15 ms·

We Live in Fear of the Online Mobs

153 points by imartin2k 9y ago

theWatcher37 9y ago
For every time people pat themselves on the back about getting some nazi fired, consider there's others where the mob gets it wrong (see: Reddit and the Boston bombers). This stuff is dangerous.
- aaron695 9y ago
  Why are you patting yourself on the back for getting a nazi [sic] fired. The fact this is consider acceptable is the whole problem. We should not be using cop outs of 'where the mob gets it wrong'. The only reason you should get someone fired is they are bad at their job and they have been given a chance to improve.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    At a high level, it's a reaction to the fact that the system seems incapable of dealing with certain crimes. Rape, any crime committed by police, war crimes, white collar theft, inmate abuse, biased promotion, harassment... so many of these things are really hard to get police to care about. So people are turning to alternative means. It worries me, but at the same time I want to see justice. I feel conflicted about it. Politically, on the one side you have people screaming about the rule of law. I think that would be ideologically consistent if they also supported increased law enforcement pressure on these kinds of crimes. But they generally don't. On the other side, you have people arguing we need to take the law into our own hands and fight back against "fascism", white supremacy, all of these things. But those same people don't generally want to take responsibility for the crimes they are complicit in (war crimes, theft of indigenous land, soft racism, etc). I don't see a clear resolution, although I think the whole situation is a reaction to the internet forcing increased self-awareness on us, and us not being able to deal with the possibility that we're genuinely bad people. The internet showed us how much violence we're complicit in, and we're reacting by getting real mad at whoever is far enough away for us to dissociate from.
    - adjkant 9y ago
      > "At a high level, it's a reaction to the fact that the system seems incapable of dealing with certain crimes. Rape, any crime committed by police, war crimes, white collar theft, inmate abuse, biased promotion, harassment... so many of these things are really hard to get police to care about. > So people are turning to alternative means. It worries me, but at the same time I want to see justice. I feel conflicted about it." Well said. In some ways this seems a bit like transferring the moral questions of vigilante justice in comics to the individual person. If you see an injustice that will not be corrected, do you have the power/obligation to correct it? The main failing is the lack of certainty, which should be one of the main focuses here.
    - alphaalpha101 9y ago
      >At a high level, it's a reaction to the fact that the system seems incapable of dealing with certain crimes. Rape, any crime committed by police, war crimes, white collar theft, inmate abuse, biased promotion, harassment... so many of these things are really hard to get police to care about. I kind of have to wonder about a list that includes 'war crimes', 'rape', 'biased promotion' and 'harassment'. Like, seriously, these are a class of similar issues? I'm not going all 'ARE YOU COMPARING X and Y????' on you, but really. Those are some pretty specific issues, why them in particular? >Politically, on the one side you have people screaming about the rule of law. I think that would be ideologically consistent if they also supported increased law enforcement pressure on these kinds of crimes. But they generally don't. But people do support increased law enforcement pressure on these kinds of crimes. People do want rapists to go to prison. People do want war crimes to result in changes. People do want bankers sent to prison. But it seems that unless you think that accused rapists should be presumed guilty that you're 'pro-rape'. It seems that unless you think that women and minorities should just get priority in all promotions, that you 'support biased promotion'. You know? >On the other side, you have people arguing we need to take the law into our own hands and fight back against "fascism", white supremacy, all of these things. But those same people don't generally want to take responsibility for the crimes they are complicit in (war crimes, theft of indigenous land, soft racism, etc). Those so-called 'crimes' are just 'being white', unfortunately. If you're a white American, then you're held responsible for all the US military's crimes, all racism in America and all historical injustices against native Americans. It's ridiculous. Why do you think that Trump supporters are so alienated from the mainstream left? They don't want to be held responsible for things that have literally nothing to do with them.
- alphaalpha101 9y ago
  >some nazi fired Did you actually read the memo? If he's a nazi, then so is 95% of the world's population.
  - eksemplar 9y ago
    I read it, wish I hadn't wasted my time on something as disgusting, but I did. I doubt 5% of the world would appreciate the message. Then again, I never saw equal rights as a threat. I don't think he's necessarily a Nazi though, just a spoiled biggot who hasn't walked a mile in anyone's shoes, not even his own.
    - alphaalpha101 9y ago
      Lol what have you been smoking? What was disgusting about saying 'hey maybe the reason that women aren't in software is that they don't want to be in software and there's nothing wrong with that as long as the women that are in software are treated well'?
      - dang 9y ago
        You've been breaking the HN guidelines quite a bit I'm afraid. Would you please read them and follow them from now on? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        alphaalpha101 9y ago
        Sorry I'll try to avoid the 'what are you smoking?' sort of thing. Comment works completely fine without it, it's just rude.
  - ryan-allen 9y ago
    I think he was being sarcastic with the 'some nazi' part?
    - graphememes 9y ago
Overtonwindow 9y ago
I've noticed a growth of righteous indignation from people, particularly over the past 10 years. It's not enough that one person disagrees with another, now this disagreement is manifesting itself in proactive rage. This rage gets directed in a vengeful, sinister effort to gravely harm someone, by getting them fired from their job etc. It seems like it's increasing, and no one is being held accountable. I've not seen this level of vitriol and other cultures, it seems uniquely American.
- stevecalifornia 9y ago
  China is well known to have this culture as well.
  - rjeli 9y ago
    I've never heard of this, please elaborate. What are the dividing topics?
    - schoen 9y ago
      I guess the reports in English usually refer to the "human flesh search engine": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine From the description, this might encompass phenomena that we would call both coordinated harassment and public shaming, and maybe the original article by Megan McArdle also means to encompass both, though it seems to have more focus on public shaming.
      - deleted 9y ago
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- zaptheimpaler 9y ago
  Some people need to find a bad guy to demonize so that they, by contrast can be the good guys.
- linkregister 9y ago
stevecalifornia 9y ago
Town squares used to be small so that mobs couldn't get too big. Now the town square is infinite and we are seeing the result. Maybe in a hundred years we will have sorted out how to maintain free speech but limit the bloodthirsty mob. But in the meantime, we all need to survive through this period while as a culture we figure out the answer. The only answer I can think of is to opt-out of social media, ignore trolls online and cultivate more meaningful in-person connections.
- Overtonwindow 9y ago
  You might find this article about a blogger in South Korea interesting. The blogger was posting financial analysis and opinion, which was apparently causing disruptions in the market. No one would have known who he was if not for the South Korean system of mandatory Internet user registration. I doubt we will see this in America, but it's interesting to consider. https://www.wired.com/2009/10/mf_minerva/ https://www.wired.com/2009/10/mf_minerva/
- busterarm 9y ago
  > The only answer I can think of is to opt-out of social media, ignore trolls online and cultivate more meaningful in-person connections. I strongly concur with your assessment.
- matt4077 9y ago
  > Town squares used to be small so that mobs couldn't get too big. See, that's the sort of thing that must be terribly difficult to write, knowing that thousands were tortured, maimed, and killed by small-town mobs in the US: http://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/ http://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/
  - damnfine 9y ago
    How is that relevant at all to the discussion?
    - matt4077 9y ago
Areading314 9y ago
The wrongly accused suffered for thousands of years before public and fair courts became common. The court of public opinion needs a counterpart for the social media age. Proof-of-work juries might be a neat way to orchestrate fair voting in anonymous spaces
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Maybe proof-of-empathy? Demonstrate that you understand how someone is thinking and feeling in their vote to be able to cast your own? Or proof-of-research? Proof-of-rationality?
  - guildwriter 9y ago
    I'd be for proof of empathy if it would somehow help reduce the number of straw men I see being constructed on a daily basis. I wouldn't hold my breath for proof of rationality. Humans are rationalizing animals, not rational animals.
peter_retief 9y ago
We could or should use online pseudonyms that can be erased if the mob attacks. Perhaps its time to protect our public personae with masks and sub masks. Why not the same for employment? Have a work personae as well. The mob are crazy and not very clever
- peter_retief 9y ago
  Nature imitating art, the mob are mobilizing ;)
docdeek 9y ago
Social media seems to be living by the maxim “It’s not enough that I succeed, others should fail”. It’s not enough to simply be a good person, win an argument, or see your personal political beliefs become widely adopted - you also have to point out how bad others are, how badly your opponent lost the argument, or how anyone holding a different political beliefe to you is a Nazi. There is value to social media in general and Twitter in particular, but it does appear to me to be increasingly toxic.
- roceasta 9y ago
  Yes, labelling a person who disagrees with you Nazi seems like a perverse application of Godwin's Law. It means you are intentionally ending the discussion. Why do it?
  - jacalata 9y ago
    Because there are people marching with swastikas? http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/08/inventor-godwin-s-law-says-it-s-fine-call-charlottesville-rioters-nazis http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/08/inventor-...
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      Yes, those people can credibly be labeled Nazis, but I assume roceasta is referring to the wider halo around them, of people also being labeled Nazis. For example, Trump was frequently labeled a Nazi for condeming violence, in his words, "on both sides. On both sides." Which I found disturbing, but I don't see how it makes him a Nazi.
      - alphaalpha101 9y ago
        It suggests that he sympathises with Nazis, which is close enough to being a Nazi for most people.
        busterarm 9y ago
mmaunder 9y ago
This is why public sentiment has become hard to measure. The result of elections, for example, will become increasingly harder to predict as individual opinions become more private. It used to be fun to share who you are voting for when randomly called. Now sharing your true beliefs or opinions comes with a risk of mob reprisal. In future, the future will be less predictable.
intopieces 9y ago
I don't think people live in fear of the online mobs. People post vile opinions all the time in the Facebook comments sections of new stories, with open profiles and what is ostensibly their real names. I agree that online mobs have changed the game as far as speech consequences go, and I agree that most of those changes are for the worse. I do not see a way out, however, except to delete your social media and do not post things to the Internet that could possibly be linked back to you. I don't really like the Web anymore.
- stubish 9y ago
  No, people really do live in fear of online mobs. You don't hear from them because they can't participate due to their anxieties. Sure, these fears can be irrational and overblown but they are real to them.
quaunaut 9y ago
This article sounds woefully out of touch with the realities of the modern web. So many of the arguments surrounding Damore talk as if this is in a vacuum, when frankly, it isn't. Much of the message it carried(and did little to discourage) came off as insulting to a group of people who commonly spend every day harassed just for what they are, anytime they have gone online. The article talks a lot about the fear of an online mob shaming people for doing something, yet completely ignores that many of those in said mob are harassed daily based on their mere existence, and often their "shaming" comes from a place of just not wanting to be hurt again. Is it necessarily the most effective means of accomplishing this? Certainly not, and I'm not about to claim to support what it becomes, but to call question to that and speak from such a "Nice problem to have" place to people suffering a much worse version of what you're talking about reeks of "Let them eat cake".
- skybrian 9y ago
  While I agree that the article is exaggerated, consider that being harassed doesn't prevent one from harassing others. The people in a crowd may have very understandable reasons for their behavior, and yet it might be a good idea to avoid their attention.
- alphaalpha101 9y ago
  >So many of the arguments surrounding Damore talk as if this is in a vacuum, when frankly, it isn't. Much of the message it carried(and did little to discourage) came off as insulting to a group of people who commonly spend every day harassed just for what they are, anytime they have gone online. That would, presumably, be women in software? Because as far as I can tell, the only people being regularly harassed on Twitter are people that don't think women should get special rights...
  - adjkant 9y ago
    I can't speak specifically to online, but this is in general: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-silicon-valley-so-awful-to-women/517788/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-...
  - 9y ago
roceasta 9y ago
I think she's correct to compare our situation now to a primitive band of people. Marshall McLuhan famously called this the global village. Close communication is paradoxically causing the fragmentation and balkanisation of the internet. A process which nations like China (with its own internet) and companies like Google (by getting into politics) are accelerating. The goal of political correctness, adopting Daniel Dennett's intentional stance, is to control thinking. Individuals who are able to resist are in some ways more isolated now than the old communist dissidents. They at least got moral support from each other in prison. http://www.beyondeasy.net/2015/09/mcluhan-new-tribalism-equivalence-of.html http://www.beyondeasy.net/2015/09/mcluhan-new-tribalism-equi... https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/intentional-stance https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/intentional-stance
- skybrian 9y ago
  I don't know what you mean? The Internet makes it easier than ever to find people who think the same way you do.
  - roceasta 9y ago
    It has been easier. However if present trends continue and new forms of 'badthink' emerge it may be necessary to start looking under stones in dark places. This (a) is hard to do, and (b) presupposes that you know others are out there. Which you may not, especially if you are young.
    - jacalata 9y ago
      So it's not that they are more isolated, just that hypothetically in a possible future they could be.
  - mantas 9y ago
    Yes. And then to stick to echo chamber with those people. So, fragmentation and balkanisation.
  - busterarm 9y ago
    Which internet? The one we made or grew up with, or the one with ~4 gatekeepers that can very effectively keep you from participating in the vast majority of it for posting views they disagree with?
tomkat0789 9y ago
Where is dystopian literature when you need it? Anybody know some good sci-fi exploring these ideas?
- Overtonwindow 9y ago
  Daemon by Daniel Suarez comes to mind
- sfRattan 9y ago
  Not literature per se, but two episodes of Black Mirror come to mind: "Hated in the Nation." Online mobs lead to death in real life because of a scifi twist involving artificial swarms/hives of bees. I won't get into details so as not to spoil the ending, but it deals rather directly with the issues raised in the article. "Nosedive." Less directly related, but hits the nail on the head with respect to the employment concerns raised by the article.
forkLding 9y ago
Isnt really online mobs the sort of thing we signed up for when people started using email and then Facebook? See Zuck's own words: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100933624710391 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100933624710391 Theres really two sides to this, one where the positive is that information is no longer closed and flows freely and the other is that negative information about other people flows so fast and wide that it cannot be fathomed. Its an interesting feeling because its really similar to dystopian notions such as the Giver where too much of a good thing easily turns bad.
- chrisco255 9y ago
  Due to some bug (or is it a feature?) in human psychology, we seem to be predisposed to spread controversial or negative press (tweets, posts, articles etc) more than good press.
  - forkLding 9y ago
    probably both bug and feature, humans havent stopped evolving yet
Meekro 9y ago
I couldn't care less if people say mean things about me on Twitter, and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't lose any friends if I became the target of an online mob. My significant other certainly wouldn't think less of me. The scary bit is employment. If a bunch of Twitter users wrote me mean emails, I'd spend about a minute creating a filter to drop them all and then go back to my life. If those emails went to my employer, on the other hand, there is a very real chance that they would determine that I'm more trouble than I'm worth. This is a new and unique security hole in our social fabric, and it's one that didn't exist 20 years ago. I don't have a good solution, but this will keep getting worse until we find one.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  > "I don't have a good solution" You do. You're already using it (on HN at least). Pseudo-anonymity. The chances of someone doxxing you over a small-scale Twitter dispute is slim.
  - benjamincburns 9y ago
    I don't disagree that anonymity offers protection against situations like this, but bear in mind that anonymity is very much a factor in the lack of civil discourse online. I'm not suggesting for a second that stripping anonymity is a solution to any of these problems, but personally I feel like I'm less likely to engage in the sort of behavior which might invite an angry mob while posting under my real name.
    - hueving 9y ago
      > but personally I feel like I'm less likely to engage in the sort of behavior which might invite an angry mob while posting under my real name. The problem with this is the 'sort of behavior' you are referring to is posting any statements that disagree with the worldview of the majority of the people in your circles. Without anonymity you will also lack civil discourse when all of the sane people on the minority side know not to speak up because they fear retribution. Anyone who publicly considered voting for Trump was accused of being a sexist, racist, xenophobic, Islamophobe. So instead of any sane discourse, there was just a surprise upset when Trump won because everyone was convinced the strategy of accusing all Trump supporters of 'isms' until they shut up was working.
thewebonthene 9y ago
FYI, the author of this piece has a long and terrible history of being a generally evil person. She has written in the past about blaming poor people for losing their jobs, arguing against the concept of health insurance, and generally attacking poor or disenfranchised people for their misery. I wouldn't take any article written by McCardle seriously. Here's a fun podcast that spent an episode breaking down just what makes her so uniquely terrible: https://m.soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-63-successfail-the-mcmegan-story-feat-theshrillest-12416 https://m.soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-63-success...
- toomim 9y ago
  Are you sarcastically trying to illustrate the author's point?
- deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
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arca_vorago 9y ago
Personally I think the failing fourth estate has particularly enlarged this problem, since by not correctly performing their duty of informing the citizenry they instead fan flames for the clicks with halfassed writing lacking what used to be first year journalistic integrity.
- guildwriter 9y ago
  I think it's worth saying that the fourth estate is also falling prey to the changing economic landscape of the times. It's not like the old days anymore where access to publishing tools was heavily gated. Everyone fights for eyeballs now. Everyone fights to be first. The growing result is that we're seeing more and more news organizations gravitating towards providing a specific kind of narrative tailored to their target audience. People in general don't want to have their views challenged. That approach is tiring as you have to fight through your own cognitive dissonance each time. Rather, they want to hear what they believe to be already true. This is why Twitter and other social media companies drive us towards echo chambers. It's how they keep people coming back, and thus make themselves more appealing to advertisers. It's easy to talk about the duty of the fourth estate, but writing a well balanced narrative does not pay the bills these days.
- skybrian 9y ago
  These days, things often happen on social networks before the press starts writing about them. Can you really blame the news media when they're getting routed around? Many big controversies would happen without them.
ben_jones 9y ago
I mean historically speaking this is endemic of human nature. Revenge mobs today in Pakistan, lynching mobs in the US for over a century, ancient Rome, Greece, the 30s in Germany, regular riots against lenders in every ancient civilization. This is nothing new - but technology is undeniably aiding a different form of it. We need to address both technology's impact and how it seems to be rooted in our culture.
rasengan0 9y ago
How does the signal spread across the network? What are the critical nodes (influencers) to disseminate the mob message? This would be an interesting big data social science experiment to see how mob fire propagates. And the data sets? https://thenewinquiry.com/taxonomy-of-humans-according-to-twitter/ https://thenewinquiry.com/taxonomy-of-humans-according-to-tw... Disclaimer: I am not part of the Dalai Lama clique.
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alphaalpha101 9y ago
>The internet did not invent the public relations disaster, or the summary firing to make said disaster go away. What the internet changed is the scale of the disasters, and the number of people who are vulnerable to them, and the cold implacable permanence of the wreckage they leave behind. But the summary firing didn't make the disaster go away, it was the disaster. A tiny fringe group of twitter users get upset at everything in the world that men say, and the entire software engineering profession got upset at someone being fired for not being PC.
adjkant 9y ago
The online mob fear is the result here. The source is people judging others by their morals (as people have for some time) and those shifting morals. It always goes back to that, which is what is causing the increasing divide in the US that then results in the growing power in these mobs. The problem with that is that all of these arguments are clearly colored by what moral side the author is on. The author focused on Damore, but didn't mention the dozens of Google employees harassed and sent death threats online for being against his memo. The article is clearly coming from the perspective of conservative thoughts being reprimanded online, but lightly tries to hide behind the guise of generality. The "fear" is not felt on all sides really. The level of inconsistency is another source of the divide on both sides. I think people need to be more willing to follow logic they use for their own beliefs and apply it to other issues and perspectives. Edit: Not just follow the logic, but speak out about the issues in the same way. When someone uses logic X for issue Y and speaks out about it, but fails to speak out against issue Z when X is also applicable is a huge problem. It's usually one of the easiest ways to see through someone's beliefs when they try to be "objective". It's often even more obvious when Y is a much smaller issue in scope than Z. If you believe in logic X, how much you advocate/support each issue should be in proportion to the size of their scopes when X applies to both.
- flukus 9y ago
  > The author focused on Damore, but didn't mention the dozens of Google employees harassed and sent death threats online for being against his memo. I think you might be doing what you're criticizing here. Damore and his supporters are likely getting just as many death threats and harassment, the "progressives" generally dish out just as much, it even get's tolerated at by the likes of twitter. The "conservative" side just doesn't make a big deal out of it.
  - adjkant 9y ago
    I wasn't aware of that - the ones I am mentioning are the ones who had their profiles directly posted in a targeted harassment attack. As far as I know, that hasn't happened in the opposite direction to be fair.
mychael 9y ago
Someone should let the members of these mobs know that they are not actually liberal or progressive. For example, they appear to prefer mob justice instead of due process; ideological blacklists instead of tolerance; and censorship instead of freedom of expression. The bedrock principles of a liberal society appear to be missing from their world view.
- busterarm 9y ago
  To those of us who've been paying attention, those principles always have been missing from a large percentage of people.
  - gasof 9y ago
    It seems comfortable to be a fascist, your moral principles are simple and your path forward, too. I wonder if the health upsides of having simpler and easier to follow moral principles, would outweigh the downsides of being offended and angry all the time. I sure hope I won't have to find out. It's a privilege to be a non-partisan, although perhaps I can't quite say I am, because I despise communism even more than I despise fascism. The intellectual dishonesty with which mainstream (which is to say, leftist) media praise communism and attack Nazism is revolting.
    - busterarm 9y ago
      Really the most despicable party here is TV media. The coverage has driven recruitment for two really inconsequential groups, both Antifa and the KKK. A minor dust-up between a few hundred people with weapons and 6000 people yelling and holding signs/shields has become major coverage, like it's the most demanding thing of our attention. It's not like these groups just suddenly appeared...but now because of the attention, we have to do something. You can barely fill 15% of a minor sports team's stadium with the count (and public influence) of the people involved here. You're not even close to having to pick a side.
      - gasof 9y ago
rodgerd 9y ago
People who didn't give a shit about harrasment of women now suddenly have an attack of the vapours when a failed male scientist is on the recieving end. If I thought any of the hand-wringers here had given a shit about gamergaters harrasing and threatening to murder people, I might think they actually cared about any of this as a problem.
- flukus 9y ago
  > If I thought any of the hand-wringers here had given a shit about gamergaters harrasing and threatening to murder people, I might think they actually cared about any of this as a problem. Do you really think the harassment and death threats were one sided? Ask someone like thunderf00t how many death threats he gets daily.
- dang 9y ago
  Would you please not post angry ideological complaints here? They break the HN guidelines regardless of which ideology you favor or how correct your underlying points are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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js8 9y ago
I don't think any protections are needed. People just need to stop participating in those "online mobs" and not take them seriously. It's the same tactic that needs to be employed against terrorists. The more seriously you take them, the bigger threat they are. The people who fired Damore are the problem. They escalated the conflict. They are the ones who should have known better and not get involved in mob justice.
- curtisblaine 9y ago
  Everyone is. A company will always fire the troublemaker, because it's a PR nightmare if they don't.
  - js8 9y ago
    > Everyone is. I think that sentence is missing a word that turns it into a point you wanted to make. > because it's a PR nightmare if they don't Why it should be a PR nightmare? Why cannot his bosses say, we are not doing vigilante justice here, and refuse to yield to "angry mob"? It seems to me like a morally better position to take. Compare this to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_carto...
    - curtisblaine 9y ago
      Make no mistake: I completely agree with you. But it seems that companies these days are willing to go any length to avoid a PR scandal. The standard company response in highly-publicized "angry mob" cases seems to be firing. Justine Sacco, the "dongle" guys, Damore, etc. So I'm guessing that in their profit/loss charts, avoiding a PR scandal is higher than resisting the will of the mob.
lurrr 9y ago
I will probably be down-voted to hell for this, but here's my 2c. This is the result of a PC culture. It has made it impossible to have an open and honest discussion about anything. It is easier to just label someone a racist, sexist, or other "buzzwords", than to strengthen your argument. Where are the times when we fought ideas, not people? From my observation the kind of people doing things like this are the ones losing the intellectual argument. If you KNOW someone is wrong, why not debate them? Why go after them personally? I wrote this in a rush, I apologize for any mistakes or inconsistencies.
- matt4077 9y ago
  > From my observation the kind of people doing things like this are the ones losing the intellectual argument. So you're saying that, in your opinion, the KKK and those guys with the swastika face-tattoos are winning the "intellectual argument"? Because that's literally what you're saying. Unless you're trying to say that this has been a learning experience; And that maybe there are instances where after, say, fighting a World War over the topic, it no longer needs further intellectual debate?
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  - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
    > the KKK and those guys with the swastika face-tattoos They, and the violent parts of anti-fa, are not the only groups.
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- guildwriter 9y ago
  People not being able to talk to one another is definitely a big part of it. Another thing to think about is how much the mediums of communication have changed since the PC era began. I don't think people appreciate just how much communicating in a specific format begins to change the way you think and perceive the world. If you talk frequently in a medium limited to 140 characters, that will affect the way you think and set up communication. Same goes with pictures, or only video. The means by which we interact and shape the world also shape us at the same time. Are we that surprised then that an outrage and drama driven culture emerge from tools that are driven by instant emotional reactions? Another thing to think about. With everyone having access to the ability to mass produce and distribute content to the world, what you consume begins to matter more and more. If all you want to eat is mental junk food, then you have all the mental junk food you could ever want for eternity. No one is going to stop you. No one at the internet companies want to stop you. People have never had to watch for this sort of thing before. Are we surprised that people binge on content that strengthens their world view and neglect views that challenge their own? There is no way a balanced view of the world can survive when people don't think about what they spend their time consuming and adjust. There is a lot more going on. It's a multi-system problem that feeds into itself and other systems at the same time.
matt4077 9y ago
Yet another article bemoaning the "online mob". Meanwhile, not one article on HN, and almost no comments, acknowleding the actual angry offline mob, with real weapons, walking around a city, threatening jews, blacks, muslims, women and anyone with hair (which all happen to be benign characteristics, btw) Oh, and they didn't get anyone fired, but they did kill a completely peaceful young woman. In addition, they do everything that the left is being accused of, and worse. Here's an article by someone who happened to film the attack, and whose parents were subsequently threatened: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/21/fake-news-charlottesville-215514 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/21/fake-news-... Because they spread opinions (and engage in violence) that any sane person considers dangerous, a deeply human mechanism kicks in: criticising/shaming/isolating. These aren't new mechanisms. They're older than homo sapiens. Beginning with the first species that formed groups of cooperation, i.e. societies, there was a need to establish and defend group norms. Today, the harshest mechanisms to correct people who behave in ways that are considered harmful are criminal laws. But long before we get to the level of crime, each one of us uses a repertoire of behaviours meant to inform you of your transgressions, and to put the perceived cost of them on you. This starts with your father's raised eyebrow when you're interrupting your sister (again!). It's the teacher calling you out for being lazy. And it's the teammates not talking to you after you lost them the match. These mechanisms escalate along with the perceived harm. It starts with subtle hints that you should work more diligently, and only when such attempts fail, it escalates to direct appeals, or even the loss of your job. Political opinions aren't somehow exempt from the judgement by others. If there's a real danger that a reasonable employer will fire you for you political opinion, don't ask "who will be targeted next?". Ask just how far from the pack have you strayed?
elihu 9y ago
I think one of the backstops that would ordinarily prevent online mobs getting out of hand is good journalism. In the case of James Damore, I think there was a lot of shoddy journalism going on due to some combination of laziness, a desire to stir up controversy to drive ad views, a desire not to present complex ideas that readers might find uncomfortable, and willfully misunderstanding a point of view that's unpopular. I'm inclined to put most of the blame on the rise of clickbait journalism. Explaining all sides of an issue takes effort, but feeding people enough information to make them angry while allowing them to fill in the details according to their own imagination is easy and cheap.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Yeah, this was really all about ethics in google journalism. Or, alternatively, you just happen to be among the people in the manosphere that pretend the last 20 years didn't happen. Because otherwise there would have been a minimum of engagement with the actual argument, namely that some (alleged) statistical difference between the genders just isn't relevant, it's only confusing what is with what ought to be.
- guildwriter 9y ago
  If clickbait journalism deserves most of the blame, how much responsibility do engineers bear for creating a world where responsible journalism struggles to survive financially? Or do we shrug our shoulders and say that this is the cost of a world where information should be free?
Khaine 9y ago
We use to live in fear of tyranny of the majority. The internet is so large that it can magnify extreme views of the minority, such that these views can rapidly have such large impact on people. This happens on twitter where someone says something and then it gets signal boosted such that an online mob harasses, threatens and in some cases ruins livelihoods (the prototypical case is Justine Sacco)[1] [1] http://www.salon.com/2013/12/23/justine_saccos_aftermath_the_cost_of_twitter_outrage/ http://www.salon.com/2013/12/23/justine_saccos_aftermath_the...
curtisblaine 9y ago
We actually do live in fear of the mobs, and in the future I foresee more anonymous / distributed content on the Internet and more services / projects facilitating the publication of such a content (https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/, https://datproject.org/ https://datproject.org/, http://telegra.ph/ http://telegra.ph/). What if Damore circulated his memo anonymously an untraceably? He would still be at Google's. Just wait until anyone gets the hint. You can't really just shut people up :)
peter_retief 9y ago
The overriding conclusion is that people online have the intelligence of a squirrel and we are fast approaching a Global Cargo Cult mentality
speby 9y ago
I have absolutely changed my behavior with regards to how public I decide to voice a view or opinion. Most of the time, it isn't that I hold some view that I know to be unpopular but rather it isn't always even clear to me which "thing" could cause reprisal from some zombie mob hungry minority that catches wind of something and decides a couple sentences voiced about something is now deemed worthy of crucifixion. But perhaps more sinister than the mob responding to something said online is that as the moral landscape continues to shift (as it has since... forever) what you have said online a long time ago can ALSO come back to haunt you, even if at the time you said it was considered perfectly acceptable or normal or whatever. This is why, I think, that social media in general is not really something I find very enjoyable to participate in. As they say, the internet never forgets.

153 points by imartin2k 9y ago

For every time people pat themselves on the back about getting some nazi fired, consider there's others where the mob gets it wrong (see: Reddit and the Boston bombers). This stuff is dangerous.

aaron695 9y ago
Why are you patting yourself on the back for getting a nazi [sic] fired. The fact this is consider acceptable is the whole problem. We should not be using cop outs of 'where the mob gets it wrong'. The only reason you should get someone fired is they are bad at their job and they have been given a chance to improve.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  At a high level, it's a reaction to the fact that the system seems incapable of dealing with certain crimes. Rape, any crime committed by police, war crimes, white collar theft, inmate abuse, biased promotion, harassment... so many of these things are really hard to get police to care about. So people are turning to alternative means. It worries me, but at the same time I want to see justice. I feel conflicted about it. Politically, on the one side you have people screaming about the rule of law. I think that would be ideologically consistent if they also supported increased law enforcement pressure on these kinds of crimes. But they generally don't. On the other side, you have people arguing we need to take the law into our own hands and fight back against "fascism", white supremacy, all of these things. But those same people don't generally want to take responsibility for the crimes they are complicit in (war crimes, theft of indigenous land, soft racism, etc). I don't see a clear resolution, although I think the whole situation is a reaction to the internet forcing increased self-awareness on us, and us not being able to deal with the possibility that we're genuinely bad people. The internet showed us how much violence we're complicit in, and we're reacting by getting real mad at whoever is far enough away for us to dissociate from.
  - adjkant 9y ago
    > "At a high level, it's a reaction to the fact that the system seems incapable of dealing with certain crimes. Rape, any crime committed by police, war crimes, white collar theft, inmate abuse, biased promotion, harassment... so many of these things are really hard to get police to care about. > So people are turning to alternative means. It worries me, but at the same time I want to see justice. I feel conflicted about it." Well said. In some ways this seems a bit like transferring the moral questions of vigilante justice in comics to the individual person. If you see an injustice that will not be corrected, do you have the power/obligation to correct it? The main failing is the lack of certainty, which should be one of the main focuses here.
  - alphaalpha101 9y ago
    >At a high level, it's a reaction to the fact that the system seems incapable of dealing with certain crimes. Rape, any crime committed by police, war crimes, white collar theft, inmate abuse, biased promotion, harassment... so many of these things are really hard to get police to care about. I kind of have to wonder about a list that includes 'war crimes', 'rape', 'biased promotion' and 'harassment'. Like, seriously, these are a class of similar issues? I'm not going all 'ARE YOU COMPARING X and Y????' on you, but really. Those are some pretty specific issues, why them in particular? >Politically, on the one side you have people screaming about the rule of law. I think that would be ideologically consistent if they also supported increased law enforcement pressure on these kinds of crimes. But they generally don't. But people do support increased law enforcement pressure on these kinds of crimes. People do want rapists to go to prison. People do want war crimes to result in changes. People do want bankers sent to prison. But it seems that unless you think that accused rapists should be presumed guilty that you're 'pro-rape'. It seems that unless you think that women and minorities should just get priority in all promotions, that you 'support biased promotion'. You know? >On the other side, you have people arguing we need to take the law into our own hands and fight back against "fascism", white supremacy, all of these things. But those same people don't generally want to take responsibility for the crimes they are complicit in (war crimes, theft of indigenous land, soft racism, etc). Those so-called 'crimes' are just 'being white', unfortunately. If you're a white American, then you're held responsible for all the US military's crimes, all racism in America and all historical injustices against native Americans. It's ridiculous. Why do you think that Trump supporters are so alienated from the mainstream left? They don't want to be held responsible for things that have literally nothing to do with them.
alphaalpha101 9y ago
>some nazi fired Did you actually read the memo? If he's a nazi, then so is 95% of the world's population.
- eksemplar 9y ago
  I read it, wish I hadn't wasted my time on something as disgusting, but I did. I doubt 5% of the world would appreciate the message. Then again, I never saw equal rights as a threat. I don't think he's necessarily a Nazi though, just a spoiled biggot who hasn't walked a mile in anyone's shoes, not even his own.
  - alphaalpha101 9y ago
    Lol what have you been smoking? What was disgusting about saying 'hey maybe the reason that women aren't in software is that they don't want to be in software and there's nothing wrong with that as long as the women that are in software are treated well'?
    - dang 9y ago
      You've been breaking the HN guidelines quite a bit I'm afraid. Would you please read them and follow them from now on? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - alphaalpha101 9y ago
        Sorry I'll try to avoid the 'what are you smoking?' sort of thing. Comment works completely fine without it, it's just rude.
- ryan-allen 9y ago
  I think he was being sarcastic with the 'some nazi' part?
  - graphememes 9y ago

Overtonwindow 9y ago

I've noticed a growth of righteous indignation from people, particularly over the past 10 years. It's not enough that one person disagrees with another, now this disagreement is manifesting itself in proactive rage. This rage gets directed in a vengeful, sinister effort to gravely harm someone, by getting them fired from their job etc. It seems like it's increasing, and no one is being held accountable. I've not seen this level of vitriol and other cultures, it seems uniquely American.

stevecalifornia 9y ago
China is well known to have this culture as well.
- rjeli 9y ago
  I've never heard of this, please elaborate. What are the dividing topics?
  - schoen 9y ago
    I guess the reports in English usually refer to the "human flesh search engine": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine From the description, this might encompass phenomena that we would call both coordinated harassment and public shaming, and maybe the original article by Megan McArdle also means to encompass both, though it seems to have more focus on public shaming.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
zaptheimpaler 9y ago
Some people need to find a bad guy to demonize so that they, by contrast can be the good guys.
linkregister 9y ago

stevecalifornia 9y ago

Town squares used to be small so that mobs couldn't get too big. Now the town square is infinite and we are seeing the result. Maybe in a hundred years we will have sorted out how to maintain free speech but limit the bloodthirsty mob. But in the meantime, we all need to survive through this period while as a culture we figure out the answer. The only answer I can think of is to opt-out of social media, ignore trolls online and cultivate more meaningful in-person connections.

Overtonwindow 9y ago
You might find this article about a blogger in South Korea interesting. The blogger was posting financial analysis and opinion, which was apparently causing disruptions in the market. No one would have known who he was if not for the South Korean system of mandatory Internet user registration. I doubt we will see this in America, but it's interesting to consider. https://www.wired.com/2009/10/mf_minerva/ https://www.wired.com/2009/10/mf_minerva/
busterarm 9y ago
> The only answer I can think of is to opt-out of social media, ignore trolls online and cultivate more meaningful in-person connections. I strongly concur with your assessment.
matt4077 9y ago
> Town squares used to be small so that mobs couldn't get too big. See, that's the sort of thing that must be terribly difficult to write, knowing that thousands were tortured, maimed, and killed by small-town mobs in the US: http://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/ http://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/
- damnfine 9y ago
  How is that relevant at all to the discussion?
  - matt4077 9y ago

Areading314 9y ago

The wrongly accused suffered for thousands of years before public and fair courts became common. The court of public opinion needs a counterpart for the social media age. Proof-of-work juries might be a neat way to orchestrate fair voting in anonymous spaces

erikpukinskis 9y ago
Maybe proof-of-empathy? Demonstrate that you understand how someone is thinking and feeling in their vote to be able to cast your own? Or proof-of-research? Proof-of-rationality?
- guildwriter 9y ago
  I'd be for proof of empathy if it would somehow help reduce the number of straw men I see being constructed on a daily basis. I wouldn't hold my breath for proof of rationality. Humans are rationalizing animals, not rational animals.

peter_retief 9y ago

We could or should use online pseudonyms that can be erased if the mob attacks. Perhaps its time to protect our public personae with masks and sub masks. Why not the same for employment? Have a work personae as well. The mob are crazy and not very clever

peter_retief 9y ago
Nature imitating art, the mob are mobilizing ;)

docdeek 9y ago

Social media seems to be living by the maxim “It’s not enough that I succeed, others should fail”. It’s not enough to simply be a good person, win an argument, or see your personal political beliefs become widely adopted - you also have to point out how bad others are, how badly your opponent lost the argument, or how anyone holding a different political beliefe to you is a Nazi. There is value to social media in general and Twitter in particular, but it does appear to me to be increasingly toxic.

roceasta 9y ago
Yes, labelling a person who disagrees with you Nazi seems like a perverse application of Godwin's Law. It means you are intentionally ending the discussion. Why do it?
- jacalata 9y ago
  Because there are people marching with swastikas? http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/08/inventor-godwin-s-law-says-it-s-fine-call-charlottesville-rioters-nazis http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/08/inventor-...
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Yes, those people can credibly be labeled Nazis, but I assume roceasta is referring to the wider halo around them, of people also being labeled Nazis. For example, Trump was frequently labeled a Nazi for condeming violence, in his words, "on both sides. On both sides." Which I found disturbing, but I don't see how it makes him a Nazi.
    - alphaalpha101 9y ago
      It suggests that he sympathises with Nazis, which is close enough to being a Nazi for most people.
      - busterarm 9y ago

mmaunder 9y ago

This is why public sentiment has become hard to measure. The result of elections, for example, will become increasingly harder to predict as individual opinions become more private. It used to be fun to share who you are voting for when randomly called. Now sharing your true beliefs or opinions comes with a risk of mob reprisal. In future, the future will be less predictable.

intopieces 9y ago

I don't think people live in fear of the online mobs. People post vile opinions all the time in the Facebook comments sections of new stories, with open profiles and what is ostensibly their real names. I agree that online mobs have changed the game as far as speech consequences go, and I agree that most of those changes are for the worse. I do not see a way out, however, except to delete your social media and do not post things to the Internet that could possibly be linked back to you. I don't really like the Web anymore.

stubish 9y ago
No, people really do live in fear of online mobs. You don't hear from them because they can't participate due to their anxieties. Sure, these fears can be irrational and overblown but they are real to them.

quaunaut 9y ago

This article sounds woefully out of touch with the realities of the modern web. So many of the arguments surrounding Damore talk as if this is in a vacuum, when frankly, it isn't. Much of the message it carried(and did little to discourage) came off as insulting to a group of people who commonly spend every day harassed just for what they are, anytime they have gone online. The article talks a lot about the fear of an online mob shaming people for doing something, yet completely ignores that many of those in said mob are harassed daily based on their mere existence, and often their "shaming" comes from a place of just not wanting to be hurt again. Is it necessarily the most effective means of accomplishing this? Certainly not, and I'm not about to claim to support what it becomes, but to call question to that and speak from such a "Nice problem to have" place to people suffering a much worse version of what you're talking about reeks of "Let them eat cake".

skybrian 9y ago
While I agree that the article is exaggerated, consider that being harassed doesn't prevent one from harassing others. The people in a crowd may have very understandable reasons for their behavior, and yet it might be a good idea to avoid their attention.
alphaalpha101 9y ago
>So many of the arguments surrounding Damore talk as if this is in a vacuum, when frankly, it isn't. Much of the message it carried(and did little to discourage) came off as insulting to a group of people who commonly spend every day harassed just for what they are, anytime they have gone online. That would, presumably, be women in software? Because as far as I can tell, the only people being regularly harassed on Twitter are people that don't think women should get special rights...
- adjkant 9y ago
  I can't speak specifically to online, but this is in general: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-silicon-valley-so-awful-to-women/517788/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-...
- 9y ago

roceasta 9y ago

I think she's correct to compare our situation now to a primitive band of people. Marshall McLuhan famously called this the global village. Close communication is paradoxically causing the fragmentation and balkanisation of the internet. A process which nations like China (with its own internet) and companies like Google (by getting into politics) are accelerating. The goal of political correctness, adopting Daniel Dennett's intentional stance, is to control thinking. Individuals who are able to resist are in some ways more isolated now than the old communist dissidents. They at least got moral support from each other in prison. http://www.beyondeasy.net/2015/09/mcluhan-new-tribalism-equivalence-of.html http://www.beyondeasy.net/2015/09/mcluhan-new-tribalism-equi... https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/intentional-stance https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/intentional-stance

skybrian 9y ago
I don't know what you mean? The Internet makes it easier than ever to find people who think the same way you do.
- roceasta 9y ago
  It has been easier. However if present trends continue and new forms of 'badthink' emerge it may be necessary to start looking under stones in dark places. This (a) is hard to do, and (b) presupposes that you know others are out there. Which you may not, especially if you are young.
  - jacalata 9y ago
    So it's not that they are more isolated, just that hypothetically in a possible future they could be.
- mantas 9y ago
  Yes. And then to stick to echo chamber with those people. So, fragmentation and balkanisation.
- busterarm 9y ago
  Which internet? The one we made or grew up with, or the one with ~4 gatekeepers that can very effectively keep you from participating in the vast majority of it for posting views they disagree with?

tomkat0789 9y ago

Where is dystopian literature when you need it? Anybody know some good sci-fi exploring these ideas?

Overtonwindow 9y ago
Daemon by Daniel Suarez comes to mind
sfRattan 9y ago
Not literature per se, but two episodes of Black Mirror come to mind: "Hated in the Nation." Online mobs lead to death in real life because of a scifi twist involving artificial swarms/hives of bees. I won't get into details so as not to spoil the ending, but it deals rather directly with the issues raised in the article. "Nosedive." Less directly related, but hits the nail on the head with respect to the employment concerns raised by the article.

forkLding 9y ago

Isnt really online mobs the sort of thing we signed up for when people started using email and then Facebook? See Zuck's own words: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100933624710391 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100933624710391 Theres really two sides to this, one where the positive is that information is no longer closed and flows freely and the other is that negative information about other people flows so fast and wide that it cannot be fathomed. Its an interesting feeling because its really similar to dystopian notions such as the Giver where too much of a good thing easily turns bad.

chrisco255 9y ago
Due to some bug (or is it a feature?) in human psychology, we seem to be predisposed to spread controversial or negative press (tweets, posts, articles etc) more than good press.
- forkLding 9y ago
  probably both bug and feature, humans havent stopped evolving yet

Meekro 9y ago

I couldn't care less if people say mean things about me on Twitter, and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't lose any friends if I became the target of an online mob. My significant other certainly wouldn't think less of me. The scary bit is employment. If a bunch of Twitter users wrote me mean emails, I'd spend about a minute creating a filter to drop them all and then go back to my life. If those emails went to my employer, on the other hand, there is a very real chance that they would determine that I'm more trouble than I'm worth. This is a new and unique security hole in our social fabric, and it's one that didn't exist 20 years ago. I don't have a good solution, but this will keep getting worse until we find one.

ZenoArrow 9y ago
> "I don't have a good solution" You do. You're already using it (on HN at least). Pseudo-anonymity. The chances of someone doxxing you over a small-scale Twitter dispute is slim.
- benjamincburns 9y ago
  I don't disagree that anonymity offers protection against situations like this, but bear in mind that anonymity is very much a factor in the lack of civil discourse online. I'm not suggesting for a second that stripping anonymity is a solution to any of these problems, but personally I feel like I'm less likely to engage in the sort of behavior which might invite an angry mob while posting under my real name.
  - hueving 9y ago
    > but personally I feel like I'm less likely to engage in the sort of behavior which might invite an angry mob while posting under my real name. The problem with this is the 'sort of behavior' you are referring to is posting any statements that disagree with the worldview of the majority of the people in your circles. Without anonymity you will also lack civil discourse when all of the sane people on the minority side know not to speak up because they fear retribution. Anyone who publicly considered voting for Trump was accused of being a sexist, racist, xenophobic, Islamophobe. So instead of any sane discourse, there was just a surprise upset when Trump won because everyone was convinced the strategy of accusing all Trump supporters of 'isms' until they shut up was working.

thewebonthene 9y ago

FYI, the author of this piece has a long and terrible history of being a generally evil person. She has written in the past about blaming poor people for losing their jobs, arguing against the concept of health insurance, and generally attacking poor or disenfranchised people for their misery. I wouldn't take any article written by McCardle seriously. Here's a fun podcast that spent an episode breaking down just what makes her so uniquely terrible: https://m.soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-63-successfail-the-mcmegan-story-feat-theshrillest-12416 https://m.soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-63-success...

toomim 9y ago
Are you sarcastically trying to illustrate the author's point?
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arca_vorago 9y ago

Personally I think the failing fourth estate has particularly enlarged this problem, since by not correctly performing their duty of informing the citizenry they instead fan flames for the clicks with halfassed writing lacking what used to be first year journalistic integrity.

guildwriter 9y ago
I think it's worth saying that the fourth estate is also falling prey to the changing economic landscape of the times. It's not like the old days anymore where access to publishing tools was heavily gated. Everyone fights for eyeballs now. Everyone fights to be first. The growing result is that we're seeing more and more news organizations gravitating towards providing a specific kind of narrative tailored to their target audience. People in general don't want to have their views challenged. That approach is tiring as you have to fight through your own cognitive dissonance each time. Rather, they want to hear what they believe to be already true. This is why Twitter and other social media companies drive us towards echo chambers. It's how they keep people coming back, and thus make themselves more appealing to advertisers. It's easy to talk about the duty of the fourth estate, but writing a well balanced narrative does not pay the bills these days.
skybrian 9y ago
These days, things often happen on social networks before the press starts writing about them. Can you really blame the news media when they're getting routed around? Many big controversies would happen without them.

ben_jones 9y ago

I mean historically speaking this is endemic of human nature. Revenge mobs today in Pakistan, lynching mobs in the US for over a century, ancient Rome, Greece, the 30s in Germany, regular riots against lenders in every ancient civilization. This is nothing new - but technology is undeniably aiding a different form of it. We need to address both technology's impact and how it seems to be rooted in our culture.

rasengan0 9y ago

How does the signal spread across the network? What are the critical nodes (influencers) to disseminate the mob message? This would be an interesting big data social science experiment to see how mob fire propagates. And the data sets? https://thenewinquiry.com/taxonomy-of-humans-according-to-twitter/ https://thenewinquiry.com/taxonomy-of-humans-according-to-tw... Disclaimer: I am not part of the Dalai Lama clique.

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alphaalpha101 9y ago

>The internet did not invent the public relations disaster, or the summary firing to make said disaster go away. What the internet changed is the scale of the disasters, and the number of people who are vulnerable to them, and the cold implacable permanence of the wreckage they leave behind. But the summary firing didn't make the disaster go away, it was the disaster. A tiny fringe group of twitter users get upset at everything in the world that men say, and the entire software engineering profession got upset at someone being fired for not being PC.

adjkant 9y ago

The online mob fear is the result here. The source is people judging others by their morals (as people have for some time) and those shifting morals. It always goes back to that, which is what is causing the increasing divide in the US that then results in the growing power in these mobs. The problem with that is that all of these arguments are clearly colored by what moral side the author is on. The author focused on Damore, but didn't mention the dozens of Google employees harassed and sent death threats online for being against his memo. The article is clearly coming from the perspective of conservative thoughts being reprimanded online, but lightly tries to hide behind the guise of generality. The "fear" is not felt on all sides really. The level of inconsistency is another source of the divide on both sides. I think people need to be more willing to follow logic they use for their own beliefs and apply it to other issues and perspectives. Edit: Not just follow the logic, but speak out about the issues in the same way. When someone uses logic X for issue Y and speaks out about it, but fails to speak out against issue Z when X is also applicable is a huge problem. It's usually one of the easiest ways to see through someone's beliefs when they try to be "objective". It's often even more obvious when Y is a much smaller issue in scope than Z. If you believe in logic X, how much you advocate/support each issue should be in proportion to the size of their scopes when X applies to both.

flukus 9y ago
> The author focused on Damore, but didn't mention the dozens of Google employees harassed and sent death threats online for being against his memo. I think you might be doing what you're criticizing here. Damore and his supporters are likely getting just as many death threats and harassment, the "progressives" generally dish out just as much, it even get's tolerated at by the likes of twitter. The "conservative" side just doesn't make a big deal out of it.
- adjkant 9y ago
  I wasn't aware of that - the ones I am mentioning are the ones who had their profiles directly posted in a targeted harassment attack. As far as I know, that hasn't happened in the opposite direction to be fair.

mychael 9y ago

Someone should let the members of these mobs know that they are not actually liberal or progressive. For example, they appear to prefer mob justice instead of due process; ideological blacklists instead of tolerance; and censorship instead of freedom of expression. The bedrock principles of a liberal society appear to be missing from their world view.

busterarm 9y ago
To those of us who've been paying attention, those principles always have been missing from a large percentage of people.
- gasof 9y ago
  It seems comfortable to be a fascist, your moral principles are simple and your path forward, too. I wonder if the health upsides of having simpler and easier to follow moral principles, would outweigh the downsides of being offended and angry all the time. I sure hope I won't have to find out. It's a privilege to be a non-partisan, although perhaps I can't quite say I am, because I despise communism even more than I despise fascism. The intellectual dishonesty with which mainstream (which is to say, leftist) media praise communism and attack Nazism is revolting.
  - busterarm 9y ago
    Really the most despicable party here is TV media. The coverage has driven recruitment for two really inconsequential groups, both Antifa and the KKK. A minor dust-up between a few hundred people with weapons and 6000 people yelling and holding signs/shields has become major coverage, like it's the most demanding thing of our attention. It's not like these groups just suddenly appeared...but now because of the attention, we have to do something. You can barely fill 15% of a minor sports team's stadium with the count (and public influence) of the people involved here. You're not even close to having to pick a side.
    - gasof 9y ago

rodgerd 9y ago

People who didn't give a shit about harrasment of women now suddenly have an attack of the vapours when a failed male scientist is on the recieving end. If I thought any of the hand-wringers here had given a shit about gamergaters harrasing and threatening to murder people, I might think they actually cared about any of this as a problem.

flukus 9y ago
> If I thought any of the hand-wringers here had given a shit about gamergaters harrasing and threatening to murder people, I might think they actually cared about any of this as a problem. Do you really think the harassment and death threats were one sided? Ask someone like thunderf00t how many death threats he gets daily.
dang 9y ago
Would you please not post angry ideological complaints here? They break the HN guidelines regardless of which ideology you favor or how correct your underlying points are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 9y ago

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js8 9y ago

I don't think any protections are needed. People just need to stop participating in those "online mobs" and not take them seriously. It's the same tactic that needs to be employed against terrorists. The more seriously you take them, the bigger threat they are. The people who fired Damore are the problem. They escalated the conflict. They are the ones who should have known better and not get involved in mob justice.

curtisblaine 9y ago
Everyone is. A company will always fire the troublemaker, because it's a PR nightmare if they don't.
- js8 9y ago
  > Everyone is. I think that sentence is missing a word that turns it into a point you wanted to make. > because it's a PR nightmare if they don't Why it should be a PR nightmare? Why cannot his bosses say, we are not doing vigilante justice here, and refuse to yield to "angry mob"? It seems to me like a morally better position to take. Compare this to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_carto...
  - curtisblaine 9y ago
    Make no mistake: I completely agree with you. But it seems that companies these days are willing to go any length to avoid a PR scandal. The standard company response in highly-publicized "angry mob" cases seems to be firing. Justine Sacco, the "dongle" guys, Damore, etc. So I'm guessing that in their profit/loss charts, avoiding a PR scandal is higher than resisting the will of the mob.

lurrr 9y ago

I will probably be down-voted to hell for this, but here's my 2c. This is the result of a PC culture. It has made it impossible to have an open and honest discussion about anything. It is easier to just label someone a racist, sexist, or other "buzzwords", than to strengthen your argument. Where are the times when we fought ideas, not people? From my observation the kind of people doing things like this are the ones losing the intellectual argument. If you KNOW someone is wrong, why not debate them? Why go after them personally? I wrote this in a rush, I apologize for any mistakes or inconsistencies.

matt4077 9y ago
> From my observation the kind of people doing things like this are the ones losing the intellectual argument. So you're saying that, in your opinion, the KKK and those guys with the swastika face-tattoos are winning the "intellectual argument"? Because that's literally what you're saying. Unless you're trying to say that this has been a learning experience; And that maybe there are instances where after, say, fighting a World War over the topic, it no longer needs further intellectual debate?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  > the KKK and those guys with the swastika face-tattoos They, and the violent parts of anti-fa, are not the only groups.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
guildwriter 9y ago
People not being able to talk to one another is definitely a big part of it. Another thing to think about is how much the mediums of communication have changed since the PC era began. I don't think people appreciate just how much communicating in a specific format begins to change the way you think and perceive the world. If you talk frequently in a medium limited to 140 characters, that will affect the way you think and set up communication. Same goes with pictures, or only video. The means by which we interact and shape the world also shape us at the same time. Are we that surprised then that an outrage and drama driven culture emerge from tools that are driven by instant emotional reactions? Another thing to think about. With everyone having access to the ability to mass produce and distribute content to the world, what you consume begins to matter more and more. If all you want to eat is mental junk food, then you have all the mental junk food you could ever want for eternity. No one is going to stop you. No one at the internet companies want to stop you. People have never had to watch for this sort of thing before. Are we surprised that people binge on content that strengthens their world view and neglect views that challenge their own? There is no way a balanced view of the world can survive when people don't think about what they spend their time consuming and adjust. There is a lot more going on. It's a multi-system problem that feeds into itself and other systems at the same time.

matt4077 9y ago

Yet another article bemoaning the "online mob". Meanwhile, not one article on HN, and almost no comments, acknowleding the actual angry offline mob, with real weapons, walking around a city, threatening jews, blacks, muslims, women and anyone with hair (which all happen to be benign characteristics, btw) Oh, and they didn't get anyone fired, but they did kill a completely peaceful young woman. In addition, they do everything that the left is being accused of, and worse. Here's an article by someone who happened to film the attack, and whose parents were subsequently threatened: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/21/fake-news-charlottesville-215514 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/21/fake-news-... Because they spread opinions (and engage in violence) that any sane person considers dangerous, a deeply human mechanism kicks in: criticising/shaming/isolating. These aren't new mechanisms. They're older than homo sapiens. Beginning with the first species that formed groups of cooperation, i.e. societies, there was a need to establish and defend group norms. Today, the harshest mechanisms to correct people who behave in ways that are considered harmful are criminal laws. But long before we get to the level of crime, each one of us uses a repertoire of behaviours meant to inform you of your transgressions, and to put the perceived cost of them on you. This starts with your father's raised eyebrow when you're interrupting your sister (again!). It's the teacher calling you out for being lazy. And it's the teammates not talking to you after you lost them the match. These mechanisms escalate along with the perceived harm. It starts with subtle hints that you should work more diligently, and only when such attempts fail, it escalates to direct appeals, or even the loss of your job. Political opinions aren't somehow exempt from the judgement by others. If there's a real danger that a reasonable employer will fire you for you political opinion, don't ask "who will be targeted next?". Ask just how far from the pack have you strayed?

elihu 9y ago

I think one of the backstops that would ordinarily prevent online mobs getting out of hand is good journalism. In the case of James Damore, I think there was a lot of shoddy journalism going on due to some combination of laziness, a desire to stir up controversy to drive ad views, a desire not to present complex ideas that readers might find uncomfortable, and willfully misunderstanding a point of view that's unpopular. I'm inclined to put most of the blame on the rise of clickbait journalism. Explaining all sides of an issue takes effort, but feeding people enough information to make them angry while allowing them to fill in the details according to their own imagination is easy and cheap.

matt4077 9y ago
Yeah, this was really all about ethics in google journalism. Or, alternatively, you just happen to be among the people in the manosphere that pretend the last 20 years didn't happen. Because otherwise there would have been a minimum of engagement with the actual argument, namely that some (alleged) statistical difference between the genders just isn't relevant, it's only confusing what is with what ought to be.
guildwriter 9y ago
If clickbait journalism deserves most of the blame, how much responsibility do engineers bear for creating a world where responsible journalism struggles to survive financially? Or do we shrug our shoulders and say that this is the cost of a world where information should be free?

Khaine 9y ago

We use to live in fear of tyranny of the majority. The internet is so large that it can magnify extreme views of the minority, such that these views can rapidly have such large impact on people. This happens on twitter where someone says something and then it gets signal boosted such that an online mob harasses, threatens and in some cases ruins livelihoods (the prototypical case is Justine Sacco)[1] [1] http://www.salon.com/2013/12/23/justine_saccos_aftermath_the_cost_of_twitter_outrage/ http://www.salon.com/2013/12/23/justine_saccos_aftermath_the...

curtisblaine 9y ago

We actually do live in fear of the mobs, and in the future I foresee more anonymous / distributed content on the Internet and more services / projects facilitating the publication of such a content (https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/, https://datproject.org/ https://datproject.org/, http://telegra.ph/ http://telegra.ph/). What if Damore circulated his memo anonymously an untraceably? He would still be at Google's. Just wait until anyone gets the hint. You can't really just shut people up :)

peter_retief 9y ago

The overriding conclusion is that people online have the intelligence of a squirrel and we are fast approaching a Global Cargo Cult mentality

speby 9y ago

I have absolutely changed my behavior with regards to how public I decide to voice a view or opinion. Most of the time, it isn't that I hold some view that I know to be unpopular but rather it isn't always even clear to me which "thing" could cause reprisal from some zombie mob hungry minority that catches wind of something and decides a couple sentences voiced about something is now deemed worthy of crucifixion. But perhaps more sinister than the mob responding to something said online is that as the moral landscape continues to shift (as it has since... forever) what you have said online a long time ago can ALSO come back to haunt you, even if at the time you said it was considered perfectly acceptable or normal or whatever. This is why, I think, that social media in general is not really something I find very enjoyable to participate in. As they say, the internet never forgets.