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There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perver

There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perverse incentives to censor anything that might impact their advertising or other income. There is no single solution for content moderation that is good. That is why giant communities controlled by a single entity with a single standard are inherently toxic themselves. The solutions are innumberable and should be. That's how the gordian knot of moderation is cut. Not one set of standards but a diversity of them. Federation and peer to peer seem to be the only way forwards. Unfortunately most users of the big sites are there for monetary reasons and these reason don't translate to smaller sites. So they'll stick around until the censorship gets so tight the money dries up (ie, what google/youtube is doing now).

stone-monkey 8y ago
>There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perverse incentives to censor anything that might impact their advertising or other income. There are definitely other problems besides a centralized internet. Consider attacks by corporate and state level enemies in the form of astroturfing and fake news. Those issues existed outside of a centralized internet, and arguably can be addressed better by centralized access to information. Look at the great firewall of China: do you think the Russian disinformation campaign could succeed there to the extent it did in the west? Free access to the internet lowers the barrier for bad actors. Having said that, I obviously prefer the western model of internet access, but I'd like to state that it doesn't come without its own set of problems.
- Shekelberg 8y ago
  > Russian disinformation campaign If you're concerned about the pocket change Russia spent on US election ads, you must be apoplectic over the massive amount of US campaign donations and media ownership by Israeli citizens. I assume you are not just using Russia to delegitimize your political opposition, and are genuinely concerned about foreign interference in US politics, so what do you propose we do about the Jewish problem?
- malvosenior 8y ago
  "Russian disinformation campaign could succeed there to the extent it did in the west?" What proof do you have that the Russians had a successful disinformation campaign in the west? I've seen none.
  - drhodes 8y ago
    people who have worked for russian troll farms have given interviews: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/curious-case-russian-flash-mob-west-palm-beach-cheesecake-factory https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/curious-case-russian-flash...
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      There's nothing in that interview that suggests any of this was effective (if it even happened at all). Even Correct The Record (Hillary's massive social media astro turf team), couldn't turn the election around for her and it was orders of magnitude larger than what is claimed the Russian's did in this podcast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record The fact is, despite all the media whinging, it turns out it's incredibly difficult if not impossible to brainwash an entire nation of people into voting for someone they wouldn't normally vote for.
      - drhodes 8y ago
        You're black and white on this. The entire nation of people doesn't need to be brainwashed. The world is gray. The dynamics of the election was changed. Did Putin elect Trump? It's impossible to say. Did Putin help elect Trump? Yes.
        JetSpiegel 8y ago
        Putin helped to elect Trump in the same way an ant riding an elephant remarks "Look at all the dust we are leaving behind". In the land of Citizens United and unlimited SuperPAC, the fake news factories barely register in the influence measurements. Now, having kompromat in both criminal terms and personal embarassement is another story, but that is a failing on the USA. The 'checks and balances' allowed a President compromised by a foreign power to last at least 2 years.
sbarre 8y ago
> There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perverse incentives to censor anything that might impact their advertising or other income. Give me a break. There is PLENTY of toxicity online, just like there is in real life. In fact the lack of accountability in the online world lets people get away with MORE toxicity than they would in the physical world. Yes, centralized/privatized control of the spaces in which we congregate and interact online is also a big problem, but it's a completely different problem. Solving one won't solve the other.
- nkkollaw 8y ago
  Online interactions don't need to be censored. They're already regulated by the same laws that apply to normal offline interactions. If it isn't illegal, it should stay where it is without being censored. Of course, any community can have an internal set of rules, but an universal filter that removes things automatically or doesn't let the user post them doesn't make any sense unless your goal is to censor unwanted speech.
  - sbarre 8y ago
    It's really not that black and white. You reduce this down to "censorship!" but really it's about creating and maintaining spaces where people are not feeling attacked or threatened. Imagine you live in NYC and you're in Central Park with your spouse, minding your own business and trying to have a conversation and someone walks up and starts shouting obscenities and insults at you and your spouse non-stop, for no reason. You don't know this person, you can't hear each other anymore, and if you try to walk away they just follow you and keep at it. (I'm using Central Park as a stand-in for whatever congregation space that people in a community will gravitate towards in order to feel connected to their community and participate in social interactions). I don't think most mature or adults would consider this acceptable behaviour, and in fact in most civil societies this actually _is_ illegal (in Canada it's called causing a public disturbance). But the above is basically the online experience for a lot of people (mostly women) today in large forums such as Twitter, Reddit and other places where a lot of our public discourse happens and where people want to join in and participate. Yet there are no consequences for these bad actors online who are effectively doing the same thing. There is nothing legitimate or defensible about trolling, brigading, bullying or harassment online. So spare me the "censorship" argument until you've got a suggestion about the "civility" problem first.
aurailious 8y ago
You don't seem to understand how moderation on reddit actually works. The admins have very little direct impact on it outside of the standard enforcement of spam blocking and illegal content. It is your "solution" of a diversity of standards. > There is nothing "toxic" about the internet There are quite a lot of terrible and toxic things on the internet. > Federation and peer to peer seem to be the only way forwards. Yes, one would hope the entire internet ends up like Tor. A place where you can buy drugs, hire hitman, and find child porn.
- scintill76 8y ago
  > The admins have very little direct impact on it outside of the standard enforcement of spam blocking and illegal content. /r/fatpeoplehate and /r/incels are admin-banned subs that weren't spam or illegal.
  - aurailious 8y ago
    I like how you interpreted "very little" as none, thanks. Nothing of any value was lost anyways as both of those subs were shitty toxic places. And I am pretty sure they were banned for their mods supporting the subs being used to harass people, which violates TOS.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - scintill76 8y ago
      So their effect is not little; it's at least as broad as illegal, spam, harassment, toxic, TOS violation.
    - superkuh 8y ago
      Another example is the reddit admins shutting down any subreddit that allows for discussion about digital rights managment. One prime example of this is r/printsf. If you try to discuss how to get your Amazon purchased ebook in a format that can be used with text to speech the local mods of the sub will ban you. This is because if they allow it the reddit admins will ban the sub. It isn't all direct reddit admin/corporate action. They put the onus on the subs to do their dirty work and enforce the corporate rules to protect their income and interests.
davidw 8y ago
> There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perverse incentives to censor anything that might impact their advertising or other income. Uh... there's plenty of toxicity on IRC, and there was plenty on Usenet too. So no, I don't think that's really the answer.
- tdb7893 8y ago
  Yeah, interestingly by far the least toxic place for me are Facebook and a personal Discord server where I know everyone in real life and I can curate who the people are.
  - davidw 8y ago
    Knowing people in real life is huge because it's a big disincentive to being a jerk to them even if you disagree. One of the things I kind of enjoy about local politics where I live is that it's a "repeated game". It's a small enough town that the other actors are people you'll encounter day to day and have to get along with, so even if you vehemently disagree with them, you need to keep it civil.
aksss 8y ago
I think what superkuh means is that it's the opinion of many that there's no problem to solve. Okay, there may be toxic comments/content, but that's a feature of the Internet, not a bug. Any solution to rid the Internet of toxicity would be worse than the disease itself. If you want a clean information age, go back to your public library.
schalab 8y ago
Maybe the solution for centralization is decoupling the data architecture and the interface. Like in the net neutrality debate everyone understands that the hardware providing bandwidth is separate from the websites which run on them. Lets take youtube for instance. Imagine if you had the choice of 10 different services which allow you to upload videos on them. Once the video is uploaded they provide a key to retrieve it. You can use this key now in any of 10 different video display sites to actually play the video to the end user. The video display sites provide the monetization and discovery services. The upload sites provide the bandwidth. This way you can migrate your videos whenever you want to a site which is more friendly to your type of content.

stone-monkey 8y ago

>There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perverse incentives to censor anything that might impact their advertising or other income. There are definitely other problems besides a centralized internet. Consider attacks by corporate and state level enemies in the form of astroturfing and fake news. Those issues existed outside of a centralized internet, and arguably can be addressed better by centralized access to information. Look at the great firewall of China: do you think the Russian disinformation campaign could succeed there to the extent it did in the west? Free access to the internet lowers the barrier for bad actors. Having said that, I obviously prefer the western model of internet access, but I'd like to state that it doesn't come without its own set of problems.

Shekelberg 8y ago
> Russian disinformation campaign If you're concerned about the pocket change Russia spent on US election ads, you must be apoplectic over the massive amount of US campaign donations and media ownership by Israeli citizens. I assume you are not just using Russia to delegitimize your political opposition, and are genuinely concerned about foreign interference in US politics, so what do you propose we do about the Jewish problem?
malvosenior 8y ago
"Russian disinformation campaign could succeed there to the extent it did in the west?" What proof do you have that the Russians had a successful disinformation campaign in the west? I've seen none.
- drhodes 8y ago
  people who have worked for russian troll farms have given interviews: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/curious-case-russian-flash-mob-west-palm-beach-cheesecake-factory https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/curious-case-russian-flash...
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    There's nothing in that interview that suggests any of this was effective (if it even happened at all). Even Correct The Record (Hillary's massive social media astro turf team), couldn't turn the election around for her and it was orders of magnitude larger than what is claimed the Russian's did in this podcast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record The fact is, despite all the media whinging, it turns out it's incredibly difficult if not impossible to brainwash an entire nation of people into voting for someone they wouldn't normally vote for.
    - drhodes 8y ago
      You're black and white on this. The entire nation of people doesn't need to be brainwashed. The world is gray. The dynamics of the election was changed. Did Putin elect Trump? It's impossible to say. Did Putin help elect Trump? Yes.
      - JetSpiegel 8y ago
        Putin helped to elect Trump in the same way an ant riding an elephant remarks "Look at all the dust we are leaving behind". In the land of Citizens United and unlimited SuperPAC, the fake news factories barely register in the influence measurements. Now, having kompromat in both criminal terms and personal embarassement is another story, but that is a failing on the USA. The 'checks and balances' allowed a President compromised by a foreign power to last at least 2 years.

sbarre 8y ago

> There is nothing "toxic" about the internet except for the centralization of communication on a handful of corporate controlled social networks that have perverse incentives to censor anything that might impact their advertising or other income. Give me a break. There is PLENTY of toxicity online, just like there is in real life. In fact the lack of accountability in the online world lets people get away with MORE toxicity than they would in the physical world. Yes, centralized/privatized control of the spaces in which we congregate and interact online is also a big problem, but it's a completely different problem. Solving one won't solve the other.

nkkollaw 8y ago
Online interactions don't need to be censored. They're already regulated by the same laws that apply to normal offline interactions. If it isn't illegal, it should stay where it is without being censored. Of course, any community can have an internal set of rules, but an universal filter that removes things automatically or doesn't let the user post them doesn't make any sense unless your goal is to censor unwanted speech.
- sbarre 8y ago
  It's really not that black and white. You reduce this down to "censorship!" but really it's about creating and maintaining spaces where people are not feeling attacked or threatened. Imagine you live in NYC and you're in Central Park with your spouse, minding your own business and trying to have a conversation and someone walks up and starts shouting obscenities and insults at you and your spouse non-stop, for no reason. You don't know this person, you can't hear each other anymore, and if you try to walk away they just follow you and keep at it. (I'm using Central Park as a stand-in for whatever congregation space that people in a community will gravitate towards in order to feel connected to their community and participate in social interactions). I don't think most mature or adults would consider this acceptable behaviour, and in fact in most civil societies this actually _is_ illegal (in Canada it's called causing a public disturbance). But the above is basically the online experience for a lot of people (mostly women) today in large forums such as Twitter, Reddit and other places where a lot of our public discourse happens and where people want to join in and participate. Yet there are no consequences for these bad actors online who are effectively doing the same thing. There is nothing legitimate or defensible about trolling, brigading, bullying or harassment online. So spare me the "censorship" argument until you've got a suggestion about the "civility" problem first.

aurailious 8y ago

You don't seem to understand how moderation on reddit actually works. The admins have very little direct impact on it outside of the standard enforcement of spam blocking and illegal content. It is your "solution" of a diversity of standards. > There is nothing "toxic" about the internet There are quite a lot of terrible and toxic things on the internet. > Federation and peer to peer seem to be the only way forwards. Yes, one would hope the entire internet ends up like Tor. A place where you can buy drugs, hire hitman, and find child porn.

scintill76 8y ago
> The admins have very little direct impact on it outside of the standard enforcement of spam blocking and illegal content. /r/fatpeoplehate and /r/incels are admin-banned subs that weren't spam or illegal.
- aurailious 8y ago
  I like how you interpreted "very little" as none, thanks. Nothing of any value was lost anyways as both of those subs were shitty toxic places. And I am pretty sure they were banned for their mods supporting the subs being used to harass people, which violates TOS.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - scintill76 8y ago
    So their effect is not little; it's at least as broad as illegal, spam, harassment, toxic, TOS violation.
  - superkuh 8y ago
    Another example is the reddit admins shutting down any subreddit that allows for discussion about digital rights managment. One prime example of this is r/printsf. If you try to discuss how to get your Amazon purchased ebook in a format that can be used with text to speech the local mods of the sub will ban you. This is because if they allow it the reddit admins will ban the sub. It isn't all direct reddit admin/corporate action. They put the onus on the subs to do their dirty work and enforce the corporate rules to protect their income and interests.

davidw 8y ago

tdb7893 8y ago
Yeah, interestingly by far the least toxic place for me are Facebook and a personal Discord server where I know everyone in real life and I can curate who the people are.
- davidw 8y ago
  Knowing people in real life is huge because it's a big disincentive to being a jerk to them even if you disagree. One of the things I kind of enjoy about local politics where I live is that it's a "repeated game". It's a small enough town that the other actors are people you'll encounter day to day and have to get along with, so even if you vehemently disagree with them, you need to keep it civil.

aksss 8y ago

I think what superkuh means is that it's the opinion of many that there's no problem to solve. Okay, there may be toxic comments/content, but that's a feature of the Internet, not a bug. Any solution to rid the Internet of toxicity would be worse than the disease itself. If you want a clean information age, go back to your public library.

schalab 8y ago

Maybe the solution for centralization is decoupling the data architecture and the interface. Like in the net neutrality debate everyone understands that the hardware providing bandwidth is separate from the websites which run on them. Lets take youtube for instance. Imagine if you had the choice of 10 different services which allow you to upload videos on them. Once the video is uploaded they provide a key to retrieve it. You can use this key now in any of 10 different video display sites to actually play the video to the end user. The video display sites provide the monetization and discovery services. The upload sites provide the bandwidth. This way you can migrate your videos whenever you want to a site which is more friendly to your type of content.