[HN Gopher] Stable pseudonyms create a more civil environment th...
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Stable pseudonyms create a more civil environment than real names:
study (2021)
Author : cubefox
Score : 116 points
Date : 2024-02-14 23:28 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| Obviously everyone should aim to be civil online, but at the same
| time if someone does become abusive when you're speaking
| anonymously online I would suggest you shouldn't take offence
| easily. There are many radically differing views in the world so
| we need to become adept at navigating them courteously, but also
| firmly and with conviction.
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| Also, without the verbal intonation of speech it can be quite
| difficult to not misinterpret the emotional sentiment of what's
| written online. It's for that reason emojis were invented and
| are useful.
| S04dKHzrKT wrote:
| Key & Peele have a good comedy sketch covering that.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naleynXS7yo (NSFW language)
| neonate wrote:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopp.12149
|
| https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12149
| n9 wrote:
| I worked at Huffpost through all three of these phases in a
| technical capacity adjacent to comments and moderation, as
| director of technical operations and eventually as head of
| engineering. This study has significant questions to answer about
| their methods and assumptions that is summed up here:
|
| "Second, we know that HuffPo used both manual and algorithmic
| moderation in all three phases, but we do not know how the
| policies changed under the different identificatory regimes."
|
| Given whay I know about Huffpo's moderation system and their
| statement that they don't have understanding of them I'd say that
| nothing reported in this study should be considered valid for a
| few reasons.
|
| One is that Huffpost used many different systems of moderations
| following many changing standards throughout their days as a big
| news site (#3 in the US at one point) and the biggest news-based
| community, which they were for several years.
|
| They started with no moderation, then human moderation with
| evolving standards and practices that were overseen by a
| brilliant community team. Then they bought Julia in 2010(? ish)
| which was a very early machine learning moderation system that
| was trained on millions of human made moderation decisions before
| launch and whose training and internals were constantly updated
| and improved for years. Julia was dropped for Facebook comments
| later on, at which point Facebook did most of the basica
| moderation but was still assited by human moderators.
|
| My first critique of this analysis is that the authors have no
| data or understanding of the moderation actions that resulted in
| suppression of comments or users. How can an analysis make any
| claims without this data? So far as they know the comment-flow
| was more hostile during the periods they observe as more civil,
| but there were just far more comments suppressed. Just one of
| dozens of other internal details of the operation that would
| invalidate their conclusions would be that Huffpost quiet-deleted
| comments for a significant period of time -- meaning that you
| could post, and you would see your posts in context when you were
| logged in but no one else would see them. They also silent-banned
| users. This and other details of implementation create a great
| deal of complexity and secondary effects.
|
| I can attest that moderation was very, very active and that lots
| and lots of comments were moderated down and out of the comment
| threads... again indicating significantly less civility than any
| retrospective analysis would be able to discern without all the
| data.
|
| I also find it interesting that this study chose Huffpost for the
| analysis. At the site's hights of success and profit the comment
| threads were the reason for their SEO dominance and were
| considered to be the most important secret sauce. Huffpost
| moderation was the best in the business by a long measure. With
| the methodology presented it would make sense to me to say that
| Huffpost would appear to be the most civil of the big sites of
| the time. So it is interesting that this study focuses singly on
| Huffpost _and_ reports that their theories indicate this
| differential.
|
| While the authors do cover some of this in their section on
| Limitations, they don't cover near enough to justify their
| results... instead this reads as another cherry-picking study
| where authors had a theory and found a dataset that confirmed it
| while being unaware of fundamental reasons why that dataset was
| an outlier, making it impossible for them to build in the needed
| controls in their methods.
| bonton89 wrote:
| My local news website sort of went through a similar set of
| transitions and I don't know what the moderation activities
| behind the scenes were.
|
| At first they had their own accounts to sign up for on the main
| website, there were definitely some unsavory characters and
| trolling but I'd say by and large it was just normal
| commenting. They announced that due to abuse or moderation
| issues (I can't recall which) they were switching to facebook
| commenting, which ostensibly has a real names policy.
|
| A month later comments were removed from the website
| altogether. The only users left were some of the nastiest
| posters ever and didn't seem concerned about their real name
| being up there next to the consistently awful things they had
| to say, possibly because they were mentally ill. I know I had
| no desire to interact with them and using my real name on a
| site full of crazy people sounded like only something a crazy
| person would do.
| precompute wrote:
| The internet is moving towards the "real world", so the new
| people think it's the platform that matters and not the people.
| The truth is, the internet isn't really for content consumption,
| it's for meeting and talking to people and making friends. The
| further away we move from that, the more dystopian tech will
| become.
| Nostromos wrote:
| Very interesting. I'd always felt that real-name policies made
| for more civil but less vibrant and dynamic discussion.
| Moderation seems to be the key for any platform that allows for
| pseudonyms but the idea of stable pseudonyms makes intuitive
| sense.
|
| n9 does make some excellent points about this study. So what does
| this boil down to? Moderate heavily and put up barriers to
| discourage bad actors, which is what everyone knows and is kinda
| boring.
| eitland wrote:
| This very website should be proof enough that real names are
| absolutely not necessary for civil discussion.
|
| I think we even get better discussions when the shy and
| thoughtful are allowed to speak.
| everdrive wrote:
| It's been years, and people are still confused about what causes
| online hostility. This study seems to be a good step in the right
| direction. A number of people believe that anonymity alone is to
| blame, and this just incorrect. People are even more hostile in
| cars, where the salient points seem to be:
|
| - Lack of direct proximity (ie, you're not face-to-face with
| someone.)
|
| - Inability to read body language cues correctly. (again, not
| face-to-face)
|
| - Probably something to do with the inherently competitive nature
| of driving. (eg, many people see being "behind" as losing and
| being in "front" as winning)
|
| In any case, people are immediately identifiable and culpable in
| a vehicle -- there are cameras everywhere, and everyone has a
| mandated government ID on the car.
|
| Twitter seems to be another obvious example. People are horrible
| all over the platform, but many of the worst people aren't
| anonymous whatsoever. It seems to be the format more than the
| anonymity.
| loceng wrote:
| There can be 1000s, if not 1,000,000s of paid shills by bad
| actors present online media - whether industrial complexes or
| domestic-foreign enemies being paid to cause problems, to be
| divisive - to divide and conquer; and what % will be AI bots
| that can have their own unique personalities and behaviour?
|
| I think we're going to have to be very careful-intentional in
| the near future of who we decide to interact with, though an
| ideological mob won't likely particularly care if they're being
| manipulated by nefarious actors who aim to weaponized a mob.
| everdrive wrote:
| This is a good point that I hadn't considered. How can you
| trust mutual cooperation over time if you can't be sure
| you're even talking to a person? And crucially, if the ratio
| of malicious actors drowns out the cooperators, it may not
| matter how altruistically the remaining cooperators act.
| causal wrote:
| Doesn't even need to drown out cooperators - one in a
| hundred interactions can be enough to ruin your day.
| loceng wrote:
| We're in a global war and most don't even realize it
| because it's 5th generation psychological warfare;
| followed by a second incognito economic attack by
| purposefully weakening societies from within by
| purposeful mismanagement, going more and more into debt,
| increasing costs of goods and services, and where the
| West has been ideologically driven - consent manufactured
| - to eliminate CO2 or tax CO2 like in Canada, meanwhile
| in China - where most of our products come from, their
| CO2 emissions are skyrocketing; look at the incongruences
| and follow the money to see a fairly clear pattern.
| HKH2 wrote:
| Is China responsible for Western corruption and
| impractical ideologies that make people blind to reality?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I'm a big proponent of clusters of invite-only communities
| combined with tracing the invite tree. It's the sweet-spot
| for community building: the growth rate is limited, so people
| get acclimated to the community. Moderation becomes easy,
| because good faith actors tend to invite good faith actors,
| and are incentized to do so by effectively staking their
| reputation by vouching for their invitees, and when a bad
| faith actor slips through the cracks their invitees tend to
| be suspect, too.
|
| This also heavily addressed the bot issue: if a bot is
| identified, it is highly likely that most if not all of their
| invitees are bots, too, and there's a good chance whoever
| invited them is not a good faith actor, either.
|
| Communities without barriers to entry are always going to be
| low trust. The trick is striking a balance between trust and
| isolationism.
| ytx wrote:
| Anonymity isn't the underlying cause of hostile behavior, it's
| the expectation that you will not interact or need help from
| the person with whom you are having a negative interaction.
| Cooperation is evolutionarily successful because of repeated,
| mutually beneficial interactions.
|
| This is antithetical to much of the internet, and anonymity is
| definitely a factor, but it's also just what happens when you
| interact with a much larger amount of people, since the chances
| of repeated, meaningful interactions is much lower. I would
| posit that road-rage would decrease if you knew that you would
| be driving behind/next to the same people every day - in fact,
| you would probably end up with some form of cooperative
| driving!
| everdrive wrote:
| I think it's important to define what anonymity means with
| regard to cooperation. Reciprocal altruism usually requires
| an ongoing relationship -- ie, the two individuals will meet
| again, and either 1) good behavior will rewarded additional
| times in the future, or 2) bad behavior will be punished
| effectively in the future.
|
| Large enough groups of people break this down. There's a
| sense in which you're anonymous in a city. The people you
| pass by will likely never see you again. If you treat them
| well, they often have no later chance to reciprocate. (unless
| they can reciprocate on the spot) If they "defect," you have
| no chance to punish them later because you don't know who
| they are, and have no chance seeing them again. But they're
| not anonymous. They're not wearing a mask, they (probably)
| have government ID. What they are is transient from the
| perspective of the individual. Someone who will never be seen
| again, and someone for whom you never have to develop a
| relationship with.
|
| This is also key to the claims of study in the linked article
| -- it is the persistence of the pseudonyms which promotes
| more cooperative behavior. Parties are likely to build up a
| reputation, and that reputation carries consequences, and of
| course those consequences inform the behavior of someone
| trying to maintain the reputation.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I would posit that road-rage would decrease if you knew
| that you would be driving behind/next to the same people
| every day - in fact, you would probably end up with some form
| of cooperative driving!
|
| Interesting idea! It's probably not completely impractical to
| test--I know that, when I used to have a long commute, I'd
| recognize a fair number of fellow commuters near my home and
| my destination. I can't be the only one in such a position.
| It didn't occur to me to ask myself whether or not I was
| kinder to those drivers than to others that I didn't
| recognize, but I probably was, and I'm sure a good pollster
| could come up with relevant questions.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| With respect to road rage, it's good to assume that other
| drivers are either confused little old ladies, off duty
| policemen, or psychotic axe murderers
| mc32 wrote:
| Cars are different. When people lose their cool in their cars
| it's often due to other semi immediate pressures such as
| getting to work on time, picking someone up on time, etc.
| Mostly a time pressure. Other times it's because of perceived
| slights to driving etiquette, or to their person. Why is
| someone weaving in and out of traffic and violating etiquette
| and causing potential dangerous situations? Are they just speed
| demons, or are they trying to "get somewhere in a shorter
| time"?
|
| Online discourse is not subject to the same pressures. Yes,
| people get offended and some people like taking offense, and
| that triggers some similar reactions, but I think the dynamic
| is different. I could be wrong.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| There are differences but there are also similarities. I
| think the similarities are more important, both when you're
| driving and interacting online, you have conflicting agendas,
| which could be a simple as when driving you're trying to get
| there as soon as possible, and when you are using an online
| message board you're either trying to get your point accepted
| or you trying to make yourself look good and smart.
|
| The point, though, is that if you're not gonna have to
| interact with these people in the future, and there are
| otherwise no repercussions to being nasty, you're more likely
| to be nasty.
| pimlottc wrote:
| > - Inability to read body language queues correctly. (again,
| not face-to-face)
|
| That should be "cues"
| everdrive wrote:
| Thank you, fixed.
| rtkwe wrote:
| I think another thing is the size mixed with the stability of
| the community. Where you can 'know' someone and have multiple
| interactions. In larger communities where the people are less
| real a think I've seen a lot is the arguments become archetypal
| instead of actual exchanges, people tend towards arguing at a
| strawman they believe the other person represents.
| swayvil wrote:
| When you are alone, reading text, online, you are in a kind of
| trance, a little bit asleep. A bit closer to your unconscious
| self than the usual walking-around-doing-stuff self.
|
| This unconscious self is a bit more animal, a bit less
| civilized.
| slifin wrote:
| Speed is addictive
|
| I think the dangerous nature of it encourages adrenaline and
| fight or flight mechanisms
|
| If the amount of deaths are anything to go by I think we have a
| lot of disregulated drivers
| imzadi wrote:
| I think a lot of the more thoughtful commenters probably stop
| commenting when their real name becomes involved. Even if what
| they are saying is not inflammatory, there is always a chance of
| making a misstep or just having a bad opinion without fully
| understanding it. In the modern age, everything is forever.
| There's no room to evolve. If you say the wrong thing now, you're
| stuck with it, even if your actual beliefs change and grow, the
| fragment left behind is what remains reality. The only people who
| want to openly comment under their real name are people who don't
| care or who are already intentionally inflammatory.
| mattxxx wrote:
| Agreed here. Using a real name is a deal breaker for a lot of
| people, and as a result you lose their contributions, which
| hypothetically could be more informed.
| supertrope wrote:
| Mark Zuckerberg touted real name comments as the solution to
| online trolling and bad behavior. Of course he means Facebook
| profiles to be that identifier. Plenty of local news websites
| comment sections are clogged with flaming by people who are not
| deterred by having their meatspace name attached to their
| comments. There's a lot of spam from FB comments too.
| sideshowb wrote:
| Conveniently, real names are more valuable to advertisers, I
| presume
| tech_ken wrote:
| > Even if what they are saying is not inflammatory, there is
| always a chance of making a misstep or just having a bad
| opinion without fully understanding it. In the modern age,
| everything is forever. There's no room to evolve.
|
| Is this actually true or is it just something people say? I
| feel like there's plenty of room for people to grow or change
| their beliefs these days, it seems like every other day someone
| in power or in the spotlight says something like "oh that was
| something I used to believe but I've changed since" and that's
| kind of the end of it. Rarely do I feel like someone is
| entirely blacklisted for some opinion they held in their past
| but no longer hold, unless that past behavior was either
| abusive or straight up mean. Maybe I'm just not tuned in enough
| though.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's pretty easy for a basement dweller to link a pseudonym
| to your real name these days, so easy that I just don't
| bother with pseudonyms anymore. If I don't feel comfortable
| linking some statement with my real name forever, I just
| won't post that statement anymore. Does that stop me from
| hitting the "Reply" button sometimes? Sure, and the community
| is probably better off because of that.
|
| The only thing I worry about is that some belief or comment
| could be totally benign today, but who knows in 30 years it
| might be totally taboo. Surely things I've said 30 years ago
| would get me fired in today's environment of heightened
| sensitivity. I don't worry too much about that because in 30
| years I'll be retired and un-cancelable, if I'm even still
| alive.
| tithe wrote:
| A vicious consequence of being blacklisted/cancelled is
| you're no longer in the public arena to broadcast a change of
| heart/mind, especially if that belief was incomplete or
| action criminal.
|
| "What's become clear to you since we last met?"
| tech_ken wrote:
| Do you have any examples in mind of this? I'm struggling
| without having something concrete to anchor on
| joe_the_user wrote:
| It's hard to know how true "the Internet is forever" is at
| this point.
|
| But that doesn't qualify in my mind as "proof you won't get
| in trouble on the Internet". Especially, I certainly don't
| want someone else dictating that what I post goes on a
| specific which can be linked to other things later.
| arp242 wrote:
| I don't comment a lot on some of the "controversial issues" not
| so much because of fear of any consequences, but because
| frankly, it's just not worth it. You can carefully construct a
| nuanced measured criticism of something or the other only to
| have someone come back with the most extremist interpretation
| of what was actually said.
|
| I feel that "anyone can comment everywhere"-model just doesn't
| work for these types of discussions without heavy moderation to
| restrict the assholes; maybe one policy is "less bad" than some
| other policy, but it's still bad.
| david422 wrote:
| Another issue too is the possibility for online stalking.
| Putting out real info means that anybody across the globe who
| has some sort of vendetta can now track you down.
| tech_ken wrote:
| No real control for the changing population you might expect
| under each sign-up regime? Seems like in the first case sign-ups
| are super frictionless, so heavy trolling is expected. Second
| phase has some mild friction, so results make sense. But in the
| third de-anonymized phase I would assume that any FB user can
| comment basically by default, so presumably the circle of
| discourse is at its widest point. In a world where someone needs
| to care enough to make an account to comment presumably the
| quality of post is higher than when any random passerby can leave
| their thoughts?
| boomlinde wrote:
| It seems to me like the second phase might have introduced a
| slight barrier to entry (that of having to register a name) that
| was removed again in phase 3 (which I assume made the comment
| sections immediately available to anyone logged into a Facebook
| account).
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >In the third phase, the commenting system was outsourced to
| Facebook
|
| This seems to be an apples-and-oranges comparison, no? Or at the
| very least, there's a confounding factor here: how difficult it
| is to start commenting.
|
| The average Internet user is far more likely to have a Facebook
| account than a HuffPo[0] account. Furthermore, Facebook does very
| little moderation. This means that in both the totally anonymous
| and Facebook real-name eras, commenting is just a matter of
| clicking a button to proceed, rather than registering an account,
| validating an e-mail, etc.
|
| Furthermore, when you run your own comment section you can build
| your own moderation tools which Facebook might lack. You also
| have the ability to restrict signups - even if you're using
| Facebook as an ID provider (e.g. those "Login with Facebook"
| buttons). If HuffPo gets a bunch of media attention they can shut
| off registration and the comment section will consist entirely of
| people who already got in before the huge crush of spammers. Or
| they could heavily moderate comments posted around a specific
| time if they built a tool for that.
|
| I'd like to know what would happen if, say, you had your own
| account system, but usernames were hidden from other commenters.
| Moderators could of course see and ban whole accounts if needed.
| I have a feeling it'd perform similarly to psuedonymity.
|
| [0] I had to fight the urge to call it HuffPuff.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I can't express how unreasonable it is to demand real identities
| in internet discussions. You can chit-chat with your mouth among
| a group of people and be mostly fine. You don't have to weigh
| every word. At worst what you say will be spread in a small
| radius, becoming ever less reliable for every level of hearsay.
| But on the internet? That's potentially omnipresent and forever.
|
| People have different personas in real life. While going under
| the same name. It's how people operate.
| jokoon wrote:
| I just think people should be accountable for their online
| behavior. It's not very hard to do.
|
| If people are accountable for what they say, act and do in
| public, the same rule should apply on public forums. Anonymity is
| good, as long as you don't abuse it, and it's being used for good
| reasons.
|
| Maybe I don't have a thick skin, but honestly, toxicity is not a
| feature of the internet, it is a problem, and everybody knows
| that the internet is generally a cesspool where you can't trust
| anybody. That's not good.
|
| It's not only up to media companies to sanitize their platforms,
| it's also up to the law to set better standards.
|
| It doesn't have to be like that. The worst things are, the more
| people will want a china-style social score.
|
| I'm pro free speech, but free speech cannot exist out of nothing,
| there is a certain set of condition required for free speech to
| work well.
| tithe wrote:
| Isn't this why HN attributes "karma" to a username?
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