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I think there's a larger point in what he said. Basically all current social media ends up optimizing for creating outrage, spawning mobs, less thoughtful discu

by ufmace 6y ago

I think there's a larger point in what he said. Basically all current social media ends up optimizing for creating outrage, spawning mobs, less thoughtful discussion and more vitriolic arguments, etc. It's becoming a real concern to me that this is going to drive us into some kind of civil war or something if we don't find some way to check it. The outrage seems to be like a drug. Nothing generates engagement quite like it, even if it's toxic in the long-term. So all social media platforms that embrace it grow bigger until they become near-monopolies, and all that don't so far have had a hard time growing userbases, making money, and generally fade into irrelevance. It would be a real service to society IMO if we could find a way to somehow generate enough engagement and energy to challenge the big players without the outrage culture.

pmoriarty 6y ago
This outrage is neither happening in a vacuum, nor is it simply a reflexive reaction to outrage on the opposite side. Real actions in the physical world are at the root of this outrage. The internet, in all of its forms, simply increases awareness of what's going on around the world. In the past, there was a relatively miniscule amount of information you could get about what was happening, and you could only get it through some gatekeepers. Now you can see what's happening, often as it happens, in cell phone camera footage and in direct reporting from people who are there, and the opinions of your fellow men are not filtered and reduced to a trickle by gatekeepers. A pessimistic view is that, like the babel fish, such increased communication will only lead to increased conflict, yet there is evidence that increased understanding and compassion can come from it too.
- zug_zug 6y ago
  So thinking about that... One the one hand, suppose I log into reddit and see police officers clubbing some people drinking beers (this specific instance was in a foreign country). Yes, on the one hand, I'm just more aware of a bad thing in the world. But on the other, if a million people get outraged watching a clip like that, it seems it does create a "magnification" effect where potentially the outrage is entirely disproportionate compared to crime that isn't brutal and on video (e.g. rich avoiding taxes) but may actually be much more important.
  - gruez 6y ago
    > compared to crime that isn't brutal and on video (e.g. rich avoiding taxes) but may actually be much more important. You must have missed all the posts from /r/aboringdystopia and /r/latestagecapitalism that regularly show up on /r/all
- manigandham 6y ago
  That's ignoring how easy it is to be inundated with extremist views and the speed of information overload with no verification.
- ufmace 6y ago
  True, but kind of misleading, at least in my opinion. One of the issues with social media is that it's too easy to promote and share information about real-world events that provoke outrage, while paying no attention to broad-level statistics that give a better representation of what's really happening overall. The greater truth IMO is that, in a large society, a massive number of essentially random things happen every single day. Plenty to construct any type of narrative that you want. If we want to have unity, there is no way around having to sweep some individual events that are outrageous under the rug to some extent.
  - burfog 6y ago
    I find it helps to compare against causes of death such as lightening strikes, falling out of bed, pools, Tylenol overdoses, and car crashes. None of those generate outrage. People worry so much about various violent acts (terrorism, school shooting, police shooting, etc.), but do they wear Faraday cages with lightening rods? Do they stay clear of cars and swimming pools? Do they own a bed or a bottle of Tylenol? Social media is but a small part of the problem. Traditional media is still largely deciding which issues will be part of today's buzz, and it is those issues that determine elections. The degree of power here is astonishing and disturbing.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  There have been so many hoaxed outrages and fake news, that's very clearly not the case.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  It's not just that by any means. I think it's largely a communication problem. People are reacting to what they perceive the other side is saying, without actually taking the time to hear what the other side is saying. They're encouraged both by their side and by the inevitable outrage from the other side. There is also an incredible amount of intentional misrepresentation of the other side (for and from both sides). If someone posts "B" in response to "A" they're usually doing so because they don't really understand what someone means by "A". They're looking at things at face value while adding in their own filters and biases and respond to that mess, instead of asking questions or seeking out information elsewhere. On the other hand, the counterresponse to someone posting "B" is often also tone-deaf. It is either assumed the person ought to know what "A" means (even if the people run in different social circles, have access to different news sources, or don't have as much free time to educate themselves); or it is assumed they person does know what "A" means and is being intentionally (as opposed to ignorantly) inflammatory. Seldom does someone on either side ask for clarification from or help to elucidate the other side. All of this seems to happen much more on the internet than in "real life."
  - cam_l 6y ago
    In my experience, asking people for clarification, regardless of which side of a discussion they are on, leads to inflammation. People seem to be attached to the idea that they perfectly understand the others point of view and therefore the other perfectly understands their own point of view. To them, more talk will not help. Typically i find when you ask for clarification you find the person doesn't even understand their own point of view. Probably also partly why they react so badly to being asked for clarification. Unfortunately, we are stuck in this world where most do not actually listen to, let alone evaluate, the content of arguments, just the context. And in online discussions the context is diminished. What to do apart from wait for the world to catch up?
  - thereticent 6y ago
    As the years wear on, I find Reddit, FB comments, and Twitter (and in my decade of lurking, HN less so) to be great examples of the importance of the Nonviolent Communication framework.
- neonate 6y ago
  I think it's very much both: you're right that awareness of what's going on is increasing and the GP is right that social media is optimized for outrage, and we can add a third thing that the circulation of misinformation is also increasing. I'm not talking about deliberate misinformation, just that people repeat things so quickly and interpret them through the prism of their own assumptions. e.g. the Covington kids case. Correction of the misinformation may follow, but it never spreads as far or as quickly, and in many cases may not bother existing for all the good it does.
- nkohari 6y ago
  > The internet, in all of its forms, simply increases awareness of what's going on around the world. The internet is not just a signal booster, but also an amplifier. Ideas which would otherwise be fringe become quickly mainstream. That's not always a bad thing, but it often is. The echo chamber effect is also incredibly powerful, psychologically. Especially through social media, outrage begets community. At first, you're a person who is angered at something that's happening in the world, but then you find others who feel similarly. Now you're a part of a community. Not only that, by discussing it in public, you're taking action. Now you're part of a movement! Now you're fomenting real change and making a difference in the world! This is true no matter where on the political spectrum you lie. No matter what opinions you're defending, those dopamine hits feel the same.
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
  > The internet, in all of its forms, simply increases awareness of what's going on around I think this gets overlooked too much by people in tech sociological bubble. The shape of the world is at any point in time a function of (1) the various frictions to information flow that are present, and (2) exploitation of the same by the powerful. The shape of the pre-information-age world in particular contained within it latent sources of conflict and instability (examples abound, I won't specify here) that could only be maintained by keeping some people voiceless and others in the dark. What we're witnessing now is a tumultuous transition period as we reach a new equilibrium. Two of the forces that will determine the shape of that new equilibrium: (1) People acting in their interests based on new information and (2) new restrictions on information transmission better adapted to the evolving state of technology.
cortesoft 6y ago
I had to stop frequenting the r/amitheasshole sub for this very reason. Getting outraged at the assholes, and then having my comments about the assholes get hundreds of upvotes, was too rewarding. It was certainly drug-like. It is strange, too, because I am normally an extremely forgiving person, and am often criticized for giving too much of the benefit of the doubt to people. Even if I am like that in real life, I was still able to be sucked into the outrage cycle.
- refurb 6y ago
  That is a truly bizarre subreddit. It’s exactly what you say, people love to go there and get on their high horse. I also suspect there are a ton of troll posts there. Too many “I am the asshole” questions that seem perfectly aligned to the politics of the day. And the stories seem perfectly written to create conflict.
  - xvector 6y ago
    This is almost any Reddit "advice" sub, like /r/relationships. People write stories for fun and to create conflict.
    - Biganon 6y ago
      One of the /r/relationship_advice moderators answered to PG's tweet
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  It probably doesn't help that a huge portion of the content is just fictional outrage porn. So instead of a real person posting their mistakes, you are seeing a caricature of a person crafted to accumulate internet points. This caricature, of course, is optimized to make you feel angry at that "person" for their actions. These days it might as well be /r/amitheangel+creativefiction
- hinkley 6y ago
  I wonder how many families have been broken by people following the advice they got in AITA or relationship advice. Everyone always suggests the nuclear option.
codingdave 6y ago
> It's becoming a real concern to me that this is going to drive us into some kind of civil war I'm more inclined to think that social media is where people go to let off steam. Most people I know have full lives outside of social media, and just get online to relax a bit, if at all. Many people I know have stopped using it at all. The ones who do vent and rant online are the minority, and they are more likely to be doing it online than in person. Of course, there are plenty of trolls and shills who join them, and together they make our society look more ready for conflict than we really are. Now, it is true that we have some serious problems going on, and are vehemently divided in the USA at the moment, with some actual riots and violence. I don't want to be dismissive of that. But I believe social media is still a magnifying glass over all our troubles, not a true barometer of our collective readiness to get into physical combat over our differences.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  If this were true, people would feel better after being exposed to social media. The evidence has shown that, instead, their anxiety increases as they are fed a stream of conflict, injustice, and sometimes even violence.
dehrmann 6y ago
What's different about HN is the only ads are basically promoting YC companies, so outrage doesn't feed any internal engagement metrics. Any outrage you see here is what we've brought on ourselves.
robomartin 6y ago
It is nothing less than exhausting to watch how people who frequent various types of social media have been driven to devolve into the worst humanity has seen in a long time short of causing physical harm to each other. I have watched as a couple of local FB groups that I used to just monitor for local information go down to the gutter on almost every single post. People who live locally and send kids to some of the same schools say the most vile things imaginable to each other. I have no clue if they realize they are doing so with their full identity on display to the world (a lot of people have no sense of privacy settings and so their entire FB profile and posts are there for the world to see). I am convinced that this has played a part in the insane behavior we have witnessed during the protests of the last several weeks. I have no problem with protests of any kind and for any reason. It's important to be heard. However, when the behavior turns criminal, with destruction of property, private or public, violence beatings and full-on anarchy, well, there is no society on earth and across history where that is considered legal or even acceptable behavior. Even stuff like invading restaurants and yelling at people with megaphones inches away from their ears. It's only a matter of time until those on the receiving end of this behavior respond with equal or greater (likely greater) brutality. Where do we go from there? Notice that I am not taking any sides here. These statements apply to all players in this sick game, regardless of affiliation. And then you have politicians and professional manipulators pinging segments of the population into resonance every day in support of political goals. Political goals, BTW, don't necessarily align with what is good for a country or a region. All they align with is being elected, reelected, obtaining or maintaining power. They could not care less about any of us. And so, the internet, that thing that most of us thought would bring forth a new age of enlightenment is being weaponized in unimaginable ways. If there was a bill to shutdown Facebook and Twitter tomorrow I would vote for it ten times if I could. As I have said in other posts, they should be shutdown until they can prove their algorithms stop driving people into dark caves of hatred and outrage. That's all they do. The have optimized their platforms to shove someone into whatever it is they are looking for deeper and harder, without regards for what the content can be. No problem if you are researching home remodeling or how to sail, huge massive problem if you are clicking through political crap (which is usually negative and hateful) and end-up in a deep dark cave of hatred. I've written before about a couple of members of our family who have been driven so far and deep into these caves (one on the left, the other on the right) that it is now impossible to pull them out. It's a drug, and we are powerless against it. I am for small government. Definitely. However, there are cases where use of force through government is justified. I believe this to be one such case. These companies need to be put on hold until they become good citizens of the world and that needs to happen very soon.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
atombender 6y ago
A few years ago I helped build a large social media site that had discussion threads at its core, and we quickly discovered how much time and effort it took. We quickly realized that so much of the grief was coming from the, ah, older generation — people over the age of 50 just loved to escalate things. For many of these people it seemed like they hadn't ever used the Internet for communicating before, and for us employees it always felt like supervising children. Sometimes they would dig up the phone number of the CEO or some poor developer, and call them with some angry complaint. Their anger died down somewhat when they got a human to talk to. I suspect a lot of the heated discussions stemmed from people's inability to see the other party as a real human; people behave online with a completely different level of respect than in real life. One of the most amusing experiences I had was hearing about how the "like" button next to comments had become a form of bullying. People would (rightfully, it would appear) complain that other people "liked" their comments ironically, and asked us to remove the likes. People in their 60s being bullied by other 60-year-olds through "likes". Both hilarious and sad.
joe_the_user 6y ago
Basically all current social media ends up optimizing for creating outrage, spawning mobs, less thoughtful discussion and more vitriolic arguments, etc. It's becoming a real concern to me that this is going to drive us into some kind of civil war or something if we don't find some way to check it. Outrage-driven profit models existed before social media as such. Once known as tabloids and the guttered press, this kind of media existed a while before Facebook. William Randolph Hearst was credited with starting the Spanish-American war back in the day (as fictionalized in Citizen Kane). This is to say the "outrage complex" extends well beyond social media platforms though such platforms certainly serve to accelerate it.
- intended 6y ago
  Yes. The discussions on HN dont go deep enough to look at the antecedents of the current imbroglio. Human brains are weak to a variety of manipulations. Media manipulations are one of the oldest, and have been going on for ever. The 24/7 news cycle preceded the net and created the exact same issues. Right now what we have added is mobile internet which means people can access the material all the time, and we've added algorithmic creation of inciteful content. We've gone to the industrial complex era of outrage creation.
- ufmace 6y ago
  They sure did. None of this is really new in concept, but it seems to be amplified quite a lot by modern technology. If it can already be credited with starting real hot wars, what will happen now that we've ramped up that same effect hundreds of times or more?
- BelleOfTheBall 6y ago
  Even HN has this problem where the users themselves stoke outrage in certain topics. For example, 99% of threads are see are great with in-depth discussion and nuanced opinions, even on topics that get flamed on other social media: climate change, gender issues, divisive art and personalities. However, lately I've noticed a huge disconnect between these threads and anything that mentions China/TikTok or solar/wind energy. For some reason, these two specifically seem to push people into baring their teeth.
sowbug 6y ago
A little over 10 years ago I started a social network for neighborhoods. Instead of people joining the network, houses would join, and people proved they lived in a house by having us send them a postcard with a code on it. Incidentally, while searching for a domain, I even tried to track down and buy "nextdoor.com," which I learned a year or so later had been in stealth mode. I first did a small launch in my own neighborhood to tune the product before going broad. It was during this phase that I discovered the toxicity of social networks. I was either a witness to, or drawn into, every petty bickering match on my side of my zip code. I am certain my product gave a wider voice to the wrong people. I should have known; ten years earlier I was an officer of my homeowners association, and it was the same thing, but face-to-face. This wasn't the only reason I shut down the project, but it was the biggest. I thought I'd be bringing people together. I was right, but I had incorrectly assumed that doing so would be a good thing.
- copperx 6y ago
  Interestingly, I joined Nextdoor expecting to see exactly that: complaints and bickering. I was surprised that most people in there are nice and supportive of each other. I'm sure there's some kind of moderation.
  - nogabebop23 6y ago
    >> I was surprised that most people in there are nice and supportive of each other. Well in my experience this is only true if you're exactly like them. different color/religion/landscaping views == the toxicity alluded to by the parent.
- em-bee 6y ago
  bringing people together is right, but it's not enough. you also have to set the tone, and block out hostility from the start. one way to do that is to make friends with neighbors, one at a time. if there is a conflict, help solve that conflict friendly and peacefully. develop a reputation for a friendly atmosphere. have neighboorhood activities, for adults or children, work on causes such as cleaning up the neighborhood, fixing play ground equipment, helping neighbors with difficulties. effectively you need to build the community. the thing is, this can only be done by people who live there, and the tools used are almost secondary. any chat room will do. the barrier to join is not a proof of address but a proof of goodwill, verified by an existing member.
austincheney 6y ago
Have read comments on journalism sites? It looks like CNN got rid of it a while ago but it’s still there on Fox News. It’s a cess pool. Even on ArsTechnica which skews towards a more educated audience the comments are often mindless trash. It’s not about outrage or any kind of drama. It’s achieving or supporting agreement and like-mindedness, which is a mob. Any outrage present is a secondary consideration of potential challenges to the agreement at present. So long as people are coalescing into groups out of mental laziness others people will be there to manipulate the mob for some selfish reason. The problem isn’t big players or media. The problem is foolish people.
bmitc 6y ago
> It would be a real service to society IMO if we could find a way to somehow generate enough engagement and energy to challenge the big players without the outrage culture. I'm not being cheeky (see below), but this already exists. It's talking to one another, person to person. :) Social media, at its core, targets the very primal part of our brain and bodies. This is my feeling and observation, and I would be very interested to see if there have been studies that show there are fundamental differences to how people communicate online, primarily via text, versus communicating in person. I would suspect there are differences in that our brain literally responds differently. As I type this, you can't see me. You don't know me. And I can't see nor do I know you. We can't respond to facial expressions or hear the cadence and tone of voice. Many, many times on the Internet, conversations get sidetracked by someone making a joke and then someone taking it too seriously. That's a simple case of online social media interaction, and there are far more complex examples. It's the same thing as working at a company. Often times you hit this moment where you just stop typing a message or an e-mail and just call the other person or go over to their desk. Even with just voice-to-voice communication, things are communicated much faster, and in person is even faster. A lot of this has to do with the process. Online, someone types something and then someone else types another thing in response and so on. In person, it's a more dynamic exchange. So at the core, my hypothesis is that almost all media (such as news) and especially social media are doing nothing but bypassing our natural filters and sensors for understanding things and try to directly target our inner primal self. As we can see online, humans are innately primal, especially when you remove all of our other evolved methods of understanding and empathy. When people see someone online say something they vehemently disagree with, they immediately ignore all possibilities and empathetic responses. We go straight to the core of finding the thing we hate about what they just said and then let them know that. However, if a stranger on the train says something like this, we often let it go. If we do engage, we are much more empathetic about their feelings and thoughts, both for human and societal reasons. Given this, I think it's essentially impossible to build an online community that is directly based upon this type of communication. It's tough enough to build one in person with people you know. And as we've all experienced over the past months, even digital face-to-face communication is hard. There's still dynamics missing like low-latency, body language, tone, hand motions, subtleties of voice, etc. I view it as an API or architecture diagram. If one drew one out for human communication, there's a lot of abstraction built upon our inner primal workings. But modern media, the Internet, and now social media has given a way to bypass all of that. The inner core can be accessed directly via advertisements, news, social media, propaganda, forums, etc., and now the Internet is like a connection between all these primal cores. It's why it's so insane. Adam Curtis' documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace covers this.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
Take the profit motive out and then you do not have this constant need for "engagement".
lone_haxx0r 6y ago
Your thesis is true, but we should keep in mind that outrage almost always comes from a perceived injuste in the world. We have always and will always disagree about political issues. Issues that from our subjective appreciation are destroying many people's lives, so it's not surprising that we resort to all sorts of toxic behaviour in order to "help the cause", whatever it might be. This emotional need for justice (even when misdirected) can not be discarded in the discussion about toxic behavior. Sometimes it takes the form of physical violence, sometimes it's an insult, a threat, doxxing, etc. We should strive to channel these desires and differences of opinion in healthy ways. "just ban all heated political discussions" is a good enough workaround at the forum level, but not a noble solution to the root problem at a societal level.
JohnBooty 6y ago
I ran (and wrote the software for) a forum for a number of years circa 2003-2012, FWIW. Did some things well and did some things poorly. It would be a real service to society IMO if we could find a way to somehow generate enough engagement and energy to challenge the big players without the outrage culture. It's not too complex to run a mostly-positive community. It's not easy, mind you. It's just not complex. Sort of like running a marathon - it's not complicated, it's just really really hard. =) As far as shaping a positive community, you attract good people and reward good behavior and disincentivize bad behavior. This is at odds with things you might reasonably do to "challenge the big players" (if by "big players" we mean Facebook, etc) in my experience, though. It's hard to scale up because it's labor-intensive. Camaraderie is relatively easy in small groups but tough in large groups. Not sure what HN's size is but I suspect it's right around the tipping point. Reddit shows one possible solution to scaling up: you scale horizontally. Each subreddit is a semiautonomous "shallow silo." It's partially successful at this: you have a lot of shockingly supportive and positive subreddits and some absolute dumpster fires. FB sort of does this well, with their groups feature. Ultimately a challenge faced by those two is their revenue model. It you don't charge users directly, you are either going to be privately funded (HN) or ad-supported. Relying upon ads is the kiss of death as far as sane discourse goes. It means you crave engagement and eyeballs and pageviews above all else. It is how you survive.
agumonkey 6y ago
> Basically all current social media ends up optimizing for creating outrage, spawning mobs, less thoughtful discussion and more vitriolic arguments, etc This is my impression too. What should we do or even think about it ? I tend to go slightly radical and cut socnet while allowing a few IRC and a bit of reddit. I think our understanding of 'social' is incomplete, as if social bonds without simple and clear goals (important tasks to be done, or sharing moments with people we have deep bonds with) leads to degenerate noise tsunamis like we're seeing.
femiagbabiaka 6y ago
I think about it quite differently —- “outrage culture” has always existed. White flight, lynchings of black men suspected of rape, “mob justice”, “community justice”. Because we saw that this was a dead end, we created institutions whose purpose was justice. Their mission was unfulfilled because the justice was not meted out equally, and this racist backlash in the form of outrage culture fought against it strongly (still does). A few things have changed though — before 24/7 news we didn’t have constant, unfiltered access to a stream of all that was wrong in the world. People with differing opinions to us ranging from benign to hateful, constant tragedy, etc. And additionally, due to the rot of our democratic institutions (unions, etc.) and the growing imbalance of power between everyday people and elites, people are starting to turn towards outrage culture as a solution to societal ills again. And so the calls for “community justice” and the sort return as well. The difference this time is that social media has democratized access to a voice. So now anyone and any cause can be fought for, and with minimal effort. Fixing social media won’t fix outrage culture, it will just mean that the only people with the power utilize it will be financial and racial elites. If we want to get rid of it entirely, we need to make our society more democratic.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  > social media has democratized access to a voice Social media could be better at democratization by increasing transparency and building better moderation tools.
  - femiagbabiaka 6y ago
    agreed!
jt2190 6y ago
> The outrage seems to be like a drug... I like to use a phrase I got from the Simpsons years ago: “Addicted to rageahol” https://youtu.be/kCUIzs8i9EU https://youtu.be/kCUIzs8i9EU
techslave 6y ago
it already has. ref: arab spring. perhaps social media was not the proximate cause but it certainly was enabling. even civil war in the US was a good thing. whose to say a next civil war won’t also be.

by ufmace 6y ago

pmoriarty 6y ago

This outrage is neither happening in a vacuum, nor is it simply a reflexive reaction to outrage on the opposite side. Real actions in the physical world are at the root of this outrage. The internet, in all of its forms, simply increases awareness of what's going on around the world. In the past, there was a relatively miniscule amount of information you could get about what was happening, and you could only get it through some gatekeepers. Now you can see what's happening, often as it happens, in cell phone camera footage and in direct reporting from people who are there, and the opinions of your fellow men are not filtered and reduced to a trickle by gatekeepers. A pessimistic view is that, like the babel fish, such increased communication will only lead to increased conflict, yet there is evidence that increased understanding and compassion can come from it too.

zug_zug 6y ago
So thinking about that... One the one hand, suppose I log into reddit and see police officers clubbing some people drinking beers (this specific instance was in a foreign country). Yes, on the one hand, I'm just more aware of a bad thing in the world. But on the other, if a million people get outraged watching a clip like that, it seems it does create a "magnification" effect where potentially the outrage is entirely disproportionate compared to crime that isn't brutal and on video (e.g. rich avoiding taxes) but may actually be much more important.
- gruez 6y ago
  > compared to crime that isn't brutal and on video (e.g. rich avoiding taxes) but may actually be much more important. You must have missed all the posts from /r/aboringdystopia and /r/latestagecapitalism that regularly show up on /r/all
manigandham 6y ago
That's ignoring how easy it is to be inundated with extremist views and the speed of information overload with no verification.
ufmace 6y ago
True, but kind of misleading, at least in my opinion. One of the issues with social media is that it's too easy to promote and share information about real-world events that provoke outrage, while paying no attention to broad-level statistics that give a better representation of what's really happening overall. The greater truth IMO is that, in a large society, a massive number of essentially random things happen every single day. Plenty to construct any type of narrative that you want. If we want to have unity, there is no way around having to sweep some individual events that are outrageous under the rug to some extent.
- burfog 6y ago
  I find it helps to compare against causes of death such as lightening strikes, falling out of bed, pools, Tylenol overdoses, and car crashes. None of those generate outrage. People worry so much about various violent acts (terrorism, school shooting, police shooting, etc.), but do they wear Faraday cages with lightening rods? Do they stay clear of cars and swimming pools? Do they own a bed or a bottle of Tylenol? Social media is but a small part of the problem. Traditional media is still largely deciding which issues will be part of today's buzz, and it is those issues that determine elections. The degree of power here is astonishing and disturbing.
koheripbal 6y ago
There have been so many hoaxed outrages and fake news, that's very clearly not the case.
cgriswald 6y ago
It's not just that by any means. I think it's largely a communication problem. People are reacting to what they perceive the other side is saying, without actually taking the time to hear what the other side is saying. They're encouraged both by their side and by the inevitable outrage from the other side. There is also an incredible amount of intentional misrepresentation of the other side (for and from both sides). If someone posts "B" in response to "A" they're usually doing so because they don't really understand what someone means by "A". They're looking at things at face value while adding in their own filters and biases and respond to that mess, instead of asking questions or seeking out information elsewhere. On the other hand, the counterresponse to someone posting "B" is often also tone-deaf. It is either assumed the person ought to know what "A" means (even if the people run in different social circles, have access to different news sources, or don't have as much free time to educate themselves); or it is assumed they person does know what "A" means and is being intentionally (as opposed to ignorantly) inflammatory. Seldom does someone on either side ask for clarification from or help to elucidate the other side. All of this seems to happen much more on the internet than in "real life."
- cam_l 6y ago
  In my experience, asking people for clarification, regardless of which side of a discussion they are on, leads to inflammation. People seem to be attached to the idea that they perfectly understand the others point of view and therefore the other perfectly understands their own point of view. To them, more talk will not help. Typically i find when you ask for clarification you find the person doesn't even understand their own point of view. Probably also partly why they react so badly to being asked for clarification. Unfortunately, we are stuck in this world where most do not actually listen to, let alone evaluate, the content of arguments, just the context. And in online discussions the context is diminished. What to do apart from wait for the world to catch up?
- thereticent 6y ago
  As the years wear on, I find Reddit, FB comments, and Twitter (and in my decade of lurking, HN less so) to be great examples of the importance of the Nonviolent Communication framework.
neonate 6y ago
I think it's very much both: you're right that awareness of what's going on is increasing and the GP is right that social media is optimized for outrage, and we can add a third thing that the circulation of misinformation is also increasing. I'm not talking about deliberate misinformation, just that people repeat things so quickly and interpret them through the prism of their own assumptions. e.g. the Covington kids case. Correction of the misinformation may follow, but it never spreads as far or as quickly, and in many cases may not bother existing for all the good it does.
nkohari 6y ago
> The internet, in all of its forms, simply increases awareness of what's going on around the world. The internet is not just a signal booster, but also an amplifier. Ideas which would otherwise be fringe become quickly mainstream. That's not always a bad thing, but it often is. The echo chamber effect is also incredibly powerful, psychologically. Especially through social media, outrage begets community. At first, you're a person who is angered at something that's happening in the world, but then you find others who feel similarly. Now you're a part of a community. Not only that, by discussing it in public, you're taking action. Now you're part of a movement! Now you're fomenting real change and making a difference in the world! This is true no matter where on the political spectrum you lie. No matter what opinions you're defending, those dopamine hits feel the same.
bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
> The internet, in all of its forms, simply increases awareness of what's going on around I think this gets overlooked too much by people in tech sociological bubble. The shape of the world is at any point in time a function of (1) the various frictions to information flow that are present, and (2) exploitation of the same by the powerful. The shape of the pre-information-age world in particular contained within it latent sources of conflict and instability (examples abound, I won't specify here) that could only be maintained by keeping some people voiceless and others in the dark. What we're witnessing now is a tumultuous transition period as we reach a new equilibrium. Two of the forces that will determine the shape of that new equilibrium: (1) People acting in their interests based on new information and (2) new restrictions on information transmission better adapted to the evolving state of technology.

cortesoft 6y ago

I had to stop frequenting the r/amitheasshole sub for this very reason. Getting outraged at the assholes, and then having my comments about the assholes get hundreds of upvotes, was too rewarding. It was certainly drug-like. It is strange, too, because I am normally an extremely forgiving person, and am often criticized for giving too much of the benefit of the doubt to people. Even if I am like that in real life, I was still able to be sucked into the outrage cycle.

refurb 6y ago
That is a truly bizarre subreddit. It’s exactly what you say, people love to go there and get on their high horse. I also suspect there are a ton of troll posts there. Too many “I am the asshole” questions that seem perfectly aligned to the politics of the day. And the stories seem perfectly written to create conflict.
- xvector 6y ago
  This is almost any Reddit "advice" sub, like /r/relationships. People write stories for fun and to create conflict.
  - Biganon 6y ago
    One of the /r/relationship_advice moderators answered to PG's tweet
DangitBobby 6y ago
It probably doesn't help that a huge portion of the content is just fictional outrage porn. So instead of a real person posting their mistakes, you are seeing a caricature of a person crafted to accumulate internet points. This caricature, of course, is optimized to make you feel angry at that "person" for their actions. These days it might as well be /r/amitheangel+creativefiction
hinkley 6y ago
I wonder how many families have been broken by people following the advice they got in AITA or relationship advice. Everyone always suggests the nuclear option.

codingdave 6y ago

> It's becoming a real concern to me that this is going to drive us into some kind of civil war I'm more inclined to think that social media is where people go to let off steam. Most people I know have full lives outside of social media, and just get online to relax a bit, if at all. Many people I know have stopped using it at all. The ones who do vent and rant online are the minority, and they are more likely to be doing it online than in person. Of course, there are plenty of trolls and shills who join them, and together they make our society look more ready for conflict than we really are. Now, it is true that we have some serious problems going on, and are vehemently divided in the USA at the moment, with some actual riots and violence. I don't want to be dismissive of that. But I believe social media is still a magnifying glass over all our troubles, not a true barometer of our collective readiness to get into physical combat over our differences.

koheripbal 6y ago
If this were true, people would feel better after being exposed to social media. The evidence has shown that, instead, their anxiety increases as they are fed a stream of conflict, injustice, and sometimes even violence.

dehrmann 6y ago

What's different about HN is the only ads are basically promoting YC companies, so outrage doesn't feed any internal engagement metrics. Any outrage you see here is what we've brought on ourselves.

robomartin 6y ago

It is nothing less than exhausting to watch how people who frequent various types of social media have been driven to devolve into the worst humanity has seen in a long time short of causing physical harm to each other. I have watched as a couple of local FB groups that I used to just monitor for local information go down to the gutter on almost every single post. People who live locally and send kids to some of the same schools say the most vile things imaginable to each other. I have no clue if they realize they are doing so with their full identity on display to the world (a lot of people have no sense of privacy settings and so their entire FB profile and posts are there for the world to see). I am convinced that this has played a part in the insane behavior we have witnessed during the protests of the last several weeks. I have no problem with protests of any kind and for any reason. It's important to be heard. However, when the behavior turns criminal, with destruction of property, private or public, violence beatings and full-on anarchy, well, there is no society on earth and across history where that is considered legal or even acceptable behavior. Even stuff like invading restaurants and yelling at people with megaphones inches away from their ears. It's only a matter of time until those on the receiving end of this behavior respond with equal or greater (likely greater) brutality. Where do we go from there? Notice that I am not taking any sides here. These statements apply to all players in this sick game, regardless of affiliation. And then you have politicians and professional manipulators pinging segments of the population into resonance every day in support of political goals. Political goals, BTW, don't necessarily align with what is good for a country or a region. All they align with is being elected, reelected, obtaining or maintaining power. They could not care less about any of us. And so, the internet, that thing that most of us thought would bring forth a new age of enlightenment is being weaponized in unimaginable ways. If there was a bill to shutdown Facebook and Twitter tomorrow I would vote for it ten times if I could. As I have said in other posts, they should be shutdown until they can prove their algorithms stop driving people into dark caves of hatred and outrage. That's all they do. The have optimized their platforms to shove someone into whatever it is they are looking for deeper and harder, without regards for what the content can be. No problem if you are researching home remodeling or how to sail, huge massive problem if you are clicking through political crap (which is usually negative and hateful) and end-up in a deep dark cave of hatred. I've written before about a couple of members of our family who have been driven so far and deep into these caves (one on the left, the other on the right) that it is now impossible to pull them out. It's a drug, and we are powerless against it. I am for small government. Definitely. However, there are cases where use of force through government is justified. I believe this to be one such case. These companies need to be put on hold until they become good citizens of the world and that needs to happen very soon.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

atombender 6y ago

A few years ago I helped build a large social media site that had discussion threads at its core, and we quickly discovered how much time and effort it took. We quickly realized that so much of the grief was coming from the, ah, older generation — people over the age of 50 just loved to escalate things. For many of these people it seemed like they hadn't ever used the Internet for communicating before, and for us employees it always felt like supervising children. Sometimes they would dig up the phone number of the CEO or some poor developer, and call them with some angry complaint. Their anger died down somewhat when they got a human to talk to. I suspect a lot of the heated discussions stemmed from people's inability to see the other party as a real human; people behave online with a completely different level of respect than in real life. One of the most amusing experiences I had was hearing about how the "like" button next to comments had become a form of bullying. People would (rightfully, it would appear) complain that other people "liked" their comments ironically, and asked us to remove the likes. People in their 60s being bullied by other 60-year-olds through "likes". Both hilarious and sad.

joe_the_user 6y ago

Basically all current social media ends up optimizing for creating outrage, spawning mobs, less thoughtful discussion and more vitriolic arguments, etc. It's becoming a real concern to me that this is going to drive us into some kind of civil war or something if we don't find some way to check it. Outrage-driven profit models existed before social media as such. Once known as tabloids and the guttered press, this kind of media existed a while before Facebook. William Randolph Hearst was credited with starting the Spanish-American war back in the day (as fictionalized in Citizen Kane). This is to say the "outrage complex" extends well beyond social media platforms though such platforms certainly serve to accelerate it.

intended 6y ago
Yes. The discussions on HN dont go deep enough to look at the antecedents of the current imbroglio. Human brains are weak to a variety of manipulations. Media manipulations are one of the oldest, and have been going on for ever. The 24/7 news cycle preceded the net and created the exact same issues. Right now what we have added is mobile internet which means people can access the material all the time, and we've added algorithmic creation of inciteful content. We've gone to the industrial complex era of outrage creation.
ufmace 6y ago
They sure did. None of this is really new in concept, but it seems to be amplified quite a lot by modern technology. If it can already be credited with starting real hot wars, what will happen now that we've ramped up that same effect hundreds of times or more?
BelleOfTheBall 6y ago
Even HN has this problem where the users themselves stoke outrage in certain topics. For example, 99% of threads are see are great with in-depth discussion and nuanced opinions, even on topics that get flamed on other social media: climate change, gender issues, divisive art and personalities. However, lately I've noticed a huge disconnect between these threads and anything that mentions China/TikTok or solar/wind energy. For some reason, these two specifically seem to push people into baring their teeth.

sowbug 6y ago

A little over 10 years ago I started a social network for neighborhoods. Instead of people joining the network, houses would join, and people proved they lived in a house by having us send them a postcard with a code on it. Incidentally, while searching for a domain, I even tried to track down and buy "nextdoor.com," which I learned a year or so later had been in stealth mode. I first did a small launch in my own neighborhood to tune the product before going broad. It was during this phase that I discovered the toxicity of social networks. I was either a witness to, or drawn into, every petty bickering match on my side of my zip code. I am certain my product gave a wider voice to the wrong people. I should have known; ten years earlier I was an officer of my homeowners association, and it was the same thing, but face-to-face. This wasn't the only reason I shut down the project, but it was the biggest. I thought I'd be bringing people together. I was right, but I had incorrectly assumed that doing so would be a good thing.

copperx 6y ago
Interestingly, I joined Nextdoor expecting to see exactly that: complaints and bickering. I was surprised that most people in there are nice and supportive of each other. I'm sure there's some kind of moderation.
- nogabebop23 6y ago
  >> I was surprised that most people in there are nice and supportive of each other. Well in my experience this is only true if you're exactly like them. different color/religion/landscaping views == the toxicity alluded to by the parent.
em-bee 6y ago
bringing people together is right, but it's not enough. you also have to set the tone, and block out hostility from the start. one way to do that is to make friends with neighbors, one at a time. if there is a conflict, help solve that conflict friendly and peacefully. develop a reputation for a friendly atmosphere. have neighboorhood activities, for adults or children, work on causes such as cleaning up the neighborhood, fixing play ground equipment, helping neighbors with difficulties. effectively you need to build the community. the thing is, this can only be done by people who live there, and the tools used are almost secondary. any chat room will do. the barrier to join is not a proof of address but a proof of goodwill, verified by an existing member.

austincheney 6y ago

Have read comments on journalism sites? It looks like CNN got rid of it a while ago but it’s still there on Fox News. It’s a cess pool. Even on ArsTechnica which skews towards a more educated audience the comments are often mindless trash. It’s not about outrage or any kind of drama. It’s achieving or supporting agreement and like-mindedness, which is a mob. Any outrage present is a secondary consideration of potential challenges to the agreement at present. So long as people are coalescing into groups out of mental laziness others people will be there to manipulate the mob for some selfish reason. The problem isn’t big players or media. The problem is foolish people.

bmitc 6y ago

> It would be a real service to society IMO if we could find a way to somehow generate enough engagement and energy to challenge the big players without the outrage culture. I'm not being cheeky (see below), but this already exists. It's talking to one another, person to person. :) Social media, at its core, targets the very primal part of our brain and bodies. This is my feeling and observation, and I would be very interested to see if there have been studies that show there are fundamental differences to how people communicate online, primarily via text, versus communicating in person. I would suspect there are differences in that our brain literally responds differently. As I type this, you can't see me. You don't know me. And I can't see nor do I know you. We can't respond to facial expressions or hear the cadence and tone of voice. Many, many times on the Internet, conversations get sidetracked by someone making a joke and then someone taking it too seriously. That's a simple case of online social media interaction, and there are far more complex examples. It's the same thing as working at a company. Often times you hit this moment where you just stop typing a message or an e-mail and just call the other person or go over to their desk. Even with just voice-to-voice communication, things are communicated much faster, and in person is even faster. A lot of this has to do with the process. Online, someone types something and then someone else types another thing in response and so on. In person, it's a more dynamic exchange. So at the core, my hypothesis is that almost all media (such as news) and especially social media are doing nothing but bypassing our natural filters and sensors for understanding things and try to directly target our inner primal self. As we can see online, humans are innately primal, especially when you remove all of our other evolved methods of understanding and empathy. When people see someone online say something they vehemently disagree with, they immediately ignore all possibilities and empathetic responses. We go straight to the core of finding the thing we hate about what they just said and then let them know that. However, if a stranger on the train says something like this, we often let it go. If we do engage, we are much more empathetic about their feelings and thoughts, both for human and societal reasons. Given this, I think it's essentially impossible to build an online community that is directly based upon this type of communication. It's tough enough to build one in person with people you know. And as we've all experienced over the past months, even digital face-to-face communication is hard. There's still dynamics missing like low-latency, body language, tone, hand motions, subtleties of voice, etc. I view it as an API or architecture diagram. If one drew one out for human communication, there's a lot of abstraction built upon our inner primal workings. But modern media, the Internet, and now social media has given a way to bypass all of that. The inner core can be accessed directly via advertisements, news, social media, propaganda, forums, etc., and now the Internet is like a connection between all these primal cores. It's why it's so insane. Adam Curtis' documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace covers this.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

Take the profit motive out and then you do not have this constant need for "engagement".

lone_haxx0r 6y ago

Your thesis is true, but we should keep in mind that outrage almost always comes from a perceived injuste in the world. We have always and will always disagree about political issues. Issues that from our subjective appreciation are destroying many people's lives, so it's not surprising that we resort to all sorts of toxic behaviour in order to "help the cause", whatever it might be. This emotional need for justice (even when misdirected) can not be discarded in the discussion about toxic behavior. Sometimes it takes the form of physical violence, sometimes it's an insult, a threat, doxxing, etc. We should strive to channel these desires and differences of opinion in healthy ways. "just ban all heated political discussions" is a good enough workaround at the forum level, but not a noble solution to the root problem at a societal level.

JohnBooty 6y ago

I ran (and wrote the software for) a forum for a number of years circa 2003-2012, FWIW. Did some things well and did some things poorly. It would be a real service to society IMO if we could find a way to somehow generate enough engagement and energy to challenge the big players without the outrage culture. It's not too complex to run a mostly-positive community. It's not easy, mind you. It's just not complex. Sort of like running a marathon - it's not complicated, it's just really really hard. =) As far as shaping a positive community, you attract good people and reward good behavior and disincentivize bad behavior. This is at odds with things you might reasonably do to "challenge the big players" (if by "big players" we mean Facebook, etc) in my experience, though. It's hard to scale up because it's labor-intensive. Camaraderie is relatively easy in small groups but tough in large groups. Not sure what HN's size is but I suspect it's right around the tipping point. Reddit shows one possible solution to scaling up: you scale horizontally. Each subreddit is a semiautonomous "shallow silo." It's partially successful at this: you have a lot of shockingly supportive and positive subreddits and some absolute dumpster fires. FB sort of does this well, with their groups feature. Ultimately a challenge faced by those two is their revenue model. It you don't charge users directly, you are either going to be privately funded (HN) or ad-supported. Relying upon ads is the kiss of death as far as sane discourse goes. It means you crave engagement and eyeballs and pageviews above all else. It is how you survive.

agumonkey 6y ago

> Basically all current social media ends up optimizing for creating outrage, spawning mobs, less thoughtful discussion and more vitriolic arguments, etc This is my impression too. What should we do or even think about it ? I tend to go slightly radical and cut socnet while allowing a few IRC and a bit of reddit. I think our understanding of 'social' is incomplete, as if social bonds without simple and clear goals (important tasks to be done, or sharing moments with people we have deep bonds with) leads to degenerate noise tsunamis like we're seeing.

femiagbabiaka 6y ago

I think about it quite differently —- “outrage culture” has always existed. White flight, lynchings of black men suspected of rape, “mob justice”, “community justice”. Because we saw that this was a dead end, we created institutions whose purpose was justice. Their mission was unfulfilled because the justice was not meted out equally, and this racist backlash in the form of outrage culture fought against it strongly (still does). A few things have changed though — before 24/7 news we didn’t have constant, unfiltered access to a stream of all that was wrong in the world. People with differing opinions to us ranging from benign to hateful, constant tragedy, etc. And additionally, due to the rot of our democratic institutions (unions, etc.) and the growing imbalance of power between everyday people and elites, people are starting to turn towards outrage culture as a solution to societal ills again. And so the calls for “community justice” and the sort return as well. The difference this time is that social media has democratized access to a voice. So now anyone and any cause can be fought for, and with minimal effort. Fixing social media won’t fix outrage culture, it will just mean that the only people with the power utilize it will be financial and racial elites. If we want to get rid of it entirely, we need to make our society more democratic.

unityByFreedom 6y ago
> social media has democratized access to a voice Social media could be better at democratization by increasing transparency and building better moderation tools.
- femiagbabiaka 6y ago
  agreed!

jt2190 6y ago

> The outrage seems to be like a drug... I like to use a phrase I got from the Simpsons years ago: “Addicted to rageahol” https://youtu.be/kCUIzs8i9EU https://youtu.be/kCUIzs8i9EU

techslave 6y ago

it already has. ref: arab spring. perhaps social media was not the proximate cause but it certainly was enabling. even civil war in the US was a good thing. whose to say a next civil war won’t also be.