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De-escalating social media conflict
- Fellshard 6y agoHow will this play when a mea culpa acts as blood in the water for some groups of bad actors?
- tomrod 6y agoPrecisely my concern. When social media channels are new, the bad faith actors are small and legitimate discussion can occur. As they age, people get burned more often and a higher proportion engages in the contagion.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- intended 6y agoIt will play badly. Its still worth testing. Not all scenarios are managed by bad actors, so if this has positive results in those situations it may lead to the creation of more tools that could help. That said, I am sure people are currently finding ways to correct themselves. The main thing here is that the original incident itself is modified.
- oehpr 6y agoCurrently I am liking the look of this proposal a lot! I've been trying to imagine some scenarios where it could be used or abused in a negative way but so far I haven't come up with any. Could you go into details on how you're thinking this would play out? I'm not sure how a bad actor would exploit a tweet with a mea culpa flag like this on it. But I am not as imaginative as bad actors.
- Fellshard 6y agoSome people take it less as an apology, and more as an admission of guilt - a self-picked target for harassment and worse.
- photoGrant 6y agoThis is precisely the discussions and issues we need to be solving to better the social media death trap we’re already in. Not only that, they supplied some really solid ideas on how, also. Kudos
- FooBarWidget 6y agoEven increasing the content limit will go a long way towards deescalation. I find that, on Twitter, one often has to resort to oversimplified hyperbole and sarcasm because it's very difficult to fit more thoughtful and nuanced messages in the content limit. Yes it's possible to write multiple tweets. But that takes significantly more effort.
- hirundo 6y agoThe oversimplified hyperbole is also a primary key to twitter's success. If you remove that feature it just creates a vacuum for some other aggregated micro-blog to fill.
- coffeefirst 6y agoBoth of these things are probably true, and a good argument for why it can’t be fixed at all.
- umvi 6y agoThen you'll just get increasingly large walls of text as each person refutes every single sentence + adds a few more zingers of their own
- notSupplied 6y agoThe thing is, a long wall of text usually reveals how truly eloquent and thoughtful the writer is. In a mere 280 characters, some random person could sound just as smart as Paul Graham. It is the essays that set them apart, and not easily replicated the by drive-by-reply-guy.
- scollet 6y agoIt doesn't take an essay to convey nuance.
- dcow 6y agoTwitter/FB just aren't the right platforms for nuanced discussion. I don't know why people keep trying to treat them that way or keep wanting them to become such. Easy for me to say as someone who has already come to this realization and has actively avoided building dependency on Twitter/FB in my daily life, I guess... But honestly I wish people who wanted to have real meaningful discourse with people would gravitate towards other forums. Maybe the reality is that no good alternative exists? I don't really know of any platforms built for "at scale" social discourse. Discords and Slacks and chats and whatnot work great for localized (in the graph-distance sense) discussion. I have yet to come across a tool built specifically around having nuanced discussion of real social issues at scale in a way that doesn't end in scorched earth.
- ptato 6y agothis is a great idea, and that's precisely why twitter would never implement it
- Nextgrid 6y agoThe problem isn't just the people but the fact that social media platforms encourage outrage because it's how they make money. We can't fix "cancel culture" as long as it benefits the social media companies.
- mikedilger 6y agoIt's the same reason that news media is so enraging.
- rvz 6y ago> By admitting a mistake, the poster stops the runaway train of replies and amplifications of their mistake, and the reputation damage that follows. No matter the apology of the mistake, those who demand them to apologise will still reject it and push further for calls for the accused to be cancelled. The replies and amplifications will divert into real life instead of Twitter.
- npunt 6y agoIt certainly won't work for all cases of conflict, but don't you think it would work for some? The goal was not a complete solution but a step towards changing community norms.
- gridlockd 6y agoIt would only work in situations that are not actually problems, like being confronted with a mob of reasonable people.
- ptero 6y agoApology can go a long way, but in my experience (USA) all the successful ones that I have seen were done from a position of strength. That is, the person apologizing felt that after apology his opinions would still be respected and listened to, not dismissed as "another stupidity from that fool". In this case, it could be very powerful. It is also seen as voluntary. On the flip side, I have never, ever seen an impactful apology that was extracted by demands. Such demanded apology is usually a punishment. Call it by what it is -- flogging (that strong inflict on the week). My 2c.
- npunt 6y agoTo be fair, in the language section I point out this is explicitly not using the language of apology (for some of the reasons you bring up), but is instead a more neutral admission of mistake.
- zozbot234 6y agoThe nice thing about this proposal is precisely how it replaces the problematic "apology" dynamic with a neutral retraction. Apologies may or may not be rejected as insincere, but a retraction is simply a factual statement that the user no longer stands behind what they wrote, while preserving the content itself (unlike tweet deletion, which in practice tends to escalate reposts) for the sake of transparency.
- im3w1l-alt 6y agoI think the mockup emphasises the original tweet too much and the apology too little. Suggestion: put the apology first. Use black color for apology, faint gray for original.
- npunt 6y agoGood idea, I was trying to use existing Twitter designs as much as possible but agree emphasis is lost. See the top image in the Follow-ups section where the mistake is represented atop the tweet for something more along what you're thinking.
- momokoko 6y agoThe only winning move is not to play.
- tomrod 6y agoA game theorist has emerged! :) I loved that movie.
- dragontamer 6y agoSocial Media is increasingly becoming a major source of power for political movements and political organization. Both Obama and Trump campaigns were signified by a major online, social-media presence. I'd expect that many future Presidents will be determined by their command of Social Media. Social Media is the new television, the new Radio. Its the new media that is most significantly consumed by the population. By "not playing", you resign your power to others who take advantage of this new form of media.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- taborj 6y agoI disagree. By not playing, you're protecting yourself from future retribution, deserved or (more commonly) not. And not being on social media - or more precisely, not posting on social media - doesn't mean you're out of touch or lacking in influence. Not by a long shot.
- koluna 6y agoTo that, genuinely curious - what is the alternative you see to social media to build influence and visibility? One of the key benefits of Twitter is that you can make your work, be it in the arts, software or literally anything else, visible to a large audience. What’s the alternative if one is not to use Twitter? How do you publicize your findings or insights to a broad population?
- 6y ago
- FailMore 6y agoThis is excellent. Great thinking
- dbbljack 6y agook what happens when the president says something like "the sky is red, dems are better off dead (marked as mistake made, replies disabled)"
- remexre 6y agoarticle actually uses one of his tweets as an example -- twitter already blocks comments on ones they judge to be over the line. there's also mention later about how to deal with bad actors.
- adjkant 6y agoThere's a lot that would need to be solved for in the "Culture of Use" section, but true props to the author for thinking outside the box of normalcy. As far as I can see, the only way we can get these types of things implemented is to have a company that cares to design and spend time with them in the first place. Does anyone know/have thoughts on/have any ideas on how to make things like this a reality?
- netsharc 6y agoSlightly off-topic (talking about the psychology and not this UX), but I also feel like people are yelling "You f*ing idiot(s)!" online to feel better about themselves, e.g. if someone wrote "How can you not see [insert politician's name here] is saving the world, you idiot!", they'd feel a bit better about themselves for getting it and being smarter than the person behind the wall of text they just read. We need to take care of the loneliness epidemic as well, and this addiction to the Ersatz-Socialising which is just staring at screens and thinking you have a social life...
- npunt 6y agoAgree completely. Negative social media behavior is many times just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger issue of the fabric of society being torn, of our spirits hurting, and of psychological issues surfacing. We must acknowledge this and offer paths for people to find psychological safety again, and one way is to soften and de-escalate the culture of discourse.
- anonms-coward 6y agoThis is very old but feels as relevant as ever http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
- musicale 6y ago> most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in French literature, but few professors of French literature could make it through a PhD program in physics Pretty sure this isn't true. French literature professors not only managed to survive a brutal graduate program but have also achieved something that is next to impossible: get a tenured job as a humanities professor. Physics is almost certainly the easier route, not just intellectually but in terms of sheer endurance.
- snicker7 6y agoSimpler solution: repeal Section 230. Social media thrives on strife and harassment (or "engagement"). It is fundamentally broken.
- geofft 6y agoSection 230 in no way prevents social media sits from moderating strife and harassment. I'd encourage you to read about the Prodigy and CompuServe cases that inspired Section 230, or alternatively https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI've always had a policy of promptly admitting when I'm wrong. It worked great, when I worked at a Japanese company. The Japanese respected it. The Americans, on the other hand, looked at it as a sign of weakness, and tended to "go for the jugular" (Carpe Jugulum). I think that explains why so many folks "double down," when asked to correct statements. Also, lawyers. A standard piece of advice at American accident scenes, is "NEVER say "I'm sorry!""
- jacquesm 6y agoThis is precisely what is going on. You can see that dynamic at work here on HN on a daily basis.
- ve55 6y agoThe idea that a feature like a 'forgive' button to forgive someone for acting out of line is so important that it's being suggested is..harrowing, in my opinion. I see how these features can seem like a good idea, but my issue is that these seems like patches onto a broken system instead of trying to fix things that have contributed to the brokenness. Instead of creating outrage and then trying to patch it later, we should try to stop the outrage from occurring to begin with, which means the nature of virality-promoting algorithms has to change.
- npunt 6y agoYeah, I'm a bit surprised nobody has picked up on the forgiveness part. The more I worked on this, the more it's necessity became clear. I think it's a more subtle point, but it's a powerful way to restore relationships and even potentially forge closer ties. I get that many people think Twitter or social media in general is a broken system. It's my belief though the same power of design to get us into the toxic situations we're in can help get us out of it. It will take many changes to deconstruct the outrage engine, but I think one part is indeed finding ways to have constructive, reputation- and respect-preserving dialog. Changing the algorithm is a much bigger task. It's a sort of 'how do you solve world peace as just one person' type question. If we lack access to change something big, we must still try to change what we can. That was why I started with a simple feature that Twitter could implement without much effort. We may as well try it and see what it does. If it works, it can help give us the momentum to tackle bigger problems, and give us the hope and concrete results to tackle larger problems.
- zestyping 6y agoThe word "forgive" is a loaded one. I wonder if it wouldn't be easier for people to understand and accept if presented as a "heart" on the mea culpa itself, since that's already a familiar button and the use of the heart symbology gives it a touch of tenderness.
- npunt 6y agoThat's definitely an alternative, I almost did it that way! I went with 'forgive' because I think the broader problem we have on social media is when looking across all users, it can be really ambiguous what things mean, which has led to a lot of misinterpretation of intent. The people entering the worldwide commons of Twitter are from every life stage, skill level, opinion tribe, culture, personality type, etc, and the tools we've used to find common ground among all of us in the past - language - is being thrown out in favor of hieroglyphs and UI structures that can be pretty ambiguous for a lot of people. Adding ambiguity can be fun and quite useful in certain circumstances, especially with new things where the goal is to create emergent behavior. But for important things that strike at the core of who we are and have deep psychological impact, I'd prefer to see those rooted in specific meaning and intent. Concepts like forgiveness and mercy are things that span almost every culture throughout history and are part of the glue that tie us together, so I figured its probably better to be extra clear about that. I also like to use design proposals to push people to think a bit, make them wrestle with things that sound silly because they're so straightforward, rather than just hand wave it (my other recent work on Spaces [0] is an example of this). But in this particular case, I loved the clarity of it. I do think it's worth further exploration and discussion tho! [0] https://nickpunt.com/blog/spaces/ https://nickpunt.com/blog/spaces/
- zuhayeer 6y agoReally like the ideas here, but I think the underlying problem is the mindset behind attacks and cheap dunks. People who are determined will find a way, they'll screenshot and flame you if they can't do anything else. Right now it feels like more of a way for attackers to cheaply drive engagement and get likes. I think we need a broader cultural shift of making it not cool to attack someone without an intent to genuinely educate. Also, at the same time, fundamentally, people use social media for different reasons and you can't necessarily dictate what people should do
- npunt 6y agoOne of the most powerful tools in design is friction. The more friction things take, the less they'll be done, and visa versa. Taking screenshots of later deleted tweets is high friction, so it only comes in the most extreme circumstances by the most dedicated people. What about other circumstances? I'm seeing a lot of acceptance of the status quo in responses here, that things will never get better, that people behave how they behave and that is that. I fundamentally disagree - I think we've gotten ourselves into this situation through designs that unintentionally favor certain outcomes, and if we are more intentional about what outcomes we wish to have, altering those designs can lead us to better outcomes.
- meowfly 6y agoI'm very much convinced that one should never admit a mistake on social media after a dogpile. I think there is too much bad faith for a Mea Culpa option to even work. Apologies work well in smaller circles because an apology implies a correction in behavior that's necessary for those around you to trust you again. In social media people are signalling they don't like your behavior but they don't actually care about you individually. If Twitter really wants to fix this they should make it against the rules to screenshot or share deleted tweets. It will be much harder to dogpile after someone deletes their tweet if people can't just keep resharing the offending tweet for likes.
- watwut 6y agoApology in personal contact does not imply correction. It is just about closing conflict so we can continue working together.
- bt4u3 6y agoDogpile is a great word as it works much like animals. Any sign of weakness is a trigger for them to go for the kill. Apologies are seen as a weakness, they've managed to get through to you and now they want more. The long term effect of teaching people never to apologize for anything is gonna be sad
- dcow 6y agoI don't see how the stance that you should never admit a mistake after a mob dog pile means the feature described here would never work. There are plenty of cases where people just straight up make real mistakes and don't feel pressured to apologize out of desire to appease the mob but rather simply have aggregated additional input, and reassessed their original statement in light of new information, and decided it needs correction.
- renewiltord 6y agoNot worth it. Most people have zero value. Write for your audience that has non zero value. Issue corrections to them. Apologies are pointless. Just issue updated information. Truth seekers will simply update the coefficients they have for you. It's just information interchange. If you don't issue errata, your coefficients will just drop.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Funes- 6y agoThere's no viable solution at this point other than leaving all social media behind. The internet should've never intertwined with our real life identities. In fact, what we have now is the vast majority of people living most of their lives exclusively online, unfailingly to the detriment of their immediate environment. Do not try to de-escalate, but to remove once and for all.
- TheBobinator 6y agoJoe Rogan had an excellent podcast up on this which is well worth your time to listen to IMO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtNW3I1FZ5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtNW3I1FZ5o What you have is a significant portion of people with c-ptsd due to the abuses western cultures' political experimentation has created who believe western culture was a mistake and tearing everything down it stands for is a lofty moral goal. These people are angry, and IMO, they have a right to be angry; they've been through some terrible, terrible things. They believe, strongly, that engaging in pyschological warfare and using tactics to build cults or go get orgs to "go woke" that eventually culminate in killing people is a reasonable method of running what can be defined at this point as an insurgency. I think it is manditory reading for people to read books like The body keeps the Score by Van Der Kolk if they want to really understand this movement and how these people have been marinated in bad situations. I think it is important to give them opportunities and show them patience in their recovery and to allow them to decide what their culture should be going forward. Their tactics and logic do not stand up to scientific riguer but are complex enough to entrap the normal minimally educated individual and get them into an emotional trap; Much like the Seattle CHAZ\CHOP, the correct way to manage this is as an emotional discussion. Eventually the movement will hit a political peak, the emotions will die down, and an unruly minority is left over. I think it is incredibly important for us to not ignore this minority, but to recognize, especially after reading that book, that these people exist and need to be given opportunities and space to decide for themselves what they want their culture to be. We need to set strong boundaires of pride in western culture and its accomplishments, but not engage in debates about how western culture needs to be torn down or we need to self-harm as an act of solidarity. We need to not engage in political discource and when they do come, give them acts of virtue signalling which are a fascade. Over time, the emotions will dissipate and the healing can begin. Western people are learning and we need, I think, to learn to pay for our mistakes a little better instead of ignoring people as detritus from failed systems.
- jennyyang 6y agoIt's actually a simple solution. Have a flamewar detector similar to HN, and then for that thread and those users, have it look like the other people in the thread respond "Ok, I'm sorry." Obviously randomized using machine learning so that people will think that it's a real apology. Everyone on the thread will think the other person apologized and will simply move on. Or, if they respond, no one except the writer will see the responses.
- gallegojaime 6y agoI might see this working only if it doesn't curtail freedom of speech that much. But it's too eerie. Without UX cues I don't know if Twitter wrote something or you did. Train it slightly wrong and Twitter takes control of some important figure's public viewpoint, perhaps even replacing something worth being angry about in the first place.
- noobermin 6y agoI think this work is great and interesting, and I respect it. One of the things I feel like it lacks is a discussion of the broader context: we all sort of suspect that one of the reasons Twitter does not generally allow for de-escalation (like FB not censoring misleading news articles) is that such escalation is in fact part of their revenue stream (escalation=more engagement), so while I think ideas like this would be great if Twitter decided to incorporate it, the issue of course is that Twitter wouldn't want to as they actually love the cancel culture mill, it generates engagement. I genuinely however like the ability to admit guilt such that replies are disabled because as the author notes, it explicitly ends all engagement. Any following engagement would require more work (subtweeting, screenshotting) but actively put a damp on the first derivative. But that said, reducing engagement is in fact not in Twitter's interest, as I said, so I don't see them doing it without some outside pressure.
- dgfitz 6y agoThe earth is still flat, the moon landing never happened, Darwin denied evolution. What I mean is, when a thing is said, a recant usually doesn’t matter. Even if the recant is from a subject matter expert. (Not debating truths of the above examples, they’re just examples)
- secondcoming 6y agoIf there's anyone out there who wants to earn money from advertising there are two words you need to be aware of: "BRAND SAFETY" No well known advertiser wants their brand associated with something unpopular or toxic. This is why YouTube is demonetising any video that mentions Covid-19. YouTube themselves technically probably don't care, but brand safety conscious advertisers certainly do, and so YouTube must too. They've realised that Twitter and FB, and others, are currently toxic platforms. The discussion threads can be awful, driven by fascists on both the far-left and far-right of the political debate. They no longer want to buy this advertising space, it's too much of a reputational risk (I will say that advertisers outsource the buying of advertising space to Ad agencies who may not be as savvy since they're under pressure to spend allotted advertising budgets). Hence the news about big brands pulling budgets from social media. Another issue that I've never seen discussed is that if Twitter (and other social media platforms) relies completely on advertising revenue, it can be forced to only allow content that advertisers approve of. In other words, advertisers can in theory control political debate. Social media platforms then ban or remove content that's undesirable for advertisers because they can't monetise it.
- ponker 6y agoThis only highlights that any substantive discussion of anything controversial should be pseudonymous.
- dcow 6y agoI think this is a great idea. I would love to see it implemented immediately as an experiment rather than tring to figure out on principle whether it would work etc. etc. etc. Only one way to know how it impacts the social climate... try it out!
- dilandau 6y agoFor small scale, acknowledging my mistakes is vital. If I'm being attacked by a crowd of people I don't even know, who don't know me, fuck em. I've seen this time and again where someone gets called out. Even when they apologize they usually still get cancelled. It's only the people who refuse to apologize to sjw's who have, ironically, been safe (joe Rogan, the draftkings guy, etc). Twitter is, and always will be, a hate machine.
- dghughes 6y ago>as the visibility of a mistake travels across social media, the poster is subject to a constant deluge of new readers calling them out I've certainly experienced this situation. It's not so bad when it's limited to a small geographic area like a single timezone. But if it's a topic that interests a world-wide audience even just English speakers that's when it can get nuts. >Twitter as an example environment....1 Ignore replies and hopefully let it die out That's all you can do you're tainted and anything you write is useless it's. Once that fuse is lit there is no plan B. Turn off notifications on your phone and walk away for a few days. Another Twitter mistake I've made is replying to a heated topic. The responding people don't understand or is not aware of all the people attached to that Tweet. Now I deselect everyone but the one person I want to reply to unless the topic is tame.
- Finnucane 6y agoThe only way to win is not to play.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoI think the article is missing a big point. Most discussions on social media are about values and sacred beliefs. Someone might quote an article or state some statistics, but that’s not at all part of their intent. Their intent is to talk about their deeply held norms. What social policy is Correct and what policy is Wrong. Not because of facts but because of tribes. These are not things you can “admit you’re wrong” about. It takes years of ego breaking life experience to realize core beliefs or values might be wrong. It simply will not happen in the span of posting in social media. So I don’t think the trouble with admitting you are wrong is as simple as they put it. It’s not about the “no respite” aspect or social proof or digging in. It’s just taking “us v them” tribal beliefs evolved to survive in agrarian or nomadic society millennia ago, and putting it in a megaphone. Many of the toxic debates are not even about anything where right and wrong makes any sense. The outrage cancel people calling for blood are just as “wrong” as the person they are persecuting. It’s just one stream of subjective babble yelling at another stream of subjective babble that they’re wrong.
- LordFast 6y agoThere's no need to go to war with someone if you can plant the seeds of a toxic mindset, and then watch them tear themselves apart instead.
- wGeF7H8Z59y985y 6y agoYears ago, when the cancel culture was just getting underway, I decided to help them out, and canceled myself from social media once and for all. Not only have I been happier since exiting Twitter, but I’ve also saved myself from certain destruction of my livelihood and career. Delete your social media accounts today. I highly recommend it. Not standing daily in front of an anonymous firing squad will do wonders for your sanity.
- jancsika 6y agoI like this and posted a question yesterday on HN whether Twitter had such a UI. So I guess they don't. The deeper issue IMO is that a) we're trying to squeeze every last ounce of value out of the dying "feature" that "anyone can join this service for zero effort", and b) the services that do leverage a web of trust (in the social sense) like Facebook have business models that tend to damage those social links rather than build something healthy with them.
- memexy 6y ago> Reply to your tweet, posting "I was wrong" There is another option. Quote tweet and say "I was wrong". Quote tweeting is a concept extension mechanism but people mostly use it for dunking. If you make a mistake then quote tweeting is the best way to correct it because people can then search for "I was wrong" and see the wrong tweet in context.
- npunt 6y agoTrue, quote tweeting (I think you mean retweet with comment) yourself is another option, however I don't see it as fundamentally different to replies. If people are liking, retweeting, or replying to the original tweet, it will continue to show up in the feeds of others through the home feed algorithm. Thus, the same forces apply that strongly favor the original over the correction.
- memexy 6y agoThat's a good point but if you actually want to verify whether the original author retracted their statement then you can do localized search, e.g. "from:author 'I was wrong'". It's true the feed will show different results but I only use twitter by searching now and it's a much better experience. Tweetdeck allows me to curate exactly what I want to be aware of instead of being beholden to algorithmic manipulation.
- oehpr 6y agoI don't believe that would work, because links to the original tweet will still be broken, allowing people to say "X deleted their tweet" without saying that they reposted and said they were wrong. Motivated actors loooooove this form of lying.
- memexy 6y agoCan't really do much for the people that are not interested in finding out the truth so not much point in trying to address their concerns. The people that care about finding out will dig through the timeline and figure it out, especially if they consider the account to be trustworthy.
- jackcosgrove 6y agoYears ago I had a rule that I would not post anything after 8pm. I had discovered after some reflection that that was when my "witching hour" for toxic internet posting was most likely to begin. I don't follow the rule anymore as I've slowly disengaged from social media and am less likely to get riled up by that nonsense, but it was a good rule when I did follow it. Commenting platforms should have "circuit breakers" that slow down activity. It's the easiest thing to measure and control. You don't even need to analyze content. Metafilter had (has?) a similar feature for posting topics, which only allowed one topic per day. As others have pointed out though, slowing down activity decreases engagement and hurts the bottom line.
- icebraining 6y agoHN has a circuit breaker too; as a thread gets deeper, the "reply" link takes longer to appear, to force a cooldown.
- pabs3 6y agoThis reminded me of Polis: https://pol.is/ https://pol.is/ https://github.com/pol-is/ https://github.com/pol-is/ Taiwan use it for their multi-stakeholder decision making to find points of agreement. Their application of it to the Uber vs Taxis situation was quite interesting. https://debconf18.debconf.org/talks/135-q-a-session-with-minister-tang/ https://debconf18.debconf.org/talks/135-q-a-session-with-min... https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-da7570d372b5 https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-da7570d372b5 https://blog.pol.is/uber-responds-to-vtaiwans-coherent-blended-volition-3e9b75102b9b https://blog.pol.is/uber-responds-to-vtaiwans-coherent-blend...
- ImaCake 6y agoThat is excellent. Tools like this get us close to the kind of granular democracy that our ancestors could only dream of.
- mistermann 6y agoAn imperfect system for granular democracy could be built fairly easily, or bolted onto an existing system (Facebook has the largest global membership I'd think). There's nothing stopping anyone from building one (other than maybe reasonable fear of being suicided if it gets too much traction, etc), yet I don't think I've ever heard of anyone who's tried. It's so obviously useful that the lack of attempts almost seems like a glitch in The Matrix.
- ImaCake 6y agoThere is an obscure party in Australia whose platform is to allow people to vote on every issue in parliament. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Direct_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Direct_Democracy
- mistermann 6y agoVery interesting! > Online Direct Democracy does not have any policies. Instead it has pledged to conduct an online poll for every bill that passes before Parliament. Anyone on the Australian electoral roll would be allowed to register to vote in these polls and will be allowed one vote per bill. The MPs would then be required to vote in accordance with the clear majority (55%-70% and more than 100,000 votes). If there is no clear majority they will abstain from voting. A beta version of the system is operating and available for public use. This system has been designed to highlight the possibilities on online democracy.[2] "required to vote in accordance with the clear majority" seems a bit problematic (in the short term anyways) - in this case it is only on a per ODD-elected MP basis so that's probably fine, but jumping straight to a direct democracy based system from what we have now likely would be a bit messy. What I have in mind is setting up a completely independent parallel political system, that has zero power (direct power anyways), which would allow time to work out the numerous kinks and complexities, while simultaneously allowing for the first time ever for the true (or, more true at least)will of the people to be known...as opposed to the obviously untrue "will of the people" we've been sold on for hundreds of years. Someone will eventually see this elephant in the room and do something about it, and things should start to get pretty interesting then. Although, my spider sense tells me that time may be running out, the propaganda techniques seem to be becoming so effective that it's hard to find independent opinions on most any topic - framing direct democracy as dangerous and evil strikes me as something that would be a very easy sales job in the current state of collective consciousness. That said, there are also a massive number of obscure, disconnected communities who all seem to be coming to the same general conclusions about what is going on here on Planet Earth, perhaps the sum total of all these obscure groups is actually a very large number, it's just that they're undetectable.
- geodel 6y agoWell the most nasty conflicts on social media are not about facts which once settled all parties can happily go home. If people were arguing who is tallest person in town it may be possible to make mistake, apologize and rectify. However most acrimonious conflicts are something like who is most evil person in town, I don't know how one can be objectively right or wrong about it or de-escalate during disagreement.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rexgallorum2 6y agoUltimately I think the best solution will be universal 'deamplification', i.e. disabling all features that facilitate virality/contagion. It is unfortunate that Facebook, Twitter, et. al. have tweaked their entire platforms and business models to profit from phenomena that appear to be almost without exception socially corrosive and destructive. Modern soc med platforms work like factories for the memetic reproduction and dissemination of bad ideas, half-truths, and other rubbish, as well as for disturbing mob behaviour. Regarding the article, providing 'mea culpa' tools would only reinforce the dictatorship of the online mob, who would invariably bully users into issuing apologies. It might seem like a stretch, but I suspect that ultimately all of these platforms are going to end up being carved up by regulators, co-opted by governments, subjected to national firewalls, etc. on account of their potential for mischief, misuse, disinformation, misinformation, open source intel gathering by hostile powers, meddling, etc.
- amadeuspagel 6y ago>as we rely heavily on social proof to sense-make around norms. What is this formulation? Why not "to make sense of norms"?
- sqldba 6y agoThis is brilliant.
- davesque 6y agoThis is brilliant. I actually was pondering just the other day how it seems like people have lost the ability to forgive in the public sphere. Unfortunately, I think a lot of world leaders are setting incredibly bad examples on this front. But maybe the design of social media is just as much of a problem. There's a bit of a chicken and egg thing there. Improving social media platforms is almost certainly the easier side of that problem to address.
- z61a 6y agoTwitter used to have this 140 char limit. Maybe they should have policy that each user can only post maximal 140 tweet each month -- to provide some equality. When every tweet counts, the conflict will be reduced.
- neilwilson 6y agoAn interesting view. However how does it deal with the main issue - when Twitter etc is gripped by a groupthink and the mob is wrong? There’s an old line that one person saying something is a crank, ten people a cult and 100 a religion. Social media allows you to find the other dozen people in the world who think what you do.
- billysielu 6y agoIf someone is abusive and you want to tell them that behavior is not acceptable you are also at the same disadvantage.
- SXX 6y agoI guess there is one more important bit that author is missing. Twitter also let's anyone retweet very old postings out-of-context and don't even show some warning like "this was posted N years ago" tells me they are not interested in de-escalation. There are a lot of years-old tweets that can be used to attack a person. And no people don't have to specifically delete their archives or press some "I was wrong" for solving this problem.
- thegayngler 6y agoI quite like this study on de-escalation online. I myself have learned to not care about whether or not people forgave me for being wrong or instead just assume they forgave me for being wrong. If I think I am actually wrong i'll say it and then ignore any further replies to the post. In the case that I simply do not agree that I'm wrong, I do not apologize. I "pithily" re-iterate my opinion/disagreement/argument and why, then ignore any further responses. Keeping track of everyone else's petty beefs with me online is not worth the effort. shrug As a side note: I do not believe in grudges. So..I do not stay mad.
- thinkingemote 6y agoForgiveness. Rather than encourage better behaviours of those targeted by the mob, it would be better to encourage better behaviours of the mob itself. Forgiveness is absent in every social media or comment section and yet it's one of the crucial ways we get along with people. Having others visibly but perhaps silently forgive another would allow social proof that its okay to forgive this perceived offender. Forgiveness also allows a person to signal a change in views. Where before they would only be able to signal disapproval, now they can still pile on and be toxic but then later signal forgiveness. Not being able to correct and reflect upon your own potentially negative actions would be one of the aims. By forgiving others you can forgive yourself of past negativity. Forgiveness might say "I recognise you did something wrong. I do not expect public repentance, but I forgive you and go about my life feeling better".
- HPsquared 6y agoThat's a very interesting thought. I wonder which other patterns of behaviour like this are absent from online communication. If the scheme set up by the website doesn't allow a certain action which would naturally occur in IRL interactions, this will distort how people and groups see each other and treat each other. Edit: I think the constant feedback provided by facial expressions is a huge thing missing from these things.
- Spearchucker 6y agoAgree. Forgiveness is great. It's where I started, which led to me questioning why I do it even. And the conclusion I came to was that the anger I felt was... useless, ineffectual and thus a total, unadulterated and complete waste of my time and energy. And so forgiveness led me to acceptance. Accepting all the things has made me very, very content. And occasionally even happy. Because who cares man. Frivolity aside, if I did care I feel I should DO something. Not complain or write angry diatribes or even forgive, but to physically do something to change the status quo. Whether that moves the needle on chosen issue or not. If I'm not willing to DO something about the thing I take issue with, I have no call to say anything about it either. Which brings this full circle back to... acceptance.
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- dgudkov 6y agoIt's an interesting suggestion which certainly makes a good point, however it's wrong in its main assumption - that people have a more or less rational discussion on social media and are looking to find out the truth rather than publicly re-translate and re-confirm beliefs which are frequently based on emotions and negative life experience. I'm afraid social media and their AI-powered "optimization for engagement" has exposed something deep and visceral in the human nature. It will probably take years to finally understand what the massive social technology-driven experiment named "social media" actually is. This experiment has made a few people very rich, and millions of people unhappy and insulted.
- davidgl 6y agoAgreed, we sometimes play the truth seeking game, but on social media the game is much more often the tribal team virtue signalling game
- HPsquared 6y agoIRL communication has the constant feedback mechanism of seeing each others' facial expressions which is mostly missing from remote communications.
- RashadSaleh 6y agoWhat about every individual person being responsible for what they say and do? There is no scheme where this responsibility can be shifted to someone else. Would you do it? Would you take up the responsibility to correct and monitor and censor and edit what your neighbor says or does? Are we so afraid to judge people that we need a "system" to express that for us? But here you see the results. A very condescending "don't worry your little head about it" article written in "good faith" to redeem the "sins" of "misguided" people on social media to "correct their ways". Preaching, preaching, preaching, and nothing but preaching. Even the harshest judgement is miles better than that.
- starkravingsane 6y agoSo I don't even know how I stumbled upon this site; I am by no means a hacker. But I read/skimmed this and I at least love the sentiment. I doubt you or anyone will see this now that there are 200 other comments, but here goes anyway. From my time on twitter, it definitely seems to me that the algorithm is designed to show the most conflict and vitriol possible. I don't really have friends who use Twitter; I'm mostly looking at accounts with thousands of followers. When I click on a tweet from Trump, I mostly see left-wing people attacking him, but when I click on a tweet from Hillary or AOC, I mostly see Trumpers attacking them. Every damn time. I know that that is not an accurate portrayal of the overall responses. I know Trump gets a fuckload of praise for just like taking a dump on the keyboard. So the algorithm is not showing me tweets I'll like/agree with, it's showing me discord, anger, and hatred. I recently came across this tweet from Megan Amram, a comedian I follow: https://twitter.com/meganamram/status/1273446578926219265 https://twitter.com/meganamram/status/1273446578926219265 in which she posts a letter of apology for some recently-surfaced offensive tweets from years ago. If you notice, most of the responses are not accepting her apology at all. I was not aware of any of this until seeing this tweet, but just from reading this letter, they do seem to have a point. Several points. I think that one takeaway from this is that in your proposal, the offending tweeter just hits an "I'm sorry" button and that's it, which is fine if they just said Mario isn't Italian. But if a politician denigrates an entire race or accidentally tweets a dickpic he meant to dm to an underage girl...well actually there's just no response for that--but you know, if it's a famous person saying something unacceptable, then really there is a need for some explanation, repentance, and at least their own words. Also, I think in such instances, their followers/the public has a right to respond. With more than just hitting a forgive button. Perhaps shutting down replies but allowing people to retweet with comment would be okay. I think the thing that's missing here is celebrities/politicians/corporate people/etc. versus the little guy. Here's another example. I once got into a bit of a heated thing with Jameela Jamil. It was late at night, I'm a random nobody with 500 followers (and only because I was a small-town reporter briefly) and more than a little buzz on, and I reply to an international celebrity's tweet. This is already super long, so I'll just say I think one word I used was misleading but it wasn't hurtful or out of line or anything. Never in a million years would I have expected to be in my pajamas alone in my apartment at midnight having a tense back-and-forth with this woman whose attractiveness was a running joke in a popular prime-time TV show. It wasn't long before I apologized, and then she said that we should both delete our tweets now "to avoid you getting piled upon" and immediately deleted hers. But she strategically left up the tweet about deleting the exchange, so then a flock of admirers, having no idea what had occurred, came to praise her for what a saint she was for doing that for what must have been some horrible evil troll. The point is that running afoul of a woman put on a pedestal by 1.1 M people on Twitter could have been pure hell for me. I'm mentally ill (trauma issues and such) and experience debilitating shame on a daily basis, and I should not have been drinking, so a tweet storm of judgment and hatred could have actually caused a serious crisis. In conclusion: I love any idea of helping people to be more caring, to reduce the vitriol, ugliness, and cruelty of online social interaction, but I think your plan is kind of missing the bigger picture, and also assumes that the problem is only the humans. You guys are the hackers here, but I am quite certain that twitter is designed to promote the hating, the dramatic, the denigrating, so that people have to keep coming back to show those idiots what big idiots they are, and to prove how right you are.
- lostjohnny 6y agoHN could learn a thing or two from this article. For example stop shadow banning people without warnings, make dead posts always visible but with disabled comments, unless vouched for, make moderation visible, I would like to know why something disappeared, create public spaces to resolve disputes between moderators and users: it's easy to misunderstand something when you are from 1% SV and the other person is from a developing country, for example, moderators are wrong too, hiding mistakes is not de-escalation. Last but not least, changing the rules around "you're posting too fast" I share my public network connection (and public IP) with tens of other people and usually can't comment because it says I'm posting too fast. Someone could be very frustrated by this behavior and become increasingly angry, this is not good de-escalation either. I've never seen an "I've made a mistake" here on HN for example
- tjpnz 6y agoThere are some convincing arguments out there that social media promotes conflict by design in order to drive engagement. If it's easier to provoke people than it is to foster empathy it is of no surprise that the algorithms would be weighted towards that. Maybe the answer is to just avoid such environments in the first place.
- m0zg 6y agoConflict == engagement, engagement == $$$. You can't make a person understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it. The sole reason for the existence of e.g. Twitter is to facilitate a woke mob going after people they don't like for whatever imaginary grievance they dream up on any given day. They don't care if they're wrong, they're going to do it anyway. And Twitter actively works to remove any and all pushback to this. Why? $$$. If it wasn't for this shit boiling over they'd be out of business long ago. Same with most of the mainstream press. Therefore, to get past this calamity, we must destroy both, through technological and/or legislative means. It is not good for society when such large, powerful actors exist specifically to fan the flames and incite violence and hatred with total impunity.
- quotemstr 6y agoNo. Totally wrong direction. Apologizing to a mob is just terrible advice. It's going to get people's careers and lives ruined. A mob cannot forgive, especially on Twitter. Never grovel in front of one. Apologizing to a mob and begging for a respite just makes the mob angrier. A platform-level feature to make this groveling easier is just going to encourage this wrong-headed response, and it can't possibly work, because even if you disable direct replied, people can still post about whatever they want an amplify their anger in a million other ways. The article is right about one thing: social media is a hothouse of hate. The best way for us to get out of this dystopia of rule by Twitter mobs is to ignore everything that happens on Twitter. It's not the real world.
- trekrich 6y agoLets just get rid of social media and be done with it. The world was a much better place before.
- caffeine 6y agoIt's important not to apologize if you don't honestly believe you have done something wrong. When faced with a mob claiming victimhood or hurt feelings, apologies can confer legitimacy to complaints that don't deserve it. The forced submission and contrition gives the mob its payoff, and thus feeds it further. This appeasement encourages the runaway social media mobs which have now spilled into the real world, murdering and looting. If you have done nothing wrong, do NOT give them the satisfaction of an apology. It is the first line of defense in beating back outrage culture.
- Balgair 6y agoThe point I got from the article wasn't this one. Forgiveness is a two way street. The sinner and the rest of the community have to come together to heal the wounds. Looking at the community antagonistically and suspiciously isn't the way forward. Each side has to take a leap, knowing full well that they can end up in the mud. That's an essential part of this, the risk. Saying that one side is incapable of understanding and kindness isn't what the article was rousing us to do. I felt the article was saying to both sides: take the risk, it's worth it.
- pjc50 6y agoThe world (or the totality of Twitter) is not a community. You can do this among people who know one another, but among the broader internet? No, too many full time trolls, factionalists, bot farms, advertisers and lunatics.
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- cs02rm0 6y agoMy first instinct was that I like the approach. I certainly agree there's an issue here. But I would worry about the creep of this as a feature. Some could argue the mistake was only the timing, or that the mistake was that it was posted where the mob could read it. It seems a natural continuation to move to more specific language. This post was unacceptable. This post was insufficiently researched. This post was bullying. This post was racist. An analogy is probably a bad idea, but in the same way F1 drivers who don't speak out in favour of BLM as a political movement, rather than just a sentiment, are being criticised I wonder if people who don't use this feature would be further targeted. Whether mobs would feel further validated by it. We could certainly do with something. I fear the answer isn't technical.
- dmje 6y agoIt's a really interesting post but the net thought I have coming out of it isn't "let's fix this" but "f* it, the whole social media experiment is so conceptually broken, we should all just stop and try something else.."
- OOPMan 6y agoPersonally, I think social media needs to be successfully rebranded as social cancer
- teddyh 6y agoYou can only de-escalate when both the two parties and the medium of communication all agree that de-escalation is in fact desired. In today’s environment, often at least two of the three instead want to escalate the conflict: Trolls and outrage addicts will by definition always want to escalate, and the platforms are all incentivized to maximize “engagement”.
- ca98am79 6y agoI was reading the book "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg and it made me think it would be nice to have a plugin when posting to social media that pre-formatted your tweet/post in a non-violent way. I think this would really help and I would use it, but probably not many people would use it. I ended up just deleting my social media accounts and I feel better already
- whiddershins 6y agoVery interesting. Something like this definitely needs to be done. The angle here though, seems to condone a certain amount of shaming. It’s hard for me to not see this through the lens of someone doing a ‘mea culpa’ because they said something which upset people’s sensibilities, even if it was true.