It's the ads and the bot farms. And the weaponisation for political ends.
There are corners of the Internet where people meet on smaller forums to talk about subjects of mutual interest, and those remain functional and interesting, sometimes even polite.
Once I've seen a website where you couldn't downvote, only upvote. That was actually a great thing, because it promoted posts that at least a significant portion of people agreed with, not just posts that simply everyone agrees with.
Just like in the real world, commercialized social spaces descend into manipulation and hollowness. Social spaces online that aren’t (very) commercial, like this one, can work well enough.
It seems like paid communities might do a little better than the rest by filtering out bots and people who would rather not torch cash and get banned repeatedly each time they misbehave.
Yeah, I've been sadly thinking about similar things. Something like a web-forum where it costs $1 to signup, and your account gets active after a day. Would serve as an automatic "You're 18" since regulations around that seems to be creeping up, and would hopefully lower the amount of abuse as people have to spend actual money to get an account.
It just sucks because there are plenty of sub-18 year old folks who are amazing and more grown up than people above 18, not everyone who has access to making internet payments and also not everyone has the means to even spend $1 on something non-essential.
Not sure if there is anything in-between "completely open and abuse-friendly" and "closed castle for section of the world population" that reduces the abuse but allow most humans on the planet.
And people that are not in the "cool kids" group are economically disadvantaged because, even if their contributions are valued, they get on the offside with the powers that be?
When you have people with power over someone else, power to ban, power to economically injure, you end up, almost without fail, with sycophantic groupings.
People only praise those with the power, and anyone foolish enough to disagree, no matter how accurate, are punished.
I'm not so sure. Every so often I browse Metafilter (remember Metafilter?) out of morbid fascination, and it's a total trainwreck. I don't think it's a model for success.
When I first started using Usenet, a couple of decades ago now, I initially thought that everyone was like-minded, and polite, but then discovered that all the political noise that we now see on Social Media.
That is, there's not actually anything new in that political discourse (literally, it was all libertarians, gun lovers and free speechers threatening/bullying anyone that disagreed with them then, like it is now)
> I have often wondered why such a thing hasn't arisen again, on things like twitter.
We still have "flame wars" I think, they're just less intelligent, is more about spamming than insulting, and is often called "brigading" instead, basically one community trying to "overrun" another community one way or another.
There’s a tipping point in community size where the dynamic changes from personal relationships and actual discussion to parasocial broadcasting of some kind of consensus opinions.
It's the ads and the bot farms. And the weaponisation for political ends.
There are corners of the Internet where people meet on smaller forums to talk about subjects of mutual interest, and those remain functional and interesting, sometimes even polite.
It's sorting by score rather than anything else, in my experience. Makes it largely opinion-forming on the participants.
Once I've seen a website where you couldn't downvote, only upvote. That was actually a great thing, because it promoted posts that at least a significant portion of people agreed with, not just posts that simply everyone agrees with.
2 replies →
Just like in the real world, commercialized social spaces descend into manipulation and hollowness. Social spaces online that aren’t (very) commercial, like this one, can work well enough.
HN is just as much of an echo-chamber as anywhere else. You just like the opinions being echoed.
6 replies →
It seems like paid communities might do a little better than the rest by filtering out bots and people who would rather not torch cash and get banned repeatedly each time they misbehave.
> It seems like paid communities
Yeah, I've been sadly thinking about similar things. Something like a web-forum where it costs $1 to signup, and your account gets active after a day. Would serve as an automatic "You're 18" since regulations around that seems to be creeping up, and would hopefully lower the amount of abuse as people have to spend actual money to get an account.
It just sucks because there are plenty of sub-18 year old folks who are amazing and more grown up than people above 18, not everyone who has access to making internet payments and also not everyone has the means to even spend $1 on something non-essential.
Not sure if there is anything in-between "completely open and abuse-friendly" and "closed castle for section of the world population" that reduces the abuse but allow most humans on the planet.
4 replies →
And people that are not in the "cool kids" group are economically disadvantaged because, even if their contributions are valued, they get on the offside with the powers that be?
When you have people with power over someone else, power to ban, power to economically injure, you end up, almost without fail, with sycophantic groupings.
People only praise those with the power, and anyone foolish enough to disagree, no matter how accurate, are punished.
1 reply →
I'm not so sure. Every so often I browse Metafilter (remember Metafilter?) out of morbid fascination, and it's a total trainwreck. I don't think it's a model for success.
When I first started using Usenet, a couple of decades ago now, I initially thought that everyone was like-minded, and polite, but then discovered that all the political noise that we now see on Social Media.
That is, there's not actually anything new in that political discourse (literally, it was all libertarians, gun lovers and free speechers threatening/bullying anyone that disagreed with them then, like it is now)
There were even "wars" - the Meow Wars were long dead history when I were a Usenetter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meow_Wars
I have often wondered why such a thing hasn't arisen again, on things like twitter.
> I have often wondered why such a thing hasn't arisen again, on things like twitter.
We still have "flame wars" I think, they're just less intelligent, is more about spamming than insulting, and is often called "brigading" instead, basically one community trying to "overrun" another community one way or another.
1 reply →
I never heard of the Meow Wars, but I do remember antiorp, a net-art mailing list disruption organisation:
https://everything2.com/title/antiorp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netochka_Nezvanova_(author)
EDIT: clarity
I think the small-ish communities, where it's really people who are enthusiastic about the same topic, are often great.
It's when they become bigger that the crappy echo chamber begins.
There’s a tipping point in community size where the dynamic changes from personal relationships and actual discussion to parasocial broadcasting of some kind of consensus opinions.