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How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Seems like they can bully and intimidate any organization from universities to corporations to GitHub projects to ko

• dudul 5y ago
  Companies and institutions just need to realize that Twitter is not the general population. How many TV shows are regularly trending on twitter but have no audience? How many products are vilified but still sell just fine? Marketing firms have been selling the lie that they analyze twitter to build campaigns, pr, etc. Their customers just need to realize that it's just BS.
• dmitrygr 5y ago
  Delay showing a public post P from person X to viewer Y until time T has passed, T defined as a time proportional how long a physical letter from X to Y would take to travel.
  • angelzen 5y ago
    Bring back friction into the world.
• wussboy 5y ago
  Neuter Twitter.
• lugged 5y ago
  You know Twitter is not a real place right?
  • exar0815 5y ago
    Well, we might know, but the people in charge choose to ignore it. Shitstorms only have power because the people in power believe they have.
    • xwdv 5y ago
      The solution is for us to rise into those positions of power, and once entrenched govern our organizations to be impervious to any such mobs. There is no other solution.
      • lugged 5y ago
        The solution is to sue these people for wrongful dismissal. The solution is to stop signing contracts with integrity clauses. The solution is to stop working for companies without a backbone.
        • xwdv 5y ago
          Nope. Those things just treat symptoms, not the cause.
  • brylie 5y ago
    The Internet, and all existing services, is based in physical locations, subject to local and international laws, governed by the decisions of real people with diverse motivations, and capable of influencing real-world outcomes on many scales.
    • lugged 5y ago
      I don't have an account, what are you gonna do? @ my name?
      • tux3 5y ago
        You posted "k.", and then edited it into this comment, but both of those are very low-effort. If Twitter had no impact on the real world whatsoever, do you think everyone else would be writing so much about it?
        • lugged 5y ago
          Wasnt sure how to respond, sue me. My original post was a reference, I guess ya'll haven't caught the special yet.
      • arp242 5y ago
        That is missing the point; it's not about you are or aren't on Twitter, it's that they are. Twitter encourages contextless "outrage", and things escalate from there. Sometimes justified, sometimes less so.
        • lugged 5y ago
          Is that one they or many they? Why should I care what they say?
          • arp242 5y ago
            You shouldn't, right up until the point you wrote something that for some reason takes off on Twitter and then you get your unrelated lecture cancelled or your employer gets calls or whatnot. And then you have no choice.
  • papandada 5y ago
    I do hope Dave Chappelle might start a trend of "ignore Twitter and suffer no consequences"
    • ta988 5y ago
      I do hope we would all move on to better things than those massive social networks. They have impacted really negatively the lives of many around me, and continue to do so.
• ekianjo 5y ago
  > How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Stop listening to them? EDIT: That's especially effective since the Twitter mobs keep moving targets every couple of weeks anyway. They don't have any patience.
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Seems like a very simple solution. I struggle to see any material effect to MIT had they simply ignored these complainers.
    • civilized 5y ago
      Many such cases. That's why we need to look more closely at why the professional administrative class so eagerly does the wishes of activist mobs. Could it be that the activists and the administrators believe the same things?
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Or the admin feel like they are taking the easiest way out? But if I was an admin, the easier thing would be to ignore it.
        • AwaAwa 5y ago
          I thought it was because, if the mob doesn't get their way, they single out the 'admins' as the next target. At least that's what I remember before I cut out on following twitter as a first party platform.
          • civilized 5y ago
            It's very conceivable, but I haven't seen any examples in a long time, if ever.
      • fighterpilot 5y ago
        That could be part of it. According to surveys the administrators are very left-wing, even more than the professors who are already almost completely left-wing themselves.
• meheleventyone 5y ago
  This is a free speech context right so surely the answer is to convince the mobs that this current approach is counter-productive? Edit: I’m also unsure if this was caused by people on Twitter or staff and students at MIT who are also on Twitter. It seems like the latter is more correct and the Twitter side of things might be a red herring.
  • fighterpilot 5y ago
    [flagged]
    • meheleventyone 5y ago
      I don’t think it’s been confirmed that these people are left wing authoritarians. It also seems like a dangerous way to think about this as a problem rationally. You’re basically deciding the facts of the matter outside of any actual evidence or argument. Further writing people off sounds pretty authoritarian.
      • fighterpilot 5y ago
        I regret making such a sweeping statement. I do think there are many decent people that get caught up in the cancel mob who are primarily motivated by genuine egalitarianism, and these people can surely be reasoned with. However, at the same time I do believe that some (perhaps a small minority) of the agitators are cynically motivated by narcissism and sadism, and there's quite a bit of research which points in this direction. For example, the close connection between virtue signalling and grandiose narcissism. Reasoning with this particular subset (however small they may be) is probably not going to be productive because their actions aren't coming from a place of real egalitarianism.
        • ta988 5y ago
          That's the problem people on all colors of the political spectrum, followers are influenced by minorities with too much rage and anger. Sometimes this rage and anger comes from an important societal issue, but that's not an excuse for shitty behavior you wouldn't like the another political opinonated mob to use.
• mraudiobook_com 5y ago
  It's not Twitter, it's this new breed of racism.
• geofft 5y ago
  Isn't this exactly the world that free speech / pro-liberty advocates want? I don't have any power to fire someone from their job; I'm not their boss. But I do have the right to make my views about them freely known. That's my right to free speech. And I can also decide whether to patronize their business or not. That's my right to economic freedom - to not be in an authoritarian society where the government tells me what I have to spend my money on. And their boss has the right to decide whether to employ them or not. That's the boss's economic freedom and at-will employment. If I'm threatening the boss with physical harm (violating the NAP, as some would say), then I'm clearly in the wrong. But if I'm making my opinion known, and their boss agrees, isn't that the intended effect of discourse? What is the point of free speech if there isn't the possibility that people might be influenced by listening to that speech? I don't see any way to cancel Twitter mobs that doesn't itself uphold cancel culture and destroy liberty. (In any case, in the article at hand, "Twitter mobs" isn't a fully accurate descriptor. The quoted tweet was from an alum. The ability for alumni to contact their university and make their opinions known - and have their opinions be taken with more weight than those of the general public - has existed long before Twitter and will exist long after.)
  • version_five 5y ago
    I don't disagree with your premise (as a libertarian) But re: > I don't see any way to cancel Twitter mobs that doesn't itself uphold cancel culture and destroy liberty. You'll see many people here are suggesting that we just don't listen to the "mob". That would be a way to "cancel" them that is completely compatible with liberty.
    • aisengard 5y ago
      Okay, but people clearly do want to listen to the mob. Is the suggestion to cancel those people? It's hilarious that the pure libertarian approach is literally "do nothing".
      • geofft 5y ago
        I'd say ironic, more than hilarious. The libertarian approach absolutely does lead to progressivism because people, broadly defined, want progressivism. You have to take a narrow subset of society for the libertarian approach to be genuinely popular, or you have to abandon the pretense that you're optimizing for the good of all people. Don't take my word for it, listen to one of the most successful libertarians in recent history: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio... > The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron. [...] > The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country[...] Thiel goes on to detail how his only hope of accomplishing libertarian ideals is by escaping to either cyberspace, outer space, or the sea, leaving behind all those people who if asked by libertarian means would reject his ideals. (And he's gone on to invest in companies like SpaceX that are working on bringing this plan to fruition.) The whole reason you get articles like this is because libertarianism can't survive on the merits, and so (apart from Thiel's approach of escape) they have to argue that people aren't playing by the rules, that somehow universities do not have the liberty to rescind invitations or that if they do it's because they're bad people. But they are playing by the rules and they're exercising their liberties.
• andrew_ 5y ago
  Twitter mobs, [social media] mobs have exactly as much power as external entities are willing to grant them.
• m0llusk 5y ago
  This appears to be driven at a basic level by a desire for justice. Having had some thousands of years of experience with the quest for justice we can say with some level of certainty that effective justice seeking has some particular characteristics without which justice remains elusive. There must be a clear statement of the injustice which must be corrected. There should be a hearing where all involved can state their view of the situation. The accused should be allowed representation. Judgements should be made by persons who are at some level uninvolved with the conflict and committed to balanced interpretation of evidence. Any punishments should be related to the nature and scale of the injustice. And so on--of course someone with more direct experience could summarize this and make it happen better than I. The point is that mob justice is not justice and all you have to do is give it some basic rules and constraints and it either gets deflected or gathers up into something that has actual meaning.
  • pjc50 5y ago
    This is basically it; the normal mechanisms don't work properly, and nobody in the mob has any faith that engaging with any formal process is going to achieve a result, so they complain in public. (This specific incident sounds like a storm in a teacup, but there's far more serious and less visible problems with racial discrimination in academia) Similar to #metoo. Reporting sexual harassment, assault and even rape quite often isn't taken seriously by either employers or the police. And in the entertainment industry there was a tacit understanding that reporting it would be a career-ending move. So the route that people have started taking is to complain publicly, in an attempt to shield themselves from retaliation and compel the system to address the complaint.
    • mkr-hn 5y ago
      Dr. King put it best: "a riot is the language of the unheard." Some portion of the mob on Twitter is people chasing clout and performing social justice. For example: I've been attacked for "generalizing nonbinary people" by cis people while describing my own experience as a nonbinary person, so I don't doubt people like that drive a lot of the discussion, but the vast majority is sincere if sometimes misdirected anger at genuine powerlessness. A Twitter riot is much like a physical riot: some agitators, but mostly just angry people denied a voice taking one by force.
• ren_engineer 5y ago
  the problem is that prestigious institutions are run by bureaucrats wearing its skin. For example this article says "MIT buckled", when in reality some campus admin buckled because to them it's not worth risking their comfy job over a speaker. The bureaucrats have no skin in the game, they don't benefit from thinking about long term damage to MIT or society in general. From their perspective it's logical to bow to Twitter mobs and collect their paychecks
  • tekacs 5y ago
    According to the upstream article posted in a sibling comment [1], the decision was made by the department head for EAPS, themselves a scientist AFAICT [2]. That doesn't necessarily change anything (and I'm not weighing in here), but given your assertion it seemed worth pointing out. [1]: https://orgchart.mit.edu/node/6/letters_to_community/important-update-re-eaps https://orgchart.mit.edu/node/6/letters_to_community/importa... [2]: https://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/hilst https://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/hilst
    • ta988 5y ago
      Most department heads are administrators doing subpar research and collecting money on both sides.
      • stochtastic 5y ago
        That's an odd generalization to apply when we're talking about an individual whose significant academic record is easy to find [0,1]. Many department heads are more senior, taking on organizational responsibilities that would be more of a burden to younger faculty. Perhaps that is what you're referring to. But in the scheme of things EAPS is - and always has been - high on the rigor scale and low on the bureaucracy scale. [0] - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RxOuRnMAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RxOuRnMAAAAJ&hl=en [1] - https://hilst.mit.edu/publications/ https://hilst.mit.edu/publications/
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• inglor_cz 5y ago
  Vote in or appoint new leaders who do not give a damn about them. May backfire if too callous people are the winners. Another method, create a formal method for processing complaints from Twitter that diverts the hateful energy from individuals towards a larger decision-making body. Let us say that a random 24 people jury of MIT peers had to decide by secret ballot whether the researcher in question gets approved or disinvited, and that the result is 14:10 to keep him. The Twitter mob cannot really do anything with such result, if individual voting behavior was anonymous.
  • brongondwana 5y ago
    Unfortunately that last point is not strictly true so long as the mob can get their hands on the list of 24 people and then badger them to each make a public condemnation of the speaker or be assumed to be a wrongthinkist like the speaker, and hence one of those who voted incorrectly. So you'd better hope that the other 10 will stand strong and not out the 14 wronguns in their mix.
    • inglor_cz 5y ago
      Yes, nothing is foolproof, but badgering 24 people is quite a lot of work. One of the reason why Twitter mobs are so efficient is that they can concentrate on a single target or two without too much effort. Edit: also, the show where all 24 people ritually condemn the person while everyone fully knows that 14 of them voted "yea" would be absurd enough to make some people think twice.
  • pessimizer 5y ago
    > Vote in or appoint new leaders who do not give a damn about them. May backfire if too callous people are the winners. You're literally talking about appointing a group primarily based on their quality of not listening to people; in the ideal case, they're callous. The trap is that you'll really just appoint a bunch of right-wingers who won't cancel right-wing speakers for not being "politically correct" but will cancel every mildly-left wing speaker for being a terrorist or supporting terrorism.
• zeckalpha 5y ago
  Ah, the Paradox of Intolerance. Who cancels the cancellers? It’s almost as though we should reserve cancellation for those seeking to exclude people from society.
  • devdas 5y ago
    Ah yes, cancel those who want to cancel the intolerant. It does help to think of tolerance as a peace treaty.
    • wrycoder 5y ago
      Don't you mean, “Cancel those who want to cancel the tolerant.” The post to which you responded said, “Only cancel the cancellors.”
      • devdas 5y ago
        Ah yes, I misread the parent as desiring to cancel the people demanding cancellation of the intolerant.
        • wrycoder 5y ago
          Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies discussed this problem.
  • AwaAwa 5y ago
    Is there a paradox in 'intolerance'? Or do you mean the 'paradox of tolerance'?
    • zeckalpha 5y ago
      I do not. The Paradox of Intolerance is expecting that you get to be intolerant of others while not expecting others to be intolerant of you.
  • Jensson 5y ago
• cyberpsybin 5y ago
  Ban twitter and tiktok
  • ncann 5y ago
    Why Tiktok? 95%+ of these incidents came from Twitter. FB, Tiktok, Instagram, for all their shortcomings, is rarely the place where these incidents happen.
• downandout 5y ago
  The only way to dampen the toxic impact of social media’s radical vocal minority on the real world is to create tools that help decision makers easily contrast what they are seeing there with overall sentiment in the real world. In this case, 74% of Americans agree with the views that got this speech canceled. Had administrators been able to instantly see this fact when they saw all the angry tweets, perhaps they would have realized that the uproar they were seeing online was incongruous with the views of people in the real world. I wrote and run a DeFi arbitrage bot for a living. There are hundreds of thousands of “pair” contracts to trade given coins through. The prices in different pairs for the same coin can vary wildly, as pairs only see their own balances, and can thus only make pricing decisions based on the rules and information within their own little silo. Arbitrage bots like mine make a profit by quickly balancing coin ratios among all pairs, which ultimately lowers the risk that a retail trader will pay an outlandish price for a given coin from a given pair. We need the equivalent of arbitrage bots that can help balance the views of radicals on social media with those in the real world. They have tried this with fact checking, but unfortunately that, too, has been weaponized by biased actors. There has to be a better way that is provably unbiased.
• dustintrex 5y ago
  I suspect we've reached Peak Woke already, and the tide has started turning. With Trump out of power, they've lost the unifying hate figure to rally against, and many SV companies (mostly prominently Coinbase, but more quietly the FAANGs as well) are starting to show the loudest extremists the door. All that said, academia is where this all started and where it's also going to stay on the longest.
  • post_from_work 5y ago
    >>>All that said, academia is where this all started and where it's also going to stay on the longest. Yuri Bezmenov warned us decades ago, and somehow nobody listened to him. https://youtu.be/Z1EA2ohrt5Q https://youtu.be/Z1EA2ohrt5Q
• lr4444lr 5y ago
  Start collecting data projecting the actual harm these people can cause if stood up to. I suspect it's minimal if analyzed rigorously. Then publish it. Promote it to data analysts. Blow away the paper tiger.
• xyzzy21 5y ago
  Twitter et al. need to be eliminated. That simple. They can't moderate/regulate well enough even if they were unbiased. And they aren't. The other angle is to track down every member of every Twitter mob and dox them. Then attack their attacks one-on-one and personal (not violence - just pull everyone they do out of any type of anonymity and lack of consequences).
  • pjc50 5y ago
    Good to see HN is in favour of free speech today.
    • bluescrn 5y ago
      Twitter has been quite harmful to the idea of free speech.
• asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  Hard to imagine a legal approach that does not impermissibly infringe on the free association rights of all the various participants. The question is whether any other mechanism would be sufficient. If Twitter were interested, they could do something to inhibit the flow of the outrage mechanism, but there are strong free speech arguments against doing this. Also it is of course not in Twitter's own best interest. If we rule out government and Twitter's action, the next idea is to convince enough mob participants themselves that it's not a good idea. This actually does seem feasible. I mean cancel culture itself is only five or six years old, at least as we think if it today. Another broad shift in perspective seems possible.
  • nradov 5y ago
    Twitter management stopped caring about free speech years ago. They are no longer the "free speech wing of the free speech party". Instead they actively promote a particular brand of US progressive politics, and ban anyone who steps out of line. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/twitter-steps-down-free-speech-party https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/twitter-steps-down-fre...
    • asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      I'm not saying Twitter cares about free speech. I'm saying that if we do, there's probably not much we can do legally to address this situation.
    • zapita 5y ago
      This article is about Twitter complying with Russian and Pakistani court orders. What’s the connection to “US progressive politics”?
    • rootusrootus 5y ago
      Given the amount of right-wing tripe I find in my twitter feed, I'm going to say that Twitter doesn't ban people who don't agree with progressive politics. I think the only ideology they really have is money.
  • 5y ago
• tasogare 5y ago
  > How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Ignore them. They have no power except the one you allow them to have on you.
  • ggreer 5y ago
    I ignore them but my employer doesn't.
• peter_retief 5y ago
  Not just on twitter the mob is alive and well on HN.
• mattlondon 5y ago
  Just don't read it - be the better person and just rise above it. These opinions are not new - they existed before Twitter was a thing. Just now the opinions have a platform that amplifies their visibility. As the quote goes, the only winning move is not to play.
  • DangitBobby 5y ago
    I already don't read Twitter, and yet the MIT admins "buckled." It looks like not reading it doesn't actually accomplish much real world change.
• api 5y ago
  People need to learn that the nuts (of any belief system) are always the loudest, and therefore give a distorted impression of actual consensus. Who are the loudest people on the left? Mobs and trolls who imagine grievances everywhere, which is sort of the leftist equivalent of conspiracy theory. Who are the loudest on the right? Qanon, Nazis, and theocrats / dominionists who think we should return to Old Testament law.
  • smolder 5y ago
    The nuts on either side aren't the loudest by their own virtue. They are amplified by their opponents. "This is the left," say the right wingers, pointing to the easiest-to-criticize, most ill-informed example of a leftist... and vice versa.
    • api 5y ago
      Yes that’s another part of the dynamic. The nuts form ready made living straw men to criticize to avoid engaging with more challenging arguments.
• echopurity 5y ago
  Top comment is about "neutering"? LMAO. The white boy insecurity is overwhelming in here. I should make another account, fuck up the echo chamber, and get banned again.
• farmerstan 5y ago
  I think Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan are setting the standard for ignoring cancel culture, and are being rewarded for it. I think most moderate people are sick of cancel culture and will support those that won’t buckle to it.
  • ta988 5y ago
    I only hope these will not be the voices of the opposition of cancel culture. As much as I don't want to see cancellations like that, I found that these two are not elevating the debate either.
  • bart_spoon 5y ago
    Unfortunately, that standard seems to be “you can ignore cancel culture if you are independently wealthy”. You can try and ignore cancel culture as some regular working man/woman, but that won’t get you far when your employer caves and fires you, and no one will hire you, because of the Twitter mob.
• sour-taste 5y ago
  The twitter mob in this case could have a legitimate impact on MIT donations. Quoting a tweet included in the article: As an alum, I’m asking you to fix this—now. Totally unacceptable and sends a message to any student that isn’t a white man that they don’t matter and that EAPS isn’t serious about (and is actively hostile towards) DEI Presumably MIT cares what it's alums care about since they are a major source of donations. I express no opinion on anything else in the article, just that alums being mad is a negative outcome for MIT.
  • angelzen 5y ago
    1 dude making wild claims on Twitter != MIT alums.
• ghaff 5y ago
  Or just someone who made a stupid joke or otherwise set off someone with enough followers. The corresponding antibody reaction of a lot of institutions, especially companies, is to make the offending thing go away before the next news cycle--especially if the person involved isn't senior. Easier to fire someone than have to publicly defend their behavior. And, if the organization is going to take any other sort of material action, might as well fire the person anyway as they're done with the organization.
• tomjen3 5y ago
  Two things: We probably only hear the stories where they succeed, or nearly so, which may be anywhere from almost all the attempts to only a tiny number. Second, if this is a which hunt, then we should treat it as such and immediately lob accusations at those who start the accusations.
  • prepend 5y ago
    So having a list of people who called for witch burning and distributing social opprobrium might help. Make the only cancelling appropriate be for cancelling cancellers. So focus cancel energy on itself. Personally, I will review job applicants social media history and if there is any “Reeeee” I take that into account as part of reference checks and whatnot. It seems like someone posting “I’m an MIT alum and I demand this speaker be cancelled” would reflect as lack of critical thinking and reasoning. I fear that this leads to islands of organizations where there are groups that don’t like this Twitter mob tactic and groups that do. God help those in orgs that think Twitter mobbing is a good thing.
• ksec 5y ago
  >Not a healthy precedent to set. May be a precedent for MIT. UCLA [1] already had theirs and many more who didn't get the press coverage. Luckily the Universities in UK have remain somewhat firm on the issue ( at least as far I am aware ) but are also under similar threat. I am also glad this is the top upvoted comment. It wasn't that long ago majority of HN were not on the same side, I think the big tech censorship, while often hard to pin point the right and wrong of it, was a wake up call to a lot of people. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28714431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28714431
  • oefrha 5y ago
    > I am also glad this is the top upvoted comment. This story is only two hours old. You have to wait, at least until the U.S. west coast wakes up and enters the ring. Stories like this often swing wildly. IIRC the top comment on the "GitHub, fuck your name change" article was reasonable from my point of view for a very long time, until eventually one telling us that using the word master somehow implies subconscious racism "won" (the saving grace is that most of its top replies vehemently disagreed with it).[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26487854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26487854
    • ksec 5y ago
      Yes I deliberately left that point out and try not to provoke some ( or even more ) negative reaction. My thought and observation is that there are silent majority on HN who usually dont get into these sort of discussions but are now vaguely aware of the consequences. Also worth pointing out today is Sunday so on HN it tends to be a quiet day. Just like twitter as if anger only works from Monday to Friday.
      • epicureanideal 5y ago
        I wish there was a safe and convenient way for those of us who agree to meet and brainstorm how to improve the situation. But I’m not sure how to accomplish that.
• jensensbutton 5y ago
  imo the issue is journalists living on Twitter. Journalists are becoming "creators" and trying to build their brands on social media like every else in an effort to parlay name recognition into more money/power. How do you get more popular on Twitter? Well, you write (in an opinionated way) about Twitter controversies. This we are bombarded by news and articles that are primed to be controversial and that the majority of people in this country don't actually give a crap about.
• brightball 5y ago
  I honestly wonder if Twitter mobs don’t walk some line of actual harassment, especially when trying to close a business or get someone fired.
• newbamboo 5y ago
  Embrace the deplorables and cancel those who join in the mob. Just like Jesus showed us so many years ago.
• coldtea 5y ago
  >How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Ignore their demands (as an enterprise, business, institution, government, etc.), mock and derise their members (as a society), and stop publicizing them (as media).
  • voakbasda 5y ago
    So, we deplatform them? Tit for tat.
    • josteink 5y ago
      They can have the platform. We just don’t need to care about it.
• karaterobot 5y ago
  Neuter the power of Twitter mobs by not using Twitter. If you don't like a thing, don't hold your noise while doing it, just stop doing it. For many people, I know Twitter seems like it's an eternal, undying force that will never go away, and we must learn to live with it: it's not. I promise, it will die if you stop feeding it.
• kodah 5y ago
  The problem is that some amount of people think this is activism. I call it amateur activism. As long as people find this to be an acceptable form of activism it will still go on, and anyone you hold accountable within the mob for their actions will be considered a martyr. I'm a veteran, there's a ton of outrageous posts I can make on social media that might gain traction. The fact is, those kind of actions don't really fuel any kind of partnership between me and people on the other side of what I perceive as a problem. It does fuel fear though, fear in administrators and representatives that they could be unhirable in a capitalist economy where your desirability as a worker is tantamount to your existence. I don't really desire a paradigm where I'm threatening someones life for my own desires and happiness. So, instead, I pay professional activists to help by being part of the discussions I don't want to have with people, and more importantly remove potentially tenuous discussions and convincing I'd have to do of regular people who don't understand the veteran world or experience. They're called lobbyists.
• still_grokking 5y ago
  It would be simple if you would just shadow-ban those mobs. Then they can go to implode inside their own bubble. Nobody would get hurt. Giving those people a broad stage and all that publicity gives those mobs power in the first place. The problem is: Services like Twitter literary make money on any drama those mobs produce. As long as it's profitable to gather attention of the masses with whatever shit gets thrown at the fan there will be an incentive to give those mobs a big stage. Let's face it: The incentive to be a drama multiplier needs to disappear. As this won't happen in a natural way regulatory steps need to be taken. The whole business model of FB, Twitter, and Co. is obviously harmful to society so this whole business model needs to disappear. Case closed once and for all. Simple as that…
• chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Are these "mobs" organized (which by definition flirts with not being a mob)? Or do they manifest and are fed by the algorythm? Or a bit of both? The point being, there seems to be a steady stream things that get a free pass. On the other hand, seemingly random - and often less impactful - things / people get canceled. Mind you, the media is often guilty of the same disconnect. But they too are driven by engagement and profit.
  • akomtu 5y ago
    There are a few rich people who's sponsoring this by running "open foundations" that donate (or not donate) to universities and legislatures. MIT's got addicted to recurring donations, so the big contributors can tell MIT how to run things. Same story with mob leaders who are in it for the money. The rank and file mob members do it for free, though (for feeling being right and being part of something big and important). If the end beneficiaries change their mind, or find another hobby, this "movement" will fold overnight without donations.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  "Apparently they dragged me on Twitter. I don't give a fuck, because Twitter is not a real place." - Dave Chappelle I also enjoyed this recent article from The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/disinformation-propaganda-amplification-ampliganda/620334/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/disinforma...
• josteink 5y ago
  > How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Seems like they can bully and intimidate any organization from universities to corporations to GitHub projects to kowtow to their demands. Don’t play the losing game. Just don’t be on Twitter.
• abacadaba 5y ago
  Hold twitter accountable for harm caused by their 'trending' algorithm?
  • account42 5y ago
    I don't think we should encourage coporations to control what can and cannot be said.
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Just shadow-ban any instigator, or give them an audience of 5 people. There are an unlimited number of options related to reach.
• birtoise 5y ago
  Maybe there’s no way to do it. Perhaps Twitter and other social networks were designed this way specifically to be immune to social control (and by consequence, to exerce social control) over well-established institutions.
• SergeAx 5y ago
  I hope by blocking everybody they think are in support of other points they will pupate and stay forever in their tight circle, so the problem will solve itself. In the mean time, spend less time on Twitter is also a good idea.