information. Not that it's a new behavioural feature, of course - propagandists and demagogues have relied on this sort of propensity forever. Maybe it's the capacity of internet media to 'present' a person by tiny amounts of information that brings it out. By 'tiny' we could be talking about a single bit, btw - I've seen plenty of reactions apparently to individuals fully formed in the reactor's mind, despite that their information consists only in the fact that someone clicked 'downvote' rather than 'upvote'!
- fenomas 11y agoThe other odd thing I find odd about these cases is the curious absence of genuine offense. I remember watching the Justine Sacco thing unfold and noticing that nobody really seemed particularly upset - to the contrary, people seemed positively giddy about the whole thing. Very little "how dare she say that?" and quite a lot of "haha she's toast, isn't this terrific?". In a way, I guess dogpiling on someone like that is probably a lot easier when you know nothing about them except the thing you're reacting to.
- Kalium 11y agoFor a surprising number of people, the presumption of offense is identical to the reality of offense. I can see why. It's a useful way to stir up the rage machine and direct its wrath without having to consider the opinions of whoever you purport to defend.
- madaxe_again 11y agoThat's most social interaction you've just described there. We generally converse with a projection, an idiopathic construct representative of another, of their state of mind, so we can interpret and respond to them appropriately. Issues arise when this projected individual differs substantially to the actual. On a one to one face to face basis, one typically rapidly readjusts one's model of another rapidly, as it's free floating and has no broader corpus to fall back on. This varies when you deal with someone famous (large corpus, many precepts) or intimate (seemingly large corpus, actually selection bias and neurosis), and the model usually becomes less accurate. Where it gets interesting is herd interactions, either on or offline. Lynch mobs, trial by media, witch burning, Internet hate machine, war - all arise from inaccurate models of the minds of others, which are reinforced through perceived (abiline!) collective consensus. Long story short, there's no good and evil, most narrative is self constructed, this is as old as man.
- ttctciyf 11y agoMaybe stating the obvious, but it's fascinated me for a while how online interactions with high affect content are almost exclusively aimed at the interactors' imaginary onstructions of each other - there's so little of a person in their tweets or forum posts that imagination ('fantasy', 'projection', or whatever) is requied in considerable degree for there to be any realistic sense of the interactee in the interactor's mind. And yet, perhaps especially in online 'shaming' or targetted critique, the shamer is (presumably) unable to discern that they are really tilting at an imaginary person they have constructed themselves from rather scant information. Not that it's a new behavioural feature, of course - propagandists and demagogues have relied on this sort of propensity forever. Maybe it's the capacity of internet media to 'present' a person by tiny amounts of information that brings it out. By 'tiny' we could be talking about a single bit, btw - I've seen plenty of reactions apparently to individuals fully formed in the reactor's mind, despite that their information consists only in the fact that someone clicked 'downvote' rather than 'upvote'!
- EGreg 11y agoI find similar things in youtube comments, facebook threads etc. A facebook page or youtube video with, say, pro Israel message gets a mob of commenters shouting down anyone who speaks about the plight of Palestinians. Meanwhile a page or video about "occupation" will have a mob shouting down anyone who speaks about Israel's right to exist. Very few in the mob actually make point by point rebuttals or even actual sense. The same can be seen in religious forums, atheists, etc. Try to post in a religious stackexchange - with the notable exception of judaism.stackexchange.com your post is likely to be censoredor heavily modified if it's too critical or raises inconvenient issues. At least, sites like quora and stackexchange have rules that tend to promote a clean end result, with quality answers. On social sites like facebook, however, things usually devolve into over 90% "bad" argumentation as defined by paul graham. I think there is some internet study that anger and outrage motivates people to respond more than good things. On Twitter, where people shout into the void and most people in the mob don't have a reputation to carefully manage, you can attract even more angry crap. On YouTube it's the same principle - comments are public so the angry confrontations with low wuality argumentation are more likely. The design of the site makes a huge difference. Which is why libertarians are just wrong, there is no "free market", every game has rules. You hear that libertarians? I am waiting for you on this thread!! :-P
- zo1 11y ago>"The design of the site makes a huge difference. Which is why libertarians are just wrong, there is no "free market", every game has rules. You hear that libertarians? I am waiting for you on this thread!! :-P" Oh, we hear you. We, or at least I, am just not quite able to parse what you're saying. Are you implying that Youtube is supposed to enforce some sort of "free-market" on the comments? Or are you baiting for some sort of "mob shouting" reply that you reference in your post? Do care to elaborate, as we Libertarians (and anarcho-capitalists), are listening.
- EGreg 11y agoWell, it was a bit of a joke, at the end of the post... showing how inflaming comments or outrage makes people comment more than nice stuff which they can agree with. Together with the description of public comment systems becoming proliferated with the negative spirals, it was also a bit meta :)
- jacquesm 11y agoThe Justine Sacco story has an interesting follow up here: http://gawker.com/justine-sacco-is-good-at-her-job-and-how-i-came-to-pea-1653022326 http://gawker.com/justine-sacco-is-good-at-her-job-and-how-i...
- Kristine1975 11y agoIt was a natural post. Twitter disasters are the quickest source of outrage, and outrage is traffic. I didn't think about whether or not I might be ruining Sacco's life. That's Gawker for you. They never care for the people they write about, they only care for the clicks. Just like when they outed the CFO of Condé Nast: http://www.salon.com/2015/07/17/gawker_drags_media_coverage_to_a_new_low_outing_an_executive_just_because_they_can/ http://www.salon.com/2015/07/17/gawker_drags_media_coverage_... And who could forget the time when they filed the sexual assault of a guy under "first world problem": https://archive.is/f0ZbV https://archive.is/f0ZbV (archive link because no traffic for Gawker).
- herbig 11y agoHe should actually just give this a rest. The article does not contribute to the discussion, it just further plugs his book. She was terribly wronged but no one else keeps bringing her up except him, for obvious financial gain. If he has something new to say then great, but cherry picking ridiculous tweets out of thousands of them, many of them complete trolls, only gives voice to an obviously ignorant minority.
- 6d0debc071 11y agoI've been on forums where people said the most atrocious things to each other. But there was never any come back from it because A) The audience was relatively limited and B) None of us used real names or spread out ID around too widely. You could pay me to use social media, but considering the potential reputational costs I'd have to be paid a lot.
- wobbleblob 11y agoWelcome to twitter. It's completely unclear to me why anyone would use it, especially after writing a book about how using it wrong can get you fired and ruin your life.
- fit2rule 11y agoIt is pretty clear that as a species, our group dynamics have both pro- and contra- modes that can be applied by the group towards the individual. Its a sliding scale .. we eat our martyrs and pamper our sinners, alike. Its cases such as this one that remind me personally that you cannot trust a mob, a crowd can be as banal and base as any wild animal, and groups need guidance to be of benefit to the individual cells which form the whole. There are no guarantees with the mob - strength, unity, enterprise - these must all be applied towards the effort to prevent the mob from consuming itself. Humans are cannibalistic - if not digestively, at least figuratively - and we form whatever cultures we can select from the infinite void in order to undo this cannibalistic urge. But yet, still it persists.
- 13thLetter 11y agoRonson's a cogent writer, but I can't help think he's suffering from cognitive dissonance. Perhaps because he still clings hopelessly to the idea that the modern concept of "social justice" is somehow beneficial, he keeps trying to find excuses for why mobbing, shaming, hate mobs, rushes to judgement and so forth could theoretically be okay in some situation and so we shouldn't consider such behavior automatically bad. To his immense credit, he doesn't go around defending specific instances of hate mobbing, but his reluctance to fully commit to opposing the technique hampers whatever it is he's attempting to accomplish.