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I’m working on a new way to talk online, with the goal of killing cancel culture, increasing understanding, and basically calming down current radicalization. P

I’m working on a new way to talk online, with the goal of killing cancel culture, increasing understanding, and basically calming down current radicalization. Picture Reddit, but with the ability to anonymously share ideas with other people in your social circles. My theory is that most reasonable people stay off social media, so places like Twitter end up filled with unreasonable narcissists. At the same time, discussing politics on a semi-anonymous forum like Reddit is pointless, who cares if someone on the Internet is wrong. But maybe there’s a better way of communication, something new, that lets you talk with people you actually know.

navd 6y ago
I will say that I’m not really interested in talking with people I necessarily know. I want to talk to people who have well thought out arguments that are non obvious. Take what you will from that and good luck.
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  Thanks. Thinking about that problem too, and trying to find a way to give people both. “The personal is political” and one hypothesis is that at least a starting point for content you’d find more interesting is content that people you know find more interesting.
- _theory_ 6y ago
  I'd say HN is the right place to be.
adrury 6y ago
Sounds kind of similar to Yik Yak, except using social circles instead of area? Hopefully it ends better than Yik Yak did.
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  Thanks for the pointer, I hadn’t heard about YikYak but will check them out.
  - wafn 6y ago
    The general issue with localized anonymity is it becomes a bulletin board rather than a discussion. In time this draws in drug dealers, prostitution, horny teenagers, and various sexual deviants (see also: whisper, craigslist and backpage forums). Gotta find a way to keep engagement up with the reduced volume of users.
cryptoz 6y ago
You're not going to "calm down radicalization" with phrases like "killing cancel culture" and suggesting that viewpoints you don't agree with on twitter/the platform as a whole as "unreasonable narcissists".
- easterncalculus 6y ago
  No one mentioned opposing viewpoints except you, and only to downplay real-world harassment as a mere difference of opinion. The radicalization occurring on Twitter is encouraging 'adults' to gang up on others (often children) and try to get their lives permanently ruined over ACTUAL differences of opinion, or for vastly disproportionate acts. So yes, we should use the word 'kill' when describing a force that destroys reasonable, well-meaning, and good people's lives every single day. The "unreasonable" part is the the disproportionate and permanent effect of internet hatred in regards to comparatively non-permanent acts (that are still often harmful, but more often than not nowhere near to the same extent). The "narcissist" part is the need to do so for beneficial social points among those that do. Those that have the online support to keep the basic needs in life that they want to deprive others of. So yes, these people meet the definition on both counts. It doesn't mean that those who are bombarded don't deserve to be reprimanded, just that they probably don't deserve to be bombarded with threats and harassment. You can express your opinion on Twitter without personal attacks and threats of harassment and violence. That part should not be a fringe opinion.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > You can express your opinion on Twitter without personal attacks and threats of harassment and violence. This should not be a fringe opinion. I can. I expect that most people can as well. I don't however agree that any opinion should be expressed without consequence. If someone says "we should kill the Jews and reinstate the 3rd Reich", or "The place of blacks is subjugated below whites". This reveals how they see others, and making sure that their employer is acting based on compete information seems perfectly reasonable. > The "narcissist" part is the need to do so for beneficial social points among those that do Why are you ascribing nefarious motives to actions? Why is it clear that these people are acting in bad faith?
easterncalculus 6y ago
This is a great idea. I would love to use a service like this. One of the downsides of anonymity that many people raise (fallaciously) as an argument against it is that too many of the anonymous people are just trolls, therefore it is a negative quality. Having it be people that are known to the person brings about an assumption of character that can solve this issue, so long as the user associates with people that they tolerate (which is a mostly fair assumption, considering how private groups and similar functions operate on the established platforms). One problem that I could see is that someone could be found out simply by virtue of being the only person that would say something like them. I guess this could be alleviated by filtering in public posts from others, but this could cause other problems while not solving what it's supposed to. The other issue for this is the Gab problem, which cannot be easily solved: that if you're using this service, you're a bad person who needs to be blocked/fired/etc. Unfortunately the mobs you're working against work to destroy with little rhyme and no reason, and they work for free (often literally unemployed). This problem is hard to get around, but I think could be mitigated with marketing it as a platform first and a solution second. Nonetheless, I wish you the best. This is a very interesting concept and could really do a lot of good in the world.
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  Thank you. I think it’s a really important problem and honestly wish it was already built so I could just use it. The Gab problem is core. Reddit bans a bunch of assholes so they go off and find alternative platforms. Free speech is great as a principle, but in practice nobody else wants to hang out with these people. My idea is that a new model of interaction could get around the problem. I’d want this to be a link people would feel comfortable sharing to their LinkedIn network. Using the site doesn’t mean you were banned from other platforms, just that you think this way of communication is better.
- TimJRobinson 6y ago
  I've been thinking about the gab problem a lot and have a solution: moderation and votes should be user centric rather than wisdom of the crowd based. Explained further here: https://adecentralizedworld.com/2020/06/a-trust-and-moderation-system-for-the-decentralized-web/ https://adecentralizedworld.com/2020/06/a-trust-and-moderati...
aiven 6y ago
Are you trying to reinvent 4chan?
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  4chan is one idea about how people can talk online with total strangers. The conversations my friends and I have at the pub are very different from 4chan, but also very different from Facebook. Recording everything you say so it can be played back years later in a job interview changes things, and I would say not for the better. But our conversations also don’t sound at all like 4chan threads, where it seems like “ironic” idiots talking to idiot idiots.
guygurari 6y ago
I’m rooting for you. Here’s a thought about a possible trade off between radicalization and engagement. When social media platforms optimize for growth, it makes sense for them to make it as easy as possible for users to share/retweet. It lowers “amplification friction” and allows messages to go viral. The most successful platforms have very low amplification friction, which suggests that low friction is an important ingredient. What we are learning is that making it trivially easy to amplify anyone’s message enables cancel culture and (I believe) leads to radicalization. If this is correct, then increasing amplification friction on your platform will lead to less radicalization, at the cost of lowering engagement. My guess is that for this to be successful requires a careful balance of where you land on the higher/lower friction spectrum. Too much friction leads to low engagement which leads to failure. Too little friction leads to uncontrolled amplification which leads to radicalization. So a balance is needed. Either that, or a totally new idea is needed that turns existing platforms on their head.
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  Thanks. I think another key part is that social networks get huge. They get thousands of employees, billions in investment, etc. This makes them fragile, and forces them down certain paths. If I stay small then I’m not handicapped by forced expectation of user engagement or growth. I agree with you about the danger of low friction amplification of messages. My hope is that if users can amplify messages but they get no social credit for it, it will dampen down this behavior.
- marchdown 6y ago
  Unethical Thought Experiments: what if Twitter shrank the retweet button or hid it under the fold to but the brakes on the viral spread? Put amplification behind a trivial inconvenience that would make knee-jerk retweets less frequent and allow the whole chain reaction to cool down.
  - dropofwill 6y ago
    Instagram doesn’t have a share/repost feature, but people still do it a lot, either manually or through 3rd part integrations. This leads to other problems like blocking someone, but still seeing their content because it gets reposted a lot.
grizzles 6y ago
You are a victim of your own bubble (as we all are). Rational discourse doesn't appeal to most people. Hence this idea won't work at scale - eg. outside said bubble.
TimJRobinson 6y ago
I really like this. At the start of this podcast [1] they talk about the dark forest theory of the Internet. It's that when you go into a dark forest at night you don't see many animals because they know if they move or make noise they become prey. Similarly many intelligent people stay silent on Twitter and only speak up in private circles for similar reasons. [1]: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/podcasts/2019/11/21/20976168/yancey-strickler-ezra-klein-climate-change-profit-kickstarter https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/podcasts/2019/11/21/2097616...
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful and interesting responses, looking forward to listening to the podcast. I loved the Cixin trilogy, but hadn’t heard of the dark forest theory applied to online conversations before. I’m not sure I agree with such a strong suggestion, maybe more that the people that are most verbal in a group are rarely the people with the most interesting thoughts. It is sadly becoming increasingly true though that anything you say is now a permanent liability.
  - jiggunjer 6y ago
    Did you read the English version? I'm trying to read the trilogy but the prose is just dull and the characters are flat.
    - chiefmcloud 6y ago
      I did. The beginning was a slog, but then it got really interesting. For me it was more about the plot than the characters.
- satvikpendem 6y ago
  Have you read the Three Body Problem trilogy, by any chance? It talks about the dark forest theory, except in terms of alien civilizations.
  - TimJRobinson 6y ago
livre 6y ago
> Picture Reddit, but with the ability to anonymously share ideas with other people in your social circles. > something new, that lets you talk with people you actually know. Anonymous Facebook? The problem with that is this: > so places like Twitter end up filled with unreasonable narcissists That's also a problem among the people you know and have added on Facebook, many of them are unreasonable narcissists and they don't mind showing that with their name and picture on the web. I feel like giving them anonymity can only make things worse. Just think of your racist uncle, your Nazi grandparent, your homophobic friend, but now you won't know which of them is posting the bullshit. You have chosen a very difficult problem to solve, I can only tell you why I think your current idea won't work and wish you luck.
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  You’re not wrong when you say it’s hard. I have been struggling with the problems you’ve brought up for awhile. Re:anonymous fb, I’m not going for exactly that but let’s imagine I was and consider the problem for a second of the homophobic/racist/etc Uncle. The simplest solution for not getting that content is to remove them from your list of contacts. But I also have a theory that this is where there could be a global improvement in communication. I believe some people are trolls not because they’re anonymous but because they’re not. Their identity is basically a troll - think the guy who wore a MAGA hat to a recent BLM protest. If that person was allowed to, maybe they would want to change their opinion.
  - cerved 6y ago
    how will you remove the racist uncle if his content is anonymous?
    - chiefmcloud 6y ago
      That’s the interesting tech challenge. Keeping things anonymous, even if a db dump leaks, but still allowing moderation and users being able to block specific people. I’m still digging into the solution but believe I have a simple solution. The key is that not everything is anonymous, you know who you’re associated with. You just don’t know the association between a specific user and the content they authored.
NicoJuicy 6y ago
I think Google already tried it with circles
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  There are some similarities. The interesting thing about circles was the recognition that you are many people, and you don’t want to necessarily have political arguments with your soccer friends. So many people seem to have given up on the promise of the internet to connect people. We’ve tried a few different modes of communicating, I still have hope the problem can be cracked.
aahhahahaaa 6y ago
I think a problem with this is that if you're at all familiar with how someone speaks or writes you can figure out who they are rather easily. So there's another weird problem (probably not so hard though): translating conversation within the same language in a way that doesn't lose meaning but obscures identifying patterns.
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  Or multiple translations. This is a great idea that I’ve considered but want to leave for V2. V1 is maybe disappoingly simpler, but at least it would mean that your boss 10 years from now isn’t reading through your post history
- dropofwill 6y ago
  This was a problem that I briefly worked on it undergrad. Turns out authorship attribution is an active sub field in comp ling. So you’re not just trying to obscure identity from human readers, but the neural nets looking through all your public writing as well. For the interested some paper keywords would be adversarial stylometry and authorship attribution.
AJRF 6y ago
This sounds like Yikyak. I have a fully working Webapp, mobile app, dB and REST API from a project I worked on when lockdown started that I lost interest in scaling but I’ll make the repos public and edit this comment later with the links if they can help you out with this.
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  That would be awesome, thank you! I’m particularly interested in any front end work that I might be able to get ideas from (still a React noob).
uptown 6y ago
I feel like this was the premise of “Branch”. It had a really interesting start. Then Facebook acquired it and killed it.
joe-collins 6y ago
I've come to feel that a crucial feature missing from online discourse is the influence of third parties to the conversation. If you have a conversation in meatspace, sufficiently nearby third parties send signals, because they cannot help but hear you (setting aside headphones or the like). Without entering the conversation, they can communicate by means like a change in stance, a muffled laugh, a roll of the eyes. If those signals are noticed, they provide feedback on the words exchanged and moderate the conversation when it grows heated or extreme. Social media doesn't well allow for these signals: the input interface doesn't allow for them without conscious effort to translate. In the absence of those signals, any outrageous speaker on the internet can mistake the silence of our lossy input interface for silent approval. If they were wrong, someone would say something, surely? But no, there's just too much effort required to tell every damned fool they're an idiot. Even when one person speaks up, there's no apparent audience to serve as jury, and the fool can go on believing themself in the right. In short: I think "audience feedback" is a necessity. In effect: I think the concept of a "timeline", as a presentation of user-generated content, is socially broken. Every posting must be weighed, none should be allowed silence.
- GeneralMayhem 6y ago
  Up/downvotes on Reddit/HN/etc. are, I think, supposed to be this. Even if Reddit users stuck to the guidance that the downvote button is to hide disruption rather than to disagree, saying nutty stuff "loudly" would count as disruption.
  - joe-collins 6y ago
    The flaw in HN/reddit votes, Twitter faves, FB likes, etc is that not all persons who see a submission will use them. Every silent observer contributes to that illusion of assent that helps entrench deviant behavior. Timelines are great tools for skimming content, but while we can aggregate content easily enough ("scan the room"), we have no tech solution for returning the social feedback that meatspace society relies on ("the room fell silent"). You could force that feedback by turning the timeline into merely a historical lookup, and delivering new posts to the user individually and not letting them return to the rest of the app without interacting with it in some way. Also, block unregistered users entirely, unless they can be locked into the same use pattern by some means that escapes me at the moment. (If we split off into sci-fi dystopia land, measure the user's emotional state as they scan each post and accumulate those scores back to the author. This is terrible, please no one ever implement it.)
soulofmischief 6y ago
I'd love to chat more about this if you'd like to reach out to me via the email address in my profile. I have some ideas for this domain which you may find useful or at least worth discussing.
davidajackson 6y ago
I don't know if there's a solution but in my mind the problem is 'likes' or 'retweets'. Most networks create an incentive to angle only for those at all costs (how else does one become an "influencer"?)--whether it be saying something ridiculous or not. This is one thing that snapchat never did that I appreciate. It's really unhealthy for people because it's essentially like a social credit score (spread across many posts) that anyone new will look at. If you can build a social network that avoids that I think people would be much happier. Also there are lot of people that still want to share content but not participate in that disingenuous ecosystem (or who don't have time) so building a platform for them might be useful.
- silveroriole 6y ago
  We already have those social networks. They’re called forums. (I know some introduced likes but they don’t mean much, since your post is still just as likely to be seen as everyone else’s.)
  - davidajackson 6y ago
    I'm thinking more closed off than forums. And more feed oriented.
silveroriole 6y ago
This never works because the people attracted to anonymous discussion with no ‘cancel culture’ (no banning/moderation?) ARE those who have been radicalized and would get banned for it anywhere else.
- collyw 6y ago
  Or maybe it's just people who want to hear alternative opinions that have been banned from the other heavily moderated platforms.
  - silveroriole 6y ago
    Opinions like what? The only opinions people get banned for are ones which seem openly racist, homophobic, etc. Nobody gets banned for having or encouraging alternative opinions about, like, which Java framework is the best. Not even for more controversial arguments like whether God exists (at least as far as I’m aware.) Therefore the only ‘rational debate’ that will take place is between what most people would call racists, homophobes, etc. Nobody else is going to want to post in or even look at such an environment, so it rapidly turns into a completely worthless bigoted echo chamber where everyone’s patting themselves on the back for having such enlightened alternative opinions.
    - collyw 6y ago
      "There are two genders" would be one - a position that I guess that the majority of the public also believe. That's ground for banning in plenty of places. We aren't allowed to discuss on many platforms. Of course I will be labelled transphobic for that opinion. > Nobody else is going to want to post in or even look at such an environment, so it rapidly turns into a completely worthless bigoted echo chamber where everyone’s patting themselves on the back for having such enlightened alternative opinions. Pure speculation on your part. How does it end up any more of an echo chamber than somewhere where certain opinions are removed?
      - silveroriole 6y ago
atupis 6y ago
My current theory is that you would make Reddit much better if you would make spillitting and merging subreddits much more fluid eg users could vote that branch this subreddit and they would automatically moved to "new branch". Also I would change moderetion to slashdot style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#Peer_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#Peer_moderation so moderation would be basically comminity based.
jhanschoo 6y ago
I liked that Slashdot had different upvotes for informative/insightful/funny, and funny doesn't add to karma. The forum needs to strongly encourage every comment to have their opinions substantiated, and show rigorous reasoning and inference explicitly where it occurs (and where an opinion is not directly based on evidence but is a reasonable conclusion from evidence). It's not an impossible task, since we have a similar example of a forum with high standards in Stack Overflow and its network. This means that the platform is primarily one for discussion and developing opinions grounded in evidence and reality, not one for free expression (which reddit primarily is).
deleted 6y ago
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raffraffraff 6y ago
I have a theory that, individually, people fundamentally disagree less than they think they do. And in real face to face meetings, they are willing to disagree about a topic without killing each other. They talk around points of disagreement. Eg: me, when I'm talking to my grandmother. The problem is that online people tend to polarize into factions during complex discussions. The more heated the discussion, the more polarized they become. Eventually it becomes impossible for either side to be self critical, or to cede a point to the other side no matter how true it may be. "B" says "the sea is made of saltwater". A moderately reasonable "A" agrees. Mistake! The "A" group accuse them of being pro-B or anti-A. Suddenly, the idea that the sea is saltwater becomes an "B dogwhistle". A cunning trick! At this point, the "A" group adds 'saltwater sea' to their list of unacceptable opinions, and the policing of everyday language and opinion is in place. That's when the notion of defending free speech gets questioned. How can you police language if people defend free speech?! It won't do! So now free speech is a dogwhistle too. Add it to the list! There is no possibility for constructive dialogue, no matter how sensible, kind and cool-headed it tries to be. Disagreement with dogma or talking to the opposition are offences. New rules: "Don't follow an A on Twitter". Guilt by association. Next up: let's use the abuse/reporting system to ban individuals. Eventually, online systems that were supposedly designed for communication and conversation have become tools for suppression and virtue monitoring. While anonymity itself will help people to own up to an opinion that they might be otherwise afraid to voice, unless there are no usernames at all it will be possible to track an individual across the system and figure out "which side they're on". Then you'll be able to figure out if their comments are acceptable or hatespeech without having to properly consider them. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see this happen, but I think it requires a lot of work. Deduplication of points made, automatic detection of logical fallacies via natural language processing, personal dictionaries with auto-translation of terms (eg: an acceptable word to you might be a slur to someone else - if the word has a genuine meaning, auto-translate to a non-slur). That would avoid having people point and scream and claim moral victory because of a word infraction, instead of hashing thing out properly.
- DanielBMarkham 6y ago
  Mostly agree. > I don't get involved because these platforms simply encourage the worst in us. In-person, I've found I can meet and talk with folks who believe and say most anything. In fact, I enjoy it. As long as we're trying to get along, we can have powerful and dynamic conversations. I can learn things and we can challenge one another. Online, there's none of this "trying to get along". Some person types something wrong. Other people pile on. Pointless argument ensues. People agree on most things! That's the crazy thing about it. But if we only interact online through text, we're raising an entire generation that doesn't grok that fact.
DanielBMarkham 6y ago
Good luck! I love writing. I used to freelance and string. I wrote a lot of speculative sci-fi that didn't go anywhere. I was an early blogger. I was an early HN'er as well. So I'm creating content constantly no matter what the current tech. I've been watching what works. Random thoughts: every conversation should have a moderator who is responsible for the subject and tone of the conversation. The start of every conversation should include what the goal is: analysis, venting, compassion, meme, etc. Conversation participants should be rated over time based on their ability to adjust their tone based on what the moderator requests. Each person votes up and down various moderators depending on the type of material they present and how well they manage their conversations. Over time the ranking system should match up moderators and participants, but not subject areas (important). There should be some escalating trust level based on this, the ability for people to make mistakes, be forgiven, delete/apologize for bad-day remarks, etc. I think with the right system this would happen organically, though. Not sure. Note that a popular/well-used system will by necessity not be a hugely-successful commercial one. You might make it work for a bit, but these are separate and conflicting goals. Personally, I'm dialing back FB and moving all of my content over to locals. I want to own whatever I write and I want the option of putting things I create behind a paywall easily. I also don't want to ever worry about having a bad day and getting my life destroyed by the mob.
Garlef 6y ago
That's a nice idea. I agree that we need social networks that are designed around fostering good discussions. However, it would be a good idea to not only approach this from an optimistic angle but keep a pessimistic one in mind by asking: "How would a malevolent actor abuse my design to manipulate public and/or indiviual oppinion?"
BoiledCabbage 6y ago
> But maybe there’s a better way of communication, something new, that lets you talk with people you actually know. Isn't Facebook's newsfeed populated with people you know? If so, why will this be any better?
_theory_ 6y ago
Maybe the easiest way to lift the standard of conversation is to start with a community of vetted members, much like a scholarly journal doesn't allow just anyone to publish. I'm not saying its an exciting way to go about it, but it would likely work.
einpoklum 6y ago
I think you're confusing radicalism with extremism or aggressiveness. * Radicalism - from the Latin "radix" - means focusing on (what you consider to be) the root of an issue, striving for fundamental change of the way things are. Also - I couldn't agree more about "who cares if someone on the Internet is wrong" - but I think the conclusion is that you care when it's in physical real life. On the other hand, talking to people you don't know is how you get to know new people, so that part might need some more nuance.
jwarden 6y ago
I love this idea. I have been working on something similar and would love to discuss this with you some more. Anonymity is important but tricky. Many researchers believe that anonymity can be key to countering groupthink, where people say what they think is socially acceptable, and not what they actually believe, for fear of denunciation and retaliation (some great books on this subject: Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann "the Spiral of Silence" and Timur Kuran "Preference Falsification.") Anonymous polling, for example, is probably critical to the functioning of a democracy. In social media I think anonymity is more tricky. One idea I have is that posts always have an author, but likes and other indicators of support and popularity are anonymous.
- chiefmcloud 6y ago
  Hi, if you’re interested I just registered chiefmccloud at mail.com (not as concerned about anonymity as spam). I’d love to chat more to you or anybody. Thanks

navd 6y ago

I will say that I’m not really interested in talking with people I necessarily know. I want to talk to people who have well thought out arguments that are non obvious. Take what you will from that and good luck.

chiefmcloud 6y ago
Thanks. Thinking about that problem too, and trying to find a way to give people both. “The personal is political” and one hypothesis is that at least a starting point for content you’d find more interesting is content that people you know find more interesting.
_theory_ 6y ago
I'd say HN is the right place to be.

adrury 6y ago

Sounds kind of similar to Yik Yak, except using social circles instead of area? Hopefully it ends better than Yik Yak did.

chiefmcloud 6y ago
Thanks for the pointer, I hadn’t heard about YikYak but will check them out.
- wafn 6y ago
  The general issue with localized anonymity is it becomes a bulletin board rather than a discussion. In time this draws in drug dealers, prostitution, horny teenagers, and various sexual deviants (see also: whisper, craigslist and backpage forums). Gotta find a way to keep engagement up with the reduced volume of users.

cryptoz 6y ago

You're not going to "calm down radicalization" with phrases like "killing cancel culture" and suggesting that viewpoints you don't agree with on twitter/the platform as a whole as "unreasonable narcissists".

easterncalculus 6y ago
No one mentioned opposing viewpoints except you, and only to downplay real-world harassment as a mere difference of opinion. The radicalization occurring on Twitter is encouraging 'adults' to gang up on others (often children) and try to get their lives permanently ruined over ACTUAL differences of opinion, or for vastly disproportionate acts. So yes, we should use the word 'kill' when describing a force that destroys reasonable, well-meaning, and good people's lives every single day. The "unreasonable" part is the the disproportionate and permanent effect of internet hatred in regards to comparatively non-permanent acts (that are still often harmful, but more often than not nowhere near to the same extent). The "narcissist" part is the need to do so for beneficial social points among those that do. Those that have the online support to keep the basic needs in life that they want to deprive others of. So yes, these people meet the definition on both counts. It doesn't mean that those who are bombarded don't deserve to be reprimanded, just that they probably don't deserve to be bombarded with threats and harassment. You can express your opinion on Twitter without personal attacks and threats of harassment and violence. That part should not be a fringe opinion.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > You can express your opinion on Twitter without personal attacks and threats of harassment and violence. This should not be a fringe opinion. I can. I expect that most people can as well. I don't however agree that any opinion should be expressed without consequence. If someone says "we should kill the Jews and reinstate the 3rd Reich", or "The place of blacks is subjugated below whites". This reveals how they see others, and making sure that their employer is acting based on compete information seems perfectly reasonable. > The "narcissist" part is the need to do so for beneficial social points among those that do Why are you ascribing nefarious motives to actions? Why is it clear that these people are acting in bad faith?

easterncalculus 6y ago

This is a great idea. I would love to use a service like this. One of the downsides of anonymity that many people raise (fallaciously) as an argument against it is that too many of the anonymous people are just trolls, therefore it is a negative quality. Having it be people that are known to the person brings about an assumption of character that can solve this issue, so long as the user associates with people that they tolerate (which is a mostly fair assumption, considering how private groups and similar functions operate on the established platforms). One problem that I could see is that someone could be found out simply by virtue of being the only person that would say something like them. I guess this could be alleviated by filtering in public posts from others, but this could cause other problems while not solving what it's supposed to. The other issue for this is the Gab problem, which cannot be easily solved: that if you're using this service, you're a bad person who needs to be blocked/fired/etc. Unfortunately the mobs you're working against work to destroy with little rhyme and no reason, and they work for free (often literally unemployed). This problem is hard to get around, but I think could be mitigated with marketing it as a platform first and a solution second. Nonetheless, I wish you the best. This is a very interesting concept and could really do a lot of good in the world.

chiefmcloud 6y ago
Thank you. I think it’s a really important problem and honestly wish it was already built so I could just use it. The Gab problem is core. Reddit bans a bunch of assholes so they go off and find alternative platforms. Free speech is great as a principle, but in practice nobody else wants to hang out with these people. My idea is that a new model of interaction could get around the problem. I’d want this to be a link people would feel comfortable sharing to their LinkedIn network. Using the site doesn’t mean you were banned from other platforms, just that you think this way of communication is better.
TimJRobinson 6y ago
I've been thinking about the gab problem a lot and have a solution: moderation and votes should be user centric rather than wisdom of the crowd based. Explained further here: https://adecentralizedworld.com/2020/06/a-trust-and-moderation-system-for-the-decentralized-web/ https://adecentralizedworld.com/2020/06/a-trust-and-moderati...

aiven 6y ago

Are you trying to reinvent 4chan?

chiefmcloud 6y ago
4chan is one idea about how people can talk online with total strangers. The conversations my friends and I have at the pub are very different from 4chan, but also very different from Facebook. Recording everything you say so it can be played back years later in a job interview changes things, and I would say not for the better. But our conversations also don’t sound at all like 4chan threads, where it seems like “ironic” idiots talking to idiot idiots.

guygurari 6y ago

I’m rooting for you. Here’s a thought about a possible trade off between radicalization and engagement. When social media platforms optimize for growth, it makes sense for them to make it as easy as possible for users to share/retweet. It lowers “amplification friction” and allows messages to go viral. The most successful platforms have very low amplification friction, which suggests that low friction is an important ingredient. What we are learning is that making it trivially easy to amplify anyone’s message enables cancel culture and (I believe) leads to radicalization. If this is correct, then increasing amplification friction on your platform will lead to less radicalization, at the cost of lowering engagement. My guess is that for this to be successful requires a careful balance of where you land on the higher/lower friction spectrum. Too much friction leads to low engagement which leads to failure. Too little friction leads to uncontrolled amplification which leads to radicalization. So a balance is needed. Either that, or a totally new idea is needed that turns existing platforms on their head.

chiefmcloud 6y ago
Thanks. I think another key part is that social networks get huge. They get thousands of employees, billions in investment, etc. This makes them fragile, and forces them down certain paths. If I stay small then I’m not handicapped by forced expectation of user engagement or growth. I agree with you about the danger of low friction amplification of messages. My hope is that if users can amplify messages but they get no social credit for it, it will dampen down this behavior.
marchdown 6y ago
Unethical Thought Experiments: what if Twitter shrank the retweet button or hid it under the fold to but the brakes on the viral spread? Put amplification behind a trivial inconvenience that would make knee-jerk retweets less frequent and allow the whole chain reaction to cool down.
- dropofwill 6y ago
  Instagram doesn’t have a share/repost feature, but people still do it a lot, either manually or through 3rd part integrations. This leads to other problems like blocking someone, but still seeing their content because it gets reposted a lot.

grizzles 6y ago

You are a victim of your own bubble (as we all are). Rational discourse doesn't appeal to most people. Hence this idea won't work at scale - eg. outside said bubble.

TimJRobinson 6y ago

I really like this. At the start of this podcast [1] they talk about the dark forest theory of the Internet. It's that when you go into a dark forest at night you don't see many animals because they know if they move or make noise they become prey. Similarly many intelligent people stay silent on Twitter and only speak up in private circles for similar reasons. [1]: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/podcasts/2019/11/21/20976168/yancey-strickler-ezra-klein-climate-change-profit-kickstarter https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/podcasts/2019/11/21/2097616...

chiefmcloud 6y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful and interesting responses, looking forward to listening to the podcast. I loved the Cixin trilogy, but hadn’t heard of the dark forest theory applied to online conversations before. I’m not sure I agree with such a strong suggestion, maybe more that the people that are most verbal in a group are rarely the people with the most interesting thoughts. It is sadly becoming increasingly true though that anything you say is now a permanent liability.
- jiggunjer 6y ago
  Did you read the English version? I'm trying to read the trilogy but the prose is just dull and the characters are flat.
  - chiefmcloud 6y ago
    I did. The beginning was a slog, but then it got really interesting. For me it was more about the plot than the characters.
satvikpendem 6y ago
Have you read the Three Body Problem trilogy, by any chance? It talks about the dark forest theory, except in terms of alien civilizations.
- TimJRobinson 6y ago

livre 6y ago

> Picture Reddit, but with the ability to anonymously share ideas with other people in your social circles. > something new, that lets you talk with people you actually know. Anonymous Facebook? The problem with that is this: > so places like Twitter end up filled with unreasonable narcissists That's also a problem among the people you know and have added on Facebook, many of them are unreasonable narcissists and they don't mind showing that with their name and picture on the web. I feel like giving them anonymity can only make things worse. Just think of your racist uncle, your Nazi grandparent, your homophobic friend, but now you won't know which of them is posting the bullshit. You have chosen a very difficult problem to solve, I can only tell you why I think your current idea won't work and wish you luck.

chiefmcloud 6y ago
You’re not wrong when you say it’s hard. I have been struggling with the problems you’ve brought up for awhile. Re:anonymous fb, I’m not going for exactly that but let’s imagine I was and consider the problem for a second of the homophobic/racist/etc Uncle. The simplest solution for not getting that content is to remove them from your list of contacts. But I also have a theory that this is where there could be a global improvement in communication. I believe some people are trolls not because they’re anonymous but because they’re not. Their identity is basically a troll - think the guy who wore a MAGA hat to a recent BLM protest. If that person was allowed to, maybe they would want to change their opinion.
- cerved 6y ago
  how will you remove the racist uncle if his content is anonymous?
  - chiefmcloud 6y ago
    That’s the interesting tech challenge. Keeping things anonymous, even if a db dump leaks, but still allowing moderation and users being able to block specific people. I’m still digging into the solution but believe I have a simple solution. The key is that not everything is anonymous, you know who you’re associated with. You just don’t know the association between a specific user and the content they authored.

NicoJuicy 6y ago

I think Google already tried it with circles

chiefmcloud 6y ago
There are some similarities. The interesting thing about circles was the recognition that you are many people, and you don’t want to necessarily have political arguments with your soccer friends. So many people seem to have given up on the promise of the internet to connect people. We’ve tried a few different modes of communicating, I still have hope the problem can be cracked.

aahhahahaaa 6y ago

I think a problem with this is that if you're at all familiar with how someone speaks or writes you can figure out who they are rather easily. So there's another weird problem (probably not so hard though): translating conversation within the same language in a way that doesn't lose meaning but obscures identifying patterns.

chiefmcloud 6y ago
Or multiple translations. This is a great idea that I’ve considered but want to leave for V2. V1 is maybe disappoingly simpler, but at least it would mean that your boss 10 years from now isn’t reading through your post history
dropofwill 6y ago
This was a problem that I briefly worked on it undergrad. Turns out authorship attribution is an active sub field in comp ling. So you’re not just trying to obscure identity from human readers, but the neural nets looking through all your public writing as well. For the interested some paper keywords would be adversarial stylometry and authorship attribution.

AJRF 6y ago

This sounds like Yikyak. I have a fully working Webapp, mobile app, dB and REST API from a project I worked on when lockdown started that I lost interest in scaling but I’ll make the repos public and edit this comment later with the links if they can help you out with this.

chiefmcloud 6y ago
That would be awesome, thank you! I’m particularly interested in any front end work that I might be able to get ideas from (still a React noob).

uptown 6y ago

I feel like this was the premise of “Branch”. It had a really interesting start. Then Facebook acquired it and killed it.

joe-collins 6y ago

I've come to feel that a crucial feature missing from online discourse is the influence of third parties to the conversation. If you have a conversation in meatspace, sufficiently nearby third parties send signals, because they cannot help but hear you (setting aside headphones or the like). Without entering the conversation, they can communicate by means like a change in stance, a muffled laugh, a roll of the eyes. If those signals are noticed, they provide feedback on the words exchanged and moderate the conversation when it grows heated or extreme. Social media doesn't well allow for these signals: the input interface doesn't allow for them without conscious effort to translate. In the absence of those signals, any outrageous speaker on the internet can mistake the silence of our lossy input interface for silent approval. If they were wrong, someone would say something, surely? But no, there's just too much effort required to tell every damned fool they're an idiot. Even when one person speaks up, there's no apparent audience to serve as jury, and the fool can go on believing themself in the right. In short: I think "audience feedback" is a necessity. In effect: I think the concept of a "timeline", as a presentation of user-generated content, is socially broken. Every posting must be weighed, none should be allowed silence.

GeneralMayhem 6y ago
Up/downvotes on Reddit/HN/etc. are, I think, supposed to be this. Even if Reddit users stuck to the guidance that the downvote button is to hide disruption rather than to disagree, saying nutty stuff "loudly" would count as disruption.
- joe-collins 6y ago
  The flaw in HN/reddit votes, Twitter faves, FB likes, etc is that not all persons who see a submission will use them. Every silent observer contributes to that illusion of assent that helps entrench deviant behavior. Timelines are great tools for skimming content, but while we can aggregate content easily enough ("scan the room"), we have no tech solution for returning the social feedback that meatspace society relies on ("the room fell silent"). You could force that feedback by turning the timeline into merely a historical lookup, and delivering new posts to the user individually and not letting them return to the rest of the app without interacting with it in some way. Also, block unregistered users entirely, unless they can be locked into the same use pattern by some means that escapes me at the moment. (If we split off into sci-fi dystopia land, measure the user's emotional state as they scan each post and accumulate those scores back to the author. This is terrible, please no one ever implement it.)

soulofmischief 6y ago

I'd love to chat more about this if you'd like to reach out to me via the email address in my profile. I have some ideas for this domain which you may find useful or at least worth discussing.

davidajackson 6y ago

I don't know if there's a solution but in my mind the problem is 'likes' or 'retweets'. Most networks create an incentive to angle only for those at all costs (how else does one become an "influencer"?)--whether it be saying something ridiculous or not. This is one thing that snapchat never did that I appreciate. It's really unhealthy for people because it's essentially like a social credit score (spread across many posts) that anyone new will look at. If you can build a social network that avoids that I think people would be much happier. Also there are lot of people that still want to share content but not participate in that disingenuous ecosystem (or who don't have time) so building a platform for them might be useful.

silveroriole 6y ago
We already have those social networks. They’re called forums. (I know some introduced likes but they don’t mean much, since your post is still just as likely to be seen as everyone else’s.)
- davidajackson 6y ago
  I'm thinking more closed off than forums. And more feed oriented.

silveroriole 6y ago

This never works because the people attracted to anonymous discussion with no ‘cancel culture’ (no banning/moderation?) ARE those who have been radicalized and would get banned for it anywhere else.

collyw 6y ago
Or maybe it's just people who want to hear alternative opinions that have been banned from the other heavily moderated platforms.
- silveroriole 6y ago
  Opinions like what? The only opinions people get banned for are ones which seem openly racist, homophobic, etc. Nobody gets banned for having or encouraging alternative opinions about, like, which Java framework is the best. Not even for more controversial arguments like whether God exists (at least as far as I’m aware.) Therefore the only ‘rational debate’ that will take place is between what most people would call racists, homophobes, etc. Nobody else is going to want to post in or even look at such an environment, so it rapidly turns into a completely worthless bigoted echo chamber where everyone’s patting themselves on the back for having such enlightened alternative opinions.
  - collyw 6y ago
    "There are two genders" would be one - a position that I guess that the majority of the public also believe. That's ground for banning in plenty of places. We aren't allowed to discuss on many platforms. Of course I will be labelled transphobic for that opinion. > Nobody else is going to want to post in or even look at such an environment, so it rapidly turns into a completely worthless bigoted echo chamber where everyone’s patting themselves on the back for having such enlightened alternative opinions. Pure speculation on your part. How does it end up any more of an echo chamber than somewhere where certain opinions are removed?
    - silveroriole 6y ago

atupis 6y ago

My current theory is that you would make Reddit much better if you would make spillitting and merging subreddits much more fluid eg users could vote that branch this subreddit and they would automatically moved to "new branch". Also I would change moderetion to slashdot style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#Peer_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#Peer_moderation so moderation would be basically comminity based.

jhanschoo 6y ago

I liked that Slashdot had different upvotes for informative/insightful/funny, and funny doesn't add to karma. The forum needs to strongly encourage every comment to have their opinions substantiated, and show rigorous reasoning and inference explicitly where it occurs (and where an opinion is not directly based on evidence but is a reasonable conclusion from evidence). It's not an impossible task, since we have a similar example of a forum with high standards in Stack Overflow and its network. This means that the platform is primarily one for discussion and developing opinions grounded in evidence and reality, not one for free expression (which reddit primarily is).

deleted 6y ago

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raffraffraff 6y ago

I have a theory that, individually, people fundamentally disagree less than they think they do. And in real face to face meetings, they are willing to disagree about a topic without killing each other. They talk around points of disagreement. Eg: me, when I'm talking to my grandmother. The problem is that online people tend to polarize into factions during complex discussions. The more heated the discussion, the more polarized they become. Eventually it becomes impossible for either side to be self critical, or to cede a point to the other side no matter how true it may be. "B" says "the sea is made of saltwater". A moderately reasonable "A" agrees. Mistake! The "A" group accuse them of being pro-B or anti-A. Suddenly, the idea that the sea is saltwater becomes an "B dogwhistle". A cunning trick! At this point, the "A" group adds 'saltwater sea' to their list of unacceptable opinions, and the policing of everyday language and opinion is in place. That's when the notion of defending free speech gets questioned. How can you police language if people defend free speech?! It won't do! So now free speech is a dogwhistle too. Add it to the list! There is no possibility for constructive dialogue, no matter how sensible, kind and cool-headed it tries to be. Disagreement with dogma or talking to the opposition are offences. New rules: "Don't follow an A on Twitter". Guilt by association. Next up: let's use the abuse/reporting system to ban individuals. Eventually, online systems that were supposedly designed for communication and conversation have become tools for suppression and virtue monitoring. While anonymity itself will help people to own up to an opinion that they might be otherwise afraid to voice, unless there are no usernames at all it will be possible to track an individual across the system and figure out "which side they're on". Then you'll be able to figure out if their comments are acceptable or hatespeech without having to properly consider them. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see this happen, but I think it requires a lot of work. Deduplication of points made, automatic detection of logical fallacies via natural language processing, personal dictionaries with auto-translation of terms (eg: an acceptable word to you might be a slur to someone else - if the word has a genuine meaning, auto-translate to a non-slur). That would avoid having people point and scream and claim moral victory because of a word infraction, instead of hashing thing out properly.

DanielBMarkham 6y ago
Mostly agree. > I don't get involved because these platforms simply encourage the worst in us. In-person, I've found I can meet and talk with folks who believe and say most anything. In fact, I enjoy it. As long as we're trying to get along, we can have powerful and dynamic conversations. I can learn things and we can challenge one another. Online, there's none of this "trying to get along". Some person types something wrong. Other people pile on. Pointless argument ensues. People agree on most things! That's the crazy thing about it. But if we only interact online through text, we're raising an entire generation that doesn't grok that fact.

DanielBMarkham 6y ago

Good luck! I love writing. I used to freelance and string. I wrote a lot of speculative sci-fi that didn't go anywhere. I was an early blogger. I was an early HN'er as well. So I'm creating content constantly no matter what the current tech. I've been watching what works. Random thoughts: every conversation should have a moderator who is responsible for the subject and tone of the conversation. The start of every conversation should include what the goal is: analysis, venting, compassion, meme, etc. Conversation participants should be rated over time based on their ability to adjust their tone based on what the moderator requests. Each person votes up and down various moderators depending on the type of material they present and how well they manage their conversations. Over time the ranking system should match up moderators and participants, but not subject areas (important). There should be some escalating trust level based on this, the ability for people to make mistakes, be forgiven, delete/apologize for bad-day remarks, etc. I think with the right system this would happen organically, though. Not sure. Note that a popular/well-used system will by necessity not be a hugely-successful commercial one. You might make it work for a bit, but these are separate and conflicting goals. Personally, I'm dialing back FB and moving all of my content over to locals. I want to own whatever I write and I want the option of putting things I create behind a paywall easily. I also don't want to ever worry about having a bad day and getting my life destroyed by the mob.

Garlef 6y ago

That's a nice idea. I agree that we need social networks that are designed around fostering good discussions. However, it would be a good idea to not only approach this from an optimistic angle but keep a pessimistic one in mind by asking: "How would a malevolent actor abuse my design to manipulate public and/or indiviual oppinion?"

BoiledCabbage 6y ago

> But maybe there’s a better way of communication, something new, that lets you talk with people you actually know. Isn't Facebook's newsfeed populated with people you know? If so, why will this be any better?

_theory_ 6y ago

Maybe the easiest way to lift the standard of conversation is to start with a community of vetted members, much like a scholarly journal doesn't allow just anyone to publish. I'm not saying its an exciting way to go about it, but it would likely work.

einpoklum 6y ago

I think you're confusing radicalism with extremism or aggressiveness. * Radicalism - from the Latin "radix" - means focusing on (what you consider to be) the root of an issue, striving for fundamental change of the way things are. Also - I couldn't agree more about "who cares if someone on the Internet is wrong" - but I think the conclusion is that you care when it's in physical real life. On the other hand, talking to people you don't know is how you get to know new people, so that part might need some more nuance.

jwarden 6y ago

I love this idea. I have been working on something similar and would love to discuss this with you some more. Anonymity is important but tricky. Many researchers believe that anonymity can be key to countering groupthink, where people say what they think is socially acceptable, and not what they actually believe, for fear of denunciation and retaliation (some great books on this subject: Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann "the Spiral of Silence" and Timur Kuran "Preference Falsification.") Anonymous polling, for example, is probably critical to the functioning of a democracy. In social media I think anonymity is more tricky. One idea I have is that posts always have an author, but likes and other indicators of support and popularity are anonymous.

chiefmcloud 6y ago
Hi, if you’re interested I just registered chiefmccloud at mail.com (not as concerned about anonymity as spam). I’d love to chat more to you or anybody. Thanks