4 ms·

It was a seriously cool experiment. Factions rose and fell, alliances were forged, battles waged, "rules of war" developed. It was amazing. But I don't think t

It was a seriously cool experiment. Factions rose and fell, alliances were forged, battles waged, "rules of war" developed. It was amazing. But I don't think there's much to be gained from pontificating about it as a model for preventing hate speech. For one, it was moderated. The slow speed of creating things just meant it was easier on moderators. Secondly, the main thing that made it mostly pleasant was that only very widespread ideas could flourish. Minority ideas, whether good or bad, could not (even the art from small communities was only allowed to exist via alliances with larger communities that could easily destroy their art). This means things were mostly unobjectionable, but it also limits creativity. Do you really want that to be your model of public conversation? Things can only be published if 1000 people all try to publish the same thing and work to maintain it? This would just be pushing filter bubbles to the extreme and driving resentment underground where nobody would notice it until it bubbled over. Then people would be like "whoa, where'd all the hate speech come from?", when it was there all along but not the dominant voice. And they would be making poor decisions regarding their own political strategy, because they mistakenly believed that they had won a battle that they had not. All a model like that would do would be to amplify the status quo, whether good or bad. Just because your political faction happens to be dominant in certain circles doesn't mean you should adopt policies that always benefit the dominant political faction. Especially when your faction is all about protecting minorities. A status-quo-favouring policy would be terrible for minorities that do not already carry favour with the larger population. When you think about whether a policy for shaping public conversation is a good idea long-term or not, consider whether it would be a good idea say, in Russia today. LGBT people in Russia are oppressed and do not hold favour with any larger political faction. "Majority gets to censor the minority" is a terrible policy in almost all cases, and people at present only don't realise this because they are in the historically improbable situation of the people with the power to censor also being the ones who favour minority voices. This is historically rare, and your policies should not rely on it being the case.

sqeaky 10y ago
> This would just be pushing filter bubbles to the extreme and driving resentment underground where nobody would notice it until it bubbled over. Then people would be like "whoa, where'd all the hate speech come from?", when it was there all along but not the dominant voice. And they would be making poor decisions regarding their own political strategy, because they mistakenly believed that they had won a battle that they had not. Doesn't this describe the recent presidential election?
- doubleunplussed 10y ago
  Yes, I wasn't trying to be subtle!
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    Well it was too subtle for me! I am living in one of the Many trumpvilles. Subtly on this topic isn't a common tactic around here.
Nexxxeh 10y ago
>Minority ideas, whether good or bad, could not (even the art from small communities was only allowed to exist via alliances with larger communities that could easily destroy their art) I'd disagree. /r/wales and /r/faroeislands have less than 7k subscribers between us. We had no bots, just a few people in a Discord channel. Actual: https://i.imgur.com/GtkaGlJl.png https://i.imgur.com/GtkaGlJl.png SCtester Cleanup: http://i.imgur.com/GQCTigC.png http://i.imgur.com/GQCTigC.png Wales also had our dragon beneath the main UK flag along with NI, England and Scotland. There was also a cool Wales places heart.
- doubleunplussed 10y ago
  Sure but the heart was there at the pleasure of the heart people, and the dragon beneath the UK flag at the pleasure of the UK people. If either of them wasn't cool with wales, they could have gotten rid of them (I'm not sure about the other one but I suspect there were conversations and agreements with surrounding art not to expand into each others' territories). Other, larger groups that did not have alliances with others failed to gain traction - Trump fans failed to draw Trump even though there are more of them than welsh people. Their numbers were large, but they did not have the favour of the majority. The OSU people, though nobody had an opinion on them beforehand, did a poor job of diplomacy, and as a result really struggled to stay on the canvas. It was about who was in the good books of the larger factions more than anything else. If rainbowroad or the germans liked you, you were golden. If OSU liked you, well, that wasn't worth much.
  - Nexxxeh 10y ago
    All the stuff in the image was by us, and we fought and won for the space. Wales is fundamentally part of the UK, and I would assume the Welsh we were represented within the /r/unitedkingdom place team. We certainly are in the subreddit. That was more /r/unitedkingdom but /r/wales did some defence of it. As for the heart in placehearts, that was r/placehearts and their allies more than us. (The Wales/Faroe Islands heart in the image was all us.) I would speculate T_D failed in large part because they attacked areas that were defended by bots, they (correctly) prioritized the flag, and trolling others. I'm sure it didn't help that they've antagonized the entire Reddit community with their shitty lack of reddiquette in general since their inception. I'd go further and suggest a lot of their members were lost to the Void, which I'd cynically suggest overlaps significantly.
cokeandsympathy 10y ago
A difference though is that the time limit between pixel placing introduced opportunity cost and provided a means of testing strength of preference. People were forced to make trade-offs between creating the things they wanted to see and censoring the things they didn't want to see, and could not do both simultaneously. This is unlike political systems in which people can vote on a referendum on gay marriage and zoning laws on the same ballot (or US congressmen voting on multiple laws in one session). Of course there are still elements of this in politics when it comes to enacting complex legislation (can't do healthcare and tax reform at the same time) but that that has more to do with the time and political capital trade-offs it takes to build coalitions which can then act unilaterally, while in reddit the cost is downstream, as coalitions must divide their power if they want to pursue simultaneous goals. Also, the time limit measured takes into account strength of preference since the ability of an individual to affect the outcome of the canvas depends on how much time they're willing to devote to their effort. Consider the example of LGBT laws. Those who are LGBT tend to have much stronger preferences regarding such laws compared to the general population who may be for or against them (though some on the religious right probably feel very strongly as well). In politics, this can lead to persecution, as a majority of people that don't care strongly but vote no can hold back those who care strongly and vote yes. On the reddit platform, since people with greater conviction are likely to devote more time than those who do not care strongly, it makes it more likely for them to get their message out.
- sooheon 10y ago
  You can kill 2 birds with one stone by placing what you want to see over what you want to sensor. But yeah, if you want to sensor many different places, there is an opportunity cost there. As for your second point, I'd argue that any variance b/w individuals wasn't that much. Much more effective than staying online for an hour and getting a few more pixels in, is propagandizing to a subreddit of 10,000 people and getting each of them to drop one pixel. Those who got their voices heard were not those staying up 24 hrs placing dots, it was those who wrote calls to arms on subreddits and mobilized others.

sqeaky 10y ago

> This would just be pushing filter bubbles to the extreme and driving resentment underground where nobody would notice it until it bubbled over. Then people would be like "whoa, where'd all the hate speech come from?", when it was there all along but not the dominant voice. And they would be making poor decisions regarding their own political strategy, because they mistakenly believed that they had won a battle that they had not. Doesn't this describe the recent presidential election?

doubleunplussed 10y ago
Yes, I wasn't trying to be subtle!
- sqeaky 10y ago
  Well it was too subtle for me! I am living in one of the Many trumpvilles. Subtly on this topic isn't a common tactic around here.

Nexxxeh 10y ago

>Minority ideas, whether good or bad, could not (even the art from small communities was only allowed to exist via alliances with larger communities that could easily destroy their art) I'd disagree. /r/wales and /r/faroeislands have less than 7k subscribers between us. We had no bots, just a few people in a Discord channel. Actual: https://i.imgur.com/GtkaGlJl.png https://i.imgur.com/GtkaGlJl.png SCtester Cleanup: http://i.imgur.com/GQCTigC.png http://i.imgur.com/GQCTigC.png Wales also had our dragon beneath the main UK flag along with NI, England and Scotland. There was also a cool Wales places heart.

doubleunplussed 10y ago
Sure but the heart was there at the pleasure of the heart people, and the dragon beneath the UK flag at the pleasure of the UK people. If either of them wasn't cool with wales, they could have gotten rid of them (I'm not sure about the other one but I suspect there were conversations and agreements with surrounding art not to expand into each others' territories). Other, larger groups that did not have alliances with others failed to gain traction - Trump fans failed to draw Trump even though there are more of them than welsh people. Their numbers were large, but they did not have the favour of the majority. The OSU people, though nobody had an opinion on them beforehand, did a poor job of diplomacy, and as a result really struggled to stay on the canvas. It was about who was in the good books of the larger factions more than anything else. If rainbowroad or the germans liked you, you were golden. If OSU liked you, well, that wasn't worth much.
- Nexxxeh 10y ago
  All the stuff in the image was by us, and we fought and won for the space. Wales is fundamentally part of the UK, and I would assume the Welsh we were represented within the /r/unitedkingdom place team. We certainly are in the subreddit. That was more /r/unitedkingdom but /r/wales did some defence of it. As for the heart in placehearts, that was r/placehearts and their allies more than us. (The Wales/Faroe Islands heart in the image was all us.) I would speculate T_D failed in large part because they attacked areas that were defended by bots, they (correctly) prioritized the flag, and trolling others. I'm sure it didn't help that they've antagonized the entire Reddit community with their shitty lack of reddiquette in general since their inception. I'd go further and suggest a lot of their members were lost to the Void, which I'd cynically suggest overlaps significantly.

cokeandsympathy 10y ago

A difference though is that the time limit between pixel placing introduced opportunity cost and provided a means of testing strength of preference. People were forced to make trade-offs between creating the things they wanted to see and censoring the things they didn't want to see, and could not do both simultaneously. This is unlike political systems in which people can vote on a referendum on gay marriage and zoning laws on the same ballot (or US congressmen voting on multiple laws in one session). Of course there are still elements of this in politics when it comes to enacting complex legislation (can't do healthcare and tax reform at the same time) but that that has more to do with the time and political capital trade-offs it takes to build coalitions which can then act unilaterally, while in reddit the cost is downstream, as coalitions must divide their power if they want to pursue simultaneous goals. Also, the time limit measured takes into account strength of preference since the ability of an individual to affect the outcome of the canvas depends on how much time they're willing to devote to their effort. Consider the example of LGBT laws. Those who are LGBT tend to have much stronger preferences regarding such laws compared to the general population who may be for or against them (though some on the religious right probably feel very strongly as well). In politics, this can lead to persecution, as a majority of people that don't care strongly but vote no can hold back those who care strongly and vote yes. On the reddit platform, since people with greater conviction are likely to devote more time than those who do not care strongly, it makes it more likely for them to get their message out.

sooheon 10y ago
You can kill 2 birds with one stone by placing what you want to see over what you want to sensor. But yeah, if you want to sensor many different places, there is an opportunity cost there. As for your second point, I'd argue that any variance b/w individuals wasn't that much. Much more effective than staying online for an hour and getting a few more pixels in, is propagandizing to a subreddit of 10,000 people and getting each of them to drop one pixel. Those who got their voices heard were not those staying up 24 hrs placing dots, it was those who wrote calls to arms on subreddits and mobilized others.