5 ms·

It all comes down to every PM's favorite metric: engagement. When users get into a heated flamewar, that's high-engagement. So you want to do everything you ca

It all comes down to every PM's favorite metric: engagement. When users get into a heated flamewar, that's high-engagement. So you want to do everything you can to ensure that the most possible users get sucked into flamewars. I feel like this should be banned, but it's unclear what the best approach would be. Mandating chronological feed order?

JasonFruit 5y ago
MeWe has chronological feed order, and I've found fewer flame wars there. The user base is smaller and possibly more ideologically uniform, though, which may be an alternate explanation.
- Pxtl 5y ago
  Yes, but small size seems to intrinsically produce nicer platforms. Even within the large platforms, you still get "stick to the small groups/subreddits/pages and folks are nice there". So there's no guarantee a structure that seems to encourage peace will actually work when scaled up.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  The big tent for everyone sites are toxic because people don't interact as closely in real life with people from different groups. We group for a reason. Within those groups common understanding on certain ideas is the connection. With that connection you let down your guard, you can be this side of yourself freely. In a big crowd you have to wear all faces to relate to everyone.
  - badRNG 5y ago
    Anecdotally, I've seen far more polemic and vitriolic posts on so-called alt-tech social media sites compared to even Twitter and Facebook, which are horrendous in this regard. Sites like Gab, Voat, Ruqqus, etc seem to be filled with the absolute most toxic, angry, and hateful discourse imaginable. I've noticed sites that tend to be for something other than "just chatting" tend to do better: many hobby specific forums, HN, hobbyist subreddits, etc. all seem to do better discourse-wise when focused on something specific, but I'm not quite sure why that'd be the case.
    - RicoElectrico 5y ago
      Incidentally, most of the sites you mentioned were the "but mah free speech!1" equivalents of mainstream sites, created by the alt-right.
    - kmeisthax 5y ago
      Niche communities are easier for a small handful of volunteers or employees to moderate. There's simply less shit to clean up. Compare that to Facebook, Google, etc; all of whom have to hire armies of moderators who will burn out in a span of months. The attrition rate is very high, and there's just too many moderators to have consistent platform policy enforcement. Furthermore, if someone is just there to be toxic, you have an easy justification to shut them down: "I'm sorry, but this is an underwater basketweaving Discord, please stop spamming #offtopic with why you think we should call in the National Guard to fight the war on Christmas." Many small communities have very strict regulation of political speech purely because it causes most of their problems. Alt-tech is trying to collect all of the toxic bullshit in one place, so obviously they're going to be way more toxic despite their small size. It's also possible for niche communities to have their own toxicity problems, too. It's more that large communities are just inherently more difficult to govern.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      The people going to those sites or TheDonald in it's heyday are bonding over being able to say things that cannot be said elsewhere. To those users none of the discourse is toxic. There are similiar left leaning sites where the anita hangout that have similiar discourse but no one finds it toxic. Combine those two groups and you have the most toxic place where everyone feels attacked, the need to attack and piling on a victim feels good. That could describe twitter or other public squares.
  - soylentcola 5y ago
    It's the same old joke/complaint about the comment sections on other large, general audience sites (Youtube, news sites, etc.) The same old gag about "never read the comments section!" applies. Once a social platform goes from "chatting with maybe a hundred friends/family max" to "basically everyone", it becomes the "comment section" for the entire region (or even the internet at large).
badRNG 5y ago
Don't the constant flamewars push people away from Facebook, thereby reducing engagement in the long run? I quit Facebook several years ago because I honestly just didn't like the experience. It was miserable and I didn't enjoy going to it any longer. I have the phone numbers of my closest friends and family, why wouldn't I just call or text when I want to talk to them?
- dtech 5y ago
  Apparently most people don't work that way. Or at least it drives up engagement up until a person-specific breaking point.
  - badRNG 5y ago
    Anecdotally, I've known several folks who've left Facebook for one reason or another, often at least in part because of the poor experience they had on the platform. > Or at least it drives up engagement up until a person-specific breaking point. Surely as this plays out, Facebook will see it's userbase fall out at some point...
  - jayess 5y ago
    My guess is that they've determined what that breaking point is and have optimized for it.
    - badRNG 5y ago
      So basically "How much daily misery can we put our users through algorithmically before they break down and uninstall"? Why does anyone who is sufficiently aware of this still use Facebook? Not even as an ethical question, why use something that makes your life miserable?
      - rgoulter 5y ago
        This reminds me of Jonathan Haidt's "Righteous Minds". One of the key points in the book is that "righteousness binds and blinds". As in, the 'righteousness binds' part is there's a social bond between people who believe the same thing. (And "blinds" is that the righteousness will blind you to certain truths). I think flamewars are like that. You gotta leave a comment otherwise you feel your side loses out.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> it's unclear what the best approach would be. Mandating chronological feed order? I'd use the laws around tobacco as a framework. Ban the opening of social media accounts for children under 13; restrict it for adolescents. Ban marketing for social media over a certain size (the caveat to preserve the threat of new entrants). Require warning labels; for minors, the warning should be attested to by a parent or guardian. Require public disclosure of any sorting, filtering and moderation algorithms and policies. Require a public comment period for modifications to the foregoing. Require open access to researchers, where Facebook retains data control but let researchers query it (subject to oversight). Let users tosue social media platforms for damage they intentionally or negligently cause. Create a fund social media companies must contribute a fraction of revenue to which subsidies mental-health services for people harmed by their social media use.
- wussboy 5y ago
  I love this. Interacting with other humans online isn't evil, our current social media has made it evil. But it can be fixed and I think what you're outlining would be a great start. I'd add that a "no marketing/algo/data collection" option should be required that users would need to opt out of (although I would settle for opt in).
Pxtl 5y ago
Chronological feed wouldn't help. Friend of a friend pushes "bad stuff". Friend comments to tell him it's stupid. They get into argument. Each of your friend's comments would still give FB a "chronological" reason to bump this post to the top of your feed, enticing you to get into the mix and increase the viral engagement of the original "bad stuff".
hinkley 5y ago
PMs who think like this are the kids who stand around two kids about to fight, egging them on. These are not your friends. These are not good people.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Superintendent: What is this gathering of people? Teacher: Two kids are fighting sir. Superintendent: And people are watching? Teacher: Yes sir. Superintendent: Great engagement! Lets put those kids next to each other so we can get more of this!
  - hinkley 5y ago
    They're mostly just standing around gesturing at each other though. Can we make them 'interact' more?

JasonFruit 5y ago

MeWe has chronological feed order, and I've found fewer flame wars there. The user base is smaller and possibly more ideologically uniform, though, which may be an alternate explanation.

Pxtl 5y ago
Yes, but small size seems to intrinsically produce nicer platforms. Even within the large platforms, you still get "stick to the small groups/subreddits/pages and folks are nice there". So there's no guarantee a structure that seems to encourage peace will actually work when scaled up.
ipaddr 5y ago
The big tent for everyone sites are toxic because people don't interact as closely in real life with people from different groups. We group for a reason. Within those groups common understanding on certain ideas is the connection. With that connection you let down your guard, you can be this side of yourself freely. In a big crowd you have to wear all faces to relate to everyone.
- badRNG 5y ago
  Anecdotally, I've seen far more polemic and vitriolic posts on so-called alt-tech social media sites compared to even Twitter and Facebook, which are horrendous in this regard. Sites like Gab, Voat, Ruqqus, etc seem to be filled with the absolute most toxic, angry, and hateful discourse imaginable. I've noticed sites that tend to be for something other than "just chatting" tend to do better: many hobby specific forums, HN, hobbyist subreddits, etc. all seem to do better discourse-wise when focused on something specific, but I'm not quite sure why that'd be the case.
  - RicoElectrico 5y ago
    Incidentally, most of the sites you mentioned were the "but mah free speech!1" equivalents of mainstream sites, created by the alt-right.
  - kmeisthax 5y ago
    Niche communities are easier for a small handful of volunteers or employees to moderate. There's simply less shit to clean up. Compare that to Facebook, Google, etc; all of whom have to hire armies of moderators who will burn out in a span of months. The attrition rate is very high, and there's just too many moderators to have consistent platform policy enforcement. Furthermore, if someone is just there to be toxic, you have an easy justification to shut them down: "I'm sorry, but this is an underwater basketweaving Discord, please stop spamming #offtopic with why you think we should call in the National Guard to fight the war on Christmas." Many small communities have very strict regulation of political speech purely because it causes most of their problems. Alt-tech is trying to collect all of the toxic bullshit in one place, so obviously they're going to be way more toxic despite their small size. It's also possible for niche communities to have their own toxicity problems, too. It's more that large communities are just inherently more difficult to govern.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    The people going to those sites or TheDonald in it's heyday are bonding over being able to say things that cannot be said elsewhere. To those users none of the discourse is toxic. There are similiar left leaning sites where the anita hangout that have similiar discourse but no one finds it toxic. Combine those two groups and you have the most toxic place where everyone feels attacked, the need to attack and piling on a victim feels good. That could describe twitter or other public squares.
- soylentcola 5y ago
  It's the same old joke/complaint about the comment sections on other large, general audience sites (Youtube, news sites, etc.) The same old gag about "never read the comments section!" applies. Once a social platform goes from "chatting with maybe a hundred friends/family max" to "basically everyone", it becomes the "comment section" for the entire region (or even the internet at large).

badRNG 5y ago

Don't the constant flamewars push people away from Facebook, thereby reducing engagement in the long run? I quit Facebook several years ago because I honestly just didn't like the experience. It was miserable and I didn't enjoy going to it any longer. I have the phone numbers of my closest friends and family, why wouldn't I just call or text when I want to talk to them?

dtech 5y ago
Apparently most people don't work that way. Or at least it drives up engagement up until a person-specific breaking point.
- badRNG 5y ago
  Anecdotally, I've known several folks who've left Facebook for one reason or another, often at least in part because of the poor experience they had on the platform. > Or at least it drives up engagement up until a person-specific breaking point. Surely as this plays out, Facebook will see it's userbase fall out at some point...
- jayess 5y ago
  My guess is that they've determined what that breaking point is and have optimized for it.
  - badRNG 5y ago
    So basically "How much daily misery can we put our users through algorithmically before they break down and uninstall"? Why does anyone who is sufficiently aware of this still use Facebook? Not even as an ethical question, why use something that makes your life miserable?
    - rgoulter 5y ago
      This reminds me of Jonathan Haidt's "Righteous Minds". One of the key points in the book is that "righteousness binds and blinds". As in, the 'righteousness binds' part is there's a social bond between people who believe the same thing. (And "blinds" is that the righteousness will blind you to certain truths). I think flamewars are like that. You gotta leave a comment otherwise you feel your side loses out.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> it's unclear what the best approach would be. Mandating chronological feed order? I'd use the laws around tobacco as a framework. Ban the opening of social media accounts for children under 13; restrict it for adolescents. Ban marketing for social media over a certain size (the caveat to preserve the threat of new entrants). Require warning labels; for minors, the warning should be attested to by a parent or guardian. Require public disclosure of any sorting, filtering and moderation algorithms and policies. Require a public comment period for modifications to the foregoing. Require open access to researchers, where Facebook retains data control but let researchers query it (subject to oversight). Let users tosue social media platforms for damage they intentionally or negligently cause. Create a fund social media companies must contribute a fraction of revenue to which subsidies mental-health services for people harmed by their social media use.

wussboy 5y ago
I love this. Interacting with other humans online isn't evil, our current social media has made it evil. But it can be fixed and I think what you're outlining would be a great start. I'd add that a "no marketing/algo/data collection" option should be required that users would need to opt out of (although I would settle for opt in).

Pxtl 5y ago

Chronological feed wouldn't help. Friend of a friend pushes "bad stuff". Friend comments to tell him it's stupid. They get into argument. Each of your friend's comments would still give FB a "chronological" reason to bump this post to the top of your feed, enticing you to get into the mix and increase the viral engagement of the original "bad stuff".

hinkley 5y ago

PMs who think like this are the kids who stand around two kids about to fight, egging them on. These are not your friends. These are not good people.

Jensson 5y ago
Superintendent: What is this gathering of people? Teacher: Two kids are fighting sir. Superintendent: And people are watching? Teacher: Yes sir. Superintendent: Great engagement! Lets put those kids next to each other so we can get more of this!
- hinkley 5y ago
  They're mostly just standing around gesturing at each other though. Can we make them 'interact' more?