
Moot: "sterile Facebook comments over provocative YouTube comments?" - josh_miller
http://www.atroundtable.com/onlinecommunities
======
marvin
I think everyone here is missing the point of moot's comment. I read this as
commentary on anonymity and honest discussion.

Ignore YouTube and 4chan's /b/ board for the moment. If you look at some of
the communities at reddit, for instance, there are subjects that are discussed
thorougly which would never see the light of day if their authors had to
appear before their friends with their full name and picture. Some of these
discussions have shed light on parts of humanity and human nature that I would
have never known about if it wasn't for anonymous internet forums. For
instance interviews with psychopaths and murderers, mean stories about ex-
girlfriends and boyfriends, candid and unpainted interviews with sex workers
etc etc etc. In general, the stuff that doesn't come up in polite conversation
and everyone pretends not to be associated with. Some of these discussions
have changed my views on both political issues and more mundane things. All
because someone is suddenly allowed to broadcast forbidden stories to a large
crowd. And people are allowed to comment on it without fear of being judged or
socially persecuted.

The difference in the style of comments on Facebook and reddit perfectly
exemplify what happens with civil discussion when people are allowed to be
anonymous, and the huge difference in behavior and mindset that this causes in
Western society. It is a pretty big deal.

~~~
DatamancerChris
I think marvin has an excellent point: people as a universal culture tend to
shun certain subjects and embrace others, and these change between nations,
faiths, etc.. The availability of an anonymous forum in which to address these
shunned portions ideas is a useful tool when it is leveraged in the right way.
There are many things people would not say if they were to be held personally
accountable for their thoughts and feelings by those who would rather punish
their "abnormal" beliefs than appreciate their candid honesty.

I think the major issue here is the responsible use of the Anonymous tag. Too
many hateful, prejudicial, or otherwise ignorant comments are tossed out from
behind that shield of "you can't see me" that is the anonymous internet, and
this becomes the norm by which others come to judge such communities. I firmly
believe that our state of being as a society indicates there must be a
striation in the internet: one where we are who we are, and one where we can
discuss counter-culture or taboo subjects without fear of reprisal. Ideally
these would be the same place, but realistically they cannot be until our
society becomes much more accepting of itself.

(Also, I've never commented on here, but HN is the Bee Knees.)

~~~
marvin
You have a good point about people who hide behind anonymity just to cause
damage. Thankfully, the latest generation of Internet forums has been able to
keep these voices confined to places where they don't cause any damage, or, in
the case of /b/, in an environment where they can actually generate something
worthwhile.

I'm not sure we will ever see a society which is so diverse and open that many
of the views we see in internet forums could be brought into the wider public
area. It would be awesome if this happened, because you often see groups of
people who have interests and views which are considered unfit in most public
gatherings (a mundane example that many of us are familiar with is simply
admitting that you're a nerd and talking about a technically complicated
subject), but which could flourish if the people who have them were brought
together. There is an idea of "the normal" which almost everyone tries to
adhere to, while repressing the ideas and impulses they really care about.

In the meantime it is still very valuable to have a place where it's possible
to be honest. There are way too many games and too much acting in Western
society. This might be the case everywhere, but the West is the only culture I
know well enough to be sure.

~~~
heed
>In the meantime it is still very valuable to have a place where it's possible
to be honest.

It's also a place where you can be completely dishonest, make up stories, be
someone else with almost no repercussions. I think most people are being
honest on reddit or HN, but the small percent that like to make up stories,
personas, etc. makes it difficult for me to fully trust many of the comments I
come across.

~~~
throwaway32
just because you know somebody's name, doesn't make them honest either, if it
did politics would be a whole different ballgame.

~~~
true_religion
It does mean that their lies can be tagged back against them.

A name, a "real name" has a certain irrevocability to it.

------
sbierwagen
I have _never_ left a Facebook comment on a third party site.

Partially this is due to inconvenience, (the web browser with my Facebook
login credentials has always had its own VM, to prevent like button tracking)
and partially because associating my real name and identity with a blog
comment seems like using a cannon to kill a squirrel. If Samuel Bierwagen
wants to say something about an issue, he'll write an essay about it; but
rolling out my name and my face for a TechCrunch comment just ain't going to
happen.

~~~
jisaacstone
If I have something to say I'll sign up for an account before using facebook
to comment

~~~
nateberkopec
I wonder if this more prevalent in hackerish audiences. Maybe the mainstream
doesn't care, and would rather just make it easy.

Also, there's something to be said for the kind of people who can "get over
the barrier" of taking 90 seconds to sign up. Making sign up _too easy_ means
dumber people get through?

------
loumf
Why choose? There are times I want to be anonymous, partially anonymous,
totally identified. Sometimes I want to be in an uncivil discussion --
sometimes public, sometimes private. Sometimes moderated, sometimes not.
Sometimes sterile, sometimes provocative.

Right now, the Internet is perfect for this -- pretty much any kind of
"community" I want to be in exists, and I participate in the ones I want to,
following the mores established there.

~~~
dfxm12
I think the very premise of this "Roundtable" is flawed: _Given the propensity
for humans in large and relatively anonymous groups to descend into fatuous
vitriol and misspelled narcissism, why bother at all?_

This isn't the case. Sites like Lamebook show us that people will attach their
face and names to stupid things. There are countless (semi-) anonymous
webforums, etc that provide useful discussion. You are right, _it doesn't
matter_ what type of community you post in.

------
joebadmo
I've actually found that the 'promoted' comments [Edit: which I assume are
promoted by voting and algorithm.] on YouTube videos are generally either
pretty entertaining or informative. I was surprised by this after consciously
completely ignoring YT comments for a long time.

~~~
DanBC
The promoted comments are usually worth reading. The first few times I saw
them I made the mistake of trying to read the rest. They were still awful.

Adam Buxton and Bug (<http://www.bugvideos.co.uk/>) have a great thing where
he reads YouTube videos. (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-WBaSNrTQ>)

------
edtechdev
Mostly it's the people, and only to some degree the technology that impacts
the quality of discussions/comments. I.E., 13 year olds on Youtube or XBox vs.
working professionals on a site like Quora or Hackernews.

I like how Quora mixes real names and anonymity to try to get the best of both
worlds. Google Knol I think supported this, too, but it's a ghost town.

Anon advantages (think Reddit): * people are more honest, about negative
reactions at least * humor works (doesn't really work on facebook) * more
comfortable to discuss sensitive or embarrassing issues

Real name advantages (think Quora, Google+, some twitterers): * more
constructive dialog * you can know more about the background of a person
contributing - their experience, qualifications, or conflicts of interest

------
404error
I wish there were more proactive comments on newspaper websites. I think
communities everywhere are missing out on a great opportunity to communicate,
exchange ideas, and bring real change to real problems in their own towns.
Most of the time newspaper comments (in my community) are about how illegal
immigration is to blame for EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING.

Commenters tend to rally behind the bully and pick on anyone who has a
different point of view. Most of the time a reply to a different point of view
starts of by first insulting the commenter and then explaining why they are
wrong about everything.

Funny how we never leave high school....

(I work for a newspaper... )

~~~
tsunamifury
The New York Times made a pretty good model.

1) Promote and recognize good comments 2) Remove offensive or non-constructive
ones

This form of hand curiation sets down rules and expectations which the
community at large than reaches for.

If you dont set down rules of course your discussion forums will disolve into
petty nonsense. The loudest, dumbest voice always wins in a shouting match
merely by employing a denial-of-ground strategy.

~~~
404error
Unfortunately our editor's response to everything is "it's a staffing
problem."

Our newsroom, if you want to call it that, spends most of the day re-writing
(fluffing) press releases to get a paper out the next day.

Corporate has our system lock down, we don't have access to our database
tables and responses to feature requests, like comment promotion, are
usually..."We'll bring that up in a meeting."

In my opinion people tend to feed their ego behind a keyboard. A lot of people
bite their tongue in face to face conversations, only a few will speak out and
make their opinions heard.

Maybe some kind of pay-wall for us would be a possible tool against trolling.

Thank you for your reply.

~~~
dredmorbius
No, it's an architecting problem.

You should be able to leverage trust and quality recognition within your own
userbase. If you can't find trusted users to seed the comment moderation
system, well, you've got other issues as well.

But if the site's founders/leaders can start federating trust at least to the
extent of promoting/muting content, then it most certainly _isn't_ a staffing
problem, beyond coding the necessary algorithms.

~~~
404error
We have a report abuse button that is attached to each comment, all our users
have to do is click it and it sends an email to the appropriate person for
moderation. (This is rarely used unfortunately)

To be honest I don't agree with a lot of the decisions corporate makes in
regards to our digital efforts. They are on the other side of the country and
believe that if it works in their market it has to work in ours.

It constantly feels like we are playing catch-up to everyone else.

------
jfruh
If by "provocative" you mean "so painfully stupid and offensive as to make you
weep for humanity," then sure, I guess.

~~~
Bvalmont
Read the comments on the Facebook blog, people are just as stupid under their
real name. I frankly don't think it'll change anything.

------
missy
I m used to Youtube comments being very rude and viscious often. It doesnt
demand real users like Facebook argues it does, so i think you can have people
say things they repress. I ve read some of the nastiest stuff on the comments.
The majority of them I find are on something to do with popular culture as I
think its a metter who is cool. So they swear alot.

About topics like Religion it is obvious well known fact it will provoke that.

I think it shows us what some people really think and whata negative effect of
unregulated users can cause. So a thing i appreciate of Facebook valueing real
users but yutube on the other hand has great content.

another difference is that facebook comments are limited in users and youtube
, where a video has millions of views, your comments will most likely be seen
by more.

Also there is no necissity to be friends on youtube with the commentator or
video creater to make posts. So anyone can insult without any real
consquences. Maybe you must add the video creator if you wanna post videos,
only fans or constructive critics would come as the negative users will be
easier traceable. I would not post something to a facebook friend like some do
on youtube as ill be shunned.

So the users actually inddirectly monitor such ations. remember private pyle
in the army in full metal jacket when he steals the donouts and they soap bar
him. Like that but chilled.

~~~
KL1234
>I think it shows us what some people really think and whata negative effect
of unregulated users can cause. So a thing i appreciate of Facebook valueing
real users but yutube on the other hand has great content.

I would say that for the most part describing youtube comments as resulting in
"negative effects" is a bit close-minded. If you're on youtube, you should
know how it works, how its userbase thinks and acts and shouldn't take it
personally if you see something you don't like.

not knowing the video creators and therefore feeling no obligation to be nice
or heed their feelings is just the nature of youtube. if you want to use the
website, accept that. don't fault the commenting policy for the anonymity that
it is based around.

~~~
missy
Good points but I said " what negative effect of unregulated users CAN CAUSE
". I heged what I said and didnt make a sweeping statement. If I said "always
cause" then you are right about saying im close minded if i said that.

------
ghc
Personally, I find that the quality of Youtube comments varies with the
content of the video. Some users post videos that always lead to excellent
discussion. I think the quality of Youtube comments reflects the quality of
the content, more than anything else.

Why else would Facebook comments be so bad and sterile? Facebook's content
consists mainly of more narcissistic fluff than even a beauty magazine could
contain.

~~~
paganel
> I think the quality of Youtube comments reflects the quality of the content,
> more than anything else.

So very true. Just last night I spent close to 2 hours reading the YouTube
comments on some Romanian "lăutari" music
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C4%83utari>) videos, and learning so much by
doing so. But if you were to move just slightly to watching a related music
style, "manele" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manele>), which are more
popular in this day and age, the comments would go way down, at the point
where one out of three comments is either racist or a badly spelled swear
word.

------
rwolf
I wish atroundtable used fragment identifiers so you could deeplink to
comments. Or give each comment it's own standalone page as well, a la twitter.

~~~
josh_miller
we're on it! look for it on the next Roundtable (with Khoi Vinh, Garry Tan,
etc).

Any other features you would like to see?

~~~
jessedhillon
I'd like to be able to mute Jonah Peretti.

------
athst
I agree entirely. Sites like Youtube and Yahoo! Answers have been maligned in
the past couple years with the rise of sites like Quora and Google Plus, but
to me, the interaction on Youtube feels a lot more human and authentic than on
the other sites. You don't even have to build it up into a whole thing about
free speech. It's just that there's something about those communities, perhaps
the anonymity, that allows people to be less guarded and it gives you a
stronger sense of community.

------
dfxm12
I think the big sticking point here (outside of the fact that most opponents
of anonymity have something to gain by knowing our real identity) is that we
put too much emphasis on "paying dues". We're used to having a "platform" (TV,
radio, magazines, etc), and only the "best" people having access to that
"platform", access being granted because of a long CV of past accomplishments.
It is important to know that because you are right once, you aren't always
right; people can get undeserved respect in this situation.

Now, with the Internet, everyone has a "platform". Everyone has ideas, and
some of these ideas are good, despite them coming from unknown people. Steve
Jobs still had a knack for design and business savvy before founding Apple,
right? But we wouldn't know that. No one wants to filter through everything
and think for themselves (the gatekeepers of the "platform" used to do that
for us). We want to be able to point to a name and say "I agree with that
person, because that person is great." How many stories get posted on HN just
because of who wrote them? _ahem_ Would HN care if someone else had said the
same exact thing as Moot? Or is this just a gossip site and we only care what
our celebrities have to say?

Anonymity puts everyone on a level playing field, and thus we actually have to
evaluate everyone's ideas and think for ourselves which ones are good and
which aren't - and there are too many out there to count because _everyone_
has access to this "platform". We shouldn't care about who writes comments, we
should care about the diamonds in the rough, because a good idea or a good
comment is good, no matter who says it.

------
josh_miller
Personally, I'd take Hacker News comments over all of the above!

~~~
Steko
Shorter josh_miller: Thumbs up if you like HN comments!

------
mcantor
What does "Sign in with Twitter to contribute" mean? Does that mean I get to
contribute to the _discussion_ by posting a reply if I sign in with Twitter?
That's what "contribute" means to me, but it seems unlikely, especially given
the relative paucity of posts in this discussion.

I wouldn't bother making a comment here to ask; normally I would just sign in
and see for myself. But this app wants permission to make posts to my Twitter
account, and I never, _ever_ do that. (I _hate_ it when I sign up for
something and I later find a post in my timeline that says "A-hyuk hyuk, I
just joined SomeSkeezyWebsite and I'm having a blast, LOL!")

~~~
ha470
Thank you for this comment! You're absolutely right - there was no reason for
us to ask for write permission - fixed that.

I also think you're right about being clear when directing people to sign in
(or do anything that requires them to give up their privacy) - we definitely
need to rethink this.

------
artursapek
One of the best things I ever did was Adblock Youtube comments.

    
    
        www.youtube.com##DIV[id="comments-view"][class=" reactions-enabled"]
        www.youtube.com##DIV[id="comments-view"][class=" disallow-ratings reactions-enabled"]

~~~
genieyclo
You don't have to go that far, often times the comments can be helpful and
insightful. I use Youtube Comment Snob[1] to weed out the most likely low-
quality comments based on text patterns like lots of !!! and ??? in them, or
lack of capitalization at the beginning of a sentence, excessive fucking
profanity, COMMENTS IN ALL CAPS, and other customizables. Check it out, there
exist addons for both Firefox and Chromium.

edit: I forgot to link the more general Comment Snob[2], also by the talented
Chris Finke which is the same idea but for the general web as well as Youtube.
Amongst the sites it features by default are HN and Reddit. It's really easy
to write new site rules to add to it with the example he provides in the link.
Only for Chromium though.

[1] <http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/youtube-comment-snob/>

[2] <http://www.chrisfinke.com/comment-snob/>

------
sjs382
Wait... Are these posts/comments in chronological order or reverse?

~~~
josh_miller
Chronological. Ahh, we'll add timestamps for the next one!

------
itswindy
Real names = self censorship.

------
shithead
One score and twice four years ago (more or less) some guys brought forth a
few modems, that they screwed to computers, which then conceived Usenet in
liberty, dedicated to the proposition that on the net nobody knows you're an
ass (unless you make it painfully clear yourself).

Thus came B1FF@PSUVM to roam the land of newsgroups, whence comp.sources
circulated programs, rec.sf-lovers hosted epic flame-wars apropos nothing
much, and alt.sex (ably assisted by alt.sex.anal) told tales titillating the
prurient interest of the readership.

Since then we have learned nothing much, which is why Google is climbing up
its own ass chasing the social butterfly, and there are pundits like Shirky
milking this tired teat over and over.

A no-prize to whoever brings back the kill-file that was feature #1 in Usenet
readers. Not to mention decent threading with color-coding of postings read,
but I suppose that's too much to ask in today's morass of PHP BBs with
twitching avatars and stupefying 'emoji'. Ah well.

