4 ms·

When people say anonymity online is bad and that having people use their real names would make people more polite, I point them to facebook comments.

disease 6y ago
Google tried using real names on youtube briefly and it had no affect in reducing white supremacy or conspiracy theories in its comments.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  That was just a side-effect of organizational stupidity. The guy they put in charge of "social" was 100% committed to the real names thing and also dedicated to the internal turf war of either taking over or shutting down any product that seemed to have "social features". So youtube comments temporarily became just a foreign feature of Google+, rendered out of context. After they showed that bozo the door, youtube went back to their old comments system.
oramit 6y ago
Yeah, though I didn't agree with the "real names only" policy at Facebook I did think it would lead to better behavior. That backfired spectacularly.
- rconti 6y ago
  I think it helped a lot. I still think it's a lot better than Twitter, but it's difficult to compare, because the default-public behavior of Twitter content makes it far more toxic; to find the same stuff on FB you either have to be in a private group, or read public comments on a public article. It doesn't come to you in the same way it does on Twitter. Most of the horribly content on Facebook is fake accounts, which you can usually identify because their entire profile is around a theme. Facebook tried to make fake accounts impossible for awhile, but apparently they've given up. Twitter doesn't try.
dralley 6y ago
And I would, in turn, point you to Parler. Facebook being a cesspit doesn't prove that anonymity can't make things worse.
- dmix 6y ago
  What are you trying to prove here? Anonymity was always a choice and we can’t go back to pretending it was... unless we go all China on the internet? The response to crazy fringes minorities by authoritarian governments has almost always been many times worse than the small fringe groups doing stupid dangerous stuff. This lesson after 9/11 in Iraq and what we’ve seen in many other authoritarian governments has been downright counterproductive and equally worse. It was always naive and overrated thinking banning hate groups or extremists on Facebook and Reddit was sufficient to make them go away. That was already the default before Trump, lets not forget. And we’ve already gone way further than just banning legitimate hate groups to banning even more stuff so everything is moderated and politically appropriate by some unelected representatives, with no recourse, as many tech companies have tried. Mostly just flailing about. And has only fueled distrust in media companies and authority systems we used to look to. Hate Inc talks about general outrage being the danger, not specific politically acceptable outrage. Which is something that is quite obvious to anyone non-partisan watching.
NickGott 6y ago
People are incredibly mean and nasty to each other on nextdoor in my neighborhood, and they literally live down the street from one another. You're completely right, it's not anonymity that causes people to act like this, it's the fact that we as humans can't perceive text on a screen as another human being that activates the empathy center in our brains. Coronavirus has made this 100X worse as people are losing their humanity being locked away from everyone else. I've had some of my best social interaction recently on VRChat of all places as it gets the closest of anything I've found so far of making it feel like there's actually a human being in front of you.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  People on Nextdoor think their neighbors are all like them and wrongly assume it's a safe space for airing out their worst thoughts. Mine is completely full of naked racism, calls for murdering specific people, etc. There doesn't seem to be a way to fix it because the "leader", basically the moderator, of my Nextdoor is the worst of them.
  - mckeed 6y ago
    It looks like you can report them if they violate Nextdoor's Community Guidelines and potentially get them demoted. https://help.nextdoor.com/s/article/How-to-remove-Lead-status https://help.nextdoor.com/s/article/How-to-remove-Lead-statu...
josefresco 6y ago
I agree with your point, however I wanted to mention that Facebook posts are typically done "in private" either accessible only to Facebook friends, or members of the FB private groups.
digihealthify 6y ago
you know which platform has little to no asshole-ness? LinkedIn. There's more on the line, their career. I envision the next social media wave encompassing this a bit. Closer tie to the person in order to have a more humanistic conversation for fear of backlash.

disease 6y ago

Google tried using real names on youtube briefly and it had no affect in reducing white supremacy or conspiracy theories in its comments.

jeffbee 6y ago
That was just a side-effect of organizational stupidity. The guy they put in charge of "social" was 100% committed to the real names thing and also dedicated to the internal turf war of either taking over or shutting down any product that seemed to have "social features". So youtube comments temporarily became just a foreign feature of Google+, rendered out of context. After they showed that bozo the door, youtube went back to their old comments system.

oramit 6y ago

Yeah, though I didn't agree with the "real names only" policy at Facebook I did think it would lead to better behavior. That backfired spectacularly.

rconti 6y ago
I think it helped a lot. I still think it's a lot better than Twitter, but it's difficult to compare, because the default-public behavior of Twitter content makes it far more toxic; to find the same stuff on FB you either have to be in a private group, or read public comments on a public article. It doesn't come to you in the same way it does on Twitter. Most of the horribly content on Facebook is fake accounts, which you can usually identify because their entire profile is around a theme. Facebook tried to make fake accounts impossible for awhile, but apparently they've given up. Twitter doesn't try.

dralley 6y ago

And I would, in turn, point you to Parler. Facebook being a cesspit doesn't prove that anonymity can't make things worse.

dmix 6y ago
What are you trying to prove here? Anonymity was always a choice and we can’t go back to pretending it was... unless we go all China on the internet? The response to crazy fringes minorities by authoritarian governments has almost always been many times worse than the small fringe groups doing stupid dangerous stuff. This lesson after 9/11 in Iraq and what we’ve seen in many other authoritarian governments has been downright counterproductive and equally worse. It was always naive and overrated thinking banning hate groups or extremists on Facebook and Reddit was sufficient to make them go away. That was already the default before Trump, lets not forget. And we’ve already gone way further than just banning legitimate hate groups to banning even more stuff so everything is moderated and politically appropriate by some unelected representatives, with no recourse, as many tech companies have tried. Mostly just flailing about. And has only fueled distrust in media companies and authority systems we used to look to. Hate Inc talks about general outrage being the danger, not specific politically acceptable outrage. Which is something that is quite obvious to anyone non-partisan watching.

NickGott 6y ago

People are incredibly mean and nasty to each other on nextdoor in my neighborhood, and they literally live down the street from one another. You're completely right, it's not anonymity that causes people to act like this, it's the fact that we as humans can't perceive text on a screen as another human being that activates the empathy center in our brains. Coronavirus has made this 100X worse as people are losing their humanity being locked away from everyone else. I've had some of my best social interaction recently on VRChat of all places as it gets the closest of anything I've found so far of making it feel like there's actually a human being in front of you.

jeffbee 6y ago
People on Nextdoor think their neighbors are all like them and wrongly assume it's a safe space for airing out their worst thoughts. Mine is completely full of naked racism, calls for murdering specific people, etc. There doesn't seem to be a way to fix it because the "leader", basically the moderator, of my Nextdoor is the worst of them.
- mckeed 6y ago
  It looks like you can report them if they violate Nextdoor's Community Guidelines and potentially get them demoted. https://help.nextdoor.com/s/article/How-to-remove-Lead-status https://help.nextdoor.com/s/article/How-to-remove-Lead-statu...

josefresco 6y ago

I agree with your point, however I wanted to mention that Facebook posts are typically done "in private" either accessible only to Facebook friends, or members of the FB private groups.

digihealthify 6y ago

you know which platform has little to no asshole-ness? LinkedIn. There's more on the line, their career. I envision the next social media wave encompassing this a bit. Closer tie to the person in order to have a more humanistic conversation for fear of backlash.