Ancestors

Written by Ulrike Hahn on 2025-01-02 at 16:00

I've been thinking a lot about social norms for online discourse....

I've also started writing up some thoughts. I'm trying multiple shorter blog posts that will (hopefully....) combine into something substantive.

Here's the first, a gentle warm up....

All thoughts welcome!

https://write.as/ulrikehahn/online-social-media-toxicity-and-scale

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Written by Ulrike Hahn on 2025-01-03 at 07:18

I’d like to conduct some polls on social norms here…..First up: blocking

Do you think it’s ok to block people

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Written by Ulrike Hahn on 2025-01-03 at 07:18

Does the acceptability of blocking depend on who is doing the blocking?

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Written by Ben Thompson 🐕 on 2025-01-03 at 07:45

@UlrikeHahn I'm interested to hear why and how people think elected representatives should behave differently, in case it is that standing for election means you sign up to accept a certain level of abuse!

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Written by Ulrike Hahn on 2025-01-03 at 07:49

@jbenjamint I added that because I've encountered people complaining about MPs blocking people in the past.

Note that even if a person just thinks the threshold for when blocking is appropriate is different (e.g., 'only in case of abuse' for MP, say, but 'fine whenever' for anyone else) the option to tick would be 'are different'

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Toot

Written by John O on 2025-01-03 at 08:56

@UlrikeHahn @jbenjamint

I think a private citizen is ok to block any account for any reason

It’s different with elected representatives who are using this platform to communicate with electorate, especially if it’s a primary means

I don’t think people should be abusive, of course. But being abusive should not permanently bar them from contacting their representatives

And scared/desperate people who absolutely do need help sometimes use abusive language.

I don’t have a solution here, I just don’t think block/mute are the right answer in this specific case,

Even if it’s eg an obvious spambot account as we would need to deal with people recovering from having their accounts taken over by spam bots

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Descendants

Written by Ben Thompson 🐕 on 2025-01-03 at 09:08

@johno @UlrikeHahn the issue I see for elected reps is the most motivated to respond or tag them publicly are often not their supporters. Open replies offers a great 'attack surface' for political opponents.

While those who want to raise issues with their reps in good faith may be content to do so directly or privately?

But then, we see posts like "I'm tagging you in this post because you've not responded to any of my emails".

Not easy!

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Written by John O on 2025-01-03 at 09:14

@jbenjamint @UlrikeHahn

definitley not easy - I just realised my first sentance "private citizen block anyone" is also problematic. I should add accounts shouldnt b e able to block instance admins or moderators. Because we need those guys to be able to investigate and deal with abusive accounts

re: replying to elected people's posts, maybe the ability to post with replies disbled addresses that, without impacting people's ability to reach out to those reps seperatley

But I expect anything we propose becomes fairly easy for someone to abuse, because thats what people on social media do

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