4 ms·
People suck online and off. People suck far more in some environments, online and off, than others. Which is to say: there's an inherent potential for sucky
by dredmorbius 3y ago
People suck online and off.
People suck far more in some environments, online and off, than others.
Which is to say: there's an inherent potential for sucky behaviour, but there are specific circumstances which really seem to amplify and trigger it.
Something like locusts: a behavioural transition of a species under the right environmental stimulus.
Brief (<4m) videos, NatGeo: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=uURqcI08IC4 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=uURqcI08IC4>, also PBS: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=dt6zCJ2VHok https://yewtu.be/watch?v=dt6zCJ2VHok>, and Attenborough/BBC: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=lAI6W2TOkh4 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=lAI6W2TOkh4>.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22206555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22206555>
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16239835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16239835>
It's pretty clear that the people who engage in toxic behaviours online are no different than they were prior to the emergence of those environments. It's the environment itself which triggers that behaviour.
That's baked into HN's philosophy:
"As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality. Our hypothesis is that this is not inevitable—that by making a conscious effort to resist decline, we can keep it from happening." <https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html>
One of dang's fairly frequent observations is that HN tends to operate at the edge of chaos:
- "if moderation doesn't evolve as a community grows, one ends up with the default dynamic of internet forums: decay followed by heat death." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20435202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20435202> (2019)
- "it's almost impossible to keep this place from collapsing" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35164049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35164049> (2023)
- "Trying to keep the bottom from falling out on a public forum is harder than it perhaps sounds." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9712216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9712216> (2015)
- "[T]he internet doesn't do such fine distinctions. Please just keep away from that rail." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13605136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13605136> (2017)
- "If 500-point stories on hot topics were dispositive, HN would be a 500-point-stories-on-hot-topics site. It isn't that kind of site, and intervention is required to keep it from going that way." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14306144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14306144> (2017)
- "Our job is to somehow balance the conflicting vectors. That's not so easy, and also not so easy to articulate. The idea is not to maintain a centrist position, it's to try to keep the community from wrecking itself via ideological fracture." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34025076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34025076> (2019)
- "It's hard enough to keep these threads from incinerating themselves" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30436973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30436973> (2022)
- "The important thing is to keep the site from burning in the first place." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932445> (2021)