Civilizing Social Media: Try these Three Simple Tricks

I expect you think, like me, that social media is ungovernable, an automatic descent into hate and bigotry unless wise content managers beat back the baddies. And now Elon Musk is opening up Twitter! The Horror!

But the Zman says otherwise. Back in the day, he writes, social media kept the nasties under control. Not any more.

Most of the complaining, however, is coming from the sorts of people the internet used to exclude. Online culture used to be a haven from the scolds and busybodies who haunt daily life.

In ordinary life, he says, we are pretty good at marginalizing the nasties.

In daily life, no one likes the woman who is always creating drama. People organize their lives to limit their exposure to that person and anyone who enjoys her drama. Further, the guy who keeps talking about Hitler or how much he hates the left gets ignored. They keep this stuff to themselves so they can be included in the community. Social pressure works.

Wat?

First, he says, you need to remove mechanisms for scolds and busybodies to cause trouble.

Removing all of the mechanism to report other users takes away the appeal to the scolds and busybodies. If they are stripped of their ability to rat out fellow users, most of the fun of the platform goes away for them, as well as the people who enjoy taunting them. 

Second, how you deal with the bad actors? Simple. Down-voting.

Similarly, down-voting is a powerful weapon against troublemakers. No one likes to be told they are the problem. It is why booing at public events remains popular. It works, and the down vote works the same way. The reason YouTube removed down-voting is they hated being booed by their own user base. Social pressure is the best way to compel conformity in a community,

Really? I had no idea. What civilizes users is that they get "reputation scores based on the up votes and down votes."

Thirdly, whatabout moderators?

Another lesson from the golden age of the internet is that the sorts of people who want to be moderators are the people who should never be moderators. It is the scolds and busybodies who lust for these positions. The Trust and Safety committee of Twitter is composed of the worst, most petty despots humanity can produce. The platform would improve greatly if Musk just threw these people off the roof of the building.

 Again. I had no idea! You mean that Twitter is actually designed to be a sh*t show?

The main thing is to

select against the scolds and busybodies who make life miserable for everyone. A reorienting of the moral hierarchy that places these people at the bottom, rather than the top, not only fixes Twitter, but sets a positive example for the rest of the public platforms.

And to think that all these problems had already been solved, and I didn't know. Until Twitter came along and unsolved them, because, I suppose, the left wants to reward scolds and busybodies. As long as they are approved lefty activists, of course,

Really, I am kinda shocked by this. I had no idea that with a few simple tricks we can solve the social media problem and everyone can get back to wiving and thriving.