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Maybe it just means that a lot of this isn't perfect. The medium is the message and our medium has evolved rapidly recently, the message has gotten overly prone
by netcan 8y ago
Maybe it just means that a lot of this isn't perfect. The medium is the message and our medium has evolved rapidly recently, the message has gotten overly prone to bickering and meanness.
It's not a trivial thing, for 8bn people to learn to speak to each other directly. If Matz is having trouble... it's a sign this isn't about bad people. We've got a system that's prone to it.
- wpietri 8y agoI don't think it's anything new. Usenet had plenty of terrible. So did the early web. At best, it's a problem with computer-mediated communication in general, which has a broken feedback loop between saying something and seeing its impact. And, frequently, it allows for anonymity, which removes the social consequences of malicious actions. But that's not really new either. Consider the historic concept of the poison pen letter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_pen_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_pen_letter I'd certainly be interested in your proposed systemic fixes. But I don't think the problem is our communications system. I think it's much broader.
- gglitch 8y agoI assume the same dynamic produces road rage too.
- rectang 8y agoFully agreed that the problem of internet abuse originates with human nature but is amplified by the medium. And yes, this problem was actually much worse a decade or two ago. You should see archives some of the old private open source forums! Holy moley were people horrible to each other. At least now we have some awareness of the problem and better understanding of its mechanisms.
- ChrisSD 8y ago> And, frequently, it allows for anonymity, which removes the social consequences of malicious actions. I don't think anonymity is a problem per se. Real people engage in all kinds of shitty trolling using their real names. And their real friends egg them on. The difference is perhaps that their local real life community don't know about it, outside of their friends.
- wpietri 8y agoIf you have any evidence that suggest that anonymity doesn't amplify harmful behaviors in people predisposed to them, I'd love to see it. But my long anecdotal experience says otherwise. As does internet lore [1] and a number of studies. [2] [1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 [2] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/who-is-that-the-study-of-anonymity-and-behavior https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/who-is-that-th...
- ChrisSD 8y agoRemember when Google (via G+) required YouTube comments to use their real name? It did not improve the tone of the comments. Or how Facebook comments on articles are rarely free from trolling. Real names may stop some people from trolling but there seem to be an abundance of people willing to put their name to it.
- wpietri 8y agoYou seem to be attacking a straw man. Nobody said that anonymity was the sole driver of bad comments. Certainly I didn't.
- snarf21 8y agoThis seems common with a lot of open source. I wonder if some of this could be solved with a fee to communicate. You want to send a message or question or PR? It costs $5 but the maintainer has the option to refund it. It also puts some skin in the game from the community people who want it for free but changed to match their exact use case. A lot of people just need to vent to someone in that moment and any obstacle would make them give up. Or maybe this is a horrible idea...
- ksec 8y agoI thought of something similar, the problem is when lots of these communications, Email, Twitter, Medium, SMS, Phone Calls etc are Free we get a lots more low quality / noise coming into it. It seems the only way is to put a price onto it.