5 ms·

The only way to detoxify the internet, is to get rid of the "social" aspect. Starting with gasp comments. My online experience has been that much better, since

The only way to detoxify the internet, is to get rid of the "social" aspect. Starting with gasp comments. My online experience has been that much better, since adding comment blockers to my browser.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
vesrah 9y ago
While I agree with you, and I also run a comment blocker, I find it difficult to believe that sites are going to willingly give up the engagement that comments brings.
- overcast 9y ago
  Well of course not, I'm just telling you how to fix it!
- mozumder 9y ago
  Lots of sites are giving up on comments. They add nothing of value to advertisers.
golergka 9y ago
This is a comment though.
- overcast 9y ago
  HN doesn't allow such negativity though. Reddit flourishes on it.
  - dymk 9y ago
    Any thread about Facebook, and most threads about Apple are cesspools of negativity. I think you've got some rose tinted glasses when it comes to the kind of discourse that HN offers.
  - irrational 9y ago
    It really depends on the subreddit, doesn't it? I only visit subreddits like r/boardgames and while there is the occasional rude person, overall thos subreddits are welcoming uplifting places. Some parts of Reddit are horrid and some parts are beautiful, just like real life. I just don't go to the horrid parts - just like I would avoid the horrid parts of a city.
  - Gargoyle 9y ago
    >HN doesn't allow such negativity though. You do read this site, right? My opinion is that getting rid of voting is step one to making both sites infinitely better. Extremely draconian human moderation is step two.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    I would encourage you to read any thread on harassment or the treatment of women and marginalized people in the tech industry and then revisit that thought.
jstanley 9y ago
I assume the irony of writing that in a comment is not lost on you.
- ASalazarMX 9y ago
  It might if he blocked it.
gruez 9y ago
>The only way to detoxify the internet, is to get rid of the "social" aspect. Starting with gasp comments are you talking about the "social" comments, or commenting in general (including this site)?
ranie93 9y ago
Personally I'm guilty of often seeking out comments before or soon after viewing an article or video online. As social creatures I think its reasonable to want, even need, others opinions. The effects of receiving these opinions may not always be positive, but I think they are necessary. Pragmatically, comment sections can have bots, ads, instigators. I think there is a better solution than outright getting rid of online discussion. There's room here for innovation (Not even technical innovation, I think there's low hanging fruit here in terms of comment section design)
- prepend 9y ago
  Similarly, I use comments as a quick screen to filter through the PR/targeted journalism of stories. Not perfect and will eventually stop working as media companies wise up. Similarly, I will frequently check Wikipedia before the company/film/whatever. Flaws, but frequently better than official channels.
  - gurkendoktor 9y ago
    It doesn't even have to be targeted journalism, sometimes people write junk because they make mistakes or aren't aware of counter-arguments...not even scientific papers are safe from this. Cunningham's Law[1] to the rescue :) I can feel that hostile internet comments take a toll on my overall happiness, but I don't want to be ignorant of valid counter-arguments to the content I read. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
jerf 9y ago
I've been kicking a design around in my head for the past few weeks which retains most of the outward form of something like Reddit, on the grounds that it has proved to be a model that can attract users, but redefines the upvote and downvote process such that an upvote now means "I want to see more of this poster's comments, and transitively (and weaker as the links go out) what that user sees" and a downvote now means "I'd like to see less of this poster's comments and transitively what they upvoted". The difference here being that upvote no longer means "I think everyone should see more of this comment", but now "I think I should see more of this commenter". I think it ought to be unidirectional to prevent obvious attacks. I'm not too worried about the "filter bubble" because I think you are inevitably in a filter bubble, and it's on you to manage it, not expect random sites on the internet to somehow pop you out of it (they basically can't, by definition). I think I'd still want categorizations for subject, just to give things some sort of focus. The result is that instead of /r/politics or /r/$ANYTHING being captured by some sort of single monolithic gestalt, multiple simultaneous gestalts could be running side-by-side. You'd want some deliberate mixing, both to keep things interesting and because I think you'd want to ensure some "heat" in the simulated annealing sense to ensure that things don't get too isolated and things keep moving. (Communities themselves keep moving, after all.) The net effect of this is that while trolls would still exist, anyone not interested in trolling should naturally filter them out of their view relatively quickly, while the trolls get each other to troll at. Since they can not be eliminated, all you can really do is fence them off. One of the other interesting side effects is that you ought to get some other interesting communities in there, too; the community of people who thoughtfully comment, the community of "doers", etc. One interesting possibility is that this may even allow "celebrities" to have a "social network" that nominally anyone can join, but requires sufficient social proof that it isn't just "anybody with a Twitter account and an itchy trigger finger can get the first reply below $CELEBRITY's tweet.", wrecking the utility of social media for the celebrity. I haven't quite solved the question of how to initialize the communities once the system gets going, but it's probably feasible. What stops me from coding this up is that whenever I start really fleshing this out into an implementable system, I realize it violates one of my life rules: "Never engage in an endeavor in which the worst case scenario is complete success." I don't want to run a community site like that. So for me personally, the outcome matrix boils down to "Failure -> waste of time, Success -> oh shit". Because even if this did miraculously fix all social issues, which I am hardly naive enough to suppose, there's still legal compliance, DMCA compliance, etc., all sorts of things I personally have no desire or drive to do. However, by all means, feel free to "steal" my idea. While I am by no means an expert in this field (the aforementioned paragraphs are pretty much the sum total of my thinking at this time), I'll even spot you some free "consulting" in the form of playing intelligent-rubber-duck to bounce ideas off of if you'd like. And let me know if you get to deployment.
ploxiln 9y ago
And yet here we both are, commenting, on the internet ...
ASalazarMX 9y ago
Reddit has a large user base and a myriad of subreddits where different solutions have been tried. So far, the best I've seen is strong moderation: clear rules and swift enforcement. AskScience is a shining example of a high quality subreddit, although the comment section usually looks like a graveyard with 90% of the comments removed.
- jstanley 9y ago
  I'd like to see moderation decoupled from the forum namespace. So you'd subscribe to a forum namespace in order to see posts about a topic (say, AskScience), but you would then also subscribe to whichever moderators you want. The moderation wouldn't be inextricably tied to the namespace. Anybody can post anything in any namespace (and anybody can declare themselves a moderator of any namespace), but people will only see posts if their chosen moderators allow it. You could have all of the same moderation powers that exist at the moment, except any given moderator's actions are optional to any given user's view of the forum. We wouldn't need a situation like with r/bitcoin and r/btc where disagreements about moderation resulted in a splinter group creating a separate namespace: those who disagreed with moderator X would simply unsubscribe from X's moderation. I don't know if this would result in a better forum, but I'd be interested to see how it's different, and I don't know of anywhere it's been tried. (And in case someone out there is granting wishes... can I also have it decentralised e.g. using IPFS's pub sub?)
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    Yep. That was usenet. But in those days, we didn't have 3rd party recommended filters - but there's no reason why they wouldn't work now. Maybe it's time to remake Usenet, minus binaries. Binaries, piracy, and their data load per server are what killed Usenet. (Yes, I know it's still living on in paid-service world. But gone are the days your ISP runs a machine.)
    - jstarfish 9y ago
      > Binaries, piracy, and their data load per server are what killed Usenet. Binaries and piracy were two of the biggest reasons to use Usenet. Spam is what killed it.
crankylinuxuser 9y ago
I agree, on areas of general topics (news, current events, et cetera), the comments are cancer. As more comments are posted, racism/sexism/ageism/horribleness approaches 1. The comment section changes a lot if you stick with tech sites and peoples' blogs, or project sites like github/gitlab/hackaday.io . In those cases, people are 99% of the time pretty decent. They may demand a feature on a FLOSS git* page, but aside of entitlement attitudes, it's relatively non-poisonous.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

The only way to detoxify the internet, is to get rid of the "social" aspect. Starting with gasp comments. My online experience has been that much better, since adding comment blockers to my browser.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

vesrah 9y ago

While I agree with you, and I also run a comment blocker, I find it difficult to believe that sites are going to willingly give up the engagement that comments brings.

overcast 9y ago
Well of course not, I'm just telling you how to fix it!
mozumder 9y ago
Lots of sites are giving up on comments. They add nothing of value to advertisers.

golergka 9y ago

This is a comment though.

overcast 9y ago
HN doesn't allow such negativity though. Reddit flourishes on it.
- dymk 9y ago
  Any thread about Facebook, and most threads about Apple are cesspools of negativity. I think you've got some rose tinted glasses when it comes to the kind of discourse that HN offers.
- irrational 9y ago
  It really depends on the subreddit, doesn't it? I only visit subreddits like r/boardgames and while there is the occasional rude person, overall thos subreddits are welcoming uplifting places. Some parts of Reddit are horrid and some parts are beautiful, just like real life. I just don't go to the horrid parts - just like I would avoid the horrid parts of a city.
- Gargoyle 9y ago
  >HN doesn't allow such negativity though. You do read this site, right? My opinion is that getting rid of voting is step one to making both sites infinitely better. Extremely draconian human moderation is step two.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  I would encourage you to read any thread on harassment or the treatment of women and marginalized people in the tech industry and then revisit that thought.

jstanley 9y ago

I assume the irony of writing that in a comment is not lost on you.

ASalazarMX 9y ago
It might if he blocked it.

gruez 9y ago

>The only way to detoxify the internet, is to get rid of the "social" aspect. Starting with gasp comments are you talking about the "social" comments, or commenting in general (including this site)?

ranie93 9y ago

Personally I'm guilty of often seeking out comments before or soon after viewing an article or video online. As social creatures I think its reasonable to want, even need, others opinions. The effects of receiving these opinions may not always be positive, but I think they are necessary. Pragmatically, comment sections can have bots, ads, instigators. I think there is a better solution than outright getting rid of online discussion. There's room here for innovation (Not even technical innovation, I think there's low hanging fruit here in terms of comment section design)

prepend 9y ago
Similarly, I use comments as a quick screen to filter through the PR/targeted journalism of stories. Not perfect and will eventually stop working as media companies wise up. Similarly, I will frequently check Wikipedia before the company/film/whatever. Flaws, but frequently better than official channels.
- gurkendoktor 9y ago
  It doesn't even have to be targeted journalism, sometimes people write junk because they make mistakes or aren't aware of counter-arguments...not even scientific papers are safe from this. Cunningham's Law[1] to the rescue :) I can feel that hostile internet comments take a toll on my overall happiness, but I don't want to be ignorant of valid counter-arguments to the content I read. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

jerf 9y ago

I've been kicking a design around in my head for the past few weeks which retains most of the outward form of something like Reddit, on the grounds that it has proved to be a model that can attract users, but redefines the upvote and downvote process such that an upvote now means "I want to see more of this poster's comments, and transitively (and weaker as the links go out) what that user sees" and a downvote now means "I'd like to see less of this poster's comments and transitively what they upvoted". The difference here being that upvote no longer means "I think everyone should see more of this comment", but now "I think I should see more of this commenter". I think it ought to be unidirectional to prevent obvious attacks. I'm not too worried about the "filter bubble" because I think you are inevitably in a filter bubble, and it's on you to manage it, not expect random sites on the internet to somehow pop you out of it (they basically can't, by definition). I think I'd still want categorizations for subject, just to give things some sort of focus. The result is that instead of /r/politics or /r/$ANYTHING being captured by some sort of single monolithic gestalt, multiple simultaneous gestalts could be running side-by-side. You'd want some deliberate mixing, both to keep things interesting and because I think you'd want to ensure some "heat" in the simulated annealing sense to ensure that things don't get too isolated and things keep moving. (Communities themselves keep moving, after all.) The net effect of this is that while trolls would still exist, anyone not interested in trolling should naturally filter them out of their view relatively quickly, while the trolls get each other to troll at. Since they can not be eliminated, all you can really do is fence them off. One of the other interesting side effects is that you ought to get some other interesting communities in there, too; the community of people who thoughtfully comment, the community of "doers", etc. One interesting possibility is that this may even allow "celebrities" to have a "social network" that nominally anyone can join, but requires sufficient social proof that it isn't just "anybody with a Twitter account and an itchy trigger finger can get the first reply below $CELEBRITY's tweet.", wrecking the utility of social media for the celebrity. I haven't quite solved the question of how to initialize the communities once the system gets going, but it's probably feasible. What stops me from coding this up is that whenever I start really fleshing this out into an implementable system, I realize it violates one of my life rules: "Never engage in an endeavor in which the worst case scenario is complete success." I don't want to run a community site like that. So for me personally, the outcome matrix boils down to "Failure -> waste of time, Success -> oh shit". Because even if this did miraculously fix all social issues, which I am hardly naive enough to suppose, there's still legal compliance, DMCA compliance, etc., all sorts of things I personally have no desire or drive to do. However, by all means, feel free to "steal" my idea. While I am by no means an expert in this field (the aforementioned paragraphs are pretty much the sum total of my thinking at this time), I'll even spot you some free "consulting" in the form of playing intelligent-rubber-duck to bounce ideas off of if you'd like. And let me know if you get to deployment.

ploxiln 9y ago

And yet here we both are, commenting, on the internet ...

ASalazarMX 9y ago

Reddit has a large user base and a myriad of subreddits where different solutions have been tried. So far, the best I've seen is strong moderation: clear rules and swift enforcement. AskScience is a shining example of a high quality subreddit, although the comment section usually looks like a graveyard with 90% of the comments removed.

jstanley 9y ago
I'd like to see moderation decoupled from the forum namespace. So you'd subscribe to a forum namespace in order to see posts about a topic (say, AskScience), but you would then also subscribe to whichever moderators you want. The moderation wouldn't be inextricably tied to the namespace. Anybody can post anything in any namespace (and anybody can declare themselves a moderator of any namespace), but people will only see posts if their chosen moderators allow it. You could have all of the same moderation powers that exist at the moment, except any given moderator's actions are optional to any given user's view of the forum. We wouldn't need a situation like with r/bitcoin and r/btc where disagreements about moderation resulted in a splinter group creating a separate namespace: those who disagreed with moderator X would simply unsubscribe from X's moderation. I don't know if this would result in a better forum, but I'd be interested to see how it's different, and I don't know of anywhere it's been tried. (And in case someone out there is granting wishes... can I also have it decentralised e.g. using IPFS's pub sub?)
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  Yep. That was usenet. But in those days, we didn't have 3rd party recommended filters - but there's no reason why they wouldn't work now. Maybe it's time to remake Usenet, minus binaries. Binaries, piracy, and their data load per server are what killed Usenet. (Yes, I know it's still living on in paid-service world. But gone are the days your ISP runs a machine.)
  - jstarfish 9y ago
    > Binaries, piracy, and their data load per server are what killed Usenet. Binaries and piracy were two of the biggest reasons to use Usenet. Spam is what killed it.

crankylinuxuser 9y ago

I agree, on areas of general topics (news, current events, et cetera), the comments are cancer. As more comments are posted, racism/sexism/ageism/horribleness approaches 1. The comment section changes a lot if you stick with tech sites and peoples' blogs, or project sites like github/gitlab/hackaday.io . In those cases, people are 99% of the time pretty decent. They may demand a feature on a FLOSS git* page, but aside of entitlement attitudes, it's relatively non-poisonous.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]