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Re:How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry by neilv on Saturday February 03, 2024 @01:31AM (#39238033)
Yeah, I think that's the biggest part of a lot of disappointing things that have happened and are happening.

There's also a separate factor in some problems, which is that the power and reach of bad actors are increased by tech. To use a familiar and relatively innocuous example, before the popular Internet, virtually no scammers from some developing nation halfway around the globe would be able to reach the US, which would effectively mean a lot fewer jerks in the world, as far as people in the US knew.

I also wonder whether sociopathy is being normalized more or faster than before (at the same time that some positive memes are also propagated). I don't know what would be a good baseline for evaluating, nor whether there are good historical analogs for some of the recent sociopathy -- including that practiced by the tech industry, and that merely enabled by the tech.

Re:How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry by throwawayqqq11 on Saturday February 03, 2024 @03:36AM (#39238557)
> increasing normalization of sociopathy

I think this is the case and appears in many shapes.

* libertarians lift their individual freedom above societal needs but they fail to see their own dependence on them, like any public services funded by taxes.

* Crypto bros advertise new "currencies" but use them as volatile investments or foster such expectations. With this volatility it will never become a fully stable currency. There is a common wisdom in traditional trading that you dont do arbitrage / speculate on real currencies because of their _intended_ stability. Another failed realization (because of personal gain attached to it).

* Right leaning people argue against criminal migrants but discriminate not by commited crimes but simply foreignness. Their percieved superior cultural identity is their solution to internal cultural problems but they fail to realize how criminal sociotopes emerge and that its independent of ethnicity.

I could go on if i had time.

Re:How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry by ben_w on Saturday February 03, 2024 @05:46AM (#39239162)
> I also wonder whether sociopathy is being normalized more or faster than before

I doubt it, bad behaviour is more likely to be called out and borderline cases probably pushed towards cooperation. Sociopathy is, I think, the condition where one can't be pushed towards cooperation by social pressure.

I think that the acts of calling people out (in addition to your point about tech empowering bad actors), just makes it seem like they are being normalised.