this might be conspirational thinking, but i don't think it's an accident that the site came out like this. yes, there's moderation, but the moderators are explicitly told to go easy on moderating racism[1]. it feels like once that kind of stuff isn't punished, it starts to snowball a change in the attitudes of the site as a whole.
that's not to say stringent moderation doesn't make a site less welcoming, though. it's about choosing what's the lesser evil to you, i guess.
> it feels like once that kind of stuff isn't punished, it starts to snowball a change in the attitudes of the site as a whole.
Considering the site has been around for over 20 years and people still call out and flame racism, I think this is an uncharitable and unfounded cynicism. I'm not sure declarative claims of 3rd order effects in a system so chaotic are capable of being accurate.
> You say this like the rationalist community and 4chan edgelords aren't two circles with an incredible amount of overlap.
They are not.
Rationalists are the crowd that would attract typical Bay Area tech yuppies. Which is something that 4chan seems to despise with passion and makes merciless fun on.
Just go on /g/ (the technology board) and see any mentions of bay area, rationalists, or tech companies/startups. If you believe there is a significant overlap, then they surely are hiding it really well there by mercilessly mocking everything related to any of those topics.
I think people, whether they know it or not, rightly realize that race is too simplistic of a way to mark people as good/bad or whatever so even in communities that would be fine with racism it's gonna catch a lot of shit for simply not being a good way to accomplish its goal.
>but the moderators are explicitly told to go easy on moderating racism[
What would be gained if they didn't "go easy on racism"? Would we all start singing kumbayah and love each other, hippy-style? Or would people be just as racist even more remote corners of the internet/world, and then slightly-left-of-center-minded individuals could pretend that all the world's problems were solved and it could continue for another 100 years?
Letting people with abhorrent beliefs assemble with one another and commiserate on the awful things they believe... I mean I don't think I'd go so far as to say it's responsible for our current historical moment, but it certainly isn't helping it. The primary disadvantage of believing terrible, anti-social things is you would be ejected from social groups, be them communal or familial. That's not to say that racism didn't exist before the internet of course, it absolutely did; but racism and sexism were both on society scale improving over time, because those beliefs would cost you: they would cost you spouses, they would cost you children, they would cost you friends, in extreme cases they would cost you jobs and potentially even open you up to legal trouble.
And it still does, but it's less effective, because various flavors of cretin now have online spaces where they can meet like-minded people and nurture those beliefs, and worse still, all of those spaces reward extremism as any social media site does: subtle, balanced views are not incentivized at all, and you get the most social attention for saying the most outrageous thing in the space. We all know this, like maybe you've never thought about it before, but I'd wager almost everyone on this board has had this experience over one thing or another, even benign nothing issues.
And all of that is before we even get to the subject of things like influencers peddling YouTube videos, TikToks, or whatever to amplify those beliefs for their own profit. Whether they "really believe" these things is irrelevant frankly; in either case, people who believe these things see people being paid to represent their (wrong) ideas which lends them legitimacy.
And now we just have little bespoke engines of radicalization humming away all over the internet in the little shadowy corners, whipping people up into a lather about whatever dumbass thing they googled way back about how they can't get a girlfriend or whatever, and there seem to be a lot of spree shootings now for some reason, totally disconnected I'm sure.
Like the problem with this Libertarian "as long as you're not hurting anyone" is that it leaves a wide open loophole in there about hurting yourself, and while in many cases hurting yourself doesn't lead to anyone being harmed apart from yourself, as I keep saying: No one is an island, if you harm yourself in certain ways, you are absolutely a risk to other people.
The totalizing idea that your beliefs and values get to be the ones guiding the moderation of every single conversation happening anywhere on the internet (and therefore, the world) is probably more authoritarian than 80% of the ideas informing people who post on /pol/.
this might be conspirational thinking, but i don't think it's an accident that the site came out like this. yes, there's moderation, but the moderators are explicitly told to go easy on moderating racism[1]. it feels like once that kind of stuff isn't punished, it starts to snowball a change in the attitudes of the site as a whole.
that's not to say stringent moderation doesn't make a site less welcoming, though. it's about choosing what's the lesser evil to you, i guess.
[1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-man-who-helped-turn-4cha...
> it feels like once that kind of stuff isn't punished, it starts to snowball a change in the attitudes of the site as a whole.
Considering the site has been around for over 20 years and people still call out and flame racism, I think this is an uncharitable and unfounded cynicism. I'm not sure declarative claims of 3rd order effects in a system so chaotic are capable of being accurate.
Multiple white supremacist mass shooters have been 4chan users.
4chan cheered on the Buffalo shooter who was live updating a 4chan thread during his murder spree: https://www.thetrace.org/newsletter/4chan-moderation-buffalo...
The christchurch shooter was a 4chan regular https://theconversation.com/christchurch-terrorist-discussed...
The whole "boogaloo" white nationalist/supremacist movement started on 4chan:
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/mcinnes-molyneux...
Stop whitewashing 4chan's history.
And the Zizian murder cult sprang out of the bay area rationalist community and trans rights advocacy, what's your point?
You say this like the rationalist community and 4chan edgelords aren't two circles with an incredible amount of overlap.
> You say this like the rationalist community and 4chan edgelords aren't two circles with an incredible amount of overlap.
They are not.
Rationalists are the crowd that would attract typical Bay Area tech yuppies. Which is something that 4chan seems to despise with passion and makes merciless fun on.
Just go on /g/ (the technology board) and see any mentions of bay area, rationalists, or tech companies/startups. If you believe there is a significant overlap, then they surely are hiding it really well there by mercilessly mocking everything related to any of those topics.
I think people, whether they know it or not, rightly realize that race is too simplistic of a way to mark people as good/bad or whatever so even in communities that would be fine with racism it's gonna catch a lot of shit for simply not being a good way to accomplish its goal.
>but the moderators are explicitly told to go easy on moderating racism[
What would be gained if they didn't "go easy on racism"? Would we all start singing kumbayah and love each other, hippy-style? Or would people be just as racist even more remote corners of the internet/world, and then slightly-left-of-center-minded individuals could pretend that all the world's problems were solved and it could continue for another 100 years?
Letting people with abhorrent beliefs assemble with one another and commiserate on the awful things they believe... I mean I don't think I'd go so far as to say it's responsible for our current historical moment, but it certainly isn't helping it. The primary disadvantage of believing terrible, anti-social things is you would be ejected from social groups, be them communal or familial. That's not to say that racism didn't exist before the internet of course, it absolutely did; but racism and sexism were both on society scale improving over time, because those beliefs would cost you: they would cost you spouses, they would cost you children, they would cost you friends, in extreme cases they would cost you jobs and potentially even open you up to legal trouble.
And it still does, but it's less effective, because various flavors of cretin now have online spaces where they can meet like-minded people and nurture those beliefs, and worse still, all of those spaces reward extremism as any social media site does: subtle, balanced views are not incentivized at all, and you get the most social attention for saying the most outrageous thing in the space. We all know this, like maybe you've never thought about it before, but I'd wager almost everyone on this board has had this experience over one thing or another, even benign nothing issues.
And all of that is before we even get to the subject of things like influencers peddling YouTube videos, TikToks, or whatever to amplify those beliefs for their own profit. Whether they "really believe" these things is irrelevant frankly; in either case, people who believe these things see people being paid to represent their (wrong) ideas which lends them legitimacy.
And now we just have little bespoke engines of radicalization humming away all over the internet in the little shadowy corners, whipping people up into a lather about whatever dumbass thing they googled way back about how they can't get a girlfriend or whatever, and there seem to be a lot of spree shootings now for some reason, totally disconnected I'm sure.
Like the problem with this Libertarian "as long as you're not hurting anyone" is that it leaves a wide open loophole in there about hurting yourself, and while in many cases hurting yourself doesn't lead to anyone being harmed apart from yourself, as I keep saying: No one is an island, if you harm yourself in certain ways, you are absolutely a risk to other people.
The totalizing idea that your beliefs and values get to be the ones guiding the moderation of every single conversation happening anywhere on the internet (and therefore, the world) is probably more authoritarian than 80% of the ideas informing people who post on /pol/.