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.
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.)
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.
>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.
I don't see a way of distinguishing between bad behaviour and discussing taboo topics. They're so often the same thing - consider flat out racism or misogyny for example. An things get even more complicated when you consider /b/-like levels of irony and inversion of meaning, where it;s difficult to tell what is a incredibly subtle troll of racists, and what is actual racism.
But I'm glad that the whole internet isn't /b/. I'm glad that terrible perspectives are often shunned from conversations. It's good to remember they're there, but if someone comes along and expresses terrible things then they should feel shame. And that only happens if those perspectives are not welcome, and are made to feel not welcome.
I think the community has as much to do with discussion as anonymity. r/programming, r/technology, r/hacking are pretty simmilar in topic, though with less emphasis on buisiness/econ. But the comment style is totally different.
As obvious as it is that community changes discussion quality, I think it's overlooked in the whole anonymity debate. HN's been doing just fine, for the most part.
I haven't been here for long, but isn't HN at least as anonymous as reddit?
There is so much pushing for de-anonymization from corporations and governments, that places like 4chan or reddit are those rare gardens of free speech in their purest sense that are most important to keep alive.
That 4chan is a bastion of cultural output is not something to be ignored, either, and that's something I'd hope even anti-free-speech advocates can recognize.
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.
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?
If the quality of TechCrunch comments were higher would you think about it? I'd actually love to participate in an engaging discussion on AVC.com, for example. But when 200 people have commented, and 75% of them are tooting Fred's horn, it's no fun.
If 75% of them thought it worthwhile enough to "toot Fred's horn", then in general, 75% of them might enjoy the rest of the comments also "tooting Fred's horn". I agree with you, but that's not something that can be ignored. Groupthink can be intoxicating.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I keenly understand the situation you are in as a former journalist myself. The simple fact of the matter is that such a significant generational divide exists in the newsroom, coupled with an underlying hatred from the old-guard for how their profession has been forced to adapt, that I completely gave up any hope of change.
I was not going to change the editors mind who believed IT took care of itself and most of it was just 'magic' -- that outsourcing tech to a low-cost vendor who provided no follow up support or update would ultimately doom the product -- and that ultimately the product of 'News' was more about the medium of tech than the news itself.
If they can't read it, you aren't making money. I was tired of skeptical questions and blank stares from managing editors who laughed at the idea of 'reading news on your phone' and thought 'code monkeys' didn't really understand the news and should stay in the basement while the experienced journalists did the real work.
I've consulted National Geographic, CNN, the New York Times, and several others about their digital futures and I have never met clients that were so stubborn, confused, and self-desceptive in my life. The one that took the cake of course was National Geographic, who refused to believe that video would supplant a large portion of their photographic work in the coming years. They also stated that they did not believe people would want to consume 'low resolution' images on a screen compared to their quality printing process.
The NYT built my idea, which became TimesCast -- kudos for that. And CNN generally stays on top of most things from an IT perspective.
It is very frustrating to have to deal with these types of attitudes.
My supervisor was around when this paper got their website up and running (late 90's) and he remembers people around here saying that the internet was just a fad it was never going to catch on. Fast forward to today and most of them are scrambling trying to figure out what to do.
It seems like forever that I've wanted either Facebook or curated comments on my local paper's site, SFGate.com
I'm at the point now where I won't click on a link or read a story on SFGate -- I will go an seek out another news source which carries that story if possible. The net effect of having such a cesspool of comments beneath whatever I'm reading is that it makes me I'm participating in a community of scumbags.
I'd rather read the Economist or NY Times, where the comments seem informed.
Newspaper issue is interesting. One of the local newspapers had all sorts of vibrant debate, including a lot of discussion of which cops were corrupt, which businesses were cheating people, and which pastors were lurking at the man garden in the local park. This was intolerable to the highly connected newspaper owner, so they required all commenters be validated by phone before commenting and use their real name. Comments went down to zero. Not 1/4, actually zero. The forums have no comments at all now.
I'm not sure what you mean by accountability regarding these examples. Do you mean the ability of the corrupt police to track down and punish the people who outted their crimes?
Amazing. So the journalists at your newspaper obviously do not protect their confidential informants, since this is your policy.
There is an extremely long history of what happens to whistle blowers and it isn't pretty. Do you deny that outting government, police and corporate corruption is dangerous and anonymity is often necessary to do so without one's self and family being exposed to great harm? What newspaper do you work for again?
Woah, I didn't say all that. We are a small newspaper and I really doubt we have informants.
Like I said before our "newsroom" doesn't do much reporting other than sitting in on Town Hall meetings and reporting on press releases, our police department isn't very cooperative with us.
I believe anonymity is important especially when someones life can potential be put in harms way. I believe this is why we have witness protection.
My frustrations are about the commenters who would rather spread hate than ideas or engage in friendly debate.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Very much true. I don't get the idea of complaining on the lack of depth of youtube comments, when most of the vids are just uploaded by some angry kid in the basement.
Speaking of quality, anyone having watched TV lately?
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.
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.
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!")
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.
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.
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.
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.