10 ms·

We gotta build things for the humans we have, not the humans we wish to have. Maybe global public squares don't work for the humans we have. That's ok.

by dimva 4y ago

istinetz 4y ago
Okay, humble suggestion - remove yourself from the public square, but don't destroy it for me. That way, you get to not hear racist stuff, and I get to not have my morality chosen by random americans.
- humanrebar 4y ago
  Right. Maybe we're much, much worse without public fora. There are valid concerns about social bubbles, fake news, and alternative facts already.
- naravara 4y ago
  TBH the issue is not that I can't stand to hear racist stuff, it's that there's well understood incentives to fear monger that have tangibly eroded social trust across the board and degraded the actual real life public square in the process. That's not just the heightened threats of terrorism and acrimonious political systems either, those are just the tips of the iceberg and there's a whole host of social maladies, mental health disorders, depression and anxiety symptoms, etc. coming out of this.
- pjc50 4y ago
  Not hearing the stuff does not prevent someone who does hear the stuff from breaking into your house with a hammer, as Paul Pelosi discovered.
  - 0x445442 4y ago
    Abe Lincoln was assassinated well before the internet.
  - goldenchrome 4y ago
    Do you think if someone hit your 82 year old grandfather on the head with a steel hammer that he would “make a full recovery”?
jstummbillig 4y ago
But is it. The world is very clearly (more clearly than at any other point in the past) one. It is entirely not obvious that our current level of global communication is sufficient to support this setup.
pc86 4y ago
You're not required to participate. Nobody is, in fact. There's something particularly disgusting about the elevated sense of self-importance required to say that because you don't like something, because there is a vanishingly small number of bad actors as there are in every single group above a certain size, it shouldn't exist at all.
- counters 4y ago
  Unfortunately the period from about 2015 to early 2021 made it very clear that even while direct participation is avoidable, the implications of the platform and it's users aren't. Then again, the solution to the hooligan yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre isn't to close the theatre...
  - naravara 4y ago
    We do enforce fire codes though, including things like occupancy limits.
    - pc86 4y ago
      I would love to hear what you think fire codes and occupancy limits have to do with Twitter and social media.
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  Correct. And I'm also not required to believe in the cultural relevance of Twitter at all. There's no digital analogue to the IRL long stare of death that is elicited when someone is out of line. Downvotes, ratios, and whatever ridiculous thing people invent aren't effective enough because the offender has little concern for being ostracized from a group of people they don't even know. It's all just avatars on a screen yelling at each other. This is why people say scale is the problem. Smaller communities can more effectively enforce norms because they create a localized culture, there is less to moderate, and they can more effectively identify and punish bad actors. These days I spend time on niche forums where people actively choose to be there and participate. There's no Internet Points to be gamed, no drama of the day, no personal brands to be pushing. It's absolutely refreshing. It moves slower, there's no sense of FOMO, it's not made to suck your attention span dry. Twitter is rotting: it's why the front page has to tell you it is relevant, and why they started requiring logins to read beyond a thread. It'd be farther gone if journalists didn't prop it up as a way to do their job faster.
mavidser 4y ago
I can't agree that "global public square don't work for humans" - but even if that were the case, it's still too late to just reverse course. As long it's possible, viable and largely desired, the market will spit out a solution to this need.
- nomdep 4y ago
  Is not too late at all. If you remove the "is not my responsibility what my users publish" for forums beyond X thousand users, every forum will stay under that limit and twitter quickly will become thousands of independent sub-twitters ala reddit. No home page aggregating everything, no suggested tweets, no country-scale public square
TheCondor 4y ago
Maybe the internet isn’t a good analog of the square. I’m sure there are taverns near any reader here where one could “say the wrong things” and be asked to leave or maybe roughed up or even worse. Those consequences might be an important part of this not-really-discourse-or-free-speech-but-we-want-to-treat-it-like-free-speech. Hard to say what the best thing is. Huge parts of our society don’t like consequences for actions.
- matwood 4y ago
  For one, a real public square isn't anonymous. To add to your example, get thrown out the tavern too many times and they will eventually not let the person come back. This person can't simply create a new account and sneak back in.
uncertain-phr 4y ago
Marshall McLuhan came up with the concept of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_village, which may be relevant here.

We gotta build things for the humans we have, not the humans we wish to have. Maybe global public squares don't work for the humans we have. That's ok.

by dimva 4y ago

We gotta build things for the humans we have, not the humans we wish to have. Maybe global public squares don't work for the humans we have. That's ok.

istinetz 4y ago

Okay, humble suggestion - remove yourself from the public square, but don't destroy it for me. That way, you get to not hear racist stuff, and I get to not have my morality chosen by random americans.

humanrebar 4y ago
Right. Maybe we're much, much worse without public fora. There are valid concerns about social bubbles, fake news, and alternative facts already.
naravara 4y ago
TBH the issue is not that I can't stand to hear racist stuff, it's that there's well understood incentives to fear monger that have tangibly eroded social trust across the board and degraded the actual real life public square in the process. That's not just the heightened threats of terrorism and acrimonious political systems either, those are just the tips of the iceberg and there's a whole host of social maladies, mental health disorders, depression and anxiety symptoms, etc. coming out of this.
pjc50 4y ago
Not hearing the stuff does not prevent someone who does hear the stuff from breaking into your house with a hammer, as Paul Pelosi discovered.
- 0x445442 4y ago
  Abe Lincoln was assassinated well before the internet.
- goldenchrome 4y ago
  Do you think if someone hit your 82 year old grandfather on the head with a steel hammer that he would “make a full recovery”?

jstummbillig 4y ago

But is it. The world is very clearly (more clearly than at any other point in the past) one. It is entirely not obvious that our current level of global communication is sufficient to support this setup.

pc86 4y ago

You're not required to participate. Nobody is, in fact. There's something particularly disgusting about the elevated sense of self-importance required to say that because you don't like something, because there is a vanishingly small number of bad actors as there are in every single group above a certain size, it shouldn't exist at all.

counters 4y ago
Unfortunately the period from about 2015 to early 2021 made it very clear that even while direct participation is avoidable, the implications of the platform and it's users aren't. Then again, the solution to the hooligan yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre isn't to close the theatre...
- naravara 4y ago
  We do enforce fire codes though, including things like occupancy limits.
  - pc86 4y ago
    I would love to hear what you think fire codes and occupancy limits have to do with Twitter and social media.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
Correct. And I'm also not required to believe in the cultural relevance of Twitter at all. There's no digital analogue to the IRL long stare of death that is elicited when someone is out of line. Downvotes, ratios, and whatever ridiculous thing people invent aren't effective enough because the offender has little concern for being ostracized from a group of people they don't even know. It's all just avatars on a screen yelling at each other. This is why people say scale is the problem. Smaller communities can more effectively enforce norms because they create a localized culture, there is less to moderate, and they can more effectively identify and punish bad actors. These days I spend time on niche forums where people actively choose to be there and participate. There's no Internet Points to be gamed, no drama of the day, no personal brands to be pushing. It's absolutely refreshing. It moves slower, there's no sense of FOMO, it's not made to suck your attention span dry. Twitter is rotting: it's why the front page has to tell you it is relevant, and why they started requiring logins to read beyond a thread. It'd be farther gone if journalists didn't prop it up as a way to do their job faster.

mavidser 4y ago

I can't agree that "global public square don't work for humans" - but even if that were the case, it's still too late to just reverse course. As long it's possible, viable and largely desired, the market will spit out a solution to this need.

nomdep 4y ago
Is not too late at all. If you remove the "is not my responsibility what my users publish" for forums beyond X thousand users, every forum will stay under that limit and twitter quickly will become thousands of independent sub-twitters ala reddit. No home page aggregating everything, no suggested tweets, no country-scale public square

TheCondor 4y ago

Maybe the internet isn’t a good analog of the square. I’m sure there are taverns near any reader here where one could “say the wrong things” and be asked to leave or maybe roughed up or even worse. Those consequences might be an important part of this not-really-discourse-or-free-speech-but-we-want-to-treat-it-like-free-speech. Hard to say what the best thing is. Huge parts of our society don’t like consequences for actions.

matwood 4y ago
For one, a real public square isn't anonymous. To add to your example, get thrown out the tavern too many times and they will eventually not let the person come back. This person can't simply create a new account and sneak back in.

uncertain-phr 4y ago

Marshall McLuhan came up with the concept of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_village, which may be relevant here.