Edit: thought of a better example - Donald Trump getting banned from most social media. If they were seeking to maximize outrage, they wouldn't do that. They'd assign an employee to moderate everything he posted if they had to, but they'd keep him there, manufacturing outrage.

------

Twitter and Reddit would both be examples of the types of platforms you're referring to, that benefit from this outrage. And neither seems to want to maximize it.

In the case of Twitter, they prompt you to rephrase your Tweet if the algo thinks it's likely to offend people. If you post too much of that type of stuff, you get a form of lite-shadowban.

Reddit has for years coached people to 'remember the human' and backs it up with various rules and bans. They want people to treat each other well.

Is either platform successful in their attempts? Arguably, no. But that wasn't my point, I was addressing the claim that they seek to maximize outrage.

> Reddit has for years coached people to 'remember the human' and backs it up with various rules and bans. They want people to treat each other well.

Are you saying that Reddit is a good example? Because that would be a laughable point to make

A good example of what? A platform not seeking to maximize outrage?

Yes. They banned the Donald Trump subreddit. That one subreddit produced more outrage than probably everything else in the history of Reddit combined. And they banned it. A company seeking to maximize outrage would not do that.

You don't want your customers OD'ing, you want them to keep coming back.

Just because there's a limit to the outrage tolerated, it doesn't mean that outrage isn't part of the plan.

You're supporting my argument. You're saying it's not in their best interests to maximize outrage.

That's where the goalposts are and that's where they are going to stay: whether or not they seek to maximize outrage.

You're just looking at it as "maximise peak outrage" when the other people are talking about "maximise outrage over time."

I was responding to someone else who said it. They did say '...whose business model depends on...outrage'.

So ya, that interpretation is the logical one. If your business model depends on something, you would be optimizing for maximizing it over time.

A business depending on a dependable local water source can still be destroyed by a flood.

It may be better to say that they want to maximize effective outrage. Or put another way to 'optimize' outrage. They are really good at it.

I think the "maximize outage" is a good simplification 80% of the time, but the "goal chain" goes from there to maximum advertising revenue, and that requires happy advertisers. And in the case of reddit I'm not sure how much revenue comes from gold and how much that was harmed by people saying "don't give money to this site hosting hate-speech".

A company seeking to maximize profit from outrage would keep it up until they engage in behavior that threatens ad revenue, like if they were talking about murdering police officers or something.

Here are the goalposts: 'seek to maximize outrage'

Please do not add any extra words to that, thus shifting the goalposts. Here you have added the word 'profit'. I never said anything about profit.

You're proving everyone's point that outrage drives attention: one can get a lot of engagement from deliberate misunderstanding. No, those were not the goalposts to anyone but the most pedantic of pedants.

Someone argued they maximize outraged.

I argued that they do not.

I don't think it's pedantic at all to say the goalposts are whether or not they maximize outrage.

I totally understand that the word's 'Reddit' and 'Twitter' and 'Trump' are going to trigger people into wanting to talk more broadly about those topics. There are lots of other places they can go and do that. I had a very specific and narrowly defined argument.

Twitter and Reddit are corporations that have to give the outward appearance of civility for advertisers and regulators. I don't think they're sincere. Their business model relies on engagement, and outrage drives up engagement.

So what you're saying is deep down they wish they could maximize outrage but they don't because they want to appease advertisers and regulators.

We're not disagreeing. I wasn't speaking to what's in their heart, only to what they actually do.

No, what I'm saying is they maximize outrage, but pretend that they care about civility.

You yourself said neither platform was successful in their attempts, that's because those "attempts" are there for show. They can't reduce outrage without reducing their profits.

> No, what I'm saying is they maximize outrage, but pretend that they care about civility.

Then you're wrong. They don't just pretend to care, they take actions. I've already given several examples.

> You yourself said neither platform was successful in their attempts

No, I did not say that. I said 'arguably' and that was precisely so people wouldn't try to turn this into a debate about how good they are at it. I said they try and they absolutely do try.

> because those "attempts" are there for show

And now you're contradicting yourself. You said they only pretend to care and now you said they make attempts. You keep flip flopping on what it is that you are even saying.

I can't read minds. Evidently you can and that's an awesome skill, congratulations. But everything I've said refers only to what they actually do. And what they do is to take actions that are clearly detrimental to maximizing outrage. Something you've just agreed with, if we extract all of your mind reading voodoo magic.

FYI. This is the tweet he got banned for:

"I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!" 06 Jan 21

I can't link to the tweet. But it has been reinstated on Twitter after the acquisition.

I'm unsure if you're making some kind of argument or just adding a footnote.

If that's an argument, it doesn't change anything about what I said.

The point is that he got banned for de-escalation of violence.

That was the final straw, yes. And if they were seeking to maximize outrage, they wouldn't have done that.

Many people would see that as a dog-whistle tweet that enouraged violence. Communiation is very complex these days.

The thing about dog whistles is that you have to be a "dog" to hear them. What does it tell you, if you constantly hear dog whistles everywhere.

I don't hear any dog whistles. That's probably because I'm a socialist and not a "dog". I'm not the one focusing on undesirable elements in society. I see a lot of struggling poor people though. People who vote for con-men populists out of desperation.

Are you perhaps overly pedantic and focused too much on the idea of "maximizing outrage to exclusion of everything else" instead of "finding a local maxima of outrage that doesn't upset our advertisers or actually drive people away?"

It's not broadening the scope though, it's an equally valid interpretation of the wording of the original claim.

reddit is a funnel away from establishment media toward sites like bitchute and obscure conspiracy groups. Every shadowban is a new alt-right acolyte.

You're a fool if you think that the way reddit handles content moderation does not create angry people.

i said they do not seek to maximize outrage.

please keep the goalposts right there and address only that one specific argument. as it's the only argument i'm making.

While we’re on the subject of social media I feel the need to point out that you don’t need to keep saying this and it also doesn’t make much sense to bother. This isn’t a debate club meetup. People can latch on to parts of the conversation and focus on that if they want.

I do not agree with your characterization of what's occurring here.

See the person above us:

>You're a fool if you think that the way reddit handles content moderation does not create angry people.

I never said that. And they're making personal attacks based on this thing I never said. That isn't what you just described.

It’s internet points. Is it truly worth moderating the entire thread?

If you see the alternatives as moderate the thread or ignore it all, I agree with you. But for me the alternatives are moderate the thread or allow them to drag me into a hundred debates about a hundred different things. I was going to participate in the discussion either way.

> Reddit has for years coached people to 'remember the human' and backs it up

Tell that to the volunteers over at /r/BanFemaleHateSubs

Reddit does about the minimum it can to avoid signifiant media backlash.

As per my original comment:

>Is either platform successful in their attempts? Arguably, no. But that wasn't my point, I was addressing the claim that they seek to maximize outrage.

> I don't know about reddit enough and just struggling to even guess the context here.

Reddit is extremely massive. With uber millions of people on it. And anyone can make a subreddit about anything. And they get extremely specific. Like someone might make one called r/FuckHNpedants for people who dislike all of the pedants on this site. And they post screenshots of our comments and mock us.

So clearly there are going to be people who make all sorts of random subreddits related to women. Lets say some guys didn't like women with freckles. They might make a subreddit showing pictures of women with freckles and bash them. And drill down a few more levels and go in all directions.

Then you have these other people who get triggered by that sort of content and demand it all be removed from Reddit. They make subreddits like that demanding it all be removed. Historically, they need to get featured in a bunch of media before Reddit does anything. They then ban a bunch of them and make a new rule.

It's subs that target hatred and violence towards women. Things like social stalking, rape confessions, non-consensual pornography, secretly cumming on their belongings etc.

a) that isn't what's keeping them. people don't stay somewhere because things that bother you, don't bother them. you didn't name anything they like about it.

b) the mandatory signup meme is and has always been ridiculous. it takes 8 seconds to create an account. for anyone who gets value out of something, that's not a big ask. if you're not willing to spend 8 seconds then it wasn't for you anyway.

That is a very disingenuous way to describe signups. You also have to deal with asinine password requirements, and you are guaranteed to be signed up for multiple spam lists you never asked for. Once you get fed up and unsubscribe from them through some obtuse process, you will still inevitably get signed up for some new “digest” or “update” list a few months later…ad nauseam. Not to mention your information is guaranteed to be sold or leaked.

> That is a very disingenuous way to describe signups.

I wasn't describing signups, I was specifically describing the Quora signup. People have been bitching about that for almost 15 years and nobody who actually uses and likes Quora cares. It's like the notch on the iPhone. Only something people who would never own an iPhone bitch about.

I am not saying you should signup. I am saying it's ridiculous to complain about it when it's clearly not a service you even like in the first place. Why do you care what some website you don't even like requires?

That's my impression of Quora today too.

It was such a special place in the early years. Sad to see what they let happen to it. The saddest part is that it's surely deliberate. They have some really, really smart people working there. And they decided this is what they want.

One could say you're doing the exact same thing to Redditors that you say they do. Being negative for the sake of being negative. Just love to hate when there is no human face - or even someone to reply. But oops, here one is ;)

Redditors are entitled and they are demanding and they are quick to jump all over you. And they can be wrong. But it's not for the sake of negativity and it's not because there is no human there.

That culture is damned effective at filtering out bullshit and bad actors and getting to the facts. If you want to bring Redditors some overpriced vaporware you are absolutely right they're going to rip you apart. They're just doing what Redditors do - calling out bullshit.

Bring them a product worthy of praising and they'll make entire subreddits dedicated to your awesome product.

> That culture is damned effective at filtering out bullshit and bad actors and getting to the facts.

Lol, that’s not at all what the culture is good at. It’s an internet mob with famous examples of false accusations, doxxing and harassment. Any subreddit that isn’t severely moderated is gamed by people who know how to appeal to the local crowd.

Being cynical and anti-business is not about “getting to the facts”. It just means they need a different type of marketing.

I can see that Reddit really hurt you. On behalf of the community, I'm sorry.

> It just means they need a different type of marketing.

That's correct. And Step #1 is to have a product which will make it past the collective bullshit detector. Step #2 is to provide real and actual value. To have a legitimately good product.

So much of marketing is built on deception. If you try to deceive Redditors, you're going to get told to fk urself.

People who can't complete step 1 or 2 and want to employ deception-based marketing often tell a tail like yours. It's our fault for not just taking what you tell us at face value and handing over our money.

However all of the people appending 'Reddit' to their search queries instead of reading the deception-based marketing pages that fill up Google results, may understand where I'm coming from.

You have way too much faith in reddit and it’s given you a huge blind spot.

It’s trivial for companies to get past Reddit’s “bullshit detector”. Just sound like a scrappy small business that cares deeply about users and not money.

There is a trail of overfunded kickstarters with nothing to show years later that demonstrates how gullible redditors are.

Your overconfidence in a bunch of armchair experts is exactly why they are so gullible. Being susceptible to marketing is one thing. Thinking you’re not is so much worse.

> I can see that Reddit really hurt you. On behalf of the community, I'm sorry.

You don’t speak for the community of which I’m a part. They also didn’t hurt me, they hurt the people they doxxed and I watched it happen years ago. That’s why there are strict doxxing bans now.

Redditors as a collective are as dumb as the average population (everyone gets equal votes), which doesn’t make for a good SNR.

> However all of the people appending 'Reddit' to their search queries instead of reading the deception-based marketing pages that fill up Google results, may understand where I'm coming from.

I do this too, but what you’re failing to grasp is that you don’t realize you’re also reading deception-based marketing pages. Corporations wised up to social media a decade ago and have armies of social media experts that know exactly how to target various online communities.

I've been a reddit user for a number of years, and while there are indeed some good subreddits, by and large my experience lines up with kortilla's.

I think the problem is that we're talking about "reddit" like it's one group of people who have the same characteristic responses to things across time. But the whole point of reddit is for there to be disparate communities who may or may not communicate with each other and may or may not share or hold diametrically opposing views on any topic that can be written in words.

When submitting to reddit, you elplicitely cannot submit just to "reddit", you have to choose a subreddit. These subreddit can be as varied in response as humans can, even when apparently sharing the same topic/goal. Subreddits turn toxic sometimes, sometimes they're made that way intentionally. Some are hard fought places of positive intent with strong moderation and some are 'wild west'. Sometimes places get toxic enough that someone else creates a similarly named subreddit with an identical goal but attempts to cultivate and moderate a positive environment. If you didn't know about this you'd see 2 identical subreddits, when you post you'll get 2 very different receptions.

"Reddit"s response is entirely dependent upon subreddit. We cannot argue about how "reddit" reacts, and it's impractical to talk about individual redditors, the communities within, the subreddits, are the unit about which we can have meaningful conversation. There's no point in arguing about whether reddit has hurt someone or not or whether their reception was beneficial or degrading the community without knowing _which_ Community. There are places that will hurt everyone, there are places that will reject every product, there are places that won't. They are different places

> These subreddit can be as varied in response as humans can

I've never been anywhere on Reddit that doesn't have the specific characteristic that I'm referring to. If people think you are wrong, they tell you. If they think you're lying or spinning bullshit, they say so. If they think your method is suboptimal, they let you know the way they think is best.

This also applies to people on HN. We're engaged in it right now.

> Lol, that’s not at all what the culture is good at. It’s an internet mob with famous examples of false accusations, doxxing and harassment.

You're both wrong :). There is no "Reddit culture"; on Reddit, culture is scoped to a subreddit. You and GP are likely hanging out on different kinds of subreddits - but if your experience is that of "an internet mob with famous examples of false accusations, doxxing and harassment", I strongly suggest you rethink which subreddits you follow. Yes, they probably need a different type of marketing, but they're probably also not worth it for technical products.

> Being cynical and anti-business is not about “getting to the facts”.

It's hard to tell, because cynicism and healthy realism overlap nearly 100% when it comes to modern business.

Oh I’m aware different subreddits have different cultures, but doxxing and mob behavior emerge from any large enough online anonymous crowd. Humans at scale are petty and vindictive. HN even has to have rules about it because it’s been a problem here even when the site was much smaller.

Any particular subreddit will have a specific ideological soft spot that a dedicated marketer will be able to identify and craft turf to exploit. It’s a fundamental flaw to anonymity.

> There is no "Reddit culture"; on Reddit, culture is scoped to a subreddit.

There is both.

For example, anonymity. There is nothing stopping people from using their real name as their username or openly revealing who they are, where they live and work etc. But the Reddit culture is to be anonymous.

Are there exceptions? Yes. But those exceptions don't change that it's an anonymous culture.

> That culture is damned effective at filtering out bullshit and bad actors and getting to the facts.

That’s not my experience at all. I’m curious what makes you think that?

Same, in my experience it’s the opposite. The downvoting and moderation creates an echo chamber where there are certain things get accepted as obvious facts that don’t have much (or any) basis. Once that happens, almost everyone seems to uncritically repeat that without bothering to see if it’s actually true, and anyone who questions it is downvoted off the page (or in more extreme cases, the posts are removed/the user is blocked).

Reddit also seems to suffer from something you see in a lot of online communities, where in the valley of the blind the one eyed man is king. People with a slight amount experience (or even hobbyists that just post a lot) get taken as authoritative sources that can’t be questioned. Working on your history degree? You can go to Reddit and be treated with more authority than most people even give accomplished historians. One of the many individuals who served as a squad leader in the army? You can get treated as if you’re an expert on all things military and are able to more accurately predict the outcome of conflicts than the Defense Department is.

> I’m curious what makes you think that?

15+ years of living on Reddit.

Is it perfect at those things? Of course not. Can you and I and others provide a bunch of examples of those things not happening? Of course. It's still damned good at them.

I expanded at length here on how this works with regard to people trying to promote their products: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703112

But it applies to all sorts of stuff, depending on the subreddit. Investing advice, sports trivia, historical facts, whatever.

That link didn’t really explain anything.

Are you talking about specific subreddits or topics?

I’ve found the negativity on Reddit to be more likely as to come from completely ignorant sources as anyone with actual knowledge. I'm pretty surprised anyone on there for a long period of time would be so trusting of the community there.

> That culture is damned effective at filtering out bullshit and bad actors and getting to the facts.

No idea how anyone can say this earnestly about Reddit while having spent as much time there as you claim you have. It's a horrible corner of the internet rife with all kinds of bigotry and hatred and negativity for the sake of it. Not to mention it's the easiest place to astroturf ever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Sunil_Tripathi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...

I think you just set the World Record for most strawmen in one comment. Congratulations.

If you took what I said to be some type of blanket 'Reddit is a perfect and wonderful place' you misunderstood.

>That culture is damned effective at filtering out bullshit and bad actors and getting to the facts.

Meanwhile the “inverse Reddit” investing strategy works even better than “inverse Cramer”

Reddit comments are the whiskey to YouTube comment’s beer on the stupidity index.

I guess it depends at what point you buy. A lot of people on Reddit got generational fuck you money betting on GME, Bitcoin and a lot of other stuff. But if you're getting your Reddit tips from CNN then ya you're probably too late.

Have you seen the receipts or are you just parroting what they are saying on social media?

I'm suspecting this other user has some naive / ideological-ish belief in the reddit community or something.

Probably what's happening is I'm doing a poor job of communicating what I mean. To me if I say 'they aren't always right' that's enough and I have clearly articulated that Reddit can be and is on a regular basis, completely idiotic, absurdly wrong and all flavor of other bad things. But evidently not as people keep saying things like you just did.

lol parroting what they say on social media.

Very interesting way you put that and sorta gets to the heart of the matter.

To me it doesn't even make sense, like, why would I get my information on social media. I'm telling you what I've seen on Reddit. But you went to what people say other places. Which is clearly how a lot of you are getting your information.

And ya, I've seen the receipts. I've got some receipts of my own.

Just for context, your responses read here as full of sarcasm and self assurance. I think your ideas might be more well received if you communicated them with a kinder and more accepting tone. For what it's worth it does sound like you spend a lot of time in toxic online communities, and i believe you have an expertise in those areas.

Man, HN has sure changed. Clearly I'm not among fellow hackers if people are worried about tone rather than truth.

If someone needs their ass kissed to recognize I'm right, that's on them. Not me.

HN is one of the few places on the internet that there's even the slightest chance at having a substantive discussion that isn't full of short, mocking, casually dismissive comments ala Reddit and Twitter. Tone is crucial to HN's quality. Encouraging a sincere and charitable tone is one of HN's founding principles and is the main focus of the posting guidelines.

The poster you're replying to is 100% correct.

Yeah, right. Strangely you didn’t mention BBBY.

One example that came to mind was Apollo app where their users came to bat for them during that whole third-party apps fiasco.

You don't have to give the url, you can just say 'found it online' 'saw it an article'. anything like that will be much more helpful than giving them false information.

Reddit is where I often see this stuff and for those dropdowns i typically select something like 'word of mouth' which is true enough for their purposes.

I think the point is that most people have extremely-low-to-zero motivation to spend time actually thinking about that question, so they pick whatever makes the request go away. I know I'm like that, exemplified by the fact that if the question is mandatory, and I pick something which triggers an extra text field for more information, I am much more like to try and change the intial option to something that doesn't require the extra input rather than having to think about what to write.

one day i will figure out how to respond to a minor detail, without making people think i'm addressing the main point.

Have you tried prepending "just a minor note to add to what you said:"?

I wonder if this is a problem with the branching structure of these sorts of discussion boards? Every comment is in some sense the start of a new conversation… it sometimes feels like there’s a tendency to want to grow a thread to meet that “whole conversation” measure. Maybe the issue is that little details don’t make it, so context gets pulled from the main thread?

It would be interesting is the site had the ability to make linear threads coming out of a comment, or start whole new branches. Then each branch could have an assorted “random asides” spot or something.

The movie Malice is one of my all-time favorites. 1993, average reviews. Total random movie. Recently I paid attention to the credits: written by Aaron Sorkin. It all makes sense now. It's been ignored for whatever reason but it's amazing.

There are Chrome Extensions that do this. Search this site and I'm sure people have recommended good ones.

A common use case is blocking w3schools.

Something won, this place is a lot different than I remember it.

>it can be detrimental to consumers, it's not suddenly nefarious when they do it.

That is more of a US than an EU point of view.

US is more "If you're not a monopoly, feel free to fuck the customer"

EU is more "Consumers have rights, quite being a dick".

Except for the last 20 years where we've had basically zero anti-trust enforcement. Lina Kahn biden's FTC chair is actually taking a crack at it again and has filed several major anti-trust suits against several big tech companies this month.

I'm not familiar with EU law but as a US consumer, I don't think that's fair. They're far from perfect but they try. We have entire agencies that exist to protect consumers in specific areas. The SEC being a famous one. Their entire mission is to protect investors from getting scammed. That's why congress created and funds the SEC. That's why those thousands of people go to work every day. To protect us from getting scammed. Awesome. I'm thankful for it.

The context here is one particular type of fucking over the customer. The ways in which monopolies can abuse their power. Within that one specific type, what you said is probably accurate.

The SEC protects investors, not end customers/users. It's different. The EU has a bunch of consumer rights that apply to everyday people regardless of wealth.

The US has very little of that, aside from the occasional recall. Instead, we have a predatory legal system that thrives on lawsuits instead of regulations.

It's not really an analogy though. The US is really behind in consumer rights compared to the EU.

The SEC's existence doesn't change that. It's like saying we have a EPA and a ATF. But those aren't consumer protection agencies either.

So apologizing wasn't enough. What would you like for me to show my genuine remorse for providing an example you don't approve of?

So either you're being sarcastic about "genuine" and your entire post here is just to be obnoxious...

Or you're the worst apologizer in the world, jesus christ, go read a tutorial or something.

And no your point doesn't stand. The defensiveness about it being exactly alike would matter if it was an analogy, but you did not make an analogy. Non-analogies do have to match, and that is not an unreasonable standard.

I shouldn't need to apologize for making an example.

How about you quit being such a pedant. An example is not supposed to be exactly the same in every way. It doesn't even need to be mostly the same. It can be only kinda sorta maybe related and that's ok. It's just an example.

Somehow analogies an examples came to mean perfect clones. That's not what they are.

> I shouldn't need to apologize for making an example.

You don't need to apologize, but a fake apology serves no purpose except to annoy people.

A fake apology that claims "genuine remorse" is extra annoying.

> How about you quit being such a pedant. An example is not supposed to be exactly the same in every way. It doesn't even need to be mostly the same. It can be only kinda sorta maybe related and that's ok. It's just an example.

Examples do need to be the same. That's the point of examples, they show what something is.

You can have "an example of something related", but that's not evidence of whatever it's related to. It's ancillary information.

This isn't pedantry, this is how you explain things and argue points. I can't fix an incorrect example by steelmanning your argument, the way I could ignore an actual issue of pedantry.

On the other side, an analogy doesn't have to be related at all, but it takes significantly more to set up. A connects to B the same way that X connects to Y. It looks very different from an example.

I don't think this is a worthwhile discussion to continue. Good day/evening to you.

Indeed, the GP's description of the situation is backwards. In the US, harming consumers is the surest way to lose an antitrust case. In the EU, they use regulatory powers to protect competitors, even when it harms consumers.

Google's customer service is famously awful.

Only if you don't pay for it. if you pay for it, its average to normal.

(I pay for 1 and I get what I pay for. People respond when I ask for help)

I'd gladly pay ~$100 or so not to be treated like a criminal by Google Ads support, but when I'm already (or was) paying ~$2000/month I'd expect someone to at least hear me out when I suggest their algo might be fucked up. Alas, they won't let me pay for support in the first place.

> it may be detrimental to consumers, it's not suddenly nefarious when they do it

It absolutely is. The whole point of these corporations is to serve us with good products and services. That's why society allows them to exist at all. That they get to turn a profit is merely a side effect meant to incentivize them. If whatever it is they're doing is not good for us, it absolutely should be prohibited. We couldn't care less how much money they're making or losing, it's literally not our problem.

"they're not doing anything nefarious" and "what they are doing should be prohibited" are not mutually exclusive.

You aren't disagreeing with me.

They're in anti-trust proceedings. That is the proper way to handle any harm they're doing.

And...as I said...that doesn't mean they are doing anything nefarious. They're conducting business as any other business would, they just happen to be really good at it. If the regulators want to step in, they can. It's the system working as intended.