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I had considered a much longer criticism of this article, but I soon realized that there was no sense in complaining about a service which is no longer "ours."

I had considered a much longer criticism of this article, but I soon realized that there was no sense in complaining about a service which is no longer "ours." The internet of today (Internet 2.x), is little more than an advertising space, a vehicle through which users mistakenly approach as an encyclopedia housing the world's information, while in actuality, the user is product. So I'll just touch on one point instead: Humor > "But Mrgan insists it hasn’t led to sterile, sanitised comments. “People are still making jokes, being a little bit snarky, getting really opinionated,” she says. “The personal attacks, name-calling and abuse have gone, but the same feel has really stayed.”" Has Mrgan ever been to Reddit, the site so bold as to deem itself "The Front Page of the Internet" before? I absolutely disagree with her insistence. While the information is often great in some specialty areas, the humor is completely dry, overly snarky, and most users appear (caveat: IMO) to be treading on eggshells in avoidance of "Being downvoted" and having their comment hidden from the world. If you were to go to a standup comedy show, you would see a _plethora_ of philosophically different types of humor. Deprecating humor, Self-deprecating humor, sarcasm, parody, allegorical comedy, etc. etc. The "new internet" is in the process of filtering out most of this. To repeat my caveat, this is all my opinion, but a sterile Internet very quickly only reduces itself to plain sarcasm and snark, and honestly, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Back in the "good old days" During the 90's and the 00's, the onus was on the user his-or-herself to ignore and filter out toxic behavior. And it's a shame I'm saying this in my 20s.

thex10 11y ago
Why are we jumping to the conclusion that the whole internet would follow the same rules though? I imagine some sites would want to cultivate certain kinds of humor (it might allow abuse, but at least not everyone's walking on eggshells), and others don't (and would rather enforce some rules in the hopes of cultivating an abuse-minimized environment). Why wouldn't each individual service be able to make its own tradeoffs? Then users would vote with their feet and hangout in the places they like best anyway.. > Back in the "good old days" During the 90's and the 00's, the onus was on the user his-or-herself to ignore and filter out toxic behavior. And it's a shame I'm saying this in my 20s. Back in the day they had to close their eyes and ignore. Now in the day they craft software that ignores and filters out toxic behavior before it even gets to their eyes. ;) You think we're regressing?
- FilterSweep 11y ago
  >Back in the day they had to close their eyes and ignore. Now in the day they craft software that ignores and filters out toxic behavior before it even gets to their eyes. ;) You think we're regressing? Yes, I do. Software could have been, and always can be, improved at the "regex level" (finding bad worse, slanderous words, etc.) but the money is now in catering an experience to where things one simply disagrees with can create a false positive as "toxic behavior." And it often does. The dialogue has completely regressed, and will continue to do so as long as catering to as wide an audience as possible is the Modus Operandi of Internet 2.x And it's quite simplistic to write off the past as "closing ones eyes and ignoring." At the very least, IRC channels had moderators.
  - douche 11y ago
    I sort of miss the old days of the "clbuttic" obscenity filters you found on so many message boards...
jerf 11y ago
"Has Mrgan ever been to Reddit, the site so bold as to deem itself..." Mrgan's claim was not about Reddit. It was about a distinct moderation structure.
- FilterSweep 11y ago
  A valid point, but I'd argue Reddit was a better example of a distinct moderation structure than the example she actually did provide, Facebook. Facebook AFAIK requires you to report posts that you disagree with, while Reddit's moderation structure lies in it's own userbase. Save for technical subfora, dissident opinions are quickly downvoted into oblivion.
  - jerf 11y ago
    No, you and apparently a lot of other people missed the point. There was nothing about the statement you quoted that was about the internet at large. It was specifically about the model of moderation they tried out. That exact one. Not anything else. But you don't seem to have been alone in missing that, so arguably the writing should have been more clear. (No sarcasm. I am seriously saying the writing must be deficient.)
pjc50 11y ago
This is about removing death threats and abuse, not humour. Reddit is absolutely not a sanitised part of the internet, and I see far more people complaining there about political correctness than actually restraining what they say. I see dry humour as more of a product of geekiness and a text-only medium, causing non-literalist humour to get a bad reception. Randi Harper's essay https://medium.com/art-marketing/putting-out-the-twitter-trashfire-3ac6cb1af3e#.7s10qlcl4 https://medium.com/art-marketing/putting-out-the-twitter-tra... is all about improvements to the mechanism of twitter to enable the users to filter out toxic behaviour - at the moment, if you're a prominent woman on twitter and you offend the wrong people, you'll get drowned in toxic behaviour.
- michaelmrose 11y ago
  Instead of trying to put out the "twitter trashfire" How about avoiding using such a crummy social network?
mc32 11y ago
This is a hard problem. On the one hand ideally people would be decent and post decent speech --assuming a mature respectful body of people. On the other hand the internet is no longer an elite corner of the more or less culturally similar technically savvy people. It has filtered down to everyone and gives everyone a voice. It gives completely opposing passionate views a platform. It gives troublemakers a platform. This diffusion and permeation of the medium has given rise to this problem. So, to make it more useful bearable you go the FB way and do a one to one real identity mapping to remove pseudonymity (to bring reputation to bear) or you use moderators (people or software) and then decide whether people can set their filtering (show dead) or you set the filter for them (where the default is sanitized) Either way, for commercial viability (i.e. advertising) it will behoove most sites with reputational concerns, to modify commenters' behavior in line with what society expects. Necessarily this will mean lower case censorship.
sliverstorm 11y ago
Back in the "good old days" During the 90's and the 00's, the onus was on the user his-or-herself to ignore and filter out toxic behavior. Which is exactly why I lament the proliferation of spam filters. The onus is on you to ignore and filter spam. My (snarky) point is that as the internet grows, toxic behavior also grows. The proportion might not have changed, but toxic people tend to be very assertive about it, and you can wind up utterly awash in it. Much like spam.

thex10 11y ago

Why are we jumping to the conclusion that the whole internet would follow the same rules though? I imagine some sites would want to cultivate certain kinds of humor (it might allow abuse, but at least not everyone's walking on eggshells), and others don't (and would rather enforce some rules in the hopes of cultivating an abuse-minimized environment). Why wouldn't each individual service be able to make its own tradeoffs? Then users would vote with their feet and hangout in the places they like best anyway.. > Back in the "good old days" During the 90's and the 00's, the onus was on the user his-or-herself to ignore and filter out toxic behavior. And it's a shame I'm saying this in my 20s. Back in the day they had to close their eyes and ignore. Now in the day they craft software that ignores and filters out toxic behavior before it even gets to their eyes. ;) You think we're regressing?

FilterSweep 11y ago
>Back in the day they had to close their eyes and ignore. Now in the day they craft software that ignores and filters out toxic behavior before it even gets to their eyes. ;) You think we're regressing? Yes, I do. Software could have been, and always can be, improved at the "regex level" (finding bad worse, slanderous words, etc.) but the money is now in catering an experience to where things one simply disagrees with can create a false positive as "toxic behavior." And it often does. The dialogue has completely regressed, and will continue to do so as long as catering to as wide an audience as possible is the Modus Operandi of Internet 2.x And it's quite simplistic to write off the past as "closing ones eyes and ignoring." At the very least, IRC channels had moderators.
- douche 11y ago
  I sort of miss the old days of the "clbuttic" obscenity filters you found on so many message boards...

jerf 11y ago

"Has Mrgan ever been to Reddit, the site so bold as to deem itself..." Mrgan's claim was not about Reddit. It was about a distinct moderation structure.

FilterSweep 11y ago
A valid point, but I'd argue Reddit was a better example of a distinct moderation structure than the example she actually did provide, Facebook. Facebook AFAIK requires you to report posts that you disagree with, while Reddit's moderation structure lies in it's own userbase. Save for technical subfora, dissident opinions are quickly downvoted into oblivion.
- jerf 11y ago
  No, you and apparently a lot of other people missed the point. There was nothing about the statement you quoted that was about the internet at large. It was specifically about the model of moderation they tried out. That exact one. Not anything else. But you don't seem to have been alone in missing that, so arguably the writing should have been more clear. (No sarcasm. I am seriously saying the writing must be deficient.)

pjc50 11y ago

This is about removing death threats and abuse, not humour. Reddit is absolutely not a sanitised part of the internet, and I see far more people complaining there about political correctness than actually restraining what they say. I see dry humour as more of a product of geekiness and a text-only medium, causing non-literalist humour to get a bad reception. Randi Harper's essay https://medium.com/art-marketing/putting-out-the-twitter-trashfire-3ac6cb1af3e#.7s10qlcl4 https://medium.com/art-marketing/putting-out-the-twitter-tra... is all about improvements to the mechanism of twitter to enable the users to filter out toxic behaviour - at the moment, if you're a prominent woman on twitter and you offend the wrong people, you'll get drowned in toxic behaviour.

michaelmrose 11y ago
Instead of trying to put out the "twitter trashfire" How about avoiding using such a crummy social network?

mc32 11y ago

This is a hard problem. On the one hand ideally people would be decent and post decent speech --assuming a mature respectful body of people. On the other hand the internet is no longer an elite corner of the more or less culturally similar technically savvy people. It has filtered down to everyone and gives everyone a voice. It gives completely opposing passionate views a platform. It gives troublemakers a platform. This diffusion and permeation of the medium has given rise to this problem. So, to make it more useful bearable you go the FB way and do a one to one real identity mapping to remove pseudonymity (to bring reputation to bear) or you use moderators (people or software) and then decide whether people can set their filtering (show dead) or you set the filter for them (where the default is sanitized) Either way, for commercial viability (i.e. advertising) it will behoove most sites with reputational concerns, to modify commenters' behavior in line with what society expects. Necessarily this will mean lower case censorship.

sliverstorm 11y ago

Back in the "good old days" During the 90's and the 00's, the onus was on the user his-or-herself to ignore and filter out toxic behavior. Which is exactly why I lament the proliferation of spam filters. The onus is on you to ignore and filter spam. My (snarky) point is that as the internet grows, toxic behavior also grows. The proportion might not have changed, but toxic people tend to be very assertive about it, and you can wind up utterly awash in it. Much like spam.