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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Unpopular Opinion
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I think that it'll get better over time, for structural reasons: since Reddit is a big instance with lots of users and only a few admins, the admins give no fucks on how you behave there. (And if you're banned by a mod, you create another username and problem solved.) Here however individual users are more precious for their instances' admins, so admins have more reasons to keep their instances clean of people likely to piss off other people. And, even if they don't, I predict that instances with notoriously rude individuals will get defederated. The net result is that those users will have low visibility for other users.
What concerns me the most is not combative, trolling, and unnecessary rude users. It's the stupid - users who are able to reason but actively avoid it. It's the context illiterates, the assumers, the false dichotomisers, the "I dun unrurrstand" [with either an implicit "I demand to be spoonfed as per my divine right", or an "I disagree but I'd rather pretend that I'm a stupid than outright say it"] and the likes. People tend to pat those users on their heads and talk about esoteric stuff like "intentions", but I don't think that they should be socially accepted here, as they drive the dialogue level down and make the place less fun for other users.
It might be different if there was noplace else for them to go. But why does EVERY place on the internet - Reddit, Twitter, Facebook/Threads - all have to cater to it? Can't there be just ONE place where we hold ourselves to a higher standard? Maybe this means we'll see fewer posts / comments / "activity" - but is that a bad thing, necessarily?
Still, as I learned how to drive, I realized something: if you leave a space somewhere, someone will fill it. If we want to build something different, it will require expended effort to make that happen.
Federated networks are, by design, not able to be constrained by one set of rules and standards. The place you are looking for is Tildes, a centralized, invite-only, text-only website whose selling point is "high quality discussions" and very harsh moderation against anything that does not fit their standard of "high quality".
I'm not sure if you want to hear this from me or not, but your answer seems to me to be an example of the Binary Fallacy, or Principle of False Dilemma, where you assume that there are only two sides, with no room for subtly or nuance in-between.
For instance, as on Reddit, here too individual communities could moderate according to different principles, depending on the magazine and what they wanted. At least, even Reddit used to have that, so I'm guessing it's actually possible here as well.
Depending on which are those standards, you might get a lot of users. We had examples of that even in Reddit, where a few subs (like r/AskHistorians) had fairly specific rules that boil down to "don't be a moron" and they were still fairly popular, even in a site that could as well have as slogan "lasciate ogni ragione, voi ch'entrate"¹. That's because not even the stupid benefit from the others' stupidity, so they still gravitate towards environments with higher standards².
So what !OpenStars@kbin.social said might be actually viable; the Fediverse (or at least, some chunks of it) could hold itself to a higher standard. The question is how; perhaps through instances? User culture? Or even UX changes that make context harder to ignore and stupid shit sink to the bottom (against the Fluff Principle³)?
(At those times I really want a c/TheoryOfTheFediverse...)
First, actually reading before speaking? And going to the trouble of citing your references?! This is absolutely an example of what I was talking about in terms of holding ourselves to higher standards. I get it - it is outright fun to share memes and short quick snippets, and there is room and value for doing that too, in line with the context that is offered (some posts call for more serious discussions, memes call for just fun, but oftentimes an article/thread can have responses of both types), and I do that myself too even, but there should also be room for deeper thoughts as well? Which by their nature tend to be downvoted or at least ignored, b/c people are not always in the mood for a wall of text, even if thoughtfully and lovingly crafted.
One example could be to add to the upvote system (or on kbin there is a "boost" that is the true upvote, actual upvotes are not counted even though they are displayed - yes it is complicated!:-D) a new thing like "favorited" or "loved". Yes, people would game that too, but maybe if you could only use one of those a day, or ten per month or some such, then people would have an incentive to hold those in reserve (people could still game it with alts, so like anything else, it may need some attention, but perhaps that is not enough of a criticism to simply not move forward and start doing it?). Netflix similarly now has "up=like", "down=did not like", but also "double up=LOVE". Implementing that across the Fediverse could allow distinctions between content that you merely agreed with, vs. content that needs special distinction as being LOVED. Even Reddit allowed awards, to meet that same need. Btw, I nominated your comment in the m/BestOf magazine for a vaguely similar effect, except that magazine has extremely little traffic (I am not even subscribed to it myself, although in my defense I do keep trying but it always goes to a new page displaying the single word "Error" whenever I try), and also it is far too much effort to do for every post that is worthy of such distinction.
I almost hesitated to respond with these thoughts, b/c who am I to suggest something that I am not willing to implement into actual code? That said, my responding to your existing comment seems a different matter, since you do seem interested in this topic, rather than an entire post requesting/demanding that something be done.
I wrote out a somewhat long-winded I suppose explanation of my personal experiences that led me to believe what I do, but I exceeded the character limit so I will have to post it separately, at which point you can peruse it at your leisure or just skip it if you'd rather.
More importantly though, if you are interested, here is an - I think - extremely insightful article about the short-term blurting types of comments, which again I do myself, we all do, acting to drown out serious discussions: https://kbin.social/m/BestOf/t/113715/The-Ennui-Engine-or-how-chasing-short-term-gratification-drains-our. I am not sure that I hold out any hope for change, but at least I enjoy trying to educate myself on such things for the sake of my own sanity:-).
We mostly agree on memes and other "just for fun" material: it's fine if it's there (I like it too). The only problem is when it drowns the deeper content into a sea of fluff, as it often happens in social media.
What if its value decrease with usage?
For example. Let's say that the feature is called "fav". And that "favs" are taking into account, for sorting purposes. Each poster gets 100 "fav points" a day.
If the person "favs" a single piece of content, that content is boosted by 100/1 = 100 fav points. If the person favs two, each gets boosted by 100/2 = 50 points. And if the person indiscriminately favs 1000 pieces of content through the day, each is boosted by only 100/1000 = 0.1 fav points, so practically nothing.
This wouldn't impose a hard limit on how much you can use the feature per day, contrariwise to your idea, but it still makes you use the feature consciously - because you know that favving one more piece of content will make all the others that you've favved through the day count less and less. I feel like this could address the fluff principle in a way that simple votes (or boosts, double upvotes etc.) don't: not using the feature would backfire (the points go to waste), but using it indiscriminately would also backfire.
I've read the Ennui Engine article. I feel like the author touched a good point, perhaps this is all a result of us taking the internet as "it is not serious / real life, then it doesn't really matter". This mentality somewhat worked in the 00s? Not any more though. The proposed solution feels unfeasible though, as it expects people to do the right thing, that's like herding all cats into the same direction; we might need smarter solutions than that. (Even then, thanks for sharing this text, I think that it bullseyes the problem on the descriptive level.)
Thanks for the nomination in the mag!
As mentioned, this is part 2 of 2, which I am going to try to be more diligent about NOT giving such long-winded replies, but in case this is of interest, at least this way you'll have the choice of whether to read it or not:
Even if the person speaking has -10000000 karma (at that point it would be a wonder they were not banned already, but setting that aside in this hypothetical:-), let their voice carry equal weight than someone else with that amount of positive karma. And I get that, I do, so long as there are only like 20 comments that's a GREAT way to get along. Except actually no, even then while the "average" situation could handle it well (you simply read through all 20 to find what you want, discarding the rest), it seems to me like even then it would be heavily vulnerable to a purposeful worst-case trolling scenario where someone writes up content to look like it is valid, and it requires some DEEPER digging to avoid spreading misinformation? Like if some tells you to drink bleach, and someone ELSE tells you to NOT drink bleach, who will you listen to? The guy who spent 10 years getting a degree specifically in medicinal matters, or the guy on the TV screaming at you? (legit, a couple of people ACTUALLY did drink bleach, upon being told that it cured Covid from an authority figure, that is a REAL STORY I told just now - and it was only a precursor to what came next with the Ivermectin scenario, in-between which one of my family members even thought she got Covid and went outside to "soak up sunlight" trying to cure it, misunderstanding that direct sunlight onto the actual virus like on an exposed surface would sterilize said surface, but that sunlight cannot penatrate someone's lungs to kill it!? oh, and it was below freezing temps when she did it too) On the other hand, this isn't a "news" site, this is "social media", so what the goal is should perhaps be thought of very much differently. I like the idea of equal access for everyone who is honestly engaging in the due-diligence process... the problem, as you mentioned for the Ennui Engine article, is when people do not do that.
And speaking of, I seem to recall its' ending quite differently - while it did acknowledge that while that may very well be the only solution that has any chance of working, even so, it continued on to state as you and I are also doing now that people simply will not do it. So that, as they say, is that. All you can do is engage, or not engage, with the mindset of heavy skepticism. And engaging less overall is preferable, plus more to the point, doing so with intentionality (like you have half an hour to kill and want mindless meme entertainment, then time-box it and go for it!:-P) is what prevents its worst effects on a person, much like alcohol that can be used to relax muscles, ease breathing passages, warm a person up after coming in from the cold - in short has valid, even medicinal uses, as well as horrible outcomes for those who allow it to get the better of them.
Though I do wish that there was an algorithmic way to help prune through all the "popular" content for the real stuff. As I took over the mod position of a small (couple of) gaming subs, I read articles written by former mods who had put a lot of thought into that, as they watched Reddit turn from a discussion forum into a social media site. Guides, FAQs, discussion megathreads, and the like are higly desirable content for people to read, yet Reddit refuses to allow more than 2 pinned posts, and even those only show up when sorted by Hot. Also, NO MATTER WHAT you tell people, they will ADAMANTLY REFUSE to follow the simplest of directions - e.g. if a "Guide" flair is meant to be reserved for those articles that are among the top 1% of all posts for a given year, people not only will slap it onto their sinlege-semtanx misplellddded "guides", but they will will even slap it onto their QUESTIONS "hey uh, I haven't played for a whole month, and despite seeing the pinned post CLEARLY stating This Is What To Do If You Have Not Played In The Past Month, I would like to ask: what should I do, you know, since I have not played in the past month?" (sadly, if they were trolling, I could not detect it - some at least seemed quite genuine in asking thus). I suspect that such an algorithmic way might not exist, since it too would rely on people to uphold even the slightest set of standards, at which point it is perhaps doomed to failure? But it is an interesting problem for me to think about latey:-). The solution for the Guides matter btw was to shift the content away from Reddit and migrate it into an external wiki, which allowed for significantly easier discoverability. Not that it lessened the sheer flood of questions asking for it in the slightest (noticeably at any rate), you understand:-).
Speaking of people misusing a feature, I think the very act of "faving" something would be misappropriated - if it was meant to be what the user thinks is good, then people applying different definitions of "good" would be working at cross-purposes. e.g. someone who claims that the holocaust never happened could either be making a wildly popular and perfectly acceptable statement, or else the exact opposite, depending on context. THAT issue... seems insurmountable to me, personally, unless a LOT more effort went into implementation. Maybe if it were something like an automated cross-posting / nomination process to the BestOf magazine, that could work? So one user could nominate the comment to a Best-Of mag, another could nominate the same comment to a Worst-Of one, still another could nominate it to a Most-Silly one, etc. Just like crowsourcing restaurant reviews!:-) In any case, people barely use that mag as it is, so it seems a nonstarter at least atm, and also, look out vulnerable restaurant reviews turned out to be:-(.
We almost might need like a separate voting system - one for "likes" and another for "something else", so that when you sort, you can either see the "popular" stuff, or you could shuffle past that and get to the "other". In Reddit, I think that was mostly accomplished by having each sub be the arbiter of its own policies - so something "popular" in r/AskHistorians would NOT be so popular in r/Memes, and vice versa. Good fences make good neighbors and so on. Although mods and users alike would also decry even in a place such as AskHistorians how end-users would abuse the upvote, turning it into a "like" button where you click it if you agree with the content, rather than indicating its relevance to the discussion. Also relevant is how large the communities are, so like if r/AskHistorian had only, lets say for ease of theoretical discussion "100 active members" (or rather, that being a useful approxomation thereof, like 100 people that contribute daily, or 200 people that contribute every other day, or 5-700 people that contribute once a week, and so on), while if r/Memes has "1 million active members", then even inside a post within the r/AskHistorian sub, if the users of r/Memes were to ever see it somehow (it appearing on r/All lets say), then they could unintentionally brigade the smaller community, completely overwhelming their normal likes and dislikes with artificial ones, even (and highly likely) entirely unintentionally.
Potentially that could be solved by using sub-specific karma, like someone's vote who has been in the sub for ten years could carry substantially more weight than someone who literally just joined a moment ago, made a reply, then immediately unsubscribed. The down-side there is that someone who had been in the sub for ten years would have to be careful to not throw their weighting around willy-nilly, and drown out people who have "only" been there like 2 years. The devil is in the details indeed, to working out such a system.
Although people on the Fediverse seem ADAMANTLY opposed to any such system of weighted voting, despite the best intentions. I think the argument goes: let the content be the deciding factor. ...
And... I am exceeding the character limit again. I guess I should be more diligent about cutting back on my social media, as that Enui Engine article said:-), and if a response is worth writing, then I should find a way to do it within the limitations provided. That said, I'm going to allow myself to do it one more time b/c it is nearly midnight and I'm too tired to rewrite it, and having come this far it seems better than simply not responding at all?
A simple and obvious solution is just to adopt the rules of communities on reddit that manage to maintain a average quality of content (askhistorians? r/science?), and building features that help with that (multireddits , so you will have different feeds for "fun" and "important", or user tags) , reddit enhancement suite features could also be helpful.
The problem I see is that those communities usually had very specific goals; e.g. r/askhistorians wasn't intended for discussions, it was more like "ask something in specific, get a specific answer", so it's hard to apply the same rules for communities with other goals.
And frankly, r/science was a bit of a dumpster fire.
I might be wrong, but I feel like we need to instigate a different mindset here, so perhaps user culture would be the way to go? That means scolding users for acting as dumbarses, instead of playing along their entitlement (a la Reddit).
Fully agree on the features.
I'd like to emphasize another advantage we have--the general sense of self-rule and control. We actually have a modicum of power here, we're not just fueling profits for some spez. We can move around, organize however we wish.
This creates a naturally higher morale environment. I think things are a little, oh, excited right now, but I expect we'll probably settle down a little bit over the next few months, as people settle in more.
The trolls, though, those are here to stay I'm afraid. Internet is the internet, you need a private community to truly guarantee none of them forever. And even that doesn't always work. Hackers and bot attacks too, also here to stay. We're big enough to be a decent target now.