16 ms·

The Silence Is Deafening

438 points by pagade 6y ago

ferros 6y ago
On top of all this there is an arbiter (social network) that filters and decides what is important enough be shared maximally. Before anybody even hears your conversation it has been filtered to a degree, there is no organic interpretation of the situation by the group like there would be in real life.
dvt 6y ago
I have a few friends that are trying to "solve this problem" -- ranging from ideas on better, more inclusive social networks, to vetting (news) sources and ideas, to self-governance, to curation-heavy communities. I personally don't really think it's a "problem" -- people simply, on average, just don't care about other opinions (especially opposing ones). This happens on both sides of any debate. Why learn about, study, and discuss the moral implications of abortion and wade through its ethical morass when you can just share some provocative meme? Why actually read the W.E.B DuBois and Booker T. Washington debates when you can just share some celebrity's shallow BLM Tweet? Hacker News is a rare gem[1]. Most people aren't educated, curious, and willing to accept when/if they're wrong. This is exacerbated by the re-emergence of yellow journalism in mainstream media (where accountability for misleading or even false headlines is nonexistent) because these days it's all about the clicks. So we're left with Twitter and Facebook. And people, on average, like their echo chambers. They don't want to be challenged or poked or prodded. In 2020, Socrates would be banned from Twitter. [1] Although, perhaps as a sign of the times, even this post is getting downvoted without any discussion.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  I fear you are being over cynical. I think most people don't have the time or energy to care about so many different things. The person we imagine in the conversation will care deeply about family, friends. Possibly about their work and maybe one or two "big" issues - but grief there are a lot of issues being top-of-lungs- screamed right now and ten more to come. Take our persona abi e and put them on a citizens jury and give them two weeks paid time to get involved in an issue (like Irish did on abortion laws) and we will see nuanced balanced decision making (which we may or may not agree with). And for the very big issues that become part of the "public conversation" this does happen - I am pretty sure that most people in the UK considered the issues around Brexit as deeply as they wanted to - there was time motivation and information available to all. So for most issues yes they fly past us all, covered in fake news and attention grabbing antics, and sometimes we get angry but most of the time it's just wallpaper. I don't like the wallpaper and don't think it's conducive to pleasant conversation but I doubt few people are actually fooled.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Brexit was dominated by misinformation and bad prospectouses far more than any recent election. People voted against things that were not going to happen any time soon, and in favor of things that were never going to be delivered, like the extra NHS money.
fzeroracer 6y ago
I think the problem I have with this argument is that it assumes 'Angry Alice' is there to argue in good faith. Unfortunately I've learned that there are many, many 'Angry Alices' out there that exist solely to rile up people and they get validation out of misleading people or tricking reasonable people. At the dinner party it's much harder to pull off this sort of trick because you're dealing with very real people face to face. Once you've caused large amounts of friction with people in reality, they're less likely to engage with you and will outright avoid you. But when you're on the internet, you have an endless supply of people that you can troll. And often it's become harder and harder to separate the trolls from what people actually believe.
- totemandtoken 6y ago
  The author does mention that though, except they call a bad-faith arguer a "grifter" instead of a "troll."
  - ponker 6y ago
    The distinction I keep is that trolls do it for fun and grifters do it for money. There is a lot of money in the outrage industry and lots of prospectors looking for gold.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    I suspect that they mean "griefer". A grifter is a conman.
- arto 6y ago
  "The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." -- H.L. Mencken
pabo 6y ago
I think he hits the nail in the head. He's main observation is this: "...digital spaces generally have no equivalent of a disapproving glare. You're stuck choosing between staying silent and entering the fray, with few options in between. If you have little reason to believe that other reasonable people will back you up, you're going to stick with the default: silence." In this permanent work from home situation, I can relate...
- apsec112 6y ago
  FWIW, Devon is a woman: https://web.archive.org/web/20200524035931/https://devonzuegel.com/page/about-me https://web.archive.org/web/20200524035931/https://devonzueg...
  - pabo 6y ago
    Ohh, thanks for pointing that out.
- yummypaint 6y ago
  Being anonymous seems to be an exception to this. Social barriers are removed and then its just a question of the energy needed to type somethong out. Of course there are all kinds of tradeoffs, but it's striking how much online communication has been de-anonymized over the last 20 years.
totemandtoken 6y ago
Love this. One of the most frustrating aspects of social media is the lack of feedback, or maybe more accurately the one-sidedness of the feedback. I personally assume that means no one cares about what I write, but maybe they just don't have the energy to tell me off. Either way, this hits the nail right on the head in my opinion
deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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lifeisstillgood 6y ago
The digital "tut" is perhaps a inter-social-media protocol we could create. Like a downvote, it indicates disapproval and starts trying to, as this article persuasively says, move social nuance online. Twitter, Facebook et al could all have this alongside a like button, on a RESTful interface so it's agnostic about the client. Many, many years ago I stumbled across a web page hosted on a white supremacist site but was third in google's ranking for Martin Luther King search term. It struck me then that what would be useful was not for me to link to that site (hence adding to its pagerank) but to link to that site with an href attribute that indicated something was wrong about the facts presented. I think overall this is the same problem of short selling - and it's not clear how to fix it.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Humans seem to have evolved to live in small-ish societies where being given the "cold shoulder" or being ostracized was a great danger. I'm always mixed though whether abandoning that is good or bad. On the one hand in liberal societies we're more free to express ourselves than ever, love whomever, etc. On the other hand, it does seem like anyone can find a subculture for whatever they believe in, even if it's destructive.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- pferde 6y ago
  Well, Usenet has its own version of "tut": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(Usenet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(Usenet)
christiansakai 6y ago
It seems like too much work, and not sure if it is a good use of someone's time to keep answering and writing long facts to people, or random strangers. It isn't realistic to expect everyone, or the majority of people, do this on the internet.
FailMore 6y ago
There are two services (one built by me) out there which have this in mind, providing an online space for deep public discussions around a topic. Taaalk (https://taaalk.co/ https://taaalk.co/) is mine. It is currently less focused around debate, and more around exploring topics: E.g. OCD: https://taaalk.co/t/exploring-obsessive-compulsive-disorder https://taaalk.co/t/exploring-obsessive-compulsive-disorder Eating disorders: https://taaalk.co/t/discussing-eating-disorders https://taaalk.co/t/discussing-eating-disorders Bitcoin: https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things Flag design: https://taaalk.co/t/the-power-and-significance-of-flags https://taaalk.co/t/the-power-and-significance-of-flags Chess: https://taaalk.co/t/how-to-think-about-chess https://taaalk.co/t/how-to-think-about-chess Psychedelics & Mental Health: https://taaalk.co/t/falling-inward-discussing-the-role-of-psychedelics-in-modern-medicine-and-mental-health https://taaalk.co/t/falling-inward-discussing-the-role-of-ps... Etc... Another alternative that is built by a fellow HNer is Debubble (https://debubble.me/ https://debubble.me/). It is more focused around debate than Taaalk. There are a fixed number of messages / discussion.
- uhhyeahdude 6y ago
  Oh, wow... I clicked on one of the topics on your site, a topic of great personal relevance, and I really like what I see so far. I’m on a quick break, but later on I would like to join the discussion, because it seems like a healthy environment that is oriented around understanding, inclusivity, and mutual aid. I’m sorry to be so vague with my feedback, but I figure it is still at least a little bit useful, and hopefully even a little encouraging as a small validation of the concept. Thank you!
  - FailMore 6y ago
    No problem, thank you for it. If you want to email me about anything, my email is in my bio.
- sideshowb 6y ago
  I quite like the approach of https://www.kialo.com/explore/featured https://www.kialo.com/explore/featured Discussions in a more visual tree format for easier navigation and reduce duplication of points (I appreciate hn and Reddit are trees already, but this takes a different direction)
burlesona 6y ago
This article made me realize, part of the quality of the conversation on HN comes from the ability to downvote. I’ve never thought about this before, but one of the effects of Twitter and Facebook only having positive reinforcement is that you don’t get the “disapproving stare.” It’s possible for a person to “like” with some degree of anonymity and no effort, but not possible to do the reverse. Worse, since the Algorithms heavily bias content based on “likes,” there’s no recognition of content that is actually broadly liked versus content that is polar. Also, for individual posters in places with downvoting, the little dopamine hit you get from upvotes is heavily countered by the bad feeling of downvotes. I know that in my own participation on HN I will occasionally think of a snarky thing to say, but usually don’t post it because I know it’ll get downvoted, which I don’t like, and that moment of hesitation is usually enough for me to think “yeah that is actually unhelpful and not worth posting.” This all probably very obvious to most of this crowd, but I honestly haven’t considered it before. How different would the world be if Facebook and Twitter merely had dislike buttons to go along with likes?
- quotemstr 6y ago
  Reddit has downvotes as well and its conversations are uniformly bad. Slate Star Codex has a creaky old antique of a comment system without voting at all, but its conversations were of the highest quality. So are LWN's. I don't think voting mechanics affect discussion quality as much as you think. What matters a lot more is a sense of mutual respect, shared purpose, and, honestly, a certain level of average intellectual horsepower.
  - donw 6y ago
    I'd argue that it's the norms that a community develops. LWN and SSC had excellent discussion because their respective communities focus on both promoting quality and policing bad behavior -- go off the rails, and you'll get a bunch of folks trying to help you get back on. It's Peelian policing[1] for internet forums. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
  - chroem- 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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dutch3000 6y ago
surprise. how about verbal communication. smh.
Ghjklov 6y ago
>speak out >get attacked >stay silent >get attacked It used to be that the only way to win a losing game is to not play, but even now that's not an option anymore.
- danlugo92 6y ago
  How do you exactly get attacked by staying silent?
  - commander_k33n 6y ago
    A common slogan these days is "Silence is violence.".
jger15 6y ago
Curious if this is related to the Balaji Srinivasan/Taylor Lorenz spat on Twitter.
tambourine_man 6y ago
Here you go, server is currently giving me 503 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://devonzuegel.com/post/the-silence-is-deafening http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/... On a side note, why does Google make it so hard for mobile users to use its cache feature?
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  IA WBM is a more reliable archive tool: https://web.archive.org/web/20200703225029/https://devonzuegel.com/post/the-silence-is-deafening https://web.archive.org/web/20200703225029/https://devonzueg...
  - tambourine_man 6y ago
    Yes, but it's a bit slower too.
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
A big part of in person conversations are about building equity in the relationship. Even from the first encounter, you express what you think about and how you think about it and look for places that your thoughts intersect with others. Those that have a beneficial intersection you're likely to explore further, invest more and build more equity. Online, there is little chance that you'll establish a new relationship and build equity with other users. You've got hundreds or thousands of followers, so do they and in many cases, the person you respond to may never see your reply, let alone remember your username for more than a few minutes. These exchanges can be so fleeting because you're both typically anonymous. Anonymity is antithetical to trust and trust is required for equity. There is little that an anonymous person can do for you, and little you could do for them. Contrast Twitter and LinkedIn. Both have feeds and allow messaging and conversations. But since you know the people you're interacting with on LinkedIn, many times personally, you are civil, helpful and courteous because one day they may actually be able to do something to benefit you. You invest in them and building equity in your relationship in expectation that if there is something you can do for them, or they can do for you in the future, it's there to leverage. Twitter just feels like, I dunno, looking for love in all the wrong places? People have a multitude of purposes for engaging online anonymously. Learning or trolling, ego support or battling boredom, maybe a better solution would be to target those purposes as independent platforms and structure the dialog to support the purpose.
- mirimir 6y ago
  Yeah, friends have occasionally encouraged me to use Twitter, over the years since the mid 00s. But it's never appealed to me, and so I have ~no experience with it, except from following posted links. But anyway, you say: > Anonymity is antithetical to trust and trust is required for equity. There is little that an anonymous person can do for you, and little you could do for them. While that's generally so, I have developed many more-or-less long-term anonymous relationships, over the past couple decades. And some of them have led to interesting collaborations, and even paying work.
- Reelin 6y ago
  I was with you until you pinned the problems on anonymity. Correlation does not imply causation. In this particular case there are (IMO) many counterexamples regarding anonymity, including HN in particular. A different comment here points out the (effectively unquantifiable) risk that more or less indelible comments can pose in the future if they can be trivially linked back to a permanent identity. Interestingly, your explanation in terms of equity actually holds up without considering anonymity. If you instead frame it in terms of purpose for visiting the site it makes sense that Twitter would have a disproportionate number of users who exhibited little concern for building equity. This is also consistent with the toxic behavior that often occurs on Facebook, where real names and interacting with people local to your area are by far the norm.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I suspect that a lot of the nice behavior on HN is because, for the most part, people value the community, and consider this a "professional" environment, and it's not a bad idea to play nice in places where employers/ees can see us show our butts. LinkedIn was like that (in fact, sickeningly saccharine), but it's starting to fray. Slashdot was good for a while, then CNN and YouTube kicked off their trolls, and they all went to /. It's now the place to go, if you want swastika ASCII art. StackOverflow manages to be a painful place to participate, even though they are sincerely trying to be decent. I think it's way too "gamified," and competitive. For myself, I'm an old troll. I admit that I was a right bastard, back in the UseNet days. I am trying to atone. One of the ways that I do that, is make all my info connected with every place I participate. If I am a jerk, you know where to find me. Alternatively, if I make a good impression, you know where to find me. I also pay attention to downvotes. If a post I make gets a couple of rapid downvotes, I nuke it. Sometimes, I understand why; sometimes, not. It's just not worth it to me. I am also making an effort not to engage too much. I may have a one-or-two-post back and forth, just to see if we can come to an accommodation, then it's "Have a great day!". Totally OK to let someone else have the last word. I have better uses for my time.
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  > I suspect that a lot of the nice behavior on HN is because, for the most part, people value the community, and consider this a "professional" environment, and it's not a bad idea to play nice in places where employers/ees can see us show our butts. As I work in dysfunctional industry (enterprise software development), being professional would ruin a lot of the fun of being on HN, as I would have to parrot their dysfunctional beliefs... Hence, I always write from anonymous accounts and decomission them often to make sure I'm not doxxed.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  I agree with you on StackOverflow mostly but their penchant for moving 1v1 arguments into extended chat and then providing a link to said chat for anyone to see is something that I wish was adopted by other sites.
  - 6y ago
VLM 6y ago
The linked article suggestions would work on a holiness-neutral topic like emacs vs vi, but I don't think the suggested tactics would work against holy virtue signalling.
- mcguire 6y ago
  Can we ditch the "virtue signalling" meme? It comes across as a simple dismissal, which doesn't improve any situation.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The term can be overused. But we need a way to describe the very real underlying phenomenon, of expectations that everyone ought to endorse and actively promote promote a particular moral stance. Trying to talk about modern activism without the term "virtue signaling" would be like trying to talk about churches without the term "religion".
    - Intermernet 6y ago
      The term "virtue signalling" is a derogatory term for something that every person does in pretty much every form of communication. You can perceive it in everything from scientific papers, to song lyrics, to professional conferences, to children's conversations. The use of the term is purely to denigrate the person by vaguely deriding the values that they've presented as the basis for their argument. If you use the term you've chosen to argue against the character of the person, and not against the content of their statements.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I don't agree. The way I normally see it used, "virtue signaling" refers to a pretty specific phenomenon where you go out of your way to make sure people know you hold the correct moral views. It can occur in pretty much every form of communication, but it's far from universal.
Thorentis 6y ago
Good observation. I have noticed that people very vocal online do not do so well in person. They forget what it's like to have people looking at you disapprovingly or to be forced to express your views coherently the first or second attempt, without the chance to craft the perfect 140 char response. Unfortunately, as more and more young people grow up with digital spaces as their primary domain, they are losing the ability to communicate in person. I have a few friends that are high school teachers, and they all notice this trend. Every class discussion involves short sentence answers, low effort, very little passion. But if you let them use a digital space to post opinions (like a class discussion forum) things can become polarised, or at least more passionate than they were in class.
- casefields 6y ago
  Toastmasters! Public speaking is an incredible valuable skill that you need in all walks of life. People should check out their local chapter: https://www.toastmasters.org/ https://www.toastmasters.org/
  - sinker 6y ago
    I've come across people mentioning Toastmasters online at least 3 dozen times in separate contexts over the years. Yet no one IRL knows what the hell it is or where to find one. How can something be so commonplace here and completely alien outside of online spaces. I've never been to one or had the word toastmasters ever mentioned in person before. Is this like an alcoholics anonymous, but for public speaking?
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I think maybe the difference is that a digital space allows you to not focus on the number of people you're addressing, so people act more like they are having a conversation with a representative member of their audience. I don't think it's fundamentally about the digital aspect so much as writing vs. speaking.
chiefalchemist 6y ago
> It gets worse—Angry Alice only sees feedback from extremists, so she doesn't receive more nuanced signals that might actually cause her to reflect on her behavior But this works both way. Actually, it works all ways. That is, the person who marginalizes Alice is also marginalized by someone else. And so on and so on. Eventually, everything is binary. There's little if any grey area. No doubt a small minority actually deserve to be marginalized. Those existed long before the internet. The internet is different. You don't need to work to understand or even engage. Instead, many seek to minimize friction and maximize positive feedback. The validity of the source is irrelevant. Digital love is good regardless of the source.
sergiotapia 6y ago
Arguing online is a complete and total waste of time. Designed to make you spin your wheels. You aren't doing _anything_ productive.
kordlessagain 6y ago
Good luck trying to do this with every single participating entity. The "problem", if there is one to be defined, is not the "silence" of the user, but the default behavior to not surface the access of the data in question to others who are accessing or discussing the data. Basically servers need to divulge all meta data about an endpoint, including access and times. Its a "security flaw" of the Internet and web services, as they are currently defined. If someone would get around to integrating Lightning with the 402 HTTP error code, it might make it a bit better. Then again, someone has to convince all the users to use new browsers and technology, which will take forever. In the meantime, a service which shows who and where the content is being accessed, and a revenue model that fits with that viewing would be interesting. Vote me down, but no discussion is just more of the same meta problem. Users vs. hidden/unknown corporate control.
proc0 6y ago
You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you. It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own. The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have. -Marcus Aurelius
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- marcusverus 6y ago
  I'm a big fan of Meditations. Having read both the Gregory Hays translation and the George Long, I have a hard time mapping these very different translations as referring onto the same text. My first impression was, "clearly the George Long translation is a real translation of the text, whereas the Gregory Hays is a contemporary attempt to restate the thesis of each lassage without strict adherence to the original." But without the ability to read the original, this is pure speculation/ignorance on my part. Does anyone have any insight into which translation is the most faithful to the original?
  - proc0 6y ago
    Yeah, it would be nice to learn Latin and read the originals.
    - wenc 6y ago
      Interesting tidbit: Marcus Aurelius, despite being a Roman emperor, wrote Meditations in Koine Greek. I once had a conversation with a Koine Greek scholar (also a Lyft driver, he was driving me to the airport -- turns out the job market for Ph.D.s in Koine Greek was/is not great), and he claims that most native English speakers should be able to achieve reading proficiency in Koine Greek in a matter of 6 months. It's apparently a very regular language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations
      - proc0 6y ago
basicplus2 6y ago
DM = Direct Message
ilaksh 6y ago
Well good ideas, but maybe Twitter should have a disapproving glare button and a way to incentivize it's use by reasonable people.
rattray 6y ago
Wow, this changes how I think about online discourse more than anything I can remember. It actually makes me feel a lot better - rather than feeling like the whole world and all my friends are angry and unreasonable, it reminds me that, no, most of them are just being invisible. And that even the ones who seem unreasonable are just a product of their environment. The funny thing is it could really be solved with a "that" feature on Twitter, to quietly keep track of when others disapprove, and even to anonymously and privately let the tweeter know.
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  A that feature? Is that a typo?
  - rattray 6y ago
    Sorry, yes, that was autocorrect - I meant "tut", which had been suggested by someone else on the thread
hnick 6y ago
I watched the famous movie 12 Angry Men for the first time recently (I think it holds up well today, BTW). There is a scene where a man goes on a racist tirade. Instead of engaging in argument or ignoring him, they stand up and turn their backs. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlHKTPfLVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlHKTPfLVA This is much like the disapproving glare mentioned, but what's the online equivalent? I play a few online games but not much multiplayer. Public voice chat made it a much less enjoyable experience. You can mute people of course. But as far as I know, they don't get told. What if each time it happened it popped up a message "4 people have muted you today", "3 out of 8 teammates have muted you"? It could be a useful feedback mechanism.
- holler 6y ago
  that’s an interesting idea.. the analog to real life would be if someone turned around and walked away, effectively muting your speech to their ears. I’m working on a new public chat app sqwok.im, actively thinking about these issues, and may consider this, thank you
- anonymousab 6y ago
  Negative feedback and dislike features can reduce engagement or drive people away, so social media platforms are incentivized to avoid such mechanisms.
  - hnick 6y ago
    And I think they're just chasing local maxima. Over the long term, they devolve and people leave.
    - sbarre 6y ago
      This is a very important observation.. It parallels the real-world chase of short-term profits in business, and short-term "points" in politics. If the major platforms took a longer view of their communities, and asked themselves how do you build the _best_ community, not the _biggest_ community, we might all be better off.. But then their stockholders wouldn't be better off, so it hasn't happened. That said, now with businesses and advertisers (the actual customers of social networks - because the users sure aren't) starting to pull ad dollars, we may see some of this change? One can hope..
082349872349872 6y ago
A single bit of disapproval may be too little information. In the southern US last century, "So, when are you inviting me over?" not only conveyed reasonably non-confrontational disapproval, but also the specific message that one shouldn't speak too much of one's own acquisitions in a wide public. "Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter" is a similar stock phrase to gently suggest online that someone is not preaching to their choir. Someone asked a few days ago on HN what to do about clearly racist rhetoric in the twenty-first century. Maybe we ought to discover a similar stock phrase, such as "All that matters is can the fine horse see" or "Nobody's saying they don't appreciate what Jenny did" (or perhaps something from Blazing Saddles? "So, when are we stampeding cattle through the Vatican?"). (but, even assuming such a phrase were discovered and originally used in a targeted fashion, how should we avoid the nearly-inevitable Godwin-treadmill flak thereafter?)
nabla9 6y ago
Best kind of disapproval makes people reflect and change behaviour. That kind of disapproval works best if it comes from people in your in-group or from people you respect. Anonymous downvoting like in big forum is just for moderation that excludes people.
guerrilla 6y ago
I've long thought that the problem with Twitter and Facebook is that there's no downvote button. This article is about something different though. What if we had a platform like these but posts had a metric of likes or shares per view displayed on them rather than absolute numbers. I really want to see how that goes actually. Simply displaying views might give a totally different interaction as well.
mjw1007 6y ago
I think this direct message technique has always been going on. The reason people on Usenet would say "The lurkers support me in email" (until they learned that saying that was taboo) is that the lurkers were supporting them in email.
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE 6y ago
But what if Alice is right and silent majority is wrong? I would say silent majority is mostly wrong in recent times.
bobthechef 6y ago
Downvoting is one way disapproval is expressed, so the premise is the article is flawed. However, we must also remember that the point of speech is to convey truth, not crowd pleasing, not stirring up conflict for the kicks, not bland milquetoast niceness. What the appropriate tone or style is, or whether engagement makes sense at all, will depend on the situation and here we need prudence (in the classical sense). Feedback can be of help in shaping prudence, but it is not the final arbiter of the correct course is action. It must be examined for validity. So please, do not couch your language. Be clear and direct. Let your yeses be yeses and your noes be noes. Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language. Listen to to your interlocutors, but speaks plainly and honestly. Let the chips fall where they may.
curation 6y ago
Polemics require belief that subjectivity is born out of battle. What has changed is that belief.
buboard 6y ago
A deeper issue is the cultural shift to an overly judgemental culture which has been built thoughout the decades. The media always, always has thrived on creating moral panics, but the public wasn't always so gullible to them. There's a noticeable shift towards conservativism and a constant preoccupation with their public image among younger generations. It's even noticeable in statistics , e.g. disapproval of nudism.
bartelby 6y ago
I’ve been trying to have more 1-1 conversations with friends these days about some of the more controversial topics in the news when it comes up, basically an IRL version of a DM, and it’s been interesting to see how people’s opinions align against the Twitter opinion spectrum. About half have been much more moderate than anything I’ve seen online, but the other half actually do align with the more radical and loud voices shouting about whatever it is that’s trending on Twitter at that moment. I always thought that Twitter wasn’t really representative of what most people thought/believed but now I’m not so sure. Of course this is just based on personal anecdotes. And to be fair, all of the 1-1 conversations I’ve had have been productive and each time I’ve been able to walk away with some ideas that I haven’t had before.

438 points by pagade 6y ago

On top of all this there is an arbiter (social network) that filters and decides what is important enough be shared maximally. Before anybody even hears your conversation it has been filtered to a degree, there is no organic interpretation of the situation by the group like there would be in real life.

dvt 6y ago

I have a few friends that are trying to "solve this problem" -- ranging from ideas on better, more inclusive social networks, to vetting (news) sources and ideas, to self-governance, to curation-heavy communities. I personally don't really think it's a "problem" -- people simply, on average, just don't care about other opinions (especially opposing ones). This happens on both sides of any debate. Why learn about, study, and discuss the moral implications of abortion and wade through its ethical morass when you can just share some provocative meme? Why actually read the W.E.B DuBois and Booker T. Washington debates when you can just share some celebrity's shallow BLM Tweet? Hacker News is a rare gem[1]. Most people aren't educated, curious, and willing to accept when/if they're wrong. This is exacerbated by the re-emergence of yellow journalism in mainstream media (where accountability for misleading or even false headlines is nonexistent) because these days it's all about the clicks. So we're left with Twitter and Facebook. And people, on average, like their echo chambers. They don't want to be challenged or poked or prodded. In 2020, Socrates would be banned from Twitter. [1] Although, perhaps as a sign of the times, even this post is getting downvoted without any discussion.

lifeisstillgood 6y ago
I fear you are being over cynical. I think most people don't have the time or energy to care about so many different things. The person we imagine in the conversation will care deeply about family, friends. Possibly about their work and maybe one or two "big" issues - but grief there are a lot of issues being top-of-lungs- screamed right now and ten more to come. Take our persona abi e and put them on a citizens jury and give them two weeks paid time to get involved in an issue (like Irish did on abortion laws) and we will see nuanced balanced decision making (which we may or may not agree with). And for the very big issues that become part of the "public conversation" this does happen - I am pretty sure that most people in the UK considered the issues around Brexit as deeply as they wanted to - there was time motivation and information available to all. So for most issues yes they fly past us all, covered in fake news and attention grabbing antics, and sometimes we get angry but most of the time it's just wallpaper. I don't like the wallpaper and don't think it's conducive to pleasant conversation but I doubt few people are actually fooled.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Brexit was dominated by misinformation and bad prospectouses far more than any recent election. People voted against things that were not going to happen any time soon, and in favor of things that were never going to be delivered, like the extra NHS money.

fzeroracer 6y ago

I think the problem I have with this argument is that it assumes 'Angry Alice' is there to argue in good faith. Unfortunately I've learned that there are many, many 'Angry Alices' out there that exist solely to rile up people and they get validation out of misleading people or tricking reasonable people. At the dinner party it's much harder to pull off this sort of trick because you're dealing with very real people face to face. Once you've caused large amounts of friction with people in reality, they're less likely to engage with you and will outright avoid you. But when you're on the internet, you have an endless supply of people that you can troll. And often it's become harder and harder to separate the trolls from what people actually believe.

totemandtoken 6y ago
The author does mention that though, except they call a bad-faith arguer a "grifter" instead of a "troll."
- ponker 6y ago
  The distinction I keep is that trolls do it for fun and grifters do it for money. There is a lot of money in the outrage industry and lots of prospectors looking for gold.
- mcguire 6y ago
  I suspect that they mean "griefer". A grifter is a conman.
arto 6y ago
"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." -- H.L. Mencken

pabo 6y ago

I think he hits the nail in the head. He's main observation is this: "...digital spaces generally have no equivalent of a disapproving glare. You're stuck choosing between staying silent and entering the fray, with few options in between. If you have little reason to believe that other reasonable people will back you up, you're going to stick with the default: silence." In this permanent work from home situation, I can relate...

apsec112 6y ago
FWIW, Devon is a woman: https://web.archive.org/web/20200524035931/https://devonzuegel.com/page/about-me https://web.archive.org/web/20200524035931/https://devonzueg...
- pabo 6y ago
  Ohh, thanks for pointing that out.
yummypaint 6y ago
Being anonymous seems to be an exception to this. Social barriers are removed and then its just a question of the energy needed to type somethong out. Of course there are all kinds of tradeoffs, but it's striking how much online communication has been de-anonymized over the last 20 years.

totemandtoken 6y ago

Love this. One of the most frustrating aspects of social media is the lack of feedback, or maybe more accurately the one-sidedness of the feedback. I personally assume that means no one cares about what I write, but maybe they just don't have the energy to tell me off. Either way, this hits the nail right on the head in my opinion

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lifeisstillgood 6y ago

The digital "tut" is perhaps a inter-social-media protocol we could create. Like a downvote, it indicates disapproval and starts trying to, as this article persuasively says, move social nuance online. Twitter, Facebook et al could all have this alongside a like button, on a RESTful interface so it's agnostic about the client. Many, many years ago I stumbled across a web page hosted on a white supremacist site but was third in google's ranking for Martin Luther King search term. It struck me then that what would be useful was not for me to link to that site (hence adding to its pagerank) but to link to that site with an href attribute that indicated something was wrong about the facts presented. I think overall this is the same problem of short selling - and it's not clear how to fix it.

chillacy 6y ago
Humans seem to have evolved to live in small-ish societies where being given the "cold shoulder" or being ostracized was a great danger. I'm always mixed though whether abandoning that is good or bad. On the one hand in liberal societies we're more free to express ourselves than ever, love whomever, etc. On the other hand, it does seem like anyone can find a subculture for whatever they believe in, even if it's destructive.
- deleted 6y ago
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pferde 6y ago
Well, Usenet has its own version of "tut": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(Usenet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(Usenet)

christiansakai 6y ago

It seems like too much work, and not sure if it is a good use of someone's time to keep answering and writing long facts to people, or random strangers. It isn't realistic to expect everyone, or the majority of people, do this on the internet.

FailMore 6y ago

There are two services (one built by me) out there which have this in mind, providing an online space for deep public discussions around a topic. Taaalk (https://taaalk.co/ https://taaalk.co/) is mine. It is currently less focused around debate, and more around exploring topics: E.g. OCD: https://taaalk.co/t/exploring-obsessive-compulsive-disorder https://taaalk.co/t/exploring-obsessive-compulsive-disorder Eating disorders: https://taaalk.co/t/discussing-eating-disorders https://taaalk.co/t/discussing-eating-disorders Bitcoin: https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things Flag design: https://taaalk.co/t/the-power-and-significance-of-flags https://taaalk.co/t/the-power-and-significance-of-flags Chess: https://taaalk.co/t/how-to-think-about-chess https://taaalk.co/t/how-to-think-about-chess Psychedelics & Mental Health: https://taaalk.co/t/falling-inward-discussing-the-role-of-psychedelics-in-modern-medicine-and-mental-health https://taaalk.co/t/falling-inward-discussing-the-role-of-ps... Etc... Another alternative that is built by a fellow HNer is Debubble (https://debubble.me/ https://debubble.me/). It is more focused around debate than Taaalk. There are a fixed number of messages / discussion.

uhhyeahdude 6y ago
Oh, wow... I clicked on one of the topics on your site, a topic of great personal relevance, and I really like what I see so far. I’m on a quick break, but later on I would like to join the discussion, because it seems like a healthy environment that is oriented around understanding, inclusivity, and mutual aid. I’m sorry to be so vague with my feedback, but I figure it is still at least a little bit useful, and hopefully even a little encouraging as a small validation of the concept. Thank you!
- FailMore 6y ago
  No problem, thank you for it. If you want to email me about anything, my email is in my bio.
sideshowb 6y ago
I quite like the approach of https://www.kialo.com/explore/featured https://www.kialo.com/explore/featured Discussions in a more visual tree format for easier navigation and reduce duplication of points (I appreciate hn and Reddit are trees already, but this takes a different direction)

burlesona 6y ago

This article made me realize, part of the quality of the conversation on HN comes from the ability to downvote. I’ve never thought about this before, but one of the effects of Twitter and Facebook only having positive reinforcement is that you don’t get the “disapproving stare.” It’s possible for a person to “like” with some degree of anonymity and no effort, but not possible to do the reverse. Worse, since the Algorithms heavily bias content based on “likes,” there’s no recognition of content that is actually broadly liked versus content that is polar. Also, for individual posters in places with downvoting, the little dopamine hit you get from upvotes is heavily countered by the bad feeling of downvotes. I know that in my own participation on HN I will occasionally think of a snarky thing to say, but usually don’t post it because I know it’ll get downvoted, which I don’t like, and that moment of hesitation is usually enough for me to think “yeah that is actually unhelpful and not worth posting.” This all probably very obvious to most of this crowd, but I honestly haven’t considered it before. How different would the world be if Facebook and Twitter merely had dislike buttons to go along with likes?

quotemstr 6y ago
Reddit has downvotes as well and its conversations are uniformly bad. Slate Star Codex has a creaky old antique of a comment system without voting at all, but its conversations were of the highest quality. So are LWN's. I don't think voting mechanics affect discussion quality as much as you think. What matters a lot more is a sense of mutual respect, shared purpose, and, honestly, a certain level of average intellectual horsepower.
- donw 6y ago
  I'd argue that it's the norms that a community develops. LWN and SSC had excellent discussion because their respective communities focus on both promoting quality and policing bad behavior -- go off the rails, and you'll get a bunch of folks trying to help you get back on. It's Peelian policing[1] for internet forums. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
- chroem- 6y ago

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dutch3000 6y ago

surprise. how about verbal communication. smh.

Ghjklov 6y ago

>speak out >get attacked >stay silent >get attacked It used to be that the only way to win a losing game is to not play, but even now that's not an option anymore.

danlugo92 6y ago
How do you exactly get attacked by staying silent?
- commander_k33n 6y ago
  A common slogan these days is "Silence is violence.".

jger15 6y ago

Curious if this is related to the Balaji Srinivasan/Taylor Lorenz spat on Twitter.

tambourine_man 6y ago

Here you go, server is currently giving me 503 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://devonzuegel.com/post/the-silence-is-deafening http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/... On a side note, why does Google make it so hard for mobile users to use its cache feature?

dredmorbius 6y ago
IA WBM is a more reliable archive tool: https://web.archive.org/web/20200703225029/https://devonzuegel.com/post/the-silence-is-deafening https://web.archive.org/web/20200703225029/https://devonzueg...
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  Yes, but it's a bit slower too.

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago

A big part of in person conversations are about building equity in the relationship. Even from the first encounter, you express what you think about and how you think about it and look for places that your thoughts intersect with others. Those that have a beneficial intersection you're likely to explore further, invest more and build more equity. Online, there is little chance that you'll establish a new relationship and build equity with other users. You've got hundreds or thousands of followers, so do they and in many cases, the person you respond to may never see your reply, let alone remember your username for more than a few minutes. These exchanges can be so fleeting because you're both typically anonymous. Anonymity is antithetical to trust and trust is required for equity. There is little that an anonymous person can do for you, and little you could do for them. Contrast Twitter and LinkedIn. Both have feeds and allow messaging and conversations. But since you know the people you're interacting with on LinkedIn, many times personally, you are civil, helpful and courteous because one day they may actually be able to do something to benefit you. You invest in them and building equity in your relationship in expectation that if there is something you can do for them, or they can do for you in the future, it's there to leverage. Twitter just feels like, I dunno, looking for love in all the wrong places? People have a multitude of purposes for engaging online anonymously. Learning or trolling, ego support or battling boredom, maybe a better solution would be to target those purposes as independent platforms and structure the dialog to support the purpose.

mirimir 6y ago
Yeah, friends have occasionally encouraged me to use Twitter, over the years since the mid 00s. But it's never appealed to me, and so I have ~no experience with it, except from following posted links. But anyway, you say: > Anonymity is antithetical to trust and trust is required for equity. There is little that an anonymous person can do for you, and little you could do for them. While that's generally so, I have developed many more-or-less long-term anonymous relationships, over the past couple decades. And some of them have led to interesting collaborations, and even paying work.
Reelin 6y ago
I was with you until you pinned the problems on anonymity. Correlation does not imply causation. In this particular case there are (IMO) many counterexamples regarding anonymity, including HN in particular. A different comment here points out the (effectively unquantifiable) risk that more or less indelible comments can pose in the future if they can be trivially linked back to a permanent identity. Interestingly, your explanation in terms of equity actually holds up without considering anonymity. If you instead frame it in terms of purpose for visiting the site it makes sense that Twitter would have a disproportionate number of users who exhibited little concern for building equity. This is also consistent with the toxic behavior that often occurs on Facebook, where real names and interacting with people local to your area are by far the norm.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

I suspect that a lot of the nice behavior on HN is because, for the most part, people value the community, and consider this a "professional" environment, and it's not a bad idea to play nice in places where employers/ees can see us show our butts. LinkedIn was like that (in fact, sickeningly saccharine), but it's starting to fray. Slashdot was good for a while, then CNN and YouTube kicked off their trolls, and they all went to /. It's now the place to go, if you want swastika ASCII art. StackOverflow manages to be a painful place to participate, even though they are sincerely trying to be decent. I think it's way too "gamified," and competitive. For myself, I'm an old troll. I admit that I was a right bastard, back in the UseNet days. I am trying to atone. One of the ways that I do that, is make all my info connected with every place I participate. If I am a jerk, you know where to find me. Alternatively, if I make a good impression, you know where to find me. I also pay attention to downvotes. If a post I make gets a couple of rapid downvotes, I nuke it. Sometimes, I understand why; sometimes, not. It's just not worth it to me. I am also making an effort not to engage too much. I may have a one-or-two-post back and forth, just to see if we can come to an accommodation, then it's "Have a great day!". Totally OK to let someone else have the last word. I have better uses for my time.

burntoutfire 6y ago
> I suspect that a lot of the nice behavior on HN is because, for the most part, people value the community, and consider this a "professional" environment, and it's not a bad idea to play nice in places where employers/ees can see us show our butts. As I work in dysfunctional industry (enterprise software development), being professional would ruin a lot of the fun of being on HN, as I would have to parrot their dysfunctional beliefs... Hence, I always write from anonymous accounts and decomission them often to make sure I'm not doxxed.
jimbob45 6y ago
I agree with you on StackOverflow mostly but their penchant for moving 1v1 arguments into extended chat and then providing a link to said chat for anyone to see is something that I wish was adopted by other sites.
- 6y ago

VLM 6y ago

The linked article suggestions would work on a holiness-neutral topic like emacs vs vi, but I don't think the suggested tactics would work against holy virtue signalling.

mcguire 6y ago
Can we ditch the "virtue signalling" meme? It comes across as a simple dismissal, which doesn't improve any situation.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The term can be overused. But we need a way to describe the very real underlying phenomenon, of expectations that everyone ought to endorse and actively promote promote a particular moral stance. Trying to talk about modern activism without the term "virtue signaling" would be like trying to talk about churches without the term "religion".
  - Intermernet 6y ago
    The term "virtue signalling" is a derogatory term for something that every person does in pretty much every form of communication. You can perceive it in everything from scientific papers, to song lyrics, to professional conferences, to children's conversations. The use of the term is purely to denigrate the person by vaguely deriding the values that they've presented as the basis for their argument. If you use the term you've chosen to argue against the character of the person, and not against the content of their statements.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      I don't agree. The way I normally see it used, "virtue signaling" refers to a pretty specific phenomenon where you go out of your way to make sure people know you hold the correct moral views. It can occur in pretty much every form of communication, but it's far from universal.

Thorentis 6y ago

Good observation. I have noticed that people very vocal online do not do so well in person. They forget what it's like to have people looking at you disapprovingly or to be forced to express your views coherently the first or second attempt, without the chance to craft the perfect 140 char response. Unfortunately, as more and more young people grow up with digital spaces as their primary domain, they are losing the ability to communicate in person. I have a few friends that are high school teachers, and they all notice this trend. Every class discussion involves short sentence answers, low effort, very little passion. But if you let them use a digital space to post opinions (like a class discussion forum) things can become polarised, or at least more passionate than they were in class.

casefields 6y ago
Toastmasters! Public speaking is an incredible valuable skill that you need in all walks of life. People should check out their local chapter: https://www.toastmasters.org/ https://www.toastmasters.org/
- sinker 6y ago
  I've come across people mentioning Toastmasters online at least 3 dozen times in separate contexts over the years. Yet no one IRL knows what the hell it is or where to find one. How can something be so commonplace here and completely alien outside of online spaces. I've never been to one or had the word toastmasters ever mentioned in person before. Is this like an alcoholics anonymous, but for public speaking?
perl4ever 6y ago
I think maybe the difference is that a digital space allows you to not focus on the number of people you're addressing, so people act more like they are having a conversation with a representative member of their audience. I don't think it's fundamentally about the digital aspect so much as writing vs. speaking.

chiefalchemist 6y ago

> It gets worse—Angry Alice only sees feedback from extremists, so she doesn't receive more nuanced signals that might actually cause her to reflect on her behavior But this works both way. Actually, it works all ways. That is, the person who marginalizes Alice is also marginalized by someone else. And so on and so on. Eventually, everything is binary. There's little if any grey area. No doubt a small minority actually deserve to be marginalized. Those existed long before the internet. The internet is different. You don't need to work to understand or even engage. Instead, many seek to minimize friction and maximize positive feedback. The validity of the source is irrelevant. Digital love is good regardless of the source.

sergiotapia 6y ago

Arguing online is a complete and total waste of time. Designed to make you spin your wheels. You aren't doing _anything_ productive.

kordlessagain 6y ago

Good luck trying to do this with every single participating entity. The "problem", if there is one to be defined, is not the "silence" of the user, but the default behavior to not surface the access of the data in question to others who are accessing or discussing the data. Basically servers need to divulge all meta data about an endpoint, including access and times. Its a "security flaw" of the Internet and web services, as they are currently defined. If someone would get around to integrating Lightning with the 402 HTTP error code, it might make it a bit better. Then again, someone has to convince all the users to use new browsers and technology, which will take forever. In the meantime, a service which shows who and where the content is being accessed, and a revenue model that fits with that viewing would be interesting. Vote me down, but no discussion is just more of the same meta problem. Users vs. hidden/unknown corporate control.

proc0 6y ago

You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you. It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own. The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have. -Marcus Aurelius

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marcusverus 6y ago
I'm a big fan of Meditations. Having read both the Gregory Hays translation and the George Long, I have a hard time mapping these very different translations as referring onto the same text. My first impression was, "clearly the George Long translation is a real translation of the text, whereas the Gregory Hays is a contemporary attempt to restate the thesis of each lassage without strict adherence to the original." But without the ability to read the original, this is pure speculation/ignorance on my part. Does anyone have any insight into which translation is the most faithful to the original?
- proc0 6y ago
  Yeah, it would be nice to learn Latin and read the originals.
  - wenc 6y ago
    Interesting tidbit: Marcus Aurelius, despite being a Roman emperor, wrote Meditations in Koine Greek. I once had a conversation with a Koine Greek scholar (also a Lyft driver, he was driving me to the airport -- turns out the job market for Ph.D.s in Koine Greek was/is not great), and he claims that most native English speakers should be able to achieve reading proficiency in Koine Greek in a matter of 6 months. It's apparently a very regular language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations
    - proc0 6y ago

basicplus2 6y ago

DM = Direct Message

ilaksh 6y ago

Well good ideas, but maybe Twitter should have a disapproving glare button and a way to incentivize it's use by reasonable people.

rattray 6y ago

Wow, this changes how I think about online discourse more than anything I can remember. It actually makes me feel a lot better - rather than feeling like the whole world and all my friends are angry and unreasonable, it reminds me that, no, most of them are just being invisible. And that even the ones who seem unreasonable are just a product of their environment. The funny thing is it could really be solved with a "that" feature on Twitter, to quietly keep track of when others disapprove, and even to anonymously and privately let the tweeter know.

acidburnNSA 6y ago
A that feature? Is that a typo?
- rattray 6y ago
  Sorry, yes, that was autocorrect - I meant "tut", which had been suggested by someone else on the thread

hnick 6y ago

I watched the famous movie 12 Angry Men for the first time recently (I think it holds up well today, BTW). There is a scene where a man goes on a racist tirade. Instead of engaging in argument or ignoring him, they stand up and turn their backs. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlHKTPfLVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlHKTPfLVA This is much like the disapproving glare mentioned, but what's the online equivalent? I play a few online games but not much multiplayer. Public voice chat made it a much less enjoyable experience. You can mute people of course. But as far as I know, they don't get told. What if each time it happened it popped up a message "4 people have muted you today", "3 out of 8 teammates have muted you"? It could be a useful feedback mechanism.

holler 6y ago
that’s an interesting idea.. the analog to real life would be if someone turned around and walked away, effectively muting your speech to their ears. I’m working on a new public chat app sqwok.im, actively thinking about these issues, and may consider this, thank you
anonymousab 6y ago
Negative feedback and dislike features can reduce engagement or drive people away, so social media platforms are incentivized to avoid such mechanisms.
- hnick 6y ago
  And I think they're just chasing local maxima. Over the long term, they devolve and people leave.
  - sbarre 6y ago
    This is a very important observation.. It parallels the real-world chase of short-term profits in business, and short-term "points" in politics. If the major platforms took a longer view of their communities, and asked themselves how do you build the _best_ community, not the _biggest_ community, we might all be better off.. But then their stockholders wouldn't be better off, so it hasn't happened. That said, now with businesses and advertisers (the actual customers of social networks - because the users sure aren't) starting to pull ad dollars, we may see some of this change? One can hope..

082349872349872 6y ago

A single bit of disapproval may be too little information. In the southern US last century, "So, when are you inviting me over?" not only conveyed reasonably non-confrontational disapproval, but also the specific message that one shouldn't speak too much of one's own acquisitions in a wide public. "Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter" is a similar stock phrase to gently suggest online that someone is not preaching to their choir. Someone asked a few days ago on HN what to do about clearly racist rhetoric in the twenty-first century. Maybe we ought to discover a similar stock phrase, such as "All that matters is can the fine horse see" or "Nobody's saying they don't appreciate what Jenny did" (or perhaps something from Blazing Saddles? "So, when are we stampeding cattle through the Vatican?"). (but, even assuming such a phrase were discovered and originally used in a targeted fashion, how should we avoid the nearly-inevitable Godwin-treadmill flak thereafter?)

nabla9 6y ago

Best kind of disapproval makes people reflect and change behaviour. That kind of disapproval works best if it comes from people in your in-group or from people you respect. Anonymous downvoting like in big forum is just for moderation that excludes people.

guerrilla 6y ago

I've long thought that the problem with Twitter and Facebook is that there's no downvote button. This article is about something different though. What if we had a platform like these but posts had a metric of likes or shares per view displayed on them rather than absolute numbers. I really want to see how that goes actually. Simply displaying views might give a totally different interaction as well.

mjw1007 6y ago

I think this direct message technique has always been going on. The reason people on Usenet would say "The lurkers support me in email" (until they learned that saying that was taboo) is that the lurkers were supporting them in email.

mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE 6y ago

But what if Alice is right and silent majority is wrong? I would say silent majority is mostly wrong in recent times.

bobthechef 6y ago

Downvoting is one way disapproval is expressed, so the premise is the article is flawed. However, we must also remember that the point of speech is to convey truth, not crowd pleasing, not stirring up conflict for the kicks, not bland milquetoast niceness. What the appropriate tone or style is, or whether engagement makes sense at all, will depend on the situation and here we need prudence (in the classical sense). Feedback can be of help in shaping prudence, but it is not the final arbiter of the correct course is action. It must be examined for validity. So please, do not couch your language. Be clear and direct. Let your yeses be yeses and your noes be noes. Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language. Listen to to your interlocutors, but speaks plainly and honestly. Let the chips fall where they may.

curation 6y ago

Polemics require belief that subjectivity is born out of battle. What has changed is that belief.

buboard 6y ago

A deeper issue is the cultural shift to an overly judgemental culture which has been built thoughout the decades. The media always, always has thrived on creating moral panics, but the public wasn't always so gullible to them. There's a noticeable shift towards conservativism and a constant preoccupation with their public image among younger generations. It's even noticeable in statistics , e.g. disapproval of nudism.

bartelby 6y ago

I’ve been trying to have more 1-1 conversations with friends these days about some of the more controversial topics in the news when it comes up, basically an IRL version of a DM, and it’s been interesting to see how people’s opinions align against the Twitter opinion spectrum. About half have been much more moderate than anything I’ve seen online, but the other half actually do align with the more radical and loud voices shouting about whatever it is that’s trending on Twitter at that moment. I always thought that Twitter wasn’t really representative of what most people thought/believed but now I’m not so sure. Of course this is just based on personal anecdotes. And to be fair, all of the 1-1 conversations I’ve had have been productive and each time I’ve been able to walk away with some ideas that I haven’t had before.