8 ms·

I get abuse and threats online – why can't it be stopped?

20 points by gadders 5y ago

cortexio 5y ago
If someone would call me a "daft cow" i would laugh my ass off. If you find that hurtful, you probably had bad parents that didnt learn you how to take insults or criticism. Why even care what others say? Do you really really really need that validation? Anyway, you can block people or just stop using facebook. Stop whining, you're not a baby anymore.
Kim_Bruning 5y ago
Reading the article , the part where it gets interesting is when she creates the "Barry" account and within 2 weeks Barry gets inundated with examples of hate. That sounds like an actual broken recommendation system, rather than just the unfortunate-but-perhaps-unavoidable "keeping the noise down to a dull roar".
nix23 5y ago
1. Don't use social media, it stops instantly. 2. If you are a public person and want to use Social-Media give your account to a public relation firm.
- lordfoom 5y ago
  I don't think it's reasonable to expect journalists to be represented by PR firms online. Given she's the BBC's disinformation specialist, it's also not reasonable to expect her to stay off social media.
  - _red 5y ago
    >BBC's disinformation specialist aka. Propagandist
  - juanani 5y ago
    Specialist sounds like they need someone with a thicker skin for that role. Most 'social media' roles are filled with snowflakes anyway, staffing failure. Stay offline.
    - soco 5y ago
      This kind of discourse sounds very much alike to the school yard bully calling others "snowflakes". Where do we draw the line on abusive language? Should it be totally accepted online and only in school yards banned? Should it be allowed everywhere? Should we allow the president mock people with disabilities? "Stick and stones can break my bones but words never harm me" sounds a bit antiquated nowadays but should we come back to that age of disrespect for the others, only because it's not physical?
      - Ginden 5y ago
        > Where do we draw the line on abusive language? Social interactions are full of gray areas and legislation obviously doesn't and can't catch it all. Some people have rather controversial definitions of violence and abuse. Though, I think social consensus is that physical violence threats are well beyond any grayness.
    - fnord123 5y ago
      I think you didn't read the article.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    > Given she's the BBC's disinformation specialist, it's also not reasonable to expect her to stay off social media. Why not? Why should every journalist be professionally active on Twitter? There is no reason why every journalist should be active on Twitter, they could just stop. I don't think anything bad would happen from that, rather I would even expect that the quality of articles would improve if journalists didn't obsess over Twitter so much. Can you explain why she absolutely have to be active and post on social media on a professional account? I don't see it, she can research disinformation and write articles even if she isn't active and commenting on events in real time on Twitter.
  - nix23 5y ago
    Since she works for BBC, there is no point to throw your real name into a social network, and representing not just you but also the BBC. If you want to brag about your work especially as a "disinformation specialist" be prepared for some stormy waters.
- bserge 5y ago
  3. Learn to ignore it/deal with it. It's much easier to change your own mind than the minds of thousands of other people.
  - sekia 5y ago
    Then social media will keep being a place full of hate. Is this a happy ending for you?
- fnord123 5y ago
  > 1. Don't use social media, it stops instantly. A problem with that (aside from victim blaming) is that you don't even need to use social media to be part of the overarching concern. YouTube recommends vile shit and you need to vigilantly ask it to not recommend misogynistic garbage or it will train you to feed on the drip of hate. You're always at risk of being infected with the brain worms and could set out to abuse others. If you read through the article it becomes clear that the solution isn't to stop online abuse (difficult to distinguish between healthy dialogue) but surveillance companies need to stop training the abusers with their Skinner Boxes. And they don't because hate fuels engagement.
  - nix23 5y ago
    >A problem with that (aside from victim blaming) I don't blame anybody, i just say: DONT use hate filled platforms who flourish from hate and make no one happy. There is just no point in talking the world and hope that just the most civilized and humble peoples will answer you.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > Don't use social media, it stops instantly. Not if you're already doxxed, it doesn't. These situations can easily expand into hate mail and phone calls.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  Is there a safe and official way to give your account to a relation firm (and choose exactly what they can and can not do with it if possible)? Just handing a password from my Facebook/Google/whatever account to someone else doesn't sound good. Many people even use their accounts to log-in to everything and run their whole life and business so a leak can be catastrophic.
aortega 5y ago
It's trivial to stop it. Go off-line, problem solved. What those people really want is the ability to control other's people speech by claiming that subjective attacks on them like 'online abuse' are real.
- bserge 5y ago
  I'm being abused by Reddit, they banned me permanently! :D
- colinb 5y ago
  When you say 'subjective attacks', do you include threats to rape, maim and murder? Because that's what this person faces. I don't think that the right response to someone who has faced a threat to themselves or their families is to tell them to toughen up, or to hide. Neither of those would be accepted in the material world. N.B. this doesn't mean I'm automatically in favor of removing anonymity on the 'net. I'm really not sure what I believe about that yet. But if I understand what you're saying correctly, then I disagree strongly.
  - blueflow 5y ago
    Threats are speech and not the real thing they refer to. Ignoring them is the way to go. Why do people insist on taking other people (and social media) so seriously?
    - Ginden 5y ago
      Acquaintance of mine was attacked by neo-nazis on street due to his online activity. Threats should be taken real, because some of them will result in physical violence.
      - freen 5y ago
        Talk to anyone who was in the punk scene in the 80’s. Nazis kill people.
    - ziml77 5y ago
1cvmask 5y ago
It is odd how much bullying goes on in real life whether at school, the playground, the workplace or among social friends. Should we outlaw all such non-physical “bullying”? I remember in college when the losing side in a debate called the winning side bullies. Online bullying is a from of status seeking performative art. It is usually the bigotry of the alleged anti-bigots. Public personas with platforms to bully like the NY Times “journalist” Taylor Lorenz lie and attack the weak. And when they are called out for their lies and attacks, they hide behind the “bullying” trope and demand censorship. Many people avoid Twitter for example precisely because it is a cesspool of status seeking bullies and trolls. While it might seem to be a mirror of society, it is only a mirror of a small self-selected microcosm. It comes with both the good and bad. But censorship of the “bad” is not an answer as a normal conversation to some is a trigger to others. Of course the dominant power structure will always exploit such censorious demands to censor the weak and powerless. Beware what you wish for - Aesops fables - On a side note she is the BBC “disinformation” specialist. The BBC just walked back on it’s fake news regarding the Syria Douma chemical attack story. Is that bullying to point out they are publishing fake news? https://then24.com/2021/09/06/syria-bbc-admits-dissemination-of-fake-news-about-the-use-of-poison-gas-in-duma-in-2018/ https://then24.com/2021/09/06/syria-bbc-admits-dissemination... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958679/BBC-admits-Syria-gas-attack-report-flaws-complaint-Peter-Hitchens.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958679/BBC-admits-... https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514d7a457a4e32457a6333566d54/index.html https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514d7a457a4e32457a6333566d54/...
- smhenderson 5y ago
  Conflating the use of the word bullying by people trying to deflect their own misdeeds with actual, real world bullying of people based on their race, their sexual preference or even just their perceived weakness when compared to others seems like a convenient excuse to continue to let the strong continue to bully the weak. People have committed suicide over online bullying. Were those people liars who attacked the weak and thus deserved the harassment they received from others? Who did a person on Instagram who is made fun of because of their looks "bully", using your definition, to deserve the negative attention they received? What platform did the Star Wars kid abuse to warrant all the laughter and derision he suffered? People who abuse a position of authority and then hide behind claims of harassment or bullying deserve to be called out; but let's not pretend they are somehow a majority and that actual bullying leading to people either harming themselves or shutting themselves off completely from society is not a real problem.
throaway46546 5y ago
I was playing Call of Duty and a 12 year old boy just told me he had sexual intercourse with my elderly mother. This is unacceptable. Why can't it be stopped?
- PeekPoke 5y ago
  Ask him if he dug her up first.
sk2020 5y ago
“Why don’t I have total control of what every else says, writes or thinks?” Aw, shucks, I guess we’re just going to have to adopt global despotism to stop this crisis of rude behavior.
- invalidname 5y ago
  Read the article. Not the stupid headline. She made an experiment where it shows quite clearly how the networks take problematic people and make them worse by bombarding them with constant misogynistic content. This fits perfectly with the stories about Facebook. They tune the algorithm for retention not to keep people informed. As a result it makes them more extreme in their views. We might have fewer terrorists, shooting and rape if they just used a normal clean news feed instead of targeting everything.
  - cortexio 5y ago
    i think u read too many "you-must-be-angry-at-this" type of articles. Poeple are not "misogynistic", nor is there much "misogynistic" content online except ofcourse if you label everything as "misogynistic". Most of the times when someone calls something "misogynistic" it's just a person that has a different opinion. As for the bullying, kids will be kids. Parents should teach their kids to be nice and teach that if people are assholes, you can always log-off facebook and look for nicer people/places. #we-live-in-a-society
  - sk2020 5y ago
    Facebook causes terrorism, murder, and rape? What evidence was the basis of that conclusion? I’m guessing the solution is a global network of unaccountable mandarins to institute a global Clockwork Orange style brainwashing campaign targeting people with the audacity of having bad opinions? In the populations where this has been implemented, say North Korea, China, Cambodia, Russia and friends, were the populations worse or better for the experience?
    - jjj123 5y ago
      I took the parent’s suggestion to mean they’re asking for a chronological news feed instead of one that prioritizes engagement. So not censorship or anything like that.
asplake 5y ago
Seriously HN, can we really not discuss this on the basis that FB could be doing better here without violating anything you find precious?
Ginden 5y ago
I don't like discussing more general problems in specific terms (in this case, misogyny). Obviously, there is much more hate against women and women are disproportionately affected by online hate. But problem is systemic - justice system ignores all forms of hate and targeting only specific issue (misogyny) instead of holding people accountable of their actions online, feels like putting band aid on rotting wound. I used to receive death threats based on my political views (I live in strongly conservative country and I'm vocally liberal), sexual orientation and gender expression. Police didn't take any action on these, or even if action was taken, "proceedings were discontinued due to failure to identify perpetrators" (they had name and city in their Facebook profiles).
- numpad0 5y ago
  You can't undo non-intelligence of an idiot by yelling at them until they stop, I tried. They just get more confused and desperate. You can't smack someone in their face or in the back while they are performing an unwanted behavior to stop it, either. It is apparently well known in behavioral psychology that doing so reinforces the behavior, counterintuitively. I think such a broad scoped problem as "hate against women" should be labeled as specific as being disgustingly misogynistic or prone to conspiracy. A lot of times those violent pricks are just having their small virgin brains overloaded by the internet. What they need are training and withdrawal.
osadalakmal 5y ago
This comment section is just atrocious. stopping bullying is something any institution that cares about the well-being of those in its care try to tackle. it is not about pandering to snowflakes. are we really going to call young people who get bullied for looking different, snowflakes? that's the language that we as adults want to use discussing things that drive people to suicide? and for all those who say don't go online, humans are social creatures. they like to socialize. that's the whole point of social media. by design or not these are now virtual public spaces. and thus they have a responsibility to their users to make sure the discourse doesn't allow bullying. it won't ever work 100 percent but that shouldn't stop is from devising ever more efficient ways to stop bullying. should schools allow bullys free rein just because its their free speech right and if the victim didn't like it, they could have stayed in the class during recess?
- salawat 5y ago
  Pardon me; did malls ever have a responsibility to stop bullying? Convention centers? Anywhere else that people hang out for that matter? All this talk of platform policing seems to leave out one thing: the certainty of running into horrible people online approaches 1 because there are horrible people out there. It just used to be the regular person never had the potential of having to deal with all of them at once, of which a critical mass of them looking your way could be life altering. Instead of asking for a nanny web, perhaps we should be asking for a better grade of person to people it. The last thing we need is digital nanny state that can be abusively exploited by those who run it, Make no mistake. Such an edifice would draw those seeking to abuse it to justify or entrench their own views on appropriate behavior like moths to a flame
  - asplake 5y ago
    Totally missing the main point of the article. FB is actively leading people down a dark path. Your mall or convention centre doesn’t so that, but FB’s attention-optimising algorithms do. FB must be very happy for people to bang on about free speech and hate speech because then they’re not looking at how FB actually works.
freen 5y ago
Bars have bouncers, for this precise reason. If you are somehow against kicking assholes off twitter/Facebook, I guess you’re ok with having them crash your private party too?
- ziml77 5y ago
  That might be the closest real world analogue to online spaces. People turn their inhibitions way down when communicating online. A digital bouncer is especially important when you combine that with the fact that so many more people can pile on someone than can in a physical space.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tomjen3 5y ago
It can be stopped if we changed social media to be, well social. If there was no public posts on Facebook, no public groups, there would be just your friends and you could talk with them. There could still be private groups, so that you could organize a surprise birthday party or whatever, but nothing would be public. The issue with social media is that humans are not wired to deal with that many humans in one place, so you end up with disfunctional behaviour. And, unlike what the media wants to sell it as, these attacks are not, per say, misogynistic. The bully doesn't care what he attacks you over, he finds what he thinks is a soft spot and then strikes. Insecurity over gender, beauty, social standing, racial identity, etc can all be used. The goal is to get a reaction out of you, and if he gets one he wins. He does not actually care that you are fat, a woman, or whatever.

20 points by gadders 5y ago

If someone would call me a "daft cow" i would laugh my ass off. If you find that hurtful, you probably had bad parents that didnt learn you how to take insults or criticism. Why even care what others say? Do you really really really need that validation? Anyway, you can block people or just stop using facebook. Stop whining, you're not a baby anymore.

Kim_Bruning 5y ago

Reading the article , the part where it gets interesting is when she creates the "Barry" account and within 2 weeks Barry gets inundated with examples of hate. That sounds like an actual broken recommendation system, rather than just the unfortunate-but-perhaps-unavoidable "keeping the noise down to a dull roar".

nix23 5y ago

1. Don't use social media, it stops instantly. 2. If you are a public person and want to use Social-Media give your account to a public relation firm.

lordfoom 5y ago
I don't think it's reasonable to expect journalists to be represented by PR firms online. Given she's the BBC's disinformation specialist, it's also not reasonable to expect her to stay off social media.
- _red 5y ago
  >BBC's disinformation specialist aka. Propagandist
- juanani 5y ago
  Specialist sounds like they need someone with a thicker skin for that role. Most 'social media' roles are filled with snowflakes anyway, staffing failure. Stay offline.
  - soco 5y ago
    This kind of discourse sounds very much alike to the school yard bully calling others "snowflakes". Where do we draw the line on abusive language? Should it be totally accepted online and only in school yards banned? Should it be allowed everywhere? Should we allow the president mock people with disabilities? "Stick and stones can break my bones but words never harm me" sounds a bit antiquated nowadays but should we come back to that age of disrespect for the others, only because it's not physical?
    - Ginden 5y ago
      > Where do we draw the line on abusive language? Social interactions are full of gray areas and legislation obviously doesn't and can't catch it all. Some people have rather controversial definitions of violence and abuse. Though, I think social consensus is that physical violence threats are well beyond any grayness.
  - fnord123 5y ago
    I think you didn't read the article.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > Given she's the BBC's disinformation specialist, it's also not reasonable to expect her to stay off social media. Why not? Why should every journalist be professionally active on Twitter? There is no reason why every journalist should be active on Twitter, they could just stop. I don't think anything bad would happen from that, rather I would even expect that the quality of articles would improve if journalists didn't obsess over Twitter so much. Can you explain why she absolutely have to be active and post on social media on a professional account? I don't see it, she can research disinformation and write articles even if she isn't active and commenting on events in real time on Twitter.
- nix23 5y ago
  Since she works for BBC, there is no point to throw your real name into a social network, and representing not just you but also the BBC. If you want to brag about your work especially as a "disinformation specialist" be prepared for some stormy waters.
bserge 5y ago
3. Learn to ignore it/deal with it. It's much easier to change your own mind than the minds of thousands of other people.
- sekia 5y ago
  Then social media will keep being a place full of hate. Is this a happy ending for you?
fnord123 5y ago
> 1. Don't use social media, it stops instantly. A problem with that (aside from victim blaming) is that you don't even need to use social media to be part of the overarching concern. YouTube recommends vile shit and you need to vigilantly ask it to not recommend misogynistic garbage or it will train you to feed on the drip of hate. You're always at risk of being infected with the brain worms and could set out to abuse others. If you read through the article it becomes clear that the solution isn't to stop online abuse (difficult to distinguish between healthy dialogue) but surveillance companies need to stop training the abusers with their Skinner Boxes. And they don't because hate fuels engagement.
- nix23 5y ago
  >A problem with that (aside from victim blaming) I don't blame anybody, i just say: DONT use hate filled platforms who flourish from hate and make no one happy. There is just no point in talking the world and hope that just the most civilized and humble peoples will answer you.
ceejayoz 5y ago
> Don't use social media, it stops instantly. Not if you're already doxxed, it doesn't. These situations can easily expand into hate mail and phone calls.
qwerty456127 5y ago
Is there a safe and official way to give your account to a relation firm (and choose exactly what they can and can not do with it if possible)? Just handing a password from my Facebook/Google/whatever account to someone else doesn't sound good. Many people even use their accounts to log-in to everything and run their whole life and business so a leak can be catastrophic.

aortega 5y ago

It's trivial to stop it. Go off-line, problem solved. What those people really want is the ability to control other's people speech by claiming that subjective attacks on them like 'online abuse' are real.

bserge 5y ago
I'm being abused by Reddit, they banned me permanently! :D
colinb 5y ago
When you say 'subjective attacks', do you include threats to rape, maim and murder? Because that's what this person faces. I don't think that the right response to someone who has faced a threat to themselves or their families is to tell them to toughen up, or to hide. Neither of those would be accepted in the material world. N.B. this doesn't mean I'm automatically in favor of removing anonymity on the 'net. I'm really not sure what I believe about that yet. But if I understand what you're saying correctly, then I disagree strongly.
- blueflow 5y ago
  Threats are speech and not the real thing they refer to. Ignoring them is the way to go. Why do people insist on taking other people (and social media) so seriously?
  - Ginden 5y ago
    Acquaintance of mine was attacked by neo-nazis on street due to his online activity. Threats should be taken real, because some of them will result in physical violence.
    - freen 5y ago
      Talk to anyone who was in the punk scene in the 80’s. Nazis kill people.
  - ziml77 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago

It is odd how much bullying goes on in real life whether at school, the playground, the workplace or among social friends. Should we outlaw all such non-physical “bullying”? I remember in college when the losing side in a debate called the winning side bullies. Online bullying is a from of status seeking performative art. It is usually the bigotry of the alleged anti-bigots. Public personas with platforms to bully like the NY Times “journalist” Taylor Lorenz lie and attack the weak. And when they are called out for their lies and attacks, they hide behind the “bullying” trope and demand censorship. Many people avoid Twitter for example precisely because it is a cesspool of status seeking bullies and trolls. While it might seem to be a mirror of society, it is only a mirror of a small self-selected microcosm. It comes with both the good and bad. But censorship of the “bad” is not an answer as a normal conversation to some is a trigger to others. Of course the dominant power structure will always exploit such censorious demands to censor the weak and powerless. Beware what you wish for - Aesops fables - On a side note she is the BBC “disinformation” specialist. The BBC just walked back on it’s fake news regarding the Syria Douma chemical attack story. Is that bullying to point out they are publishing fake news? https://then24.com/2021/09/06/syria-bbc-admits-dissemination-of-fake-news-about-the-use-of-poison-gas-in-duma-in-2018/ https://then24.com/2021/09/06/syria-bbc-admits-dissemination... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958679/BBC-admits-Syria-gas-attack-report-flaws-complaint-Peter-Hitchens.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958679/BBC-admits-... https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514d7a457a4e32457a6333566d54/index.html https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514d7a457a4e32457a6333566d54/...

smhenderson 5y ago
Conflating the use of the word bullying by people trying to deflect their own misdeeds with actual, real world bullying of people based on their race, their sexual preference or even just their perceived weakness when compared to others seems like a convenient excuse to continue to let the strong continue to bully the weak. People have committed suicide over online bullying. Were those people liars who attacked the weak and thus deserved the harassment they received from others? Who did a person on Instagram who is made fun of because of their looks "bully", using your definition, to deserve the negative attention they received? What platform did the Star Wars kid abuse to warrant all the laughter and derision he suffered? People who abuse a position of authority and then hide behind claims of harassment or bullying deserve to be called out; but let's not pretend they are somehow a majority and that actual bullying leading to people either harming themselves or shutting themselves off completely from society is not a real problem.

throaway46546 5y ago

I was playing Call of Duty and a 12 year old boy just told me he had sexual intercourse with my elderly mother. This is unacceptable. Why can't it be stopped?

PeekPoke 5y ago
Ask him if he dug her up first.

sk2020 5y ago

“Why don’t I have total control of what every else says, writes or thinks?” Aw, shucks, I guess we’re just going to have to adopt global despotism to stop this crisis of rude behavior.

invalidname 5y ago
Read the article. Not the stupid headline. She made an experiment where it shows quite clearly how the networks take problematic people and make them worse by bombarding them with constant misogynistic content. This fits perfectly with the stories about Facebook. They tune the algorithm for retention not to keep people informed. As a result it makes them more extreme in their views. We might have fewer terrorists, shooting and rape if they just used a normal clean news feed instead of targeting everything.
- cortexio 5y ago
  i think u read too many "you-must-be-angry-at-this" type of articles. Poeple are not "misogynistic", nor is there much "misogynistic" content online except ofcourse if you label everything as "misogynistic". Most of the times when someone calls something "misogynistic" it's just a person that has a different opinion. As for the bullying, kids will be kids. Parents should teach their kids to be nice and teach that if people are assholes, you can always log-off facebook and look for nicer people/places. #we-live-in-a-society
- sk2020 5y ago
  Facebook causes terrorism, murder, and rape? What evidence was the basis of that conclusion? I’m guessing the solution is a global network of unaccountable mandarins to institute a global Clockwork Orange style brainwashing campaign targeting people with the audacity of having bad opinions? In the populations where this has been implemented, say North Korea, China, Cambodia, Russia and friends, were the populations worse or better for the experience?
  - jjj123 5y ago
    I took the parent’s suggestion to mean they’re asking for a chronological news feed instead of one that prioritizes engagement. So not censorship or anything like that.

asplake 5y ago

Seriously HN, can we really not discuss this on the basis that FB could be doing better here without violating anything you find precious?

Ginden 5y ago

I don't like discussing more general problems in specific terms (in this case, misogyny). Obviously, there is much more hate against women and women are disproportionately affected by online hate. But problem is systemic - justice system ignores all forms of hate and targeting only specific issue (misogyny) instead of holding people accountable of their actions online, feels like putting band aid on rotting wound. I used to receive death threats based on my political views (I live in strongly conservative country and I'm vocally liberal), sexual orientation and gender expression. Police didn't take any action on these, or even if action was taken, "proceedings were discontinued due to failure to identify perpetrators" (they had name and city in their Facebook profiles).

numpad0 5y ago
You can't undo non-intelligence of an idiot by yelling at them until they stop, I tried. They just get more confused and desperate. You can't smack someone in their face or in the back while they are performing an unwanted behavior to stop it, either. It is apparently well known in behavioral psychology that doing so reinforces the behavior, counterintuitively. I think such a broad scoped problem as "hate against women" should be labeled as specific as being disgustingly misogynistic or prone to conspiracy. A lot of times those violent pricks are just having their small virgin brains overloaded by the internet. What they need are training and withdrawal.

osadalakmal 5y ago

This comment section is just atrocious. stopping bullying is something any institution that cares about the well-being of those in its care try to tackle. it is not about pandering to snowflakes. are we really going to call young people who get bullied for looking different, snowflakes? that's the language that we as adults want to use discussing things that drive people to suicide? and for all those who say don't go online, humans are social creatures. they like to socialize. that's the whole point of social media. by design or not these are now virtual public spaces. and thus they have a responsibility to their users to make sure the discourse doesn't allow bullying. it won't ever work 100 percent but that shouldn't stop is from devising ever more efficient ways to stop bullying. should schools allow bullys free rein just because its their free speech right and if the victim didn't like it, they could have stayed in the class during recess?

salawat 5y ago
Pardon me; did malls ever have a responsibility to stop bullying? Convention centers? Anywhere else that people hang out for that matter? All this talk of platform policing seems to leave out one thing: the certainty of running into horrible people online approaches 1 because there are horrible people out there. It just used to be the regular person never had the potential of having to deal with all of them at once, of which a critical mass of them looking your way could be life altering. Instead of asking for a nanny web, perhaps we should be asking for a better grade of person to people it. The last thing we need is digital nanny state that can be abusively exploited by those who run it, Make no mistake. Such an edifice would draw those seeking to abuse it to justify or entrench their own views on appropriate behavior like moths to a flame
- asplake 5y ago
  Totally missing the main point of the article. FB is actively leading people down a dark path. Your mall or convention centre doesn’t so that, but FB’s attention-optimising algorithms do. FB must be very happy for people to bang on about free speech and hate speech because then they’re not looking at how FB actually works.

freen 5y ago

Bars have bouncers, for this precise reason. If you are somehow against kicking assholes off twitter/Facebook, I guess you’re ok with having them crash your private party too?

ziml77 5y ago
That might be the closest real world analogue to online spaces. People turn their inhibitions way down when communicating online. A digital bouncer is especially important when you combine that with the fact that so many more people can pile on someone than can in a physical space.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tomjen3 5y ago

It can be stopped if we changed social media to be, well social. If there was no public posts on Facebook, no public groups, there would be just your friends and you could talk with them. There could still be private groups, so that you could organize a surprise birthday party or whatever, but nothing would be public. The issue with social media is that humans are not wired to deal with that many humans in one place, so you end up with disfunctional behaviour. And, unlike what the media wants to sell it as, these attacks are not, per say, misogynistic. The bully doesn't care what he attacks you over, he finds what he thinks is a soft spot and then strikes. Insecurity over gender, beauty, social standing, racial identity, etc can all be used. The goal is to get a reaction out of you, and if he gets one he wins. He does not actually care that you are fat, a woman, or whatever.