It seems that we need a 'Law of Anonymous Social Systems Entropy' (not to be confused with the idea of 'Social Entropy') that states that every social system (including social media platforms) tends, over time, to demonstrate that groups of negative human beings will eventually -- by virtue of their being less constrained by civility and less tolerant of foreign ideas or groups -- infiltrate and negatively affect all human social systems that allow anonymity. This is likely due to the fact that anonymous social capital (e.g. this site's user reputation) is not real enough to activate normal human self-censorship. As well, the disingenuous will be able to game the system to gain the social capital necessary to negatively affect the system. Note that the negative group need not be in the majority to do damage.
It has taken longer for HN to reflect this truth but it appears that a significant percentage of this site's commentariat has finally become more and more insular to ideas -- and even questions -- more borderline than the ideas of those who hold its social capital (i.e. those with the ability to downvote a post).
In theory, anonymity is great for allowing free-thinking people to express their controversial views without worry for reprisal from other groups, but in reality that gives cover to the people with purely destructive, anti-social, anti-progressive and intolerant tendencies. And those attitudes and their accompanying behaviors have a much greater negative system effect than those of well-intentioned users.
The fact that our entire world is now connected by effectively anonymous social media means that the above concept has crept into every aspect of our lives, and has actually cost lives in places such as Myanmar.
(Note that I don't have the karma to up or down vote.)
That reminds me of Eliezer's model of evaporative cooling of beliefs - and, by extension, communities. TL;DR: as trolls, or random chance, slightly lowers the standard of discussion, the first people to get fed up and leave the community are the ones with above-average quality contributions. When they leave, the average quality goes down. The process repeats until the community is garbage.
Let me offer a theory:
It seems that we need a 'Law of Anonymous Social Systems Entropy' (not to be confused with the idea of 'Social Entropy') that states that every social system (including social media platforms) tends, over time, to demonstrate that groups of negative human beings will eventually -- by virtue of their being less constrained by civility and less tolerant of foreign ideas or groups -- infiltrate and negatively affect all human social systems that allow anonymity. This is likely due to the fact that anonymous social capital (e.g. this site's user reputation) is not real enough to activate normal human self-censorship. As well, the disingenuous will be able to game the system to gain the social capital necessary to negatively affect the system. Note that the negative group need not be in the majority to do damage.
It has taken longer for HN to reflect this truth but it appears that a significant percentage of this site's commentariat has finally become more and more insular to ideas -- and even questions -- more borderline than the ideas of those who hold its social capital (i.e. those with the ability to downvote a post).
In theory, anonymity is great for allowing free-thinking people to express their controversial views without worry for reprisal from other groups, but in reality that gives cover to the people with purely destructive, anti-social, anti-progressive and intolerant tendencies. And those attitudes and their accompanying behaviors have a much greater negative system effect than those of well-intentioned users.
The fact that our entire world is now connected by effectively anonymous social media means that the above concept has crept into every aspect of our lives, and has actually cost lives in places such as Myanmar.
(Note that I don't have the karma to up or down vote.)