12 ms·

This is really great, actionable, sensible, advice for folks who write on the internet. It agrees with my experiences, too. On the other hand, it's sad that th

• omoikane 3y ago
  > I have a weird catalog in my head of things not to mention An optimistic view is that people maintain blacklists of topics to avoid, as opposed to whitelists of noncontroversial topics that they are allowed to talk about ("Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?").
• nonethewiser 3y ago
  > The exact flavors of that on HN, Slashdot, Twitter, Tumblr, etc are different, but the core issue is the same everywhere. I think there are three main factors. Some cases are more one than the other. 1. Anonymity. Many places people know who you really are. Your family, friends, and coworkers arent judging you. 2. Using a mob for cover. As an analogy, its a lot safer to throw a Molotov cocktail from a crowd then by yourself. 3. No empathy for avatars. You aren’t talking to a real person, who you would empathize a lot more with. After writing these, they are largely different shades of anonymity.
  • verve_rat 3y ago
    Ah, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
• ghaff 3y ago
  I'm not sure I'd use censor in the context of Julia's post. It read more like the next thing you quoted. Something's well-trod and people have strong opinions but absolutely no one is going to change their mind or really make a novel point or learn anything new. I do think there are things that many people self-sensor, e.g. opinions that fall outside or on the edges of the orthodoxy of some bubble and is just going to trigger emotional arguments/stereotyping/downvotes/etc.
  • ChrisSD 3y ago
    Imagine, for example, there's a really interesting scientific paper someone would love to talk about but it's in the field of Climate Science. Everyone knows the comments a blog post on it is going to get. And they're (almost) all going to be the same no matter what the paper is actually about. Every time. Should someone feel they have to self-censor just to avoid this?
    • ghaff 3y ago
      If it seriously challenged the orthodoxy of, say, HN, nothing's keeping me from submitting it but, no, I probably wouldn't comment even if it made what I think are some interesting points, in part because I'm not an expert on the area. There are some topics guaranteed to attract 500+ comments that are mostly nothing but rants about big companies, Musk, the US, etc. Better to just avoid.
    • halfinvested 3y ago
      People are going to feel all kinds of things. Asking whether or not they should feel them is a dead end in the context of public forums, because nobody controls anybody else's feelings, or how each individual reacts to a feeling. Sincere, productive conversations are mostly going to take place in more private forums like group chat or face to face. Public discussion threads are better suited for identifying friends and enemies, playing and joking around, and signaling status.
      • wpietri 3y ago
        It's not a dead end, because public forums are not natural phenomena. They are things we design, build, maintain, and police. Personally, I want experts to be able to talk about their work without feeling abused, harassed, or threatened. I want it not just for myself, but so that we can have a society based on truth, not just on who can shout the loudest or who can be the biggest jerk.
• dkarl 3y ago
  I think it's fair that some people have stronger feelings about and more appetite for discussing a topic than I do. To pick one of her examples, I've done a couple of toy projects with Tailwind. I think it's pretty neat, and I don't mind saying so! But I accept that people working full time on huge Tailwind projects at work probably care way more deeply about the topic than I do, are much more impacted by aspects of Tailwind that might be trivial to me in my toy use of it, and are going to invest an amount of time and passion discussing it that would frankly bore me to death. If I were running into that repeatedly, I would stop bringing Tailwind into discussions that I didn't want to be about Tailwind, and I wouldn't feel that bad about it.
  • remich 3y ago
    You know, that's interesting. I tend to avoid Tailwind discussion because I feel like I don't see enough opinions from people working full time on huge projects using it. Most of the time, it seems like the strongest opinions in favor come from folks who have only used it in toy apps, side projects, or completely greenfield small-to-medium applications. There's nothing wrong with using it in that way, of course, or of thinking it's the best tool for the job in those scenarios. But for some reason I rarely see that caveat mentioned, and the idea of refactoring a legacy application to use it makes me queasy haha.
    • civilitty 3y ago
      > But for some reason I rarely see that caveat mentioned, and the idea of refactoring a legacy application to use it makes me queasy haha. Easiest way to check is to just add tailwind with PostCSS and the `@tailwind` directives and see what happens to your app. Unfortunately, if there's substantial CSS it will most likely be a disaster because the Tailwind reset will clobber the assumptions made by the previous CSS. It can be really hard to refactor custom styles when you can't see how they were supposed to look without running a separate older commit. You can try disabling the CSS reset tailwind adds but then you'll have to chase bugs in the assumptions Tailwind makes so it's a bit of a catch 22. If it's a really large project with dozens of developers in its history, chances are there is already a custom CSS utility framework in place that uses the obvious formats like "p-2"/"px-2" for padding (with a different scale, yay!) and other naming collisions. You can however use the `@apply` directive to inline the Tailwind styles in the legacy classes to make it easier.
• sneak 3y ago
  When it's opt-in, it's called editing, not censoring. Nothing is forcing them to censor themselves, contrary to what you have asserted.
  • ghaff 3y ago
    If you choose not to discuss something because you know it's an unpopular opinion in some circle and may lead to nasty and from your perspective unconstructive criticism, it seems reasonable to call that self-censorship even if it doesn't fit the dictionary definition of censoring (which primarily applies to the government or other authority body).
  • teddyh 3y ago
    Self-censorship is, in fact, a thing: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Self-censorship&oldid=1168568448 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Self-censorship&o...>
  • lbotos 3y ago
    I get the pedantic line you are trying to draw here, but self-censorship is different than editing. Editing == adjusting so the point is clearer or more easily understood. Censorship/Self-censorship == avoiding a topic that the author wants to talk about due to fear or external forces.
• mattlutze 3y ago
  >> So I have a weird catalog in my head of things not to mention if I don’t want to start the same discussion about that thing for the 50th time. > Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable, and even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be acceptable in other social settings. The exact flavors of that on HN, Slashdot, Twitter, Tumblr, etc are different, but the core issue is the same everywhere. People tend to enjoy bikeshedding when presented the opportunity to, and it's a good idea to avoid bringing up the bikesheds you don't want to debate.
• deleted 3y ago
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• lapcat 3y ago
  > Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable, and even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be acceptable in other social settings. I don't think we've "built" the culture per se. I think it's more like humans evolved over millions of years for small, in-person groups, and we're not "built" (by nature) to handle the endless sea of online strangers. On the internet, the personal familiarity is gone, the proximity is gone, the facial expressions and tone are gone, and indeed the fear of repercussions is mostly gone.
  • schneems 3y ago
    I agree with you that we’re in the infancy of context free communication (text only posts). But disagree that it wasn’t built (or couldn’t be changed, my extended interpretation) There are wildly different experiences with communities online. Communities are also a thing that can be built intentionally. We can also learn from prior works. Lessig (1999) identifies four elements that regulate behavior online: Laws, norms, markets, and technology - *Code/architecture* – the physical or technical constraints on activities (e.g. locks on doors or firewalls on the Internet) - *Market* – economic forces - *Law* – explicit mandates that can be enforced by the government - *Norms* – social conventions that one often feels compelled to follow
    • lapcat 3y ago
      I think the biggest factor is actually moderation. Smaller communities can be effectively moderated. This may fall under "Norms", but the difference is that (non-government) moderators will enforce the social conventions regardless of whether you feel compelled to follow them. But perhaps familiarity is still a factor in smaller online communities, because the participants often get to know each other. Unfortunately, larger communities are effectively beyond moderation IMO. I don't think that the one or two moderators are enough on Hacker News, and of course the social media platforms are even worse. In the "real world", the non-online world, a significant portion of the population will flout the laws, regardless of government enforcement, and a significant portion will flout the social conventions. That will also occur in the online world. To put it another way, all you need is one bad reply to ruin your day. :-)
• mecsred 3y ago
  I agree with the sentiment that greater freedom of expression is a noble goal and society loses something with these soft restrictions. Having a catalog of unmentionables is not a new thing though, and definitely is not "unacceptable in other social settings". It's a basic social skill from long before the internet existed. It's been rude to bring up politics and devicive issues in conversation for literal centuries.
• tptacek 3y ago
  Steering persuasive and technical writing away from topics like Emacs vs. Vim isn't censorship, it's just good writing.
• politician 3y ago
  > Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable, and even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be acceptable in other social settings. It's an unfortunate consequence of the point-based reward systems that platforms use to incentivize participation. There are certain topics that large groups of people will always upvote or always downvote. It's a rational behavior to repeat the same comments whenever such a topic comes up if those comments can reliably mine rewards by doing so, even if the rewards in this case are adjustments to one's own dopamine balance. In offline social settings, the ability to monetize comments is somewhat more difficult but not totally absent (popularity, elections, etc).
  • genewitch 3y ago
    As someone who has been on the internet about 3-4 times as long as "point systems" on comments/posts/etc i don't see any correlation to point systems. People were jerks in AOL chatrooms, IRC, myspace, and forums long before the likes of reddit and /. gamified being annoying. edit: change "jerks" and "annoying" to "repeating ad-nauseam the prevalent comments to garner points". I misread the latter part of your comment, went back and saw where i misread, and still like the general premise of my reply.