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What's the difference between a bubble and personal interests? A technology that allows no way of filtering out the things you find uninteresting is about as us

by pharke 6y ago

What's the difference between a bubble and personal interests? A technology that allows no way of filtering out the things you find uninteresting is about as useless as one that doesn't provide any means of discovering new interests. Regardless, this isn't the issue we should be focusing on, communities turn toxic when they feed into the delusions, bad habits, vices, and narcissism of their members. That's less of a technological problem and more of a moral one. You can't produce moral behaviour by creating a new (or changing an existing one into a) platform that strictly enforces it, people will either subvert your rules by inventing ways to get around them or they will simply not use your platform and go elsewhere. The same problems exist in the offline world, and it's always more effective to address the root causes of the problem than it is to legislate and punish.

phailhaus 6y ago
> That's less of a technological problem and more of a moral one. I ascribe to a "medium is the message" type of mentality, where the design of your platform is going to inform the nature of the behavior on it. For example, Facebook's commenting system is, unfortunately, hot garbage. They don't track comment threads, and instead they have this weird "mention" system wherein the best you can do is @ someone and hope they remember the thread. You can't read a conversation in order, it's all jumbled up for some reason. What kind of conversations arise from such a mess? It ends up being a convoluted stew of people just vaguely yelling in each other's directions. You can't maintain a thread of conversation, and neither can anyone else. Furthermore, Facebook views all interacts as equal. However, users will often use "haha" and "angry" reacts in order to mock the more extreme and toxic comments. Facebook doesn't notice this, and goes "aha! This is a Good Comment. I will promote it." So what happens? The top comments on popular posts are often the most toxic, and they get the most visibility. It's design like this that makes the internet a worse place. I think RSS is on the right track, but I think the fact that we can't see each other's feeds is a problem. Many will end up spiraling into a feedback loop of toxic content, with no way to see opposing viewpoints and a "way out". On Reddit, I can actively peek at r/Conservative and see what a completely different group of people are talking about. I can't quite do that with RSS.
- type0 6y ago
  > On Reddit, I can actively peek at r/Conservative and see what a completely different group of people are talking about. I can't quite do that with RSS. you can, go to old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/.rss
  - phailhaus 6y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean literally RSS with Reddit, I meant it as an analogy. Reddit lets me "peek" at r/Conservative, but I can't "peek" at your set of RSS feeds.
- pharke 6y ago
  My question would be, why are there toxic posts on any of these platforms in the first place even before they are promoted? I don't see Reddit's model as a viable alternative, any subreddit with a large population seems to have fallen into a pit of lowest common denominator group think from which they'll never return. I don't think it's their architecture that's to blame, it's a disease that arises from a large population of self-interested people who aren't invested in the wellbeing of the community. They're there to see a funny meme, do some shitposting, and try to get some karma rather than meaningfully contribute. I think a good community can still thrive on a platform that has terrible tools, humans are adaptable and will make the best of a bad situation. The only thing that spoils that is a large enough group of people intent on making a bad situation worse for their own benefit.
  - phailhaus 6y ago
    > any subreddit with a large population seems to have fallen into a pit of lowest common denominator group think from which they'll never return. I don't think it's their architecture that's to blame You should! Have you ever wondered why subreddits suddenly go to crap when they hit the front page? It's because people upvote without considering the subreddit that it was originally posted in. And that's partly because Reddit's design doesn't make the originating subreddit obvious enough, partly because you don't have to navigate to that subreddit to vote on it, and mostly because the front page hits a large number of unsubscribed folks that don't know the sub rules. So as people are idly scrolling through their feed, they see something funny, they go "heh, upvote." and move on. Whoops, that post was in r/Unexpected, and it wasn't unexpected at all. The top posts of that subreddit slowly become more homogenous with all the other popular subreddits, and we say the subreddit has died. The most savvy subs will implement a stickied comment system. The top comment in the post will be stickied and allow people to vote on whether the post really belongs to the sub. They're able to filter out highly-upvoted irrelevant content this way, even if the sub hits the front page. > why are there toxic posts on any of these platforms People exist, there is no way around this. The best we can do is design around mitigating it, not amplifying it.

by pharke 6y ago

phailhaus 6y ago

> That's less of a technological problem and more of a moral one. I ascribe to a "medium is the message" type of mentality, where the design of your platform is going to inform the nature of the behavior on it. For example, Facebook's commenting system is, unfortunately, hot garbage. They don't track comment threads, and instead they have this weird "mention" system wherein the best you can do is @ someone and hope they remember the thread. You can't read a conversation in order, it's all jumbled up for some reason. What kind of conversations arise from such a mess? It ends up being a convoluted stew of people just vaguely yelling in each other's directions. You can't maintain a thread of conversation, and neither can anyone else. Furthermore, Facebook views all interacts as equal. However, users will often use "haha" and "angry" reacts in order to mock the more extreme and toxic comments. Facebook doesn't notice this, and goes "aha! This is a Good Comment. I will promote it." So what happens? The top comments on popular posts are often the most toxic, and they get the most visibility. It's design like this that makes the internet a worse place. I think RSS is on the right track, but I think the fact that we can't see each other's feeds is a problem. Many will end up spiraling into a feedback loop of toxic content, with no way to see opposing viewpoints and a "way out". On Reddit, I can actively peek at r/Conservative and see what a completely different group of people are talking about. I can't quite do that with RSS.

type0 6y ago
> On Reddit, I can actively peek at r/Conservative and see what a completely different group of people are talking about. I can't quite do that with RSS. you can, go to old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/.rss
- phailhaus 6y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean literally RSS with Reddit, I meant it as an analogy. Reddit lets me "peek" at r/Conservative, but I can't "peek" at your set of RSS feeds.
pharke 6y ago
My question would be, why are there toxic posts on any of these platforms in the first place even before they are promoted? I don't see Reddit's model as a viable alternative, any subreddit with a large population seems to have fallen into a pit of lowest common denominator group think from which they'll never return. I don't think it's their architecture that's to blame, it's a disease that arises from a large population of self-interested people who aren't invested in the wellbeing of the community. They're there to see a funny meme, do some shitposting, and try to get some karma rather than meaningfully contribute. I think a good community can still thrive on a platform that has terrible tools, humans are adaptable and will make the best of a bad situation. The only thing that spoils that is a large enough group of people intent on making a bad situation worse for their own benefit.
- phailhaus 6y ago
  > any subreddit with a large population seems to have fallen into a pit of lowest common denominator group think from which they'll never return. I don't think it's their architecture that's to blame You should! Have you ever wondered why subreddits suddenly go to crap when they hit the front page? It's because people upvote without considering the subreddit that it was originally posted in. And that's partly because Reddit's design doesn't make the originating subreddit obvious enough, partly because you don't have to navigate to that subreddit to vote on it, and mostly because the front page hits a large number of unsubscribed folks that don't know the sub rules. So as people are idly scrolling through their feed, they see something funny, they go "heh, upvote." and move on. Whoops, that post was in r/Unexpected, and it wasn't unexpected at all. The top posts of that subreddit slowly become more homogenous with all the other popular subreddits, and we say the subreddit has died. The most savvy subs will implement a stickied comment system. The top comment in the post will be stickied and allow people to vote on whether the post really belongs to the sub. They're able to filter out highly-upvoted irrelevant content this way, even if the sub hits the front page. > why are there toxic posts on any of these platforms People exist, there is no way around this. The best we can do is design around mitigating it, not amplifying it.