4 ms·

Its a shit rubbish reality that the only moderation option is infinite, is forever. Sever ties. End it. Write someone off as garbage. Your comment is way way t

Its a shit rubbish reality that the only moderation option is infinite, is forever. Sever ties. End it. Write someone off as garbage. Your comment is way way too cancel culture for me. It hurts a lot having one bad exchange & having the door slammed in your face. Especially if it's some topic you feel strongly about, that you were trying to engage in. You may be right that it's a better tact than engaging. It's a shit system though, deeply dehumanizing ways of treating each other.

krapp 5y ago
>It's a shit system though, deeply dehumanizing ways of treating each other. The system was already deeply dehumanizing. "Block early, block often" is simply the inevitable and, frankly, only reasonable reaction to years of dealing with psychopaths, assholes and trolls on the internet. I only wish Hacker News came with its own killfile. Mine would be hundred of entries long by now.
- rektide 5y ago
  - solveit 5y ago
    "Why don't you do it?" is not a put-down I like very much, but when you say stuff like this >yeaahhhh sorrrryyyy, i just see basically zero attempts to build systems that do better. there's a vast lack of trying in my view. calling this all inevitable & necessary is a dry, shrivelled response that accepts the fat nothingburger of effort anyone has put in to trying anything better. I feel compelled to ask: "Have you tried?"
    - rektide 5y ago
      I am working very very hard but I am also very very slow, and I care about pendantic stupid layers of the stack that are not really relevant to the larger questions I want to tangle with.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    There was a lot I loved about Slashdot's moderation, and it really was a step forward, but ultimately it was a failure. The end product was a giant hivemind where a narrow range of opinions (essentially: "libertarianism good, Linux good") would be automatically upvoted and everything else was quashed. It was a step forward but I'm not really pining for it 30 years later. I agree about the lack of progress in the meantime, though. Ultimately I'm not sure it's a solvable problem. People don't want to change their minds, and are nearly always going to seek out little "bubbles" of likeminded folks.
    - rektide 5y ago
      I agree I too am not sure this is a solve able problem. But the dominion of Big Social has aborted the freewheeling idea of the web to be able to better suss out democratically truth & idea & reason is absolute & tragic, has been at the wheel for well over a decade, and it fucking sucks and has brought us no good, no attempts. Slashdot was one of the last attempts that seemed to try. We need to loosen back up & start to try again: something we've not done, and something that has let disinformation & malignancy rule for far too long.
      - JohnBooty 5y ago
        Hopefully I'm spectacularly wrong, but I don't think it's possible. the freewheeling idea of the web to be able to better suss out democratically truth & idea & reason is absolute I think most of the 1990's-style optimism about the web was strictly an illusion, based on the fact that early netizens were more educated/intelligent than the general population, simply due to the fact that they tended to get net access through academic institutions or were highly motivated tech-savvy individuals. It sure wasn't perfect, as many of those people weren't exactly amazing, but it was better than what we see in 2021. That, and the fact that the web's reach was much smaller, making it a much less attractive target for malicious disinformation campaigns. Once everybody's racist, uneducated uncles started logging major minutes surfin' the web things deteriorated fast. I'm not convinced anything can possibly be done, at least not within the scope of better internet forum design, to somehow coax a better level of discourse and truth-finding out of (pardon my frankness) lower-quality individuals who are actively having their minds poisoned by disinformation campaigns. Honestly, the places doing this best these days are some sub-reddits, and HN itself. If you spend enough time on Reddit, you can find some absolutely lovely niche subreddits with strong, caring, and active moderation teams. Most subreddits do not fit this description; some do. HN takes a similar approach; most don't realize the level of human moderation by dang et al that goes into keeping this place from becoming a cesspool. But, we could definitely at least do better than something like Facebook which seems actively designed to reward inflammatory posts and conflict in general.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >yeaahhhh sorrrryyyy, i just see basically zero attempts to build systems that do better. Then you haven't been looking very hard. Sites have tried just about every conceivable means of moderation from user-based moderation to charging money per account or post to karma to forcing real-name accounts. It isn't a systems problem, it's a people problem - described by the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, and you can't just cleverly engineer away people problems.
    - rektide 5y ago
      Got any references? Any links? How many of these projects have failed because their moderation failed, because Greater Fuckwad theory took over? This is pushing into far off frontier territory, but I see few real options about it, so I'll lay down my cards. We need social web protocols[1], as a groundwork for innovation, for trying different things, for different folk making ongoing progress towards their own success. That diversity is the only hope we have of revealing greater wider paths. It doesn't have to be these particular protocols cited, but open, interoperable social is the basis where we can start to formulate ideas of moderation & response. You've made a lot of gesticulartion that we've tried a lot, but frankly, I have a hard time pinning down any of your various "we've tried this, it's no good" naysaying shitthrowing to any particular sites, and just one site failing seems to mean a lot to you, but it means very little to me. I don't see that you have even the faintest remotest appreciation for how much exploration & possibility is open. This attitude that connectivity is all a-priori doomed to fail is shit, is weak, is cowardice. Fuck this x1000. I don't think we've started to try, your protests give me no evidence to the counter. (editor note: why you got downvoted on your last reply is shit. downvoting is such a stupid plague. nothing you've said is bad or wrong.) [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/social-web-protocols/ https://www.w3.org/TR/social-web-protocols/
- lanstin 5y ago
  That would be nice.
ncmncm 5y ago
Treat it as a hint that Twitter is a cesspit you are better off out of.
ninkendo 5y ago
Why does anyone owe you their eyes and ears? If somebody doesn’t want to read what you have to say, it’s fine that they block you. It’s fine. Stop worrying about it, it’s not “cancel culture”, it’s just human beings being overwhelmed by the number of people that piss them off.
- rektide 5y ago
  It's pathetic beyond words that there's no other moderation systems available. To take remorseless, infinite action against someone who may be having a bad day, or who may feel strongly against something: it's a drastic drastic overreaction. But we have literally no choice; on most sites blocking/muting are the only options available to us to de-espouse incoming comments. This is a technical fault, heartlessness is built in by design. It's remarkable how callouslness & cruelty, how "fuck these people why should i give them any slack" options like you present run roughshod over civility. It's beyond words to me that such absolutely dejectable, hostile, negative, piss-off-and-die fucking-you attitude as you present is allowed to ride so high & mighty, that we believe that tension & disagreement, that some occasional fuckery means all those fuckers can all just fuck off and die. This is never going to beget a rising up, a better society. It will lead only to tension. And it's built in, at the deepest technical layers: an increased amplification of tension & pissery. It is cancel culture. And it's amplified enormously by technical systems which don't have options like digital juries, don't have options for justice to be enacted, which afford only digital death to the other. Fuck this times a million. This is callous bullshit we exist in, and the enormousness of people being bad online isn't some weak-kneed shit ass justification for being bastards to one another like you claim: it's part of the fucking problem, and it is cancel culture. 100%. Saying that the fucker deserved it, that there's so many fuckers about, doesn't make it less so. We do need defense. But fucking a!!! Not like this.
  - volkk 5y ago
    somewhere underneath all of this vulgarity, i see your point and it's quite interesting. really wonder whether the whole "block" attitude is actually detrimental. never really thought about it that way, and have always imagined it is the only way to "be" on the internet. but maybe something better exists, but nobody imaginative or powerful enough has yet uncovered it. thanks for your POV.
tptacek 5y ago
I don't think it's at all healthy to equate being blocked on Twitter to being "written off as garbage".

krapp 5y ago

>It's a shit system though, deeply dehumanizing ways of treating each other. The system was already deeply dehumanizing. "Block early, block often" is simply the inevitable and, frankly, only reasonable reaction to years of dealing with psychopaths, assholes and trolls on the internet. I only wish Hacker News came with its own killfile. Mine would be hundred of entries long by now.

rektide 5y ago
- solveit 5y ago
  "Why don't you do it?" is not a put-down I like very much, but when you say stuff like this >yeaahhhh sorrrryyyy, i just see basically zero attempts to build systems that do better. there's a vast lack of trying in my view. calling this all inevitable & necessary is a dry, shrivelled response that accepts the fat nothingburger of effort anyone has put in to trying anything better. I feel compelled to ask: "Have you tried?"
  - rektide 5y ago
    I am working very very hard but I am also very very slow, and I care about pendantic stupid layers of the stack that are not really relevant to the larger questions I want to tangle with.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  There was a lot I loved about Slashdot's moderation, and it really was a step forward, but ultimately it was a failure. The end product was a giant hivemind where a narrow range of opinions (essentially: "libertarianism good, Linux good") would be automatically upvoted and everything else was quashed. It was a step forward but I'm not really pining for it 30 years later. I agree about the lack of progress in the meantime, though. Ultimately I'm not sure it's a solvable problem. People don't want to change their minds, and are nearly always going to seek out little "bubbles" of likeminded folks.
  - rektide 5y ago
    I agree I too am not sure this is a solve able problem. But the dominion of Big Social has aborted the freewheeling idea of the web to be able to better suss out democratically truth & idea & reason is absolute & tragic, has been at the wheel for well over a decade, and it fucking sucks and has brought us no good, no attempts. Slashdot was one of the last attempts that seemed to try. We need to loosen back up & start to try again: something we've not done, and something that has let disinformation & malignancy rule for far too long.
    - JohnBooty 5y ago
      Hopefully I'm spectacularly wrong, but I don't think it's possible. the freewheeling idea of the web to be able to better suss out democratically truth & idea & reason is absolute I think most of the 1990's-style optimism about the web was strictly an illusion, based on the fact that early netizens were more educated/intelligent than the general population, simply due to the fact that they tended to get net access through academic institutions or were highly motivated tech-savvy individuals. It sure wasn't perfect, as many of those people weren't exactly amazing, but it was better than what we see in 2021. That, and the fact that the web's reach was much smaller, making it a much less attractive target for malicious disinformation campaigns. Once everybody's racist, uneducated uncles started logging major minutes surfin' the web things deteriorated fast. I'm not convinced anything can possibly be done, at least not within the scope of better internet forum design, to somehow coax a better level of discourse and truth-finding out of (pardon my frankness) lower-quality individuals who are actively having their minds poisoned by disinformation campaigns. Honestly, the places doing this best these days are some sub-reddits, and HN itself. If you spend enough time on Reddit, you can find some absolutely lovely niche subreddits with strong, caring, and active moderation teams. Most subreddits do not fit this description; some do. HN takes a similar approach; most don't realize the level of human moderation by dang et al that goes into keeping this place from becoming a cesspool. But, we could definitely at least do better than something like Facebook which seems actively designed to reward inflammatory posts and conflict in general.
- krapp 5y ago
  >yeaahhhh sorrrryyyy, i just see basically zero attempts to build systems that do better. Then you haven't been looking very hard. Sites have tried just about every conceivable means of moderation from user-based moderation to charging money per account or post to karma to forcing real-name accounts. It isn't a systems problem, it's a people problem - described by the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, and you can't just cleverly engineer away people problems.
  - rektide 5y ago
    Got any references? Any links? How many of these projects have failed because their moderation failed, because Greater Fuckwad theory took over? This is pushing into far off frontier territory, but I see few real options about it, so I'll lay down my cards. We need social web protocols[1], as a groundwork for innovation, for trying different things, for different folk making ongoing progress towards their own success. That diversity is the only hope we have of revealing greater wider paths. It doesn't have to be these particular protocols cited, but open, interoperable social is the basis where we can start to formulate ideas of moderation & response. You've made a lot of gesticulartion that we've tried a lot, but frankly, I have a hard time pinning down any of your various "we've tried this, it's no good" naysaying shitthrowing to any particular sites, and just one site failing seems to mean a lot to you, but it means very little to me. I don't see that you have even the faintest remotest appreciation for how much exploration & possibility is open. This attitude that connectivity is all a-priori doomed to fail is shit, is weak, is cowardice. Fuck this x1000. I don't think we've started to try, your protests give me no evidence to the counter. (editor note: why you got downvoted on your last reply is shit. downvoting is such a stupid plague. nothing you've said is bad or wrong.) [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/social-web-protocols/ https://www.w3.org/TR/social-web-protocols/
lanstin 5y ago
That would be nice.

ncmncm 5y ago

Treat it as a hint that Twitter is a cesspit you are better off out of.

ninkendo 5y ago

Why does anyone owe you their eyes and ears? If somebody doesn’t want to read what you have to say, it’s fine that they block you. It’s fine. Stop worrying about it, it’s not “cancel culture”, it’s just human beings being overwhelmed by the number of people that piss them off.

rektide 5y ago
It's pathetic beyond words that there's no other moderation systems available. To take remorseless, infinite action against someone who may be having a bad day, or who may feel strongly against something: it's a drastic drastic overreaction. But we have literally no choice; on most sites blocking/muting are the only options available to us to de-espouse incoming comments. This is a technical fault, heartlessness is built in by design. It's remarkable how callouslness & cruelty, how "fuck these people why should i give them any slack" options like you present run roughshod over civility. It's beyond words to me that such absolutely dejectable, hostile, negative, piss-off-and-die fucking-you attitude as you present is allowed to ride so high & mighty, that we believe that tension & disagreement, that some occasional fuckery means all those fuckers can all just fuck off and die. This is never going to beget a rising up, a better society. It will lead only to tension. And it's built in, at the deepest technical layers: an increased amplification of tension & pissery. It is cancel culture. And it's amplified enormously by technical systems which don't have options like digital juries, don't have options for justice to be enacted, which afford only digital death to the other. Fuck this times a million. This is callous bullshit we exist in, and the enormousness of people being bad online isn't some weak-kneed shit ass justification for being bastards to one another like you claim: it's part of the fucking problem, and it is cancel culture. 100%. Saying that the fucker deserved it, that there's so many fuckers about, doesn't make it less so. We do need defense. But fucking a!!! Not like this.
- volkk 5y ago
  somewhere underneath all of this vulgarity, i see your point and it's quite interesting. really wonder whether the whole "block" attitude is actually detrimental. never really thought about it that way, and have always imagined it is the only way to "be" on the internet. but maybe something better exists, but nobody imaginative or powerful enough has yet uncovered it. thanks for your POV.

tptacek 5y ago

I don't think it's at all healthy to equate being blocked on Twitter to being "written off as garbage".