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How will you avoid- > John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory was proposed in the Penny Arcade (web comic) on March 19, 2004 by Mike Krahulik and Jerry

How will you avoid- > John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory was proposed in the Penny Arcade (web comic) on March 19, 2004 by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. It says that when a normal person is allowed anonymity and an audience, they lose social inhibitions and act inappropriately. If anything, the last decade has taught us the immutability of this law. Usernames and comment history seem to help somewhat with people acting accountable for their actions. Total anonymity seems to always lead to a cesspool like 4chan.

paulcole 7y ago
Yep just check out my comment history if you don’t believe it.
dontbenebby 7y ago
I think people are more toxic in private even if they're now willing to be semi-toxic in public. I say this as someone who was very good at research back when people didn't understand stuff like not using the same handle across sites, not using same email across sites, not giving out so much info the property of intersection narrows them down... it's amazing to see someone's public and what they think are private thoughts and how they contrast. I've kind of given up on total anonymity when saying anything of substance given advances in stylometry - anonymous receiving is solved, but speaking seems the real challenge.
aeneasmackenzie 7y ago
This is limited: what about all the people who like the unique community that formed on anonymous imageboards? There's no posturing or attempts to build a reputation. You just throw out your piece and it stands alone.
- cc-d 7y ago
  Agreed. With psuedoanonymous sites like reddit it's trivial to be anonymous anyway by rotating alt-accounts. This just streamlines the process.
djsumdog 7y ago
Be careful if you're at work. There's already porn on this thing in some of the Imgur links. I miss the late 90s when you had a lot of small, independent websites. Sure there was always a war against spammers and scripts, but I feel like you could find more independent content from individuals instead of these big link aggregation platforms (remember web-rings?) There is more to think about today when making something that hosts other's content (or links to that content). I'm surprised ActivityPub networks (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.) haven't had more issues with spam and bad actors. When starting a project like this, I think a few small things authors should consider right off the bat: implement some Captcha (preferably an open source implementation that's not Google mandated tracking, if you can find something decent), for at least account creation .. maybe posts too. I'm not sure what Lobsters uses for spam testing/filtering, but it'd be worth looking at that and other projects for any quick solutions. Prismo (https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo) also comes to mind.
- mehhh 7y ago
  Hosts of ActivityPub based platforms have all kinds of troubles with users and instances that are abusive and/or datamining. Thing is, the instances are generally small and good admins communicate, dropping known abusive IPs and reaching out to server hosts when abusive instances violate local laws like the CFAA.
- cc-d 7y ago
  Captcha option has been implemented since before release, just disabled.It is enabled now. Content marked as "nsfw" will not show up in the default index page, and nsfw posts in sfw subs will have the thumbnail hidden. This was 'resubmitted' here when I was sleeping. I woke up to a site I left misconfigured being flooded with people lol.
- busymom0 7y ago
  Lobsters is invite only (last I checked) so that prevents spam.
- zaarn 7y ago
  Most Masto/Pleroma instances are too small to be worth the trouble. I get about 1-2 spam bots signing up per week, usually deleted automatically or within 1 hour of signing up (longer if all the admins are sleeping). Small instances that don't do anything about spam usually get defederated fairly quickly. With the way federation works, your reach is very unpredictable and you need to attach to very large instances if you want to have any effect. And large instances have more moderators to more quickly handle them. Per-user mastodon probably has more moderators/administrators than comparable services (twitter), so it's a bit more clean.
cc-d 7y ago
Internet fuckwads are fine as long as they stay limited to their own communities. What you and I deem a 'fuckwad' will vary greatly. While somebody spamming 'hitler did nothing wrong' is certainly a fuckwad, it is only an issue which this fuckwadry is exposed to those who were not expressively looking for it. I see zero issues in fuckwads congregating if they stick to themselves.
- dlp211 7y ago
  The issue is they never do.
  - Y_Y 7y ago
    That seems like a selection bias. You never see the ones who keep to themselves.
    - dlp211 7y ago
      It doesn't matter if some of them keep to themselves. What matters is that those communities continuously spill out and if that has detrimental effects. I contend that they do and they have. In addition to that, allowing those communities to exist legitimizes them and allows them to recruit impressionable people. The combination of these two things lead to things like gamergate and "doing it for the lulz" and ends with things like the march in Charlottesville and the El Paso shooting.
- fragmede 7y ago
  We're someone else's fuckwads. We all hope the troll spewing "Hitler did nothing wrong" learns better somehow, but there isn't a quick and effective "somehow". The Internet enables us to connect with people all over the world, or at least the English-speaking world, but all we've constructed is more echoey echo chambers. Fuckwads sticking together is how we got to the current state of politics. Someday, someone smart is going to figure out how to do better than deleting/hiding fuckwads' comments and giving them their own echo chamber. It's the best solution we have now, but it's a pretty bad one.
jancsika 7y ago
> If anything, the last decade has taught us the immutability of this law. Or equally likely-- there are a tiny fraction of bona fide users who act moderately anti-social on the net when granted anonymity, just as they would in real life. It's just that forums with no little to no publishing friction allow those people to do 100x damage compared to what they could get away with in real life. Add to that: * corporate-sponsored trolls doing 1000x damage compared to real life * nation-state trolls doing 10000x damage compared to real life That's how you get that inimitable Reddit charm of watching an entire thread on geopolitics seem to change its hive mind as the mods manually strip out all the astroturf over the course of an hour.
- atoav 7y ago
  I don’t know, there seem to be various levels of anonymity with different social implications. Let’s roughly differenciate between: 1. Full Anonymity (no way to differenciate between user A and B except by the content) 2. Anonymous Pseudonymity (Users can take usernames, but they don’t mean a lot because they can be changed fast and there is no per user post history) 3. Accountbuilding Pseudonymity (Users usually stick to their accounts, Per user post history or karma is visible and meaningful) 4. Mandatory Real Names (on top of the stuff in point 3 you also have to use your real name - but face no consequences if you make something up) 5. Enforced Real Names (same as point 4, but the service provider has to check your identity) Positive effects of mandatory real name policies could never been proven — as far as I know they haven’t improved civility e.g. on facebook. I believe the secret lies more in the feedback systems and how easy it is to flip or flop your position away from what you historically said. It helps if all community interactions or rules are clear and minimalistic instead of arbitrary and arcane. All of this together weakens or strengthens the impact of the kind of user you mentioned. So in short: the emergent culture on really bad image boards is also part of their systemic design, just like it is with hn, facebook, instagram and any other online plattform. I think the type mentioned in point 3 (accountbuilding) paired with clever measures to keep the aims of the community aligned help a lot.
  - jancsika 7y ago
    You're coupling registration process with posting process. What evidence is there that a fully anonymous image board writable by Debian maintainers would follow this so-called "law?"
taosx 7y ago
Register user but don't show any identifiers when they post. They can speak freely as the user can be anonymous but their data is still stored somewhere so they can't act without any thoughts.
Vinnl 7y ago
Haven't we by now found out that in reality, it's really only an audience that is needed? There are many inappropriate comments posted on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter posted using people's real names. And also, of course, it just holds for some otherwise apparently normal persons.
iliketocomplain 7y ago
That's a good thing, it's called free speech and no censorship.
vharuck 7y ago
>Total anonymity seems to always lead to a cesspool like 4chan. 4chan is a collection of boards, and not all of them are cesspools. The ones focused on niche hobbies tend to fare better. Of course, abrasive discussion is still common. But one man's cesspool is another man's hot spring.
- calcifer 7y ago
  > But one man's cesspool is another man's hot spring. A cesspit is still a cesspit even if some people choose to call it a hot spring.
  - johnisgood 7y ago
    X is a cesspit to you, and X is a hot spring to someone else. Why would your perspective be the superior or the ultimate one?
slavik81 7y ago
Penny Arcade was complaining about people on Unreal Tournament 2004, which was pseudonymous. The real driver of toxicity was the hyper-competitive nature of the game he was playing. You should see how some people act in real life playing hockey or soccer. Everybody knows their real names, but that doesn't stop them from being assholes.

paulcole 7y ago

Yep just check out my comment history if you don’t believe it.

dontbenebby 7y ago

I think people are more toxic in private even if they're now willing to be semi-toxic in public. I say this as someone who was very good at research back when people didn't understand stuff like not using the same handle across sites, not using same email across sites, not giving out so much info the property of intersection narrows them down... it's amazing to see someone's public and what they think are private thoughts and how they contrast. I've kind of given up on total anonymity when saying anything of substance given advances in stylometry - anonymous receiving is solved, but speaking seems the real challenge.

aeneasmackenzie 7y ago

This is limited: what about all the people who like the unique community that formed on anonymous imageboards? There's no posturing or attempts to build a reputation. You just throw out your piece and it stands alone.

cc-d 7y ago
Agreed. With psuedoanonymous sites like reddit it's trivial to be anonymous anyway by rotating alt-accounts. This just streamlines the process.

djsumdog 7y ago

Be careful if you're at work. There's already porn on this thing in some of the Imgur links. I miss the late 90s when you had a lot of small, independent websites. Sure there was always a war against spammers and scripts, but I feel like you could find more independent content from individuals instead of these big link aggregation platforms (remember web-rings?) There is more to think about today when making something that hosts other's content (or links to that content). I'm surprised ActivityPub networks (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.) haven't had more issues with spam and bad actors. When starting a project like this, I think a few small things authors should consider right off the bat: implement some Captcha (preferably an open source implementation that's not Google mandated tracking, if you can find something decent), for at least account creation .. maybe posts too. I'm not sure what Lobsters uses for spam testing/filtering, but it'd be worth looking at that and other projects for any quick solutions. Prismo (https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo) also comes to mind.

mehhh 7y ago
Hosts of ActivityPub based platforms have all kinds of troubles with users and instances that are abusive and/or datamining. Thing is, the instances are generally small and good admins communicate, dropping known abusive IPs and reaching out to server hosts when abusive instances violate local laws like the CFAA.
cc-d 7y ago
Captcha option has been implemented since before release, just disabled.It is enabled now. Content marked as "nsfw" will not show up in the default index page, and nsfw posts in sfw subs will have the thumbnail hidden. This was 'resubmitted' here when I was sleeping. I woke up to a site I left misconfigured being flooded with people lol.
busymom0 7y ago
Lobsters is invite only (last I checked) so that prevents spam.
zaarn 7y ago
Most Masto/Pleroma instances are too small to be worth the trouble. I get about 1-2 spam bots signing up per week, usually deleted automatically or within 1 hour of signing up (longer if all the admins are sleeping). Small instances that don't do anything about spam usually get defederated fairly quickly. With the way federation works, your reach is very unpredictable and you need to attach to very large instances if you want to have any effect. And large instances have more moderators to more quickly handle them. Per-user mastodon probably has more moderators/administrators than comparable services (twitter), so it's a bit more clean.

cc-d 7y ago

Internet fuckwads are fine as long as they stay limited to their own communities. What you and I deem a 'fuckwad' will vary greatly. While somebody spamming 'hitler did nothing wrong' is certainly a fuckwad, it is only an issue which this fuckwadry is exposed to those who were not expressively looking for it. I see zero issues in fuckwads congregating if they stick to themselves.

dlp211 7y ago
The issue is they never do.
- Y_Y 7y ago
  That seems like a selection bias. You never see the ones who keep to themselves.
  - dlp211 7y ago
    It doesn't matter if some of them keep to themselves. What matters is that those communities continuously spill out and if that has detrimental effects. I contend that they do and they have. In addition to that, allowing those communities to exist legitimizes them and allows them to recruit impressionable people. The combination of these two things lead to things like gamergate and "doing it for the lulz" and ends with things like the march in Charlottesville and the El Paso shooting.
fragmede 7y ago
We're someone else's fuckwads. We all hope the troll spewing "Hitler did nothing wrong" learns better somehow, but there isn't a quick and effective "somehow". The Internet enables us to connect with people all over the world, or at least the English-speaking world, but all we've constructed is more echoey echo chambers. Fuckwads sticking together is how we got to the current state of politics. Someday, someone smart is going to figure out how to do better than deleting/hiding fuckwads' comments and giving them their own echo chamber. It's the best solution we have now, but it's a pretty bad one.

jancsika 7y ago

> If anything, the last decade has taught us the immutability of this law. Or equally likely-- there are a tiny fraction of bona fide users who act moderately anti-social on the net when granted anonymity, just as they would in real life. It's just that forums with no little to no publishing friction allow those people to do 100x damage compared to what they could get away with in real life. Add to that: * corporate-sponsored trolls doing 1000x damage compared to real life * nation-state trolls doing 10000x damage compared to real life That's how you get that inimitable Reddit charm of watching an entire thread on geopolitics seem to change its hive mind as the mods manually strip out all the astroturf over the course of an hour.

atoav 7y ago
I don’t know, there seem to be various levels of anonymity with different social implications. Let’s roughly differenciate between: 1. Full Anonymity (no way to differenciate between user A and B except by the content) 2. Anonymous Pseudonymity (Users can take usernames, but they don’t mean a lot because they can be changed fast and there is no per user post history) 3. Accountbuilding Pseudonymity (Users usually stick to their accounts, Per user post history or karma is visible and meaningful) 4. Mandatory Real Names (on top of the stuff in point 3 you also have to use your real name - but face no consequences if you make something up) 5. Enforced Real Names (same as point 4, but the service provider has to check your identity) Positive effects of mandatory real name policies could never been proven — as far as I know they haven’t improved civility e.g. on facebook. I believe the secret lies more in the feedback systems and how easy it is to flip or flop your position away from what you historically said. It helps if all community interactions or rules are clear and minimalistic instead of arbitrary and arcane. All of this together weakens or strengthens the impact of the kind of user you mentioned. So in short: the emergent culture on really bad image boards is also part of their systemic design, just like it is with hn, facebook, instagram and any other online plattform. I think the type mentioned in point 3 (accountbuilding) paired with clever measures to keep the aims of the community aligned help a lot.
- jancsika 7y ago
  You're coupling registration process with posting process. What evidence is there that a fully anonymous image board writable by Debian maintainers would follow this so-called "law?"

taosx 7y ago

Register user but don't show any identifiers when they post. They can speak freely as the user can be anonymous but their data is still stored somewhere so they can't act without any thoughts.

Vinnl 7y ago

Haven't we by now found out that in reality, it's really only an audience that is needed? There are many inappropriate comments posted on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter posted using people's real names. And also, of course, it just holds for some otherwise apparently normal persons.

iliketocomplain 7y ago

That's a good thing, it's called free speech and no censorship.

vharuck 7y ago

>Total anonymity seems to always lead to a cesspool like 4chan. 4chan is a collection of boards, and not all of them are cesspools. The ones focused on niche hobbies tend to fare better. Of course, abrasive discussion is still common. But one man's cesspool is another man's hot spring.

calcifer 7y ago
> But one man's cesspool is another man's hot spring. A cesspit is still a cesspit even if some people choose to call it a hot spring.
- johnisgood 7y ago
  X is a cesspit to you, and X is a hot spring to someone else. Why would your perspective be the superior or the ultimate one?

slavik81 7y ago

Penny Arcade was complaining about people on Unreal Tournament 2004, which was pseudonymous. The real driver of toxicity was the hyper-competitive nature of the game he was playing. You should see how some people act in real life playing hockey or soccer. Everybody knows their real names, but that doesn't stop them from being assholes.