[pythonistic]

Over the years, we've seen reddit increasingly turn into an echo chamber. I've been personally voted down for telling people in a general subreddit that the anger they feel about ${Political Party A} is the same way that the opposition feels about ${Political Party B}.

What mechanisms are you planning to implement to, for lack of a better phrase, increase exposure to and improve tolerance of different points of view? Is strict moderation the only way to keep groups, or entire sites, from becoming friendly to only one point of view?

[Deimorz]

This is definitely one of the most difficult aspects, and already something that we've had some good discussions about on Tildes. There are some people involved already that have been moderators of some of the really divisive subreddits, and I've also had a lot of conversations over the last year with mods from subreddits that work very hard to promote civil discussions even on controversial topics - places like /r/ChangeMyView and /r/AskHistorians.

In terms of pure mechanisms, there are a few things. Tildes doesn't have any downvoting, so that alone takes a lot of the "conflict" out of interactions. Also, for the foreseeable future, new groups won't be user-created, so this means that people can't create very "extreme" little sub-groups (on either side) that treat each other like enemies. We've also been talking a lot about a sort of trust/reputation system (https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics-future), which will make it so that if people get banned for being an asshole, they can't just create a new account and immediately carry on doing the same thing.

[annabellish]

>so this means that people can't create very "extreme" little sub-groups (on either side) that treat each other like enemies

On the other hand, reddit's ability to have user-defined sub-groups has given rise to good communities. To come at this from a personal perspective (though I believe it to be true from many other perspectives), there are a whole bunch of communities on reddit centered around various facets of being transgender. I think in a lot of ways, this kind of community has replaced the old siloed bulletin boards we used to have ten, fifteen years ago, and there's both advantages and disadvantages to that - but either way, I think the point I'm trying to make is that user-defined sub-groups can be a legitimately useful feature that benefits people's lives in a meaningful manner.

What reddit might get wrong is making it _easy_. Have you considered a system like stackexchange use, where setting up a new site is a big deal that requires use cases to be drawn up, example content, users who pledge to partake and maintain the site in accordance with the network's standards, and so on?

[cfabbro]

Tildes plans on opening up group creation at some point, deimorz just didn’t want to do that to start since it has hurt other similar startups by doing so, e.g, imzy. Open community creation to start fractures the user base too much and as a result most wind up as ghost towns.

One of the primary ideas with group hierarchy and tagging on tildes is to give us a way to judge interest level in subjects and allow new communities to form organically from that. However Deimos has also said he is not opposed to others ways for communities to form, such as a few trusted users simply saying “hey, this would be a good idea for a community to add” or even a petition from users.

The other nice thing about group hierarchy is that if a new subgroup spawns but after a few months is inactive it can simple be merged back into its parent. E.g. ~music.metal.numetal forms but is dead after a few months, it can just be merged back into ~music.metal. And if, further down the line, more users join and show an interest in Nu Metal it can be given its own community again.

[mistermann]

A very big problem I see, even in "good" communities, is a pattern of well-intentioned people commonly mistaking popular opinions for facts. Of course this is inevitable to some degree when emotional beings are involved, but the part that I think is worrying is that more and more genuinely intelligent people are starting to become undisciplined and let their integrity with respect to the truth slide, because it feels good to stick it to someone who may be an asshole, or you know to hold other beliefs with which you disagree. This behavior isn't illogical either - as they say, perception is reality, and sometimes the ends do justify the means. But in the big picture, the world would be a better place if there was one social site emotion was acceptable, but objective truth trumped everything, and that belief was upheld by admins, who themselves would have to be extremely aware of their own bias.

I will give a hopefully not too controversial example: tax policy.

I'd feel comfortable asserting (while standing in front of God at the entrance to the spirit world, so I must be honest) that well over 50% of people believe that <their person favorite economic policy> is(!) the "best way" to run a society, for <reasons> and <citations of "studies">. The reality though is, it is a matter of opinion, not of fact. And even if it was "objectively provable", that proof only holds under certain circumstances. The optimum policy varies based on the input parameters, which vary over time, but it also assumes we are all optimizing for the same thing!

Or in other words, the correct answer is very often: "it depends". You can see all sorts of people happily agreeing with this principle in their daily lives. How many people would get really, really angry if I said Vanilla is "the best ice cream flavor", or that "saving 25% of your net income is a wise strategy, if you can manage it". But wander into topics such as gender, sexuality, politics, etc and most of these very same people will become very emotional and illogical very, very fast.

If there was a site whose administrators were absolutely hardcore about not violating that principle (asserting that grey is white or black is not allowed, period, with penalty of a temporary or permanent ban), I think it could not only work, but if all the pieces fell together in the right way (with intelligent help and cooperation from admins/mods/users, and maybe even input from a broad spectrum of serious professional psychologists/sociologists/etc), it could change the world. I truly believe that.

EDIT: I'm kind of on the fence about whether this strict rule should be site-wide, or only in certain subforums, I could make an argument either way. I think it's fun to think about.

Also: I fully acknowledge I am one of the assholes I mention above. I'm an "asshole" because I actually believe ridiculously strongly about the importance of truth and logic (but also emotion), and that it matters more than almost anything. Literally millions of people die on a fairly regular basis because humanity can't get it's sh*t together on a handful of problems, most of which (but not all!) really aren't that complicated.

[Deimorz]

I think /r/ChangeMyView has a really good approach to this sort of thing (I'm using them as an example a lot here, but it's because I think they really do run one of the highest-quality communities on the internet).

One of their core rules is that people posting there have to demonstrate that they're open to having their opinion changed - they can't use the post just to soapbox. There's a lot written about it here, it's been very well thought-out: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b

[mistermann]

Thanks, I've never really gone there before, sounds like maybe I should.

[hkmurakami]

>the anger they feel about ${Political Party A} is the same way that the opposition feels about ${Political Party B}.

Do you ever talk about this in meatspace? Personally, the inability for many people to grasp this has been quite frustrating.

[archagon]

I'm sorry, but just because two parties have equal amounts of power and vitriol towards each other does not give them any degree moral parity. This sort of "equivalence by emotion" means absolutely nothing.

[mistermann]

It's interesting, he made absolutely no mention that he considered them morally equivalent, yet you refer to that notion in a very passionate manner.

Do you believe it is possible for anyone to hold partially imperfect beliefs? Do you believe it is possible for you to hold partially imperfect beliefs? Do you think it's possible that some people mistake matters of opinion (or personal preference) for matters of fact? Do you think it's possible for two people two hold differing opinions on a specific subject, with neither of them being wrong?

I appreciate that in these times these types of questions might be considered deliberately hostile, but I say them with non-hostile intent, as hard to believe as that may be. I think they are valid, and extremely relevant.

It's these sorts of questions that I hope some day can be discussed in a reasonable and respectful manner in a public forum. There was a time not so long ago that we could do so, I hope initiatives like this might help to regain that capability in the internet age.

I will link a few videos that I believe are quite thought provoking in this respect, I would be surprised if you don't as well after you've finished watching them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SOQduoLgRw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMqPcVUTlD4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gZ5UD1hFM4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKIhk3zOE4k

[hkmurakami]

>Do you think it's possible that some people mistake matters of opinion (or personal preference) for matters of fact? Do you think it's possible for two people two hold differing opinions on a specific subject, with neither of them being wrong?

This is uncanny -- it's like I'm listening to myself speak. I'd be interested in talking to you privately if you're interested. Shoot me a message at the address in my profile.

[mistermann]

Sent, hopefully I interpreted your email address correctly.

[hkmurakami]

Not received ;).

me "at" hkmurakami.com

Apologies for my cryptic code (is that statement redundant?)

[pjc50]

Not all points of view are morally equivalent; the site should not be friendly to certain extremist points of view.

[mistermann]

What if the extreme views may be correct?

And I don't mean that in a trolling way, I mean that sincerely and literally.

[pjc50]

Well, if it turns out that "genocide is actually good" is correct we're all doomed.

Less flippantly, we may not have any special access to moral rightness; in fact if there's one important conclusion of 20th century moral philosophy it's that there's no exogenous moral truth to be found; but we definitely do know a number of things are wrong and lead to moral disaster on a colossal scale. This is why you have to ban racial supremacists. It's happening all over again with the Rohingya.

There is certainly a large band of "extremism or acceptable questioning of the status quo", but anyone running a discussion forum has to be aware that they can't disclaim all moral responsibility for hate spread on it.

[mistermann]

> This is why you have to ban racial supremacists.

The problem is, there is far from an accepted common definition (by design, I'd argue) for "racial supremacists".

> It's happening all over again with the Rohingya.

Is this related to online forums somehow or just a reference to consequences?