Cipheron on 20/8/2023 at 05:14
Quote Posted by R Soul
Is it helpful to use words like 'safe' and 'hostile' regarding words people post on the internet? I think words like that exaggerate significance of trolls and other objectionable people.
Those trolls are how we ended up with people storming the Capitol on Jan 6 and 5 people dead.
So yes, it matters. Damn near came close to toppling US Democracy, as in toppling the peaceful transition of power, all fueled by the online shit specifically because people dismissed it as mere words. It was really only AFTER Jan 6 that the media started to go "oh shit, maybe this 'QAnon' stuff is bad". Nobody exaggerated anything, they actually didn't pay attention until it was too late.
Similarly, how many people are actually dead now because of the spread of anti-vaccination disinformation? A lot, actually. Some areas had Republicans dying at twice the rate of Democrats. Purely because of online propaganda by people who don't give a fuck about their own followers. If you look at the actual numbers of excess Covid deaths on a party-affiliation basis, it's not a 911-scale event, it's like a Hiroshima-scale event, JUST killing US Republicans, and almost entirely fueled by social media.
That's not even getting into a plethora of other horrors that originated with some online shit talk. Like the guy into QAnon who killed his own kids with a spear gun, because he thought his wife was part of the conspiracy and his kids has reptilian DNA. He didn't come up with that himself, it's online stuff. Or mass shooters radicalized online. A lot of the us/them talk about "white replacement" and anti-whatever minority is almost guaranteed to radicalize some amount of murders. It's just the expected outcome.
We've played the "word don't matter, it's only the internet" game for a while now, but ... it's about 90% of why things are so fucked up now.
So, when I'm talking about safe spaces, I'm not talking about preventing "boo hoo my feelings are hurt" stuff, I'm talking about keeping far-right hate groups out of people's social media groups. The kind who literally do inspire people to murder the groups they target. There's a big overlap with people who think Russia is great and are salivating for the US to have a right-wing coup and butthurt that Jan 6 didn't play out that way as well. Maybe you can say these people are only speaking objectionably, but ... it did lead to a real coup attempt.
SD on 20/8/2023 at 12:04
Quote Posted by R Soul
Is it helpful to use words like 'safe' and 'hostile' regarding words people post on the internet?
This is the world we live in now; words are violence, speech is violence, opinions are violence, everything is violence except, ironically, actual violence.
WEI on 20/8/2023 at 12:18
Quote Posted by demagogue
I think it's true that trolling is a lot more basic problem, and you often don't want to give a troll more credit than they're worth.
But I could see from the perspective of some people being targeted, they might not feel safe.
Actually one part of the law firm where I work represents women being sexually harassed on Twitter, when some wacko guy is relentlessly harassing a woman or even getting her address to stalk her and putting up proof in their Twitter feed, etc., things like that, bad enough that I had to figure out the process to get a subpoena from a Japanese judge to Twitter's International HQ, in Dublin at the time, for the Japanese guy's IP address so the judge could issue an arrest warrant. From the number of clients we get, it happens more than you'd probably like to know.
I could imagine an equivalent kind of case for certain minorities or minority groups badgered by hate speech and getting targeted IRL.
But anyway for a case like that, the language of safe and hostile is definitely fair and not being able to block people is going to make things a lot worse for people realizing they're entering that situation.
Quote Posted by Cipheron
Those trolls are how we ended up with people storming the Capitol on Jan 6 and 5 people dead.
So yes, it matters. Damn near came close to toppling US Democracy, as in toppling the peaceful transition of power, all fueled by the online shit specifically because people dismissed it as mere words. It was really only AFTER Jan 6 that the media started to go "oh shit, maybe this 'QAnon' stuff is bad". Nobody exaggerated anything, they actually didn't pay attention until it was too late.
Similarly, how many people are actually dead now because of the spread of anti-vaccination disinformation? A lot, actually. Some areas had Republicans dying at twice the rate of Democrats. Purely because of online propaganda by people who don't give a fuck about their own followers. If you look at the actual numbers of excess Covid deaths on a party-affiliation basis, it's not a 911-scale event, it's like a Hiroshima-scale event, JUST killing US Republicans, and almost entirely fueled by social media.
That's not even getting into a plethora of other horrors that originated with some online shit talk. Like the guy into QAnon who killed his own kids with a spear gun, because he thought his wife was part of the conspiracy and his kids has reptilian DNA. He didn't come up with that himself, it's online stuff. Or mass shooters radicalized online. A lot of the us/them talk about "white replacement" and anti-whatever minority is almost guaranteed to radicalize some amount of murders. It's just the expected outcome.
We've played the "word don't matter, it's only the internet" game for a while now, but ... it's about 90% of why things are so fucked up now.
So, when I'm talking about safe spaces, I'm not talking about preventing "boo hoo my feelings are hurt" stuff, I'm talking about keeping far-right hate groups out of people's social media groups. The kind who literally do inspire people to murder the groups they target. There's a big overlap with people who think Russia is great and are salivating for the US to have a right-wing coup and butthurt that Jan 6 didn't play out that way as well. Maybe you can say these people are only speaking objectionably, but ... it did lead to a real coup attempt.
Quote Posted by R Soul
Is it helpful to use words like 'safe' and 'hostile' regarding words people post on the internet? I think words like that exaggerate significance of trolls and other objectionable people.
Seriously though, not being able to block anyone in this day and age is just insane... Personaly my first thought doesn't go to trolls or QAnon wackos but simply harassment. Harassment has always been a problem on the internet, people and kids suffer from it daily, got mentally ill for it, even killed or armed themselves because of it..this isn't even scratching the surface of the insanity, think of pedos, or creeps harassing women constantly.. all kind of sick stuff...
I know we are talking about Twitter, but it doesn't make it less crazy.
Most platforms don't consider blocking as an optionnal feature, it's a bare minimum safety measure.. I am not even entirely sure Elon can pull that off without legal repercussions, or his site getting banned in some countries.
Nameless Voice on 20/8/2023 at 22:29
He likely can't, as Apple and Google both have a requirement in their app store terms that social media platforms must allow blocking.
Though I'm not sure if they specifically require that users can block other users, or if the app itself blocking (e.g. censorship) would be enough. Would need to read the terms in a bit more detail (they're long and legalese.)
Nameless Voice on 20/8/2023 at 22:35
Quote Posted by mxleader
I think I signed up for Twitter and lasted a day before I deleted my account, and that was years before Elon bought it. I just don't get why anyone wants to read or share that much detail of their daily lives so often. That being said I was just looking at Mastodon and it looks a lot like what Facebook was in the beginning. Not sure it's worth spending time on that app though. Also, the M in the logo for some reason makes me want McDonald's.
This doesn't really make any sense? Twitter is a platform for posting short updates on whatever you think is relevant. Most people don't actually use it to e.g. share what they had for lunch.
I feel it occupies a space similar to RSS feeds - where you can follow someone's snippets of news - but with the advantage of it being a single central site and people being able to reply.
Mastodon is
exactly the same thing. It's explicitly modelled on Twitter, just that it's open-source and its UX is terrible.
WEI on 20/8/2023 at 22:55
I can't believe this guy... Like you thought you figured how dumb people like Musk are, you'd think they wont suprise you anymore with how insane and stupid they can be, and yet one day you just read the news in disbelief...
mxleader on 20/8/2023 at 23:07
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
This doesn't really make any sense? Twitter is a platform for posting short updates on whatever you think is relevant.
Made sense to me at the time. I'm pretty sure I was reading tweets about what people were eating for lunch. But maybe I was reading tweets from some cooking show star. Difficult to remember.
It's hard to keep up with what platform does what these days. I'm one the 'old' people that still use Facebook the youngin's talk about on TikTok.
mxleader on 20/8/2023 at 23:09
Quote Posted by WEI
I can't believe this guy... Like you thought you figured how dumb people like Musk are, you'd think they wont suprise you anymore with how insane and stupid they can be, and yet one day you just read the news in disbelief...
Why not? Dumb people like Trump and Biden managed to get elected president and they've both said some really stupid things.
Jason Moyer on 20/8/2023 at 23:31
Quote Posted by Cipheron
Latest Twitter thing, X users don't need to be able to block other users.
That will last until all of the people he's blocked over the years can read and respond to his posts. Like every other time he changes a policy without realizing it affects him too.
WEI on 20/8/2023 at 23:38
Quote Posted by mxleader
Why not? Dumb people like Trump and Biden managed to get elected president and they've both said some really stupid things.
It's so stupid it's impressive is what I mean. I am amazed each freaking time even though I am thinking "but of course he'd do that !", it gets me speechless.. It's as if each time you discover a whole new level of stupidity.
And yeah, I wasn't only speaking about Musk, he is not alone in this category for sure, but damn if he isn't one fine specimen.
