9 ms·

Are a few people ruining the internet for the rest of us?

113 points by pseudolus 1y ago

oceanhaiyang 1y ago
I tried smaller internet for discussion like lemmy and mastodon, it’s either boring or equally as toxic. Makes me think we’ve been conditioned to expect a ton of content and get upset easily. Both can be true. Blogs has been more interesting as often seen here.
- asdff 1y ago
  It is interesting seeing the shift in tone from when you drop into an old forum thread from 25 years ago vs a similar sort of discussion today. People tend to always take the contrary opinion and argue it to death. Sometimes I find myself even reflexively wanting to do that and I have to stop myself because what is even the point? Sure there would be people getting at it in the forums but it would usually be like 2 people going back and forth while everyone else sits back and waits for them to cool off or embarrass themselves. You get dogpiled today easily. Especially on systems with up and down votes, people get bathed in downvotes for valid but not-in-vogue-with-hivemind opinions. I'm not even talking about political stuff either but opinions on technical matters could devolve into people using the downvote button to disagree. Just tanks those opinions to the bottom of threads and makes it so the hivemind opinion is biased to be above the fold and perpetuated among more parrots. Happens on HN too where I see slightly faded comments for no real reason get piled on a lot, although at least votes are masked here which discourages some of that behavior.
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    A good point. I handle the downvoted comments by 1) upvoting (but of course) but then also 2) adding a comment to the effect of "Hey, I upvoted you because ...". We've all seen the downvoted comment start to "fade back in" by doing this. Heck, I frequently even upvote greyed out comments I disagree with because I kind of root for the underdog anyway. Or, kind of as you say, think it is unfair (at least when the downvoted comment was sincere and not troll-bait or whatever). Personally I try to avoid downvoting a comment if I am unwilling to leave a comment as to why. This open the doors to my getting downvotes as well if I am off base. Regardless, watching my own comments get downvoted has been a good lesson for me. Sometimes I rethink my position ("Am I missing something here?") or, if nothing else, I rethink the tone I used ("Guess I need to make a better case next time — not come across so antagonistic."). (Corny examples, but you get the idea.)
    - oceanhaiyang 1y ago
      Getting downvoted constantly on Reddit for asking or answering technical questions in my field just made me not want to use it.
      - JKCalhoun 1y ago
        Thankfully, HN is a little cooler than that, I think.
        oceanhaiyang 1y ago
        I mostly agree! I was surprised when I was downvoted once here. Didn’t even know that was a thing
- AuthAuth 1y ago
  Just like the article mentions, I've found that lemmy because much better once you block the handful of toxic users. Sure it doesnt have that much content but I dont need to scroll all day so it suits me.
- Nemo_bis 1y ago
  Mastodon v4+ replicates some of the issues with Twitter by giving prominence to highly followed accounts. This is considered "easier" for new users coming from elsewhere (in the sense it's easier to be bombarded with posts you didn't need, than to go look for what you actually need). The issue is tracked at https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18128 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18128 . So, even on Mastodon you still need some self-care. Avoid following popular accounts, block and silence generously.
nmstoker 1y ago
Link to the paper it's based on (by same author): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X24001313 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23522... Assuming the key points are valid (they seem reasonable), I'd argue that we'd probably be in a better position with social media if it weren't for the platforms taking on managing our interactions with others. If people had their own software/agents that would filter according to your own needs, we'd likely see less toxicity - but this comes tumbling down as I suspect the platforms would see a dent in their monetisation, and so naturally they wouldn't be in favour.
- crop_rotation 1y ago
  > If people had their own software/agents that would filter according to your own needs, we'd likely see less toxicity Isn't that just another echo bubble? Telegram doesn't manage interactions yet every large channel is just an echo bubble or a cesspit. IMHO most human beings are simply not ready for this ultrawide real time communication networks.
roscas 1y ago
Ads companies like google and facebook make their core business to put ads on your face. Same as, someone pays them loads of money for them to show you ads, so you can buy things you don't want or need. So when you use any of their "products", you are the product. This is nothing new. I hope that is not new to you. That said, their business spy also is good for spy agencies, so they take care of each other's business. And please don't ever say "social media" or "social plataforms" because those are not social. Those are indeed anti-social platforms. You can call them that. Take a look at twitter and what is has become. It was already bad.
andsoitis 1y ago
> produced enough content to create the false perceptions that many people were vaccine hesitant. Many many people were vaccine hesitant. It was not a false perception that many were hesitant. I spent a lot of time with friends and family convincing them how to think about the risks and to convince them to take the vaccine.
- asdff 1y ago
  Yeah long before covid people were vaccine hesitant too. You just didn't really see it come to a head until covid really forced those people out of the woodwork but they were there the whole time not doing their flu shot, not keeping up with their past shots, and doing bare minimum of immunizations for school.
  - andsoitis 1y ago
    I think we’re talking about two different things. What I was trying to say is that many people (who are not vaccine skeptics), were hesitant to take a covid vaccine, and their hesitancy (contrary to the article’s assertion), was not due to a handful of people who spread misinformation.
deleted 1y ago
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daft_pink 1y ago
It’s pretty easy to cut yourself off from divisive content.
- asdff 1y ago
  If the answer is to just not use the internet that is basically like saying "broken arm? use the other one." The issue is that it didn't used to be this bad. You could browse a forum and not have it be shills or shill accounts farming points so as to not appear as shill accounts. It was a more personal world without people trying to market themselves as none of that was incentivized in any way at the time. People prolifically posting videos for all 43 viewers for years and you'd never see them turn the camera at their face. It got too big and then it became worth the investment to advertise in, the meta was established, and then that was that.
- protocolture 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - daft_pink 1y ago
    Just mute or unfollow the divisive content. I’ve found it works pretty well and my FB is politics free.
    - protocolture 1y ago
      I went through a period of blocking and muting everything that pissed me off. The bedrock, that I cannot shift, is flat earth nonsense. I can block every flat earth page I see and there's always more. And largely the problem with flerf "content" is that it is so unoriginal. If it wasn't the same 10 arguments (soundly defeated) over and over again it might be interesting.
      - daft_pink 1y ago
        that’s so odd. I don’t think i’ve ever seen flat earth content. this reminds me of that seinfeld episode where the tivo thinks the character is gay.
jjangkke 1y ago
we live in a society where we can't really voice, our opinions or grievances towards specific groups or cultures or issues as it is deemed politically incorrect, so a lot of that has moved online, behind anonymity. Anonymity also plays an amplifying role. Larping as the target group and in many instances it becomes even easier to manipulate this much is true, but this is the price of forcing all of the healthy debates away from the off-line world because we fear offending. The contrast between the online off-line world that the author in the article alludes to is indicative of this. It's the unspoken role where we all know that speaking out has consequences often that impacts are economic well-being. There would be no way to get farm something for which there is no demand for...
- doctorpangloss 1y ago
  [flagged]
- tokinonagare 1y ago
  I agree, but even online is now heavily censored. It's harder and harder to find a place to express even slightly non-PC opinions. In my opinion this is not gonna produce good results in the long run.
  - genghisjahn 1y ago
    What's a slightly non-pc opinion that's hard to find online?
    - zdragnar 1y ago
      I think there's a difference between an opinion being hard to find, and a place to express the opinion being hard to find. The more suppressed a view is, the more extreme the place where that view is allowed ends up being. Those places don't normally allow rational debate either. They're just a different kind of toxic, and have their own rules for what will get you dog piled.
      - 1y ago
jmugan 1y ago
I find it nearly impossible to avoid divisive content online. There are so many cool things in the world, but I can't find them because my timelines are all flooded with culture war. I wish I could find a platform that would listen to me when I say "show fewer posts like this."
ylee 1y ago
Nothing has changed since Jerry Pournelle wrote 40 years ago when discussing online forums: >I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's not always easy to do. This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The network's design has several flaws, most importantly no way for any central authority to completely delete posts (admins in moderated groups can only approve posts), since back in the late 1970s Usenet's designers expected that everyone with the werewithal to participate online would meet a minimum standard of behavior. Usenet has always had a spam problem, but as usage of the network declined as the rest of the Internet grew, spam's relative proportion of the overall traffic grew. That said, there are server- and client-side anti-spam tools of varying effectiveness. A related but bigger problem for Usenet is people with actual mental illness; think "50 year olds with undiagnosed autism". Usenet is such a niche network nowadays that there has to be meaningful motivation to participate, and if the motivation is not a sincere interest in the subject it's, in my experience, going to be people with very troubled personal lives which their online behavior reflects. Again, as overall traffic declined, their relative contribution and visibility grew. This, not spam, is what has mostly killed Usenet. [1] I am talking about traditional non-binary Usenet here
- pinoy420 1y ago
  [dead]
- joecool1029 1y ago
  >This, not spam, is what has mostly killed Usenet. Usenet had a nonstop spam generator called Google Groups that shit it up for years. It wasn't just intentional spam but clueless people came in through there and bumped 20+ year old threads. The other factor related to the decline was ISP's stopped bundling usenet service in the 2000's. There are sill a handful of active groups but unfortunately at least a third of the remaining active lost access when the Google spam service stopped.
  - MichaelZuo 1y ago
k310 1y ago
Root cause. Advertising. Quantity wins. Quality loses. Founders are all greed and no scruples. Money is God. Illustration: (Emily's Quotes) https://emilysquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/capitalism-religion-bank-church-bankers-priest-wealth-heaven-greed-poverty-hell-rich-people-saints-poor-sinners-commodities-blessing-money-god-sad-mistake-life-intelligent-Miguel-D-Lewis.jpg https://emilysquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/capitali... The Internet's Original Sin It's not too late to ditch the ad-based business model and build a better web. [0] By Ethan Zuckerman The Internet Apologizes [1] Even those who designed our digital world are aghast at what they created. A breakdown of what went wrong — from the architects who built it. By Noah Kulwin [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/adver... [0] https://archive.is/NxfXW https://archive.is/NxfXW [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/an-apology-for-the-internet-from-the-people-who-built-it.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/an-apology-for-the-i...
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Since the article discusses the Algorithm that amplifies the trolls, your connecting it to advertising shouldn't be dismissed.
  - k310 1y ago
    Clicks, clicks, no matter how you get them. The more the better. Anger works.
sublinear 1y ago
I think people forget that the same things happen offline. These arguments that blame anonymity or large groups are flimsy. Just think about how embarrassing some friends or family can be. Think about why you went online in the first place.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  I didn't go online to get away from a bigoted relative. To the contrary, the bigoted relative was no longer invited to various get togethers.
- arp242 1y ago
  The amount of people you can reach offline is quite small. In particular the amount of strangers you can reach is quite small. Online you can easily post several hundred times a day, and/or reach a huge audience.
fuzzfactor 1y ago
More than a few. And rising. The result of leveraging one-to-many persuasive marketing-type efforts until its footprint encroaches on an unleveraged many-to-many ecosystem bad enough to compromise former utility more & more as technology advances. As opposed to mainstream users who should be gaining more from the same underlying infrastructure as improvements in technology occur. Which should theoretically have continued happening but it got reversed by overwhelming force.
ileonichwiesz 1y ago
Outrage is the most valuable emotion a piece of online content can inspire. If you enjoy something, you’ll like/heart/upvote it and move on. But if it outrages you, chances are you’ll go straight to the comment section to argue. Maybe you’ll repost it with your own take to show everyone how much you disagree. More „engagement” = more time to shove ads in your face = a nice juicy bonus for the ad execs who run all the websites now.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  The word is "ragebait". In general there are a lot more "farming" type activities going on these days. Farming various kinds of engagement from different people, scientifically tuned much like in agriculture / animal husbandry. It's fascinating to watch unfold.
tolerance 1y ago
This article is rife with wishful thinking and honestly I don't know if society has ever been as harmonious as I feel like it alleges. As if there was a time where everyone just got along and things were great and you could get an egg cream for a quarter after the sock hop. I seriously question whether there was ever a time where the masses weren't influenced by "a few people", for better or worse. The numbers don't move me and can't be the sole arbitrator of truth when the direction of humanity is involved. So while I'm not surprised that people report feeling less inclined toward inflammatory media after disengaging it, I just don't believe that there is a grand collective that we can return to that is free from the influential few. The issue is that there are many masses and many fews at odds to find their pair and wont to view the others as the outrageous ones. People can hardly curate outfits at their own discretion. They're going to defer to people who are deferring to what amounts to a cell of 3-4 guys linked to a larger apparatus of taste to find out what to wear, what to watch and what to think. That's just the way it is. The average person is well-meaning and reasonable up unto the this eerie point in their life where they feel existentially threatened and thrust on the stage of public opinion for the criticism of others. So I think that suggesting that society isn't toxic in it's current form and all it is is that we're just viewing the world through this funhouse lens because of a few bad guys on social media is a conceited perspective because the world as it is indeed is a carnival of ideas surrounding the marketplace and the internet is its pavilion, not its public square. And to dare to suggest that there is in fact one single true direction for people to choose demands contending against all the goofy ways people are turning and admitting that things are as bad as they appear, in spite of whatever ways we can come up with to assume the good faith of the common man. The irony is that this same outlet will unapologetically make its bones off the incessant reporting on all the ways that society is under peril. Sometimes obscuring these reports with solicitations to fund this effort.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  I can only say that it is worse now than at any other time I have lived (I say this at 61 years old, white guy, FWIW). There's a complete lack of ... unity? Everything including the weather is now pigeon-holed into something political (and therefore "tribal"). Sock hops and the soda fountain were before my time, but I can speak for the 70's and say it was not this crazy. Nut jobs like The John Birch Society (just to pick on one group of the era) were not given a global megaphone. Say what you want about newspapers, etc. but the "Fourth Estate" had to earn reader's trust, could not expect to just act to inflame the fringe elements of society.
asdff 1y ago
The answer is yes, and also yes towards that question for most other media. The fact propaganda is an industry is the issue. As soon as you have a population of people of sufficient mass, it becomes worthwhile to invest in attempting to influence the mindshare in some way towards a profitable end. This will be true for as long as we make use of propaganda for selling products, controlling votes, and how people think and behave. People might think it is only for the masses, but given their individual value you can probably be sure that all influential people in this world are also propagandized into making decisions that benefit other latent interests. I'm not sure how you get out of the fact that game theory suggests there will always be people operating selfishly like this and reaping benefit from it as such. You see it in ecosystems too. It is a perfectly valid evolutionary strategy to learn to rob a nest vs making your own way. The question is how we balance these realities about our animal selves and even try and counter them for collectively beneficial reasons, that also won't just be subverted for someone else. Especially as technology grows to be more esoteric and powerful in the future.
jlaternman 1y ago
The author is describing the socially (and physically) destructive percentage of the population who just want to grab power through manipulation and control and the way they express this through social media, I believe (dark triad personality disorders, loosely). The only danger I see is an embrace of passivism in the form of “anyone who objects to things that are happening in passionate terms is the real problem.” Which would be even worse, when that percentage has real power, and real ability to pull levers. Not to say everyone should go around screaming or protesting with every tweet, etc. It's the balance of these things I think is off-kilter, not a simple solution “just act aloof and block the right people, and all will be well in the world, just like it is in Starbucks when I leave my apartment each morning.” In any case, that's my two cents. There's a balance to be struck, that this article doesn't really get at.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  There is a lot of behavior online which I'd characterize as "hearing the dog whistles and barking" that when confront folks they will characterize it as "objecting to things in passionate terms" Like the Otaku described by Azuma [1] there is a definite regression in terms of the of use of language and ideology, essentially a reversion from a language-using animal which can create unlimited meanings by putting together a finite vocabulary in a grammatical system as opposed to words that have a meaning in and of itself. For instance, anti-resilience activists will run you out of some communities because you use the word "snowflake" because this is a dog whistle that makes them bark. With their lexicon of triggering words in hand you can talk about the dangers of anti-resilience all day and you're talking right past them. This style of communication is especially dangerous for marginalized communities because they create a bubble of false consensus that makes them think somebody agrees with them but doesn't do the hard work of explaining themselves and doing the even harder work of bringing about a change of heart across the society would be necessary to do something widespread and durable problems such as the mutual lack of respect between black Americans and the police. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Otaku-Database-Animals-Hiroki-Azuma/dp/0816653526 https://www.amazon.com/Otaku-Database-Animals-Hiroki-Azuma/d...
xg15 1y ago
> When I scroll through social media, I often leave demoralized, with the sense that the entire world is on fire and people are inflamed with hatred towards one another. Yet, when I step outside into the streets of New York City to grab a coffee or meet a friend for lunch, it feels downright tranquil. Alternative explanation: The online world is "real" and the real-life interactions are "fake", at least as far as political opinions are concerned. The social conventions for online and face-to-face interactions are still markedly different (with good reason). When face-to-face, we generally care a lot more about maintaining a pleasant conversational environment and usually avoid things that would insult or hurt the person we are talking with. The focus is also a lot more about everyday issues and a lot less about abstract political topics like it would be online. All of this means that face-to-face, we will probably talk a lot less about divisive political topics than we would do online. But it does not mean we have fewer opinions on those topics, only that we won't show them so easily. So it could be that the online discourse really is a truthful mirror of the political division of society, only that in real life, those divisions are much more hidden behind layers of politeness.
- another_twist 1y ago
  How does the alternate theory work ? The evidence here suggests that instigation on social media is usually targeted and limited to a handful of accounts. If it were indeed the case that people are more real online and more towards the right politically, then we shouldn't observe this concentration. It would be more diffused.
- albumen 1y ago
  Or, online discourse has polarised opinion through The Algorithm promoting inflammatory, divisive content. In real life, when people talk, they see the other person as a human with more understandable motivations, and tend to find a lot more common ground. So perhaps instead of "in real life, those divisions are much more hidden behind layers of politeness"; "in real life, divisions turn out to be largely illusory (or more moderate; or more understandable) once you get to know someone".
  - scarface_74 1y ago
snitzr 1y ago
Zipf's law again!
deleted 1y ago
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jongjong 1y ago
It's totally not true that only a small number of people are spreading all the contrarian ideas online. I remember where was some media coverage about 'The disinformation dozen' during COVID; what a load of rubbish. How can anyone believe this? In a world with billions of people connected to the internet, only 12 are spreading disinformation? This is impossible. There are surely at least 100 North Korean agents working full time being paid to spread non-stop disinformation... This is a really conservative guess. Now do that for every country who have a beef against the west you probably have tens of thousands of people being paid to spread disinformation. Then you probably have thousands of people spreading disinformation as a way to promote their books... Then you probably have millions of institutional insiders spreading various bits of contrarian information once in a while (which would be mislabeled as disinformation). It's not a small number of people either way. It's a LOT of people... Suggesting that it's only 12 people is comically wrong! I'm sorry but if you ever believed that, you need to adjust your worldview because you've been living in a bubble. It's not only physically impossible statistically, it's literally impossible to measure so you'd be wrong just for accepting any fixed number (let alone a tiny number)... The mainstream view is a simplified view and so there will always be people who can see fundamental flaws in parts of the mainstream argument because they have deeper knowledge on certain aspects than a journalist has. Mainstream news is written by journalists, they never know quite as much as the insiders. So anytime a news article is published, there will be a small number of people out there who know the full story and they will be surprised at the discrepancies between the story and their first-hand experience of it. If you're an expert in anything, it's likely a matter of time before you come across some media story about your field which you know doesn't quite correspond to reality. Once you experience that, it makes you doubt all media coverage of other fields too. It's just a fact that the media isn't fully accurate. It doesn't matter how reputable the organization is; they have a near monopoly so this allows them to add a lot of spin and make a lot of 'mistakes'.
Workaccount2 1y ago
Even more of a problem is journalists thinking twitter is an accurate portrayal of society.
lapphi 1y ago
I would love it if there were a part of the internet where a) one person = one account and non-person accounts were somehow labeled. Kind of how south korea does it. But you know, better. And b) i could block that one person on each platform with one click on all my accounts, including screenshots of their posts. In real life i know the person talking to me is a unique individual and not one of several duplicate persons bc of physical limitations. Wishful thinking: we are reaching that point where AI could solve this instead of AI just making the issue worse.
another_twist 1y ago
Technical question - they say people felt 23pc less animosity. Assuming their measurements are okay, what would the statistical power of this experiment ? I dont think they report a null hypothesis.
- bxparks 1y ago
  Can you explain why you wrote '23pc' instead of using the '23%' that was used in the article? It is confusing to me. I had never seen 'pc' used as a short hand for percent (%) until recently in an article (can't remember where), where they used 'pc' repeatedly. Unfortunately the article was also talking about the 'pence' of money, so I found it impossible to figure out from context whether they were talking about a 'pence' or a 'percent'. In the US, I have seen 'pct' used instead of '%', but not too frequently. I had never seen 'pc' used until recently.
  - another_twist 1y ago
    I think because its easier to type this on the alphabet keyboard.
  - lutusp 1y ago
    > I had never seen 'pc' used as a short hand for percent (%) until recently in an article (can't remember where), where they used 'pc' repeatedly. A couple of possibilities: * For plain-text content that might migrate into a Web page (or emanate from a Web page), the special meaning of '%' in that context might motivate some to avoid the character entirely. * When typing on a cell phone, one may want to avoid '%' because it often requires shifting to an alternate character set, typing a non-alpha character, then shifting back. Still, as you point out, it's confusing.
    - fuzzfactor 1y ago
      Old habits die hard. Teletypes didn't start out with a % symblol.
- lutusp 1y ago
nomdep 1y ago
How ironic coming from The Guardian, a big source of rage bait
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GuB-42 1y ago
There are many instances where a few people are ruining the internet for the rest of us. And for me it is mostly about security. I'd rather do without all that encryption and passwords and security updates and anti-viruses. All that to prevent a few people from messing with us. Hateful people on social media? They are annoying, but at least, I can ignore them.
syeare 1y ago
Is it really the "few people" ruining it for the "rest of us"? Or is it moreso that the "rest" of the people are ruining it for the "few of us"?
vicurve 1y ago
If we bring up HN is it against the guidelines?
alganet 1y ago
> Yet, when I step outside into the streets of New York City to grab a coffee or meet a friend for lunch, it feels downright tranquil. I think you're in for a surprise in the next few decades. EDIT: what am I even saying? The article comes from an UK media outlet, they should fully know by now that toxic behavior in the real world cannot be separated from media exposure. This is uncanny. > The contrast between the online world and my daily reality has only gotten more jarring. One or two generations immersed in primarily online activity will change your opinion about how safe the real world is from toxic behavior. > In a paper I recently published [...] Paywalled. > we paid people a few dollars to unfollow the most divisive political accounts on X For a psychology study, I fail to see how you considered the full mechanism of incentives behind their choice. If the paper was open, I would look for a control group in the study. Was there even one? > Platforms could easily redesign their algorithms to stop promoting the most outrageous voices. No, they can't. If you are putting your hope on that prospect, I think you are insane. It's not even about will, it cannot be done.
bell-cot 1y ago
For those less familiar with history - it's really nothing new for a micro-minority to abuse mass media access and human nature to spread lies and malice for fame, fun, market share, and profit. An iconic example, from the late 1800's - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...
throwaway81523 1y ago
This is about online trolls entoxifying (toxificating? whatever) social media. I thought it was going to be about AI scrapers causing captcha walls to appear in front of everything. The trolls are easier to ignore.
lutusp 1y ago
> In a recent series of experiments, we paid people a few dollars to unfollow the most divisive political accounts on X. This is instructive. It suggests that, unless they get paid, people aren't inclined to unfollow conversations that are destructive or misleading. It supports the idea that, over time, toxic conversations naturally attract an increasing number of followers. In the old Usenet days, apart from the few moderated forums, there was no mechanism to remove trolls/ideologues, consequently it made the Wild West resemble a tea party by comparison. In modern times, everything is different, yet everything is the same. Those who operate online forums have every incentive to tolerate abusive participants, because they attract people to the platform, to see ads. My favorite story about this comes from Howard Stern, a so-called "shock jock". Owners of radio stations began to worry that Stern's bizarre content would drive people away. But audience studies discovered something: people who agreed with Stern stayed tuned in, just to hear what he would say next. And people who disagreed with Stern ... wait for it ... also stayed tuned in, to hear what he would say next. This may seem orthogonal, but it seems people don't learn debate rules in school any more. If debate rules were enforced online, it would kill off much of the toxic content, but would greatly reduce the number of participants. Imagine a world where trolls are expelled from fora because they refuse to address any legitimate topic, preferring personal attacks and other logical fallacies, behavior that would get them expelled from a formal college debate. But I may expect too much. We're talking about a population of average intelligence, the same people who asked Dave Brubeck "How many musicians are in your quartet?"
musicale 1y ago
> Platforms could easily redesign their algorithms to stop promoting the most outrageous voices and prioritise more representative or nuanced content. By de-prioritizing "engagement" perhaps? Possibly a good idea, but the incentives of an advertising-based business model seem to be in direct opposition to doing so.
gumaflux 1y ago
Counter arguments Social media isn’t monolithically harmful The article suggests a small group ruins the internet, but this ignores research showing social platforms also democratize discourse, enabling civic engagement and marginalized voices. Not all online “distortion” amounts to damage While the piece emphasizes filter bubbles and radical users, algorithmic content curation exists in print and broadcast media too—these are framing tools, not always societal toxins. Logical leaps undermine its claims The Guardian implies isolated incidents escalate to systemic ruin—this mirrors slippery-slope reasoning. Without data demonstrating measurable harm (e.g., polarization metrics), it remains speculative. Forces of good are often overlooked Platforms frequently host prosocial behavior, from mental health communities to humanitarian fundraising—yet the article omits these evidence-backed positives. Assumes a universal “ruin” standard By framing a few actors as “ruining the internet,” the article treats degradation as a one-size-fits-all harm. But norms vary culturally—with differences in how “ruin” is perceived. Some gaps 1. Integrate empirical data: Use actual trends in polarization, mental health outcomes, or misinformation impact, instead of anecdotal evidence. 2. Compare with legacy media: Acknowledge traditional media distortions to avoid caricaturing social platforms uniquely. 3. Balance the picture: Highlight both negative and positive digital outcomes for nuance. 4. Contextualize “harm”: Define ruin in culturally plural terms, avoiding universal moral assumptions.
jaesonaras 1y ago
I know a few people are ruining democracy for us.
Nemo_bis 1y ago
Link to the actual paper on OSF (CC BY 4.0): https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/acbwg_v1 https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/acbwg_v1
Nemo_bis 1y ago
The title is funny. Yes of course it's all the fault of a few people, mostly big tech billionaires. (This holds true even if you like billionaires. Those with the most money have the most power, so they ought to be accountable for the results.)
nobodywillobsrv 1y ago
Very strange. I and some friends I have asked about this have found the opposite. Sure, IRL people are avoiding discussing anything that matters for the most part but then if something does matter, no matter how trivial, they often seem to be completely unable to put forth a coherent set of statements about whatever they think. Speaking to AIs and interacting with "trolls and bots" on the internet at least has a hard cut between the bad actors/bots and the real thinkers. My impression is that people who find "the internet" bad are simply not imagining that they are sampling a vast space of agents and of course if they simply stop at after the first 10 bad things they will stop pretty quickly. It's basically unbounded what you can find. You must accept that. I would be very interested in understanding more how people are classifying these two regimes in terms of them being "ruined" or not. Hearing the internet is "ruined" feels a bit like hearing "books are ruined" or something. It just seems bizarre. It is very easy to curate what you read. It is not so easy to curate real life encounters.
AbstractH24 1y ago
On the one hand, I feel like the fact that platforms are not just incentivized, but protected from liability from causing these things that is the source of all ills in society. On the other, why weren't newspapers hyping to increase circulation 50 years ago? Or were they?
- appreciatorBus 1y ago
  They absolutely were. Front page newspaper headlines were the bait to get you to buy, and not all dissimilar to rage bait tweets in their tactics. The differences in my opinion: - slower timescale - discourse and outage evolved over days and weeks instead of minutes and hours - much more muted feedback mechanism - sales numbers could not tell you which headline or article drove in particular conversion - much more muted comment mechanism - people could and did write letters to the editor, including idiots and assholes, but only a small percentage were ever printed. Those that were printed, were at the very least read by someone at the paper before being approved.
inemesitaffia 1y ago
Just particular Guardian writers
exiguus 1y ago
s/internet/world

113 points by pseudolus 1y ago

I tried smaller internet for discussion like lemmy and mastodon, it’s either boring or equally as toxic. Makes me think we’ve been conditioned to expect a ton of content and get upset easily. Both can be true. Blogs has been more interesting as often seen here.

asdff 1y ago
It is interesting seeing the shift in tone from when you drop into an old forum thread from 25 years ago vs a similar sort of discussion today. People tend to always take the contrary opinion and argue it to death. Sometimes I find myself even reflexively wanting to do that and I have to stop myself because what is even the point? Sure there would be people getting at it in the forums but it would usually be like 2 people going back and forth while everyone else sits back and waits for them to cool off or embarrass themselves. You get dogpiled today easily. Especially on systems with up and down votes, people get bathed in downvotes for valid but not-in-vogue-with-hivemind opinions. I'm not even talking about political stuff either but opinions on technical matters could devolve into people using the downvote button to disagree. Just tanks those opinions to the bottom of threads and makes it so the hivemind opinion is biased to be above the fold and perpetuated among more parrots. Happens on HN too where I see slightly faded comments for no real reason get piled on a lot, although at least votes are masked here which discourages some of that behavior.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  A good point. I handle the downvoted comments by 1) upvoting (but of course) but then also 2) adding a comment to the effect of "Hey, I upvoted you because ...". We've all seen the downvoted comment start to "fade back in" by doing this. Heck, I frequently even upvote greyed out comments I disagree with because I kind of root for the underdog anyway. Or, kind of as you say, think it is unfair (at least when the downvoted comment was sincere and not troll-bait or whatever). Personally I try to avoid downvoting a comment if I am unwilling to leave a comment as to why. This open the doors to my getting downvotes as well if I am off base. Regardless, watching my own comments get downvoted has been a good lesson for me. Sometimes I rethink my position ("Am I missing something here?") or, if nothing else, I rethink the tone I used ("Guess I need to make a better case next time — not come across so antagonistic."). (Corny examples, but you get the idea.)
  - oceanhaiyang 1y ago
    Getting downvoted constantly on Reddit for asking or answering technical questions in my field just made me not want to use it.
    - JKCalhoun 1y ago
      Thankfully, HN is a little cooler than that, I think.
      - oceanhaiyang 1y ago
        I mostly agree! I was surprised when I was downvoted once here. Didn’t even know that was a thing
AuthAuth 1y ago
Just like the article mentions, I've found that lemmy because much better once you block the handful of toxic users. Sure it doesnt have that much content but I dont need to scroll all day so it suits me.
Nemo_bis 1y ago
Mastodon v4+ replicates some of the issues with Twitter by giving prominence to highly followed accounts. This is considered "easier" for new users coming from elsewhere (in the sense it's easier to be bombarded with posts you didn't need, than to go look for what you actually need). The issue is tracked at https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18128 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18128 . So, even on Mastodon you still need some self-care. Avoid following popular accounts, block and silence generously.

nmstoker 1y ago

Link to the paper it's based on (by same author): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X24001313 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23522... Assuming the key points are valid (they seem reasonable), I'd argue that we'd probably be in a better position with social media if it weren't for the platforms taking on managing our interactions with others. If people had their own software/agents that would filter according to your own needs, we'd likely see less toxicity - but this comes tumbling down as I suspect the platforms would see a dent in their monetisation, and so naturally they wouldn't be in favour.

crop_rotation 1y ago
> If people had their own software/agents that would filter according to your own needs, we'd likely see less toxicity Isn't that just another echo bubble? Telegram doesn't manage interactions yet every large channel is just an echo bubble or a cesspit. IMHO most human beings are simply not ready for this ultrawide real time communication networks.

roscas 1y ago

Ads companies like google and facebook make their core business to put ads on your face. Same as, someone pays them loads of money for them to show you ads, so you can buy things you don't want or need. So when you use any of their "products", you are the product. This is nothing new. I hope that is not new to you. That said, their business spy also is good for spy agencies, so they take care of each other's business. And please don't ever say "social media" or "social plataforms" because those are not social. Those are indeed anti-social platforms. You can call them that. Take a look at twitter and what is has become. It was already bad.

andsoitis 1y ago

> produced enough content to create the false perceptions that many people were vaccine hesitant. Many many people were vaccine hesitant. It was not a false perception that many were hesitant. I spent a lot of time with friends and family convincing them how to think about the risks and to convince them to take the vaccine.

asdff 1y ago
Yeah long before covid people were vaccine hesitant too. You just didn't really see it come to a head until covid really forced those people out of the woodwork but they were there the whole time not doing their flu shot, not keeping up with their past shots, and doing bare minimum of immunizations for school.
- andsoitis 1y ago
  I think we’re talking about two different things. What I was trying to say is that many people (who are not vaccine skeptics), were hesitant to take a covid vaccine, and their hesitancy (contrary to the article’s assertion), was not due to a handful of people who spread misinformation.

deleted 1y ago

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daft_pink 1y ago

It’s pretty easy to cut yourself off from divisive content.

asdff 1y ago
If the answer is to just not use the internet that is basically like saying "broken arm? use the other one." The issue is that it didn't used to be this bad. You could browse a forum and not have it be shills or shill accounts farming points so as to not appear as shill accounts. It was a more personal world without people trying to market themselves as none of that was incentivized in any way at the time. People prolifically posting videos for all 43 viewers for years and you'd never see them turn the camera at their face. It got too big and then it became worth the investment to advertise in, the meta was established, and then that was that.
protocolture 1y ago
[flagged]
- daft_pink 1y ago
  Just mute or unfollow the divisive content. I’ve found it works pretty well and my FB is politics free.
  - protocolture 1y ago
    I went through a period of blocking and muting everything that pissed me off. The bedrock, that I cannot shift, is flat earth nonsense. I can block every flat earth page I see and there's always more. And largely the problem with flerf "content" is that it is so unoriginal. If it wasn't the same 10 arguments (soundly defeated) over and over again it might be interesting.
    - daft_pink 1y ago
      that’s so odd. I don’t think i’ve ever seen flat earth content. this reminds me of that seinfeld episode where the tivo thinks the character is gay.

jjangkke 1y ago

we live in a society where we can't really voice, our opinions or grievances towards specific groups or cultures or issues as it is deemed politically incorrect, so a lot of that has moved online, behind anonymity. Anonymity also plays an amplifying role. Larping as the target group and in many instances it becomes even easier to manipulate this much is true, but this is the price of forcing all of the healthy debates away from the off-line world because we fear offending. The contrast between the online off-line world that the author in the article alludes to is indicative of this. It's the unspoken role where we all know that speaking out has consequences often that impacts are economic well-being. There would be no way to get farm something for which there is no demand for...

doctorpangloss 1y ago
[flagged]
tokinonagare 1y ago
I agree, but even online is now heavily censored. It's harder and harder to find a place to express even slightly non-PC opinions. In my opinion this is not gonna produce good results in the long run.
- genghisjahn 1y ago
  What's a slightly non-pc opinion that's hard to find online?
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    I think there's a difference between an opinion being hard to find, and a place to express the opinion being hard to find. The more suppressed a view is, the more extreme the place where that view is allowed ends up being. Those places don't normally allow rational debate either. They're just a different kind of toxic, and have their own rules for what will get you dog piled.
    - 1y ago

jmugan 1y ago

I find it nearly impossible to avoid divisive content online. There are so many cool things in the world, but I can't find them because my timelines are all flooded with culture war. I wish I could find a platform that would listen to me when I say "show fewer posts like this."

ylee 1y ago

Nothing has changed since Jerry Pournelle wrote 40 years ago when discussing online forums: >I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's not always easy to do. This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The network's design has several flaws, most importantly no way for any central authority to completely delete posts (admins in moderated groups can only approve posts), since back in the late 1970s Usenet's designers expected that everyone with the werewithal to participate online would meet a minimum standard of behavior. Usenet has always had a spam problem, but as usage of the network declined as the rest of the Internet grew, spam's relative proportion of the overall traffic grew. That said, there are server- and client-side anti-spam tools of varying effectiveness. A related but bigger problem for Usenet is people with actual mental illness; think "50 year olds with undiagnosed autism". Usenet is such a niche network nowadays that there has to be meaningful motivation to participate, and if the motivation is not a sincere interest in the subject it's, in my experience, going to be people with very troubled personal lives which their online behavior reflects. Again, as overall traffic declined, their relative contribution and visibility grew. This, not spam, is what has mostly killed Usenet. [1] I am talking about traditional non-binary Usenet here

pinoy420 1y ago
[dead]
joecool1029 1y ago
>This, not spam, is what has mostly killed Usenet. Usenet had a nonstop spam generator called Google Groups that shit it up for years. It wasn't just intentional spam but clueless people came in through there and bumped 20+ year old threads. The other factor related to the decline was ISP's stopped bundling usenet service in the 2000's. There are sill a handful of active groups but unfortunately at least a third of the remaining active lost access when the Google spam service stopped.
- MichaelZuo 1y ago

k310 1y ago

Root cause. Advertising. Quantity wins. Quality loses. Founders are all greed and no scruples. Money is God. Illustration: (Emily's Quotes) https://emilysquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/capitalism-religion-bank-church-bankers-priest-wealth-heaven-greed-poverty-hell-rich-people-saints-poor-sinners-commodities-blessing-money-god-sad-mistake-life-intelligent-Miguel-D-Lewis.jpg https://emilysquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/capitali... The Internet's Original Sin It's not too late to ditch the ad-based business model and build a better web. [0] By Ethan Zuckerman The Internet Apologizes [1] Even those who designed our digital world are aghast at what they created. A breakdown of what went wrong — from the architects who built it. By Noah Kulwin [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/adver... [0] https://archive.is/NxfXW https://archive.is/NxfXW [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/an-apology-for-the-internet-from-the-people-who-built-it.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/an-apology-for-the-i...

JKCalhoun 1y ago
Since the article discusses the Algorithm that amplifies the trolls, your connecting it to advertising shouldn't be dismissed.
- k310 1y ago
  Clicks, clicks, no matter how you get them. The more the better. Anger works.

sublinear 1y ago

I think people forget that the same things happen offline. These arguments that blame anonymity or large groups are flimsy. Just think about how embarrassing some friends or family can be. Think about why you went online in the first place.

JKCalhoun 1y ago
I didn't go online to get away from a bigoted relative. To the contrary, the bigoted relative was no longer invited to various get togethers.
arp242 1y ago
The amount of people you can reach offline is quite small. In particular the amount of strangers you can reach is quite small. Online you can easily post several hundred times a day, and/or reach a huge audience.

fuzzfactor 1y ago

More than a few. And rising. The result of leveraging one-to-many persuasive marketing-type efforts until its footprint encroaches on an unleveraged many-to-many ecosystem bad enough to compromise former utility more & more as technology advances. As opposed to mainstream users who should be gaining more from the same underlying infrastructure as improvements in technology occur. Which should theoretically have continued happening but it got reversed by overwhelming force.

ileonichwiesz 1y ago

Outrage is the most valuable emotion a piece of online content can inspire. If you enjoy something, you’ll like/heart/upvote it and move on. But if it outrages you, chances are you’ll go straight to the comment section to argue. Maybe you’ll repost it with your own take to show everyone how much you disagree. More „engagement” = more time to shove ads in your face = a nice juicy bonus for the ad execs who run all the websites now.

HPsquared 1y ago
The word is "ragebait". In general there are a lot more "farming" type activities going on these days. Farming various kinds of engagement from different people, scientifically tuned much like in agriculture / animal husbandry. It's fascinating to watch unfold.

tolerance 1y ago

This article is rife with wishful thinking and honestly I don't know if society has ever been as harmonious as I feel like it alleges. As if there was a time where everyone just got along and things were great and you could get an egg cream for a quarter after the sock hop. I seriously question whether there was ever a time where the masses weren't influenced by "a few people", for better or worse. The numbers don't move me and can't be the sole arbitrator of truth when the direction of humanity is involved. So while I'm not surprised that people report feeling less inclined toward inflammatory media after disengaging it, I just don't believe that there is a grand collective that we can return to that is free from the influential few. The issue is that there are many masses and many fews at odds to find their pair and wont to view the others as the outrageous ones. People can hardly curate outfits at their own discretion. They're going to defer to people who are deferring to what amounts to a cell of 3-4 guys linked to a larger apparatus of taste to find out what to wear, what to watch and what to think. That's just the way it is. The average person is well-meaning and reasonable up unto the this eerie point in their life where they feel existentially threatened and thrust on the stage of public opinion for the criticism of others. So I think that suggesting that society isn't toxic in it's current form and all it is is that we're just viewing the world through this funhouse lens because of a few bad guys on social media is a conceited perspective because the world as it is indeed is a carnival of ideas surrounding the marketplace and the internet is its pavilion, not its public square. And to dare to suggest that there is in fact one single true direction for people to choose demands contending against all the goofy ways people are turning and admitting that things are as bad as they appear, in spite of whatever ways we can come up with to assume the good faith of the common man. The irony is that this same outlet will unapologetically make its bones off the incessant reporting on all the ways that society is under peril. Sometimes obscuring these reports with solicitations to fund this effort.

JKCalhoun 1y ago
I can only say that it is worse now than at any other time I have lived (I say this at 61 years old, white guy, FWIW). There's a complete lack of ... unity? Everything including the weather is now pigeon-holed into something political (and therefore "tribal"). Sock hops and the soda fountain were before my time, but I can speak for the 70's and say it was not this crazy. Nut jobs like The John Birch Society (just to pick on one group of the era) were not given a global megaphone. Say what you want about newspapers, etc. but the "Fourth Estate" had to earn reader's trust, could not expect to just act to inflame the fringe elements of society.

asdff 1y ago

The answer is yes, and also yes towards that question for most other media. The fact propaganda is an industry is the issue. As soon as you have a population of people of sufficient mass, it becomes worthwhile to invest in attempting to influence the mindshare in some way towards a profitable end. This will be true for as long as we make use of propaganda for selling products, controlling votes, and how people think and behave. People might think it is only for the masses, but given their individual value you can probably be sure that all influential people in this world are also propagandized into making decisions that benefit other latent interests. I'm not sure how you get out of the fact that game theory suggests there will always be people operating selfishly like this and reaping benefit from it as such. You see it in ecosystems too. It is a perfectly valid evolutionary strategy to learn to rob a nest vs making your own way. The question is how we balance these realities about our animal selves and even try and counter them for collectively beneficial reasons, that also won't just be subverted for someone else. Especially as technology grows to be more esoteric and powerful in the future.

jlaternman 1y ago

The author is describing the socially (and physically) destructive percentage of the population who just want to grab power through manipulation and control and the way they express this through social media, I believe (dark triad personality disorders, loosely). The only danger I see is an embrace of passivism in the form of “anyone who objects to things that are happening in passionate terms is the real problem.” Which would be even worse, when that percentage has real power, and real ability to pull levers. Not to say everyone should go around screaming or protesting with every tweet, etc. It's the balance of these things I think is off-kilter, not a simple solution “just act aloof and block the right people, and all will be well in the world, just like it is in Starbucks when I leave my apartment each morning.” In any case, that's my two cents. There's a balance to be struck, that this article doesn't really get at.

PaulHoule 1y ago
There is a lot of behavior online which I'd characterize as "hearing the dog whistles and barking" that when confront folks they will characterize it as "objecting to things in passionate terms" Like the Otaku described by Azuma [1] there is a definite regression in terms of the of use of language and ideology, essentially a reversion from a language-using animal which can create unlimited meanings by putting together a finite vocabulary in a grammatical system as opposed to words that have a meaning in and of itself. For instance, anti-resilience activists will run you out of some communities because you use the word "snowflake" because this is a dog whistle that makes them bark. With their lexicon of triggering words in hand you can talk about the dangers of anti-resilience all day and you're talking right past them. This style of communication is especially dangerous for marginalized communities because they create a bubble of false consensus that makes them think somebody agrees with them but doesn't do the hard work of explaining themselves and doing the even harder work of bringing about a change of heart across the society would be necessary to do something widespread and durable problems such as the mutual lack of respect between black Americans and the police. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Otaku-Database-Animals-Hiroki-Azuma/dp/0816653526 https://www.amazon.com/Otaku-Database-Animals-Hiroki-Azuma/d...

xg15 1y ago

> When I scroll through social media, I often leave demoralized, with the sense that the entire world is on fire and people are inflamed with hatred towards one another. Yet, when I step outside into the streets of New York City to grab a coffee or meet a friend for lunch, it feels downright tranquil. Alternative explanation: The online world is "real" and the real-life interactions are "fake", at least as far as political opinions are concerned. The social conventions for online and face-to-face interactions are still markedly different (with good reason). When face-to-face, we generally care a lot more about maintaining a pleasant conversational environment and usually avoid things that would insult or hurt the person we are talking with. The focus is also a lot more about everyday issues and a lot less about abstract political topics like it would be online. All of this means that face-to-face, we will probably talk a lot less about divisive political topics than we would do online. But it does not mean we have fewer opinions on those topics, only that we won't show them so easily. So it could be that the online discourse really is a truthful mirror of the political division of society, only that in real life, those divisions are much more hidden behind layers of politeness.

another_twist 1y ago
How does the alternate theory work ? The evidence here suggests that instigation on social media is usually targeted and limited to a handful of accounts. If it were indeed the case that people are more real online and more towards the right politically, then we shouldn't observe this concentration. It would be more diffused.
albumen 1y ago
Or, online discourse has polarised opinion through The Algorithm promoting inflammatory, divisive content. In real life, when people talk, they see the other person as a human with more understandable motivations, and tend to find a lot more common ground. So perhaps instead of "in real life, those divisions are much more hidden behind layers of politeness"; "in real life, divisions turn out to be largely illusory (or more moderate; or more understandable) once you get to know someone".
- scarface_74 1y ago

snitzr 1y ago

Zipf's law again!

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jongjong 1y ago

It's totally not true that only a small number of people are spreading all the contrarian ideas online. I remember where was some media coverage about 'The disinformation dozen' during COVID; what a load of rubbish. How can anyone believe this? In a world with billions of people connected to the internet, only 12 are spreading disinformation? This is impossible. There are surely at least 100 North Korean agents working full time being paid to spread non-stop disinformation... This is a really conservative guess. Now do that for every country who have a beef against the west you probably have tens of thousands of people being paid to spread disinformation. Then you probably have thousands of people spreading disinformation as a way to promote their books... Then you probably have millions of institutional insiders spreading various bits of contrarian information once in a while (which would be mislabeled as disinformation). It's not a small number of people either way. It's a LOT of people... Suggesting that it's only 12 people is comically wrong! I'm sorry but if you ever believed that, you need to adjust your worldview because you've been living in a bubble. It's not only physically impossible statistically, it's literally impossible to measure so you'd be wrong just for accepting any fixed number (let alone a tiny number)... The mainstream view is a simplified view and so there will always be people who can see fundamental flaws in parts of the mainstream argument because they have deeper knowledge on certain aspects than a journalist has. Mainstream news is written by journalists, they never know quite as much as the insiders. So anytime a news article is published, there will be a small number of people out there who know the full story and they will be surprised at the discrepancies between the story and their first-hand experience of it. If you're an expert in anything, it's likely a matter of time before you come across some media story about your field which you know doesn't quite correspond to reality. Once you experience that, it makes you doubt all media coverage of other fields too. It's just a fact that the media isn't fully accurate. It doesn't matter how reputable the organization is; they have a near monopoly so this allows them to add a lot of spin and make a lot of 'mistakes'.

Workaccount2 1y ago

Even more of a problem is journalists thinking twitter is an accurate portrayal of society.

lapphi 1y ago

I would love it if there were a part of the internet where a) one person = one account and non-person accounts were somehow labeled. Kind of how south korea does it. But you know, better. And b) i could block that one person on each platform with one click on all my accounts, including screenshots of their posts. In real life i know the person talking to me is a unique individual and not one of several duplicate persons bc of physical limitations. Wishful thinking: we are reaching that point where AI could solve this instead of AI just making the issue worse.

another_twist 1y ago

Technical question - they say people felt 23pc less animosity. Assuming their measurements are okay, what would the statistical power of this experiment ? I dont think they report a null hypothesis.

bxparks 1y ago
Can you explain why you wrote '23pc' instead of using the '23%' that was used in the article? It is confusing to me. I had never seen 'pc' used as a short hand for percent (%) until recently in an article (can't remember where), where they used 'pc' repeatedly. Unfortunately the article was also talking about the 'pence' of money, so I found it impossible to figure out from context whether they were talking about a 'pence' or a 'percent'. In the US, I have seen 'pct' used instead of '%', but not too frequently. I had never seen 'pc' used until recently.
- another_twist 1y ago
  I think because its easier to type this on the alphabet keyboard.
- lutusp 1y ago
  > I had never seen 'pc' used as a short hand for percent (%) until recently in an article (can't remember where), where they used 'pc' repeatedly. A couple of possibilities: * For plain-text content that might migrate into a Web page (or emanate from a Web page), the special meaning of '%' in that context might motivate some to avoid the character entirely. * When typing on a cell phone, one may want to avoid '%' because it often requires shifting to an alternate character set, typing a non-alpha character, then shifting back. Still, as you point out, it's confusing.
  - fuzzfactor 1y ago
    Old habits die hard. Teletypes didn't start out with a % symblol.
lutusp 1y ago

nomdep 1y ago

How ironic coming from The Guardian, a big source of rage bait

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

GuB-42 1y ago

There are many instances where a few people are ruining the internet for the rest of us. And for me it is mostly about security. I'd rather do without all that encryption and passwords and security updates and anti-viruses. All that to prevent a few people from messing with us. Hateful people on social media? They are annoying, but at least, I can ignore them.

syeare 1y ago

Is it really the "few people" ruining it for the "rest of us"? Or is it moreso that the "rest" of the people are ruining it for the "few of us"?

vicurve 1y ago

If we bring up HN is it against the guidelines?

alganet 1y ago

> Yet, when I step outside into the streets of New York City to grab a coffee or meet a friend for lunch, it feels downright tranquil. I think you're in for a surprise in the next few decades. EDIT: what am I even saying? The article comes from an UK media outlet, they should fully know by now that toxic behavior in the real world cannot be separated from media exposure. This is uncanny. > The contrast between the online world and my daily reality has only gotten more jarring. One or two generations immersed in primarily online activity will change your opinion about how safe the real world is from toxic behavior. > In a paper I recently published [...] Paywalled. > we paid people a few dollars to unfollow the most divisive political accounts on X For a psychology study, I fail to see how you considered the full mechanism of incentives behind their choice. If the paper was open, I would look for a control group in the study. Was there even one? > Platforms could easily redesign their algorithms to stop promoting the most outrageous voices. No, they can't. If you are putting your hope on that prospect, I think you are insane. It's not even about will, it cannot be done.

bell-cot 1y ago

For those less familiar with history - it's really nothing new for a micro-minority to abuse mass media access and human nature to spread lies and malice for fame, fun, market share, and profit. An iconic example, from the late 1800's - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...

throwaway81523 1y ago

This is about online trolls entoxifying (toxificating? whatever) social media. I thought it was going to be about AI scrapers causing captcha walls to appear in front of everything. The trolls are easier to ignore.

lutusp 1y ago

> In a recent series of experiments, we paid people a few dollars to unfollow the most divisive political accounts on X. This is instructive. It suggests that, unless they get paid, people aren't inclined to unfollow conversations that are destructive or misleading. It supports the idea that, over time, toxic conversations naturally attract an increasing number of followers. In the old Usenet days, apart from the few moderated forums, there was no mechanism to remove trolls/ideologues, consequently it made the Wild West resemble a tea party by comparison. In modern times, everything is different, yet everything is the same. Those who operate online forums have every incentive to tolerate abusive participants, because they attract people to the platform, to see ads. My favorite story about this comes from Howard Stern, a so-called "shock jock". Owners of radio stations began to worry that Stern's bizarre content would drive people away. But audience studies discovered something: people who agreed with Stern stayed tuned in, just to hear what he would say next. And people who disagreed with Stern ... wait for it ... also stayed tuned in, to hear what he would say next. This may seem orthogonal, but it seems people don't learn debate rules in school any more. If debate rules were enforced online, it would kill off much of the toxic content, but would greatly reduce the number of participants. Imagine a world where trolls are expelled from fora because they refuse to address any legitimate topic, preferring personal attacks and other logical fallacies, behavior that would get them expelled from a formal college debate. But I may expect too much. We're talking about a population of average intelligence, the same people who asked Dave Brubeck "How many musicians are in your quartet?"

musicale 1y ago

> Platforms could easily redesign their algorithms to stop promoting the most outrageous voices and prioritise more representative or nuanced content. By de-prioritizing "engagement" perhaps? Possibly a good idea, but the incentives of an advertising-based business model seem to be in direct opposition to doing so.

gumaflux 1y ago

Counter arguments Social media isn’t monolithically harmful The article suggests a small group ruins the internet, but this ignores research showing social platforms also democratize discourse, enabling civic engagement and marginalized voices. Not all online “distortion” amounts to damage While the piece emphasizes filter bubbles and radical users, algorithmic content curation exists in print and broadcast media too—these are framing tools, not always societal toxins. Logical leaps undermine its claims The Guardian implies isolated incidents escalate to systemic ruin—this mirrors slippery-slope reasoning. Without data demonstrating measurable harm (e.g., polarization metrics), it remains speculative. Forces of good are often overlooked Platforms frequently host prosocial behavior, from mental health communities to humanitarian fundraising—yet the article omits these evidence-backed positives. Assumes a universal “ruin” standard By framing a few actors as “ruining the internet,” the article treats degradation as a one-size-fits-all harm. But norms vary culturally—with differences in how “ruin” is perceived. Some gaps 1. Integrate empirical data: Use actual trends in polarization, mental health outcomes, or misinformation impact, instead of anecdotal evidence. 2. Compare with legacy media: Acknowledge traditional media distortions to avoid caricaturing social platforms uniquely. 3. Balance the picture: Highlight both negative and positive digital outcomes for nuance. 4. Contextualize “harm”: Define ruin in culturally plural terms, avoiding universal moral assumptions.

jaesonaras 1y ago

I know a few people are ruining democracy for us.

Nemo_bis 1y ago

Link to the actual paper on OSF (CC BY 4.0): https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/acbwg_v1 https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/acbwg_v1

Nemo_bis 1y ago

The title is funny. Yes of course it's all the fault of a few people, mostly big tech billionaires. (This holds true even if you like billionaires. Those with the most money have the most power, so they ought to be accountable for the results.)

nobodywillobsrv 1y ago

Very strange. I and some friends I have asked about this have found the opposite. Sure, IRL people are avoiding discussing anything that matters for the most part but then if something does matter, no matter how trivial, they often seem to be completely unable to put forth a coherent set of statements about whatever they think. Speaking to AIs and interacting with "trolls and bots" on the internet at least has a hard cut between the bad actors/bots and the real thinkers. My impression is that people who find "the internet" bad are simply not imagining that they are sampling a vast space of agents and of course if they simply stop at after the first 10 bad things they will stop pretty quickly. It's basically unbounded what you can find. You must accept that. I would be very interested in understanding more how people are classifying these two regimes in terms of them being "ruined" or not. Hearing the internet is "ruined" feels a bit like hearing "books are ruined" or something. It just seems bizarre. It is very easy to curate what you read. It is not so easy to curate real life encounters.

AbstractH24 1y ago

On the one hand, I feel like the fact that platforms are not just incentivized, but protected from liability from causing these things that is the source of all ills in society. On the other, why weren't newspapers hyping to increase circulation 50 years ago? Or were they?

appreciatorBus 1y ago
They absolutely were. Front page newspaper headlines were the bait to get you to buy, and not all dissimilar to rage bait tweets in their tactics. The differences in my opinion: - slower timescale - discourse and outage evolved over days and weeks instead of minutes and hours - much more muted feedback mechanism - sales numbers could not tell you which headline or article drove in particular conversion - much more muted comment mechanism - people could and did write letters to the editor, including idiots and assholes, but only a small percentage were ever printed. Those that were printed, were at the very least read by someone at the paper before being approved.

inemesitaffia 1y ago

Just particular Guardian writers

exiguus 1y ago

s/internet/world