[HN Gopher] Persistent interaction patterns across social media ...
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Persistent interaction patterns across social media platforms and
over time
Author : andsoitis
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-04-09 14:27 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| iamthirsty wrote:
| > This API considers toxicity as "a rude, disrespectful or
| unreasonable comment likely to make someone leave a discussion".
|
| This seems to be incredibly subjective.
|
| According to this, "toxic" content could include a serious
| discussion about contentious subject matter, a terse comment, or
| even a off-color joke.
| medellin wrote:
| I agree it should be broken down better or they are falling
| into the same simple thinking that most commenters online have.
| iamthirsty wrote:
| > they are falling into the same simple thinking that most
| commenters online have.
|
| Please be aware that your comment has been marked by the API
| as 'toxic' due to an overt generalized assumption.
|
| /s
| spencerflem wrote:
| I agree, and non-sarcastically. The GP comment is saying
| that not only are the researchers are dumb but that most
| internet commenters (not them) are too.
|
| This doesn't make for a good discussion. There's no easy
| way to respond to this other than being defensive or adding
| more snark. It is a discussion ender and if all hackernews
| comments were like this I would leave the site.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _There 's no easy way to respond to this other than
| being defensive or adding more snark_
|
| Your comment is itself an example of how to respond to
| this without being defensive or snarky.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Thanks, I really do try.
| mistermann wrote:
| > This doesn't make for a good discussion.
|
| What if it is objectively true?
|
| Is there some magic dust that renders humans
| _necessarily_ good /smart, or might it be possible that
| you are grading on a curve, as you have been trained to
| do _by humans_?
|
| If there are problems and people refuse to even
| acknowledge them let alone address them, they deserve
| what they get imho.
|
| I imagine a lot of innocent people get caught up in the
| harm, but how would one determine who is objectively
| innocent?
| newzisforsukas wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_entrepreneur
| Funes- wrote:
| I mean, you could make an otherwise polite, respectful or
| reasonable comment, and the fact that it made someone leave the
| discussion would make it the opposite of what it actually is,
| as well as "toxic". Even more, the level of "toxicity" of
| certain expressions would depend solely on the average
| tolerance of the userbase to them at any given time. You could
| rather label these expressions as "discussion enders", I guess,
| to signify the general reaction to them, rather than the nature
| of their content, which can vary from user to user and across
| time.
| spencerflem wrote:
| That seems like a very reasonable definition to me.
|
| To your expanded definition: there's plenty of 'contentious'
| discussions that could happen on Hackernews for example and I'm
| very glad that dang's excellent moderation and the community
| culture as a whole prevents them from overwhelming everything
| else as much as possible. Some subjects have the tendency to be
| very passionate and personal and to take over spaces when they
| appear, and letting every thread devolve into those topics
| makes for an unpleasant place.
|
| But the original definition requires it be "rude, disrespectful
| or unreasonable". So I don't think a controversial topic is
| necessarily toxic by their definition, though some topics tend
| to turn toxic very fast.
|
| These adjectives all pretty uncontroversially negative. The HN
| guidelines say "Be kind. Don't be snarky". Saying that a rude
| comment is toxic is just correct. If your terse comment or off-
| color joke is rude or unreasonable it Is toxic and you probably
| shouldn't say it.
| incomingpain wrote:
| A great deal of this study is entirely subjective and they
| focus heavily on social media that has ejected viewpoints.
| Therefore, why would there even be toxicity when it's only 1
| viewpoint being allowed?
|
| Climate change is never having any sort of healthy debate on
| reddit or gab for example. It's 1 sided discussion in echo
| chambers(in this case opposing sides) and therefore toxicity
| should be expected to be 0.
|
| > For the vaccines topic, we collected about 70,000 comments
| from the r/VaccineDebate subreddit, focusing on the COVID-19
| vaccine debate.
|
| except for the part where you check this out.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/VaccineDebate/
|
| They have 152 members and no activity for 4 years.So what's
| this about 70,000 comments of curation against antivaxxers.
| Reddit quite regularly banned anyone antivaxxer for 'medical
| misinformation'
|
| They aren't measuring toxicity at all in this case for example.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| and it also focuses on the impact, not the intent. Almost _any_
| comment can make someone upset and cause them to throw a hissy
| fit /leave yet most people wouldn't judge those specific
| comments to be toxic.
|
| Similarly, the most toxic, awful and mean insults can be non-
| toxic by this definition if they happen between good friends or
| simply people with very thick skin who won't leave no matter
| what. (either due to the relationship or simply due to their
| desire to prove their point)
|
| This study operated on a flawed definition, so the conclusions
| are biased in quite a strong way.
|
| Also, as other users ITT mentioned, this study uses platforms
| where posting is heavily censored, either as a global action by
| the site or by the room's admins (in case of Reddit, FB groups
| and Telegram). This does not account for the chilling effect -
| the opposite side won't leave the conversation because they
| couldn't/didn't want to join in the first place!
|
| So many utter echochambers with really toxic behaviours (e.g.
| the FDS subreddit) would be classed as non-toxic because all
| participants have the same viewpoint - the targets of the
| toxicity are outsiders to the community.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I think the article actually agrees with you, that their
| toxitiy is hostile to outsiders.
|
| "This entails, for example, that even if toxicity does not
| seem to make people leave conversations, it could still be a
| factor that discourages them from joining them."
|
| They also agree that the effects of the moderation impact the
| data set, and this is mentioned. That's part of why they
| tried to include many different sites which may have
| different policies and even so it's cited as a potential
| problem.
|
| What, specifically, from the conclusions do you think is
| wrong?
|
| I also think you are misunderstanding what the criteria is.
| It is not comments that cause someone to leave in that
| specific instance (something there's not data for anyways),
| but comments that are declared toxic according to a ML model
| where the idea is to find comments likely to repel others due
| to being rude or unreasoanable, regardless of the actual
| effect. This is kinda squishy and objectionable too, but not
| in the way that you're saying so I figured it was worth
| clarifying
| mhuffman wrote:
| What if their definition of "toxic" makes me want to leave a
| discussion, are they moral enough to close down the entire
| thing?
| reader5000 wrote:
| Mainstream corporate media is at least an order of magnitude more
| toxic than anything on the internet.
| poopsmithe wrote:
| I think you mean legacy media. Internet is the mainstream now.
| lapcat wrote:
| My theory about why toxicity doesn't necessarily cause people to
| leave a discussion: the strong desire to have the last word in a
| discussion.
|
| You don't want the "idiot" to win by default.
| criddell wrote:
| A frequent request on HN is for an easy way to find out when
| somebody has responded to a comment. I think not having any
| kind notification system is one of the reasons HN hasn't become
| another Reddit or X.
|
| I hope HN never gets that "feature".
| fragmede wrote:
| Siri to be the bearer of bad new but that's just a Google
| search away, if you don't want to write it yourself/can't.
| lapcat wrote:
| https://hnrss.github.io
| spencerflem wrote:
| To me, the interesting parts of this are:
|
| "We also show that some online conversation features have
| remained consistent over the past three decades despite the
| evolution of platforms and social norms." and "Our findings
| suggest that the polarization of user opinions--intended as the
| degree of opposed partisanship of users in a conversation--may
| have a more crucial role than toxicity in shaping the evolution
| of online discussions."
|
| This is something I've noticed too, as a former participant of a
| tiny social media site originally forked from Hackernews.
| Different political opinions and a controversial subject can make
| for a really unpleasant place, and without any sort of real-life
| connection, everything is so abstracted that it's hard to be
| respectful. People on that site that I know are usually good
| commenters got toxic, I try very hard not to be toxic and had to
| leave when I couldn't.
|
| Moral is, theres some anecdotal proof for the conclusion , and it
| does make me wonder that maybe the reason facebook / twiter /
| etc. is so toxic isn't due to being milked for engagement. Or at
| least, that that's not as big a factor as I thought. And this
| seems like it could have some implications on how to make for a
| pleasant fediverse.
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