It was never just the anonymity, it was the lack of consequences as well. Combined those two often lead to people showing their worst selves.
Now though? Often those worst characteristics are applauded by others. It's disappointing.
Also the best, not just the worst. I agree but I hate to be pessimistic. Back then we used to dig to the shit to find a few hidden gems. The amount of gems stayed the same but the pile of shit got bigger. I liked the internet more when it was more like island with a lot of activity instead of bridges everywhere (I know the irony being on Lemmy). I miss active bulletin boards. Reddit really killed forums. Everyone wants convenience instead of quality. And everyone seems to be in a hurry
Yeah before www I would say there was more good than bad. Im talking about 93 before aol. The word troll was about the few bad actors spoinling things. But its like the good followed a linear growth rate while the bad followed an exponential growth rate.
Don’t feed the trolls
I thought I could feed trolls before midnight?
Dead Internet Theory suggests these racist accounts are all just self-perpetuating whether you engage or not.
I still blame the algorithms. Angry people click more => let's assure they always get more to click.
It's the for profit corporate capture really. When everyone started thinking of the internet as 5 websites and their bank.
You've misspelled capitalism.
It's a gray line, as the drive for celebrity isn't strictly capitalist but is definitely rewarded under capitalism.
I meant "the algorithm", that the parent comment mentions. Designing an algorithm that is driven by clickrate in order to gain more ad revenue is motivated by capitalistic forces.
Anything bad == capitalism.
I highly doubt a social network would ever lack incentive for increased engagement (via shock value and toxicity or otherwise) in a non-capitalist society.
They may gain popularity, societal influence, or whatever else instead of money. They’re still motivated to deepen that connection.
Can we tackle the root cause (advertising) somehow?
If there's no incentive to farm clicks, maybe the circlejerk could stop.
The root cause is billionaires.
There’s no stopping trolls completely, but they were self limiting when the internet was more disaggregated and a little less accessible. It’s greedy Big Tech, led by a few people, that weaponized them into world-scale attention farms.
Advertising is a huge enabler yeah, but I have to wonder if they could’ve leveraged other schemes back then, like the Patreon/Onlyfans model, crypto, or whatever.
Yes and no, the main factor are bubbles. Even for the most asshole opinions you can probably find the right bubble where you aren't shunned for it but get affirming reactions. Algorithms do significantly ease the formation of bubbles but are ultimately not required for it
im chill with algoithms as long as theyre FOSS and don't manipulate people
Raising $600k after going public about dropping the N-bomb on a child might have something to do with this.
A few incredibly racist billionaires are financing endless waves of bigotry and brutality. Until they stop, this is only going to get worse.
Hate is victimized now and it is a powerful tool for controlling the masses.
I always though it was anonymity, but its more likely the missing human connection. On the internet, our thoughts are transmitted without seeing the person before us in real time, so some may act different, forgetting there is a person on the other side.
There's obviously people who don't give a shit, but they were just assholes to begin with.
Fear of retaliation by the physical human in front of you as well. Some people are good because they believe in the value of goodness but a lot of them only act right when they can't get away with being awful.
It's almost like a large-scale social experiment, with the result that there seem to be many profoundly evil people whose malicious beliefs are artificially pushed by billionaire "gatekeepers" to a point where they can appear socially acceptable, a few good people who have less and less say due to social media logic and content overload, and a large majority who just stand by and watch civilization go down the drain because they're too lazy to change their habits and just rely on someone else to fix this mess, if they even recognize the problem in the first place.
In this context, I think the definition of public opinion established by political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann back in the 1980s is once again highly relevant:
"Public opinion is the opinion dominant in public which can be expressed without risk of social isolation."
The spiral of silence : public opinion, our social skin (1984)
Noelle-Neumann emphasized that public opinion is not just any opinion, but specifically those views that are visible, vocal, and supported by the majority, making them safe to express in public. This ties closely to her "Spiral of Silence" theory, where individuals may refrain from expressing minority views due to fear of social isolation.
The great problem of our current media situation seems to be that these public opinions are increasingly artificially constructed since they just seem like majority opinions, even if they are not, because they get pushed so hard by the influential crooks controlling major parts of the Internet (social media and search engine monopolies and so on).
So I think today's web has become almost the opposite of what early Internet utopians had in mind.
I don't know, the people sending death threats to anyone that calls their favorite internet personality dumb seem preety bent on doing so behind fake e-mails and names...
Right, this is the other side of the same coin, and also feels like a part of what people seem to have forgotten about the Internet.
Before: Don't give out your personal info to anyone online. You have no idea who's on the other side!
Now: Hey, everyone, here's my name, and all the details of my life, and all the opinions I hold. Hope you all like it!
“SHITCOCK”
(Quick edit: daaaamn that really was 21 years ago…)
I was there, Gandalf...
I kind of miss the anonymity of the internet. It's too easy to be ostracized now.
It's genuinely disturbing how many information these sites have about us.
Clicking on a Xitter link gives them enough information that they could probably direct a reasonably accurate drone strike against you.
And after browsing for a few hours on these sites they know you better than you do.
TOR walks into the room
As soon as we figure out how to punch someone through the screen this shit is done.
First Over TCP/IP has been the goal of many an internet denizen over the last 3 decades
Yes! Finally! Somebody who gets that violence IS the answer.
......and also highly entertaining if video recorded. Lets make the webcam record when we punch!
Imagine that. Someguy is watching pornhub, just jackin it, and then his webcam records him as he suddenly without warning gets punched in the face.
And we all watch.
Not thru the screen. We just figure out where they're at, go there, and then punch them in the face like good old times.
What if it's a ten hour drive?
Then it's a road trip!
Yeah turns out it wasn't anonymity, that was estimated because the internet has a greater amoun of dickery than real life.
But really, Assholes online are also assholes in real life. Same for kibd people. What the internet did was allow assholes find and network with each other, and make environment uncomfoetable enough that kind people leave. Only assholes are left.
Defederate from him.
But he's the dev. If we defederate we won't get support, and since the software is a janky piece of crap we need that support.
Really like how the artist used the "? face" to symbolize anonimity and drawing the after with real faces to tell that anonimity is gone.
I am guilty of thinking this. All I can say is... Huh.
I still don’t really know anything about Mr Beaks and happy to maintain that status quo.
This is what happens when you are on the internet for too long. You no longer want to be a part time anonymous troll but a real life one too except that can have some inconvenient side effects
The problem with Reddit and Lemmy too is that people are just mostly pretty strange there and it is hard to take it all seriously
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