7 ms·

I don't know if it will prevail in the end, but I think that Reddit approach by splitting the community in small subgroups/communities has a better chance to la

by seren 11y ago

I don't know if it will prevail in the end, but I think that Reddit approach by splitting the community in small subgroups/communities has a better chance to last in the long run. Of course, you'll create feuds between communities but at least it is somewhat confined and not always spilling in the common public space. Unfortunately it also greatly increases the echo chamber / filter bubble but it seems you can not have a peaceful community without an heavy dose of groupthink. A long time ago, at the dusk of the XXth century, I used to believe that Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources. Arguably that was a pretty naive view, and instead we got new tribes disagreeing on almost everything conceivable.

reitoei 11y ago
In-fighting within communities is one of reddit's biggest problems.
- vidarh 11y ago
  Yes, but then those who don't enjoy that infighting can, and often do, leave and form their own.
  - reitoei 11y ago
    Which fail in 99% of cases, so they come back to the original one more bitter than when they left.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  (Not directly applicable to Twitter, but to online communities in general) It'd be interesting if you could have two votes: whether you liked what the person posted (which would only be visible to them) and whether you'd personally share it with your friends (which would affect it's ranking only among your friends) Or put differently, I wonder if it's not possible to create a system that dynamically sorts content, instead of having static groups. Seems like static groups with a label on them inevitably end up arguing about exactly what the label means (grin). I don't want an echo chamber, and I want to be challenged -- but I don't want a daily rage fest against whomever the internet currently hates either.
  - dustingetz 11y ago
    The follower system on twitter already sorts content like that, it's just the retweet system amplifies certain types of content so strongly that it drowns out other types. Amongst other glaring problems, like driving an evil feedback loop that makes twitter money by making everyone angry.
    - DanielBMarkham 11y ago
      Many times online I see a friend who is justifiably upset. Let's say they like to put their dog in a sweater and somebody said it was animal abuse. Now I could care less about dogs in sweaters, but I like my friend. I hear them and I want them to know that they have been heard. So I "like" the content. When you've only got 1,000 or so followers, no big deal. But if you're around 50 or 100K? statistically you're going to end up with dozens, maybe hundreds of likes. Some likes are "I agree!" Some likes are "I like you". How could any system distinguish the two? I have difficulties doing this in small groups where people are physically nodding their head. I know designers don't want to move away from the one-button like/vote/heart/plus/whatever, but hell if I can figure out how you'd make a system work like that without massive feedback noise (which is what's happening).
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        The other day my friend's pet died, and they put a status update on Facebook. Blow me down if they didn't get 5 sympathetic likes!
  - seren 11y ago
    > I don't want an echo chamber, and I want to be challenged -- but I don't want a daily rage fest against whomever the internet currently hates either There is some scaling effect at play. Let's say in community of 1,000 - 10,000 it is easy to keep a civil discourse by small moderation and self-policing. In the 100,000 - 1,000,000 range it is much much harder. I have no idea of the size of HN but I believe it is closer to 50,000 and thus still "nice".
- fredley 11y ago
  I think there's probably an upper limit for how big any community can become before it becomes fractured. This size is probably variable, and dependent on the medium and structure of the community to an extent, but I'd posit it exists for any community. See: reddit, Stack Overflow, Facebook, any church, any religion, any politcal party, any country. Often secession is what happens: new subreddits, new churches, new countries. But as they grow, the same problems return. One thing I've often thought about is some kind of community-space with a fixed upper-bound on the size of communities, essentially forcing a community to split to add new members, like an old cell.
- monksy 11y ago
  There is bleeding over from one extremist community to others. (Namely SRS)
  - nols 11y ago
    SRS is the boogeyman of Reddit. It doesn't have nearly the power so many people seem to think. There are plenty of reactionary subreddits on multiple sides of various spectrums.
honksillet 11y ago
Reddit might be the perfect analogy given the propensity for censorship demonstrated both by mods and the corporate folks.
- sdenton4 11y ago
  There's two reasons for strong moderation (sometimes called 'censorship' by people who don't like it) on the internet: Jackasses creating an unsafe space for other parts of the community, and making a space safe for advertisers. The first reason comes down to having a choice between taking action against jackasses to allow groups like "women" and to have a place on your site. This is pretty damn important, and something that places like twitter and reddit have been horrible at. To the extent that there's less harassment on sites like Instagram, I wonder if it's just that the jackasses have confined themselves to Reddit. Advertising is a different issue altogether, and pretty much comes down to the Q-Tip corporation not wanting their ads to run on r/penetration. Which, meh, as far as I'm concerned, but companies based on ad revenue need to be able to sell ads. Both of these become bigger issues, however, as the sites get bigger and have a larger need for advertising dime to keep the lights on, and just have a bigger pool of jackasses to deal with. Reddit seems to have scaled... poorly... in both of these regards, and needs to think hard about both issues.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    We disagree (and I get the impression this is the root of much strife) on the definition of the word "safe" in "safe space". Safe from what? From having your views challenged? From someone calling you an asshat? From people making non-credible threats (Think navy seal copypasta)? From people making legitimate threats? Talk to 10 different people and all will have different definitions as to what the meaning is there.
    - jerf 11y ago
      IMHO, the objectionable part of "safe space" is the idea that everywhere needs to be a "safe space", and especially so when only certain favored groups of people gets to be "safe" in that universal "safe space" in accordance with the demands of a very vocal minority. The right to carve out a space (on the Internet or otherwise) for certain like minded individuals to be "safe" from any of the things you mentioned, as well as any other things they may deem fit, is one that we should generally honor, though.
jonstokes 11y ago
"A long time ago, I used to believe that Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources." Heh, same here. I think that so many of us simply underestimated the immense power of capitalism to co-opt and commodify everything it touches.
- cousin_it 11y ago
  Your dig on capitalism is ironic, given that the original post was about the power of activism to politicize everything it touches.
  - danharaj 11y ago
    The status quo is always political. There is no apolitical center.
    - cousin_it 11y ago
      Sure, we can't have an apolitical space. But we can have an activism-free space, and that's exactly what I want.
      - danharaj 11y ago
        so, a safe space from activism? :p i think your desire is reasonable. however, i think it would be unreasonable to demand it of something as public and global as Twitter.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        cousin_it 11y ago
        Agreed that Twitter shouldn't be activism-free, but they could try to make it less threatening, e.g. by hiding or slowing down replies that are likely to be part of mobbing.
fche 11y ago
Re. your last paragraph, the "different opinions" is exactly what we get, so it's not "instead" but "consequently". As for unbiased sources, that is a pipe dream as it ever was.
gedy 11y ago
> Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources Agreed. Seems like what happened is people could find their own opinion bubble to live it and feel empowered without having to deal with other opinions.
Paul-ish 11y ago
I have been waiting a long time for someone to use lessons learned from recommender systems to build a social media site like reddit, but rather than having users group themselves up, they would be shown posts algorithmically, based on how they have voted in the past. For example, if I vote for a lot of pro EFF posts, maybe I will see more posts about free software or something like that. This also allows the site to treat votes as merely an expression of preference, not a judgment of quality (which is hard to define). Many sites try to enforce a rule that says "Don't downvote things disagree with." This is an impossible battle to win, there will always be people who downvote things they don't agree with. This behavior needs to be accounted for in the platform. This is more "socially scalable" to me.
- organsnyder 11y ago
  Isn't that basically how Facebook's algorithms work? The only difference is that it restricts the pool of possible content to your list of "friends".
  - jcoffland 11y ago
    FB also decides who your real friends are. You normally only see posts from the friends you interact with most.
- spatulan 11y ago
  That sounds horrible. I don't want the internet to become a giant echo chamber. I want to hear differing views from time to time, because I might be wrong.
  - HCIdivision17 11y ago
    I would imagine you could also similarly find the things you either stay away from or actively dislike. Sort of a topical noise cancellation. Train it to know your preferences, but to occasionally give material outside the comfort zone. I think you'd really need a substantial map of topics to have a good understanding of where contrasts lie, but we're likely on track with the datasets currently being built in public sites like Reddit. Really, I'm surprised this feature isn't implemented anywhere, since one of the joys of the Internet is being delighted by a new idea you haven't seen before. I certainly would appreciate filtering of the obvious rubbish like Fry is exasperated with, but having quality dissenting opinions available is precious.
MicroBerto 11y ago
For those of you old enough to have seen the net hey started, but young enough to have been impressionable by its start: Remember when we wanted EVERYONE to get online? Remember when we thought how great the world would be if everyone was connected and could read all this great information and research? HA! One thing we did not understand: the tragedy of the commons. It is now nothing but a tragedy. Best thing to do is stay deep within your select niches and away from general purpose networks like Facebook or Twitter.
- markatkinson 11y ago
  Yea man, I used to just screw around on Yahoo for hours on end exploring the internet in its weird pixelated glory. I like that term "general purpose networks", although "purposelessness" might be better suited.
- bananaboy 11y ago
  See also Eternal September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
EvanPlaice 11y ago
The US does this by allowing states to have their own local governments and laws. Forcing everybody into a single, homogeneous culture dictated by a central authority is a recipe for disaster. People often point to the chaos that takes place in the US government as a 'failure of Democracy'. I'd argue the opposite, it's a side effect of a successful Democracy that supports a wide variety of subcultures with different beliefs/norms. It should be extremely difficult to establish a universal consensus. The danger comes when the central authority makes declarative judgements that affect everybody without working out foing due diligence. Some topics can't be addressed globally and therefore should be defined locally or not at all. Universal laws work best when they're used to guarantee basic human rights and freedoms. Unfortunately, some groups try to manipulate public opinion and garner support by attaching 'human right' to whatever particular pet cause they're trying to force.

by seren 11y ago

reitoei 11y ago

In-fighting within communities is one of reddit's biggest problems.

vidarh 11y ago
Yes, but then those who don't enjoy that infighting can, and often do, leave and form their own.
- reitoei 11y ago
  Which fail in 99% of cases, so they come back to the original one more bitter than when they left.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
(Not directly applicable to Twitter, but to online communities in general) It'd be interesting if you could have two votes: whether you liked what the person posted (which would only be visible to them) and whether you'd personally share it with your friends (which would affect it's ranking only among your friends) Or put differently, I wonder if it's not possible to create a system that dynamically sorts content, instead of having static groups. Seems like static groups with a label on them inevitably end up arguing about exactly what the label means (grin). I don't want an echo chamber, and I want to be challenged -- but I don't want a daily rage fest against whomever the internet currently hates either.
- dustingetz 11y ago
  The follower system on twitter already sorts content like that, it's just the retweet system amplifies certain types of content so strongly that it drowns out other types. Amongst other glaring problems, like driving an evil feedback loop that makes twitter money by making everyone angry.
  - DanielBMarkham 11y ago
    Many times online I see a friend who is justifiably upset. Let's say they like to put their dog in a sweater and somebody said it was animal abuse. Now I could care less about dogs in sweaters, but I like my friend. I hear them and I want them to know that they have been heard. So I "like" the content. When you've only got 1,000 or so followers, no big deal. But if you're around 50 or 100K? statistically you're going to end up with dozens, maybe hundreds of likes. Some likes are "I agree!" Some likes are "I like you". How could any system distinguish the two? I have difficulties doing this in small groups where people are physically nodding their head. I know designers don't want to move away from the one-button like/vote/heart/plus/whatever, but hell if I can figure out how you'd make a system work like that without massive feedback noise (which is what's happening).
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      The other day my friend's pet died, and they put a status update on Facebook. Blow me down if they didn't get 5 sympathetic likes!
- seren 11y ago
  > I don't want an echo chamber, and I want to be challenged -- but I don't want a daily rage fest against whomever the internet currently hates either There is some scaling effect at play. Let's say in community of 1,000 - 10,000 it is easy to keep a civil discourse by small moderation and self-policing. In the 100,000 - 1,000,000 range it is much much harder. I have no idea of the size of HN but I believe it is closer to 50,000 and thus still "nice".
fredley 11y ago
I think there's probably an upper limit for how big any community can become before it becomes fractured. This size is probably variable, and dependent on the medium and structure of the community to an extent, but I'd posit it exists for any community. See: reddit, Stack Overflow, Facebook, any church, any religion, any politcal party, any country. Often secession is what happens: new subreddits, new churches, new countries. But as they grow, the same problems return. One thing I've often thought about is some kind of community-space with a fixed upper-bound on the size of communities, essentially forcing a community to split to add new members, like an old cell.
monksy 11y ago
There is bleeding over from one extremist community to others. (Namely SRS)
- nols 11y ago
  SRS is the boogeyman of Reddit. It doesn't have nearly the power so many people seem to think. There are plenty of reactionary subreddits on multiple sides of various spectrums.

honksillet 11y ago

Reddit might be the perfect analogy given the propensity for censorship demonstrated both by mods and the corporate folks.

sdenton4 11y ago
There's two reasons for strong moderation (sometimes called 'censorship' by people who don't like it) on the internet: Jackasses creating an unsafe space for other parts of the community, and making a space safe for advertisers. The first reason comes down to having a choice between taking action against jackasses to allow groups like "women" and to have a place on your site. This is pretty damn important, and something that places like twitter and reddit have been horrible at. To the extent that there's less harassment on sites like Instagram, I wonder if it's just that the jackasses have confined themselves to Reddit. Advertising is a different issue altogether, and pretty much comes down to the Q-Tip corporation not wanting their ads to run on r/penetration. Which, meh, as far as I'm concerned, but companies based on ad revenue need to be able to sell ads. Both of these become bigger issues, however, as the sites get bigger and have a larger need for advertising dime to keep the lights on, and just have a bigger pool of jackasses to deal with. Reddit seems to have scaled... poorly... in both of these regards, and needs to think hard about both issues.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  We disagree (and I get the impression this is the root of much strife) on the definition of the word "safe" in "safe space". Safe from what? From having your views challenged? From someone calling you an asshat? From people making non-credible threats (Think navy seal copypasta)? From people making legitimate threats? Talk to 10 different people and all will have different definitions as to what the meaning is there.
  - jerf 11y ago
    IMHO, the objectionable part of "safe space" is the idea that everywhere needs to be a "safe space", and especially so when only certain favored groups of people gets to be "safe" in that universal "safe space" in accordance with the demands of a very vocal minority. The right to carve out a space (on the Internet or otherwise) for certain like minded individuals to be "safe" from any of the things you mentioned, as well as any other things they may deem fit, is one that we should generally honor, though.

jonstokes 11y ago

"A long time ago, I used to believe that Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources." Heh, same here. I think that so many of us simply underestimated the immense power of capitalism to co-opt and commodify everything it touches.

cousin_it 11y ago
Your dig on capitalism is ironic, given that the original post was about the power of activism to politicize everything it touches.
- danharaj 11y ago
  The status quo is always political. There is no apolitical center.
  - cousin_it 11y ago
    Sure, we can't have an apolitical space. But we can have an activism-free space, and that's exactly what I want.
    - danharaj 11y ago
      so, a safe space from activism? :p i think your desire is reasonable. however, i think it would be unreasonable to demand it of something as public and global as Twitter.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - cousin_it 11y ago
        Agreed that Twitter shouldn't be activism-free, but they could try to make it less threatening, e.g. by hiding or slowing down replies that are likely to be part of mobbing.

fche 11y ago

Re. your last paragraph, the "different opinions" is exactly what we get, so it's not "instead" but "consequently". As for unbiased sources, that is a pipe dream as it ever was.

gedy 11y ago

> Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources Agreed. Seems like what happened is people could find their own opinion bubble to live it and feel empowered without having to deal with other opinions.

Paul-ish 11y ago

I have been waiting a long time for someone to use lessons learned from recommender systems to build a social media site like reddit, but rather than having users group themselves up, they would be shown posts algorithmically, based on how they have voted in the past. For example, if I vote for a lot of pro EFF posts, maybe I will see more posts about free software or something like that. This also allows the site to treat votes as merely an expression of preference, not a judgment of quality (which is hard to define). Many sites try to enforce a rule that says "Don't downvote things disagree with." This is an impossible battle to win, there will always be people who downvote things they don't agree with. This behavior needs to be accounted for in the platform. This is more "socially scalable" to me.

organsnyder 11y ago
Isn't that basically how Facebook's algorithms work? The only difference is that it restricts the pool of possible content to your list of "friends".
- jcoffland 11y ago
  FB also decides who your real friends are. You normally only see posts from the friends you interact with most.
spatulan 11y ago
That sounds horrible. I don't want the internet to become a giant echo chamber. I want to hear differing views from time to time, because I might be wrong.
- HCIdivision17 11y ago
  I would imagine you could also similarly find the things you either stay away from or actively dislike. Sort of a topical noise cancellation. Train it to know your preferences, but to occasionally give material outside the comfort zone. I think you'd really need a substantial map of topics to have a good understanding of where contrasts lie, but we're likely on track with the datasets currently being built in public sites like Reddit. Really, I'm surprised this feature isn't implemented anywhere, since one of the joys of the Internet is being delighted by a new idea you haven't seen before. I certainly would appreciate filtering of the obvious rubbish like Fry is exasperated with, but having quality dissenting opinions available is precious.

MicroBerto 11y ago

For those of you old enough to have seen the net hey started, but young enough to have been impressionable by its start: Remember when we wanted EVERYONE to get online? Remember when we thought how great the world would be if everyone was connected and could read all this great information and research? HA! One thing we did not understand: the tragedy of the commons. It is now nothing but a tragedy. Best thing to do is stay deep within your select niches and away from general purpose networks like Facebook or Twitter.

markatkinson 11y ago
Yea man, I used to just screw around on Yahoo for hours on end exploring the internet in its weird pixelated glory. I like that term "general purpose networks", although "purposelessness" might be better suited.
bananaboy 11y ago
See also Eternal September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

EvanPlaice 11y ago

The US does this by allowing states to have their own local governments and laws. Forcing everybody into a single, homogeneous culture dictated by a central authority is a recipe for disaster. People often point to the chaos that takes place in the US government as a 'failure of Democracy'. I'd argue the opposite, it's a side effect of a successful Democracy that supports a wide variety of subcultures with different beliefs/norms. It should be extremely difficult to establish a universal consensus. The danger comes when the central authority makes declarative judgements that affect everybody without working out foing due diligence. Some topics can't be addressed globally and therefore should be defined locally or not at all. Universal laws work best when they're used to guarantee basic human rights and freedoms. Unfortunately, some groups try to manipulate public opinion and garner support by attaching 'human right' to whatever particular pet cause they're trying to force.