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Critics may accuse President-elect Donald J. Trump and his supporters of dragging down public discourse in America, but civility took leave of open discussions years ago – online. Beneath digital news stories and social media posts are unmoderated, often anonymous comment streams showing in plain view the anger, condescension, misogyny, xenophobia, racism and nativism simmering within the citizenry.
In the early days of the World Wide Web, digital conversation areas were small, disparate, anonymous petri dishes, growing their own online cultures of human goodness as well as darkness. But when virtual forums expanded onto mainstream news sites more than a decade ago, incivility became the dominant force. The people formerly known as the audience used below-the-line public squares to sound off with the same coarse "straight talk" as our current president-elect.
[...] As a scholar of journalism and digital discourse, the crucial point about online comment forums and social media exchanges is that they have allowed us to be not just consumers of news and information, but generators of it ourselves. This also gives us the unbridled ability to say offensive things to wide, general audiences, often without consequences. That's helped blow the lid off society's pressure cooker of political correctness. Doing so on news websites gave disgruntled commenters (and trolls) both a wider audience and a fig leaf of legitimacy. This has contributed to a new, and more toxic, set of norms for online behavior. People don't even need professional news articles to comment on at this point. They can spew at will.
Freedom of speech is only for approved narratives. Miss America explained it best in Bananas.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:56AM
This also gives us the unbridled ability to say offensive things to wide, general audiences, often without consequences.
Yeah, see. Problem is that trying to restrict that basically means that you must submit to the government's line of thinking.
Fuck that.
These days, having a dissenting opinion is considered "hatred." Cutting out online comments was an attempt to prevent people from expressing opinions contrary to those dictated from the media. The irony of course is lost on those who have disabled comments sections, usually accompanied by a post chastising the masses for disagreeing with their narrative, the writer completely oblivious of their own bully pulpit as they seek to deny it to others.
I'm not willing to submit to thought policing because a few special snowflakes got their ridiculously frail, outrage-primed 'feelings' hurt. I'm not the only one.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @04:00AM
When I call out the special snowflakes, it's because I am a legend in my own mind.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:16AM
That is unfortunate for you, and I hope for successful therapy resulting in your speedy recovery. Fortunately most people can use "special snowflakes" and many other terms without implying that they suffer from a mental illness.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @04:11AM
Special snowflakes... as in SJW'ers?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:41AM
The snowflakes are the ones who go on and on and on the most about "PC" ruining everything. Tell it like it is and call them out on being the delusional bigots they are instead of the PC-approved terms they demand to be called by and watch them flip the fuck out. Its hilarious how the ones who denigrate "PC" the most are the ones most insistent to be called by PC-approved terms instead of the terms that most accurately and precisely describe them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:47AM
Snowflakes seem to congregate in jmorris's rectum, since his shit is as cold as ice. It causes him no end of pain, what with the sharp pointy ends and whatnot.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @04:17AM
I didn't think it was so much "disagreeing with their narrative"?
Weren't many comments sections taken down due to trolling (and the reactions of the unwitting troll-ees), and also some small fraction of comments that were batshit crazy, off the tracks?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:14AM
That depends on what you mean by "trolling." In most cases I've seen personally, a lot of the time forceful disagreement or outright disagreement was classified as trolling.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Francis on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:33AM
I see articles that are likely to result in incorrect views to have the comment section disabled proactively.
After all, we can't possibly talk about how the various candidates aren't qualified to be President, that would be sexist. It leads to a situation where nobody is able to attach things to articles to indicate that they're biased. As a result, the Clinton's get an advantageous article up and nobody can dissent. Had those posts been allowed, people might have realized what a shitty candidate she was when there was still a chance of doing something about it.
Likewise, people would have had a chance to point out that Trump is probably no more racist than most 70 year olds and that his positions on various GLBTQ issues were grossly distorted by the press to sell newspapers. He's going to be a deeply problematic President, but probably not in the ways that people were predicting during the election. Or at least, not necessarily just in the ways people predicted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @10:39AM
Ahh, I see you have been modded 'flamebait' for 'fueling hatred' because you wrote something that some individuals are still in denial about:
No accurate assessments can be tolerated, especially not by the 'tolerant left' who cannot tolerate the idea it was they that won Trump the White House. No, No, NO... it's off to online commenters gulag for you my friend!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday December 28 2016, @10:54AM
True but around here he's half likely to end up scored 5 Flamebait.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:24PM
That's one of the reasons why I tolerate the trolling and some of the shit posters, it at least means there's some possibility of coming across some actual thought provoking comments rather than the approved comments that just go on about how great the article was and serve to form an echo chamber.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @11:12PM
Indeed, he is a master baiter.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday December 28 2016, @11:55PM
> [...] his positions on various GLBTQ issues were grossly distorted by the press [...]
More important than what Mr. Trump said is his choice of Mike Pence as his running mate.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:48AM
No, that was the justification. The genuinely bad comments are easy to moderate because there aren't that many edgelords on the Internet compared to normies. Problem is that the "hateful comments" that the media wants to restrict are statements like "unrestricted immigration is bad" or "Brexit will be good for Britain" or "Trump is not a racist".
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday December 28 2016, @04:34PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:26PM
That would be an insult to the equine posterior.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:44PM
A human still needs to do the moderation, though. And as we all know, businesses love spending money on humans that don't add anything to the bottom line.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:53PM
not really, many, if not most, of the sites who have eliminated comments or relegated them to farcebook, do so because their readers were collectively smarter and more informed than the writers, and they HATED being called out on their shitty reportage...
based on a true story...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:43PM
I thought it was spambots mostly... because it was either that or an authentication system that sucks if the moderators are not doing their jobs or if there are no moderators. I will never train googles AI so I can post somewhere; I will never register with a phone or give out my phone number or real name so I can post some comment on a news site or blog. It's too much to ask.
Anyway I guess the places where I visit, people are not posting stupid things most of the time, and at those places, spambots were the worst issues.
Differences in opinion are common and not to be avoided; ads for women's shoes and penis pills (strong enough for a man, but made for women?) and so on... I mean without a quality system in place, it's either accept the spambots or accept google or facebook or even linkedin now. it all boils down to authentication, and the most acceptable to the public is authentiation to show you the correct narrative's advertising. So, i refuse it all!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by http on Wednesday December 28 2016, @08:13AM
You seriously do not understand the situation. Shut up, please, as anyone with half a brain and half an education doesn't buy it. Or maybe you do understand the situation, and are simply malicious - out to offend on purpose. In which case, right back at ya, moron. It's not dissent per se that's offensive.
Wanting a discussion free of your fermented shit doesn't make someone a special snowflake. It makes them a human who values discourse. Restricting special snowflakes like you who go out of their way to make everyone else have to wade through vomit and worse to engage in the discussion is hardly a demand to think the way the government wants you to. If you had something valuable to say, it would have come through even if you swore like a sailor.
And no, you're not the only one, since stupid loves company. But it's a really small company.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @09:28AM
It is. Pointless and obnoxious comments are being used as justification to shut down informed comments that disagree with the official narrative.
Yes it does! [youtube.com]
Which is why news sites that disable comments are no longer on many peoples reading lists.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday December 28 2016, @10:05AM
Shut up, please, as anyone with half a brain and half an education doesn't buy it.
If that were true, we wouldn't have a story complaining about such things in the first place.
Wanting a discussion free of your fermented shit doesn't make someone a special snowflake. It makes them a human who values discourse.
Just not YOUR discourse.
And no, you're not the only one, since stupid loves company. But it's a really small company.
Yes, I'm quite sure those hordes of imaginary smart people will back you up on that.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @11:31AM
The continual cry of the stereotypical SJW - "get educated!," in particularly lengthy form, second only to "check your privilege!" and “kill yourself!”
Well, you may be disappointed I’m not going to kill myself, even though you refrained from using that particular piece of canned insult, but in terms of being educated? I am. Perhaps not to your standards, but education does not flow solely from the font of professors who build their knowledge base and careers on a mountain of identity politics and the demagoguery of regressive candidates. Arguably that’s more rhetoric for specific political ends than any actual transference of knowledge, skill or theory. Pointing out that Hillary is a liar, thief, and incompetent is not sexist, for instance, whether or not the Russians were the ones that released the e-mails (and believing they did not, and not taking the word of the current administration that they did, is not sexist, either). Yet, on many of the boards silencing replies, this would often get the comment removed on the grounds of being sexist (and possibly racist if she weren’t white), and altogether be considered “bad behavior” for not following what I am told blindly.
I’d tell you to “stop talking” yourself, but since your only defense thus far is a smattering of insults boiling down to a wordier version of “you’re stupid! Get educated!” with no indication that you yourself have any better knowledge, or indeed, beliefs at all that aren’t simply part of the narrative you have by all indications been completely indoctrinated into, it’s pretty clear you’re never going to stop talking. It’s the only way you can drown out anything that might make you question your own opinions, not to mention questioning if they are in fact actually your own and not someone else's.
I look forward to the retort, should there be one, since it will likely boil down to more attempts to call me names in a desperate attempt to drown out the disagreement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:24PM
I look forward to the retort, should there be one, since it will likely boil down to more attempts to call me names in a desperate attempt to drown out the disagreement.
You're a special snowflake. Does that qualify as desperate name-calling?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:52PM
I read Drudge on a daily basis and always click on the clickbait/flamebait articles to read the amusing comments and to skewer antediluvian thinkers who form the bulk of Drudge's readership. It never gets old to see the bright lights carefully differentiate forms of government in America ("It's a Republic, not a Democracy!") but then turn around and conflate socialism with fascism. Truly they are the dross that settled out of the Melting Pot.
They have gotten, though, much better and milder than they have been for years. Still the mainstream media sites have turned off comments because they have bucked their narrative. In other words, people were telling them how awful Hillary was, and why, and explaining why they were going to vote for Trump, but they didn't want to hear it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:36PM
Fascism is not Socialism.... but they are on the same family tree and pretty close. Some of us can actually read, and we know the Italian Fascists forked off of Socialism, The Nazi's have Socialist right there in the branding and Bernie Sanders probably agrees with all of their platform if you only leave out the parts that hates on Jews, like Bernie. Or who knows, most prog Jews are of the self hating sort so who knows, he might be willing to go whole hog.
You see, that gets to the heart of this debate. Yo! Listen up legacy Progressive media and academic types. We reject you. We reject you guys when you proclaim yourselves THE authority, THE judges of what the terms of "legitimate" debate are, THE source of wisdom, etc. We reject your authority, we reject your claims to competence. Your day is done. We abjure thee, return to the Pit from whence ye came.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:29PM
Oh dear.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 30 2016, @12:26AM
They're not in the same ballpark at all. They're on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Socialism grew out of Marxist thinking, Fascism out of Nietzschean. Saying "National Socialism" proves Hitler was a communist also then proves that the German Democratic Republic was a liberal democracy and a wonderful place to live. Neither is true.
In fact one of the justifications Hitler and the Nazis gave for exterminating the Jews (among the many groups of undesireables they exterminated) was that they were trying to insinuate Bolshevism (aka Socialism) everywhere they were.
As for the rest of what you wrote, well, it seems to me you have not had much contact with academia because your portrayal of them is simple. Academics say a lot of things on a lot of subjects and quite disagree most of the time. About the only thing they share is a love and respect for erudition and a delight in intellectually rigorous debate. It's ludicrous to cast such creatures as calling themselves, "THE authority, THE judges of what the terms of the 'legitimate' debate are, THE source of wisdom." They can barely agree on what to have for lunch.
Of course it's natural to feel threatened by people who think deeply and are careful to say things supported by facts and evidence, when you live your life inside a Pavlovian response matrix. The big words, precise terms, and complex concepts they use can leave a person puzzled and staring dumbly, the way a grandmother does when looking at source code.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:35PM
These days, having a dissenting opinion is considered "hatred."
Do you see no difference between?
1) "Your opinions on laissez-faire economic policy have been proven incorrect in history. Look what happened during the Gilded Age and the subsequent Great Depression. The currency contractions creates a self-fulfilling prophecy and a spiral of poverty, as discussed in..."
2) "Laissez-faire capitalism has been discredited among all serious economists for years."
3) "LOL, Laissez-faire capitalism in 2016."
4) "Only idiots believe in Laissez-faire capitalism. You are a moron."
5) "You should get cancer and die in a fire."
6) "Hey, Anonymous Coward lives at 123 Main Street. Somebody should go kill him!"
I don't know the solution, but saying all negative speech online is just people being hyper-sensitive is clearly not true. If you've spent any time on Reddit, Twitch, IRC, news forums, or anything else you'd know that. I'm sure you've met countless trolls, who do things "for the lulz," if not outright having an agenda of some kind or another.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @03:46AM
I live at 123 Main Street, you inconsiderate clod.
And according to Google, (About 6,790,000 results) there are quite a few of us ACs at that address...