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It’s amazing to me that people look at an online community such as twitter and then determine if it’s toxic or not based on observed behaviors. They’re just peo

It’s amazing to me that people look at an online community such as twitter and then determine if it’s toxic or not based on observed behaviors. They’re just people. People are toxic on twitter. Twitter is not toxic. Twitter is exactly the way that people who use it want it to be. How do you expect to change twitter without changing people? It’s an exercise in futility. You can regulate it for eternity and it will still reflect the people who use and engage in the site.

notafraudster 8y ago
I mean, moderation policies, tools to change signal to noise ratio, reward incentives for certain types of behaviours, and community mores all affect the observed level of toxicity. There are clearly places and periods on the internet that are more or less abusive and it's not because massive social change is happening in the outside world, right?
ggreer 8y ago
The same people can behave totally differently depending on circumstances. For example: many people experience road rage, but they'd never behave that way outside of their car. Something about being in a car separated by a couple panes of glass causes a lot of people to act insane. It's similar for social media: - Twitter and Tumblr both have retweet/reblog with commentary, which makes it extremely convenient for people to tell their followers about something they dislike. Just click retweet, type, "Look at this dumbass.", and watch the likes come in. - Twitter notifies you if someone replied, quote-tweeted, mentioned you, or linked to a tweet of yours. This means that people definitely know when somebody disagrees with or dislikes them. If those same people were mocking them on some other forum, they'd never know and a cycle of hostility wouldn't form. - Twitter's character limit makes it hard for people to keep nuance in their ideas. Replies to tweets are sorted by time, so whoever replies first (i.e. gives their response the least thought) gets the most eyeballs. - Lastly, Twitter defaults to only accept direct messages from people you follow, meaning that most people can't criticize in private. They have to broadcast the criticism to the whole world, making it much harder for both parties to keep their egos in check. These "features" combine to make civil conversation all but impossible.
- majos 8y ago
  All good points. One I would add: there is far less assumption of good faith from strangers on Twitter, and most parts of the internet in general. For whatever reason, in-person interactions have a level of charity in them. You'll clarify misconceptions, give people the chance to make and walk back mistakes, and generally assume that your conversational partner is reasonable until proven otherwise. Twitter is not like this. Many people seem to find it very easy to start a conversation with criticism, looking for evidence of stupidity or malice rather than trying to clarify it away. And there is almost no ground-level assumption that the other person is actually "trying" the way you are. Seems easily traced back to Twitter not being a very human medium. As in the car example, it's easier to strongly dislike something when it's not obviously another human. But of course, the existence of trolls on the internet and mostly nonexistence of tolls in everyday life is a factor too. For this reason, I've mostly given up on having any kind of remotely grey-area discussion on Twitter. I just use it to follow a few dozen people whose thoughts I'm interested in. And outside of HN and email/messaging, I don't talk through the internet at all.
snthd 8y ago
related - https://medium.com/what-to-build/how-to-design-social-systems-without-causing-depression-and-war-3c3f8e0226d https://medium.com/what-to-build/how-to-design-social-system...

notafraudster 8y ago

I mean, moderation policies, tools to change signal to noise ratio, reward incentives for certain types of behaviours, and community mores all affect the observed level of toxicity. There are clearly places and periods on the internet that are more or less abusive and it's not because massive social change is happening in the outside world, right?

ggreer 8y ago

The same people can behave totally differently depending on circumstances. For example: many people experience road rage, but they'd never behave that way outside of their car. Something about being in a car separated by a couple panes of glass causes a lot of people to act insane. It's similar for social media: - Twitter and Tumblr both have retweet/reblog with commentary, which makes it extremely convenient for people to tell their followers about something they dislike. Just click retweet, type, "Look at this dumbass.", and watch the likes come in. - Twitter notifies you if someone replied, quote-tweeted, mentioned you, or linked to a tweet of yours. This means that people definitely know when somebody disagrees with or dislikes them. If those same people were mocking them on some other forum, they'd never know and a cycle of hostility wouldn't form. - Twitter's character limit makes it hard for people to keep nuance in their ideas. Replies to tweets are sorted by time, so whoever replies first (i.e. gives their response the least thought) gets the most eyeballs. - Lastly, Twitter defaults to only accept direct messages from people you follow, meaning that most people can't criticize in private. They have to broadcast the criticism to the whole world, making it much harder for both parties to keep their egos in check. These "features" combine to make civil conversation all but impossible.

majos 8y ago
All good points. One I would add: there is far less assumption of good faith from strangers on Twitter, and most parts of the internet in general. For whatever reason, in-person interactions have a level of charity in them. You'll clarify misconceptions, give people the chance to make and walk back mistakes, and generally assume that your conversational partner is reasonable until proven otherwise. Twitter is not like this. Many people seem to find it very easy to start a conversation with criticism, looking for evidence of stupidity or malice rather than trying to clarify it away. And there is almost no ground-level assumption that the other person is actually "trying" the way you are. Seems easily traced back to Twitter not being a very human medium. As in the car example, it's easier to strongly dislike something when it's not obviously another human. But of course, the existence of trolls on the internet and mostly nonexistence of tolls in everyday life is a factor too. For this reason, I've mostly given up on having any kind of remotely grey-area discussion on Twitter. I just use it to follow a few dozen people whose thoughts I'm interested in. And outside of HN and email/messaging, I don't talk through the internet at all.

snthd 8y ago

related - https://medium.com/what-to-build/how-to-design-social-systems-without-causing-depression-and-war-3c3f8e0226d https://medium.com/what-to-build/how-to-design-social-system...