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0 pointsPaulHoule2y ago0 comments

I find blocks are almost necessary for me to be able to stand to use Mastodon.

There are a lot of decent people there and participating can feel really worthwhile to me but there are a lot of very angry people and even 1% of crazy angry toots can wreck my mood and I feel I wouldn’t want to participate otherwise.

One kind of behavior I can’t stand is people who call other people “fascists” indiscriminately because they are comfortable in their own skin or think we should have a police department or because they are a landlord evicting a tenant who didn’t pay the rent, or whatever. Much of the time I agree or largely agree with them on a lot of issues but it’s the hate I can’t stand.

So I am really quick to block on expressed hate, particularly when associated with certain issues that quickly get flagged on Hacker News as it seems many participants immediately resort to name calling against anyone who disagrees with them in the slightest or even expresses uncertainty on the issue.

You could make the case that these people really deserve a correction and that, who knows, the way they are they are driving people away from their side and helping “the fascists” get elected (for any political activity I think you have to ask the question of “who does this really help?”). This behavior is self-reinforcing and unfortunately these people surround themselves with other people who do the same things and many of them respond quite hatefully when you call out their behavior so I’d be doing nothing but arguing with these people and getting exhausted… without the block button.

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dotnet002y ago· 1 in thread

While I can relate to that, as that's how I made Twitter tolerable, is that really as much of an issue on the Fediverse which doesn't have algorithmic recommendations? I only have to see posts from the people I follow and I don't follow anyone who has a tendency to like "rage post"ing so I basically never see that sort of stuff unless I look at the global feed.

PaulHouleOP2y ago

I think people have misconceptions about algorithmic feeds.

You can measure what inflames people or you can predict what inflames people, measuring is always going to be more acccurate.

… and you can do that measuring by counting boosts or (on HN) taking the ratio of comments/votes. 0.5 is about the median, articles that go above 2 are well in the danger zone.

In my mind the chronological feed with boosting is pretty toxic on its own, an “explore” feed based on what is getting boosted is even worse.

YOShInOn’s main feed I look at every day is based on (1) clustering and (2) prediction of my upvotes and downvotes, I don’t particularly upvote toxic articles, in fact, I make a point to down vote them so my feed is calming and low in sensationalism. (Though there was a time I was into articles from The Guardian about how the UK is going to hell…). So that kind of algorithmic feed is not inflammatory.

If you use “boost count” or judged sentiment or the like you could make a model that amplifies or diminishes angry content. The thing is voting and boosting is not all bad, I post a lot of flower pics to Mastodon because they get boosted, up to a point discussions on HN are a good thing, If you used a sentiment model to suppress angry content in a voting/boosting process that might be very good.

Sometimes I think about making an “angry toot” model but I can’t stand the thought of looking at 5000 angry toots (well, i have thought about testing a weight loss plan based on inducing a psychogenic fever and maybe that would work…)

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