[Karrot_Kream]

A popular theory on techie parts of the web is that engagement-optimizing sites create this negativity loop, but I disagree. I think negativity is naturally something that people seek no matter what the algorithm is. In an upvote based site, outrage ranks to the top. I also think text based platforms suffer from negative engagement much moreso than multimedia platforms.

Model correlation is decent here but there's certainly more to do to use its outputs predictively.

[johnfn]

I don't really agree with this. I go and hang out with my friends, and we don't all end up getting outraged about stuff. I go for a walk in the park and no one is shouting at me; I go to a restaurant and people are sitting around normally discussing whatever. If you start quoting outrage bait that you read online, people might look at you strangely.

My point is I don't think people seek out outrage. Social media's algorithms may not explicitly reward it as transparently as `if (post.outrage > 100) post.boost()`, but outrage isn't some default rule of interaction.

[miki123211]

As a mastodon user, I can definitely confirm this.

Give people the way to repost / retweet / boost, and your feed suddenly turns into mostly negativity, even if your algorithm is "show posts from my followers only, newest to oldest"

[Karrot_Kream]

Yeah my Bluesky followers are carefully curated to stop from swelling into negativity. I've been playing around with a labeller that filters followed posts into those that I find emotionally pleasant which I've been training based on my own labeling of followers' posts. The goal is to follow more people and have the labeller (or feed generator depending on how I go) hide the posts I don't care for.

[Vampiero]

If that theory were true then, what about every website on the internet pre-2010? What about 4chan?

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

We're just built like that.

Regarding text platforms suffering more than non-text platforms, I think it's because of the lack of social cues that are otherwise there. You can infer a lot from the way someone talks, or from their body language. You can't infer much from text, which is partly why Poe's law exists -- sarcasm doesn't translate well.

[Karrot_Kream]

> what about every website on the internet pre-2010

It was definitely there. Plenty of forums had "rant threads" that were efforts to quarantine shitty reactionary behavior like this. Also a lot of the healthier forums were smaller forums. I was on plenty of forums that had 10-20 folks on them that today would just be a Telegram group chat or a small Discord "server". These small spaces tend to be a lot lower on toxicity than larger fora. I was part of a few large fora like Gaia Online and they were just as toxic as today's large platforms. Managing large communities with chronological posting is really difficult and upvote based social networks were the first real networks to be able to scale to larger userbases without having hundreds of moderators (like Gaia or the large MUDs.)

> What about 4chan?

4chan is immune because the default emotional register there is indignant dismissal. Because of this it's just a matter of choosing what else to layer ontop of the indignant dismissal, like sarcasm or anger or whatnot.

> Regarding text platforms suffering more than non-text platforms, I think it's because of the lack of social cues that are otherwise there. You can infer a lot from the way someone talks, or from their body language. You can't infer much from text, which is partly why Poe's law exists.

That's an interesting theory actually. My theory was that in the age of multimedia platforms, text platforms tend to attract folks who specifically want to use text over multimedia. Generally text forums will select for folks with social or self-esteem issues. These folks are the least likely to healthily deal with their emotions or disengage positively. This leads to higher toxicity on text based platforms.

[Eisenstein]

> My theory was that in the age of multimedia platforms, text platforms tend to attract folks who specifically want to use text over multimedia. Generally text forums will select for folks with social or self-esteem issues. These folks are the least likely to healthily deal with their emotions or disengage positively. This leads to higher toxicity on text based platforms.

Some people like to take time to compose thoughts in written form because that is generally the best way to communicate thoughtfully. You can say what you will about a lack of body language, but plenty of people get into verbal fights in person and it doesn't help that they end up talking over each other.

I think that your assertion that people who communicate via text have social issues is without evidence and is reductive.

You could say that people who enjoy looking at themselves and hearing themselves enough to edit their footage and post it online have ego issues and are less likely to listen to what others have to say.

[Karrot_Kream]

My reading of your response is that you identify as a person who prefers written form communication because you feel that it is the best to communicate thoughtfully and you felt personally attacked by my response. I think that's reductive and not really relevant for this train of thought and your response seems to feel like a defense of your identity. I personally prefer communicating in text as well because I like to take my time to compose my thoughts but I know that presents a weakness for me because I'm much less able to articulate my thoughts in fast-moving situations such as work meetings or community emergency planning or other things. I am, indeed, less capable in social situations than others and it's a deficiency I've tried to grow past my entire life.

The direction of my implication comes from observation: text communities tend to all descend into toxicity (observation) -> why does this happen in text communities moreso than non-text communities? (question) -> higher proportion of socially maladapted people (theory). You might well be correct that people who enjoy looking and hearing themselves and have ego issues are the ones that prefer (compose a higher proportion thereof) multimedia social networks. I don't disagree with you, either. That's beside the point. The point is that most text communities tend to descend into toxicity.

Humans aren't perfect and if I'm in a positive community of high egos, I'd much prefer that than a toxic community with "normal" egos.

So I want to zoom in on this:

> Some people like to take time to compose thoughts in written form because that is generally the best way to communicate thoughtfully. You can say what you will about a lack of body language, but plenty of people get into verbal fights in person and it doesn't help that they end up talking over each other.

We're talking about social networks here not real life, because social networks deal with the fundamentally different problem. In a social network (yes this includes IRC) you are interacting with a number of people whom you do not share any real-world context with, whom you do not share any physical space with, and whom generally have a much lower stake in their relationships because of the lack of shared context.

In my experience all textual social networks that grow beyond a certain number of users descend into toxicity: Usenet, IRC (old Freenode and Rizon), Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, HN, Youtube Comments, Nextdoor, Local News Comments, Twitter/X, etc. I think "algorithms" (including counting upvotes) have reduced the moderation burden and allowed social sites to scale much higher than they could before algorithms.

Text communities all eventually collapse into ranting, bullying, hot takes, moral outrage, zealotry, and negativity. I'm open to any and all theories about why this is but I find this specific to text-based communities: Twitch, Instagram and TikTok have so much less of it for example. I think the idea that text leads to thoughtful communication was a hypothesis advanced first during the Usenet era and later during the blogging era but ended up being disproven. I think there's a nostalgia of the pre-media web that pervades these discussions that prevent text-fans from realizing at a macro level that the toxicity that was on comp.lang.lisp is the same toxicity in HN comments and is toxicity that just isn't there on most of Instagram, for better or for worse.

I actually think this identity around being a "text person" is part of the problem. The moment you wrap your identity around something you become both proud and protective of it. For some things this is fine, but if your preferred media itself becomes part of your identity, then you're going to have a blind spot around what makes your preferred social media different from the others.

[Eisenstein]

Excuse me but you are the one who made the 'text identity' distinction and called people who don't prefer posting videos of themselves 'toxic'.

What exactly is a 'multimedia community' anyway? You haven't defined it. Is it just tik tok?

[Karrot_Kream]

I don't think you're really engaging with my comment. I feel that you're offended at me calling text-only users of the internet toxic, and that you're responding in defense. If that's the case then there's no value in our discussion. You're just going to reply with charged comments until I recant.

If you want another perspective on my point, take a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

Have a nice day.

[drilbo]

>Twitch, Instagram and TikTok have so much less of it for example.

I'd be interested in any sort of evidence that supports this

[Vampiero]

> My theory was that in the age of multimedia platforms, text platforms tend to attract folks who specifically want to use text over multimedia. Generally text forums will select for folks with social or self-esteem issues. These folks are the least likely healthily deal with their emotions or disengage positively. This leads to higher toxicity on text based platforms.

Yeah that's very plausible indeed

[int_19h]

This video will make you angry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

[jerjerjer]

Humans love having something to be righteously indignant about.