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points by hypfer 16 hours ago | 0 comments

Not really, because a generic observation cannot be expressed specifically. So that's a weird question to begin with.

It is true that this is heavily moderated and that this is one of the more pleasant spaces, but it is also precisely the moderation style that is being weaponized.

As I said, the toxicity gets hidden in layers and layers of jargon, misdirection and plausible deniability. It gets a veneer of civilty applied, which, somewhat surprisingly, makes it hit even harder, because fighting back is a lot harder, as there is nothing immediately visible to fight back against. It just stings.

It's not just attacking but simultaneously gaslighting. Which has been what the whole internet has been doing since everything became twitter fwiw.

What I said is also not to be understood as "HN bad", because if I would feel that way, I would not be commenting here.

[–] semireg 16 hours ago

There must be some logical fallacy here where, reduced down to human existence, all toxicity is hidden under layers. This is both an ultimately true statement of any suspiciously viewed human interaction and it kind of makes the argument moot.

Reminds me of the recent thread about LLMs controversial take on humanity: we are all terribly cynical, hallucinate importance, and we are all bad/good deep down inside.

[–] mjburgess 16 hours ago

I guess they are saying people argue/comment in bad faith. That they don't really mean what they say, and at least, they say it not to discuss it but for some hidden agenda.

The problem is that outside of "where's my keys? what are we having for lunch?", most language is a symptom of people's agendas. Its a rarefied elite environment that takes things literally, and acts in good faith.

I don't think this is psychopathic, as much as we're apes -- and speaking literally and in good faith about relatively abstract topics takes a considerable amount of training and is, in general, psychologically fragile (ie., its easy to be tilted).

[–] brookst 16 hours ago

If you’re having to look through layers and layers of jargon, misdirection, and plausible deniability to find the toxicity, is it possible there’s a roarscach element to it?

[–] hypfer 16 hours ago

> If you’re having to look through layers and layers of jargon, misdirection, and plausible deniability to find the toxicity, is it possible there’s a roarscach element to it?

Are we going to play "prove me right" here? :D

Come on, this is just a direct personal attack. Go play better. Hide it with a more elaborate construct.

[–] _matthew_ 13 hours ago

So I think I understand what hypfer's getting at, but I personally would never classify this sort of thing even remotely as "trolling".

@hypfer I'm curious, can you understand / identify with at least some of what I'm sharing below?:

A lot of people (likely near 100% of people) have their own internal beliefs about the world and they are largely commenting primarily to validate that belief (I am literally doing it with this comment). Like you often can see both what the person objectively wrote but then also get a feeling for some internal belief that motivated this specific comment.

And naturally, people are emotionally attached to their internal beliefs. And so sometimes comments are less a sharing of ideas and more a factually coded emotional rationalization of their internal beliefs. And when you read a comment like this that goes against one of your own beliefs, it may feel like an attack.

To me the distinction though is the motivation of the person on the other side. My interpretation is that true trolls have a motivation to incite emotions whereas most other people simply are trying to validate their own beliefs, despite potentially doing it in a way that is not emotionally palatable to all perspectives.

Separately, for you (hypfer), do you agree that there could be some amount of "hostile attribution bias" here? I saw this term while searching about this topic and to me it would explain both your perspective of feeling personally attacked and others perspective of feeling like that's actually not at all what's happening.

[–] Arnt 16 hours ago

Sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether someone is a troll "just asking questions" or actually just asking that question. More so on HN than in most of the world, I mean.

[–] retromagik 16 hours ago

Yep that's why the trolls lick that strategy

[–] hypfer 16 hours ago

An interesting realisation there which I believe will shape the upcoming years of discussion spaces is that one can shift the burden of proof there.

Instead of leaving it with the moderation to prove without a doubt that someone is trolling, one can default to assume trolling and demand prove that it is not the case.

As it is impossible to bring up proof for either of those things, the house wins and people make damn sure to quintuple-check if their messaging is decent.

I don't think that that is a good solution, but the status quo was horrible, so maybe the pendulum swinging in another direction for a while might help us discover saner solutions.

[–] cowlevel 15 hours ago

It works until trolls figure out how to prove they are not trolls, even though they are trolls, while non-trolls have difficulty proving it.

[–] hypfer 15 hours ago

I suspect that the energy required scales exponentially though, and, eventually, it might just become less of a hassle to just behave.

That and the fact that each increase in difficulty filters out people that do not have the capability to pass it. So the pool shrinks every time.

Though, valid counterpoint: Eventually prefabs emerge and get shared.

But then we innovate once more. We always did. We always will

[–] cowlevel 16 hours ago

And that ambiguity is precisely something that trolls hide behind.

[–] tacitusarc 16 hours ago

It seems likely this comment is a waste but… no, that clearly was not a personal attack, and going through life treating comments like those as personal attacks seems like a good way to be miserable.

[–] hypfer 16 hours ago

> It seems likely this comment is a waste but… no, that clearly was not a personal attack, and going through life treating comments like those as personal attacks seems like a good way to be miserable.

I'm not sure if can truly let this pass as a more sophisticated construct, but I do appreciate the opener that already invalidates dismissal.

That's a good tactic. Thank you for playing.

I feel great btw :) Thank you for your concern.

[–] kmijyiyxfbklao 15 hours ago

This is completely crazy. How could someone point out that assuming evil intentions is not a good way to interact with people without being accused of doing the same thing as the FBI telling MLK to kill himself?

[–] hypfer 15 hours ago

> This is completely crazy. How could someone point out that assuming evil intentions is not a good way to interact with people without being accused of doing the same thing as the FBI telling MLK to kill himself?

I was genuinely wondering if we would see the end of it, but of course, no.

But I like this, because it's such an obvious strawman and bad faith reinterpration by an account consisting of random jumbled letters.

Thank you. This is background radiation one can live with. Thanks for making things normal again.

[–] kmijyiyxfbklao 5 hours ago

Now you are just trolling

[–] regretsresin 16 hours ago

Unlikely. Plenty of anti LGBTQ rhetoric is permissible here by mods, for example.

However, it often uses queer lingo - words that folks might think aren't notable, but queer folks will instantly recognize as an attack.

Refusing to call a gay man's husband a husband, but subsisting in friend or partner. Calling someone biologically male. Etc.

These get deployed quite subtly here, and because none of the words are slurs, they don't get moderated. (Though HN also permits overt slur usage -- search for the r-slur and you'll find plenty of cases.)

[–] cosmic_cheese 16 hours ago

FWIW, it may just be a colossal misconception of my own, but I’d been of the mind that “partner” was in some cases more polite to use because it doesn’t make assumptions about the individuals in question or about the dynamics of the relationship between them. I am not part of the LGBTQ world, however, and am happy to be corrected.

[–] regretsresin 2 hours ago

There's a difference between the polite use and the impolite use. If someone makes a point to always introduce and discuss their husband, some anti LGBTQ folks will make a point to never say husband. Like, "you don't get to have that word." It's a way of suggesting people aren't married.

The difficulty is that partner is also acceptable and polite, especially when gender or marital status is unknown.

It's subtle, which is exactly the sort of thing this thread is about -- ways to subtly exclude someone while appearing polite to outsiders.

[–] my-next-account 1 hour ago

Jeeze, ya know. I don't get exposed to phobes sufficiently to know this. Typical dog whistle: Folks who are in the group know it, folks antagonized by the group know it, everyone else looks on with a question mark on their face.

[–] amanaplanacanal 15 hours ago

It can be used both ways, I suppose. I use it for my partner because legal marital status isn't important to me, but for those that had to fight to obtain the basic right to get married I can see why it would be hurtful.

I wonder how much of it is generational? I see something similar in the way second wave feminists rightly hated being called girls, whereas it's not as much of an issue for the younger generations because they didn't have those experiences.