
My Internet Mea Culpa: I’m sorry I was wrong. We all were - smacktoward
https://medium.com/@RickWebb/my-internet-mea-culpa-f3ba77ac3eed
======
jdietrich
>I don’t think anyone saw coming that we’d have to actually be explaining to
American children why racism and fascism are bad in the 21st century.

For me, this is the most damning sentence in the whole piece.

Before Eternal September, there were exactly as many racists and fascists in
America, it's just that the mainstream media had done a fairly good job of
hiding them. If you lived in San Francisco or New York, you'd have to make a
real effort to see the level of racism that was still prevalent in many parts
of the US. The sort of people who built the internet didn't know what they'd
unleash, because they had been born and raised in a bubble.

The internet hasn't fundamentally changed human nature, it has just exposed
what already existed. The average person is pretty awful and half of them are
worse than that. Timothy McVeigh wasn't radicalised by the internet - he was
radicalised by photocopied zines, small-press books and conversations at gun
shows. The internet may have accelerated that process, but it has also brought
it to light. It has shown liberals that they have been utterly complacent,
that for decades they contemptuously ignored most of America, that they lived
in a fantasy of their own making.

A mea culpa from the pioneers of the internet is missing the point entirely.
The problem isn't that we built a communications platform and learned that a
lot of people held abhorrent views, it's that for decades we ignored the rot
at the heart of American democracy.

~~~
apatters
That sentence stood out to me as well, and my reaction was: why would we
_ever_ stop teaching children why those things are bad?

If we stop having that debate then people will forget the lessons of history
and why we fought those things. And you can't have a debate without having
both sides represented.

It's toxic and shameful for fascist, racist Internet trolls to make personal
attacks against people and my sense is that the main solution needs to be
better tooling for helping victims block their attackers (this might conflict
with the DNA of today's social platforms). But we can and should consider this
stuff a teaching opportunity.

As well as an opportunity to engage the other side--the majority of people who
post hateful messages online aren't latent McVeighs, they're immature,
frustrated about something, and acting out.

As always the best antidote is to engage with the ones who are willing to have
a rational conversation, and ignore the ones who aren't until they cool down.
If someone is espousing racist ideas the best outcome is for everybody to take
a chill pill, discuss their point of view and why you don't share it, and
agree to disagree.

Suppression will lead to echo chambers and radicalization. Communities live or
die based on their ability to sustain civil discourse between divergent
opinions.

In my opinion no communications platform should suppress speech of any
political persuasion, but personal attacks and hostility should be discouraged
on all of them.

------
CM30
This point makes me wonder whether Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other such
sites are simply fundamentally unworkable ideas:

> We are biological organisms with thousands of years of evolution geared
> towards villages of 100, 150 people. What on earth made us think that in the
> span of a single generation, after a couple generations in cities with lots
> of people around us but wherein we still didn’t actually know that many
> people, that we could suddenly jump to a global community?

The reason so many problems occur on them (brigading, uneven rule enforcement,
the feeling that Nazis/antifa/whoever aren't being banned, etc)comes from the
fact they're a million communities built on a platform run by a single
organisation, and attempt to have groups of people who simply can't work
together use the same platform and interact with the same user accounts.

They're trying to be a 'global city' inhabited by millions or billions of
people, and are encountering the same issues every country or organisation
does at that scale. On the other hand, old school internet forums and
separated communities were like human villages of a few hundred people, self
contained instances that could be run according to their inhabitants wishes
and meant that those that couldn't interact civily for some fundamental belief
difference didn't have to.

That seems to be a case where Zuckerberg and co were wrong, and where that's
caused huge amounts of people to numerous people.

~~~
ohtwenty
I think this is what mastodon/the fediverse is doing right

------
gooseus
I'm having trouble with this article... where is the lesson they learned? No
offering of what the newest generation is pursuing with naive and reckless
abandon? What about what they believe currently about how a global world can
be structured? How would they have done it differently if they could do it
again?

Sounds like they got relatively wealthy and powerful by building this internet
they're disappointed in. If they feel guilty, are they working toward
redemption?

I appreciate the willingness to admit when one has been wrong, but this sounds
to me like the person who has too much to drink, spills their cup all over
your floor and goes "whoops, my bad, watch out for that punch, it's strong
stuff..." and then walks away to get another drink while their spilled one
soaks through the rug.

------
brickmort
I very much dislike the whole mindset of "we" as this single, uniform society.
There are 7.6 billion humans in the world today, we're not all going to agree
with everything all the time, and to say that "we" are generally unhappy
because of things that "we" deem unsuitable for public discourse is rather
arrogant, myopic and naive.

I agree with the author's realization that we probably won't all be able to
get along. I think it's a harsh truth that you can either choose to accept or
spend a long time trying to fight, and I think much of Silicon Valley falls
into the latter. Because of the huge reach and influence of the internet,
Silicon Valley (and other areas of large influence) have a bad habit of
developing a messiah complex where they see themselves as world ambassadors of
peace and justice, striving for an egalitarian world free of 'hatred'. The
problem is that the people that get pushed out of this utopia don't just
vanish; you end up with people inside the utopia and people outside the
utopia. You now have two different groups. So much for the idea of a world of
unity and singularity.

------
anigbrowl
I've been going through this for maybe 5+ years, as regular readers may have
noticed. What surprises me is that apparently mystified 'good' ideologies'
don't automatically displace 'bad' ones. I'd have thought that someone with
his experience and insight would have engaged with the science of group
dynamics and so on.

As a leftie, I think part of the problem is that when the USSR went down to
defeat, instead of the internet being developed as a tool of democracy it was
developed as one of commerce instead, and much of the developed world reacted
to the (apparent) failure of socialism by declaring victory and going
shopping. Turns out that people find the idea of consumption as the end of
society meaningless and unsatisfying.

------
tynpeddler
The alternative to kicking racists and facists off of reddit is not, "racists
and facists no longer exist." It's, "a massive swath of the population feels
manipulated and ostracised," and "we further cement population divides in the
country because we've prevented people from opposite sides of the issue from
seeing each other." Imagine the backlash when that situation resolves.

I feel like the author is suffering from the one sided fallacy (I'm sure
there's a better name for it). We had two choices, we choose one and now we're
grappling with the consequences of it. But that doesn't mean that the other
option doesn't have consequences just as bad or worse. This is a classic case
where, as a society, we're forced to make a major decision with very little
hard data. Based on what I know of history, I'm more willing to err on the
side of more speech rather than less speech. We have very recent examples in
the US where a desire for sanitized civil discourse led to an inappropriate
application of the "Safe Spaces" concept, and repeated instances of internet
lynch mobs thought policing in an effort to make sure people are only engaged
in good speak.

Trump did not create racism. Trump has simply taken advantage of a problem
that has been festering for a while. Banning them from the internet doesn't
get rid of the problem, it only makes it fester worse. The quiet problems have
now become loud and that's a good thing. With these issues in the open, it
lets us address them instead of bury them. Blaming the internet for racism is
like blaming camera phones for police brutality. The problem has been there
all along, and now we see it in ugly detail.

The author is arguing that there should be an end to history. That there just
has to be a time when racism is dead and we can stop talking about it. This is
baloney. The very definition of racism changes as our culture evolves and that
changing definition will always be a point of contention. Worse yet, racism is
almost certainly something that is biologically ingrained in people. We are a
deeply tribalistic species and we're always looking to associate ourselves
with those most similar to us. The war against racism is a war against our own
biology and it's a war we can win. Childhood is all about training children to
appropriately manage their biological impulses, maybe someday we'll treat
racism like we treat potty training; a phase that every child goes through
while raising them.

------
erikpukinskis
Yes, there are wayward children who need an education about fascism. But not
because they are in some vacuum of senae. What has also happened since WWII is
there are now wayward adults who are labeling things fascist that aren’t. So
children are confused because there are some legitimate points of confusion.
“Anti-fascism means burning cars?” “Voting for Trump means someone is a
fascist?” These are not trivial ideas that appear neatly resolved to the mind
of a child. They are things we must give children space to understand.

And the existence of those conversations on the internet with innocent
children taking either side is not a sign of the downfall of civilization—or
even the downfall of the internet. It’s the kids racing ahead through Hegelian
dialectics, deconstructing ideas that many adults are either too smart or too
afraid to deconstruct.

But the internet is deconstructing everything, fractally painting and
repainting the universe inside every idea. A whole universe inside My Little
Pony. A whole universe inside Planetary physics. And yes, a whole universe
within facism. With fascist candy canes. It is splintering and cataloging all
of human consciousness, and then every idea will be animated in AI form.

That should terrify you, but not because fascism will be back. It should
terrify you because all culture will be detached from its embodiment like a
crab from its shell.

------
hux_
Silicon Valley is trapped. Its narrative has basically moved from - why are
ppl criticizing our magic, to telling regulators right now as we speak - yup
we screwed up, but if we make the fixes for all these unintended consequences
playing out -

1\. We loose revenue.

2\. Somebody in China or Russia or wherever will step in with alternatives

So guess what shitheads - we are too big to fail. Silicon Valley is not going
to fix jack until regulators protect them.

So expect things to get worse.

~~~
rdlecler1
Silicon Valley is a whole lot more than Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.

~~~
eurticket
But who is a whole lot more than Facebook, Twitter and Reddit in Silicon
Valley? Meaning, their voices and choices have power in creating change.

------
itronitron
if you listen closely you will hear the world's tiniest violin as musical
accompaniment... the internet is more than the media companies that are
currently dominating people's attention, it is up to each person to tune that
out and pursue their own interests and contribute to their own community.

------
attagat
"What if we were fundamentally wrong?"

It's never a good sign when you've gone this long without questioning your own
beliefs. Yes, it's possible to be wrong.

------
djroomba
I dont like how he dodges the money question.

We have let financial concerns warp our utopian into a money driven ad
dopamine hacking dystopia for a money.

------
sunstone
Theoretically there is a contradiction at the core of the issue. How does a
tolerant society deal with intolerance? Tolerance of intolerance clearly won't
work, but then what?

Practically, by default people ought to be able to do as they wish except as
proscribed by law. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms takes a pretty
good stab at setting the boundaries.

------
dgreensp
If the Internet, unbeknownst to most of us, is actually _supposed_ to bring
about a uniform world culture, or world peace, or no more secrets/privacy...
well, who’s to say it isn’t succeeding? You wanted your idea of utopia on your
schedule?

------
dkarl
I think when we see racists claiming their voice on the internet, we remember,
"Oh, yeah — those people who are shamed, isolated, and oppressed in the real
world, who find their voice on the internet, some of them are the people _we
're_ shaming and isolating _for a good reason!_ "

But we should also remember that the mechanisms of shaming and silencing that
we apply to racists are exactly the same mechanisms that have been used to
silence people we think deserve a voice and a refuge. The mechanisms are the
same. The motivations are the same. The difference is _who is right_ and that
isn't something technology can detect.

When we lament our inability to shut up racists, what we're rooting for is
more effective mechanisms of control. We wish for ourselves to have the power
to decide who can speak and who cannot. But do we really want such effective
mechanisms to exist in the world? Do we want each society's elite to have
complete ideological control over its citizens? How do ideas spread, then? By
violent revolution? By one society overpowering another and assuming
ideological control over its citizens? If ideas can only spread by violence,
then violence is the inevitable result.

The alternative is to keep engaging with our fellow humans and trust the
direction that history has taken. It's funny: we were a hair's breadth from a
reality in which progressives would eagerly assent to this suggestion. An
ever-so-slightly-different chain of events would have put Hillary Clinton in
the White House, and instead of chastising ourselves for not being
sufficiently aggressive and effective censors, we would be celebrating the
inevitable progress of tolerance and equality in an open society. Such a huge
difference in attitude, and it comes down to a slim and strange victory.
Donald Trump and his supporters are a real phenomenon. However, he won the
presidency with 46% of the vote, less than John Kerry got when he lost in
2004, less than Al Gore got when he lost in 2008, just 0.4% more than Michael
Dukakis got when he got trounced in 1988. The last time a Democratic
presidential candidate got less than 47% was in 1992 when Bill Clinton won a
three-way race. Also, a lot of the erosion of Hillary Clinton's support came
from the left, not only because of her connections to Wall Street but also
because even before #MeToo people were starting to realize how awful it was
that the establishment Democratic machine, including Hillary Clinton, rallied
around Bill Clinton to shame and discredit the women he victimized. (I voted
for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the primary and Donald Trump in the
general election. My point is only that her support was eroded from both
sides, not by an overall shift rightward.)

I think we're thinking about the visibility of racism and misogyny online all
wrong. Racist and misogynistic Twitter trolls are functioning like cell phone
videos of police brutality. You can't address a problem when it's plausible to
deny that it even exists. Decades ago it was possible for people of good faith
to question whether there even existed a significant number of avowed racists
in the United States, just like it was possible to believe that police didn't
really treat black people differently. Now we know. What Twitter has done is
turned on the lights in the GOP kitchen at 2am and proved that yes, there is a
cockroach problem. Yes, if you leave that racist garbage in the sink until
tomorrow, you are feeding avowed racists.

It's counterintuitive to equate open racism and misogyny on Twitter with cell
phone videos of police violence against people of color. One is proudly
broadcast. The other is a furtive activity revealed against its will. Their
eruption into the public eye functions the same way, though. Twitter racists,
by their inability to stay quiet and work in the shadows, are bringing
unwelcome scrutiny to a phenomenon that has escaped scrutiny for decades. We
can use them just like we use cell phone videos of cops beating black
motorists. Now that it's impossible to deny that this stuff exists, people are
forced to take sides in a way that they haven't had to take sides in a long,
long time.

------
megamindbrian2
This is a sobering article. We definitely aren't where I thought we would be.
Especially on the social justice front. Some websites you aren't even allowed
to talk about it, such as HN.

~~~
splittingTimes
Mind to elaborate?

------
natch
Still not sure what he thinks "we" were wrong about. Reading between the
lines, since I missed it if he ever said outright what he means, it seems like
he means "we" were wrong about a free exchange of ideas on the Internet
necessarily leading to only positive developments.

I'm not sure he can speak for Brand and Kelly and others on this. Perhaps they
realized, unlike him apparently, that things will be a little messy along the
way, a kind of imperfect muddling toward maturity for society. That doesn't
make their cheerleading for it something to apologize for.

------
natch
>I don’t think anyone saw coming that...

Any article that says any statement of this form immediately loses a lot of
credibility in my book.

Plenty of people saw plenty of things coming.

You (the writer) really have no way of knowing what other people have seen
coming. Perhaps if the only people you pay attention to are the famous rock
stars of whatever area you're talking about, you could think you know. But
even then, you don't know what private thoughts they are having.

