5 ms·
Five short years ago, I was no less a permanent resident of the Internet than I am now, and I was no stranger to the unsavory dark corners. Yet I had either nev
by psyc 9y ago
Five short years ago, I was no less a permanent resident of the Internet than I am now, and I was no stranger to the unsavory dark corners. Yet I had either never, or very rarely encountered so many of the inflammatory topics that i see now on a daily basis.
There were no regular references to nazis (godwin'd threads aside) and white supremacy. You don't even hear about godwin's law anymore, because it applies much too often now. I'd never heard of antifa. I didn't daily encounter people accusing people and things of being racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and so on. I didn't know the names of any white supremacists other than David Duke, and I rarely saw anything about him. (Ironically, I still have never seen any white supremacist material or figures in any organic context. I only see them being promoted by their opponents due to the Streisand Effect).
My perception of all of this has changed drastically in the last 5 years. I encounter all of the above daily to the point where it's never far from my thoughts. That was never the case before. I'm not an activist. I don't take an interest in politics. I only subscribe to graphics programmers on Twitter, and I only visit subreddits that interest me. But it's only in the past 3-4 years that I can't even be on the web without seeing all of the above.
Now all of this hasn't found its way into IRL, yet. But it has begun to. People I've known for many years have recently started posting about what I consider fairly extreme political ideas. Certain distinctive vocabulary, and the associated thinking, is seeping into their lexicons.
I'm sure there's a lot of truth to what you're saying too. But culture spreads. If those outraged voices are "just" being heard more, there is no "just" about it. They're drawing people in, the ideas are spreading, and the mobs are growing too.
- adventured 9y agoI didn't know how many of my second-tier friends, and friend-acquaintances, were assholes, belligerent politically, and or just downright mean when it comes to things they disagree with (small or large). It's a very odd thing to be exposed to so many of a distant person's thoughts on so many topics over years of time. I think part of the aspect of Facebook sucking so bad now, is that people have become 'friends' with vast numbers of people that they really are not in fact friends with, and never would be. Previously they would have remained unexposed to all the things they don't like about said persons. Now that exposure is a daily event, and it makes a product like Facebook horrible, because it sinks to being a shit-show 24/7, where your thousand 'friends' on a network like that end up overwhelming the less than 20 or 50 people you'd ever care to communicate with regularly. What's the subtractive value of being exposed to one terrible post by an acquaintance 'friend' on Facebook? How many good posts does it take by your actual friends on there, to offset that negative? I'd bet it doesn't take being exposed to very many personally negative posts in a day to drop the Facebook experience into the sewer. Fundamentally, I think this means that the hyper-connection experiment known as Facebook is doomed to fail (ie be a miserable product), unless you heavily restrict it down to a small core socially that you actually get exposed to. And then if you do that, is there any point to having the thousand 'friends' on your fake friends list to begin with (I'd say no).
- WalterSear 9y agoThere's an ignore button for a reason.
- adventured 9y agoThat's to my point (my opinion): small, tightly curated social networks will produce radically superior outcomes in terms of product experience. You can accomplish that on a platform with a billion users, however the connection counts have to be relatively small compared to what's common on eg Facebook today. Those 400 or 1,000 fake friend lists, are at the core of why people have a bad experience on Facebook: nobody really has a hundred friends. Facebook's drive for hyper connectivity, doomed their product to suck. Large, hyper connected networks will always end up being mediocre or worse experiences. With that experience sinking as they grow toward saturation, and assuming hyper connectivity amongst the users on the platform.
- devmunchies 9y agoThe best ignore button is “delete my account”.
- gkya 9y agoWhen relatives ask me to help with the Facebook app, I just can't. And I'm a power-user of about any program/device I use. I doubt more than a fraction of the users of that app know anything else than the basic stuff like "add a friend", "make a comment/post", &c.
- Pulcinella 9y agoFacebook’s various settings have an annoying tendency to undo themselves...
- sizzle 9y agoThanks for articulating that I've been feeling for many years now but couldn't quite put into words.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoThe only reason HN has survived as well as it has is because of the moderators. Thanks, deng and company. This place is better for your efforts.
- knieveltech 9y agoPoint of Order: Godwin suspended Godwin's Law indefinitely, likely in response to the alt-right and Trump's election.
- psyc 9y agoWell. It’s official then.
- dempseye 9y agoJust shows that invoking Godwin's Law as if it had probative force was nonsense in the first place. Valid principles of reasoning can't be suspended by fiat.
- analognoise 9y agoThere...are....FOUR...LIGHTS!
- leereeves 9y agoName calling is not a valid principle of reason.
- dempseye 9y agoNot sure what your point is.
- leereeves 9y ago> Just shows that invoking Godwin's Law as if it had probative force was nonsense in the first place. Valid principles of reasoning can't be suspended by fiat. What is the valid principle of reasoning allegedly suspended by Godwin's Law? Most invocations of the Nazis are nothing more than name calling.
- knieveltech 9y agoThat statement was substantially more accurate 24 months ago when we didn't have organized groups of individuals marching in our cities literally chanting Nazi slogans.