Comment on A little essay I wrote about "mods are power tripping"
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 weeks agoTo start with, Usenet was often just as toxic as any current social media/forum site.
I definitely don’t think this is true. That’s the whole “eternal September” thing.
I do think trolls existed, definitely they did on BBSes, but the magnitude of the problem was just not even in the same ballpark.
Then we started to get the first web based news sites with a social aspect (Slashdot/Fark/Digg/etc).
I remember very distinctly being around for that first big meltdown on Slashdot, with Jon Katz being put in a special position by the site administrators in a way that the userbase didn’t agree with, a little bit of that impedance mismatch developing from that in what had before then been an all “us” type of place, and then something escalated and there was a big explosion and exodus. I don’t even fully remember the details, but I think I remember one of the site admins getting into a big public spat with some big part of the userbase, and going and tampering with the comments database to make his point, and that was pretty much the beginning of the end. It never recovered and what had been a pretty good thing up until that point just flamed out and became a shell.
Everyone sort of assumed it was an “us” place that the nerds were finally in charge of. That’s what made it special. Then that perceived betrayal of trust when the administrators tried to assert that it was “their” place firstly, and the users existed only at their pleasure, was really shocking to a lot of people. Again, on the modern commercial internet, even on moderator-curated Reddit clones like Lemmy, that’s normal, that’s the whole point of what I’m saying here. But back then the template of assumptions was much more innocent.
That’s the central conflict I’m talking about. How we can get back to the days where it’s all an “us” place. Lemmy is a huge step forward, I think.
Like yourself, not sure how to fix it, but splitting the tech companies apart from their advertising divisions would be step one. Probably would be helpful to require social media companies to be standalone businesses. Would at least be easier to hold them accountable. And maybe require that they be operated as nonprofits? To help disincentivize the kind of behavior we’ve got now.
I’m mostly talking about the volunteer internet. I don’t have any active accounts on commercial social media, even for business things. Why would I? It’s horrible, and I don’t see it getting any better for any reason any time soon. I think just outcompeting it from a better direction, and letting it follow along into the new protocols or not, is a better way.
geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I mean, it was my literal experience as a user. And it wasn’t just September, the first wave was June when high schoolers started summer break and spent considerable time online, and then the second wave in September with college kids. Honestly the second wave wasn’t as bad, as the college kids were using their university’s connection and they usually had some idea that if they went too far there might be consequences. Whereas the summer break latchkey high school kids were never that worried about any consequences.
I know, but that’s part of my point. The things that make online places feel safe, welcoming, and worthwhile are the same regardless if volunteer or commercial. I absolutely loved 2007 - 2012 early Twitter - it actually felt like the best of my old BBS/Usenet days but with much better scope. But I haven’t regularly been on there since 2016-ish, and completely left Reddit in July of last year (despite having had an account since 2009). For me the volunteer and federated social media has the best shot at being a “good” place, but I don’t have a philosophical objections to seeing commercial social media become less horrible, and in terms of understood and agreed upon social contract, I think approaching both with the same attitude should be encouraged.
We don’t need the commercial social media to fail for us to succeed, we need to change how people think about how they participate in online spaces and how those spaces should be managed and by whom.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 weeks ago
I think we’re talking about different time periods. In the time I’m talking about, before AOL connected with Usenet, the number of high school kids on the actual internet could probably be measured in double digits. There were BBSes, which had their own wonderful culture, but they had trolls and villains in a way that Usenet did not.
I completely agree with this. I think most of the factors that make a network a nice place are social. Technological features can destroy or inhibit the social contract that I’m talking about, which I think happens a lot right now, but the main issues are not technological. The pre-dark-forest-internet phase of Twitter is a great example of people making a good place for themselves.
geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
It was higher than you think. While an outlier, realize WarGames came out in 1983. I grew up in the suburbs of DC, and by 1986, a number of us had modems and regularly dialed into local BBSes. Basically as soon as we got 2400 bits/s, it started to get more widespread. And honestly since we usually knew the admin running the BBS we dialed into, there were less serious trolling issues. But newsgroups were another matter - usually folks were pretty much anonymous and from all over, and while there could be a sense of community, there were healthy amounts of trolls. What you’re describing is the literal exact opposite of my own lived experience. Nothing wrong with that, and doesn’t mean either of us are wrong, just means different perspectives/experiences.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 weeks ago
I think it’s possible you’re thinking of Fidonet or something similar. I’m not trying to argue with you, I’m just saying I was around on Usenet and some of the national BBS culture at the time as well, and well into the mid-90s, they were two separate cultures.
What you’re saying about BBS culture is absolutely true. Usenet was different. I think the first Usenet-to-BBS gateway that even existed was UFGATE, from 1988 or some similar time. 1986 was before even the alt. hierarchy, when the people that put together the system were uncomfortable with the idea of even unregulated newsgroups existing. I don’t know how many nodes there were in the system back then, but I know in 1984, there were less than a thousand sites in the world even connected to Usenet. I don’t think BBSes were in the picture back then. I can’t swear it never happened, from single sites with forward-thinking sysops of some kind, but I would be surprised if you can go back in any kind of Usenet archive and find even a single message from someone pre-1990 who isn’t identified by their full real name, and some tech or research institution as their place of entry. Maybe Kibo.
The influx of people from AOL or Delphi in the mid-90s, and the alarm and despair it caused as it damaged the existing Usenet culture of the time, is very well-documented. I’m not saying you’re wrong. For all I know you were on Usenet and witnessed the occasional troll back then. I’m just trying to say that the type of interactions on Usenet back then were very, very different than on the modern internet, and 1994 was when the old Usenet culture died, as people got widespread access to it.