
Social Media: An Apology - xuande
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-elders-social-media-apology/?include_text=1
======
wpietri
> In retrospect, we should have known; USENET was a pretty clear warning.

100% true.

Another good data point is John Gabriel's Great Internet Fuckwad Theory:
[https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19](https://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19)

That was written 14 years ago, effectively before modern social media. This
problem has been a long time coming. The problem isn't that we couldn't know.
It's that people kept thinking it would magically be different this time.

~~~
cirgue
> It's that people kept thinking it would magically be different this time.

I don't think that's the problem, rather it's that the overwhelming majority
of people currently on the internet are completely unaware there was a 'last
time'.

~~~
wpietri
I don't think the people who created Usenet were entirely unaware of human
social dynamics. And the people who created things like Twitter certainly
weren't unaware that Usenet, mailing lists, and web forums existed.

But at best, they had an incredibly rosy view of what was going on. E.g.,
looking back, a Twitter founder claims that in 2006 everyone "was cool":
[https://twitter.com/rasmus_kleis/status/974552443789836288](https://twitter.com/rasmus_kleis/status/974552443789836288)

Given Gabriel's theory, that's obvious bunk. And having talked to some online
community pioneers, abuse started pretty much from the get go. Look at all the
replies I got when I brought it up on Twitter, for example. Story after story
of early experiences of trolling, abuse, etc:
[https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/974847531317211136](https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/974847531317211136)

There was (and is) a strong strain of technoutopianism, where we take the
shiny new possibility and project a perfect future onto it. This goes back at
least as far as the introduction of the telegraph, which many thought would
bring about world peace: [https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-
Remarkable-Ninetee...](https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-
Nineteenth-line/dp/162040592X)

As Neiwart documents, though, many of the terrible people online today are
intellectual descendants of the terrible people who were doing their social
networking in person and via the mail: [https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-
Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/...](https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-
Right-Trump/dp/1786634236)

~~~
malvosenior
Please don't take offence but honestly I think the "uncoolness" is being
demonstrated by you in these twitter threads and is an example of behavior
that came about post-social media.

You and Rasmus twist Ev's words to somehow be about oppression instead of what
he clearly meant: the early internet was inhabited by geeks and he (a geek)
liked that. It's also clear that he's talking more about spammers than
abusers. Of course with scale both will ramp up.

Secondly we see the presentation of a hard left view as the _only_ valid way
of thinking. Pro-gun people showing up to a forum about gun control is in no
way abuse, it's the internet fulfilling its promise of giving everyone a voice
(even if you don't agree with them).

Yes, there have always been trolls, spammers, jerks, loudmouths... What social
media seems to have created is a unique culture of grievance hunting, virtue
signalling and a worship of victimhood.

Again, please don't take this as a personal attack, it's just an observation
from someone who's been on the internet for a really long time.

~~~
wpietri
If I am "uncool" in your eyes, I promise I was this way before social media.
I've been using the Internet since the late 1980s, and before that was a BBS
user.

I also think I'm reading Ev just fine. He says "We laid down fundamental
architectures that had assumptions that didn’t account for bad behavior." As
one of Twitter's first users and a former Twitter employee, I think he's
right. But when Twitter started in 2006, people had been behaving badly on the
Internet for a long time, and it was far from being a "just nerds" place. The
September that Never Ended started _13 years_ before Twitter, for example.

I also don't believe that my view is "hard left". I'm a gun owner, and am fine
with people talking about guns. You're distorting what I said, which is that
"rabid pro-gun types turned up to aggressively dominate and/or ruin the [gun
control] forum". We were talking about abuse, and this was given as an example
of clear forum abuse. Yes, gun owners can participate usefully in gun control
forums, but being pro-gun does mean you can't be abusive.

------
mikro2nd
Note:

    
    
        2.4.  Whisky
              For those unable to leave social media or otherwise curtail their use.
    

With the caveat that while imbibing Whisky (or Whiskey, if you prefer) social
media SHOULD be configured as a read-only medium.

~~~
koolba
I think it's more effective if it's still read-write but the output is
redirected to /dev/null.

~~~
mikro2nd
I'd dispute with you, but I'm drinking Whisky!

------
IGI-111
I know this is a joke (although only partly), but blocklists are honestly part
of the problem.

People got to this ridiculous level of childlike annoyance at the mere
existence of dissent through group effects alone, but compounding it by
literally removing any form of conflict seems like the worst solution
possible.

The solution to people acting terribly on the public square shouldn't be to
remove it.

~~~
TheIronYuppie
There is a fair bit of scholarship that says this is incorrect. Most commonly,
people cute the paradox of tolerance as a starting point[1], but there's lots
more.

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

~~~
bena
I don't think he's invoking that. That we must be tolerant of intolerance lest
we become intolerant ourselves.

I think he's saying that that the ease of which we can cut out any information
that challenges our beliefs does more harm than good.

I'm sure you're a fine, upstanding, rational person who will always consider
every viewpoint and come to a reasoned conclusion based on the facts every
time and won't let emotions dictate any part of your decision.

However, not everyone is so disciplined. Don't consider the rational actor.
Consider the irrational. Consider the flat-earther who can personally silence
any sources that provide evidence to the contrary. Just stuck in their little
bubble of misinformation. Then when something does sneak through their filter,
they'll regard it as the anomaly because everything else they see confirms
what they already know.

Now, there is some benefit to being able to silence certain opinions. I for
one don't need flat-earthers constantly pushing their narrative that flies in
the face of facts. But, then again, they feel the same way. I believe I've
considered their evidence and their viewpoint fairly and have come to a
conclusion rationally. But so do they. I believe I'm right, I'm fairly certain
of it. But so are they.

It comes down to believing that personal abuse should be silenced. If I'm just
blatantly attacking you or you're attacking me with no other goal but to be
insulting, then being able to block each other seems fine. But to be able to
silence information just because you disagree with it seems a bit more dodgy.

------
mewse-hn
The elders of the internet use a hotmail address??

~~~
giancarlostoro
That's how old they are. :)

~~~
mattl
Hotmail was mid 90s. What did they use for the ~20 years prior to that?

~~~
WorldMaker
bang!paths!to!uucp!servers

~~~
DrScump
In the late 1980s, I was the _first_ person in my company to seek to add my
email address to my business cards. I still have some of those business cards
with the old bang-style address format.

------
peterkelly
Origin of the "Elders of the Internet" term, for the uninitiated:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg)

------
swanlyk
“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only
spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community"

Umberto Eco

------
smacktoward
_> The Edlers of the Internet note with sorrow the passing of our former
member, Stephen Hawking, aka "The Hawk." You will be missed._

Apparently the Elders of the Internet are too old to know about spell-check
:-D

~~~
lainga
No, the Internet was founded in Austria-Hungary.

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

------
mfoy_
It was really easy to be an egalitarian before social media caught on in a big
way... Now more and more elections are going the way of populism and truth has
taken a back seat.

I currently try to employ mitigation methods 2.3 and 2.4. If you slip on 2.3
you can generally compensate by leaning more heavily on 2.4.

~~~
mxuribe
That's funny my flow is in the opposite direction: I use method 2.4
(responsibly and without abuse, and with a different goal in mind) first,
which leads to apathy of social media, which results in naturally applying
method 2.3. I guess we both reach our intended goals, so it speaks to the
effectiveness of the methods! ;-)

------
FLUX-YOU
There's not really much you can respond with, so I'm just gonna type some
words so I'm not just leaving a one word post on HN:

"Okay"

