6 ms·

This Story Stinks

83 points by mxfh 14y ago

mxfh 14y ago
Full article: Crude Comments and Concern: Online Incivility's Effect on Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12009/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12009/full
redschell 14y ago
The idea of constant social feedback on just about everything brought this classic short story by the late John McCarthy to mind: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby...
nemesisj 14y ago
This article could be retitled to "Why Fox News and Right Wing Talk Radio is so Effective". Injecting constant insults and rage into commentary is the secret ingredient.
- protomyth 14y ago
  "Why MSNBC and Left Wing TV Shows are so Effective" This is not new (go look at some of the early Presidential elections - 1800 is a good start). The only real difference is that science and technology have advanced and people's understanding hasn't kept up. We now have a lot more people commenting on things with whole services built for it. Its kissing cousin is the "Link Bait Headline". Its basically an aggressive comment used as a title naming some items or concepts people hold dear.
CleanedStar 14y ago
From September of 2001 to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 the New York Times treated the world with fabricated story after story about WMDs in Iraq, by way of Judith Miller, by way of dedicated liar Ahmed Chalabi, whose fairy tales the New York Times saw fit to print on its front page time and time again. I kind of like the idea that the vox populi can call them for their BS under their articles. Of course comments are still invisible until approved by a moderator. Incidentally, Chalabi went to MIT and studied under Whitfield Diffie, of Diffie-Hellman key exchange fame.
friendly_chap 14y ago
"Then someone invented “reader comments” and paradise was lost". Of course the paradise was lost for the oppressing media. Long live the internet. "Comments from some readers, our research shows, can significantly distort what other readers think was reported in the first place" Research would show that your lies significantly distort what readers think in the first place. "But as they say, the genie is out of the bottle." You would happily undo this whole internet thingie, wouldn't you?
- lutze 14y ago
  Yeah seriously. This guy just lauded the internet as a bastion of debate, and then in the same breath bemoaned the fact that the dirty proles get to talk back. It's not a "debate" if other people don't get a say, it's propaganda...
  - jasonlotito 14y ago
    He's not referring to debates as being the problem. Quite the contrary: "In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments." Civility does not mean blindly agreeing. It means just that: acting civil. However, what he does argue against is rudeness and insults. Essentially, not debating, but slinging mud. "Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought." Simply put, you can act civil even if you disagree. This does provide value. However, when that civility is removed, the results are polarizing. If you can't see the benefits of civil debate, you are an idiot.
    - friendly_chap 14y ago
      Your last sentence ruined it, seriously.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
carleverett 14y ago
Hacker news is a great haven for this. I don't know of any other place on the internet where such a large portion of the comments are constructive, civil, and enlightening. It really adds a ton of value to the content itself. Such a shame that most of the internet is better off just turning the comments off.
- MaysonL 14y ago
  See Bill McBride's real estate & economics blog Calculated Risk : there's a community of (mostly) civil, amusing, and knowledgeable commenters.
- return0 14y ago
  The key is the limited community. Comments are great when the community is oriented towards something. Generic type comments, just like generic type social media are useless. In extreme cases, like youtube, the comments severely degrade the quality of the site (try using a youtube comment blocker).
- jamesjporter 14y ago
  Less Wrong (http://lesswrong.com/ http://lesswrong.com/) is another topically focused online community with civil and interesting discussion.
whiddershins 14y ago
But I never read the comments on a news story ... do most people read them? That is unaddressed in the article.
- paganel 14y ago
  I usually do, not all of them, mind you, but at least the highest ranking comments. For example that's how I found out that former Italian PM Mario Monti wasn't that much of a "success" in his home country two months ago, by reading the top online comments in an Italian newspaper. My only tangent with the Italian political life was through newspapers and magazines like The Economist, FT or NYT, and they all were painting a pretty rosy picture of his job. Sure enough, come election time he got handily defeated.
quaunaut 14y ago
When I made this comment, it should be noted that most of the comments were pretty negative toward the NYT in particular. Not paying attention to the publisher, I've gotta say that I find myself agreeing more often than not. Sometimes, comments do great- but anything above a readership in a couple hundred thousand, and suddenly it all goes to hell. You'll get a mix of misunderstanding, people inserting their own bias, memetic derailing bullshit, and a whole lot of people who think they're experts, for whatever poor reason they found. This isn't because they're trolls, or horrible people; We all have done it. We all do it. It's being human. But the problem is, finding the signal in all that noise is just impossible given our current means of filtering. Different outlets have tried different ways of getting people to put more thoughts behind their posts- requiring real names, Facebook accounts, hell, entire companies like Disqus have sprung up for the exact purpose of trying to foster better conversations. And while they all make a decent change, none of them even solve a quarter of the problem. About the only solution I've ever seen, is heavy-handed moderation. But that opens you up to 'censorship' comments, as we've seen here. Personally, I can't help but feel like maybe it'd be better if real, substantive stories and opinion pieces just didn't have comments; If a person wants to respond, let them go through the effort of making their own blog post, and addressing the author with it on Twitter or in e-mail. It'd certainly lead to more productive conversation. It's partly why I wish there were more intellectually-minded Tumblr accounts, as their format for this is perfect, with reblogging. This isn't to say comments are all bad, or that they don't serve a purpose. Just that sometimes, all this social doesn't actually produce better content.
- Metapony 14y ago
  Didn't William Gibson foresee the need for a "shared killfile"?
- edwardunknown 14y ago
  The Reddit voting system works fine. On both Reddit and HN I usually learn more from the comments than the actual article, but I still wouldn't want comments in the New York Times. Heavy handed censorship turns rude commenters who should be simply ignored into internet terrorists, Facebook comments dilutes the conversation by making people self consciously edit themselves and Twitter or Tumblr replies are like shouting into the wind. Good old semi-anonymous Reddit comments still perform though, even with a user base of millions of bratty kids the best stuff usually floats to the top.
logn 14y ago
This is what happens when people don't trust newspapers (for good reason).
- jasonlotito 14y ago
  Pretty sure this has nothing do with with trusting newspapers and everything to do with human nature. It's easier to call someone an idiot than simply disagree with them and explain why. Couple that with the immediacy and anonymous nature of the internet, and you give a lot more lazy people the ability to offer their opinion, even if it's nothing more than mindless drivel. People have always disagreed with newspapers. It's just that prior to the internet, the overhead to respond was much higher.
  - logn 14y ago
    My thinking was just that the efficacy of nasty comments is probably higher when you have readers who don't trust a publication, the writers, or editors. I think a lot of people assume newspapers are politically biased, but in reality I think they are biased by their desire to appear non-biased, their goal to go easy on people to get further interviews/access with them, and also their role as the mouthpiece for corporations and entrenched government power.
    - jasonlotito 14y ago
      > My thinking was just that the efficacy of nasty comments is probably higher when you have readers who don't trust a publication, the writers, or editors. I disagree. Oh, I'm sure if you dislike the source, you are more apt to dismiss them. What I disagree with is the nature of these comments and who they are coming from. Nasty comments are most likely coming from people who disagree with the premise presented in the article, not who is writing the article. There is also the study that shows that other comments will induce you into taking one side or another. Any comment you make can easily be just as volatile. Point is, the epidemic has nothing to do with the source, but rather, the message. I do not have enough faith that all those nasty comments are from people who've done proper research into what reporters and newspapers strive to do. In the end, it's easier to blame someone else for your failings at civility.
JulianMorrison 14y ago
Comments on the same site as the article are a terrible idea. It basically allows every green-ink shouty idiot to undermine what's being said, in a way that gives them huge undeserved prominence. Just because you said something to the NY Times, does not mean you deserve to be published in the NY Times. The internet permits you to reply to anything - get a tumblr. If your opinions are valued, you will attract a following.
bjourne 14y ago
"Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought." That would mean that, the best way to influence people is to use expletives. If it's true then there's no wonder so many people are rude on the internet - it's the best way to get your message across!
binarymax 14y ago
Fascinating results indeed. Suppose you are a competitor or have some vested interest in a specific product failing/not being well received. You could poison the comments section in the articles that report on said product, using an army of sock puppets...thereby potentially turning any article into propaganda that works for you.
- Semaphor 14y ago
  But that's not what the evildoer can learn from this article. He probably has those sockpuppets already. What is new, is that he now needs to tell them to curse, use ad hominem and generally be unfriendly.
Semaphor 14y ago
Another interesting thing, if you include a somewhat negative remark about something the readers care deeply about at the beginning of your article, something like "paradise was lost because of reader comments", most people will ignore the content of the article and just argue about that part. As evidenced right now here on HN.
NotUncivil 14y ago
So the lesson here might be to never visit 4chan's board on technology [1] and the like? [1] https://boards.4chan.org/g/ https://boards.4chan.org/g/ (NSFW)
mitmads 14y ago
In sites like Amazon.com, comments and reviews have a big influence on the consumers. No wonder Yelp was built on reviews.
d4vlx 14y ago
The tea party uses this to great effect. At one point they had training sessions where they would encourage people to go online and post canned comments in an attempt to discredit and delegitimize their political opponents. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGB8Uuffi4M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGB8Uuffi4M

83 points by mxfh 14y ago

mxfh 14y ago

Full article: Crude Comments and Concern: Online Incivility's Effect on Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12009/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12009/full

redschell 14y ago

The idea of constant social feedback on just about everything brought this classic short story by the late John McCarthy to mind: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby...

nemesisj 14y ago

This article could be retitled to "Why Fox News and Right Wing Talk Radio is so Effective". Injecting constant insults and rage into commentary is the secret ingredient.

protomyth 14y ago
"Why MSNBC and Left Wing TV Shows are so Effective" This is not new (go look at some of the early Presidential elections - 1800 is a good start). The only real difference is that science and technology have advanced and people's understanding hasn't kept up. We now have a lot more people commenting on things with whole services built for it. Its kissing cousin is the "Link Bait Headline". Its basically an aggressive comment used as a title naming some items or concepts people hold dear.

CleanedStar 14y ago

From September of 2001 to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 the New York Times treated the world with fabricated story after story about WMDs in Iraq, by way of Judith Miller, by way of dedicated liar Ahmed Chalabi, whose fairy tales the New York Times saw fit to print on its front page time and time again. I kind of like the idea that the vox populi can call them for their BS under their articles. Of course comments are still invisible until approved by a moderator. Incidentally, Chalabi went to MIT and studied under Whitfield Diffie, of Diffie-Hellman key exchange fame.

friendly_chap 14y ago

"Then someone invented “reader comments” and paradise was lost". Of course the paradise was lost for the oppressing media. Long live the internet. "Comments from some readers, our research shows, can significantly distort what other readers think was reported in the first place" Research would show that your lies significantly distort what readers think in the first place. "But as they say, the genie is out of the bottle." You would happily undo this whole internet thingie, wouldn't you?

lutze 14y ago
Yeah seriously. This guy just lauded the internet as a bastion of debate, and then in the same breath bemoaned the fact that the dirty proles get to talk back. It's not a "debate" if other people don't get a say, it's propaganda...
- jasonlotito 14y ago
  He's not referring to debates as being the problem. Quite the contrary: "In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments." Civility does not mean blindly agreeing. It means just that: acting civil. However, what he does argue against is rudeness and insults. Essentially, not debating, but slinging mud. "Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought." Simply put, you can act civil even if you disagree. This does provide value. However, when that civility is removed, the results are polarizing. If you can't see the benefits of civil debate, you are an idiot.
  - friendly_chap 14y ago
    Your last sentence ruined it, seriously.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]

carleverett 14y ago

Hacker news is a great haven for this. I don't know of any other place on the internet where such a large portion of the comments are constructive, civil, and enlightening. It really adds a ton of value to the content itself. Such a shame that most of the internet is better off just turning the comments off.

MaysonL 14y ago
See Bill McBride's real estate & economics blog Calculated Risk : there's a community of (mostly) civil, amusing, and knowledgeable commenters.
return0 14y ago
The key is the limited community. Comments are great when the community is oriented towards something. Generic type comments, just like generic type social media are useless. In extreme cases, like youtube, the comments severely degrade the quality of the site (try using a youtube comment blocker).
jamesjporter 14y ago
Less Wrong (http://lesswrong.com/ http://lesswrong.com/) is another topically focused online community with civil and interesting discussion.

whiddershins 14y ago

But I never read the comments on a news story ... do most people read them? That is unaddressed in the article.

paganel 14y ago
I usually do, not all of them, mind you, but at least the highest ranking comments. For example that's how I found out that former Italian PM Mario Monti wasn't that much of a "success" in his home country two months ago, by reading the top online comments in an Italian newspaper. My only tangent with the Italian political life was through newspapers and magazines like The Economist, FT or NYT, and they all were painting a pretty rosy picture of his job. Sure enough, come election time he got handily defeated.

quaunaut 14y ago

When I made this comment, it should be noted that most of the comments were pretty negative toward the NYT in particular. Not paying attention to the publisher, I've gotta say that I find myself agreeing more often than not. Sometimes, comments do great- but anything above a readership in a couple hundred thousand, and suddenly it all goes to hell. You'll get a mix of misunderstanding, people inserting their own bias, memetic derailing bullshit, and a whole lot of people who think they're experts, for whatever poor reason they found. This isn't because they're trolls, or horrible people; We all have done it. We all do it. It's being human. But the problem is, finding the signal in all that noise is just impossible given our current means of filtering. Different outlets have tried different ways of getting people to put more thoughts behind their posts- requiring real names, Facebook accounts, hell, entire companies like Disqus have sprung up for the exact purpose of trying to foster better conversations. And while they all make a decent change, none of them even solve a quarter of the problem. About the only solution I've ever seen, is heavy-handed moderation. But that opens you up to 'censorship' comments, as we've seen here. Personally, I can't help but feel like maybe it'd be better if real, substantive stories and opinion pieces just didn't have comments; If a person wants to respond, let them go through the effort of making their own blog post, and addressing the author with it on Twitter or in e-mail. It'd certainly lead to more productive conversation. It's partly why I wish there were more intellectually-minded Tumblr accounts, as their format for this is perfect, with reblogging. This isn't to say comments are all bad, or that they don't serve a purpose. Just that sometimes, all this social doesn't actually produce better content.

Metapony 14y ago
Didn't William Gibson foresee the need for a "shared killfile"?
edwardunknown 14y ago
The Reddit voting system works fine. On both Reddit and HN I usually learn more from the comments than the actual article, but I still wouldn't want comments in the New York Times. Heavy handed censorship turns rude commenters who should be simply ignored into internet terrorists, Facebook comments dilutes the conversation by making people self consciously edit themselves and Twitter or Tumblr replies are like shouting into the wind. Good old semi-anonymous Reddit comments still perform though, even with a user base of millions of bratty kids the best stuff usually floats to the top.

logn 14y ago

This is what happens when people don't trust newspapers (for good reason).

jasonlotito 14y ago
Pretty sure this has nothing do with with trusting newspapers and everything to do with human nature. It's easier to call someone an idiot than simply disagree with them and explain why. Couple that with the immediacy and anonymous nature of the internet, and you give a lot more lazy people the ability to offer their opinion, even if it's nothing more than mindless drivel. People have always disagreed with newspapers. It's just that prior to the internet, the overhead to respond was much higher.
- logn 14y ago
  My thinking was just that the efficacy of nasty comments is probably higher when you have readers who don't trust a publication, the writers, or editors. I think a lot of people assume newspapers are politically biased, but in reality I think they are biased by their desire to appear non-biased, their goal to go easy on people to get further interviews/access with them, and also their role as the mouthpiece for corporations and entrenched government power.
  - jasonlotito 14y ago
    > My thinking was just that the efficacy of nasty comments is probably higher when you have readers who don't trust a publication, the writers, or editors. I disagree. Oh, I'm sure if you dislike the source, you are more apt to dismiss them. What I disagree with is the nature of these comments and who they are coming from. Nasty comments are most likely coming from people who disagree with the premise presented in the article, not who is writing the article. There is also the study that shows that other comments will induce you into taking one side or another. Any comment you make can easily be just as volatile. Point is, the epidemic has nothing to do with the source, but rather, the message. I do not have enough faith that all those nasty comments are from people who've done proper research into what reporters and newspapers strive to do. In the end, it's easier to blame someone else for your failings at civility.

JulianMorrison 14y ago

Comments on the same site as the article are a terrible idea. It basically allows every green-ink shouty idiot to undermine what's being said, in a way that gives them huge undeserved prominence. Just because you said something to the NY Times, does not mean you deserve to be published in the NY Times. The internet permits you to reply to anything - get a tumblr. If your opinions are valued, you will attract a following.

bjourne 14y ago

"Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought." That would mean that, the best way to influence people is to use expletives. If it's true then there's no wonder so many people are rude on the internet - it's the best way to get your message across!

binarymax 14y ago

Fascinating results indeed. Suppose you are a competitor or have some vested interest in a specific product failing/not being well received. You could poison the comments section in the articles that report on said product, using an army of sock puppets...thereby potentially turning any article into propaganda that works for you.

Semaphor 14y ago
But that's not what the evildoer can learn from this article. He probably has those sockpuppets already. What is new, is that he now needs to tell them to curse, use ad hominem and generally be unfriendly.

Semaphor 14y ago

Another interesting thing, if you include a somewhat negative remark about something the readers care deeply about at the beginning of your article, something like "paradise was lost because of reader comments", most people will ignore the content of the article and just argue about that part. As evidenced right now here on HN.

NotUncivil 14y ago

So the lesson here might be to never visit 4chan's board on technology [1] and the like? [1] https://boards.4chan.org/g/ https://boards.4chan.org/g/ (NSFW)

mitmads 14y ago

In sites like Amazon.com, comments and reviews have a big influence on the consumers. No wonder Yelp was built on reviews.

d4vlx 14y ago

The tea party uses this to great effect. At one point they had training sessions where they would encourage people to go online and post canned comments in an attempt to discredit and delegitimize their political opponents. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGB8Uuffi4M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGB8Uuffi4M