The same way you prevent them from becoming progressice/racist trash bin worse than reddit.

You let them speak and prove them idiots. It's really not hard. Unless you're constantly on the side that's losing, then it's pretty miserable.

But know that even though you're losing now you can reformulated your arguments and try again because no ones going to censor you. You have all the same rights because you, like they, are people deserving respect, no matter how much you look down on them or hate them. And that's what I tell them about you.

Less hate more love.

>let them speak and prove them idiots. It's really not hard

No popular platform works like this. All working solutions involve hard moderation and separate forums/groups for different people.

>they, are people

Not necessarily.

Even if they are real people they may be paid propagandists, trolls or promoters. You need heavy moderation or access restrictions to make things work after the size of community grows. Eventually even moderation breaks down after the size grows.

The problem, however, is that people are unresponsive to arguments. We are not reasonable, unfortunately. People aren't coming to these places to learn. They don't want to learn.

I'm very curious as to how we can get out of this, because I really have a hard time understanding people and this is an enormous laboratory.

> unresponsive to arguments

Not just unresponsive to arguments, but will argue in bad faith, and it takes 10x as much effort to disprove someone's bad contentions than it does to produce them.

I agree with this position and wonder if there is any supporting evidence that speaks to this point that you know of?

And since everyone is unreasonable you think someone should be in charge of deciding what's reasonable at the barrel of a gun.

I really don't think you've thought your argument through.

An argument doesn't have to be reasonable. You have logos, pathos, and ethos [1] to convince somebody.

It's like a good sale, you identify what they want and then you show them a more social and friendly approach to reach their goal.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric

What if you don't want to prove them wrong, or indeed engage them at all? Not everyone is owed a debate, a response, or even eyeballs. There's plenty of interesting content out there that people are paid to read, what makes you think anyone who values their time would be willing to read racist trash for free?

That's perfectly fine. But just because you don't want to debate with someone does that mean they're not allowed to talk to each other?

In my opinion it's more important to let groups self-moderate and compartmentalize. We can have a peaceful talk because "they" are over there, where they don't disturb us.

> Not everyone is owed [...] even eyeballs.

Where to look is up to each pair of eyeballs.

> they... compartmentalize

And that's the key problem. People are more divided than ever, especially in politics, to the point where rational discussion is nearly impossible.

Instead of letting people separate into echo chambers, it seems much better to force everyone to be in the same space, which should result in people hearing each side of an argument. Use moderation to punish people who don't act civilly, which should eliminate the worst offenders.

I prefer things to be self moderated as much as possible, but not to the point where echo chambers can form. Some ideas:

- content gets removed after N reports - users with N reported posts get shadow-banned for some period (exponential scale) - users get N reports, which get replenished faster if reports result in content removal - users that brigade get their reports silently nixed (e.g. you consistently report content along with the same users)

Or something along those lines. Just having an open forum leads to one group out-shouting other groups, which leads to echo chambers. There must be some moderation, but not so much as to recreate the problem a different way.

What? No, we should not force people to share the same space as fascists and racists. It seems ridiculous to have to say it. If I were to encounter neo-nazis in real life, I would not engage in a civil discussion, confident that the police is there to make sure everyone is civil. I would walk away. Online, it's pretty much the same thing. I'm not sure why it's so hard to fathom that most people have more productive uses of their time than hearing what racists and fascists have to say.

You can still walk away, but the key point is that those who do not want to walk away will still hear differing (to theirs) opinions.

I think you want to narrow the overton window. My preference is to keep the overton window wide but have multiple subgroups along the continuum so that the outer percentiles only form small subgroups that don't dominate.

In other words echo chambers are only a problem when they are large and even worse when you have to choose one of two chambers dominated by either extreme. The political analogue would be the 2 party system in the US vs. the multi party parliaments with coalitions and fringe parties that you can find in europe.

I disagree. The small groups, especially the ones with self-amplifying „high echos“ in their groups are the ones (groups or individual members of that group) that easily radicalize. That‘s how terrorist cells, guerillas, and „lone wolf“ aggressors arise (left and right, political and social, agnostic and religious, whatever-you-can-think of extremists). Just check the news of the last months, I mean weeks…er, days!

And I‘m not saying your point about large echo chambers is wrong, it’s quite true (again, see recent news). But the problem is with any kind/size of echo chamber. And „echo chamber“ is a different thing than domain-specific groups like HN – it‘s only an echo chamber when HN is your only source of (tech/entrepreneurial) news/discussions. Note that even where you live can easily become an echo chamber if you rarely break out of it.

>literal Sieg Heil Nazis are people deserving respect

I respectfully disagree.

ETA: Sunlight isn't actually a disinfectant here. If it was, moderation-lite platforms wouldn't be full of fascist trash.

What actually happens is this: 1. Someone makes a moderation-lite platform in response to censorship on mainstream platforms 2. Thousands of awful people flock to the platform, along with two or three principled free speech advocates. Most normal people avoid it because they don't realistically need to worry about being banned from mainstream platforms and they don't want to deal with fascists. (Besides, the racist trolls aren't actually interested in open and respectful discourse. That's a lie.)

Conversely, as mainstream platforms ban more and more viewpoints, it does start to affect "normal people" as well - and that increases the potential userbase for all these alternative services to spring up.

"awful people" As in, people who are inherently awful, cannot be helped, and should therefore be cut out of society. Why stop there? Why not put them in prisons? Fine with that? Why stop there? Why waste resources on trash? Why not incinerate them in some kind of large cooking appliance? :^)

There‘s certainly a risk here but that is why we have laws. E.g. in Germany, showing fascist symbols is forbidden (unless it‘s an educational/historical context). It‘s up to the people and courts to ensure the law is not overstepping the boundaries of free expression, and it‘s up to the executive and judicial branch to ensure people don’t tend to prejudgement.

Oh, goodie, a community where every topic of conversation, no matter how mundane, turns into a "debate" about if [insert group here] are human or not and if it should be ok to own women and why don't we still send Jews to the gas chambers? Sounds like a pleasant place, I can't wait to spend my time there "debating" levelheaded reasonable people who I just "disagree" with.

You're not entitled to have every community be in your image.

It's all fun and "debate" until someone shoots up a synagogue.

Wtf..

Slippery slope fallacy.

No, that's how we got here. We're already below that point on the slope. Fascist trash bins leak, into the real world.

I feel like the cost of having open communication platforms is the existence of toxic communities.

The correct approach (IMO) is to educate people about these rather than to have some sort of censorship mechanism.

That is, unfortunately, unworkable. You cannot successful quarantine toxic people from non-toxic people in the same community. People who aren't toxic rarely want to spend their time around toxic people, and those that don't mind it are usually those who aren't the targets of the toxic people. A community with many members who are openly white supremacists might not be uncomfortable for other white people -- even if they themselves are not white supremacists -- but it's almost certainly unusable for those that are the target of the white supremacists ire. Look at any "open communication platform" that doesn't make any effort to ban "toxic" behaviour and you'll find that the toxic behaviour leaks into every aspect of the platform.

If a website permits members to be openly anti-semitic or racist or sexist then they will be anti-semitic, racist and sexist everywhere, whether that's a quarantined sub-community about anti-semitism, or a community about video games, make-up or curating art for galleries. No amount of education is going to encourage jewish people to spend their time talking to openly anti-semitic people about video games. If you permit toxic behaviour then you exclude anybody who feels threatened by that behaviour.

See my sibling comment. Should we (society) have quarantined and de-platformed homosexuals when they were (historically) considered "toxic"?

You can talk in hand-wavey sound bites about civil liberties that's not the world we've chosen to create, and it's hard to understand how you can earnestly compare racism and homosexuality. Are violent racists oppressed when they're not permitted to deny the rights of minorities, in the same way minorities are oppressed when they're not permitted to exercise their rights? Perhaps when you're philosophising in comments on the internet about civil liberties they're the same but in the real world they are not.

You cannot effectively allow people to individually "filter out" toxic behaviour within a community because toxic behaviour permeates all aspects of participation in a community. The views we hold are fundamental to all aspects of our lives: our lives are built upon our views. A violent anti-semite's beliefs are present in their views on politics, religion, video games, food, housing, travel, science, technology... you cannot effectively "filter out" the fundamentals of someone's view points without neutering their speech -- which is no different from de-platforming them.

A community is a group of people and a group of people is a collection of beliefs, a community is not a bunch of people who use the same website but are intentionally siloed because their beliefs are incompatible. People who favour the PlayStation 4 over the Xbox One can be part of a community with people who favour the Xbox One over the Playstation 4, but can people who wish death upon all jews be a part of a community with jewish people?

But that's exactly what you're doing. You're oppressing them by denying them the ability to speak because you believe (perhaps rightly) that their opinion and way of living is wrong. Would you actually not deny housing to a nazi? Openly fascist people ARE denied jobs, how can you imagine otherwise? "Closet" facists are allowed to have jobs, in the same way closet homosexuals were allowed to have jobs back when homosexuality was considered toxic.

There‘s still a huge difference between „certain people are not allowed to live“ vs. „I want to be allowed to love whomever I chose“. That former group should still not be excluded from certain basic „rights“, at least until they act on their beliefs (but that‘s up to the courts to decide). But again, you are comparing apples to oranges and questioning the moral principles the (at least Western) society is built on.

Anti-semites don't see things that way. They see Jewish people as attacking THEM, denying THEM the right to their way of existence. They might use the same language you use.

You bring up an important point, implementing equal rights does not reduce the rights of those who previously were oppressors, no matter how delusional their thinking is.

> You can talk in hand-wavey (sic.) sound bites about civil liberties

I'm not waving any hands. I'm firmly advocating self-filtering over authoritarian censorship as a means of regulating community content platforms. I am also explaining that I believe my stance is in tune with our guiding political principles in the US because it is the option that does not systemically promote oppression.

> that's not the world we've chosen to create,

What? It is exactly the world we intended to create in the US (you might have missed my caveat, and I noticed your spelling of favor). I'm referencing political philosophy from the federalist papers and from the prior art they're somewhat inspired by. Many of the people who founded the US were religiously oppressed and sought to create exactly a world that would prevent such oppression from manifesting again. It's where the whole separation of church and state comes from.

> and it's hard to understand how you can earnestly compare racism and homosexuality.

I'm not sure I follow. I'm not comparing homosexuality and racism. Where did I do that? But since you mention it, it actually sounds like you might not be aware of the extent to which homosexuals have historically been persecuted, experienced oppression, and had their liberties and even lives taken from them.

> Are violent racists oppressed when they're not permitted to deny the rights of minorities

Violent racists are jailed when they commit acts of violence. They could claim the mere existence of some class is oppressive and not allowing them to eradicate it infringes upon their rights. It's unlikely that strategy would get them anywhere because the right to genocide is not a universally understood and acknowledged human right (in the US, anyway).

Nobody is ever allowed to deny rights that we the people have agreed to defend--it's illegal because it's oppressive--that's the point. We are all supposed to enjoy the liberties we've agreed are core to our constitution, not just those of us who are "right". Saying, "Blacks aren't people" or, "Kill the Jews" does not deprive members of the respective class (or anyone) of their person-hood, or their liberty so we tolerate it even though it's stupid.

> Perhaps when you're philosophising (sic.) in comments on the internet about civil liberties they're the same but in the real world they are not.

I guess the internet isn't real life? If so, why do you care so much about de-platforming and censoring toxic minority views on internet community platforms? Anyway, I do not believe the ends justify the means. I do not support oppression or removal of civil liberties so that we can gosh darn it eradicate those pesky racists. To do so would required us to declare them sub-human (by constitutional definition) and strip them of their liberties and remove them from our communities. "Let's round up all the racists and get rid of them..." That sounds a little -ist or -azi for my tastes.

As to your last paragraph, anyone who thinks xbone is better than PS4 probably isn't human so they never had a chance anyway (;

> “I don't agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

There are diametrically opposed subreddits, 4chan boards or even twitter feeds. People can definitely coexist. The coexistence is not always easy or 100% free of disturbance but most of the time they work well enough to let each group focus on their own things.

You're confusing platform and community. It's extremely rare that those aren't distinct, HN is one of the only examples that comes to mind.

Yes. To add, with the introduction of a global real-time communication network (the internet), we've also realized you must include mechanisms that make it easy for each individual to filter content so that they have the ability to remove themselves from situations that they consider oppressive, unethical, and/or immoral.

> I feel like the cost of having open communication platforms is the existence of toxic communities.

This topic has been discussed through history by many political philosophers. In the US, it's one of our founding principles. A strict non-unanimous majority rule is by definition oppressive. So how does one craft a society that keeps the majority of people happy while keeping in check the oppression a majority exerts upon dissenting "factions"? You preserve certain fundamental civil liberties and human rights for all your citizens. You do this so that a mere majority cannot infringe upon the liberties of minority groups. On top of that, the civil liberties you choose to universally defend are selected such that they give social agency to members regardless of faction allegiance. A faction may begin to feel oppressed by introduction of an ignorant law or by global change in social outlook (including reinterpretation of existing laws). The response is for the faction to exercise their social agency in order to effect political change that they otherwise don't have the numbers to outright decree.

If you allow people to communicate, some are going to say something "toxic". We pay this price so that as a society we retain a means for oppression to be discovered. Indeed two "toxic" homosexuals one day may be the voice for marriage equality the next.

Then use your exit rights and don’t participate.

And to facilitate the formation of insulated communities that don't interact with each other directly, without altogether removing any but the most toxic of communities from public search results.

It isn't possible, but you can choose which subs where you want to subscribe.

There will be a moderated list of subs (maintained by the main developer), but users will be free to try to find an join even the most controversial ones.

As someone who has spent the better part of their life advocating for openness, decentralization, etc... it pains me to believe this, but I'm not sure we can have both open decentralized communities and simultaneously a community that isn't overrun with toxicity.

If the goal is shitposting and edge-waddling I think it can be done, for a while anyway. However, if the goal is to have a space where discussion is meaningful, good faith, charitable, intelligent conversation, I'm not sure we can currently do this in a completely open way and still maintain a signal to noise ratio where sane people would willfully spend their valuable free time.

In our current iteration of tech, society, education levels, culture, and politics it seems that (so far) every time we create an open space, the moment it reaches a certain level of popularity, the noise levels reach a point where it is pretty much impossible to have meaningful, contextual, and nuanced conversations.

At the point that signal to noise ratio reaches unacceptable levels, we lose a critical mass of the people who made the space "special"

I really hope we can get around this someday, but sadly, so far the absolutist free-for-all spaces really offer diminishing returns for those of us who are busy. Rather than sifting through rubble to find gold, at least for me, I can think of many things I'd rather do than engage in a conversation with someone when there is a higher than average chance they aren't there in good faith and when entire segments of the community exist who are literally only in the space to engage in and spread sophistry.

At least for now, outside of invite only communities or high barrier of entry communities, spaces such as HN or SSC --both of which are largely unknown to the general public-- seem to offer the best blend of openness and time-well-spent conversations. But I'm not sure either of these could maintain the same level of conversation at scale.

If comments by Group B are considered "noise" by Group A, while Group A's own comments are considered "signal" then I would suggest that being unable to maintain a "good" signal to noise ratio indicates that the signal/noise has reversed. The argument you describe is entirely predicated on the fact that you are right (you being whomever) and they are wrong. This is where the breakdown occurs.

what is SSC?

Thanks

Groups have moderators, users can subscribe to specific mods' decisions.

By getting a large enough userbase, and not repeating the cycle by banishing unwanted opinions.