We don't mind liars, as long as they are "on our side."
Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2020 3:49 pm
"Our side" may be a simple general opinion, often some kind of hatred, formed from believing oft-repeated lies that will appeal, by design or otherwise, to knee-jerk impressions. The creators of "fake news" -- the real fake news, not professional journalism -- know this, and so do certain internet trolls, who, being anonymous (most of them) have hidden agendas and promote them with either (1) massive sock puppetry, hiding identity, or even (2) a single long-term single person who jealously guards identity.
Wikipedia Sucks and so do its critics, and most of this can be traced to anonymity, which frees people to be utterly, totally offensive, blatant liars or trolls, with no personal consequences. Years ago, I confronted a hater on Wikipediocracy, and was banned for my trouble. In spite of some claims, I violated no rules, except an unwritten one. I was not warned that I would be banned, it happened without warning.
There were probably two real reasons behind the ban. (1) I "wrote too much" -- but there was no admin warning -- and (2) I was confronting their Favorite Troll, "entertaining," and way too many people love to watch "flame wars." At the same time, they are contemptuous of anyone who defends themselves, they are "lolcows." Contempt is an aspect of hatred, and it infects the audience.
There is another group, then, beyond and possibly larger than the first two: (3) the fellow-travellers, those who buy and spread and promote deception, repeating lies and misleading information as fact. In genuine fake news with major political impact, it is this group that causes fake news to cause real damage.
It is probably human instinct to believe what is often repeated. In pre-internet society, information came with the reputation and affect and presence and personal history of the one conveying it. The internet, for the first time, allowed massive, widespread communication without those safeguards. It can seem like "everybody" is saying something, and that, therefore, it must be true.
And there goes the community, down the tubes. This is all obvious and is not personal. It's just what happens. Is this harmful? Harmful to what? After all, if the targets are "shitheels," what's the harm? So maybe there are some exaggerations. So what?
Lies create disconnect between opinion and reality. They cause deep harm to our ability to form sane collective judgments. It doesn't matter what "side" they are on, because reality is not a "side," and basing decisions on other than reality can lead to spectacular doom, even with "good intentions."
Recent events on Wikipediocracy and Reddit have demonstrated the power of massive sock puppetry and trolling, if it goes after consistent targets. Much of it sticks with a general audience.
The audience tends to believe that "both sides" are to blame. Why don't they just get along? If someone is being attacked by hundreds of socks -- and a few non-socks -- they surely must be doing something wrong!
So admins may tend to block both sides, even if research would show that all the disruption is coming from one person or a narrow faction. If they do that, the anonymous throwaway side has obtained exactly the result they were aiming for, so they continue the behavior. The non-socks didn't really care about that forum, etc.
I first saw this phenomenon in the 1980s, with the early "conferencing" systems. For the first time, the entire record of discussions was available and it could be seen how conflict arose. And nobody cared to look. It was too much work, besides, "we saw it all, we were following, so our opinions must be right, we don't need to look at actual history. I had, however, done extensive transcription of meetings In real life, and knew that memory unreliable. We remember, not what was actually said, but how we interpreted it, with emphasis on emotional interpretation, good, bad, angry, etc.
I found that if I did the research, and pointed to how a conflict had started, people would conclude that I was on one side, had cherry-picked what I quoted, to make the other side look bad, even though I had no such motive. I was really interested in what happened and in the origins of conflict. Basically, many people believe that their knee-jerk impressions are reality. This, while disabling, is normal.
Reddit shows this, clearly, in r/WikiInAction. There are a few observers who actually know the history and the evidence. Their comments are buried in massive avalanches of throwaway accounts (mostly from the Smith brothers, my conclusion), and then a huge number of posts (over 350) from the Vilignat from Wikipediocracy, also engaged in the same campaign on WO itself, and, what surprised me, the "evil twin" of Genderdesk joined in the claque. All of them repeating deceptions and lies as if fact.
So group (1) is the Smith brothers, (2) is here represented by the ViliGnat, and (3) is Genderdesk. All anonymous. There are possibly some additional people, likely factionally allied (i.e, the so-called rational skeptics, who were clearly allied with the Smith brothers on Wikipedia and RationalWiki). An example of a possible additional person would be HorseshoeTheBat. I have collected the throwaway accounts, and those since January 1, 2020 are on this blog page. Collecting data like this reveals patterns, it goes far deeper than simply allowing impressions to accumulate. Still, when I mentioned to Dysklyver that one account seemed different, he immediately knew which one. Of course, Dysklyver is also under attack by the same trolls. (I have a suspicion as to other accounts of that user, and I have means of investigating this. But it's work, and does it matter?)
Anyone who confronts the haters and trolls will be attacked, and that does not mean mere disagreement. It means massive socking, pure ad-hominem argument and defamation, and doxxing if possible, emails to family and employers, sometimes defamatory articles and pages.
And there can be people who believe those attacks. It's just the way it is. This will not change in my lifetime, I expect.
Is this a situation, though, to be tolerated? I think not, but I can do little alone. Who is interesting in standing for reality, against lies and deception -- or even simple misinterpretation? Is there a difference between fact and opinion?
There is a difference, in practice, it's clear, to those who study this.
We will always form opinions, it's human and even necessary, but when opinion comes to drive what we see as fact, we have set up a vicious cycle that could even take humanity into extinction. We need to hew to reality so that opinion may be live, may continuously adjust as informed by reality.
The trolls and haters have hated, most of all, simple documentation of what they were doing, with minimal opinion.
"If they are not shooting at you, you are not doing anything worth wasting bullets on."
Being shot at is obviously no proof of "correctness." It does mean that someone really doesn't like what you are doing.
"You know you are over the target when the flak gets heaviest." It might not even be the original target, but flak is expensive. Somebody obviously is intensely interested in protecting that target. Again, that doesn't prove that the target is bad or wrong, but it is surely interesting!
Wikipedia Sucks and so do its critics, and most of this can be traced to anonymity, which frees people to be utterly, totally offensive, blatant liars or trolls, with no personal consequences. Years ago, I confronted a hater on Wikipediocracy, and was banned for my trouble. In spite of some claims, I violated no rules, except an unwritten one. I was not warned that I would be banned, it happened without warning.
There were probably two real reasons behind the ban. (1) I "wrote too much" -- but there was no admin warning -- and (2) I was confronting their Favorite Troll, "entertaining," and way too many people love to watch "flame wars." At the same time, they are contemptuous of anyone who defends themselves, they are "lolcows." Contempt is an aspect of hatred, and it infects the audience.
There is another group, then, beyond and possibly larger than the first two: (3) the fellow-travellers, those who buy and spread and promote deception, repeating lies and misleading information as fact. In genuine fake news with major political impact, it is this group that causes fake news to cause real damage.
It is probably human instinct to believe what is often repeated. In pre-internet society, information came with the reputation and affect and presence and personal history of the one conveying it. The internet, for the first time, allowed massive, widespread communication without those safeguards. It can seem like "everybody" is saying something, and that, therefore, it must be true.
And there goes the community, down the tubes. This is all obvious and is not personal. It's just what happens. Is this harmful? Harmful to what? After all, if the targets are "shitheels," what's the harm? So maybe there are some exaggerations. So what?
Lies create disconnect between opinion and reality. They cause deep harm to our ability to form sane collective judgments. It doesn't matter what "side" they are on, because reality is not a "side," and basing decisions on other than reality can lead to spectacular doom, even with "good intentions."
Recent events on Wikipediocracy and Reddit have demonstrated the power of massive sock puppetry and trolling, if it goes after consistent targets. Much of it sticks with a general audience.
The audience tends to believe that "both sides" are to blame. Why don't they just get along? If someone is being attacked by hundreds of socks -- and a few non-socks -- they surely must be doing something wrong!
So admins may tend to block both sides, even if research would show that all the disruption is coming from one person or a narrow faction. If they do that, the anonymous throwaway side has obtained exactly the result they were aiming for, so they continue the behavior. The non-socks didn't really care about that forum, etc.
I first saw this phenomenon in the 1980s, with the early "conferencing" systems. For the first time, the entire record of discussions was available and it could be seen how conflict arose. And nobody cared to look. It was too much work, besides, "we saw it all, we were following, so our opinions must be right, we don't need to look at actual history. I had, however, done extensive transcription of meetings In real life, and knew that memory unreliable. We remember, not what was actually said, but how we interpreted it, with emphasis on emotional interpretation, good, bad, angry, etc.
I found that if I did the research, and pointed to how a conflict had started, people would conclude that I was on one side, had cherry-picked what I quoted, to make the other side look bad, even though I had no such motive. I was really interested in what happened and in the origins of conflict. Basically, many people believe that their knee-jerk impressions are reality. This, while disabling, is normal.
Reddit shows this, clearly, in r/WikiInAction. There are a few observers who actually know the history and the evidence. Their comments are buried in massive avalanches of throwaway accounts (mostly from the Smith brothers, my conclusion), and then a huge number of posts (over 350) from the Vilignat from Wikipediocracy, also engaged in the same campaign on WO itself, and, what surprised me, the "evil twin" of Genderdesk joined in the claque. All of them repeating deceptions and lies as if fact.
So group (1) is the Smith brothers, (2) is here represented by the ViliGnat, and (3) is Genderdesk. All anonymous. There are possibly some additional people, likely factionally allied (i.e, the so-called rational skeptics, who were clearly allied with the Smith brothers on Wikipedia and RationalWiki). An example of a possible additional person would be HorseshoeTheBat. I have collected the throwaway accounts, and those since January 1, 2020 are on this blog page. Collecting data like this reveals patterns, it goes far deeper than simply allowing impressions to accumulate. Still, when I mentioned to Dysklyver that one account seemed different, he immediately knew which one. Of course, Dysklyver is also under attack by the same trolls. (I have a suspicion as to other accounts of that user, and I have means of investigating this. But it's work, and does it matter?)
Anyone who confronts the haters and trolls will be attacked, and that does not mean mere disagreement. It means massive socking, pure ad-hominem argument and defamation, and doxxing if possible, emails to family and employers, sometimes defamatory articles and pages.
And there can be people who believe those attacks. It's just the way it is. This will not change in my lifetime, I expect.
Is this a situation, though, to be tolerated? I think not, but I can do little alone. Who is interesting in standing for reality, against lies and deception -- or even simple misinterpretation? Is there a difference between fact and opinion?
There is a difference, in practice, it's clear, to those who study this.
We will always form opinions, it's human and even necessary, but when opinion comes to drive what we see as fact, we have set up a vicious cycle that could even take humanity into extinction. We need to hew to reality so that opinion may be live, may continuously adjust as informed by reality.
The trolls and haters have hated, most of all, simple documentation of what they were doing, with minimal opinion.
"If they are not shooting at you, you are not doing anything worth wasting bullets on."
Being shot at is obviously no proof of "correctness." It does mean that someone really doesn't like what you are doing.
"You know you are over the target when the flak gets heaviest." It might not even be the original target, but flak is expensive. Somebody obviously is intensely interested in protecting that target. Again, that doesn't prove that the target is bad or wrong, but it is surely interesting!