9 ms·

Instagram's War on Bullying

43 points by jbredeche 7y ago

cookieswumchorr 7y ago
the case described had nothing to do with the victims account on any specific platform, it was people misusing his picture for lulz. If banned on instagram they could have continued anywhere else.
- mffnbs 7y ago
  This logic doesn't give facebook a free pass to allow bullying to take place on their platforms.
  - hrobok 7y ago
    should public parks be on the hook for bullying on their grounds? should we have AI-enabled camera drones patrolling at all hours?
- lawlessone 7y ago
  >If banned on instagram they could have continued anywhere else. They could, but it wouldn't be instagrams problem then.
  - mrweasel 7y ago
    But that's a really weird way of looking at the problem, unless you're Instagram. Continuously closing accounts, blocking content and reporting bullying isn't fixing anything. In some cases I get the feeling that it will make the problem worse. We want to stop the bullying, not simply remove the evidence of it. Instagram can't prevent bullying, they can only hide parts of it.
    - pavel_lishin 7y ago
      > Instagram can't prevent bullying, they can only hide parts of it. But they can take steps to mitigate it on their platform. If you're doing your best and genuinely helping solve the problem on your platform, then you can say to kids, "hey - come hang out on this platform. It's a safer place. This is a place where you can socialize with less risk than other places." That's good for the kids, and for the platform. Arguing against is like saying, "My kid gets bullied, but why should I only solve the problem for him?"
      - filoleg 7y ago
        >Arguing against is like saying, "My kid gets bullied, but why should I only solve the problem for him?" That's not what it is like at all, though. I would say your approach is more similar to "my kid is being bullied at a local community pool, so instead of trying to address the bullying issue occurring to my kid directly, I will simply try to institute a bunch of rules to make that local pool a 'bully-free zone'".
        pavel_lishin 7y ago
        > I will simply try to institute a bunch of rules to make that local pool a 'bully-free zone' That sounds like a great idea for a pool to implement, and I would feel better about taking my kid there vs. the local arcade that just shrugged their shoulders and said "what do you want, if they don't get bullied here, they'll get bullied elsewhere."
        mrweasel 7y ago
        But that rule would be: No one is allowed in the pool, ever.
        pavel_lishin 7y ago
        By that logic, you should tell dang to stop moderating HN, no?
raxxorrax 7y ago
If you do not want anybody to have the possibility to make fun of your picture, don't upload it to the internet. I wonder if Instagram would pay me for this ingenious solution.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  The second sentence of TFA says someone else was taking and uploading pictures of him. Keep brainstorming!
  - devit 7y ago
    The solution is to fix the school system so that people are not forced to stay with a bunch of classmates they didn't choose and not prevented to do what they would really like to do in life, resulting in activities like this as a replacement.
    - rectang 7y ago
      In the US, the doctrine of "separate but equal" was resoundingly rejected in Brown vs. Board of Education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal The persecuted should not have to live life on the run, fleeing from one ever-shrinking, insecure refuge to another. Instead, we hold victimizers responsible for the problems they cause, and insist on fixing those problems at the source.
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        It’s basically impossible to expel children with anything resembling a colourable legal case from the education system. That’s what the right to education means in practice. The rights of the disruptive and abusive to education do interfere with actual education but it has limited effect on school’s primary purpose, child storage during the working day.
      - devit 7y ago
        Yeah, in normal adult social circles if you behave like an asshole you get ignored and if you force others to put up with you you get kicked out and police is called if you refuse. If the social circle you are in doesn't kick assholes you find another one. But in school someone can just terrorize everyone else with impunity because people are usually not expelled, you can't easily choose a school that expels people and the abusers don't care about being ostracized or potentially expelled because they don't care about being in school in the first place.
close04 7y ago
>Go after bullying too aggressively and risk alienating users with stricter rules and moderation that feels intrusive at a time when the company is a bright spot of growth for Facebook. Don’t do enough, especially after promising to set new standards for the industry, and risk accusations of placing profits over the protection of kids Seems these days the second option is always the preferred one. It's easier to ask forgiveness (and make money while you do) than it is to get permission.
- dexen 7y ago
  >Seems these days the second option is always the preferred one. Not on the internet, no. The 2/4/8/whatever-chans are alive and kicking. Ditto the good old IRC. There's plenty of other services that are more rough-and-tumble than milktoasty. Any of the new social media like Mastodon, Minds, BitChute have rather hands-off moderation - any lawfull content has rather good chances of staying there undisturbed. The difference is one of perception - namely, which ones get favorable opinions in the media as family safe, and which ones get condemned as the seedy, scary underbelly.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    Chans are seen as integration tests for censorship. I doubt media has that much influence on platform choice today.
  - 1337biz 7y ago
    > Not on the internet, no. The 2/4/8/whatever-chans are alive and kicking. These places are almost like art. Fully dependent on the goodwill of a handful of patrons that regard them as valuable while many would prefer to see them dissapear.
    - stronglikedan 7y ago
      > many would prefer to see them dissapear. I don't think it's as many as some think. A lot of this censorship banter comes from a very vocal minority who appear to be a majority only in their own minds.
mrweasel 7y ago
While I understand the desire to have Instagram, and others, police their sites to prevent bullying, I also think it's pointless to a large extend. The head of Instagrams public policy is very correct when she states: Teens are exceptionally creative. Assholes and bullies have always existed, 25 years ago at least you had a respite at home after school, but now social media makes victims available 24-7. Not to sound defeatist, but I don't think social media can exist while preventing bullying. For the victims it's binary, either they're being bullied or they're not, so social media needs to prevent 100% for bullying and that is not going to happen, people will always find a way to be assholes. In my mind the effort is misplaced, at least for teenagers who often know the bully. It's the schools and parents that need to take action, not some random faceless US corporation. For 100% online bullying... I don't think there's away around that. You can try to reduce the amount, but you won't be able to eliminate it.
- dtech 7y ago
  I do not agree with your assertion. Bullying is similar to spam and other unwanted messages. You can never get 100% protection, but you can get pretty far. Things like Whatsapp not giving you a way to prevent you from being added to a group (until very recently) are fixable. Victims could not even prevent themselves from being constantly added to the "Jimmy go kill yourself" group. If I translate your post to spam filtering all efforts there are useless and everyone should disable their spam filters, because either you receive spam or you don't.
  - kabwj 7y ago
    >Victims could not even prevent themselves from being constantly added to the "Jimmy go kill yourself" group. What’s the difference between inviting Jimmy to that group and just messaging him in private asking him to kill himself? Seems like a pointless feature. (Let’s remember that users you’ve blocked could never add you to groups.)
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Bullies then figure out how to make new unblocked accounts, stalk you around the internet on other services and spam you there. I think we need to address bullies directly, figure out their reasoning and help to resolve those issues. Problem is few actually do get addressed long before it's too late.
ab_c 7y ago
Not sure why people are suggesting shadow-banning doesn't work. Shadow bans have existed for a long time, already. Message forums and MMOs have used this method to deal with toxic community members and it has already shown to be successful. The way they measure the decrease in toxicity is based on support tickets. When organizations implement this feature, a reduction in complaints means they don't require as much support staff to deal with it. It saves them money. The logic behind it is simple: Toxic community members want a voice to be heard. This method sends players the message that if you post something offensive or unwelcomed, it'll be voted down and no one will see it.

43 points by jbredeche 7y ago

the case described had nothing to do with the victims account on any specific platform, it was people misusing his picture for lulz. If banned on instagram they could have continued anywhere else.

mffnbs 7y ago
This logic doesn't give facebook a free pass to allow bullying to take place on their platforms.
- hrobok 7y ago
  should public parks be on the hook for bullying on their grounds? should we have AI-enabled camera drones patrolling at all hours?
lawlessone 7y ago
>If banned on instagram they could have continued anywhere else. They could, but it wouldn't be instagrams problem then.
- mrweasel 7y ago
  But that's a really weird way of looking at the problem, unless you're Instagram. Continuously closing accounts, blocking content and reporting bullying isn't fixing anything. In some cases I get the feeling that it will make the problem worse. We want to stop the bullying, not simply remove the evidence of it. Instagram can't prevent bullying, they can only hide parts of it.
  - pavel_lishin 7y ago
    > Instagram can't prevent bullying, they can only hide parts of it. But they can take steps to mitigate it on their platform. If you're doing your best and genuinely helping solve the problem on your platform, then you can say to kids, "hey - come hang out on this platform. It's a safer place. This is a place where you can socialize with less risk than other places." That's good for the kids, and for the platform. Arguing against is like saying, "My kid gets bullied, but why should I only solve the problem for him?"
    - filoleg 7y ago
      >Arguing against is like saying, "My kid gets bullied, but why should I only solve the problem for him?" That's not what it is like at all, though. I would say your approach is more similar to "my kid is being bullied at a local community pool, so instead of trying to address the bullying issue occurring to my kid directly, I will simply try to institute a bunch of rules to make that local pool a 'bully-free zone'".
      - pavel_lishin 7y ago
        > I will simply try to institute a bunch of rules to make that local pool a 'bully-free zone' That sounds like a great idea for a pool to implement, and I would feel better about taking my kid there vs. the local arcade that just shrugged their shoulders and said "what do you want, if they don't get bullied here, they'll get bullied elsewhere."
        mrweasel 7y ago
        But that rule would be: No one is allowed in the pool, ever.
        pavel_lishin 7y ago
        By that logic, you should tell dang to stop moderating HN, no?

raxxorrax 7y ago

If you do not want anybody to have the possibility to make fun of your picture, don't upload it to the internet. I wonder if Instagram would pay me for this ingenious solution.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
The second sentence of TFA says someone else was taking and uploading pictures of him. Keep brainstorming!
- devit 7y ago
  The solution is to fix the school system so that people are not forced to stay with a bunch of classmates they didn't choose and not prevented to do what they would really like to do in life, resulting in activities like this as a replacement.
  - rectang 7y ago
    In the US, the doctrine of "separate but equal" was resoundingly rejected in Brown vs. Board of Education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal The persecuted should not have to live life on the run, fleeing from one ever-shrinking, insecure refuge to another. Instead, we hold victimizers responsible for the problems they cause, and insist on fixing those problems at the source.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      It’s basically impossible to expel children with anything resembling a colourable legal case from the education system. That’s what the right to education means in practice. The rights of the disruptive and abusive to education do interfere with actual education but it has limited effect on school’s primary purpose, child storage during the working day.
    - devit 7y ago
      Yeah, in normal adult social circles if you behave like an asshole you get ignored and if you force others to put up with you you get kicked out and police is called if you refuse. If the social circle you are in doesn't kick assholes you find another one. But in school someone can just terrorize everyone else with impunity because people are usually not expelled, you can't easily choose a school that expels people and the abusers don't care about being ostracized or potentially expelled because they don't care about being in school in the first place.

close04 7y ago

>Go after bullying too aggressively and risk alienating users with stricter rules and moderation that feels intrusive at a time when the company is a bright spot of growth for Facebook. Don’t do enough, especially after promising to set new standards for the industry, and risk accusations of placing profits over the protection of kids Seems these days the second option is always the preferred one. It's easier to ask forgiveness (and make money while you do) than it is to get permission.

dexen 7y ago
>Seems these days the second option is always the preferred one. Not on the internet, no. The 2/4/8/whatever-chans are alive and kicking. Ditto the good old IRC. There's plenty of other services that are more rough-and-tumble than milktoasty. Any of the new social media like Mastodon, Minds, BitChute have rather hands-off moderation - any lawfull content has rather good chances of staying there undisturbed. The difference is one of perception - namely, which ones get favorable opinions in the media as family safe, and which ones get condemned as the seedy, scary underbelly.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Chans are seen as integration tests for censorship. I doubt media has that much influence on platform choice today.
- 1337biz 7y ago
  > Not on the internet, no. The 2/4/8/whatever-chans are alive and kicking. These places are almost like art. Fully dependent on the goodwill of a handful of patrons that regard them as valuable while many would prefer to see them dissapear.
  - stronglikedan 7y ago
    > many would prefer to see them dissapear. I don't think it's as many as some think. A lot of this censorship banter comes from a very vocal minority who appear to be a majority only in their own minds.

mrweasel 7y ago

While I understand the desire to have Instagram, and others, police their sites to prevent bullying, I also think it's pointless to a large extend. The head of Instagrams public policy is very correct when she states: Teens are exceptionally creative. Assholes and bullies have always existed, 25 years ago at least you had a respite at home after school, but now social media makes victims available 24-7. Not to sound defeatist, but I don't think social media can exist while preventing bullying. For the victims it's binary, either they're being bullied or they're not, so social media needs to prevent 100% for bullying and that is not going to happen, people will always find a way to be assholes. In my mind the effort is misplaced, at least for teenagers who often know the bully. It's the schools and parents that need to take action, not some random faceless US corporation. For 100% online bullying... I don't think there's away around that. You can try to reduce the amount, but you won't be able to eliminate it.

dtech 7y ago
I do not agree with your assertion. Bullying is similar to spam and other unwanted messages. You can never get 100% protection, but you can get pretty far. Things like Whatsapp not giving you a way to prevent you from being added to a group (until very recently) are fixable. Victims could not even prevent themselves from being constantly added to the "Jimmy go kill yourself" group. If I translate your post to spam filtering all efforts there are useless and everyone should disable their spam filters, because either you receive spam or you don't.
- kabwj 7y ago
  >Victims could not even prevent themselves from being constantly added to the "Jimmy go kill yourself" group. What’s the difference between inviting Jimmy to that group and just messaging him in private asking him to kill himself? Seems like a pointless feature. (Let’s remember that users you’ve blocked could never add you to groups.)
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Bullies then figure out how to make new unblocked accounts, stalk you around the internet on other services and spam you there. I think we need to address bullies directly, figure out their reasoning and help to resolve those issues. Problem is few actually do get addressed long before it's too late.

ab_c 7y ago

Not sure why people are suggesting shadow-banning doesn't work. Shadow bans have existed for a long time, already. Message forums and MMOs have used this method to deal with toxic community members and it has already shown to be successful. The way they measure the decrease in toxicity is based on support tickets. When organizations implement this feature, a reduction in complaints means they don't require as much support staff to deal with it. It saves them money. The logic behind it is simple: Toxic community members want a voice to be heard. This method sends players the message that if you post something offensive or unwelcomed, it'll be voted down and no one will see it.