9 ms·

How do you get this to not turn into a fascist/racist trash bin worse than 4chan/b/ as other Reddit clones have seemingly fallen into?

swiley 8y ago
I feel like the cost of having open communication platforms is the existence of toxic communities. The correct approach (IMO) is to educate people about these rather than to have some sort of censorship mechanism.
- commun3 8y ago
  That is, unfortunately, unworkable. You cannot successful quarantine toxic people from non-toxic people in the same community. People who aren't toxic rarely want to spend their time around toxic people, and those that don't mind it are usually those who aren't the targets of the toxic people. A community with many members who are openly white supremacists might not be uncomfortable for other white people -- even if they themselves are not white supremacists -- but it's almost certainly unusable for those that are the target of the white supremacists ire. Look at any "open communication platform" that doesn't make any effort to ban "toxic" behaviour and you'll find that the toxic behaviour leaks into every aspect of the platform. If a website permits members to be openly anti-semitic or racist or sexist then they will be anti-semitic, racist and sexist everywhere, whether that's a quarantined sub-community about anti-semitism, or a community about video games, make-up or curating art for galleries. No amount of education is going to encourage jewish people to spend their time talking to openly anti-semitic people about video games. If you permit toxic behaviour then you exclude anybody who feels threatened by that behaviour.
  - the8472 8y ago
    There are diametrically opposed subreddits, 4chan boards or even twitter feeds. People can definitely coexist. The coexistence is not always easy or 100% free of disturbance but most of the time they work well enough to let each group focus on their own things.
  - deleteme12345 8y ago
    > “I don't agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
  - dcow 8y ago
    See my sibling comment. Should we (society) have quarantined and de-platformed homosexuals when they were (historically) considered "toxic"?
    - commun3 8y ago
      You can talk in hand-wavey sound bites about civil liberties that's not the world we've chosen to create, and it's hard to understand how you can earnestly compare racism and homosexuality. Are violent racists oppressed when they're not permitted to deny the rights of minorities, in the same way minorities are oppressed when they're not permitted to exercise their rights? Perhaps when you're philosophising in comments on the internet about civil liberties they're the same but in the real world they are not. You cannot effectively allow people to individually "filter out" toxic behaviour within a community because toxic behaviour permeates all aspects of participation in a community. The views we hold are fundamental to all aspects of our lives: our lives are built upon our views. A violent anti-semite's beliefs are present in their views on politics, religion, video games, food, housing, travel, science, technology... you cannot effectively "filter out" the fundamentals of someone's view points without neutering their speech -- which is no different from de-platforming them. A community is a group of people and a group of people is a collection of beliefs, a community is not a bunch of people who use the same website but are intentionally siloed because their beliefs are incompatible. People who favour the PlayStation 4 over the Xbox One can be part of a community with people who favour the Xbox One over the Playstation 4, but can people who wish death upon all jews be a part of a community with jewish people?
      - nixarian 8y ago
        But that's exactly what you're doing. You're oppressing them by denying them the ability to speak because you believe (perhaps rightly) that their opinion and way of living is wrong. Would you actually not deny housing to a nazi? Openly fascist people ARE denied jobs, how can you imagine otherwise? "Closet" facists are allowed to have jobs, in the same way closet homosexuals were allowed to have jobs back when homosexuality was considered toxic.
        8y ago
  - swiley 8y ago
    You're confusing platform and community. It's extremely rare that those aren't distinct, HN is one of the only examples that comes to mind.
- wycs 8y ago
  Then use your exit rights and don’t participate.
- kakarot 8y ago
  And to facilitate the formation of insulated communities that don't interact with each other directly, without altogether removing any but the most toxic of communities from public search results.
- dcow 8y ago
  Yes. To add, with the introduction of a global real-time communication network (the internet), we've also realized you must include mechanisms that make it easy for each individual to filter content so that they have the ability to remove themselves from situations that they consider oppressive, unethical, and/or immoral. > I feel like the cost of having open communication platforms is the existence of toxic communities. This topic has been discussed through history by many political philosophers. In the US, it's one of our founding principles. A strict non-unanimous majority rule is by definition oppressive. So how does one craft a society that keeps the majority of people happy while keeping in check the oppression a majority exerts upon dissenting "factions"? You preserve certain fundamental civil liberties and human rights for all your citizens. You do this so that a mere majority cannot infringe upon the liberties of minority groups. On top of that, the civil liberties you choose to universally defend are selected such that they give social agency to members regardless of faction allegiance. A faction may begin to feel oppressed by introduction of an ignorant law or by global change in social outlook (including reinterpretation of existing laws). The response is for the faction to exercise their social agency in order to effect political change that they otherwise don't have the numbers to outright decree. If you allow people to communicate, some are going to say something "toxic". We pay this price so that as a society we retain a means for oppression to be discovered. Indeed two "toxic" homosexuals one day may be the voice for marriage equality the next.
HostFat 8y ago
It isn't possible, but you can choose which subs where you want to subscribe. There will be a moderated list of subs (maintained by the main developer), but users will be free to try to find an join even the most controversial ones.
Lkjhmnbv 8y ago
The same way you prevent them from becoming progressice/racist trash bin worse than reddit. You let them speak and prove them idiots. It's really not hard. Unless you're constantly on the side that's losing, then it's pretty miserable. But know that even though you're losing now you can reformulated your arguments and try again because no ones going to censor you. You have all the same rights because you, like they, are people deserving respect, no matter how much you look down on them or hate them. And that's what I tell them about you. Less hate more love.
- dhimes 8y ago
  The problem, however, is that people are unresponsive to arguments. We are not reasonable, unfortunately. People aren't coming to these places to learn. They don't want to learn. I'm very curious as to how we can get out of this, because I really have a hard time understanding people and this is an enormous laboratory.
  - faitswulff 8y ago
    > unresponsive to arguments Not just unresponsive to arguments, but will argue in bad faith, and it takes 10x as much effort to disprove someone's bad contentions than it does to produce them.
    - jonnydubowsky 8y ago
      I agree with this position and wonder if there is any supporting evidence that speaks to this point that you know of?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - southerndrift 8y ago
    An argument doesn't have to be reasonable. You have logos, pathos, and ethos [1] to convince somebody. It's like a good sale, you identify what they want and then you show them a more social and friendly approach to reach their goal. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric
kakarot 8y ago
By getting a large enough userbase, and not repeating the cycle by banishing unwanted opinions.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
toofy 8y ago
As someone who has spent the better part of their life advocating for openness, decentralization, etc... it pains me to believe this, but I'm not sure we can have both open decentralized communities and simultaneously a community that isn't overrun with toxicity. If the goal is shitposting and edge-waddling I think it can be done, for a while anyway. However, if the goal is to have a space where discussion is meaningful, good faith, charitable, intelligent conversation, I'm not sure we can currently do this in a completely open way and still maintain a signal to noise ratio where sane people would willfully spend their valuable free time. In our current iteration of tech, society, education levels, culture, and politics it seems that (so far) every time we create an open space, the moment it reaches a certain level of popularity, the noise levels reach a point where it is pretty much impossible to have meaningful, contextual, and nuanced conversations. At the point that signal to noise ratio reaches unacceptable levels, we lose a critical mass of the people who made the space "special" I really hope we can get around this someday, but sadly, so far the absolutist free-for-all spaces really offer diminishing returns for those of us who are busy. Rather than sifting through rubble to find gold, at least for me, I can think of many things I'd rather do than engage in a conversation with someone when there is a higher than average chance they aren't there in good faith and when entire segments of the community exist who are literally only in the space to engage in and spread sophistry. At least for now, outside of invite only communities or high barrier of entry communities, spaces such as HN or SSC --both of which are largely unknown to the general public-- seem to offer the best blend of openness and time-well-spent conversations. But I'm not sure either of these could maintain the same level of conversation at scale.
- redcat255 8y ago
  what is SSC?
  - grzm 8y ago
    http://slatestarcodex.com http://slatestarcodex.com
    - redcat255 8y ago
mst 8y ago
Groups have moderators, users can subscribe to specific mods' decisions.

swiley 8y ago

I feel like the cost of having open communication platforms is the existence of toxic communities. The correct approach (IMO) is to educate people about these rather than to have some sort of censorship mechanism.

commun3 8y ago
That is, unfortunately, unworkable. You cannot successful quarantine toxic people from non-toxic people in the same community. People who aren't toxic rarely want to spend their time around toxic people, and those that don't mind it are usually those who aren't the targets of the toxic people. A community with many members who are openly white supremacists might not be uncomfortable for other white people -- even if they themselves are not white supremacists -- but it's almost certainly unusable for those that are the target of the white supremacists ire. Look at any "open communication platform" that doesn't make any effort to ban "toxic" behaviour and you'll find that the toxic behaviour leaks into every aspect of the platform. If a website permits members to be openly anti-semitic or racist or sexist then they will be anti-semitic, racist and sexist everywhere, whether that's a quarantined sub-community about anti-semitism, or a community about video games, make-up or curating art for galleries. No amount of education is going to encourage jewish people to spend their time talking to openly anti-semitic people about video games. If you permit toxic behaviour then you exclude anybody who feels threatened by that behaviour.
- the8472 8y ago
  There are diametrically opposed subreddits, 4chan boards or even twitter feeds. People can definitely coexist. The coexistence is not always easy or 100% free of disturbance but most of the time they work well enough to let each group focus on their own things.
- deleteme12345 8y ago
  > “I don't agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
- dcow 8y ago
  See my sibling comment. Should we (society) have quarantined and de-platformed homosexuals when they were (historically) considered "toxic"?
  - commun3 8y ago
    You can talk in hand-wavey sound bites about civil liberties that's not the world we've chosen to create, and it's hard to understand how you can earnestly compare racism and homosexuality. Are violent racists oppressed when they're not permitted to deny the rights of minorities, in the same way minorities are oppressed when they're not permitted to exercise their rights? Perhaps when you're philosophising in comments on the internet about civil liberties they're the same but in the real world they are not. You cannot effectively allow people to individually "filter out" toxic behaviour within a community because toxic behaviour permeates all aspects of participation in a community. The views we hold are fundamental to all aspects of our lives: our lives are built upon our views. A violent anti-semite's beliefs are present in their views on politics, religion, video games, food, housing, travel, science, technology... you cannot effectively "filter out" the fundamentals of someone's view points without neutering their speech -- which is no different from de-platforming them. A community is a group of people and a group of people is a collection of beliefs, a community is not a bunch of people who use the same website but are intentionally siloed because their beliefs are incompatible. People who favour the PlayStation 4 over the Xbox One can be part of a community with people who favour the Xbox One over the Playstation 4, but can people who wish death upon all jews be a part of a community with jewish people?
    - nixarian 8y ago
      But that's exactly what you're doing. You're oppressing them by denying them the ability to speak because you believe (perhaps rightly) that their opinion and way of living is wrong. Would you actually not deny housing to a nazi? Openly fascist people ARE denied jobs, how can you imagine otherwise? "Closet" facists are allowed to have jobs, in the same way closet homosexuals were allowed to have jobs back when homosexuality was considered toxic.
      - 8y ago
- swiley 8y ago
  You're confusing platform and community. It's extremely rare that those aren't distinct, HN is one of the only examples that comes to mind.
wycs 8y ago
Then use your exit rights and don’t participate.
kakarot 8y ago
And to facilitate the formation of insulated communities that don't interact with each other directly, without altogether removing any but the most toxic of communities from public search results.
dcow 8y ago
Yes. To add, with the introduction of a global real-time communication network (the internet), we've also realized you must include mechanisms that make it easy for each individual to filter content so that they have the ability to remove themselves from situations that they consider oppressive, unethical, and/or immoral. > I feel like the cost of having open communication platforms is the existence of toxic communities. This topic has been discussed through history by many political philosophers. In the US, it's one of our founding principles. A strict non-unanimous majority rule is by definition oppressive. So how does one craft a society that keeps the majority of people happy while keeping in check the oppression a majority exerts upon dissenting "factions"? You preserve certain fundamental civil liberties and human rights for all your citizens. You do this so that a mere majority cannot infringe upon the liberties of minority groups. On top of that, the civil liberties you choose to universally defend are selected such that they give social agency to members regardless of faction allegiance. A faction may begin to feel oppressed by introduction of an ignorant law or by global change in social outlook (including reinterpretation of existing laws). The response is for the faction to exercise their social agency in order to effect political change that they otherwise don't have the numbers to outright decree. If you allow people to communicate, some are going to say something "toxic". We pay this price so that as a society we retain a means for oppression to be discovered. Indeed two "toxic" homosexuals one day may be the voice for marriage equality the next.

HostFat 8y ago

It isn't possible, but you can choose which subs where you want to subscribe. There will be a moderated list of subs (maintained by the main developer), but users will be free to try to find an join even the most controversial ones.

Lkjhmnbv 8y ago

The same way you prevent them from becoming progressice/racist trash bin worse than reddit. You let them speak and prove them idiots. It's really not hard. Unless you're constantly on the side that's losing, then it's pretty miserable. But know that even though you're losing now you can reformulated your arguments and try again because no ones going to censor you. You have all the same rights because you, like they, are people deserving respect, no matter how much you look down on them or hate them. And that's what I tell them about you. Less hate more love.

dhimes 8y ago
The problem, however, is that people are unresponsive to arguments. We are not reasonable, unfortunately. People aren't coming to these places to learn. They don't want to learn. I'm very curious as to how we can get out of this, because I really have a hard time understanding people and this is an enormous laboratory.
- faitswulff 8y ago
  > unresponsive to arguments Not just unresponsive to arguments, but will argue in bad faith, and it takes 10x as much effort to disprove someone's bad contentions than it does to produce them.
  - jonnydubowsky 8y ago
    I agree with this position and wonder if there is any supporting evidence that speaks to this point that you know of?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- southerndrift 8y ago
  An argument doesn't have to be reasonable. You have logos, pathos, and ethos [1] to convince somebody. It's like a good sale, you identify what they want and then you show them a more social and friendly approach to reach their goal. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric

kakarot 8y ago

By getting a large enough userbase, and not repeating the cycle by banishing unwanted opinions.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

toofy 8y ago

As someone who has spent the better part of their life advocating for openness, decentralization, etc... it pains me to believe this, but I'm not sure we can have both open decentralized communities and simultaneously a community that isn't overrun with toxicity. If the goal is shitposting and edge-waddling I think it can be done, for a while anyway. However, if the goal is to have a space where discussion is meaningful, good faith, charitable, intelligent conversation, I'm not sure we can currently do this in a completely open way and still maintain a signal to noise ratio where sane people would willfully spend their valuable free time. In our current iteration of tech, society, education levels, culture, and politics it seems that (so far) every time we create an open space, the moment it reaches a certain level of popularity, the noise levels reach a point where it is pretty much impossible to have meaningful, contextual, and nuanced conversations. At the point that signal to noise ratio reaches unacceptable levels, we lose a critical mass of the people who made the space "special" I really hope we can get around this someday, but sadly, so far the absolutist free-for-all spaces really offer diminishing returns for those of us who are busy. Rather than sifting through rubble to find gold, at least for me, I can think of many things I'd rather do than engage in a conversation with someone when there is a higher than average chance they aren't there in good faith and when entire segments of the community exist who are literally only in the space to engage in and spread sophistry. At least for now, outside of invite only communities or high barrier of entry communities, spaces such as HN or SSC --both of which are largely unknown to the general public-- seem to offer the best blend of openness and time-well-spent conversations. But I'm not sure either of these could maintain the same level of conversation at scale.

redcat255 8y ago
what is SSC?
- grzm 8y ago
  http://slatestarcodex.com http://slatestarcodex.com
  - redcat255 8y ago

mst 8y ago

Groups have moderators, users can subscribe to specific mods' decisions.