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FAQ Off: An Open Source Project to Defeat Harassment Mobs and Disinformation

11 points by some_furry 7y ago

downerending 7y ago
> And then, all current and future iterations of the same tired line of questioning can be answered by a simple hyperlink instead of wasting your time again. That will totally work.
rlili 7y ago
Cool project. Society desperately needs tools to combat disinformation. But couldn't this tool also be used to spread it? Also, does it prevent circular reasoning?
- some_furry 7y ago
  > Cool project. Society desperately needs tools to combat disinformation. Thanks! I'm a huge fan of Snopes <3 > But couldn't this tool also be used to spread it? It's a tool; a platform. Anything that can be used for good can be used for bad. I'm mostly circulating this in queer/pro-science circles, in the hopes that the critical mass of early adopters will dictate the culture surrounding the platform. > Also, does it prevent circular reasoning? No. You can create cycles in the Follow-Ups that loop infinitely. It might even be convenient to do so in many cases! But that definitely does not prevent circular reasoning.
Ajedi32 7y ago
So I looked at one example (the VPN misconceptions one) and coming at it from the perspective of someone looking for an argument (the "Sea Lions" referred to in the OP) the whole thing really just feels like a giant straw man. Few if any of the "questions" in the FAQ are stances I'd actually take in a debate about VPNs, and the flaws I see in the arguments the FAQ presents aren't addressed at all by the follow-up questions that are present.
- some_furry 7y ago
  To address this deficit, the latest release (v0.4.0, released over the weekend) includes a "Question Box" feature that lets people submit follow-up questions, in the same spirit as curiouscat.me. To prevent spam and abuse, it's limited to authenticated users. I noodled over ways to make it work with anonymous users, but that's ultimately a losing battle. (See also: TrollForge.) The admins can decide their access policy (invite-only or open registration, Twitter auth or username+password, etc.). The platform is open source software, and I'm trying to make it as easy and accessible for folks to set it up as I can.
traverseda 7y ago
Eww, automated arguments. I toyed with a similar idea, it can be pretty easy to write a chat bot that automatically responds to common arguments. Anyone who's ever debated the religiously-indoctrinated will see a similar thing, a "script" of common talking points that you pretty quickly see or what they are, thought-terminating cliches. At least with real people you can sometimes find a path through those thought-terminating cliches, or they can find a path through yours, and you can actually think about things. I'm not looking forward to the future where every time I try to discuss something I'm linked to an (out of date and poorly maintained) playbook that has obvious flaws in it's arguments but is considered an irrefutable source of truth by it's proponents. At least when you're dealing with people on an individual level you can point out when there are issues with an argument. I know it's hard to have productive discussion about a lot of these things but I can't help but think it would be much better to try and teach people basic epistemology, how to assess what you should count as evidence, how much weight you should give different standards of evidence, rules of debating in good faith, etc. All these tools for "taking control of the narrative" will be used by your enemies. If you're going to make a tool like that realize that everyone can use tools like that, even your ideological opponents. Try to think about the consequences of your actions, what happens if everyone adopts this technology for "controlling the narrative"? What happens if the "alt right" this post mentions starts using it? I guess it's nice to make the script you're following explicit though.
- some_furry 7y ago
  > All these tools for "taking control of the narrative" will be used by your enemies. The alt-right already takes control of the narrative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA Even if this platform ever "took off" enough to be used by bad people, the only thing that would happen is we'd have a level playing field.
  - traverseda 7y ago
    They'll use it better than you. That's a very common trend, the far-left develops some new tool to control the narrative or otherwise excerpt social control and they discover that the alt-right is better equipped to use it then they are. We've seen this time and time again. If you're going to try to use that tactic at least don't be so obvious about it. Do what the geek-feminism-wiki or derailing-for-dummies does and put all your thought-terminating cliche's into a wiki that you can claim is authoritative or otherwise supported be science, and link people to that (for bonus points tie identity politics into it so that the arguments can only be used against people in your outgroup). You're trying to use technology to make a fully-general-counterargument which is just bad epistemology. What's worse is that if you normalize that style of discourse it will be used against you to much greater effect then you can hope to wield it. The thing about tools like this is that they're force multipliers, if you're not already winning bringing in a force multiplier like this won't help. Force-multipliers inherently favour entrenched power structures unless there's some reason why your group would be better at using them, some asymmetry. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-o... for more on asymmetric memetic warfare. Seriously, if you're going to mess around with persuasion technology be very careful.

11 points by some_furry 7y ago

> And then, all current and future iterations of the same tired line of questioning can be answered by a simple hyperlink instead of wasting your time again. That will totally work.

rlili 7y ago

Cool project. Society desperately needs tools to combat disinformation. But couldn't this tool also be used to spread it? Also, does it prevent circular reasoning?

some_furry 7y ago
> Cool project. Society desperately needs tools to combat disinformation. Thanks! I'm a huge fan of Snopes <3 > But couldn't this tool also be used to spread it? It's a tool; a platform. Anything that can be used for good can be used for bad. I'm mostly circulating this in queer/pro-science circles, in the hopes that the critical mass of early adopters will dictate the culture surrounding the platform. > Also, does it prevent circular reasoning? No. You can create cycles in the Follow-Ups that loop infinitely. It might even be convenient to do so in many cases! But that definitely does not prevent circular reasoning.

Ajedi32 7y ago

So I looked at one example (the VPN misconceptions one) and coming at it from the perspective of someone looking for an argument (the "Sea Lions" referred to in the OP) the whole thing really just feels like a giant straw man. Few if any of the "questions" in the FAQ are stances I'd actually take in a debate about VPNs, and the flaws I see in the arguments the FAQ presents aren't addressed at all by the follow-up questions that are present.

some_furry 7y ago
To address this deficit, the latest release (v0.4.0, released over the weekend) includes a "Question Box" feature that lets people submit follow-up questions, in the same spirit as curiouscat.me. To prevent spam and abuse, it's limited to authenticated users. I noodled over ways to make it work with anonymous users, but that's ultimately a losing battle. (See also: TrollForge.) The admins can decide their access policy (invite-only or open registration, Twitter auth or username+password, etc.). The platform is open source software, and I'm trying to make it as easy and accessible for folks to set it up as I can.

traverseda 7y ago

Eww, automated arguments. I toyed with a similar idea, it can be pretty easy to write a chat bot that automatically responds to common arguments. Anyone who's ever debated the religiously-indoctrinated will see a similar thing, a "script" of common talking points that you pretty quickly see or what they are, thought-terminating cliches. At least with real people you can sometimes find a path through those thought-terminating cliches, or they can find a path through yours, and you can actually think about things. I'm not looking forward to the future where every time I try to discuss something I'm linked to an (out of date and poorly maintained) playbook that has obvious flaws in it's arguments but is considered an irrefutable source of truth by it's proponents. At least when you're dealing with people on an individual level you can point out when there are issues with an argument. I know it's hard to have productive discussion about a lot of these things but I can't help but think it would be much better to try and teach people basic epistemology, how to assess what you should count as evidence, how much weight you should give different standards of evidence, rules of debating in good faith, etc. All these tools for "taking control of the narrative" will be used by your enemies. If you're going to make a tool like that realize that everyone can use tools like that, even your ideological opponents. Try to think about the consequences of your actions, what happens if everyone adopts this technology for "controlling the narrative"? What happens if the "alt right" this post mentions starts using it? I guess it's nice to make the script you're following explicit though.

some_furry 7y ago
> All these tools for "taking control of the narrative" will be used by your enemies. The alt-right already takes control of the narrative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA Even if this platform ever "took off" enough to be used by bad people, the only thing that would happen is we'd have a level playing field.
- traverseda 7y ago
  They'll use it better than you. That's a very common trend, the far-left develops some new tool to control the narrative or otherwise excerpt social control and they discover that the alt-right is better equipped to use it then they are. We've seen this time and time again. If you're going to try to use that tactic at least don't be so obvious about it. Do what the geek-feminism-wiki or derailing-for-dummies does and put all your thought-terminating cliche's into a wiki that you can claim is authoritative or otherwise supported be science, and link people to that (for bonus points tie identity politics into it so that the arguments can only be used against people in your outgroup). You're trying to use technology to make a fully-general-counterargument which is just bad epistemology. What's worse is that if you normalize that style of discourse it will be used against you to much greater effect then you can hope to wield it. The thing about tools like this is that they're force multipliers, if you're not already winning bringing in a force multiplier like this won't help. Force-multipliers inherently favour entrenched power structures unless there's some reason why your group would be better at using them, some asymmetry. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-o... for more on asymmetric memetic warfare. Seriously, if you're going to mess around with persuasion technology be very careful.