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This goes beyond trust, I think. The social structures of Internet communities are very different from those those in real life, and I'm highly disturbed when p

This goes beyond trust, I think. The social structures of Internet communities are very different from those those in real life, and I'm highly disturbed when people try to transplant IRL social norms to the Internet thoughtlessly. This is where we get bone-headed ideas like the real-names policy for "the Internet". Now, I am not discounting that there is actually toxic, horrific harassment that goes on the Internet. Doxxing and things like it are terrible and should never happen. Rather, I'm arguing that people need to acquire a sort of "street smarts" when navigating the Internet. Much like when you travel to a foreign country, you may expect a different culture with different norms, so it is the same with the Internet. What's rude in one culture is simply social convention in another. What is casual conversation in one is taboo in another. I spent a lot of time on the Internet growing up and I feel like I have been inoculated against the worst parts of the Internet, but at times it feels like many people haven't. A good example of this is how a lot of people and media take 4chan posts at face value, without realizing that a lot of it is completely self-aware and that the worst posts are almost always a game of who can post the most needlessly offensive thing possible. A lot of 4chan is an exercise is communication with no names and no filter. And yet some of my most informative conversations have been on 4chan precisely because there is no politeness filter, and posters can be as devastating critical as they want. But a reader also needs to learn how to tune in and out, correspondingly discount and read between the lines to get the most out of 4chan conversation, otherwise you simply come away with the idea that the community hates everything and everyone. For a more tame example, I follow a couple of Twitch streamers. For example, for streamer A, most communication with their chat is saccharine and supportive. But for streamer B, the chat makes fun off and insults him the whole way especially he makes a mistake, and the streamer, and the streamer gives as good as he gets and makes fun of the chat the whole time too. And this is normal and fun engagement for all parties. From afar, streamer B's community looks extremely toxic, but that's the furthest thing from the truth. (What is abhorrent is when you take streamer B's chat behavior into streamer A's chat, and that is frowned upon by all parties.) I believe that Internet activity should be diverse. There should be places where communication is an extension of real life (Facebook, emails), places of semi-anonymous and professional communication (Hacker News, certain subreddits/slack communitiees/GitHub), and then places where you should be able to go hogwild with whatever you want to say (fun subreddits, discord). Twitter is unfortunately one of those places that has had all of these mixed together, which is why I decided to have multiple Twitter accounts targeting professional/personal hobby communication. From what I hear, kids are already tuning to this idea, with things like public/private instagram accounts. The Internet is not all the same, and that's great. The Internet is not just real life, and that's great.

clhodapp 7y ago
A serious problem with the "let the people live in their own worlds" attitude is that many communities do not stay in their realms. You allude to this a little but, in my opinion, it's not a minor problem to be glossed over, it's the core of the trust issue: any online community that doesn't keep itself small and insular (and enforce this with sufficient opsec) is at risk of being invaded and exploited (for lulz, for cash, or for political manipulation).
- arugulum 7y ago
  I absolutely agree. Invasions are bad, crossing "community" boundaries is. I think that's also part of the "Internet Etiquette" to be learnt: what happens in one domain of the Internet should stay in that domain of the Internet. You don't bring your mischievous trolling behavior from Discord to Facebook, but you also don't bring your "comfortable-space" standards from a support group forum to a video game forum. I acknowledge your argument that "diverse worlds" system may not be sustainable over time because it is unstable, particularly to new entrants who do have to learn the local lingo. I personally disagree, and would argue instead that that's something Internet users should learn to deal with. We've long had the solution for this: good moderation. You can have hyper-extensive moderation like r/askhistorians or Facebook support groups, you can have moderate moderation for spam and the like for things like generic hobby groups, and then you can have light moderation for spaces deliberately made for that. From heavy to light moderation, the burden shifts from the moderator to the user. Different Internet spaces should have different arrangements like this. While this solution may not be perfect, I argue that this is what works. I put this in contrast to another prevailing idea that all spaces should be like IRL (because that has maximal accountability and requires no context switching), and I argue that that's what will diminish the diversity and dynamism of the Internet. I would further add a key ingredient to making this world is the tools provided by the platform to perform this moderation. That's one reason why Twitter, for all the good content it has, is also a mess, because there's no limit of cross-pollination of communities. Contrast this to, say, Reddit, which gives subreddit moderators significant powers to curate and protect their communities.
Nursie 7y ago
> A good example of this is how a lot of people and media take 4chan posts at face value, without realizing that a lot of it is completely self-aware But a lot of it is not, and a fair number of people do become indoctrinated to alt-right ways of thinking through that sort of medium, some of them going as far as murder. I'm not saying "Ban this sick filth!" but I am increasingly of the opinion that such places shouldn't just be left to fester, because the genuinely twisted do go there, and they recruit, and that has real world consequences.

clhodapp 7y ago

A serious problem with the "let the people live in their own worlds" attitude is that many communities do not stay in their realms. You allude to this a little but, in my opinion, it's not a minor problem to be glossed over, it's the core of the trust issue: any online community that doesn't keep itself small and insular (and enforce this with sufficient opsec) is at risk of being invaded and exploited (for lulz, for cash, or for political manipulation).

arugulum 7y ago
I absolutely agree. Invasions are bad, crossing "community" boundaries is. I think that's also part of the "Internet Etiquette" to be learnt: what happens in one domain of the Internet should stay in that domain of the Internet. You don't bring your mischievous trolling behavior from Discord to Facebook, but you also don't bring your "comfortable-space" standards from a support group forum to a video game forum. I acknowledge your argument that "diverse worlds" system may not be sustainable over time because it is unstable, particularly to new entrants who do have to learn the local lingo. I personally disagree, and would argue instead that that's something Internet users should learn to deal with. We've long had the solution for this: good moderation. You can have hyper-extensive moderation like r/askhistorians or Facebook support groups, you can have moderate moderation for spam and the like for things like generic hobby groups, and then you can have light moderation for spaces deliberately made for that. From heavy to light moderation, the burden shifts from the moderator to the user. Different Internet spaces should have different arrangements like this. While this solution may not be perfect, I argue that this is what works. I put this in contrast to another prevailing idea that all spaces should be like IRL (because that has maximal accountability and requires no context switching), and I argue that that's what will diminish the diversity and dynamism of the Internet. I would further add a key ingredient to making this world is the tools provided by the platform to perform this moderation. That's one reason why Twitter, for all the good content it has, is also a mess, because there's no limit of cross-pollination of communities. Contrast this to, say, Reddit, which gives subreddit moderators significant powers to curate and protect their communities.

Nursie 7y ago

> A good example of this is how a lot of people and media take 4chan posts at face value, without realizing that a lot of it is completely self-aware But a lot of it is not, and a fair number of people do become indoctrinated to alt-right ways of thinking through that sort of medium, some of them going as far as murder. I'm not saying "Ban this sick filth!" but I am increasingly of the opinion that such places shouldn't just be left to fester, because the genuinely twisted do go there, and they recruit, and that has real world consequences.