How can we fight online shaming campaigns?

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2221

by arundelo • 11 years ago

28 33 11 years ago

jensen123• 11 years ago

I think the most dangerous people in the world are self-righteous idealists who wants to do good. They often end up causing lots of harm. Although, I do see that idealism can be good in some situations.

qq66• 11 years ago

It seems like an individually game-theoretic optimization to the online shaming problem is to abstain from discussing any controversial or potentially controversial issue, offline or offline, at any time, for any reason.

hga11• 11 years ago

Talk to anyone who's lived in a totalitarian, Stalinist regime, or read things like Nineteen Eighty Four and you'll find this is a very unhealthy thing to do, mentally and emotionally. It's also strictly impossible, for things that are safe today become unsafe tomorrow, because this is more about power and broken people than anything rational.

Its also dyscivic. Much, much uglier things will happen if you cede to one faction the public sphere, the "soap box" in the sequence of "soap box, ballet box, bullet box".

iwwr• 11 years ago

People are starting to realize social media is not that friendly. Every statement made in public gets recorded and attached to your real identity forever. Kids who say stupid shit get that held against them forever from employers, associates or even random stalkers. All for the need of some targeted advertising. Hopefully, the generation coming after that would learn and be more privacy-aware.

DanBC2• 11 years ago

Kids who say stupid shit get that held against them forever from employers,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22083032

Elrac2• 11 years ago

South Korea, as I understand it, has this principle of ensuring that the author of anything Internet can be personally identified.

This kind of accountability might help even the odds between what is otherwise a named individual vs. an anonymous mob. I honestly don't know if it's a good idea or not, though.

cbd19846• 11 years ago

That makes it very hard for some minority groups to talk freely. Trans people are a big example but even gays can be at risk. And then there are whistle blowers.

hga11• 11 years ago

And speaking of "minority groups", at least on the net, what about conservatives?

Echoing my other comment about the totalitarian and most especially Stalinist nature of this arena, Brendan Eich was purged from Mozilla for holding the same position on gay marriage as Obama, "CEO" of the entire nation, officially did until May 9th, 2012, although in fairness to Obama, he said he changed his mind as opposed to always being at war with Eastasia.

The Left has captured a whole bunch of fields like science where "No Irish or (open) Conservatives" applies, so to still be able to engage in the public sphere anonymity is required.

And fortunately anonymity is enshrined in our lowercase and uppercase c/Constitutional order, e.g. The Federalist Papers. Compare to South Korea where they're still in a not quite hot but definitely not cold war with their northern Communist neighbor; I don't believe they can afford some of the civil liberties we enjoy.

DanBC2• 11 years ago

Did you miss the bits of the submission where he describes being attacked by people under their real names?

(the title of Amanda Marcotte’s hit-piece
My photo was on the front page of Salon, {Arthur Chu}
not once but twice on ‘Dr. Nerdlove,’ {Harris O'Malley}

See also XBOXLive, where people feel free to be thoroughly toxic even though their online identities are tied to an offline identity.

Or Facebook, where racists are happily racist under their real names. http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_w...

z3t4• 11 years ago

In the example she made fun of 1)black people 2) AIDS 3) White people. And possible offended all religious people in the world. What can possible go wrong? :P

hga11• 11 years ago

Indeed, but does the punishment fit the "crime"? If not, how many orders of magnitude is the latter off by?

GFK_of_xmaspast2• 11 years ago

Hasn't Scott Aaronson himself gotten salty at people he disagrees with?

How can we fight online shaming campaigns?

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