
We Live in Fear of the Online Mobs - imartin2k
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-22/we-live-in-fear-of-the-online-mobs
======
lurrr
I will probably be down-voted to hell for this, but here's my 2c.

This is the result of a PC culture. It has made it impossible to have an open
and honest discussion about anything. It is easier to just label someone a
racist, sexist, or other "buzzwords", than to strengthen your argument. Where
are the times when we fought ideas, not people?

From my observation the kind of people doing things like this are the ones
losing the intellectual argument. If you KNOW someone is wrong, why not debate
them? Why go after them personally?

I wrote this in a rush, I apologize for any mistakes or inconsistencies.

~~~
matt4077
> From my observation the kind of people doing things like this are the ones
> losing the intellectual argument.

So you're saying that, in your opinion, the KKK and those guys with the
swastika face-tattoos are winning the "intellectual argument"?

Because that's literally what you're saying. Unless you're trying to say that
this has been a learning experience; And that maybe there are instances where
after, say, fighting a World War over the topic, it no longer needs further
intellectual debate?

~~~
DarkKomunalec
> the KKK and those guys with the swastika face-tattoos

They, and the violent parts of anti-fa, are not the only groups.

------
Meekro
I couldn't care less if people say mean things about me on Twitter, and I'm
pretty sure that I wouldn't lose any friends if I became the target of an
online mob. My significant other certainly wouldn't think less of me.

The scary bit is employment. If a bunch of Twitter users wrote me mean emails,
I'd spend about a minute creating a filter to drop them all and then go back
to my life. If those emails went to my employer, on the other hand, there is a
very real chance that they would determine that I'm more trouble than I'm
worth.

This is a new and unique security hole in our social fabric, and it's one that
didn't exist 20 years ago. I don't have a good solution, but this will keep
getting worse until we find one.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "I don't have a good solution"

You do. You're already using it (on HN at least). Pseudo-anonymity. The
chances of someone doxxing you over a small-scale Twitter dispute is slim.

~~~
benjamincburns
I don't disagree that anonymity offers protection against situations like
this, but bear in mind that anonymity is very much a factor in the lack of
civil discourse online. I'm not suggesting for a second that stripping
anonymity is a solution to any of these problems, but personally I feel like
I'm less likely to engage in the sort of behavior which might invite an angry
mob while posting under my real name.

~~~
hueving
> but personally I feel like I'm less likely to engage in the sort of behavior
> which might invite an angry mob while posting under my real name.

The problem with this is the 'sort of behavior' you are referring to is
posting any statements that disagree with the worldview of the majority of the
people in your circles.

Without anonymity you will also lack civil discourse when all of the sane
people on the minority side know not to speak up because they fear
retribution.

Anyone who publicly considered voting for Trump was accused of being a sexist,
racist, xenophobic, Islamophobe. So instead of any sane discourse, there was
just a surprise upset when Trump won because everyone was convinced the
strategy of accusing all Trump supporters of 'isms' until they shut up was
working.

~~~
benjamincburns
FWIW, most of what you're saying here is my rationale for the first half of
the sentence you quoted. Specifically, there are times when it makes sense to
speak up, and being able to do so anonymously definitely quashes fear-driven
self censorship.

While generally I'd agree that self censorship is a bad thing, I'd also agree
that an ability to control one's impulsiveness is just the opposite. Impulse
control is what I was referring to above as my general reasoning for why I
default to using my real identity online, not self censorship.

------
mmaunder
This is why public sentiment has become hard to measure. The result of
elections, for example, will become increasingly harder to predict as
individual opinions become more private. It used to be fun to share who you
are voting for when randomly called. Now sharing your true beliefs or opinions
comes with a risk of mob reprisal.

In future, the future will be less predictable.

------
stevecalifornia
Town squares used to be small so that mobs couldn't get too big. Now the town
square is infinite and we are seeing the result.

Maybe in a hundred years we will have sorted out how to maintain free speech
but limit the bloodthirsty mob. But in the meantime, we all need to survive
through this period while as a culture we figure out the answer.

The only answer I can think of is to opt-out of social media, ignore trolls
online and cultivate more meaningful in-person connections.

~~~
matt4077
> Town squares used to be small so that mobs couldn't get too big.

See, that's the sort of thing that must be terribly difficult to write,
knowing that thousands were tortured, maimed, and killed by small-town mobs in
the US: [http://www.naacp.org/history-of-
lynchings/](http://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/)

~~~
damnfine
How is that relevant at all to the discussion?

~~~
matt4077
It's a direct contradiction of the parent's point that the past was somehow
better?

------
adjkant
The online mob fear is the result here. The source is people judging others by
their morals (as people have for some time) and those shifting morals. It
always goes back to that, which is what is causing the increasing divide in
the US that then results in the growing power in these mobs.

The problem with that is that all of these arguments are clearly colored by
what moral side the author is on. The author focused on Damore, but didn't
mention the dozens of Google employees harassed and sent death threats online
for being against his memo. The article is clearly coming from the perspective
of conservative thoughts being reprimanded online, but lightly tries to hide
behind the guise of generality. The "fear" is not felt on all sides really.

The level of inconsistency is another source of the divide on both sides. I
think people need to be more willing to follow logic they use for their own
beliefs and apply it to other issues and perspectives.

Edit: Not just follow the logic, but speak out about the issues in the same
way. When someone uses logic X for issue Y and speaks out about it, but fails
to speak out against issue Z when X is also applicable is a huge problem. It's
usually one of the easiest ways to see through someone's beliefs when they try
to be "objective". It's often even more obvious when Y is a much smaller issue
in scope than Z. If you believe in logic X, how much you advocate/support each
issue should be in proportion to the size of their scopes when X applies to
both.

~~~
flukus
> The author focused on Damore, but didn't mention the dozens of Google
> employees harassed and sent death threats online for being against his memo.

I think you might be doing what you're criticizing here. Damore and his
supporters are likely getting just as many death threats and harassment, the
"progressives" generally dish out just as much, it even get's tolerated at by
the likes of twitter. The "conservative" side just doesn't make a big deal out
of it.

~~~
adjkant
I wasn't aware of that - the ones I am mentioning are the ones who had their
profiles directly posted in a targeted harassment attack. As far as I know,
that hasn't happened in the opposite direction to be fair.

~~~
josteink
Googlers publicly tweeted that people like Damore should be punched in the
face. For having an generalist opinion about certain demographics, and
policies based on those.

Let me re-iterate that: Actually encouraging _actual_ violence against a named
individual.

Funnily enough Google and twitter had zero issues with that. Unlike what
Damore did, that was _not_ against their code of conduct.

This really is PC culture, it's intolerance, and the terrible things it drives
fully and perfectly exemplified.

------
docdeek
Social media seems to be living by the maxim “It’s not enough that I succeed,
others should fail”.

It’s not enough to simply be a good person, win an argument, or see your
personal political beliefs become widely adopted - you also have to point out
how bad others are, how badly your opponent lost the argument, or how anyone
holding a different political beliefe to you is a Nazi. There is value to
social media in general and Twitter in particular, but it does appear to me to
be increasingly toxic.

~~~
roceasta
Yes, labelling a person who disagrees with you _Nazi_ seems like a perverse
application of Godwin's Law. It means you are intentionally ending the
discussion. Why do it?

~~~
jacalata
Because there are people marching with swastikas?
[http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/08/inventor-...](http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/08/inventor-
godwin-s-law-says-it-s-fine-call-charlottesville-rioters-nazis)

~~~
erikpukinskis
Yes, those people can credibly be labeled Nazis, but I assume roceasta is
referring to the wider halo around them, of people also being labeled Nazis.
For example, Trump was frequently labeled a Nazi for condeming violence, in
his words, "on both sides. On _both_ sides."

Which I found disturbing, but I don't see how it makes him a Nazi.

~~~
alphaalpha101
It suggests that he sympathises with Nazis, which is close enough to being a
Nazi for most people.

~~~
busterarm
Yes, because anyone who disagrees with Antifa's tactics should reasonably be
assumed to be a Nazi sympathizer... I can't roll my eyes hard enough at this.

------
mychael
Someone should let the members of these mobs know that they are not actually
liberal or progressive. For example, they appear to prefer mob justice instead
of due process; ideological blacklists instead of tolerance; and censorship
instead of freedom of expression. The bedrock principles of a liberal society
appear to be missing from their world view.

~~~
busterarm
To those of us who've been paying attention, those principles always have been
missing from a large percentage of people.

~~~
gasof
It seems comfortable to be a fascist, your moral principles are simple and
your path forward, too.

I wonder if the health upsides of having simpler and easier to follow moral
principles, would outweigh the downsides of being offended and angry all the
time.

I sure hope I won't have to find out. It's a privilege to be a non-partisan,
although perhaps I can't quite say I am, because I despise communism even more
than I despise fascism. The intellectual dishonesty with which mainstream
(which is to say, leftist) media praise communism and attack Nazism is
revolting.

~~~
busterarm
Really the most despicable party here is TV media. The coverage has driven
recruitment for two really inconsequential groups, both Antifa and the KKK.

A minor dust-up between a few hundred people with weapons and 6000 people
yelling and holding signs/shields has become major coverage, like it's the
most demanding thing of our attention. It's not like these groups just
suddenly appeared...but now because of the attention, we have to do something.

You can barely fill 15% of a minor sports team's stadium with the count (and
public influence) of the people involved here. You're not even close to having
to pick a side.

~~~
gasof
I guess I illustrated your point then, the coverage makes it seem like we have
to do something; we have to pick sides!

I feel the pull and it sucks. How does one immunize themselves to this?

And could it be done to one or more percent points of the population, or even
to the point that herd immunity takes over? How could advocating "mass
redpilling" be portrayed as "domestic terrorism" to those deeply immersed in
the mainstream narrative?

~~~
busterarm
Turn off the TV. There's a wonderful, beautiful world outside if you look
around and participate in it.

You can avoid the conflict completely and actually reach people bring out
their reasonable side if you go out there and treat everyone with love and
respect.

~~~
andrewjw
Unfortunately, just because I turn off the TV, doesn't mean everyone else does
too.

------
theWatcher37
For every time people pat themselves on the back about getting some nazi
fired, consider there's others where the mob gets it wrong (see: Reddit and
the Boston bombers).

This stuff is dangerous.

~~~
alphaalpha101
>some nazi fired

Did you actually read the memo? If he's a nazi, then so is 95% of the world's
population.

~~~
ryan-allen
I think he was being sarcastic with the 'some nazi' part?

~~~
graphememes
Does that make it any better?

~~~
ryan-allen
Better than what? Are you a little hot headed at what he said, a little
outraged, perhaps?

------
intopieces
I don't think people live in fear of the online mobs. People post vile
opinions all the time in the Facebook comments sections of new stories, with
open profiles and what is ostensibly their real names.

I agree that online mobs have changed the game as far as speech consequences
go, and I agree that most of those changes are for the worse. I do not see a
way out, however, except to delete your social media and do not post things to
the Internet that could possibly be linked back to you.

I don't really like the Web anymore.

~~~
stubish
No, people really do live in fear of online mobs. You don't hear from them
because they can't participate due to their anxieties. Sure, these fears can
be irrational and overblown but they are real to them.

------
elihu
I think one of the backstops that would ordinarily prevent online mobs getting
out of hand is good journalism. In the case of James Damore, I think there was
a lot of shoddy journalism going on due to some combination of laziness, a
desire to stir up controversy to drive ad views, a desire not to present
complex ideas that readers might find uncomfortable, and willfully
misunderstanding a point of view that's unpopular.

I'm inclined to put most of the blame on the rise of clickbait journalism.
Explaining all sides of an issue takes effort, but feeding people enough
information to make them angry while allowing them to fill in the details
according to their own imagination is easy and cheap.

~~~
matt4077
Yeah, this was really all about ethics in google journalism.

Or, alternatively, you just happen to be among the people in the manosphere
that pretend the last 20 years didn't happen. Because otherwise there would
have been a minimum of engagement with the actual argument, namely that some
(alleged) statistical difference between the genders just isn't relevant, it's
only confusing what is with what ought to be.

------
roceasta
I think she's correct to compare our situation now to a primitive band of
people. Marshall McLuhan famously called this the _global village_. Close
communication is paradoxically causing the fragmentation and balkanisation of
the internet. A process which nations like China (with its own internet) and
companies like Google (by getting into politics) are accelerating.

The goal of political correctness, adopting Daniel Dennett's _intentional
stance_ , is to control thinking. Individuals who are able to resist are in
some ways more isolated now than the old communist dissidents. They at least
got moral support from each other in prison.

[http://www.beyondeasy.net/2015/09/mcluhan-new-tribalism-
equi...](http://www.beyondeasy.net/2015/09/mcluhan-new-tribalism-equivalence-
of.html) [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/intentional-
stance](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/intentional-stance)

~~~
skybrian
I don't know what you mean? The Internet makes it easier than ever to find
people who think the same way you do.

~~~
roceasta
It _has_ been easier. However if present trends continue and new forms of
'badthink' emerge it may be necessary to start looking under stones in dark
places. This (a) is hard to do, and (b) presupposes that you know others are
out there. Which you may not, especially if you are young.

~~~
jacalata
So it's not that they _are_ more isolated, just that hypothetically in a
possible future they could be.

------
forkLding
Isnt really online mobs the sort of thing we signed up for when people started
using email and then Facebook?

See Zuck's own words:
[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100933624710391](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100933624710391)

Theres really two sides to this, one where the positive is that information is
no longer closed and flows freely and the other is that negative information
about other people flows so fast and wide that it cannot be fathomed.

Its an interesting feeling because its really similar to dystopian notions
such as the Giver where too much of a good thing easily turns bad.

~~~
chrisco255
Due to some bug (or is it a feature?) in human psychology, we seem to be
predisposed to spread controversial or negative press (tweets, posts, articles
etc) more than good press.

~~~
forkLding
probably both bug and feature, humans havent stopped evolving yet

------
js8
I don't think any protections are needed. People just need to stop
participating in those "online mobs" and not take them seriously.

It's the same tactic that needs to be employed against terrorists. The more
seriously you take them, the bigger threat they are.

The people who fired Damore are the problem. They escalated the conflict. They
are the ones who should have known better and not get involved in mob justice.

~~~
curtisblaine
Everyone is. A company will always fire the troublemaker, because it's a PR
nightmare if they don't.

~~~
js8
> Everyone is.

I think that sentence is missing a word that turns it into a point you wanted
to make.

> because it's a PR nightmare if they don't

Why it should be a PR nightmare? Why cannot his bosses say, we are not doing
vigilante justice here, and refuse to yield to "angry mob"? It seems to me
like a morally better position to take.

Compare this to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-
Posten_Muhammad_carto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-
Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy)

~~~
curtisblaine
Make no mistake: I completely agree with you. But it seems that companies
these days are willing to go any length to avoid a PR scandal. The standard
company response in highly-publicized "angry mob" cases seems to be firing.
Justine Sacco, the "dongle" guys, Damore, etc.

So I'm guessing that in their profit/loss charts, avoiding a PR scandal is
higher than resisting the will of the mob.

------
arca_vorago
Personally I think the failing fourth estate has particularly enlarged this
problem, since by not correctly performing their duty of informing the
citizenry they instead fan flames for the clicks with halfassed writing
lacking what used to be first year journalistic integrity.

~~~
guildwriter
I think it's worth saying that the fourth estate is also falling prey to the
changing economic landscape of the times. It's not like the old days anymore
where access to publishing tools was heavily gated. Everyone fights for
eyeballs now. Everyone fights to be first.

The growing result is that we're seeing more and more news organizations
gravitating towards providing a specific kind of narrative tailored to their
target audience. People in general don't want to have their views challenged.
That approach is tiring as you have to fight through your own cognitive
dissonance each time. Rather, they want to hear what they believe to be
already true. This is why Twitter and other social media companies drive us
towards echo chambers. It's how they keep people coming back, and thus make
themselves more appealing to advertisers.

It's easy to talk about the duty of the fourth estate, but writing a well
balanced narrative does not pay the bills these days.

------
Areading314
The wrongly accused suffered for thousands of years before public and fair
courts became common.

The court of public opinion needs a counterpart for the social media age.

Proof-of-work juries might be a neat way to orchestrate fair voting in
anonymous spaces

~~~
erikpukinskis
Maybe proof-of-empathy? Demonstrate that you understand how someone is
thinking and feeling in their vote to be able to cast your own?

Or proof-of-research?

Proof-of-rationality?

~~~
guildwriter
I'd be for proof of empathy if it would somehow help reduce the number of
straw men I see being constructed on a daily basis.

I wouldn't hold my breath for proof of rationality. Humans are rationalizing
animals, not rational animals.

------
rasengan0
How does the signal spread across the network?

What are the critical nodes (influencers) to disseminate the mob message?

This would be an interesting big data social science experiment to see how mob
fire propagates.

And the data sets? [https://thenewinquiry.com/taxonomy-of-humans-according-to-
tw...](https://thenewinquiry.com/taxonomy-of-humans-according-to-twitter/)

Disclaimer: I am not part of the Dalai Lama clique.

------
Khaine
We use to live in fear of tyranny of the majority. The internet is so large
that it can magnify extreme views of the minority, such that these views can
rapidly have such large impact on people.

This happens on twitter where someone says something and then it gets signal
boosted such that an online mob harasses, threatens and in some cases ruins
livelihoods (the prototypical case is Justine Sacco)[1]

[1]
[http://www.salon.com/2013/12/23/justine_saccos_aftermath_the...](http://www.salon.com/2013/12/23/justine_saccos_aftermath_the_cost_of_twitter_outrage/)

------
ben_jones
I mean historically speaking this is endemic of human nature. Revenge mobs
today in Pakistan, lynching mobs in the US for over a century, ancient Rome,
Greece, the 30s in Germany, regular riots against lenders in every ancient
civilization. This is nothing new - but technology is undeniably aiding a
different form of it. We need to address both technology's impact and how it
seems to be rooted in our culture.

------
speby
I have absolutely changed my behavior with regards to how public I decide to
voice a view or opinion. Most of the time, it isn't that I hold some view that
I know to be unpopular but rather it isn't always even clear to me which
"thing" could cause reprisal from some zombie mob hungry minority that catches
wind of something and decides a couple sentences voiced about something is now
deemed worthy of crucifixion.

But perhaps more sinister than the mob responding to something said online is
that as the moral landscape continues to shift (as it has since... forever)
what you have said online a long time ago can ALSO come back to haunt you,
even if at the time you said it was considered perfectly acceptable or normal
or whatever.

This is why, I think, that social media in general is not really something I
find very enjoyable to participate in. As they say, the internet never
forgets.

------
tomkat0789
Where is dystopian literature when you need it? Anybody know some good sci-fi
exploring these ideas?

~~~
sfRattan
Not literature per se, but two episodes of Black Mirror come to mind:

"Hated in the Nation." Online mobs lead to death in real life because of a
scifi twist involving artificial swarms/hives of bees. I won't get into
details so as not to spoil the ending, but it deals rather directly with the
issues raised in the article.

"Nosedive." Less directly related, but hits the nail on the head with respect
to the employment concerns raised by the article.

------
curtisblaine
We actually do live in fear of the mobs, and in the future I foresee more
anonymous / distributed content on the Internet and more services / projects
facilitating the publication of such a content
([https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/),
[https://datproject.org/](https://datproject.org/),
[http://telegra.ph/](http://telegra.ph/)).

What if Damore circulated his memo anonymously an untraceably? He would still
be at Google's. Just wait until anyone gets the hint. You can't really just
shut people up :)

------
peter_retief
The overriding conclusion is that people online have the intelligence of a
squirrel and we are fast approaching a Global Cargo Cult mentality

------
peter_retief
We could or should use online pseudonyms that can be erased if the mob
attacks. Perhaps its time to protect our public personae with masks and sub
masks. Why not the same for employment? Have a work personae as well. The mob
are crazy and not very clever

~~~
peter_retief
Nature imitating art, the mob are mobilizing ;)

------
Overtonwindow
I've noticed a growth of righteous indignation from people, particularly over
the past 10 years. It's not enough that one person disagrees with another, now
this disagreement is manifesting itself in proactive rage. This rage gets
directed in a vengeful, sinister effort to gravely harm someone, by getting
them fired from their job etc. It seems like it's increasing, and no one is
being held accountable. I've not seen this level of vitriol and other
cultures, it seems uniquely American.

~~~
remarkEon
How disagreements used to happen: I think [idea]. Here's my evidence.

How they happen now: Speaking as a [member in X class], I believe [idea].

We've started to tie up our identities into our arguments, and when you do
that you can't get around attacking who someone is as a person when they link
their membership in a group to the epistemology of why they think something.
This is my working theory for why people have started to equate speech with
"literally violence". Disagreeing has become an attack on their identity, so
it's only natural to interpret that in an extreme form.

~~~
xxXXxx-
You have a very, very misguided view of the past, we have _always_ tied up our
identities into our arguments. In fact, I would say less so now than in the
past not moreso.

~~~
mLuby
it's perhaps misguided, but not very, very misguided. hyperbole fuels the mob.

~~~
xxXXxx-
_Hyperbole_?

The definition of hyperbole is "exaggerated statements or claims not meant to
be taken literally."

My statement is not hyperbole, it was not at all exaggerated is meant to be
taken literally. _People have gone to war over this shit._

------
quaunaut
This article sounds woefully out of touch with the realities of the modern
web.

So many of the arguments surrounding Damore talk as if this is in a vacuum,
when frankly, it isn't. Much of the message it carried(and did little to
discourage) came off as insulting to a group of people who commonly spend
every day harassed just for what they are, anytime they have gone online.

The article talks a lot about the fear of an online mob shaming people for
doing something, yet completely ignores that many of those in said mob are
harassed daily based on their mere existence, and often their "shaming" comes
from a place of just not wanting to be hurt again.

Is it necessarily the most effective means of accomplishing this? Certainly
not, and I'm not about to claim to support what it becomes, but to call
question to that and speak from such a "Nice problem to have" place to people
suffering a much worse version of what you're talking about reeks of "Let them
eat cake".

~~~
alphaalpha101
>So many of the arguments surrounding Damore talk as if this is in a vacuum,
when frankly, it isn't. Much of the message it carried(and did little to
discourage) came off as insulting to a group of people who commonly spend
every day harassed just for what they are, anytime they have gone online.

That would, presumably, be women in software? Because as far as I can tell,
the only people being regularly harassed on Twitter are people that don't
think women should get special rights...

~~~
xxXXxx-
You can't be serious. I literally got harassed by a stranger yesterday.

~~~
josteink
If you consider discussing policy changes you don't like "harassment", I can
see how your daily life must be a true struggle. You have my condolences.

I hope you don't consider this online disagreement "harassment". If so:
recurse, see above.

