Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

No, it isn't voluntary or pretend. For most people today it's a natural extension of their lives, which they use daily, if not hourly. Where two decades ago you'd call a friend to talk, or send physical mail to communicate or physically go to a store or send mail to pay your taxes,today all of those are online. Most young people grow up with all of those things online and have never known anything else. For them, and those who grew up while things were changing, being offline is a option like going in exile in Siberia.

Heck, many people make their self worth based on Instagram or whatever, and many make their livelihoods online. The Internet is not what it was two decades ago, and pretending otherwise is foolish. It simply cannot remain the Wild West, like the real Wild West couldn't and didn't. Real life people are impacted, up to and including death (radicalisation and joining a terrorist group, or driven to suicide through harassmwnt, to name two "fun" ones)

> many people make their self worth based on Instagram or whatever

That’s unhealthy; why should promoting unhealthy social media adoption be our policy priority?

> Real life people are impacted, up to and including death (radicalisation and joining a terrorist group,

This occurred before the Internet, too. The answer is more speech, education, and enabling people — not censorship.

> or driven to suicide through harassmwnt, to name two "fun" ones)

Then we need to focus on individual resiliency - not building a hug-box.

> That’s unhealthy; why should promoting unhealthy social media adoption be our policy priority?

Nobody should promote it, people should fight against it, but until that changes, it should be taken into account.

> This occurred before the Internet, too. The answer is more speech, education, and enabling people — not censorship.

Before the Internet the potential reach was much more limited. Recruitment for ISIS online, for instance on Twitter, was highly successful where before they would have struggled to reach disillusioned youth in France or Indonesia for instance. More education, ideally secular, is needed, but how do you force that to happen in Indonesia for instance?

> Then we need to focus on individual resiliency - not building a hug-box.

How ? How do you make it so everyone is immune from, for instance, rape threats or personalised ( e.g. racial) harassment online ?

Just like real immunity, it requires exposure and a robust personal defense. The last thing you do for a healthy immune system is put a body in a sterile bubble.

There were mean, bad people before the internet too. We can deal with that fact, or fail attempting to get rid of them with censorship, while harming real information and exchanges in the process.

The mean, bad people weren't able to reach whoever wherever while retaining anonymity. That drastically alters the equation. A kid in Pakistan can harass a female journalist in Spain today without any trouble; a random racist from anywhere can hurl racial slurs at a French footballer playing in the UK. Few people would dare to say the bullshit they spew online face to face, with associated risks.

You only are "reached" by bad people online because you want to. You can choose to only allow contact from people you know.

What they want though is to be "reachable" by everyone without the drawback of people actually demonstrating a negative view, very much like removing dislikes from Youtube. They want to remove the dislikes from their online personas but done for everyone so it's less obvious they are hiding their critics. Because at the end of the day they need to be famous to get sponsorships or money whatever way they do it, hence they need to pretend to be "reachable".

"That’s unhealthy; why should promoting unhealthy social media adoption be our policy priority?"

The alternative is to destroy the tech industry as it exists. That's a fair chunk of the world economy. How do you plan on implementing that policy?

"[Radicalisation and joining a terrorist group] occurred before the Internet, too. The answer is more speech, education, and enabling people — not censorship."

I don't suppose you could provide an example or three? Of your "answer" working; I have plenty for the problem.

"Then we need to focus on individual resiliency - not building a hug-box."

1. Victim blaming.

2. Personal responsibility for one's actions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com