Comments on: After all, it's the Internet, right?

CNET News.com's Charles Cooper, who spent vacation time perusing posts about Jewish cabals and minority scams, found little holiday spirit within.

[James Anglin]

Moderation in all things

Message boards with decent moderators are a lot better. They're a
limitation on total freedom that it is well worth accepting.

[williamQ]

"cyber bullies and nitwits" on the left?

"Cyber bullies and nitwits" are of course a problem. Charles, I'm
wondering if you take notice of those from your own side of the
political spectrum as well.

[Andy kaufman]

So true

both sides do the same thing equally.

[Penguinisto]

Left, Right, and Sideways.

One usually does not pay attention to trolls that agree with one's
position. It's not an intentional slant, but human nature.

Then again, over time I find that sometimes "your side" says
something wrong, and you find the desire to correct them.

/P

[tremorfireheart]

matter of clarification

he did not say that the libertarians were the nitwits or bullies. He just said that the libertarians would defend the nitwits right to post. He deffinately has his own political point of views he's pushing in the article.

[rapier1]

I believe

The author would be more than willing to concede that this is a
universal problem. However, the zionist conspiracy theorists, the
hyper patriots, and the cranks *seem* to be more willing to take
their positions into unrelated forums. The lunatic left (which I'm not
using to describe all, or even most, of the people on the left)
generally seem to want to spend all of their time in echo chambers
like DailyKos. So they're annoying but they seem to keep it amoung
themselves more often.

[charlie cooper]

all across the spectrum

of course. this isn't a left-right argument. stupidity and coarse behavior extends widely across the political spectrum.

[Markomusic]

I don't think there's an equivalence

I hear this argument a lot today. For every criticism of tactics in the political arena there is an equivalent crime to charge of the opponent. Of course it works, because it is so often at least partially true. And I would gladly concur that there are unreasonable people who spew or personalize their remarks or throw out steaming piles of sarcasm from all walks of politics. So far I'm with you. And I do understand that this specific remark caught people's attention.

"Rat liberals are simply fink traitors in drag. "

This inclusion might imply that the only pols who were trashing up cyberspace were conservatives, and we agree that this is not true. But that's as far as I'll be drug down this line of protest. I personally believe that acquiescence to the idea that liberal and conservative trash talking in cyberspace is "equivalent" is just falling for good ol' ?conservative correctness.? We've been pretty well indoctrinated into this view over the last decade and a half by virtue of an endless stream of fairness complaints (and yes just as we have been indoctrinated into political correctness - but the two are still not "equivalent").

The simple TRUTH is that conservative bloggers are worse when it comes to the phenomenon described in this article. And just for the record I'm not a liberal or a conservative. And while I couldn?t hand over a count of specific abusive instances on thousands of pages on thousands of sites to somehow make my argument empirically stronger than the original poster, I can't even imagine that the simple truth to which I refer is not obvious to all or most of you.

What I am noticing more and more and more is that conservative bloggers are astoundingly willing to jump off topic. One of the most common manifestations is making left/right dramas out of almost everything. Lefties do this on occasions, but they just don't do it anywhere near as frequently or as outrageously. One thing is for sure, when lefties see a con doing this, they often contribute some bile in return, thus falling into the trap and further soiling the discussion.

Another technique that I feel comes from the right a lot more are ?drive bys.? Now to be fair, lefties do drive bys on many conservative sites in great frequency, so if a conservative had a distorted impression of what's happening from that it would be perfectly understandable. Those same well-behaved respectful cons are probably not spending too much time on liberal sites seeing what their fellow cons are doing. Believe me its every bit equivalent to liberal drive bys. But that seeming equivalence is not the end of the debate. There are all the other sites, the objective sites, the mixed opinion sites, and (most relevantly) the completely no place for politics sites. As Mr. Cooper wrote, that's where you'll find "Rat liberals are simply fink traitors in drag. "

I realize it's not "correct" to try to call out this problem for what I believe it really is, i.e. to pick a side. But I?m just being honest, and I believe, objective. Objectivity and equivalence are not the same things.

[punterjoe]

proof of the 'democratization' of the net.

As with all tools - probably from fire, the wheel & sticks as clubs - a handful grasped & mastered the concept, then it trickled down to everyone. Sure these 'late adopters' likely set themselves on fire, rolled over their toes, & beat each other to a pulp, but that seems to be what happens when a tool becomes a commodity. I'm not in any way excusing it, just pointing out that with any ripe fruit, it's only a matter of time before the insects come. :P

[Len Bullard]

The Unreality of the Conversation

Ah.. so the wisdom of crowds isn't necessarily?

1. Negative hype amplifies with more strength than positive hype. Possibly this is the effect of fight or flight evolutionary pressures.

2. Some like the ecosystem metaphors. Others like chaotic attractors. The difference is the expectation the former "feels" effects. The latter are studying 'affective' systems. However, both achieve the same end: redirecting signal to by taking energy from another system until the signal source is disminished past recovery. Think 'brand assasination'. See OOXML vs ODF.

It is a good idea to sort the trendy metaphors. The difference is 'bermuda and fescue' over 'black holes and near star systems'. The reason to understand these is to understand that proof of intent is easy. Identifying intent reliably is hard. Fescue replaces bermuda because it is aggressive in its intent to reproduce. Black holes cause near systems to light up and speed up, but then they disappear. See Google redirects for information access and strategies for investing against customers. Most pure service play companies have that affect on their partners over time even though the kumbayah is one of 'we'll grow the market through standards' when the service company actually has no products.

The problem of 'tipping point', 'the conversation' and 'information wants to be free', all variants of 'network effect' is to not note that

a) All nodes are not equally powerful/competent.

b) Node amplification relies on timing or proximity of signal to an amplifying node. (See Karl Rove and the concept of addition by division where moving a small percentage at a critical node point causes a mass shift. Facts don't matter in the face of highly emotional content if the listener is greedy for emotional stimulation. Know thyself.

My advice Mr C:

o Know the signal types by intent.
o Turn off or do not surf near any sources where the intent does not match your own.
o Avoid signal for it's own sake. Addiction to information is not a virtue. It is a stimulus-bound behavior.

Self-modification is principally self-moderation. If you don't want to get fat, don't eat more than you need.

The Internet is stuff. The conversation is real. The effects of the conversation may be to convey wisdom but it is more probable it will create 'unreality' where the reaction is quite real and then the superstition is self-promoting.

Learn and understand the laws of cybernetics. Understand first, second and third order systems.

[Newspeak finder]

Who provides the lead?

While casting welcome light on unwanted behaviour would it not
be appropriate to also highlight the 'role models' provided by
political leaders who lie to us and sell their principles to the
highest bidder and then have the effrontery to tell the rest of the
world how to behave.

Can I suggest that if politicians want to tell others how to
behave they should clean up their own houses first and set a
decent example?

[Penguinisto]

Here's how it really works. :)

It's an accepted maxim in a lot of cases that:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Jackass.

It isn't the case in all arenas and people, but it does hold true
that the ignorant and hateful, whom society would otherwise
keep in check, often find a nice little outlet for their anger and
frustrations, and use it in ways that easily offend others.

But it is often not as simple. Back in the day when USENET was
the major communications venue, some of us decided to use
trolling as an intellectual exercise... not as mere vandalism, but
to do two things:

* challenge others to think, and
* challenge ourselves to think.

This type of troll isn't to get a giggle out of watching angst, but
to present arguments in a clear and logical fashion - even if you
yourself do not hold the beliefs you propose as the troll. This
forces you to analyze and study the argument you presented,
and among intelligent responders, it forces them to examine
their own as well.

In politics, this is an awesome way to check and change (as you
discover the need to) ideologies and philosophies in a
challenging manner, without actually having to do so as
yourself.

If it's done right, both you and those whom you debate with
learn a lot in the process. It can add wisdom and insight you
would otherwise not have when you began.

--

That said? All too often, you find the troll is actually a child
(physically or mentally), though IMHO they're laughably easy to
spot.

Conversely, all too often you find that many of the responders to
a troll are also children (in body or mind), or at least ignorant
and all-too-touchy about certain subjects. Now some subjects
(e.g. racist conspiracy theories) are naturally way out-of-
bounds, and stupid conspiracy theories are far too easy to
ignore... which IMHO is the proper course of action in those
cases. But everything else IMHO can always be used to learn a
few things, either as initiator or responder.

--

Overall, you can use it to learn more about the positions you
hold (by researching them), and over time, you learn to become
a more tolerant person, both on-line and in real life. You also
learn a lot more about how to discuss and debate more
effectively.

Finally, you can use it to overcome a lot of things you otherwise
wouldn't be able to. For instance, my first online experience was
in 1991... and I used it to increase my once-crap typing speed to
something respectable, and at the same time overcome a strong
case of dyslexia. The time-sensitive nature you bring onto
yourself helps with faster recognition and response skills, after
all. :)

Cheers!

/P

[Greg5A]

Deja Vu All Over Again

What has happened to the Internet is the same thing that happened on a smaller scale to Citizen's Band (CB) radio during the 70s. The jerks and dumdheads took over and ruined things.

--Bill

[rapier1]

Its called Signal to Noise

in the way back when all we had was email and newsgroups
you'd often see this same thing happening. A mailing list or new
group would start up. It would be exciting and full of interesting
well informed people. It would grow in popularity and more and
more people would join. Eventually the group would disintegrate
into squabbling, flamewars, and fluff. The people who made the
list interesting would leave and start a new list or group. Lather.
Rinse. Repeat.

Not that I'm any better. I let the bullcrap take hold of me
sometimes and start arguing just to win a point rather than to
inform. Its tough because online we don't have any of the
normal cues that keep many face to face conversations civil.

[gurfrip]

Yahoo Finance Bulletin Boards

Yahoo finance boards in 2003 to 2004 used to use automated conversation generators called chatterbots to generate positive stock chatter about their shares and other yahoo corporate clients, like countrywide financial.

This went on until I indicated the problem to Elliot Spitzer.

[aureolin]

Interesting point of view...

... that only conservative groups can be cyberbullies and nitwits. Telling.

[charlie cooper]

Here's what's "telling..."

the fact that you've put words in my mouth and attributed political viewpoints where none exist.

telling, indeed.

[ggrs34]

Cnet is different of course

Like there's no net nazi's or nit wits on Cnet comments pages :)