
De-escalating social media conflict - npunt
https://nickpunt.com/blog/deescalating-social-media/
======
noobermin
I think this work is great and interesting, and I respect it. One of the
things I feel like it lacks is a discussion of the broader context: we all
sort of suspect that one of the reasons Twitter does not generally allow for
de-escalation (like FB not censoring misleading news articles) is that such
escalation is in fact part of their revenue stream (escalation=more
engagement), so while I think ideas like this would be great if Twitter
decided to incorporate it, the issue of course is that Twitter wouldn't want
to as they actually love the cancel culture mill, it generates engagement.

I genuinely however like the ability to admit guilt such that replies are
disabled because as the author notes, it explicitly ends all engagement. Any
following engagement would require more work (subtweeting, screenshotting) but
actively put a damp on the first derivative. But that said, reducing
engagement is in fact not in Twitter's interest, as I said, so I don't see
them doing it without some outside pressure.

~~~
secondcoming
If there's anyone out there who wants to earn money from advertising there are
two words you need to be aware of:

"BRAND SAFETY"

No well known advertiser wants their brand associated with something unpopular
or toxic. This is why YouTube is demonetising any video that mentions
Covid-19. YouTube themselves technically probably don't care, but brand safety
conscious advertisers certainly do, and so YouTube must too.

They've realised that Twitter and FB, and others, are currently toxic
platforms. The discussion threads can be awful, driven by fascists on both the
far-left and far-right of the political debate. They no longer want to buy
this advertising space, it's too much of a reputational risk (I will say that
advertisers outsource the buying of advertising space to Ad agencies who may
not be as savvy since they're under pressure to spend allotted advertising
budgets).

Hence the news about big brands pulling budgets from social media.

Another issue that I've never seen discussed is that if Twitter (and other
social media platforms) relies completely on advertising revenue, it can be
forced to only allow content that advertisers approve of. In other words,
advertisers can in theory control political debate. Social media platforms
then ban or remove content that's undesirable for advertisers because they
can't monetise it.

~~~
guerrilla
> fascists on both the far-left

While I appreciate your comment otherwise, fascism is universally agreed to be
a far-right ideology and claiming otherwise at this point in history can't
really be taken as anything but inflammatory, which isn't what belongs here in
an otherwise insightful comment.

~~~
mirimir
Actually the full quote is:

> fascists on both the far-left and far-right of the political debate

According to Merriam-Webster, fascism is:[0]

> a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti)
> that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a
> centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe
> economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

It's true that some on both the "left" and "right" (which is an absurdly
simplistic one-dimensional distinction) are over-the-top extremist and
forcibly suppress their opposition. However, that's only one aspect of the
definition of "fascist".

Even so, Merriam-Webster doesn't restrict fascism to the right wing, so I
defer to it. But Wikipedia does.[1]

Last, I note that the Soviet Union was arguably fascist. While it didn't exalt
any nation above the individual, it did exalt the Party, and more generally
the state. And its government was certainly autocratic and dictatorial.

0) [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/fascism)

1)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism)

~~~
chinesempire
> the Soviet Union was arguably fascist

No, it wasn't.

Fascism is not simply "what you don't like"

If USSR was arguably fascist, so are the USA then.

Do you think bombing other countries for their oil or to seize control of
countries close to the enemy borders (like in Vietnam) looks more democratic
or fascist?

USSR has been at war in Afghanistan for 9 years, mainly because USA financed
the resistance, creating and arming those mujahideen that years later became
"terrorists" simply because they weren't needed anymore...

USA has been at war in Afghanistan for 19 years now (and counting) and the
evidence to go to war were falsified.

Fascism is a specific thing, if we broaden the meaning of that word, anything
can be called fascist.

~~~
sukilot
We are long past the point of "fascism" meaning anything but "government that
hurts people"

~~~
chinesempire
As Italian, with a grandfather imprisoned by the fascists and the other sent
by the fascist regime to die in Russia, I can tell you what fascism is and
what is not and I can tell you we never thought it meant "government that
hurts people" like nazism is not just "people who wear swastikas", if you use
it that way, you are wrong.

My grandmother died few moths ago, she was from 1922 and escaped from the
fascists on one side and the Marocchinate
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marocchinate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marocchinate))
on the other side, while my grandfather was in jail even if he was ill with
tuberculosis, my father house was occupied by fascists and he had to hide from
the day he was born until he was five, and when the war ended his father never
came back.

I think it's not long past when people that suffered from it are still alive,
don't you think?

You're oversimplifying something that's been very hurtful for my country, the
history of my continent and for my family.

But let me make a simple example for you: fascism was about separating people
in classes, USSR was about eliminating classes.

Fascism was about colonialism and they did unspeakable things in North Africa,
justifying their actions with he excuse that "black people are not humans,
they are like animals"

USSR never did something similar, because of people's race.

Fascism was about individualism, USSR was about colletivism.

Etc. etc. etc.

Just to exemplify for you what fascism is and what is not: US is more fascist
than USSR could ever have been.

And not because I like USSR, but because words have meanings and it's not for
you to decide what fascism means when we are the ones who faced it, in our
houses, fought it, defeated it, and rebuilt from the ruins and the trail of
dead fascism left.

BL matters, Italian lives matters too.

~~~
saagarjha
That might be what it used to mean, but it certainly does not mean that now:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#"Fascist"_as_a_pejorat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#"Fascist"_as_a_pejorative).
You can call it wrong all you want, but the use of the word has been diluted
enough that the meaning that you seek is not people believe when they use it.

~~~
mirimir
Fair enough. So now it's just an insult.

But that doesn't mean that it's lost its actual meaning, when used
professionally.

------
thinkingemote
Forgiveness.

Rather than encourage better behaviours of those targeted by the mob, it would
be better to encourage better behaviours of the mob itself.

Forgiveness is absent in every social media or comment section and yet it's
one of the crucial ways we get along with people. Having others visibly but
perhaps silently forgive another would allow social proof that its okay to
forgive this perceived offender. Forgiveness also allows a person to signal a
change in views.

Where before they would only be able to signal disapproval, now they can still
pile on and be toxic but then later signal forgiveness. Not being able to
correct and reflect upon your own potentially negative actions would be one of
the aims. By forgiving others you can forgive yourself of past negativity.

Forgiveness might say "I recognise you did something wrong. I do not expect
public repentance, but I forgive you and go about my life feeling better".

~~~
wffurr
The author goes into that in the next section of the article.

Forgiveness starts with an apology.

~~~
yodelshady
Forgiveness also requires our being _right_. That's not a given. If not, it's
not an apology, it's shouting at someone until they're too exhausted to defend
themselves any more.

So, we should start by not assuming that. _Especially_ when large numbers of
people agree with us.

~~~
jkoudys
Forgiveness certainly does not require being correct. The "mistake" language
is excellent, because it covers cases where you may not have been badgered at
all. You could feel it was a mistake to post something based on its timing (eg
a tasteless joke)

------
rvz
> By admitting a mistake, the poster stops the runaway train of replies and
> amplifications of their mistake, and the reputation damage that follows.

No matter the apology of the mistake, those who demand them to apologise will
still reject it and push further for calls for the accused to be cancelled.
The replies and amplifications will divert into real life instead of Twitter.

~~~
zozbot234
The nice thing about this proposal is precisely how it replaces the
problematic "apology" dynamic with a neutral retraction. Apologies may or may
not be rejected as insincere, but a retraction is simply a factual statement
that the user no longer stands behind what they wrote, while preserving the
content itself (unlike tweet deletion, which in practice tends to _escalate_
reposts) for the sake of transparency.

~~~
joe_the_user
Well, if you have someone determined to go after someone else, the most
nuanced approach is not going to get you much. The attacker just rephrases it
as they wish.

Which is to say, when you have a medium like Twitter, where the entire world
can march in and get involved with conversation X, a proposal for de-
escalation seems futile and a bit absurd. Among other things, a lot of media
personalities have built their engagement by not letting go of opportunities
for kicking whoever when they are down - giving this up would literally cost
them money.

It seems like plans for de-escalation would do much better in situations where
the participants are actually building a community, a group sharing values, a
part of a reasonable forum/medium, not a stand-alone thing.

~~~
npunt
Twitter isn't just one thing, it's composed of many communities of various
sizes and closeness. Some communities are toxic and enjoy kicking people when
they're down, others less so. We tend to recall only the extremes of these big
personalities doing bad things.

People model behavior every day on Twitter. If people only see or recall
others kicking people when they're down, that's what people will expect is the
norm, and this will sway future behavior. If there are tools that offer
alternatives, then we can alter those norms, and make change among the many
people not at the extremes, swaying them toward more productive and respectful
discourse.

~~~
joe_the_user
_Twitter isn 't just one thing, it's composed of many communities of various
sizes and closeness._

That's true tautologically in the sense that different people follow different
things and interests tend to cluster. But Twitter doesn't have communities
that can easily kick people out of their entire group, IE, the only
enforcement comes from Twitter's own lax rules.

 _People model behavior every day on Twitter._

Sure, on average. But determined person, say a troll, is in no way constrained
to model anyone's behavior. That's kind of general problem of bullies - most
people model the average and bully does what they want, so the average moves
towards the bully over time.

~~~
npunt
> But Twitter doesn't have communities that can easily kick people out of
> their entire group

Agree that's a problem, it puts a limit on how close a community can be if it
solely relies on Twitter to operate (rather than on their own online or in-
person fora). This is one rather legitimate reason for cancelling - its a way
for communities to excise members they do not want in the community, using the
rules of social engagement available to them on the platform. Cancelled people
may still have accounts and be able to interact in other groups of people in
the broader twittersphere, but largely become pariahs in the communities they
are a part of on twitter. This is why cancelling on twitter is not uniformly a
bad thing, it is simply a way for communities to maintain some level of
cohesion and shared values within the rules available to them.

As far as trolls, yes that behavior will always exist to some extent online.
Mea Culpa is just one way to improve discourse, not a complete solution. The
issue in public fora like Twitter is that these types of personalities tend to
have outsized impacts on the community, and that's still a problem to solve.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I've always had a policy of promptly admitting when I'm wrong.

It worked great, when I worked at a Japanese company. The Japanese respected
it.

The Americans, on the other hand, looked at it as a sign of weakness, and
tended to "go for the jugular" _(Carpe Jugulum)_.

I think that explains why so many folks "double down," when asked to correct
statements.

Also, lawyers.

A standard piece of advice at American accident scenes, is " _NEVER_ say "I'm
sorry!""

~~~
jacquesm
This is precisely what is going on. You can see that dynamic at work here on
HN on a daily basis.

~~~
noobermin
I have apologized before on HN and people vote it up, so no I do not see it.
It feels much more like people just dig in their heels due to selfish reasons.

~~~
silvat
I wouldn't be so sure. I read a book about rhetoric (basically the bread and
butter of politicians, marketing and PR) and it strongly advocated never( or
almost never) apologizing. I can't remember the exact reasoning but the the
assertion was that it rarely has the desired effect and often weakens your
position and your ability to actually fix the situation.

~~~
stephenbez
Interesting. Do you know what book this was?

~~~
silvat
Yeah, it was this one: Thank You for Arguing: What Cicero, Shakespeare and the
Simpsons Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

From chapter 23. Recover from a screw-up

```Don’t apologize at all. The problem with an apology is that it belittles
you without enlarging your audience. Belittling yourself fails to un-belittle
the victim. That’s why apologies often don’t work. They rarely seem sincere
enough or extreme enough. And many people—especially men—try to couch their
apologies in ways that avoid belittling themselves: “I’m really sorry you feel
that way.” Apologies like that only increase the belittlement, implying, “I
really wish you weren’t such a sensitive flower.” Try this sometime. Shrink
your audience to the size of a plant and watch the anger flow.

Whoa, wait. Aren’t we splitting a hair or two here? When I told my boss how
terrible I felt about misplacing a volcano, wasn’t that the same as an
apology? Actually, no. Look closely and you will find a critical difference.
When you own up to falling short of your own expectations, you emphasize your
high standards. Focus on the standards, and you can actually make your ethos
bigger in your audience’s eyes. Say you’re sorry, and you shrink.```

------
meowfly
I'm very much convinced that one should never admit a mistake on social media
after a dogpile. I think there is too much bad faith for a Mea Culpa option to
even work. Apologies work well in smaller circles because an apology implies a
correction in behavior that's necessary for those around you to trust you
again.

In social media people are signalling they don't like your behavior but they
don't actually care about you individually.

If Twitter really wants to fix this they should make it against the rules to
screenshot or share deleted tweets. It will be much harder to dogpile after
someone deletes their tweet if people can't just keep resharing the offending
tweet for likes.

~~~
dcow
I don't see how the stance that you should never admit a mistake after a mob
dog pile means the feature described here would never work. There are plenty
of cases where people just straight up make real mistakes and don't feel
pressured to apologize out of desire to appease the mob but rather simply have
aggregated additional input, and reassessed their original statement in light
of new information, and decided it needs correction.

------
pabs3
This reminded me of Polis:

[https://pol.is/](https://pol.is/) [https://github.com/pol-
is/](https://github.com/pol-is/)

Taiwan use it for their multi-stakeholder decision making to find points of
agreement. Their application of it to the Uber vs Taxis situation was quite
interesting.

[https://debconf18.debconf.org/talks/135-q-a-session-with-
min...](https://debconf18.debconf.org/talks/135-q-a-session-with-minister-
tang/) [https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-
da7570d372b5](https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-da7570d372b5)
[https://blog.pol.is/uber-responds-to-vtaiwans-coherent-
blend...](https://blog.pol.is/uber-responds-to-vtaiwans-coherent-blended-
volition-3e9b75102b9b)

~~~
ImaCake
That is excellent. Tools like this get us close to the kind of granular
democracy that our ancestors could only dream of.

~~~
mistermann
An imperfect system for granular democracy could be built fairly easily, or
bolted onto an existing system (Facebook has the largest global membership I'd
think).

There's nothing stopping anyone from building one (other than maybe reasonable
fear of being suicided if it gets too much traction, etc), yet I don't think
I've ever heard of anyone who's tried. It's so obviously useful that the lack
of attempts almost seems like a glitch in The Matrix.

~~~
ImaCake
There is an obscure party in Australia whose platform is to allow people to
vote on every issue in parliament.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Direct_Democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Direct_Democracy)

~~~
mistermann
Very interesting!

> Online Direct Democracy does not have any policies. Instead it has pledged
> to conduct an online poll for every bill that passes before Parliament.
> Anyone on the Australian electoral roll would be allowed to register to vote
> in these polls and will be allowed one vote per bill. The MPs _would then be
> required to vote in accordance with the clear majority (55%-70% and more
> than 100,000 votes)_. If there is no clear majority they will abstain from
> voting. A beta version of the system is operating and available for public
> use. This system has been designed to highlight the possibilities on online
> democracy.[2]

"required to vote in accordance with the clear majority" seems a bit
problematic (in the short term anyways) - in this case it is only on a per
ODD-elected MP basis so that's probably fine, but jumping straight to a direct
democracy based system from what we have now likely would be a bit messy.

What I have in mind is setting up a completely independent parallel political
system, that has zero power ( _direct_ power anyways), which would allow time
to work out the numerous kinks and complexities, while simultaneously allowing
_for the first time ever_ for the true (or, _more true_ at least)will of the
people to be known...as opposed to the obviously untrue "will of the people"
we've been sold on for hundreds of years.

Someone will eventually see this elephant in the room and do something about
it, and things should start to get pretty interesting then. Although, my
spider sense tells me that time may be running out, the propaganda techniques
seem to be becoming so effective that it's hard to find independent opinions
on most any topic - framing direct democracy as dangerous and evil strikes me
as something that would be a very easy sales job in the current state of
collective consciousness.

That said, there are also a massive number of obscure, disconnected
communities who all seem to be coming to the same general conclusions about
what is going on here on Planet Earth, perhaps the sum total of all these
obscure groups is actually a very large number, it's just that they're
undetectable.

------
caffeine
It's important not to apologize if you don't honestly believe you have done
something wrong.

When faced with a mob claiming victimhood or hurt feelings, apologies can
confer legitimacy to complaints that don't deserve it.

The forced submission and contrition gives the mob its payoff, and thus feeds
it further. This appeasement encourages the runaway social media mobs which
have now spilled into the real world, murdering and looting.

If you have done nothing wrong, do NOT give them the satisfaction of an
apology. It is the first line of defense in beating back outrage culture.

~~~
Balgair
The point I got from the article wasn't this one.

Forgiveness is a two way street. The sinner and the rest of the community have
to come together to heal the wounds.

Looking at the community antagonistically and suspiciously isn't the way
forward. Each side has to take a leap, knowing full well that they can end up
in the mud. That's an essential part of this, the risk. Saying that one side
is incapable of understanding and kindness isn't what the article was rousing
us to do.

I felt the article was saying to _both_ sides: take the risk, it's worth it.

~~~
pjc50
The world (or the totality of Twitter) is not a community.

You can do this among people who know one another, but among the broader
internet? No, too many full time trolls, factionalists, bot farms, advertisers
and lunatics.

------
FooBarWidget
Even increasing the content limit will go a long way towards deescalation. I
find that, on Twitter, one often has to resort to oversimplified hyperbole and
sarcasm because it's very difficult to fit more thoughtful and nuanced
messages in the content limit.

Yes it's possible to write multiple tweets. But that takes significantly more
effort.

~~~
dcow
Twitter/FB just aren't the right platforms for nuanced discussion. I don't
know why people keep trying to treat them that way or keep wanting them to
become such. Easy for me to say as someone who has already come to this
realization and has actively avoided building dependency on Twitter/FB in my
daily life, I guess... But honestly I wish people who wanted to have real
meaningful discourse with people would gravitate towards other forums. Maybe
the reality is that no good alternative exists? I don't really know of any
platforms built for "at scale" social discourse. Discords and Slacks and chats
and whatnot work great for localized (in the graph-distance sense) discussion.
I have yet to come across a tool built specifically around having nuanced
discussion of real social issues at scale in a way that doesn't end in
scorched earth.

~~~
holler
agree! It’s a challenging problem to solve. Im working on a new project that’s
a sort of hybrid between twitter/slack/discord, and actively thinking about
these issues... Still young but my aim is both scale and nuanced convo!
(example post
[https://sqwok.im/p/TU2ba6D-iDEYuQ](https://sqwok.im/p/TU2ba6D-iDEYuQ))

~~~
mistermann
Is sqwok that project?

I'm curious to know some of the ideas you have in mind for increasing nuance,
have you written them up anywhere?

~~~
holler
Hey sorry late response, yes it is the project.

I don't have it written anywhere publicly. In the immediate I'm focused on
solidifying the foundational conversation features, which center around fast,
open, low-friction live conversation. It should be possible to take advantage
of the live nature of it with features like alternate conversation modes,
branching, and other ways to signal feedback to users that are engaging. The
ranking algo uses chat activity and other data points instead of using voting.
Anyways, I'm hoping to engage with others interested in such things to see
what types of ideas could work in a new site like this!

------
momokoko
The only winning move is not to play.

~~~
dragontamer
Social Media is increasingly becoming a major source of power for political
movements and political organization.

Both Obama and Trump campaigns were signified by a major online, social-media
presence. I'd expect that many future Presidents will be determined by their
command of Social Media.

Social Media is the new television, the new Radio. Its the new media that is
most significantly consumed by the population.

By "not playing", you resign your power to others who take advantage of this
new form of media.

~~~
taborj
I disagree. By not playing, you're protecting yourself from future
retribution, deserved or (more commonly) not. And not being on social media -
or more precisely, not _posting_ on social media - doesn't mean you're out of
touch or lacking in influence. Not by a long shot.

~~~
koluna
To that, genuinely curious - what is the alternative you see to social media
to build influence and visibility? One of the key benefits of Twitter is that
you can make your work, be it in the arts, software or literally anything
else, visible to a large audience. What’s the alternative if one is not to use
Twitter? How do you publicize your findings or insights to a broad population?

~~~
adventured
> What’s the alternative if one is not to use Twitter? How do you publicize
> your findings or insights to a broad population?

If you can, you do it behind the shield of a faceless corporate entity (that
you own) doing the promoting, rather than tying statements to your own
personal identity. You don't stop using Twitter or Instagram et al., you stop
using them to project your personal opinions out into the world. Your
opinionated discussions are reserved to people you trust and to smaller in-
person environments where you can have a real dialogue of understanding and
exchange.

If you want to build value in your own identity, you take on the risks to
chase the rewards. I'd suggest strictly talking about work, and never
deviating from that. If you leave that lane, these days everyone knows the
risks they're taking, it's blatantly obvious.

You publicize your findings, you don't spout off about such and such highly
charged partisan social cultural revolution topic that is just begging to get
you in trouble if you twitch the wrong way. I think that's really plainly
obviously the way you handle it. What's so hard about that? Oh I just couldn't
help throwing out my meaningless 2cents on BLM while discussing my work on
using machine learning to recognize giraffes standing next to stop signs; I
just had to get my opinion about black-white relations out there in the open,
because what I have to say about BLM is super important and could change the
world. No, just publicize the findings.

~~~
dcow
In other words: self-censor. Sorry not my style.

I believe you have good points about keeping your work and personal lives as
separate as possible and I believe your advice is very pragmatic. I don't,
however, think it should be necessary nor is it realistic. Let's all go into
sterile work environments for 8+ hours a day where we have to self-censor
based solely on observations of how other people fucked up and angered the
mob. Let's never celebrate each other's humanity at work in case they
accidentally "twitch the wrong way", as you put it. Let's all just sand in
line, the oppressed among us silent and powerless because they've been told
they have no voice.

In reality, people's work is important and meaningful to them. People need the
freedom to express themselves without having to calculate whether it's worth
finding a new job tomorrow because a mob sniffed them out.

~~~
stjohnswarts
I don't think he was implying that you have to live by what he perceives as an
out to the social quagmire to be found in social media. Let the screaming
masses have it and they'll eventually destroy themselves or move on to another
quagmire.

~~~
dragontamer
> Let the screaming masses have it

Ultimately, those "screaming masses" will vote and determine the future of
this country. And by "eventually", I mean in less than 4 months.

> they'll eventually destroy themselves

Not before Election Day.

The social media groups have proven themselves to be powerful coalitions of
voters, capable of coordinating mass movement and determining the future of
our country.

------
rexgallorum2
Ultimately I think the best solution will be universal 'deamplification', i.e.
disabling all features that facilitate virality/contagion. It is unfortunate
that Facebook, Twitter, et. al. have tweaked their entire platforms and
business models to profit from phenomena that appear to be almost without
exception socially corrosive and destructive. Modern soc med platforms work
like factories for the memetic reproduction and dissemination of bad ideas,
half-truths, and other rubbish, as well as for disturbing mob behaviour.
Regarding the article, providing 'mea culpa' tools would only reinforce the
dictatorship of the online mob, who would invariably bully users into issuing
apologies.

It might seem like a stretch, but I suspect that ultimately all of these
platforms are going to end up being carved up by regulators, co-opted by
governments, subjected to national firewalls, etc. on account of their
potential for mischief, misuse, disinformation, misinformation, open source
intel gathering by hostile powers, meddling, etc.

------
ve55
The idea that a feature like a 'forgive' button to forgive someone for acting
out of line is so important that it's being suggested is..harrowing, in my
opinion. I see how these features can seem like a good idea, but my issue is
that these seems like patches onto a broken system instead of trying to fix
things that have contributed to the brokenness.

Instead of creating outrage and then trying to patch it later, we should try
to stop the outrage from occurring to begin with, which means the nature of
virality-promoting algorithms has to change.

~~~
npunt
Yeah, I'm a bit surprised nobody has picked up on the forgiveness part. The
more I worked on this, the more it's necessity became clear. I think it's a
more subtle point, but it's a powerful way to restore relationships and even
potentially forge closer ties.

I get that many people think Twitter or social media in general is a broken
system. It's my belief though the same power of design to get us into the
toxic situations we're in can help get us out of it. It will take many changes
to deconstruct the outrage engine, but I think one part is indeed finding ways
to have constructive, reputation- and respect-preserving dialog.

Changing the algorithm is a much bigger task. It's a sort of 'how do you solve
world peace as just one person' type question. If we lack access to change
something big, we must still try to change what we can. That was why I started
with a simple feature that Twitter could implement without much effort. We may
as well try it and see what it does. If it works, it can help give us the
momentum to tackle bigger problems, and give us the hope and concrete results
to tackle larger problems.

~~~
zestyping
The word "forgive" is a loaded one. I wonder if it wouldn't be easier for
people to understand and accept if presented as a "heart" on the mea culpa
itself, since that's already a familiar button and the use of the heart
symbology gives it a touch of tenderness.

~~~
npunt
That's definitely an alternative, I almost did it that way!

I went with 'forgive' because I think the broader problem we have on social
media is when looking across _all_ users, it can be really ambiguous what
things mean, which has led to a lot of misinterpretation of intent. The people
entering the worldwide commons of Twitter are from every life stage, skill
level, opinion tribe, culture, personality type, etc, and the tools we've used
to find common ground among all of us in the past - language - is being thrown
out in favor of hieroglyphs and UI structures that can be pretty ambiguous for
a lot of people.

Adding ambiguity can be fun and quite useful in certain circumstances,
especially with new things where the goal is to create emergent behavior. But
for important things that strike at the core of who we are and have deep
psychological impact, I'd prefer to see those rooted in specific meaning and
intent. Concepts like forgiveness and mercy are things that span almost every
culture throughout history and are part of the glue that tie us together, so I
figured its probably better to be extra clear about that.

I also like to use design proposals to push people to think a bit, make them
wrestle with things that sound silly because they're so straightforward,
rather than just hand wave it (my other recent work on Spaces [0] is an
example of this). But in this particular case, I loved the clarity of it. I do
think it's worth further exploration and discussion tho!

[0] [https://nickpunt.com/blog/spaces/](https://nickpunt.com/blog/spaces/)

------
Fellshard
How will this play when a mea culpa acts as blood in the water for some groups
of bad actors?

~~~
oehpr
Currently I am liking the look of this proposal a lot! I've been trying to
imagine some scenarios where it could be used or abused in a negative way but
so far I haven't come up with any.

Could you go into details on how you're thinking this would play out? I'm not
sure how a bad actor would exploit a tweet with a mea culpa flag like this on
it. But I am not as imaginative as bad actors.

~~~
Fellshard
Some people take it less as an apology, and more as an admission of guilt - a
self-picked target for harassment and worse.

------
im3w1l-alt
I think the mockup emphasises the original tweet too much and the apology too
little.

Suggestion: put the apology first. Use black color for apology, faint gray for
original.

~~~
npunt
Good idea, I was trying to use existing Twitter designs as much as possible
but agree emphasis is lost. See the top image in the Follow-ups section where
the mistake is represented atop the tweet for something more along what you're
thinking.

------
jackcosgrove
Years ago I had a rule that I would not post anything after 8pm. I had
discovered after some reflection that that was when my "witching hour" for
toxic internet posting was most likely to begin. I don't follow the rule
anymore as I've slowly disengaged from social media and am less likely to get
riled up by that nonsense, but it was a good rule when I did follow it.

Commenting platforms should have "circuit breakers" that slow down activity.
It's the easiest thing to measure and control. You don't even need to analyze
content. Metafilter had (has?) a similar feature for posting topics, which
only allowed one topic per day.

As others have pointed out though, slowing down activity decreases engagement
and hurts the bottom line.

~~~
icebraining
HN has a circuit breaker too; as a thread gets deeper, the "reply" link takes
longer to appear, to force a cooldown.

------
SXX
I guess there is one more important bit that author is missing.

Twitter also let's anyone retweet very old postings out-of-context and don't
even show some warning like "this was posted N years ago" tells me they are
not interested in de-escalation.

There are a lot of years-old tweets that can be used to attack a person. And
no people don't have to specifically delete their archives or press some "I
was wrong" for solving this problem.

------
netsharc
Slightly off-topic (talking about the psychology and not this UX), but I also
feel like people are yelling "You f __*ing idiot(s)! " online to feel better
about themselves, e.g. if someone wrote "How can you not see [insert
politician's name here] is saving the world, you idiot!", they'd feel a bit
better about themselves for getting it and being smarter than the person
behind the wall of text they just read.

We need to take care of the loneliness epidemic as well, and this addiction to
the Ersatz-Socialising which is just staring at screens and thinking you have
a social life...

~~~
npunt
Agree completely. Negative social media behavior is many times just the tip of
the iceberg of a much larger issue of the fabric of society being torn, of our
spirits hurting, and of psychological issues surfacing. We must acknowledge
this and offer paths for people to find psychological safety again, and one
way is to soften and de-escalate the culture of discourse.

------
zuhayeer
Really like the ideas here, but I think the underlying problem is the mindset
behind attacks and cheap dunks. People who are determined will find a way,
they'll screenshot and flame you if they can't do anything else.

Right now it feels like more of a way for attackers to cheaply drive
engagement and get likes. I think we need a broader cultural shift of making
it not cool to attack someone without an intent to genuinely educate.

Also, at the same time, fundamentally, people use social media for different
reasons and you can't necessarily dictate what people should do

~~~
npunt
One of the most powerful tools in design is friction. The more friction things
take, the less they'll be done, and visa versa. Taking screenshots of later
deleted tweets is high friction, so it only comes in the most extreme
circumstances by the most dedicated people. What about other circumstances?

I'm seeing a lot of acceptance of the status quo in responses here, that
things will never get better, that people behave how they behave and that is
that. I fundamentally disagree - I think we've gotten ourselves into this
situation through designs that unintentionally favor certain outcomes, and if
we are more intentional about what outcomes we wish to have, altering those
designs can lead us to better outcomes.

------
jancsika
I like this and posted a question yesterday on HN whether Twitter had such a
UI. So I guess they don't.

The deeper issue IMO is that a) we're trying to squeeze every last ounce of
value out of the dying "feature" that "anyone can join this service for zero
effort", and b) the services that do leverage a web of trust (in the social
sense) like Facebook have business models that tend to damage those social
links rather than build something healthy with them.

------
quotemstr
No. Totally wrong direction. Apologizing to a mob is just terrible advice.
It's going to get people's careers and lives ruined. A mob cannot forgive,
especially on Twitter. Never grovel in front of one. Apologizing to a mob and
begging for a respite just makes the mob angrier. A platform-level feature to
make this groveling easier is just going to encourage this wrong-headed
response, and it can't _possibly_ work, because even if you disable direct
replied, people can still post about whatever they want an amplify their anger
in a million other ways.

The article is right about one thing: social media is a hothouse of hate. The
best way for us to get out of this dystopia of rule by Twitter mobs is to
ignore everything that happens on Twitter. It's not the real world.

------
adjkant
There's a lot that would need to be solved for in the "Culture of Use"
section, but true props to the author for thinking outside the box of
normalcy.

As far as I can see, the only way we can get these types of things implemented
is to have a company that cares to design and spend time with them in the
first place. Does anyone know/have thoughts on/have any ideas on how to make
things like this a reality?

------
photoGrant
This is precisely the discussions and issues we need to be solving to better
the social media death trap we’re already in. Not only that, they supplied
some really solid ideas on how, also. Kudos

------
davesque
This is brilliant. I actually was pondering just the other day how it seems
like people have lost the ability to forgive in the public sphere.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of world leaders are setting incredibly bad
examples on this front. But maybe the design of social media is just as much
of a problem. There's a bit of a chicken and egg thing there. Improving social
media platforms is almost certainly the easier side of that problem to
address.

------
mlthoughts2018
I think the article is missing a big point. Most discussions on social media
are about values and sacred beliefs. Someone might quote an article or state
some statistics, but that’s not at all part of their intent.

Their intent is to talk about their deeply held norms. What social policy is
Correct and what policy is Wrong. Not because of facts but because of tribes.

These are not things you can “admit you’re wrong” about. It takes years of ego
breaking life experience to realize core beliefs or values might be wrong. It
simply will not happen in the span of posting in social media.

So I don’t think the trouble with admitting you are wrong is as simple as they
put it. It’s not about the “no respite” aspect or social proof or digging in.

It’s just taking “us v them” tribal beliefs evolved to survive in agrarian or
nomadic society millennia ago, and putting it in a megaphone.

Many of the toxic debates are not even about anything where right and wrong
makes any sense. The outrage cancel people calling for blood are just as
“wrong” as the person they are persecuting. It’s just one stream of subjective
babble yelling at another stream of subjective babble that they’re wrong.

------
Funes-
There's no viable solution at this point other than leaving _all_ social media
behind. The internet should've never intertwined with our real life
identities. In fact, what we have now is the vast majority of people living
most of their lives exclusively online, unfailingly to the detriment of their
immediate environment.

Do not try to de-escalate, but to remove once and for all.

------
dghughes
>as the visibility of a mistake travels across social media, the poster is
subject to a constant deluge of new readers calling them out

I've certainly experienced this situation. It's not so bad when it's limited
to a small geographic area like a single timezone. But if it's a topic that
interests a world-wide audience even just English speakers that's when it can
get nuts.

>Twitter as an example environment....1 Ignore replies and hopefully let it
die out

That's all you can do you're tainted and anything you write is useless it's.
Once that fuse is lit there is no plan B. Turn off notifications on your phone
and walk away for a few days.

Another Twitter mistake I've made is replying to a heated topic. The
responding people don't understand or is not aware of all the people attached
to that Tweet. Now I deselect everyone but the one person I want to reply to
unless the topic is tame.

------
dgudkov
It's an interesting suggestion which certainly makes a good point, however
it's wrong in its main assumption - that people have a more or less rational
discussion on social media and are looking to find out the truth rather than
publicly re-translate and re-confirm beliefs which are frequently based on
emotions and negative life experience.

I'm afraid social media and their AI-powered "optimization for engagement" has
exposed something deep and visceral in the human nature. It will probably take
years to finally understand what the massive social technology-driven
experiment named "social media" actually is.

This experiment has made a few people very rich, and millions of people
unhappy and insulted.

~~~
davidgl
Agreed, we sometimes play the truth seeking game, but on social media the game
is much more often the tribal team virtue signalling game

------
dcow
I think this is a great idea. I would love to see it implemented immediately
as an experiment rather than tring to figure out on principle whether it would
work etc. etc. etc. Only one way to know how it impacts the social climate...
try it out!

------
thegayngler
I quite like this study on de-escalation online. I myself have learned to not
care about whether or not people forgave me for being wrong or instead just
assume they forgave me for being wrong. If I think I am actually wrong i'll
say it and then ignore any further replies to the post. In the case that I
simply do not agree that I'm wrong, I do not apologize. I "pithily" re-iterate
my opinion/disagreement/argument and why, then ignore any further responses.
Keeping track of everyone else's petty beefs with me online is not worth the
effort. _shrug_

As a side note: I do not believe in grudges. So..I do not stay mad.

------
whiddershins
Very interesting. Something _like_ this definitely needs to be done.

The angle here though, seems to condone a certain amount of shaming. It’s hard
for me to not see this through the lens of someone doing a ‘mea culpa’ because
they said something which upset people’s sensibilities, even if it was true.

------
ca98am79
I was reading the book "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg and it
made me think it would be nice to have a plugin when posting to social media
that pre-formatted your tweet/post in a non-violent way. I think this would
really help and I would use it, but probably not many people would use it.

I ended up just deleting my social media accounts and I feel better already

------
tjpnz
There are some convincing arguments out there that social media promotes
conflict by design in order to drive engagement. If it's easier to provoke
people than it is to foster empathy it is of no surprise that the algorithms
would be weighted towards that. Maybe the answer is to just avoid such
environments in the first place.

------
m0zg
Conflict == engagement, engagement == $$$. You can't make a person understand
something when his salary depends on not understanding it. The sole reason for
the existence of e.g. Twitter is to facilitate a woke mob going after people
they don't like for whatever imaginary grievance they dream up on any given
day. They don't care if they're wrong, they're going to do it anyway. And
Twitter actively works to remove any and all pushback to this. Why? $$$. If it
wasn't for this shit boiling over they'd be out of business long ago. Same
with most of the mainstream press. Therefore, to get past this calamity, we
must destroy both, through technological and/or legislative means. It is not
good for society when such large, powerful actors exist specifically to fan
the flames and incite violence and hatred with total impunity.

------
cs02rm0
My first instinct was that I like the approach.

I certainly agree there's an issue here.

But I would worry about the creep of this as a feature. Some could argue the
mistake was only the timing, or that the mistake was that it was posted where
the mob could read it. It seems a natural continuation to move to more
specific language. This post was unacceptable. This post was insufficiently
researched. This post was bullying. This post was racist.

An analogy is probably a bad idea, but in the same way F1 drivers who don't
speak out in favour of BLM as a political movement, rather than just a
sentiment, are being criticised I wonder if people who don't use this feature
would be further targeted. Whether mobs would feel further validated by it.

We could certainly do with something. I fear the answer isn't technical.

------
neilwilson
An interesting view. However how does it deal with the main issue - when
Twitter etc is gripped by a groupthink and the mob is wrong?

There’s an old line that one person saying something is a crank, ten people a
cult and 100 a religion.

Social media allows you to find the other dozen people in the world who think
what you do.

------
z61a
Twitter used to have this 140 char limit. Maybe they should have policy that
each user can only post maximal 140 tweet each month -- to provide some
equality. When every tweet counts, the conflict will be reduced.

------
Finnucane
The only way to win is not to play.

------
jennyyang
It's actually a simple solution.

Have a flamewar detector similar to HN, and then for that thread and those
users, have it look like the other people in the thread respond "Ok, I'm
sorry." Obviously randomized using machine learning so that people will think
that it's a real apology. Everyone on the thread will think the other person
apologized and will simply move on. Or, if they respond, no one except the
writer will see the responses.

~~~
gallegojaime
I might see this working only if it doesn't curtail freedom of speech that
much. But it's too eerie. Without UX cues I don't know if Twitter wrote
something or you did.

Train it slightly wrong and Twitter takes control of some important figure's
public viewpoint, perhaps even replacing something worth being angry about in
the first place.

------
geodel
Well the most nasty conflicts on social media are not about facts which once
settled all parties can happily go home. If people were arguing who is tallest
person in town it may be possible to make mistake, apologize and rectify.
However most acrimonious conflicts are something like who is most evil person
in town, I don't know how one can be objectively right or wrong about it or
de-escalate during disagreement.

------
teddyh
You can only de-escalate when both the two parties and the medium of
communication _all agree_ that de-escalation is in fact desired. In today’s
environment, often at least two of the three instead want to _escalate_ the
conflict: Trolls and outrage addicts will by definition always want to
escalate, and the platforms are all incentivized to maximize “engagement”.

------
LordFast
There's no need to go to war with someone if you can plant the seeds of a
toxic mindset, and then watch them tear themselves apart instead.

------
memexy
> Reply to your tweet, posting "I was wrong"

There is another option. Quote tweet and say "I was wrong". Quote tweeting is
a concept extension mechanism but people mostly use it for dunking. If you
make a mistake then quote tweeting is the best way to correct it because
people can then search for "I was wrong" and see the wrong tweet in context.

~~~
npunt
True, quote tweeting (I think you mean retweet with comment) yourself is
another option, however I don't see it as fundamentally different to replies.

If people are liking, retweeting, or replying to the original tweet, it will
continue to show up in the feeds of others through the home feed algorithm.
Thus, the same forces apply that strongly favor the original over the
correction.

~~~
memexy
That's a good point but if you actually want to verify whether the original
author retracted their statement then you can do localized search, e.g.
"from:author 'I was wrong'". It's true the feed will show different results
but I only use twitter by searching now and it's a much better experience.
Tweetdeck allows me to curate exactly what I want to be aware of instead of
being beholden to algorithmic manipulation.

------
ponker
This only highlights that any substantive discussion of anything controversial
should be pseudonymous.

------
dmje
It's a really interesting post but the net thought I have coming out of it
isn't "let's fix this" but "f __* it, the whole social media experiment is so
conceptually broken, we should all just stop and try something else.. "

------
FailMore
This is excellent. Great thinking

------
OOPMan
Personally, I think social media needs to be successfully rebranded as social
cancer

------
RashadSaleh
What about every individual person being responsible for what they say and do?

There is no scheme where this responsibility can be shifted to someone else.

Would you do it? Would you take up the responsibility to correct and monitor
and censor and edit what your neighbor says or does?

Are we so afraid to judge people that we need a "system" to express that for
us?

But here you see the results. A very condescending "don't worry your little
head about it" article written in "good faith" to redeem the "sins" of
"misguided" people on social media to "correct their ways".

Preaching, preaching, preaching, and nothing but preaching. Even the harshest
judgement is miles better than that.

------
HPsquared
IRL communication has the constant feedback mechanism of seeing each others'
facial expressions which is mostly missing from remote communications.

------
billysielu
If someone is abusive and you want to tell them that behavior is not
acceptable you are also at the same disadvantage.

------
amadeuspagel
>as we rely heavily on social proof to sense-make around norms.

What is this formulation? Why not "to make sense of norms"?

------
TheBobinator
Joe Rogan had an excellent podcast up on this which is well worth your time to
listen to IMO.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtNW3I1FZ5o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtNW3I1FZ5o)

What you have is a significant portion of people with c-ptsd due to the abuses
western cultures' political experimentation has created who believe western
culture was a mistake and tearing everything down it stands for is a lofty
moral goal.

These people are angry, and IMO, they have a right to be angry; they've been
through some terrible, terrible things. They believe, strongly, that engaging
in pyschological warfare and using tactics to build cults or go get orgs to
"go woke" that eventually culminate in killing people is a reasonable method
of running what can be defined at this point as an insurgency.

I think it is manditory reading for people to read books like The body keeps
the Score by Van Der Kolk if they want to really understand this movement and
how these people have been marinated in bad situations. I think it is
important to give them opportunities and show them patience in their recovery
and to allow them to decide what their culture should be going forward.

Their tactics and logic do not stand up to scientific riguer but are complex
enough to entrap the normal minimally educated individual and get them into an
emotional trap; Much like the Seattle CHAZ\CHOP, the correct way to manage
this is as an emotional discussion. Eventually the movement will hit a
political peak, the emotions will die down, and an unruly minority is left
over.

I think it is incredibly important for us to not ignore this minority, but to
recognize, especially after reading that book, that these people exist and
need to be given opportunities and space to decide for themselves what they
want their culture to be.

We need to set strong boundaires of pride in western culture and its
accomplishments, but not engage in debates about how western culture needs to
be torn down or we need to self-harm as an act of solidarity. We need to not
engage in political discource and when they do come, give them acts of virtue
signalling which are a fascade. Over time, the emotions will dissipate and the
healing can begin.

Western people are learning and we need, I think, to learn to pay for our
mistakes a little better instead of ignoring people as detritus from failed
systems.

------
sqldba
This is brilliant.

------
anonms-coward
This is very old but feels as relevant as ever

[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

~~~
musicale
> most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in French
> literature, but few professors of French literature could make it through a
> PhD program in physics

Pretty sure this isn't true. French literature professors not only managed to
survive a brutal graduate program but have also achieved something that is
next to impossible: get a tenured job as a humanities professor. Physics is
almost certainly the easier route, not just intellectually but in terms of
sheer endurance.

------
ptato
this is a great idea, and that's precisely why twitter would never implement
it

~~~
Nextgrid
The problem isn't just the people but the fact that social media platforms
encourage outrage because it's how they make money. We can't fix "cancel
culture" as long as it benefits the social media companies.

~~~
mikedilger
It's the same reason that news media is so enraging.

------
starkravingsane
So I don't even know how I stumbled upon this site; I am by no means a hacker.
But I read/skimmed this and I at least love the sentiment. I doubt you or
anyone will see this now that there are 200 other comments, but here goes
anyway.

From my time on twitter, it definitely seems to me that the algorithm is
designed to show the most conflict and vitriol possible. I don't really have
friends who use Twitter; I'm mostly looking at accounts with thousands of
followers. When I click on a tweet from Trump, I mostly see left-wing people
attacking him, but when I click on a tweet from Hillary or AOC, I mostly see
Trumpers attacking them. Every damn time. I know that that is not an accurate
portrayal of the overall responses. I know Trump gets a fuckload of praise for
just like taking a dump on the keyboard. So the algorithm is not showing me
tweets I'll like/agree with, it's showing me discord, anger, and hatred.

I recently came across this tweet from Megan Amram, a comedian I follow:
[https://twitter.com/meganamram/status/1273446578926219265](https://twitter.com/meganamram/status/1273446578926219265)
in which she posts a letter of apology for some recently-surfaced offensive
tweets from years ago. If you notice, most of the responses are not accepting
her apology at all. I was not aware of any of this until seeing this tweet,
but just from reading this letter, they do seem to have a point. Several
points.

I think that one takeaway from this is that in your proposal, the offending
tweeter just hits an "I'm sorry" button and that's it, which is fine if they
just said Mario isn't Italian. But if a politician denigrates an entire race
or accidentally tweets a dickpic he meant to dm to an underage girl...well
actually there's just no response for that--but you know, if it's a famous
person saying something unacceptable, then really there is a need for some
explanation, repentance, and at least their own words.

Also, I think in such instances, their followers/the public has a right to
respond. With more than just hitting a forgive button. Perhaps shutting down
replies but allowing people to retweet with comment would be okay.

I think the thing that's missing here is celebrities/politicians/corporate
people/etc. versus the little guy. Here's another example.

I once got into a bit of a heated thing with Jameela Jamil. It was late at
night, I'm a random nobody with 500 followers (and only because I was a small-
town reporter briefly) and more than a little buzz on, and I reply to an
international celebrity's tweet. This is already super long, so I'll just say
I think one word I used was misleading but it wasn't hurtful or out of line or
anything. Never in a million years would I have expected to be in my pajamas
alone in my apartment at midnight having a tense back-and-forth with this
woman whose attractiveness was a running joke in a popular prime-time TV show.
It wasn't long before I apologized, and then she said that we should both
delete our tweets now "to avoid you getting piled upon" and immediately
deleted hers. But she strategically left up the tweet about deleting the
exchange, so then a flock of admirers, having no idea what had occurred, came
to praise her for what a saint she was for doing that for what must have been
some horrible evil troll.

The point is that running afoul of a woman put on a pedestal by 1.1 M people
on Twitter could have been pure hell for me. I'm mentally ill (trauma issues
and such) and experience debilitating shame on a daily basis, and I should not
have been drinking, so a tweet storm of judgment and hatred could have
actually caused a serious crisis.

In conclusion: I love any idea of helping people to be more caring, to reduce
the vitriol, ugliness, and cruelty of online social interaction, but I think
your plan is kind of missing the bigger picture, and also assumes that the
problem is only the humans. You guys are the hackers here, but I am quite
certain that twitter is designed to promote the hating, the dramatic, the
denigrating, so that people have to keep coming back to show those idiots what
big idiots they are, and to prove how right you are.

------
lostjohnny
HN could learn a thing or two from this article.

For example stop shadow banning people without warnings, make dead posts
always visible but with disabled comments, unless vouched for, make moderation
visible, I would like to know why something disappeared, create public spaces
to resolve disputes between moderators and users: it's easy to misunderstand
something when you are from 1% SV and the other person is from a developing
country, for example, moderators are wrong too, hiding mistakes is not de-
escalation.

Last but not least, changing the rules around "you're posting too fast" I
share my public network connection (and public IP) with tens of other people
and usually can't comment because it says I'm posting too fast.

Someone could be very frustrated by this behavior and become increasingly
angry, this is not good de-escalation either.

I've never seen an "I've made a mistake" here on HN for example

------
trekrich
Lets just get rid of social media and be done with it. The world was a much
better place before.

------
dbbljack
ok what happens when the president says something like

"the sky is red, dems are better off dead (marked as mistake made, replies
disabled)"

~~~
remexre
article actually uses one of his tweets as an example -- twitter already
blocks comments on ones they judge to be over the line.

there's also mention later about how to deal with bad actors.

------
renewiltord
Not worth it. Most people have zero value. Write for your audience that has
non zero value. Issue corrections to them. Apologies are pointless. Just issue
updated information.

Truth seekers will simply update the coefficients they have for you. It's just
information interchange. If you don't issue errata, your coefficients will
just drop.

