4 ms·

> If Kant is being invoked about this we might have strayed into the weeds just a little! I find his ethics quite a bore, like many christian thinkers he very

> If Kant is being invoked about this we might have strayed into the weeds just a little! I find his ethics quite a bore, like many christian thinkers he very quickly skips all the fun bits to jump into "god" as an answer. But the universal maxim principle is quite fun to use as a metric for "small infractions" that are easy to wave away (specially when forgiving yourself) but that would make live hell if everyone did them all the time. > There weren’t. They were though. Maybe not explicitly but social contracts are still rules. And despite having usernames and not personaly linked info most people assume 1 nick = 1 person. If I created twelve accounts and replied to you with all of them, sure no "rules" would be broken, but anyone who stumbled upon this conversation would implicitly think a large number of people disagree with you. Famous users have been banned later into the platforms lifecycle for doing exactly that, just getting a few accounts to upvote themselves. In reddits economy the first 5 upvotes are are good as the next 1000 basically. > And nobody who liked Reddit then or now would have any problem with what the founders did to simulate activity and get it growing. They do not know what they could not get. If there was a better app, a better founding team who was chasing Digg's fall but did not cheat they might be left in the dust of history. And in a parallel universe the users would be happier with that platform than they are now on Reddit. Capitalism could reward something more than speed (or in this case network effects) if someone else had a better platform without sock puppet accounts. (Similar arguments can be made about the jailbait subreddit and the ethical implications of that and the initial growth of reddit but thats just seeing trends in their ethical behaviour beyond their founding)

tomhoward 3y ago
There is no “social contract” against simulating usage on a site that has no organic usage. > a better founding team who was chasing Digg's fall but did not cheat Every new social site has to find some trick to kickstart usage and break out of their chicken-and-egg trap. There’s no “cheating” to speak of here. It’s playfulness. The teams that tried and failed to grow this kind of thing would have failed due to a lack of playfulness and imagination. I say again, we can afford to see the fun in this, and commenters might reflect on their need to react to my appeal against grumpiness by replying with more grumpiness.
- Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
  > There is no “social contract” against simulating usage on a site that has no organic usage If we cannot agree that most people expect nick to mean one person then we are not gonna agree on anything else. But that is one of the most basic assumptions of anonymous internet comms since IRC. > Every new social site has to find some trick to kickstart usage and break out of their chicken-and-egg trap. good marketing, leveraging existing IRL networks, transparent content from the founding team. Youtube made a video with the creators at the zoo, Facebook used harvard students knowing each other irl, etc. > There’s no “cheating” to speak of here. It’s playfulness. They say the way to hell is paved with good intentions. Playfullness is a very cute way to frame deceit, but its still a lie to most. Grumpiness out of the market rewarding liars and cheaters is the obvious, and normal response. The proposed goal of a market led economy is the efficient market hypothesis, if you find obvious, glaring, examples of non optimal solutions (such as cheating, corruption, law breaking, scams, deceit, fraud etc) being rewarded instead of punished then yeah you should be grumpy.
  - tomhoward 3y ago
    Please try and step outside yourself for a moment and consider how many extreme words (hell, deceit, lie, cheating, corruption, law breaking, scams, fraud) you've included in this comment, about an act that nobody has ever claimed to be harmed by and no government agency has ever expressed any concerns about, and by your own argumentation can only be deemed wrong according to the philosophies of Immanuel Kant, which is no objective standard of morality at all - just one person's musings a couple of centuries ago. If the Reddit foundation story was as self-evidently heinous as you're insisting, you wouldn't need to use all those charged words.
    - Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
      > how many extreme words (hell, deceit, lie, cheating, corruption, law breaking, scams, fraud) Extreme words? Half of them are simple descriptive nouns of legal parameters being broken? > about an act that nobody has ever claimed to be harmed by and no government agency has ever expressed any concerns about "Nobody has ever claimed to be harmed by", seems wrong considering Reddit has now banned the practice, Hacker news bans the practice, Steam bans the practice and most anonoymous online forums have explicit rules against fake account, multiple accounts etc? If nobody is harmed why are they explicitly banned by the large part of the ecosystem? Also the goverment in multiple countries has proposed end of anonimity bans, things like tying your twitter to your driver license or passport. In what universe is that "no goverment has expressed concern" when they went full end of privacy over it? > by your own argumentation can only be deemed wrong according to the philosophies of Immanuel Kant That was a simple thought experiment, and no, by my own argumentation it is wrong entirely based on the fact its deceitful. And lies are inherently wrong. In this case they disrupt one of the assumptions of the market model, but in any social interaction they usually break a rule. In conversation they would break one of Grice's maxims. > If the Reddit foundation story was as self-evidently heinous as you're insisting, you wouldn't need to use all those charged words. They deceitfully added content to their site. I dont know how that is a charged adjective, its what they did by definition. The rest of them where in relation to other points, things like corruption and scams grow from small deceits, that is just studied psychology.

tomhoward 3y ago

There is no “social contract” against simulating usage on a site that has no organic usage. > a better founding team who was chasing Digg's fall but did not cheat Every new social site has to find some trick to kickstart usage and break out of their chicken-and-egg trap. There’s no “cheating” to speak of here. It’s playfulness. The teams that tried and failed to grow this kind of thing would have failed due to a lack of playfulness and imagination. I say again, we can afford to see the fun in this, and commenters might reflect on their need to react to my appeal against grumpiness by replying with more grumpiness.

Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
> There is no “social contract” against simulating usage on a site that has no organic usage If we cannot agree that most people expect nick to mean one person then we are not gonna agree on anything else. But that is one of the most basic assumptions of anonymous internet comms since IRC. > Every new social site has to find some trick to kickstart usage and break out of their chicken-and-egg trap. good marketing, leveraging existing IRL networks, transparent content from the founding team. Youtube made a video with the creators at the zoo, Facebook used harvard students knowing each other irl, etc. > There’s no “cheating” to speak of here. It’s playfulness. They say the way to hell is paved with good intentions. Playfullness is a very cute way to frame deceit, but its still a lie to most. Grumpiness out of the market rewarding liars and cheaters is the obvious, and normal response. The proposed goal of a market led economy is the efficient market hypothesis, if you find obvious, glaring, examples of non optimal solutions (such as cheating, corruption, law breaking, scams, deceit, fraud etc) being rewarded instead of punished then yeah you should be grumpy.
- tomhoward 3y ago
  Please try and step outside yourself for a moment and consider how many extreme words (hell, deceit, lie, cheating, corruption, law breaking, scams, fraud) you've included in this comment, about an act that nobody has ever claimed to be harmed by and no government agency has ever expressed any concerns about, and by your own argumentation can only be deemed wrong according to the philosophies of Immanuel Kant, which is no objective standard of morality at all - just one person's musings a couple of centuries ago. If the Reddit foundation story was as self-evidently heinous as you're insisting, you wouldn't need to use all those charged words.
  - Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
    > how many extreme words (hell, deceit, lie, cheating, corruption, law breaking, scams, fraud) Extreme words? Half of them are simple descriptive nouns of legal parameters being broken? > about an act that nobody has ever claimed to be harmed by and no government agency has ever expressed any concerns about "Nobody has ever claimed to be harmed by", seems wrong considering Reddit has now banned the practice, Hacker news bans the practice, Steam bans the practice and most anonoymous online forums have explicit rules against fake account, multiple accounts etc? If nobody is harmed why are they explicitly banned by the large part of the ecosystem? Also the goverment in multiple countries has proposed end of anonimity bans, things like tying your twitter to your driver license or passport. In what universe is that "no goverment has expressed concern" when they went full end of privacy over it? > by your own argumentation can only be deemed wrong according to the philosophies of Immanuel Kant That was a simple thought experiment, and no, by my own argumentation it is wrong entirely based on the fact its deceitful. And lies are inherently wrong. In this case they disrupt one of the assumptions of the market model, but in any social interaction they usually break a rule. In conversation they would break one of Grice's maxims. > If the Reddit foundation story was as self-evidently heinous as you're insisting, you wouldn't need to use all those charged words. They deceitfully added content to their site. I dont know how that is a charged adjective, its what they did by definition. The rest of them where in relation to other points, things like corruption and scams grow from small deceits, that is just studied psychology.