Re:Google User Data Is Police's Top Shortcut for Solving Crimes
by dang on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @11:06PM
(#37774508)
I believe you that it wasn't your intent, but the definition of flamebait isn't about intent, it's about effects*: what effect is a post likely to have? what subthread is it likely to generate? That's what determines the expected value of a post. If you post things like "right wing waste of sperm", "vomit their hate", and so on, the likely outcome is a flamewar whether you intended it or not—and you're actually responsible for it whether you intended it or not. (And this case was not a borderline call!)
But you're also making an important point here and I don't want you to feel like it hasn't been heard.
I agree with you that emotions are important and need to be given a place. HN's rules are definitely not about constraining everybody into a starched, repressed state. The big question is how to express emotions in a way that leads to more curious, respectful conversation and not to a flamewar in which people just get mad and rush to defend their side and bash the other side.
This is an open question—it's not something that we've figured out yet as a community or a culture or in terms of moderation. But here's my current take, FWIW.
It's much better if you express your emotion explicitly as something you are feeling. If you directly share what you're actually feeling, that will make your comment more interesting to other people and make it less likely to sound like an attack on others.
Many people (including me) have a hard time doing this, so instead of saying openly how we feel, we encode it into a statement about a thing, an idea, or another person—and then we get our emotion in through the "back door" by packing as much intensity as we can into our language. Sound familiar? That's how much internet discourse works.
This feels safer because it makes you less vulnerable, but it's a recipe for internet disaster because people will get triggered by the intensity rather than receiving your actual meaning—and to be fair, it's not their fault, because you didn't really give them a chance.
But you're also making an important point here and I don't want you to feel like it hasn't been heard.
I agree with you that emotions are important and need to be given a place. HN's rules are definitely not about constraining everybody into a starched, repressed state. The big question is how to express emotions in a way that leads to more curious, respectful conversation and not to a flamewar in which people just get mad and rush to defend their side and bash the other side.
This is an open question—it's not something that we've figured out yet as a community or a culture or in terms of moderation. But here's my current take, FWIW.
It's much better if you express your emotion explicitly as something you are feeling. If you directly share what you're actually feeling, that will make your comment more interesting to other people and make it less likely to sound like an attack on others.
Many people (including me) have a hard time doing this, so instead of saying openly how we feel, we encode it into a statement about a thing, an idea, or another person—and then we get our emotion in through the "back door" by packing as much intensity as we can into our language. Sound familiar? That's how much internet discourse works.
This feels safer because it makes you less vulnerable, but it's a recipe for internet disaster because people will get triggered by the intensity rather than receiving your actual meaning—and to be fair, it's not their fault, because you didn't really give them a chance.
* For past explanations on this point see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...