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I get where you're coming from with the academic curiosity of seeing how people think. That said, it seems you're assuming comments are simply a one-way output

by npunt 8y ago

I get where you're coming from with the academic curiosity of seeing how people think. That said, it seems you're assuming comments are simply a one-way output of different people's thought patterns, rather than a two-way process that has an effect on others. It's obvious it has a two-way effect - the point of reading and listening is to learn, and we can learn in ways that make us worse off. The idea that we should have a super low-friction way to be exposed to the internal thought process of anybody who is motivated to post those is an idea worth challenging, and we're starting to wake up to just how negative the repercussions of it are. That level of reach without any filtering steps (such as community standards, social feedback loops, etc) is fuel for extremism, harassment, and triggering/exacerbating mental illness. Lets not give everyone PTSD if we don't have to, cause thats effectively what your argument boils down to.

whatshisface 8y ago
As a staunch supporter of free speech, being exposed to your internal thought process had some negative repercussions for me. None of my fellow pro-free-speech HN users were able to filter you, nor even were they able to socially pressure you, and as result I read an extremist opinion. I think it's important that communities control anti-free-speech comments, otherwise they will descend into extremism.
- npunt 8y ago
  You haven't refuted my argument that super low-friction reach is valuable enough to preserve. I have pretty decent karma in HN and there are much better filtering mechanisms in this community to remove bad actors and posts than there are on youtube. That's the context of my post that, while hidden, is nonetheless present in this community. There is no community for many youtube comments - its driveby comments that get free reach.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    What's so bad about being exposed to the public id that you'd be willing to even loose a sliver of free speech to prevent it? You're already being exposed to the public id every moment, awake or asleep, because part of it is you.
    - npunt 8y ago
      > What's so bad about being exposed to the public id I dunno, wake up and look outside.
      - zapzupnz 8y ago
        Indeed, it's important for people to not think so academically about viewpoints all the time. There are ideals, and then there is the real world. It's fine to have ideals about things like absolute free speech in all domains, but it must be balanced against the constraints, rational and irrational, of society at large which never constrains its behaviours to anything resembling the ideal. It's a classic question of the world not being black and white. Either people accept this greyness and work within it to produce the most desirable result possible, or fruitlessly wonder why nobody else is able to see what apparently is so patently visible to your eyes only.
        arminiusreturns 8y ago
        and it is exactly the shifting of the Overton window into that machiavellian realpolitik approach that has the empire invading and performing coups since at least ww2, causing millions of lives lost and reverberation effects for generations to come. The same for any number of major constitutional issues such as the justice system, regulatory capture, etc. We need more idealism, not less. Tempered with pragmatism is one thing, but the problem is then one is encouraged to temper that idealism a bit more, and a bit more, and one more time, until the original ideal is more a memory than anything. For me this mostly stems from a lack of knowledge or respect for history.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  I've downvoted this because it's clearly taking the piss, recontedtualising a comment for gainsaying. No part of the content reinforces nor advances the main thrust of your argument that I can see.
busterarm 8y ago
You can't exactly challenge ideas if the challenger ideas need to be approved or in an approved venue. It's not that long ago that the Catholic church had people executed for heresy.
- npunt 8y ago
  I didn't say that ideas need to be 'approved'. I challenged the idea that the ability to reach a worldwide audience should be free and available to anybody, regardless of content therein. Filtering mechanisms exist in all forums, online and offline. Some suck, like certain sub-communities in youtube. The discussion should be about what filters we employ to best balance the positive value of conversation against the negative.
  - ThrowawayR2 8y ago
    > I didn't say that ideas need to be 'approved'. I challenged the idea that the ability to reach a worldwide audience should be free and available to anybody, regardless of content therein. If that "reach" should not be available to "anybody, regardless of content therein", then the logical and unavoidable conclusion there is some person or organization that has to decide what people and content are allowed access. You can hardly dodge the logical implications of your own statement.
    - dwaltrip 8y ago
      Do you have a specific point? Or just picking a nit? There are vastly different ways in which the flow of communication between people or groups of people can be impacted, and the differences between these ways can be very important. Because of this, sweeping generalizations don't seem very helpful.
    - nl 8y ago
      This is absolutely not the case. Reach is about broadcast. There are plenty of non-authoritarian ways to reduce reach. The most obvious one is to make people pay for it (like they do on Facebook). Community moderation is another, and trust metrics is yet another. All have tradeoffs, but - since you are nitpicking here - it isn't a logical and unavoidable conclusion that this has to be a decision about allowed access.
philwelch 8y ago
It's kind of like deinstitutionalization. When deinstitutionalization happened, lots of chronically mentally ill people started wandering the streets behaving erratically. You run into these people in cities--I've encountered one who loudly narrates her paranoid delusions about the people around her. Sometimes late at night you see people committing vandalism or doing drugs. I think it's a better idea to give people the tools to control where they direct their attention.
- npunt 8y ago
  Good analogy, the internet is entirely deinstitutionalized, but even worse, because: a) people are more likely to have gumption to be negative in the absence of social cues of another person in their presence (global effect, whether or not user is mentally ill) b) those motivated and possessing time to post are more likely to be suffering from issues (where those not mentally ill may just not engage because they have other things going on in life) c) unlike the physical space where filters exist, you're often exposed to these people when navigating to entirely innocuous content (e.g. a kids video). d) way way easier to find people with same or adjacent point of view on internet, reinforcing beliefs and potentially driving person further to extremes Problem needs to be addressed from multiple fronts - as you say, more control for end users to tweak their experience (top down), alongside better platform-level filtering (bottom up), along with all the helpful designs therein like good defaults.
- lr4444lr 8y ago
  The open and free exchange of ideas isn't the same as deinstitutionalizing criminally violent people and self-harming drug users. Not in the slightest. The people "harmed" by Internet comments (live aside) simply have no recourse in U.S. law for their problem with it.

by npunt 8y ago

whatshisface 8y ago

As a staunch supporter of free speech, being exposed to your internal thought process had some negative repercussions for me. None of my fellow pro-free-speech HN users were able to filter you, nor even were they able to socially pressure you, and as result I read an extremist opinion. I think it's important that communities control anti-free-speech comments, otherwise they will descend into extremism.

npunt 8y ago
You haven't refuted my argument that super low-friction reach is valuable enough to preserve. I have pretty decent karma in HN and there are much better filtering mechanisms in this community to remove bad actors and posts than there are on youtube. That's the context of my post that, while hidden, is nonetheless present in this community. There is no community for many youtube comments - its driveby comments that get free reach.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  What's so bad about being exposed to the public id that you'd be willing to even loose a sliver of free speech to prevent it? You're already being exposed to the public id every moment, awake or asleep, because part of it is you.
  - npunt 8y ago
    > What's so bad about being exposed to the public id I dunno, wake up and look outside.
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      Indeed, it's important for people to not think so academically about viewpoints all the time. There are ideals, and then there is the real world. It's fine to have ideals about things like absolute free speech in all domains, but it must be balanced against the constraints, rational and irrational, of society at large which never constrains its behaviours to anything resembling the ideal. It's a classic question of the world not being black and white. Either people accept this greyness and work within it to produce the most desirable result possible, or fruitlessly wonder why nobody else is able to see what apparently is so patently visible to your eyes only.
      - arminiusreturns 8y ago
        and it is exactly the shifting of the Overton window into that machiavellian realpolitik approach that has the empire invading and performing coups since at least ww2, causing millions of lives lost and reverberation effects for generations to come. The same for any number of major constitutional issues such as the justice system, regulatory capture, etc. We need more idealism, not less. Tempered with pragmatism is one thing, but the problem is then one is encouraged to temper that idealism a bit more, and a bit more, and one more time, until the original ideal is more a memory than anything. For me this mostly stems from a lack of knowledge or respect for history.
zapzupnz 8y ago
I've downvoted this because it's clearly taking the piss, recontedtualising a comment for gainsaying. No part of the content reinforces nor advances the main thrust of your argument that I can see.

busterarm 8y ago

You can't exactly challenge ideas if the challenger ideas need to be approved or in an approved venue. It's not that long ago that the Catholic church had people executed for heresy.

npunt 8y ago
I didn't say that ideas need to be 'approved'. I challenged the idea that the ability to reach a worldwide audience should be free and available to anybody, regardless of content therein. Filtering mechanisms exist in all forums, online and offline. Some suck, like certain sub-communities in youtube. The discussion should be about what filters we employ to best balance the positive value of conversation against the negative.
- ThrowawayR2 8y ago
  > I didn't say that ideas need to be 'approved'. I challenged the idea that the ability to reach a worldwide audience should be free and available to anybody, regardless of content therein. If that "reach" should not be available to "anybody, regardless of content therein", then the logical and unavoidable conclusion there is some person or organization that has to decide what people and content are allowed access. You can hardly dodge the logical implications of your own statement.
  - dwaltrip 8y ago
    Do you have a specific point? Or just picking a nit? There are vastly different ways in which the flow of communication between people or groups of people can be impacted, and the differences between these ways can be very important. Because of this, sweeping generalizations don't seem very helpful.
  - nl 8y ago
    This is absolutely not the case. Reach is about broadcast. There are plenty of non-authoritarian ways to reduce reach. The most obvious one is to make people pay for it (like they do on Facebook). Community moderation is another, and trust metrics is yet another. All have tradeoffs, but - since you are nitpicking here - it isn't a logical and unavoidable conclusion that this has to be a decision about allowed access.

philwelch 8y ago

It's kind of like deinstitutionalization. When deinstitutionalization happened, lots of chronically mentally ill people started wandering the streets behaving erratically. You run into these people in cities--I've encountered one who loudly narrates her paranoid delusions about the people around her. Sometimes late at night you see people committing vandalism or doing drugs. I think it's a better idea to give people the tools to control where they direct their attention.

npunt 8y ago
Good analogy, the internet is entirely deinstitutionalized, but even worse, because: a) people are more likely to have gumption to be negative in the absence of social cues of another person in their presence (global effect, whether or not user is mentally ill) b) those motivated and possessing time to post are more likely to be suffering from issues (where those not mentally ill may just not engage because they have other things going on in life) c) unlike the physical space where filters exist, you're often exposed to these people when navigating to entirely innocuous content (e.g. a kids video). d) way way easier to find people with same or adjacent point of view on internet, reinforcing beliefs and potentially driving person further to extremes Problem needs to be addressed from multiple fronts - as you say, more control for end users to tweak their experience (top down), alongside better platform-level filtering (bottom up), along with all the helpful designs therein like good defaults.
lr4444lr 8y ago
The open and free exchange of ideas isn't the same as deinstitutionalizing criminally violent people and self-harming drug users. Not in the slightest. The people "harmed" by Internet comments (live aside) simply have no recourse in U.S. law for their problem with it.