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The state of the modern internet and social has me rethinking the common wisdom that giving everyone as much access to computing as possible is a good idea. I

The state of the modern internet and social has me rethinking the common wisdom that giving everyone as much access to computing as possible is a good idea. I think lowering the bar, to a certain point, has been harmful to society. Its a case of tragedy of the commons. It takes no effort to get online and speak your mind so nobody respects the technology. They don't have to, they didn't earn it. It was given to them. If people had to expend even a little bit of effort to access social media I think they would treat it very differently. And I don't think you have to raise that bar by much at all.

ghaff 4y ago
Of course, pre-Eternal September, you only got to access the Internet if you went to the right schools or worked for the right companies or government organizations. Which in certain ways was certainly better for the haves but also makes for some pretty heavy-duty gatekeeping.
night-rider 4y ago
Yes but you can’t deny that giving everyone a level playing field is a net positive. There will be problems with that like hate speech, trolling, harassment etc but that can be addressed with safety measures and moderation, which social networks employ although they don’t stomp out everything and anonymous accounts are still a problem.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Yes but you can’t deny that giving everyone a level playing field is a net positive. Sure I can. Giving millions of random uneducated whackjobs an equal voice with actual trained medical professionals poses a real threat to public health. That's exactly what's happened.
bragr 4y ago
So everything else that the internet offers is worthless because you can't have a particular subjective experience in the past? People can't benefit from computers because you don't approve? Everytime this particular subject comes up, commenters are quick to chime with their experiences or actual messages, and I don't think the quality of the posts was as good on average as you think. Usenet had weirdos, trolls, crazy people, political nutjobs, racists, and plenty of inane posts too. I think you're nostalgic for something that never existed.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  But forums did have better moderation and actively prevented flame wars. Social media quite literally encourages flame wars on a societal/global scale.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >But forums did have better moderation and actively prevented flame wars. I don't recall a lot of moderation and I do recall flame wars. I think most of the moderation was social norms, especially in an environment where many were posting under their own names from university/company/government accounts.
  - amadeuspagel 4y ago
    Why the past tense? Forums - like this one - still exist. And it's easier then ever to make a moderated forum (a subreddit, a discord server, a facebook group).
    - ASalazarMX 4y ago
      In the case of Reddit, niche subreddits can be handled by a couple of moderators, but once they become popular and you have thousands of people breaking the rules, you need a full time team of capable moderators. In forums like the old Slashdot or here, users can moderate with varying degrees of skill with their votes, but users of popular subreddits will happily upvote a serial reposter in the thousands before the mods can take action, they have no idea what the rules are, and even will get mad if the mods "oppress" them. On a side note, I believe Internet usage should be an obligatory subject in school, but not for etiquette, but for common sense and resiliency against manipulation. Add socialization, mental health, and parenting too if you're changing the study plans.
- thereddaikon 4y ago
  No. I didn't say that and I don't think I implied that either. Benefitting from technology and having direct access to the means are not one and the same. I get to benefit from the interstate highway system but that doesn't mean I can just go and add lanes or off and on ramps wherever I want. Raising the bar to access doesn't mean people don't get the economic benefit of a connected world. It means speaking your mind in an online forum is hardware than downloading the twitter app and tapping a few buttons.
rr888 4y ago
I think everyone probably needs some internet at home, but at this stage I think smartphones should be illegal or at least heavily taxed and regulated like alcohol.
candiddevmike 4y ago
At some point we overcorrected when trying to simplify things and now folks are being forced against their will to cede privacy to big corps in exchange for security and availability of their data instead of having to learn and understand how to do that themselves. At which point everything becomes a constant treadmill of walled gardens further insulating them in an attempt to not have them go learn something new.
hi5eyes 4y ago
Mobile ruined the internet
DrBazza 4y ago
The majority of people go to the most-popular (walled garden) social media these days. In that sense, the majority rarely realise what the internet is [1] and that it's more than just Facebook, Amazon etc. > It takes no effort to get online and speak your mind so nobody respects the technology. In my day, you either walked past the crazy person on the street corner and paid no attention to their insane rantings, or you spent several days cutting out letters from a newspaper and glueing them onto A4 before popping in the snail-mail. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  Difference is the ease of getting online and global reach means all the crazy persons on the street corner can collaborate and grow communities.
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
This comes off as extremely elitist, like you don't want the lowborn peasants on the Internet. That said, I understand where you're coming from. The Internet has given a megaphone to every moron on the planet.
ISL 4y ago
Computation and access to information are sources of power within our civilization -- ensuring easy access to both should be a goal of our society, lest one group conclude that another group is unworthy. With that power comes responsibility. It is on us to promulgate cultural norms to exist in this new world, where we choose to do unto others as we would have done unto us. Humanity is so new to grappling with these changes -- we are only beginning to understand the impacts and implications inherent to our newly-constructed tools. The world was a simpler and less-connected place when I was a child -- my earliest computer memories include an 8086 and one of the first few 1200 bps modems in our entire town of 30,000 people. Uploading a single image from my smartphone at those rates would, in the best case, take more than five hours. None of us earned the internet ourselves. It emerged through the uncoordinated efforts of billions of people. We limit access to it at our collective peril.
kwatsonafter 4y ago
I think, "democratizing complicated or beautiful things" (ie. music, Internet, education, information) is the myth of the day alongside other prevalent myths like, "elite rule isn't the norm for humans" "The real basis of legal rights is a religious object" (this applies just as badly to Liberals in their belief in equality as much as it does Christian Conservatives who believe Jesus was our first president) and especially, "self-determination for common people is the highest good humanity could ever realize." I really, really hate to say this but I'm beginning to have sympathies with Ayn Rand's literature. We don't let, "normal people" into operating rooms; why is it that the public has been invited to the conversation about complicated things like science, medicine, philosophy, ethics (..?) Worth relating: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/708391 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/708391
ASalazarMX 4y ago
> If people had to expend even a little bit of effort to access social media I think they would treat it very differently. And I don't think you have to raise that bar by much at all. I think you're underestimating the effort people can put into voicing their opinions, specially if they're controversial, or they built their personality around them.
noobermin 4y ago
Why is your framing and solution to exclude people? In the "early internet," the SNR nostalgia you have was primarily a result of better moderation, not exclusion of the "masses." That said, the decline of moderation can occur with the addition of new users without a proportionate increase of moderators and such. Still, they are not logically equivalent, it is principally the lack of moderation which is the actual issue. Systems if they want to maintain norms need to adapt to changing times. Ironically people's starting point for "when things became bad" is almost always after they join, so even "seasoned users" disagree on the start of the decline in general. That's the problem with exclusionary rhetoric in almost all walks of life, because the easiest response to any sort of "we're full" rhetoric is and should be "you leave first" and such a response has no real counter.
- thereddaikon 4y ago
  My framing isn't to actively exclude people like some stuck up gatekeeper. Its to stop lowering the bar of entry to anyone who wants to shoot off their dumb opinions online has to expend at least a little effort and brainpower to get there. Lowering the bar to allow even the most willfully tech illiterate to effortlessly post on places like twitter guarantee tragedy of the commons. Compare the R/C plane hobby before and after Drones hit the market. Before quadcopter drones, R/C aircraft were difficult to fly and required an investment of time and discipline to master the skill. This meant the community was fairly small and dedicated. And it was able to effectively self govern for decades with basically no government intervention required. Then quadcopters hit the market and it took not even 10 years before the FAA had to intervene because idiots who had no skill or respect for the technology were flying around airports, public gatherings and other restricted areas. Even though things practically fly themselves they were crashing into people and their property. There were serious injuries because they were flown by morons. So the FAA had to step in and become the gatekeeper. Is crashing a drone into a person's car or a child the same as idiots on social media? No, but irresponsible use of social media has ruined plenty of people's lives. The connect isn't as obvious but the damage is still there. We haven't started requiring social media licenses because speech is a protected right of course. And we shouldn't change that. But that means there should be some social responsibility.

ghaff 4y ago

Of course, pre-Eternal September, you only got to access the Internet if you went to the right schools or worked for the right companies or government organizations. Which in certain ways was certainly better for the haves but also makes for some pretty heavy-duty gatekeeping.

night-rider 4y ago

Yes but you can’t deny that giving everyone a level playing field is a net positive. There will be problems with that like hate speech, trolling, harassment etc but that can be addressed with safety measures and moderation, which social networks employ although they don’t stomp out everything and anonymous accounts are still a problem.

reaperducer 4y ago
Yes but you can’t deny that giving everyone a level playing field is a net positive. Sure I can. Giving millions of random uneducated whackjobs an equal voice with actual trained medical professionals poses a real threat to public health. That's exactly what's happened.

bragr 4y ago

So everything else that the internet offers is worthless because you can't have a particular subjective experience in the past? People can't benefit from computers because you don't approve? Everytime this particular subject comes up, commenters are quick to chime with their experiences or actual messages, and I don't think the quality of the posts was as good on average as you think. Usenet had weirdos, trolls, crazy people, political nutjobs, racists, and plenty of inane posts too. I think you're nostalgic for something that never existed.

edgyquant 4y ago
But forums did have better moderation and actively prevented flame wars. Social media quite literally encourages flame wars on a societal/global scale.
- ghaff 4y ago
  >But forums did have better moderation and actively prevented flame wars. I don't recall a lot of moderation and I do recall flame wars. I think most of the moderation was social norms, especially in an environment where many were posting under their own names from university/company/government accounts.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago
  Why the past tense? Forums - like this one - still exist. And it's easier then ever to make a moderated forum (a subreddit, a discord server, a facebook group).
  - ASalazarMX 4y ago
    In the case of Reddit, niche subreddits can be handled by a couple of moderators, but once they become popular and you have thousands of people breaking the rules, you need a full time team of capable moderators. In forums like the old Slashdot or here, users can moderate with varying degrees of skill with their votes, but users of popular subreddits will happily upvote a serial reposter in the thousands before the mods can take action, they have no idea what the rules are, and even will get mad if the mods "oppress" them. On a side note, I believe Internet usage should be an obligatory subject in school, but not for etiquette, but for common sense and resiliency against manipulation. Add socialization, mental health, and parenting too if you're changing the study plans.
thereddaikon 4y ago
No. I didn't say that and I don't think I implied that either. Benefitting from technology and having direct access to the means are not one and the same. I get to benefit from the interstate highway system but that doesn't mean I can just go and add lanes or off and on ramps wherever I want. Raising the bar to access doesn't mean people don't get the economic benefit of a connected world. It means speaking your mind in an online forum is hardware than downloading the twitter app and tapping a few buttons.

rr888 4y ago

I think everyone probably needs some internet at home, but at this stage I think smartphones should be illegal or at least heavily taxed and regulated like alcohol.

candiddevmike 4y ago

At some point we overcorrected when trying to simplify things and now folks are being forced against their will to cede privacy to big corps in exchange for security and availability of their data instead of having to learn and understand how to do that themselves. At which point everything becomes a constant treadmill of walled gardens further insulating them in an attempt to not have them go learn something new.

hi5eyes 4y ago

Mobile ruined the internet

DrBazza 4y ago

The majority of people go to the most-popular (walled garden) social media these days. In that sense, the majority rarely realise what the internet is [1] and that it's more than just Facebook, Amazon etc. > It takes no effort to get online and speak your mind so nobody respects the technology. In my day, you either walked past the crazy person on the street corner and paid no attention to their insane rantings, or you spent several days cutting out letters from a newspaper and glueing them onto A4 before popping in the snail-mail. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg

candiddevmike 4y ago
Difference is the ease of getting online and global reach means all the crazy persons on the street corner can collaborate and grow communities.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago

This comes off as extremely elitist, like you don't want the lowborn peasants on the Internet. That said, I understand where you're coming from. The Internet has given a megaphone to every moron on the planet.

ISL 4y ago

Computation and access to information are sources of power within our civilization -- ensuring easy access to both should be a goal of our society, lest one group conclude that another group is unworthy. With that power comes responsibility. It is on us to promulgate cultural norms to exist in this new world, where we choose to do unto others as we would have done unto us. Humanity is so new to grappling with these changes -- we are only beginning to understand the impacts and implications inherent to our newly-constructed tools. The world was a simpler and less-connected place when I was a child -- my earliest computer memories include an 8086 and one of the first few 1200 bps modems in our entire town of 30,000 people. Uploading a single image from my smartphone at those rates would, in the best case, take more than five hours. None of us earned the internet ourselves. It emerged through the uncoordinated efforts of billions of people. We limit access to it at our collective peril.

kwatsonafter 4y ago

I think, "democratizing complicated or beautiful things" (ie. music, Internet, education, information) is the myth of the day alongside other prevalent myths like, "elite rule isn't the norm for humans" "The real basis of legal rights is a religious object" (this applies just as badly to Liberals in their belief in equality as much as it does Christian Conservatives who believe Jesus was our first president) and especially, "self-determination for common people is the highest good humanity could ever realize." I really, really hate to say this but I'm beginning to have sympathies with Ayn Rand's literature. We don't let, "normal people" into operating rooms; why is it that the public has been invited to the conversation about complicated things like science, medicine, philosophy, ethics (..?) Worth relating: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/708391 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/708391

ASalazarMX 4y ago

> If people had to expend even a little bit of effort to access social media I think they would treat it very differently. And I don't think you have to raise that bar by much at all. I think you're underestimating the effort people can put into voicing their opinions, specially if they're controversial, or they built their personality around them.

noobermin 4y ago

Why is your framing and solution to exclude people? In the "early internet," the SNR nostalgia you have was primarily a result of better moderation, not exclusion of the "masses." That said, the decline of moderation can occur with the addition of new users without a proportionate increase of moderators and such. Still, they are not logically equivalent, it is principally the lack of moderation which is the actual issue. Systems if they want to maintain norms need to adapt to changing times. Ironically people's starting point for "when things became bad" is almost always after they join, so even "seasoned users" disagree on the start of the decline in general. That's the problem with exclusionary rhetoric in almost all walks of life, because the easiest response to any sort of "we're full" rhetoric is and should be "you leave first" and such a response has no real counter.

thereddaikon 4y ago
My framing isn't to actively exclude people like some stuck up gatekeeper. Its to stop lowering the bar of entry to anyone who wants to shoot off their dumb opinions online has to expend at least a little effort and brainpower to get there. Lowering the bar to allow even the most willfully tech illiterate to effortlessly post on places like twitter guarantee tragedy of the commons. Compare the R/C plane hobby before and after Drones hit the market. Before quadcopter drones, R/C aircraft were difficult to fly and required an investment of time and discipline to master the skill. This meant the community was fairly small and dedicated. And it was able to effectively self govern for decades with basically no government intervention required. Then quadcopters hit the market and it took not even 10 years before the FAA had to intervene because idiots who had no skill or respect for the technology were flying around airports, public gatherings and other restricted areas. Even though things practically fly themselves they were crashing into people and their property. There were serious injuries because they were flown by morons. So the FAA had to step in and become the gatekeeper. Is crashing a drone into a person's car or a child the same as idiots on social media? No, but irresponsible use of social media has ruined plenty of people's lives. The connect isn't as obvious but the damage is still there. We haven't started requiring social media licenses because speech is a protected right of course. And we shouldn't change that. But that means there should be some social responsibility.