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by ethbro
3320 days ago
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> social control through targeted propaganda That's more along the lines of what I was talking about. Albeit from a double-edged sword perspective and with an emphasis on passive rather than active influence. Anonymity / lack of consequences causes individuals to do certain things, yes. But above and in addition to that, I'd say the nature of their network connectivity (e.g. none, newspaper, coffee shop, phone, app, etc) also fundamentally influences the behavior you get in aggregate. Or, to put it another way, we could design a network that caused everyone to become an asshole, just as we could design one that caused everyone to become an angel. Without the levers of totalitarianism, realistic outcomes are probably between those two extremes. But how we connect people still strongly influences their experiences and behavior. |
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> Or, to put it another way, we could design a network that caused everyone to become an asshole, just as we could design one that caused everyone to become an angel.
Well, one could do that as described above. But then, who gets to define "asshole" and "angel"? The Internet is becoming increasingly fragmented, with each culture attempting to impose standards. I can not imagine a common standard for the Internet.
> Without the levers of totalitarianism, realistic outcomes are probably between those two extremes. But how we connect people still strongly influences their experiences and behavior.
I prefer relatively totalitarian forums, such as HN and Wilders. I do occasionally lose it, and get spanked. But that's cool, in order to have discussions that are civil and interesting. The rules for some forums seem crazy to me, so I avoid them.
But overall, I believe that, by default, the Internet should be anonymous and censorship-free. As a global agora. If that leads some to be assholes, so be it. Because it's the next step for humanity.
Basically, we need to learn how to ignore the assholes. I mean, who cares what people say in alt.talk.bestiality? Or post on Encyclopedia Dramatica? The problem has been seeing that bullshit migrate to Facebook and Twitter, and visible to the naive and susceptible.
It is a hard problem. But it's not a new one. Many countries became chaotic during industrialization, as the masses moved from farms to cities, and were less constrained socially. But that was transient. So we just need the Internet equivalent.