[osadalakmal]

This comment section is just atrocious. stopping bullying is something any institution that cares about the well-being of those in its care try to tackle. it is not about pandering to snowflakes. are we really going to call young people who get bullied for looking different, snowflakes? that's the language that we as adults want to use discussing things that drive people to suicide?

and for all those who say don't go online, humans are social creatures. they like to socialize. that's the whole point of social media. by design or not these are now virtual public spaces. and thus they have a responsibility to their users to make sure the discourse doesn't allow bullying. it won't ever work 100 percent but that shouldn't stop is from devising ever more efficient ways to stop bullying. should schools allow bullys free rein just because its their free speech right and if the victim didn't like it, they could have stayed in the class during recess?

[ziml77]

I don't know why I expect anything better when I go into an HN comment section about anything that isn't purely tech. The comments are just disgusting. Bullying is indefensible and yet here we have people defending it!

[salawat]

Pardon me; did malls ever have a responsibility to stop bullying? Convention centers? Anywhere else that people hang out for that matter?

All this talk of platform policing seems to leave out one thing: the certainty of running into horrible people online approaches 1 because there are horrible people out there. It just used to be the regular person never had the potential of having to deal with all of them at once, of which a critical mass of them looking your way could be life altering.

Instead of asking for a nanny web, perhaps we should be asking for a better grade of person to people it. The last thing we need is digital nanny state that can be abusively exploited by those who run it, Make no mistake. Such an edifice would draw those seeking to abuse it to justify or entrench their own views on appropriate behavior like moths to a flame

[Volundr]

I actually worked as a security guard through most of college, split amongst various sites including out local mall. We actually called it "harassment" not bullying, but we absolutely took it seriously and you could find yourself banned from the mall pretty easily, and none of the "boys will be boys" or "he's a good kid" that you'll often see used to excuse the behavior in schools. Frankly, my opinion is the mall probably dealt with it MORE effectively than my high school.

[salawat]

Growing up, the most effective anti-bullying enforcement was pretty much bystanders, and a minority thereof to boot. Don't know whether the difference was, but 90% of the time for me, official intervention was nowhere near as effective as that that just happening to see something and intervening because they felt it was wrong.

[osadalakmal]

I am sorry but you complete misrepresented my comments and are now making a straw man argument. I did not state that a state controlled many web is the answer anywhere in my comment. you seem to have come up with that on your own. so let's leave that alone

now regarding malls, the incentives are different, so yes for the most part they do. at least in the country I live in at the moment. it is in their best interest to get more people in the door and for longer, can't do that if they keep getting harrased. I don't know why you think they wouldn't.

no other business benefits from emotional dark patterns as much as these platforms

[salawat]

It's not my intent to construct a strawman at all. As an American, and as someone who while growing up was regularly a target for abuse by members of my peer group, I'm trying to get across the fact that creating an an organizational obligation to "control" this aberrant behavior doesn't work. Ever. The most effective deterrent, is exercising that responsibility as an individual standing up for common decency. Not one place is an effective deterrer of things, generally because while you might get a bump initially, it wanes over time. In fact, the times when bullying is most likrly is exactly where bullies know organizational blind spots exist. If you formalize a policy on it, they basically know exactly what to look out for.

I one hundred percent agree the dark patterns are an issue. The thing is I disagree with the conclusion of dark pattern use causes bullying that otherwise wouldn't happen to happen.

Awful people gonna awful. Nada's gonna change that. There's therefore a balance point between creating organizational levers to pull to compel action vs. realizable level of attainment of suppression of deleterious behavior.

I'm just saying; doing something about dark pattern use should be just that; don't conflate it with the eternal struggle against getting bullies to stop bullying.

[asplake]

Totally missing the main point of the article. FB is actively leading people down a dark path. Your mall or convention centre doesn’t so that, but FB’s attention-optimising algorithms do. FB must be very happy for people to bang on about free speech and hate speech because then they’re not looking at how FB actually works.

[salawat]

What I'm saying is bullies gonna bully. With or without Facebook's help. The only thing that keeps it in check is everyone else. Facebook is undoubtedly part of the problem, but I don't see Facebook serving ads "how to more effectively troll", "go on, doxx your friends", "hound someone to suicide".

No, that's a case of problem existing between keyboard and chair independent of what websites are visited. You can argue Facebook makes it worse, but then you can't realistically stop there. Every platform does that doesn't moderate to some $subgroup's liking.

[freen]

Yes.

They regularly kick assholes out.

Lookup “bouncers”.