6 ms·

Social Media: An Apology

79 points by xuande 8y ago

mewse-hn 8y ago
The elders of the internet use a hotmail address??
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  That's how old they are. :)
  - mattl 8y ago
    Hotmail was mid 90s. What did they use for the ~20 years prior to that?
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      bang!paths!to!uucp!servers
      - DrScump 8y ago
        In the late 1980s, I was the first person in my company to seek to add my email address to my business cards. I still have some of those business cards with the old bang-style address format.
- stilley2 8y ago
  That was probably my favorite part.
- wpietri 8y ago
  It was the first big webmail provider. Assuming they registered it early on, that email address is old enough to drink now. And very much needs to, I'm sure.
wpietri 8y ago
> In retrospect, we should have known; USENET was a pretty clear warning. 100% true. Another good data point is John Gabriel's Great Internet Fuckwad Theory: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 That was written 14 years ago, effectively before modern social media. This problem has been a long time coming. The problem isn't that we couldn't know. It's that people kept thinking it would magically be different this time.
- cirgue 8y ago
  > It's that people kept thinking it would magically be different this time. I don't think that's the problem, rather it's that the overwhelming majority of people currently on the internet are completely unaware there was a 'last time'.
  - mfoy_ 8y ago
    >the overwhelming majority of people currently on the internet are completely unaware Generally just this.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    I don't think the people who created Usenet were entirely unaware of human social dynamics. And the people who created things like Twitter certainly weren't unaware that Usenet, mailing lists, and web forums existed. But at best, they had an incredibly rosy view of what was going on. E.g., looking back, a Twitter founder claims that in 2006 everyone "was cool": https://twitter.com/rasmus_kleis/status/974552443789836288 https://twitter.com/rasmus_kleis/status/974552443789836288 Given Gabriel's theory, that's obvious bunk. And having talked to some online community pioneers, abuse started pretty much from the get go. Look at all the replies I got when I brought it up on Twitter, for example. Story after story of early experiences of trolling, abuse, etc: https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/974847531317211136 https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/974847531317211136 There was (and is) a strong strain of technoutopianism, where we take the shiny new possibility and project a perfect future onto it. This goes back at least as far as the introduction of the telegraph, which many thought would bring about world peace: https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Nineteenth-line/dp/162040592X https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Ninetee... As Neiwart documents, though, many of the terrible people online today are intellectual descendants of the terrible people who were doing their social networking in person and via the mail: https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/dp/1786634236 https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/...
FLUX-YOU 8y ago
There's not really much you can respond with, so I'm just gonna type some words so I'm not just leaving a one word post on HN: "Okay"
mfoy_ 8y ago
It was really easy to be an egalitarian before social media caught on in a big way... Now more and more elections are going the way of populism and truth has taken a back seat. I currently try to employ mitigation methods 2.3 and 2.4. If you slip on 2.3 you can generally compensate by leaning more heavily on 2.4.
- mxuribe 8y ago
  That's funny my flow is in the opposite direction: I use method 2.4 (responsibly and without abuse, and with a different goal in mind) first, which leads to apathy of social media, which results in naturally applying method 2.3. I guess we both reach our intended goals, so it speaks to the effectiveness of the methods! ;-)
IGI-111 8y ago
I know this is a joke (although only partly), but blocklists are honestly part of the problem. People got to this ridiculous level of childlike annoyance at the mere existence of dissent through group effects alone, but compounding it by literally removing any form of conflict seems like the worst solution possible. The solution to people acting terribly on the public square shouldn't be to remove it.
- TheIronYuppie 8y ago
  There is a fair bit of scholarship that says this is incorrect. Most commonly, people cute the paradox of tolerance as a starting point[1], but there's lots more. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - bena 8y ago
    I don't think he's invoking that. That we must be tolerant of intolerance lest we become intolerant ourselves. I think he's saying that that the ease of which we can cut out any information that challenges our beliefs does more harm than good. I'm sure you're a fine, upstanding, rational person who will always consider every viewpoint and come to a reasoned conclusion based on the facts every time and won't let emotions dictate any part of your decision. However, not everyone is so disciplined. Don't consider the rational actor. Consider the irrational. Consider the flat-earther who can personally silence any sources that provide evidence to the contrary. Just stuck in their little bubble of misinformation. Then when something does sneak through their filter, they'll regard it as the anomaly because everything else they see confirms what they already know. Now, there is some benefit to being able to silence certain opinions. I for one don't need flat-earthers constantly pushing their narrative that flies in the face of facts. But, then again, they feel the same way. I believe I've considered their evidence and their viewpoint fairly and have come to a conclusion rationally. But so do they. I believe I'm right, I'm fairly certain of it. But so are they. It comes down to believing that personal abuse should be silenced. If I'm just blatantly attacking you or you're attacking me with no other goal but to be insulting, then being able to block each other seems fine. But to be able to silence information just because you disagree with it seems a bit more dodgy.
mikro2nd 8y ago
Note: 2.4. Whisky For those unable to leave social media or otherwise curtail their use. With the caveat that while imbibing Whisky (or Whiskey, if you prefer) social media SHOULD be configured as a read-only medium.
- koolba 8y ago
  I think it's more effective if it's still read-write but the output is redirected to /dev/null.
  - mikro2nd 8y ago
    I'd dispute with you, but I'm drinking Whisky!
smacktoward 8y ago
> The Edlers of the Internet note with sorrow the passing of our former member, Stephen Hawking, aka "The Hawk." You will be missed. Apparently the Elders of the Internet are too old to know about spell-check :-D
- lainga 8y ago
  No, the Internet was founded in Austria-Hungary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edler
peterkelly 8y ago
Origin of the "Elders of the Internet" term, for the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
swanlyk 8y ago
“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community" Umberto Eco

79 points by xuande 8y ago

mewse-hn 8y ago

The elders of the internet use a hotmail address??

giancarlostoro 8y ago
That's how old they are. :)
- mattl 8y ago
  Hotmail was mid 90s. What did they use for the ~20 years prior to that?
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    bang!paths!to!uucp!servers
    - DrScump 8y ago
      In the late 1980s, I was the first person in my company to seek to add my email address to my business cards. I still have some of those business cards with the old bang-style address format.
stilley2 8y ago
That was probably my favorite part.
wpietri 8y ago
It was the first big webmail provider. Assuming they registered it early on, that email address is old enough to drink now. And very much needs to, I'm sure.

wpietri 8y ago

> In retrospect, we should have known; USENET was a pretty clear warning. 100% true. Another good data point is John Gabriel's Great Internet Fuckwad Theory: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 That was written 14 years ago, effectively before modern social media. This problem has been a long time coming. The problem isn't that we couldn't know. It's that people kept thinking it would magically be different this time.

cirgue 8y ago
> It's that people kept thinking it would magically be different this time. I don't think that's the problem, rather it's that the overwhelming majority of people currently on the internet are completely unaware there was a 'last time'.
- mfoy_ 8y ago
  >the overwhelming majority of people currently on the internet are completely unaware Generally just this.
- wpietri 8y ago
  I don't think the people who created Usenet were entirely unaware of human social dynamics. And the people who created things like Twitter certainly weren't unaware that Usenet, mailing lists, and web forums existed. But at best, they had an incredibly rosy view of what was going on. E.g., looking back, a Twitter founder claims that in 2006 everyone "was cool": https://twitter.com/rasmus_kleis/status/974552443789836288 https://twitter.com/rasmus_kleis/status/974552443789836288 Given Gabriel's theory, that's obvious bunk. And having talked to some online community pioneers, abuse started pretty much from the get go. Look at all the replies I got when I brought it up on Twitter, for example. Story after story of early experiences of trolling, abuse, etc: https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/974847531317211136 https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/974847531317211136 There was (and is) a strong strain of technoutopianism, where we take the shiny new possibility and project a perfect future onto it. This goes back at least as far as the introduction of the telegraph, which many thought would bring about world peace: https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Nineteenth-line/dp/162040592X https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Ninetee... As Neiwart documents, though, many of the terrible people online today are intellectual descendants of the terrible people who were doing their social networking in person and via the mail: https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/dp/1786634236 https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/...

FLUX-YOU 8y ago

There's not really much you can respond with, so I'm just gonna type some words so I'm not just leaving a one word post on HN: "Okay"

mfoy_ 8y ago

It was really easy to be an egalitarian before social media caught on in a big way... Now more and more elections are going the way of populism and truth has taken a back seat. I currently try to employ mitigation methods 2.3 and 2.4. If you slip on 2.3 you can generally compensate by leaning more heavily on 2.4.

mxuribe 8y ago
That's funny my flow is in the opposite direction: I use method 2.4 (responsibly and without abuse, and with a different goal in mind) first, which leads to apathy of social media, which results in naturally applying method 2.3. I guess we both reach our intended goals, so it speaks to the effectiveness of the methods! ;-)

IGI-111 8y ago

I know this is a joke (although only partly), but blocklists are honestly part of the problem. People got to this ridiculous level of childlike annoyance at the mere existence of dissent through group effects alone, but compounding it by literally removing any form of conflict seems like the worst solution possible. The solution to people acting terribly on the public square shouldn't be to remove it.

TheIronYuppie 8y ago
There is a fair bit of scholarship that says this is incorrect. Most commonly, people cute the paradox of tolerance as a starting point[1], but there's lots more. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bena 8y ago
  I don't think he's invoking that. That we must be tolerant of intolerance lest we become intolerant ourselves. I think he's saying that that the ease of which we can cut out any information that challenges our beliefs does more harm than good. I'm sure you're a fine, upstanding, rational person who will always consider every viewpoint and come to a reasoned conclusion based on the facts every time and won't let emotions dictate any part of your decision. However, not everyone is so disciplined. Don't consider the rational actor. Consider the irrational. Consider the flat-earther who can personally silence any sources that provide evidence to the contrary. Just stuck in their little bubble of misinformation. Then when something does sneak through their filter, they'll regard it as the anomaly because everything else they see confirms what they already know. Now, there is some benefit to being able to silence certain opinions. I for one don't need flat-earthers constantly pushing their narrative that flies in the face of facts. But, then again, they feel the same way. I believe I've considered their evidence and their viewpoint fairly and have come to a conclusion rationally. But so do they. I believe I'm right, I'm fairly certain of it. But so are they. It comes down to believing that personal abuse should be silenced. If I'm just blatantly attacking you or you're attacking me with no other goal but to be insulting, then being able to block each other seems fine. But to be able to silence information just because you disagree with it seems a bit more dodgy.

mikro2nd 8y ago

Note: 2.4. Whisky For those unable to leave social media or otherwise curtail their use. With the caveat that while imbibing Whisky (or Whiskey, if you prefer) social media SHOULD be configured as a read-only medium.

koolba 8y ago
I think it's more effective if it's still read-write but the output is redirected to /dev/null.
- mikro2nd 8y ago
  I'd dispute with you, but I'm drinking Whisky!

smacktoward 8y ago

> The Edlers of the Internet note with sorrow the passing of our former member, Stephen Hawking, aka "The Hawk." You will be missed. Apparently the Elders of the Internet are too old to know about spell-check :-D

lainga 8y ago
No, the Internet was founded in Austria-Hungary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edler

peterkelly 8y ago

Origin of the "Elders of the Internet" term, for the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg

swanlyk 8y ago

“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community" Umberto Eco