To be honest, and maybe this will be panned, but the real answer is for people to grow thicker skin and stop putting one's feelings on a pedestal above all.
I don't block people because they hurt my feelings, i block people because im just not interested in seeing bird watching content on my timeline. No one deserves my eyeballs.
Look - I don't even particularly disagree with you, but I want to point out a problem with this approach.
I'm 33. I grew up playing multiplayer video games (including having to run a db9 COM cable across the house from one machine to another to play warcraft 2 multiplayer, back when you had to explicitly pick the protocol for the networking in the game menu)
My family worked with computers, so I had DSL since I have memories. I played a ton of online games. The communities are BRUTAL. They are insulting, abusive, misogynistic, racist, etc... the spectrum of unmonitored teenage angst, in all it's ugly forms (and to be fair, some truly awesome folks and places).
As a result - I have a really thick skin about basically everything said online. But a key difference between the late 90s and today, is that if I wanted it to stop, all I had to do was close the game I was playing. Done.
Most social activities were in person, not online. I could walk to my friend's houses. I could essentially tune out all the bullshit by turning off my computer, and there was plenty of other stuff to go do where the computer wasn't involved at all.
I'm not convinced that's enough anymore. The computer is in your pocket. It's always on. Your social life is probably half online, half in person. Your school work is online. Your family is online. your reputation is online (as evidenced by those fucking blue checkmarks). The abuse is now on a highway into your life, even if you want to turn it off.
It's like the school bully is now waiting for you everywhere. He's not waiting at school - he's stepping into the private conversations you're having online. He's talking to your friends. He's hurling abuse at you when you look at your family photos. He's in your life in a way that just wasn't possible before.
I don't think it's fair to say "Just grow a thicker skin" in response to that. I think growing a thicker skin is desperately needed, but I don't think it's sufficient. The problem is deeper.
We have a concept for people who do the things these users are doing on twitter in person - They're called fighting words, and most times, legally (even in the US) there is zero assumption of protected speech here. You say bad shit about someone with the goal of riling them up and no other value? You have no right of free speech, because you aren't "speaking" - you're trying to start a fight.
I'm not protecting your ability to bully someone. Full stop. If you want to do that, do it with the clear understanding that you're on your own, and regardless of how thick my skin is - I think you need a good slap upside the head. I'd cheer it on.
In person - this resolves itself because the fuckwads who do this literally get physically beaten. Not always - but often enough we have a modicum of civil discussion we accept, and a point where no one is going to defend you because you were a right little cunt, and the beating was well deserved.
I don't know how you simulate the same constraint online. I'm not entirely sure you can, but I think the answer isn't to just stop trying.
> The computer is in your pocket. It's always on. Your social life is probably half online, half in person. Your school work is online. Your family is online. your reputation is online (as evidenced by those fucking blue checkmarks). The abuse is now on a highway into your life, even if you want to turn it off.
It is still a choice to participate online. I'm not on Twitter or Facebook or anything like that. It doesn't affect my life in the slightest. Someone could be on there right this minute calling me names, and it can't bother me because I don't see it, and I don't let it into my life. This is not a superpower, it's a choice to not engage with social media and all the ills it brings.
Have I occasionally gotten hate mail from an HN post? Sure. I even got a physical threat over E-mail (LOL good luck, guy). If HN ever became as toxic as social media can be, I could just stop posting and reading. Problem solved. Online is not real if you just ignore it.
The attitude of "If you don't like it, leave!" is allowing the bullies to win.
Minorities, both racial and gender, should be able to use social media without having vitriol spewed at them because they're guilty of being a minority.
This is yet another antitrust issue, regulation should be put in place so that a private company cannot have own a platform with a market share large enough to become "the" public square.
That's asking human nature to change, or at least asking almost everyone to work on their trauma until they don't get so activated. Neither will happen soon, so this can't be the real answer.
Interesting, that wasn’t my interpretation of the twitter thread, it was more that spam and not hurtful content was the real tricky thing about moderating social media.
Spam was more of an example than the point, I think -- the argument Yishan is making is that moderation isn't for content, it's for behavior. The problem is that if bad behavior is tied to partisan and/or controversial content, which it often is, people react as if the moderation is about the content.
I respectfully disagree. Beyond the reason that there is no way you can be 100% certain 'unmoderated media' was the primary motivator. Nobody can presume to know his motivations or inner dialogue. A look at that mans history shows clear mental health issues and self-destructive behavior so we can infer some things but never truly know.
Violence exists outside of mean tweets and political rhetoric. People, even crazy ones, almost always have their own agency even if it runs contrary to what most consider to be normal thoughts and behavior. They choose to act, regardless of others and mostly without concern or conscious. There are crazy people out there and censoring others wont ever stop bad people from doing bad things. If so, then how do we account for the evils done by those prior to our inter-connected world?
