[zestyping]

I have a hypothesis. It goes like this.

Today all the major text-based social platforms work in about the same way: we type text into an empty little box that's threaded under another box. There are variations in ranking and flagging, but the basic mechanism is unchanged.

It is striking to me that, in all these years, we have explored only a tiny little corner of the design space. There are no mechanisms to lower the temperature when arguments get intense, for example. Nothing to help keep us from misconstruing comments out of context. Nothing to assist us in feeling compassion for the people we're talking to, or understanding their intent as they mean it to be understood. And so on. It's almost as though we sold millions of cars without brakes, everyone is crashing into things and hurting each other, and our response as a society is to throw up our hands and say "Welp, guess humans are just too stupid to drive cars safely."

Many people have suggested eliminating engagement as a metric and going back to purely chronological feeds. That sounds pretty reasonable given where "engagement" has gotten us so far.

But what if there were such a thing as "healthy engagement"?

The hypothesis is that healthy engagement is achievable. I don't know whether it is, but there's a huge range of design possibilities that we have yet to explore.

Do you know of anyone working on healthy engagement? Is it something you want to work on, or do you have any recommendations on starting an effort in this direction?

[rhizome]

>Do you know of anyone working on healthy engagement?

Wikipedia is one, by not "working on" it.

>It's almost as though we sold millions of cars without brakes, everyone is crashing into things and hurting each other, and our response as a society is to throw up our hands and say "Welp, guess humans are just too stupid to drive cars safely."

No, they have brakes, it's just that half of the car owners are punching people who work at Jiffy Lube and screaming that brakers should be killed.

>But what if there were such a thing as "healthy engagement"?

"Engagement" can not ever be healthy because "working on" it relies on manipulation. Curiosity implies an absence of manipulation and a maximum of arbitrary connections.

You want healthy engagement? Create something well-loved that doesn't depend on or require any additional action from the appreciator for them to experience its complete impact.

Oh shit, that's hard! "Well then how about I scare them into clicking on a link that pays me money when they do so, then use an image and/or words to call them inadequate in some aspect of their lives so that they send me more money?" Tomato-tomahto?

[sayhar]

Hey this is a really good question. And I agree with you 100%! We have only explored a tiny corner of the design space.

Since you asked for links, I think you'd like this talk I gave at Berkman a little while ago: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/governing-social-media-city

It's about: if we think of social media as a new city, what are the alternatives to hiring tons of cops/censors? What about urban planning, bike lanes, etc?

As for healthy engagement: I think there are a few people in this space. I honestly don't know as many as I'd like. This will be a learning experience for everyone. I think New Public might be doing good work, but I'm not sure!

https://newpublic.org/

Hope that helps!

[SrslyJosh]

> There are no mechanisms to lower the temperature when arguments get intense, for example.

This is a second, third, or fourth-tier concern after stuff like white supremacists using platforms for organizing/harassment, governments using them to facilitate genocide, scammers using them to profit off of the pandemic, etc., etc.

"When arguments get intense" completely ignores the incredibly low-hanging fruit: banning networks of bad actors. (They have the data to do this, they just don't want to.)

> Do you know of anyone working on healthy engagement?

Twitter is trying to warn users about "intense" conversations. Unsurprisingly, they suck at it:

https://twitter.com/angryblacklady/status/144754672404668416... https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1446879163307028481

[Fnoord]

> Twitter is trying to warn users about "intense" conversations.

Discourse, too. It gives a statistic that X% of the posts are yours, and asks you to consider letting other's voice their opinion. It says that after you typed your post. I'm not going to not post, then, but I admit that yes it does remind me to consider spending less time on the platform in general (!).

HN has it, too. Deep threads hide the reply button if posts are made in quick succession.

The orig. comment claimed:

> [...] There are no mechanisms to lower the temperature when arguments get intense, for example.

Addressed above.

> Nothing to help keep us from misconstruing comments out of context.

I don't agree with this. Factchecking occurs, thumb-up/heart on factual content helps. Also, quoting, logic, and linking sources allows to dispute (such) fallacies. These tools are available.

> Nothing to assist us in feeling compassion for the people we're talking to, or understanding their intent as they mean it to be understood. [...]

Bingo.

Because polarized people don't want to. They want to 'win' a discussion instead of learn from it.