A "kinder, gentler" Reddit?
June 8, 2016 6:44 PM Subscribe
I've been in it, it seems like a nice place, that has tried hard to solve a lot of problems. There's not much going on there yet. I hope it gets some traction.
posted by edheil at 7:03 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by edheil at 7:03 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
This sounds really neato. I hope it's a success.
posted by Metroid Baby at 7:11 PM on June 8, 2016
posted by Metroid Baby at 7:11 PM on June 8, 2016
God, is there nowhere left for me to pursue my love of questionably legal pornography and my irrational hatred of fat people?
posted by leotrotsky at 7:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [42 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 7:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [42 favorites]
I have 5 invites, if SansPoint runs out.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 7:16 PM on June 8, 2016
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 7:16 PM on June 8, 2016
I think Reddit's problem was they loved to congratulate their community, but not take responsibility for their community. That sent an implicit message that harassment groups and semi-legal porn was okay so long as Random Acts of Pizza was active.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:19 PM on June 8, 2016 [21 favorites]
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:19 PM on June 8, 2016 [21 favorites]
So you can only have one username per community but you can have different usernames in different communities, is that right?
Also, is the requirement for an invite the primary means of keeping people from signing up for more than one account?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:20 PM on June 8, 2016
Also, is the requirement for an invite the primary means of keeping people from signing up for more than one account?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:20 PM on June 8, 2016
“This is a classic situation where someone thinks that the thing that worked in 2006 will work in 2016 if they clean up the design and make it ‘nicer,’” she said. “Over a decade later and there is no Reddit-killer. There’s a reason for that.”
Isn't she basically describing Metafilter? I don't really see why this has to be a Reddit-killer, and I don't think that's the aim just yet. Maybe that level of scale is fundamentally not desirable.
posted by naju at 7:21 PM on June 8, 2016 [18 favorites]
Isn't she basically describing Metafilter? I don't really see why this has to be a Reddit-killer, and I don't think that's the aim just yet. Maybe that level of scale is fundamentally not desirable.
posted by naju at 7:21 PM on June 8, 2016 [18 favorites]
The problem I have with it is basically that... well, it didn't need to look exactly like Reddit. But there are some design choices they made that seem to make it more like a platform for sharing stuff than a discussion platform. Like how you can comment on something without ever having even loaded, much less looked at, the comments other people have already made? And giving big header photos to everything while the number of comments is a little grey icon and number in the corner? It doesn't feel like the discussion part of the site is really front-and-center. Which leaves it feeling a little more like just a platform for sharing links, than a platform for actually talking to people, and the platform for talking to people was a big part of what I wanted.
posted by Sequence at 7:22 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by Sequence at 7:22 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]
Did voat die?
posted by gucci mane at 7:29 PM on June 8, 2016
posted by gucci mane at 7:29 PM on June 8, 2016
Voat was neither kinder nor gentler.
posted by Jairus at 7:39 PM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]
posted by Jairus at 7:39 PM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]
I think Reddit's problem was they loved to congratulate their community, but not take responsibility for their community
Reddit's problem is that there's just no fuckin' moderation, and the "moderators" of all of their communities - yes, even the "good" ones - are the types of "we don't tolerate racism and shittiness etc, but, like, we still support free speech" people. They prioritize dumb abstract stuff like "reddiquette" ("don't downvote JUST cuz you disagree with someones opinion!!!") over actual shittiness.
From the article: Individual moderators self-govern their communities, based on rules of their own making, giving each community the flexibility to set its own terms about what is and is not permissible.
Is this not what Reddit already does? Again, their "mods" suck in most communities, it's a lot of thinking that the upvoting and downvoting will just take care of itself. If they say their community doesn't tolerate hate speech it means they will delete the n-word, that's about it. I used to visit the New York subreddit but they are basically a glorified version of the Fox News comments section: Someone posts an article about a violent crime, and everyone posts comments about thugs running rampant. Once someone literally posted a picture of some graffiti scribbled on a subway platform along the lines of "f white people," just so they could all outrage-jerk over the harsh realities of black on white racism. Etc etc etc.
posted by windbox at 7:39 PM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]
Reddit's problem is that there's just no fuckin' moderation, and the "moderators" of all of their communities - yes, even the "good" ones - are the types of "we don't tolerate racism and shittiness etc, but, like, we still support free speech" people. They prioritize dumb abstract stuff like "reddiquette" ("don't downvote JUST cuz you disagree with someones opinion!!!") over actual shittiness.
From the article: Individual moderators self-govern their communities, based on rules of their own making, giving each community the flexibility to set its own terms about what is and is not permissible.
Is this not what Reddit already does? Again, their "mods" suck in most communities, it's a lot of thinking that the upvoting and downvoting will just take care of itself. If they say their community doesn't tolerate hate speech it means they will delete the n-word, that's about it. I used to visit the New York subreddit but they are basically a glorified version of the Fox News comments section: Someone posts an article about a violent crime, and everyone posts comments about thugs running rampant. Once someone literally posted a picture of some graffiti scribbled on a subway platform along the lines of "f white people," just so they could all outrage-jerk over the harsh realities of black on white racism. Etc etc etc.
posted by windbox at 7:39 PM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]
I have five invites too. Ping me if you want one.
I also started a community there for talking about Adobe Illustrator. I think there may be some extra invites hanging around there if you visit its page. I am not totally sure of this.
I kinda agree with Sequence about the design. I really want a layout for it that's more about text and less about images; when I visit Reddit, it's with its images turned off.
well okay sometimes I use the reddit ipad app to look at the list it keeps of subreddits I'm sometimes interested in but not subscribed to, which are, um... let's just say they're image-heavy and leave it at that.
posted by egypturnash at 7:45 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
I also started a community there for talking about Adobe Illustrator. I think there may be some extra invites hanging around there if you visit its page. I am not totally sure of this.
I kinda agree with Sequence about the design. I really want a layout for it that's more about text and less about images; when I visit Reddit, it's with its images turned off.
well okay sometimes I use the reddit ipad app to look at the list it keeps of subreddits I'm sometimes interested in but not subscribed to, which are, um... let's just say they're image-heavy and leave it at that.
posted by egypturnash at 7:45 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
Also, is the requirement for an invite the primary means of keeping people from signing up for more than one account?
It's in the Big Manual of How to Start a Social Network that you have to have invites in order to seem hip and mysterious and exclusive.
posted by Pyry at 8:01 PM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]
It's in the Big Manual of How to Start a Social Network that you have to have invites in order to seem hip and mysterious and exclusive.
posted by Pyry at 8:01 PM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]
I hope it takes off, but I'm skeptical. From the way it's described it's just another case of someone trying to build a better mousetrap: "If I build the site to incentivize the behavior I want and disincentivize the behavior I don't want then it'll just run hands-free, populated only by a self-selected group of non-shitty people who will be non-shitty to each other." Ok. Maybe. I guess we'll see.
posted by um at 8:01 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by um at 8:01 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
I also have invites, though doesn't sound like they'll be needed here. The layout is basically killing any interest I have in the place. Very low text density, large headers and overly cutesy graphics which add little.
It's hard to take Imzy seriously. The biggest problem is the lack of density. But maybe that sort of design is the future. Ars Technica's botched redesign also was all about killing density in favor of large graphics and tiny text blocks. I do like Imzy's core ideas and wish them luck. But probably not a place I'll spend much time, unless they decide their audience is advanced enough to handle more text on the screen.
posted by honestcoyote at 8:06 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]
It's hard to take Imzy seriously. The biggest problem is the lack of density. But maybe that sort of design is the future. Ars Technica's botched redesign also was all about killing density in favor of large graphics and tiny text blocks. I do like Imzy's core ideas and wish them luck. But probably not a place I'll spend much time, unless they decide their audience is advanced enough to handle more text on the screen.
posted by honestcoyote at 8:06 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]
I kind of feel like metafilter already is a kinder gentler reddit - but still, I'm very intrigued. I wouldn't mind an invite, if anyone's got a spare. If it's anything like here, I'd probably enjoy adding another thing to do during my work breaks.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 8:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 8:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
This article explains the moderation approach a bit more.
posted by Ruki at 8:14 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Ruki at 8:14 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's in the Big Manual of How to Start a Social Network that you have to have invites in order to seem hip and mysterious and exclusive.
It worked for Gmail.
Not so much for Google Wave, Google Buzz, and Google Now.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:15 PM on June 8, 2016
It worked for Gmail.
Not so much for Google Wave, Google Buzz, and Google Now.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:15 PM on June 8, 2016
I'm whelmed...
posted by damnitkage at 8:20 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by damnitkage at 8:20 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
A trivial fee for membership seems to keep the trolls out. 5$ sounds fair. It can be used to pay wise moderators.
posted by adept256 at 8:23 PM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]
posted by adept256 at 8:23 PM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]
Like most 12 - 18 yr old white dudes, while I still was one at least, I was on the original Digg, then transitioned to reddit after it had been around a little while. I caught wind of Metafilter because it was on an aggregator aggregator (popurls anyone?) and I noticed that metafilter usually had the same stuff as reddit but a day or two later.
And then eventually I "grew up" a little and I started to appreciate and comprehend the discourse here. And then I could afford the 5 bucks but I didn't say much because I didn't have anything to contribute for a year or three. (I don't even remember now; time on the internet is completely nonlinear to me.)
Nowadays I still go to reddit compulsively but I'm always unhappy there.
All this is to say, I don't think Metafilter is very much like reddit at all, beyond the sense that they are both communities of people mediated by text-based data structures broadcast over fibre optics.
posted by an animate objects at 8:26 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]
And then eventually I "grew up" a little and I started to appreciate and comprehend the discourse here. And then I could afford the 5 bucks but I didn't say much because I didn't have anything to contribute for a year or three. (I don't even remember now; time on the internet is completely nonlinear to me.)
Nowadays I still go to reddit compulsively but I'm always unhappy there.
All this is to say, I don't think Metafilter is very much like reddit at all, beyond the sense that they are both communities of people mediated by text-based data structures broadcast over fibre optics.
posted by an animate objects at 8:26 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]
A trivial fee for membership seems to keep the trolls out. 5$ sounds fair. It can be used to pay wise moderators.
Well, it works for SomethingAwful at least.
posted by fifthrider at 8:27 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
Well, it works for SomethingAwful at least.
posted by fifthrider at 8:27 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
A new non-Reddit social media site that is not going to rely on advertising, and is handing out memberships to ensure a slow rollout? Sounds like the exact conversation we had about Ello almost exactly 2 years ago.
posted by komara at 8:31 PM on June 8, 2016 [17 favorites]
posted by komara at 8:31 PM on June 8, 2016 [17 favorites]
(and don't get me wrong - that's not snarking on our enthusiasm at that time. I was excited as hell for this new thing, and then it failed to deliver.)
(see also: my short-lived enthusiasm on the subject of app.net vs. Twitter)
posted by komara at 8:34 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
(see also: my short-lived enthusiasm on the subject of app.net vs. Twitter)
posted by komara at 8:34 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm still getting sad emails from Ello I don't think I can take the guilt of signing up for another social media account and then never using it.
posted by emjaybee at 9:18 PM on June 8, 2016 [28 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 9:18 PM on June 8, 2016 [28 favorites]
Hope this turns out well. I like Reddit for my niche hobby/interest subreddits (I mean remember like ten years ago when you had to be registered to like four or five awkward phpBB boards for your niche interests? Jeez), but even I grow weary of all the stupid misogyny/racism/etc that pops up even on smaller nicer subreddits. The garbage culture from the overall site bleeds into pretty much everything, just to a smaller extent in some of the better places.
Reddit's problem is that there's just no fuckin' moderation, and the "moderators" of all of their communities - yes, even the "good" ones - are the types of "we don't tolerate racism and shittiness etc, but, like, we still support free speech" people. They prioritize dumb abstract stuff like "reddiquette" ("don't downvote JUST cuz you disagree with someones opinion!!!") over actual shittiness.
some of the anarchist/communist leaning subreddits are pretty good with being like "fuck your 'free speech' and fuck off back to the trump supporter subreddit" but I admit that's a really specific and narrow exception
posted by Gymnopedist at 9:36 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
Reddit's problem is that there's just no fuckin' moderation, and the "moderators" of all of their communities - yes, even the "good" ones - are the types of "we don't tolerate racism and shittiness etc, but, like, we still support free speech" people. They prioritize dumb abstract stuff like "reddiquette" ("don't downvote JUST cuz you disagree with someones opinion!!!") over actual shittiness.
some of the anarchist/communist leaning subreddits are pretty good with being like "fuck your 'free speech' and fuck off back to the trump supporter subreddit" but I admit that's a really specific and narrow exception
posted by Gymnopedist at 9:36 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
I, too, am sitting on a few invites if any mefits are interested. It's interesting so far.
posted by verb at 9:39 PM on June 8, 2016
posted by verb at 9:39 PM on June 8, 2016
Imagine swallowing a fart and you are in the vicinity of my experience with voat, but it is still more or less alive.
Anyway, I would take an invite if they are still being passed around.
posted by seraphine at 9:58 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Anyway, I would take an invite if they are still being passed around.
posted by seraphine at 9:58 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
I didn't mean to insinuate that voat was kinder or gentler, just that it was a previous attempt at "doing Reddit better" (even though it was bullshit).
It always seemed to me that a lot of the issues with moderation on Reddit was that a lot of mods would be inactive on a particular Reddit, and after a while they could therefore be taken off and someone else put in, who'd then mod their people. The other part of this was that a lot of people that moderated big subreddits were affiliated with sketchy subreddits and were in cahoots with the admins. For example, the then-CEO of Reddit, Yishan Wong, defended violentacrez after the expose about him and r/jailbait and r/creepshots. I know people on ShitRedditSays have also determined that moderators of white supremacist subreddits were also mods of a lot of default subreddits, but I don't know if I can't find those posts again (I quit using Reddit a lot time ago).
posted by gucci mane at 9:58 PM on June 8, 2016
It always seemed to me that a lot of the issues with moderation on Reddit was that a lot of mods would be inactive on a particular Reddit, and after a while they could therefore be taken off and someone else put in, who'd then mod their people. The other part of this was that a lot of people that moderated big subreddits were affiliated with sketchy subreddits and were in cahoots with the admins. For example, the then-CEO of Reddit, Yishan Wong, defended violentacrez after the expose about him and r/jailbait and r/creepshots. I know people on ShitRedditSays have also determined that moderators of white supremacist subreddits were also mods of a lot of default subreddits, but I don't know if I can't find those posts again (I quit using Reddit a lot time ago).
posted by gucci mane at 9:58 PM on June 8, 2016
We should start a page on the MeFi wiki collecting fpps about the launches and closings of various sites that try to invent what we already have here as though it is a new thing.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:19 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:19 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]
Imzy's terms of service don't read like dense legal boilerplate, but they still worry me a bit. (Okay, maybe more than a bit. "Friendly" ToS language usually means "we didn't bother to hire a lawyer to confirm that this actually says what we want it to.")
There's the requirement to follow the community standards - which aren't readable without logging in.
There's the catchall disclaimer: "You agree to release Imzy and its employees, agents, consultants, directors, shareholders, and any other person or entity that directly or indirectly controls, is under common control with, or is directly or indirectly controlled by Imzy from responsibility, liability, claims, demands, and/or damages (actual and consequential) of every kind and nature, known and unknown." (Followed by the California 1542 waiver, guaranteeing that just because you didn't know of a thing when you agreed to waive your right to sue, means you can't claim it later.)
Note that the waiver there doesn't say, "from actions in conjunction with activities on Imzy" or anything like that. As far as I can tell, if you get an account on Imzy, and meet someone from the staff and he's drunk and slashes your tires, you can't sue him. It also seems to say Imzy employees (who have accounts) can't sue each other or their bosses, but maybe that's mitigated by employee documents elsewhere.
Hey, maybe I could become a shareholder on Imzy and be immune from lawsuits from everyone who has an account! I like that.
"Don’t post Content that is pornographic, glorifies self-harm, promotes terrorism, or displays gore or torture relating to people or animals. Don’t harass, spam, impersonate, or deceive others."
Um. "Pornographic" has no legal definition, and Imzy provides none. Do they, like Facebook, consider pictures of breastfeeding women to be "pornographic?" Are there any standards for what's considered "glorifying self-harm?" (That's entirely in the mind of the reader, I expect... plenty of people believe that abortions are both self-harm and murder.)
Mostly, I expect that they are sensible and probably liberal-minded people and would say "of course that's not what we meant!" But diverse communities are not well-served by policies that come down to "we know bad behavior when we see it, so don't do any bad stuff while you're here."
"Don’t use the Services to do anything illegal. By accessing or using the Services, you represent and warrant that your activities are lawful in every jurisdiction where you access or use the service."
They're missing a bit by not insisting that you also have to follow the laws where Imzy's servers are. Otherwise, they could be getting themselves in trouble--for example, plenty of books are in public domain in Canada but not in the US.
"Imzy may terminate or suspend accounts or usernames at any time, in its sole discretion. Upon termination, all licenses and other rights granted to you in this Agreement will immediately cease."
IANAL, but that looks like it accidentally says "if we cancel your account, you're free to sue us." Or, looks like it could be argued that way.
"You are responsible for reviewing and becoming familiar with any updates to this Agreement, and continuing to use Imzy after notification means you agree to the updates."
Not valid in California; they have to notify users of changes. (Not likely to be a problem if they're not charging money, but a lot of sites use phrasing like this.)
It looks interesting. I'd like to try it. But I suspect they're going to approach internet-social with "we shall all be decent folks here and then we won't have that awful harassment and drama that occurs on Those Other Sites," which is not an effective starting point.
I want an anti-harassment policy with TEETH. Even in their "we're going to be friendly" ToS, I want to see that they take claims of harassment seriously, that there are consequences for breaking the rules. Right now, what I see is "if you're Bad, we might throw you out." That's Reddit's policy. And Facebook's. And Twitter's. And of course, with all the content on the site locked behind a login, there's no way for new members to know what the community standards are.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:45 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]
There's the requirement to follow the community standards - which aren't readable without logging in.
There's the catchall disclaimer: "You agree to release Imzy and its employees, agents, consultants, directors, shareholders, and any other person or entity that directly or indirectly controls, is under common control with, or is directly or indirectly controlled by Imzy from responsibility, liability, claims, demands, and/or damages (actual and consequential) of every kind and nature, known and unknown." (Followed by the California 1542 waiver, guaranteeing that just because you didn't know of a thing when you agreed to waive your right to sue, means you can't claim it later.)
Note that the waiver there doesn't say, "from actions in conjunction with activities on Imzy" or anything like that. As far as I can tell, if you get an account on Imzy, and meet someone from the staff and he's drunk and slashes your tires, you can't sue him. It also seems to say Imzy employees (who have accounts) can't sue each other or their bosses, but maybe that's mitigated by employee documents elsewhere.
Hey, maybe I could become a shareholder on Imzy and be immune from lawsuits from everyone who has an account! I like that.
"Don’t post Content that is pornographic, glorifies self-harm, promotes terrorism, or displays gore or torture relating to people or animals. Don’t harass, spam, impersonate, or deceive others."
Um. "Pornographic" has no legal definition, and Imzy provides none. Do they, like Facebook, consider pictures of breastfeeding women to be "pornographic?" Are there any standards for what's considered "glorifying self-harm?" (That's entirely in the mind of the reader, I expect... plenty of people believe that abortions are both self-harm and murder.)
Mostly, I expect that they are sensible and probably liberal-minded people and would say "of course that's not what we meant!" But diverse communities are not well-served by policies that come down to "we know bad behavior when we see it, so don't do any bad stuff while you're here."
"Don’t use the Services to do anything illegal. By accessing or using the Services, you represent and warrant that your activities are lawful in every jurisdiction where you access or use the service."
They're missing a bit by not insisting that you also have to follow the laws where Imzy's servers are. Otherwise, they could be getting themselves in trouble--for example, plenty of books are in public domain in Canada but not in the US.
"Imzy may terminate or suspend accounts or usernames at any time, in its sole discretion. Upon termination, all licenses and other rights granted to you in this Agreement will immediately cease."
IANAL, but that looks like it accidentally says "if we cancel your account, you're free to sue us." Or, looks like it could be argued that way.
"You are responsible for reviewing and becoming familiar with any updates to this Agreement, and continuing to use Imzy after notification means you agree to the updates."
Not valid in California; they have to notify users of changes. (Not likely to be a problem if they're not charging money, but a lot of sites use phrasing like this.)
It looks interesting. I'd like to try it. But I suspect they're going to approach internet-social with "we shall all be decent folks here and then we won't have that awful harassment and drama that occurs on Those Other Sites," which is not an effective starting point.
I want an anti-harassment policy with TEETH. Even in their "we're going to be friendly" ToS, I want to see that they take claims of harassment seriously, that there are consequences for breaking the rules. Right now, what I see is "if you're Bad, we might throw you out." That's Reddit's policy. And Facebook's. And Twitter's. And of course, with all the content on the site locked behind a login, there's no way for new members to know what the community standards are.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:45 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]
I couldn't agree more with an animate object's quote: "Nowadays I still go to reddit compulsively but I'm always unhappy there."
One thing that is somewhat magical about Metafilter is that, as a community, it evolves. It is forgetful enough that you aren't punished for a bad comment or two, but, over time, the community has reached some conclusions about what sorts of things matter, and how to handle disagreement and dissent in useful ways.
One frustration with Reddit is that it doesn't evolve. At the start of things like GamerGate, I kept thinking that, over time, many of the people involved would drift off as they realized how toxic their forum was. Instead, to the extent that happens, there just seems to be new trolls replacing the old ones, and no one seems to learn anything.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:36 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]
One thing that is somewhat magical about Metafilter is that, as a community, it evolves. It is forgetful enough that you aren't punished for a bad comment or two, but, over time, the community has reached some conclusions about what sorts of things matter, and how to handle disagreement and dissent in useful ways.
One frustration with Reddit is that it doesn't evolve. At the start of things like GamerGate, I kept thinking that, over time, many of the people involved would drift off as they realized how toxic their forum was. Instead, to the extent that happens, there just seems to be new trolls replacing the old ones, and no one seems to learn anything.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:36 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]
There are some good places on Reddit, which I've mentioned before. The Steven Universe subreddit, for instance, is great. Subject matter on a sub seems to matter a lot towards how toxic it gets.
posted by JHarris at 11:52 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 11:52 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
(Of course, the mere existence of extremely toxic subs paints the whole site in a negative light. I'm not defending Reddit as a whole, just saying, if you confine yourself to some pretty limited areas, you could almost forget the trashdumps exist.)
posted by JHarris at 11:54 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 11:54 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
I got an invite but haven't yet signed up (think it's about to expire). Hope it takes off just so there is another choice for a discussion site, although I agree with the posters above that sticking to some niche, not too popular subreddits is really the way to go with Reddit.
The main draw of Reddit is their sheer volume of posts though, and I'm not sure any site can replicate that overnight (or even very easily in an year or two)
posted by geminus at 12:19 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
The main draw of Reddit is their sheer volume of posts though, and I'm not sure any site can replicate that overnight (or even very easily in an year or two)
posted by geminus at 12:19 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
I really wish Metafilter would stop patting its collective back every time the subject of Other Forums comes up. Don't get me wrong, Metafilter is pretty great if you are a US-based "progressive" (whatever THAT means) that likes to talk politics with like-minded people interspersed with cutesy animal videos and links to oddball internet ephemera. Not everything can or should be that.
Metafilter has a tiny tiny TINY amount of comments per day compared to even something like Something Awful, never mind a juggernaut like reddit. With a small feed like that its possible to have 24/7 paid on-call moderators looking out for nastiness. This will not work on scale.
Metafilter also has set limits for itself what it will discuss and how. This works for Metafilter, but thinking that it is the best way to generally do discussion on the Internet is simply ludicrous.
I guess what I'm saying is that Metafilter is not is a generalist discussion forum (and I don't think it can or even should be one) and it would be great if there was one with a better culture and moderation policies than reddit. I don't know if Imzy is going to be it, but I'm excited to see them try.
posted by Soi-hah at 12:57 AM on June 9, 2016 [26 favorites]
Metafilter has a tiny tiny TINY amount of comments per day compared to even something like Something Awful, never mind a juggernaut like reddit. With a small feed like that its possible to have 24/7 paid on-call moderators looking out for nastiness. This will not work on scale.
Metafilter also has set limits for itself what it will discuss and how. This works for Metafilter, but thinking that it is the best way to generally do discussion on the Internet is simply ludicrous.
I guess what I'm saying is that Metafilter is not is a generalist discussion forum (and I don't think it can or even should be one) and it would be great if there was one with a better culture and moderation policies than reddit. I don't know if Imzy is going to be it, but I'm excited to see them try.
posted by Soi-hah at 12:57 AM on June 9, 2016 [26 favorites]
I admire the what. The lack of how worries me. The focus on yet another young, white man as originator and voice of the site worries me even more; I can't tell if the mono-focus on him and the exclusion of his wife as his business partner is on the media's side or Imzys, but while she is mentioned in an article here and there, she's never quoted.
It looks like the staff is a little under half made up of women, but not a single person of color in the bunch; again, an important exclusion on the structural level - harassment of women is bad but harassment of women of color is worse. All of the copy is vaguely feel good without a mention of the actual concerns which have reproduced themselves across a wide swath of the internet - there's not even an easy-to-find anti-harassment or code of conduct for people to read. I wish I could be more hopeful, but... I guess it's not in me anymore.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:00 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]
It looks like the staff is a little under half made up of women, but not a single person of color in the bunch; again, an important exclusion on the structural level - harassment of women is bad but harassment of women of color is worse. All of the copy is vaguely feel good without a mention of the actual concerns which have reproduced themselves across a wide swath of the internet - there's not even an easy-to-find anti-harassment or code of conduct for people to read. I wish I could be more hopeful, but... I guess it's not in me anymore.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:00 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]
Did voat die?
Voat remains a cesspool of anti-semites, white supremacists and alt-right shitheads.
posted by pharm at 1:16 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Voat remains a cesspool of anti-semites, white supremacists and alt-right shitheads.
posted by pharm at 1:16 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Voat remains a cesspool of anti-semites, white supremacists and alt-right shitheads.
Ah, so it's going according to plan, then.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 1:21 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
Ah, so it's going according to plan, then.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 1:21 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
The focus on yet another young, white man
If only there was a forum where someone's age, race and gender weren't being used to stereotype a large demographic.
posted by adept256 at 1:33 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
If only there was a forum where someone's age, race and gender weren't being used to stereotype a large demographic.
posted by adept256 at 1:33 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
Oh please, feel free to read any of the hundreds of pieces on how Silicon Valley's overwhelming young white male makeup has had serious repercussions for the tech we end up using.
posted by naju at 1:53 AM on June 9, 2016 [16 favorites]
posted by naju at 1:53 AM on June 9, 2016 [16 favorites]
I guess what I'm saying is that Metafilter is not is a generalist discussion forum.
Interestingly, neither is Reddit, despite its scale. Reddit also skews a particular demographic, and is certainly susceptible to hegemonic discourse which dominates all kinds of voices.
The general fragmentation of media platforms looks to me like the next level of what research has often warned us about--that the information we each get on the Internet tends to be self-selected, that in certain respects it makes us uncritical in evaluating our sources, and this amplification of confirmation bias leads to social and political polarization and related consequences. Entire generations of users reflexively assume Google Search to be authoritative, the problem being that's a pretty low level of epistemic thinking and communication. The concern is that IT misused gives us illusions of knowledge, and for the case of social media platforms, they may inculcate inaccurate views of the sociopolitical field.
posted by polymodus at 2:30 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]
Interestingly, neither is Reddit, despite its scale. Reddit also skews a particular demographic, and is certainly susceptible to hegemonic discourse which dominates all kinds of voices.
The general fragmentation of media platforms looks to me like the next level of what research has often warned us about--that the information we each get on the Internet tends to be self-selected, that in certain respects it makes us uncritical in evaluating our sources, and this amplification of confirmation bias leads to social and political polarization and related consequences. Entire generations of users reflexively assume Google Search to be authoritative, the problem being that's a pretty low level of epistemic thinking and communication. The concern is that IT misused gives us illusions of knowledge, and for the case of social media platforms, they may inculcate inaccurate views of the sociopolitical field.
posted by polymodus at 2:30 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]
1. lol @ mefites smugly congratulating themselves for how great their community is while concurrent election threads require moderators to post "seriously, all of you need to fuck off now" messages six times per day
2. regarding this in the article:
3. It's genuinely weird to me that people have a blind spot re: functional mechanics on a site dictating how communities turn out. This sense that "programming can't do mods' jobs" is some fundamental dictum that describes the limits of Machines alternatingly frustrates me and cracks me up. Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, MeFi, et al wouldn't be the communities they are were it not for their particular mechanics, in completely transparent ways.
What I think obscures this a bit is that engineers are, as we all know, fucking idiots, who skip past thinking the "step one: let anonymous people interact freely with one another" step and right into the "step two: create highly complex algorithms intended to combat the human problem of people sometimes being spooges" phase. Though even that can sometimes work! I hear good things about Christa Mrgan's Civil Comments startup, which rings true to me in that its system is built around relationships between people instead of machine worship.
What's strange to me is that most of the problems of social web sites, when articulated in terms of human interaction rather than whatever the fuck it normally gets written up as, can be understood pretty clearly as failures of design. "Tumblr reblogs create fractal discussions in which multiple social circles wind up commenting in the 'same space' at once, and the original poster can see all of it." Are social circles known for being gossippy and spiteful? Yes. Maybe use a different mechanic. "Twitter lets anybody contact you and lowers the barrier to their doing so, and lets those people see every single time you've written something new in case they're irritable and prone to trigger-happiness." At what point did that seem like a good idea? Oh wait, Twitter went right from "rich San Franciscans using an in-office app" to multiple millions of dollars in venture funding, and now it enables abuse on a historically-unprecedented scale.
Ironically, I'd suggest that Facebook (which, disclaimer, was the social network I wrote for professionally) has in some ways the healthiest approach to cultural formation of any site that size. Which isn't to say its culture is healthy: mostly, it's fucking boring. But Facebook makes it possible to create safe spaces for yourself, where you don't see hurtful things and can hide the people who'd threaten your ability to express yourself, with a granularity that most sites lack. It takes a bit of effort, but that's effort most sites won't let you put in in the first place.
Communities can work on smaller scales, and maybe Imzy turns out to be that. It'll never be anything more: the appeal of a social site is defined by mechanic, mechanic, mechanic, and people rarely jump ship otherwise. Even Reddit would've struggled without Digg's spectacular implosion, and Reddit was functionally superior to Digg in a plethora of ways.
But the real magic bullet, to me, and something I've been fascinated at the prospect of for half a decade, is the prospect of a good culture that can scale, and that teaches people by its own formation to step up and take responsibility for their actions. Which is a couple orders of magnitude from the sites we're discussing here; there may be a simple solution, but it'll be simple along contours the web hasn't seen before. It would have to revolve around something more substantial than "post thoughts about interesting links", for a start, and once it finds whatever that substantial thing is, it would have to make that thing appealing on an attention-defecit level without losing its integity. Which is another level of fuck me-level difficulty. Not impossible, though!
Social networks are psychologically and programmatically fascinating. The intersection of abstraction and human nature is where all the best art gets made; I can't wait for the Internet to step up and rise to the occasion. Right now we're still so primitive and ugly that Thomas Kincade laughs at our feeble attempts at enlightenment, but this medium is barely a decade old. We'll get there. I can't wait.
posted by rorgy at 3:16 AM on June 9, 2016 [21 favorites]
2. regarding this in the article:
Gina Bianchini, chief executive of the online community platform Mightybell and co-founder of Ning, another community site, is skeptical about whether Imzy will take off.speaking as somebody who's done QA for social networks and written professionally about social networks, the cofounder of Ning doesn't get to have opinions about this sort of thing
3. It's genuinely weird to me that people have a blind spot re: functional mechanics on a site dictating how communities turn out. This sense that "programming can't do mods' jobs" is some fundamental dictum that describes the limits of Machines alternatingly frustrates me and cracks me up. Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, MeFi, et al wouldn't be the communities they are were it not for their particular mechanics, in completely transparent ways.
What I think obscures this a bit is that engineers are, as we all know, fucking idiots, who skip past thinking the "step one: let anonymous people interact freely with one another" step and right into the "step two: create highly complex algorithms intended to combat the human problem of people sometimes being spooges" phase. Though even that can sometimes work! I hear good things about Christa Mrgan's Civil Comments startup, which rings true to me in that its system is built around relationships between people instead of machine worship.
What's strange to me is that most of the problems of social web sites, when articulated in terms of human interaction rather than whatever the fuck it normally gets written up as, can be understood pretty clearly as failures of design. "Tumblr reblogs create fractal discussions in which multiple social circles wind up commenting in the 'same space' at once, and the original poster can see all of it." Are social circles known for being gossippy and spiteful? Yes. Maybe use a different mechanic. "Twitter lets anybody contact you and lowers the barrier to their doing so, and lets those people see every single time you've written something new in case they're irritable and prone to trigger-happiness." At what point did that seem like a good idea? Oh wait, Twitter went right from "rich San Franciscans using an in-office app" to multiple millions of dollars in venture funding, and now it enables abuse on a historically-unprecedented scale.
Ironically, I'd suggest that Facebook (which, disclaimer, was the social network I wrote for professionally) has in some ways the healthiest approach to cultural formation of any site that size. Which isn't to say its culture is healthy: mostly, it's fucking boring. But Facebook makes it possible to create safe spaces for yourself, where you don't see hurtful things and can hide the people who'd threaten your ability to express yourself, with a granularity that most sites lack. It takes a bit of effort, but that's effort most sites won't let you put in in the first place.
Communities can work on smaller scales, and maybe Imzy turns out to be that. It'll never be anything more: the appeal of a social site is defined by mechanic, mechanic, mechanic, and people rarely jump ship otherwise. Even Reddit would've struggled without Digg's spectacular implosion, and Reddit was functionally superior to Digg in a plethora of ways.
But the real magic bullet, to me, and something I've been fascinated at the prospect of for half a decade, is the prospect of a good culture that can scale, and that teaches people by its own formation to step up and take responsibility for their actions. Which is a couple orders of magnitude from the sites we're discussing here; there may be a simple solution, but it'll be simple along contours the web hasn't seen before. It would have to revolve around something more substantial than "post thoughts about interesting links", for a start, and once it finds whatever that substantial thing is, it would have to make that thing appealing on an attention-defecit level without losing its integity. Which is another level of fuck me-level difficulty. Not impossible, though!
Social networks are psychologically and programmatically fascinating. The intersection of abstraction and human nature is where all the best art gets made; I can't wait for the Internet to step up and rise to the occasion. Right now we're still so primitive and ugly that Thomas Kincade laughs at our feeble attempts at enlightenment, but this medium is barely a decade old. We'll get there. I can't wait.
posted by rorgy at 3:16 AM on June 9, 2016 [21 favorites]
Instead, to the extent that happens, there just seems to be new trolls replacing the old ones, and no one seems to learn anything
It won't happen. It's always September on the Internet these days.
I'm surprised to see people search for the One Platform to Rule Them All. If anything, fragmentation followed by isolation is pretty much the only way to ensure a semi-consistent set of (non-trolling) commentators -- otherwise (as with Reddit, as with Usenet), the entire system will be dominated by newcomers and trolls.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 3:38 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
It won't happen. It's always September on the Internet these days.
I'm surprised to see people search for the One Platform to Rule Them All. If anything, fragmentation followed by isolation is pretty much the only way to ensure a semi-consistent set of (non-trolling) commentators -- otherwise (as with Reddit, as with Usenet), the entire system will be dominated by newcomers and trolls.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 3:38 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
lol @ mefites smugly congratulating themselves for how great their community is while concurrent election threads require moderators to post "seriously, all of you need to fuck off now" messages six times per day
That's a really unfair way of characterizing the mods' voice around here, which is nowhere near "fuck off now."
And every successful largeish-scale forum/online community/discussion group/etc. I've been part of has had active and visible moderation, with clear guidelines and consequences. Ravelry's forums are typically well-moderated. Television Without Pity, back in the day, was well-moderated. It can happen.
It might not happen at a truly large scale anytime soon, because moderation is a full-time job, and an exhausting one at that, and few sites have either the budget or inclination to pay appropriately.
posted by Metroid Baby at 3:48 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]
That's a really unfair way of characterizing the mods' voice around here, which is nowhere near "fuck off now."
And every successful largeish-scale forum/online community/discussion group/etc. I've been part of has had active and visible moderation, with clear guidelines and consequences. Ravelry's forums are typically well-moderated. Television Without Pity, back in the day, was well-moderated. It can happen.
It might not happen at a truly large scale anytime soon, because moderation is a full-time job, and an exhausting one at that, and few sites have either the budget or inclination to pay appropriately.
posted by Metroid Baby at 3:48 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]
Metroid Baby: You're doing me a disservice to accuse me of characterizing the MODS that way, versus the series of debate threads which've predictably gone to shit every fifteen minutes since last July. Everybody, not just the staff, is tired of it.
I love the mods.
posted by rorgy at 3:51 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]
I love the mods.
posted by rorgy at 3:51 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]
I think what you might be missing rorgy is that those “misfeatures” were also exactly the things that made those platforms successful.
What could be better for a hoping-for-a-moonshot SV startup than an interaction mechanic that drags opposing worldviews into direct conflict with each other & keeps each side coming back for more? By which I don’t mean that Twitter et al deliberately chose these mechanics to be the most aggravating ones possible, but rather the iron law of selection in social networks meant that the companies that chose those particular mechanisms were going to be the ones that achieved self sustaining levels of growth. I suspect that both Tumblr and Twitter achieved their user growth *because* of these socially-hostile user interaction mechanics, not in spite of them. Their engineers just happened to choose mechanisms that enabled growth & if you’re an SV venture capital funded company with no revenue model except the potential for lowest common denominator advertising at some indeterminate point in the future then rocket ship user growth is the only metric that matters when you’re starting out. The question in your VC fund partner’s mind is: Are you going to get to a billion users? Otherwise GTFO.
But wait, “what about Facebook?” you say. Facebook won the user acquisition race by piggy backing on the existing real world network of connections. They didn’t need to be aggravating in order to acquire users, they got to ride the positive feedback loop of “hey, another cute picture of my friend’s cat!”. Why else did Facebook only have Likes up until very recently? Because maintaining those positive feelings about Facebook was everything - it’s what kept people coming back for those little endorphin kicks. Even now, none of the reaction choices to a Facebook post are actually downvotes in the Reddit sense.
Only the most stimulating social networks win the user race. You can stimulate your users the nice Facebook way, but that requires you to piggy back on their existing personal connections, and Facebook has locked up that network good and tight meanwhile LinkedIn has locked up people’s professional connections. The rest of the social network companies that survive the ruthless competition for users are going to be the most aggravating ones.
posted by pharm at 4:08 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
What could be better for a hoping-for-a-moonshot SV startup than an interaction mechanic that drags opposing worldviews into direct conflict with each other & keeps each side coming back for more? By which I don’t mean that Twitter et al deliberately chose these mechanics to be the most aggravating ones possible, but rather the iron law of selection in social networks meant that the companies that chose those particular mechanisms were going to be the ones that achieved self sustaining levels of growth. I suspect that both Tumblr and Twitter achieved their user growth *because* of these socially-hostile user interaction mechanics, not in spite of them. Their engineers just happened to choose mechanisms that enabled growth & if you’re an SV venture capital funded company with no revenue model except the potential for lowest common denominator advertising at some indeterminate point in the future then rocket ship user growth is the only metric that matters when you’re starting out. The question in your VC fund partner’s mind is: Are you going to get to a billion users? Otherwise GTFO.
But wait, “what about Facebook?” you say. Facebook won the user acquisition race by piggy backing on the existing real world network of connections. They didn’t need to be aggravating in order to acquire users, they got to ride the positive feedback loop of “hey, another cute picture of my friend’s cat!”. Why else did Facebook only have Likes up until very recently? Because maintaining those positive feelings about Facebook was everything - it’s what kept people coming back for those little endorphin kicks. Even now, none of the reaction choices to a Facebook post are actually downvotes in the Reddit sense.
Only the most stimulating social networks win the user race. You can stimulate your users the nice Facebook way, but that requires you to piggy back on their existing personal connections, and Facebook has locked up that network good and tight meanwhile LinkedIn has locked up people’s professional connections. The rest of the social network companies that survive the ruthless competition for users are going to be the most aggravating ones.
posted by pharm at 4:08 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
Sometimes baby social media networks are fun because you can actually hear everyone in the room rather than just a wall of meme-tipped noise. It's that golden hour before they either grow up or die. You can meet some good people that way.
(Three invites left to disperse here.)
posted by Construction Concern at 5:17 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
(Three invites left to disperse here.)
posted by Construction Concern at 5:17 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Hope this turns out well. I like Reddit for my niche hobby/interest subreddits (I mean remember like ten years ago when you had to be registered to like four or five awkward phpBB boards for your niche interests? Jeez), but even I grow weary of all the stupid misogyny/racism/etc that pops up even on smaller nicer subreddits. The garbage culture from the overall site bleeds into pretty much everything, just to a smaller extent in some of the better places.
This is, ultimately, the heart of The Reddit Problem. It's way, way better than having a dozen scattered phpBB boards scattered all over the place that you're active in and maybe twice that number that you pop in to occasionally because you don't like to post there but other people with good information do and you want to see what they're saying. It's just that, in consolidating all the phpBB boards for parrot owners and video gamers onto one site, Reddit "forgot" to exclude all the Stormfront spinoffs.
Anyway, I had heard a bit about Imzy, but I somehow hadn't heard that the head guy is an ex-Reddit person. That does not instill confidence.
(As for moderators wading into political threads on Metafilter to tell people to knock it off: that's a feature, not a bug.)
posted by tobascodagama at 5:18 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]
This is, ultimately, the heart of The Reddit Problem. It's way, way better than having a dozen scattered phpBB boards scattered all over the place that you're active in and maybe twice that number that you pop in to occasionally because you don't like to post there but other people with good information do and you want to see what they're saying. It's just that, in consolidating all the phpBB boards for parrot owners and video gamers onto one site, Reddit "forgot" to exclude all the Stormfront spinoffs.
Anyway, I had heard a bit about Imzy, but I somehow hadn't heard that the head guy is an ex-Reddit person. That does not instill confidence.
(As for moderators wading into political threads on Metafilter to tell people to knock it off: that's a feature, not a bug.)
posted by tobascodagama at 5:18 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]
1. lol @ mefites smugly congratulating themselves for how great their community is while concurrent election threads require moderators to post "seriously, all of you need to fuck off now" messages six times per day
That the mods do />that, rather than just letting it run its course, that is what we're celebrating. Not that the discourse here is perfect when unmanaged, but that, with the help of the mods, the discourse here is a damn sight better than on many other (less moderated) forums.
posted by Dysk at 5:25 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
That the mods do />that, rather than just letting it run its course, that is what we're celebrating. Not that the discourse here is perfect when unmanaged, but that, with the help of the mods, the discourse here is a damn sight better than on many other (less moderated) forums.
posted by Dysk at 5:25 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
komara: "A new non-Reddit social media site that is not going to rely on advertising, and is handing out memberships to ensure a slow rollout? Sounds like the exact conversation we had about Ello almost exactly 2 years ago."
Wow, Ello was only two years ago? It seems like ages ago.
posted by octothorpe at 5:29 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Wow, Ello was only two years ago? It seems like ages ago.
posted by octothorpe at 5:29 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
I mean remember like ten years ago when you had to be registered to like four or five awkward phpBB boards for your niche interests? Jeez
I miss phpBB. I'll never understand why people seem to hate it so much. It's just proper functional forum software, does exactly what you need it to, not a whole heap of unnecessary cells and whistles, easy to make it look good, etc. 99% of what's replaced it is just flat worse, from a user perspective.
posted by Dysk at 5:30 AM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]
I miss phpBB. I'll never understand why people seem to hate it so much. It's just proper functional forum software, does exactly what you need it to, not a whole heap of unnecessary cells and whistles, easy to make it look good, etc. 99% of what's replaced it is just flat worse, from a user perspective.
posted by Dysk at 5:30 AM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]
hey, you can still run phpBB if you want; its needs are modest. But it'll be shit if you don't moderate it. The Raspberry Pi forum runs under it, and survives with some very dedicated moderation.
posted by scruss at 5:45 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by scruss at 5:45 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Oh yeah, I know the software still exists. I'm just sad that all the communities that I used to use it in have all either migrated to worse software or died out and de facto moved to platforms like Facebook or Reddit (which again, worse). I don't get the hate for phpBB - yes, it has the same moderation variability of any software platform (though reasonably good mood tools on the back end) but it's certainly not inherently worse for that than what's replaced it.
posted by Dysk at 5:50 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 5:50 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
Yeah, rorgy, while I agree with a lot of what you say, I think you're misreading the MeFi love in this thread. It's not praise of MeFites, its praise of mods. The fact that MeFi doesn't look like Reddit has almost nothing to do with MeFites and pretty much everything to do with the mods.
posted by Bugbread at 5:50 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Bugbread at 5:50 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'm still on a couple phpBB forums. They work just fine. And they are moderated.
I still miss LiveJournal, though, so probably don't listen to me.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:54 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
I still miss LiveJournal, though, so probably don't listen to me.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:54 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
Looks like I misinterpreted that, rorgy. I thought you were criticizing the moderation here, when on second readthrough you're pointing out that the moderation is what's keeping this place from being a crapdump like everywhere else. I agree, and apologize for any mischaracterization.
posted by Metroid Baby at 6:20 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Metroid Baby at 6:20 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
My more cynical side thinks that the project of the internet for building global communities of affiliation and interest has largely failed. Even metafilter isn't half as good as it think it is. I don't like the overall reddit culture, but some subreddits do better than tumblr, which has its own homebrewed flavors of harassment and prejudice. Facebook is a non-starter for some discussions due to the privacy issues. (I have different circles of closet right now, which complicates way too much right now.)
Then there's Livejournal/Dreamwidth, one had those tools but fell into questionable security, the other is largely dead.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:49 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
Then there's Livejournal/Dreamwidth, one had those tools but fell into questionable security, the other is largely dead.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:49 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
This is, ultimately, the heart of The Reddit Problem. It's way, way better than having a dozen scattered phpBB boards scattered all over the place that you're active in and maybe twice that number that you pop in to occasionally because you don't like to post there but other people with good information do and you want to see what they're saying.
As a lazy person, it's also really convenient for me to be able to /r/apple or /r/skyrim or /r/nameofthing and be taken more-or-less to the place I want to go. I'm sure I'm missing out on great forums because I just don't care enough to filter through the 700 strangely-URL'd places and find the good stuff.
Also, the phpBB convo makes me have a FLASHBACK!, because the social network I QA'd for was intended to be a meta-hub for forumgoers. phpBB and vBulletin owners could replace their shitty forum profiles with shiny Zoints(!) profiles, and the Zoints(!) profiles were kind of like MySpace profiles with fancier AJAX editing options, so you could (in theory) make crazy colorful pages that were still mostly legible. Though no MySpace user genuinely wanted legibility in the first place.
The real neat thing was, they programmed a Single Sign-On module that worked cross-forum. From one site, you could auto-create a Zoints(!) profile, and from Zoints(!) you could then auto-register for any Zoints(!)-related forum. The idea was to create a forum-centric utopia, one that merged the narcissistic appeal of social media profiles with the genuine community formation of forums.
It was while doing competitor research for Zoints(!)—at the time, MySpace's biggest competitors were thought of as TagWorld and Bebo, one of which was "MySpace with more features" and one of which was "MySpace with more white space"—that I wound up signing up for a then-still-college-exclusive Facebook, and lemme tell you, if you were buried deep in social networking culture at the time, Facebook was a revelation. This may be bias talking, but I still think it's the one social network site whose approach to designing networks feels genuinely innovative and insightful; it's overly bloated now and I can't use it because Anxiety, but it's done a lot better as an oppressive monolith, from a design-and-visionary standpoint, than any of its competitors seem to have it in 'em to attempt.
Anyway, when Facebook introduced its OWN Facebook-centric sign-on, years and years later, all I could do was shake my head at the fact that Zoints(!) management hadn't been brave enough to hand over the keys to their company to their own fifteen-year-old wunderkind.* They could have had it all. In so many ways they were well ahead of the game, and in so many other ways they had the Internet's best interest at heart.
* me. that is me. why am i not a controversial billionaire like mark is. you ruined me, zoints(!).
posted by rorgy at 7:02 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
As a lazy person, it's also really convenient for me to be able to /r/apple or /r/skyrim or /r/nameofthing and be taken more-or-less to the place I want to go. I'm sure I'm missing out on great forums because I just don't care enough to filter through the 700 strangely-URL'd places and find the good stuff.
Also, the phpBB convo makes me have a FLASHBACK!, because the social network I QA'd for was intended to be a meta-hub for forumgoers. phpBB and vBulletin owners could replace their shitty forum profiles with shiny Zoints(!) profiles, and the Zoints(!) profiles were kind of like MySpace profiles with fancier AJAX editing options, so you could (in theory) make crazy colorful pages that were still mostly legible. Though no MySpace user genuinely wanted legibility in the first place.
The real neat thing was, they programmed a Single Sign-On module that worked cross-forum. From one site, you could auto-create a Zoints(!) profile, and from Zoints(!) you could then auto-register for any Zoints(!)-related forum. The idea was to create a forum-centric utopia, one that merged the narcissistic appeal of social media profiles with the genuine community formation of forums.
It was while doing competitor research for Zoints(!)—at the time, MySpace's biggest competitors were thought of as TagWorld and Bebo, one of which was "MySpace with more features" and one of which was "MySpace with more white space"—that I wound up signing up for a then-still-college-exclusive Facebook, and lemme tell you, if you were buried deep in social networking culture at the time, Facebook was a revelation. This may be bias talking, but I still think it's the one social network site whose approach to designing networks feels genuinely innovative and insightful; it's overly bloated now and I can't use it because Anxiety, but it's done a lot better as an oppressive monolith, from a design-and-visionary standpoint, than any of its competitors seem to have it in 'em to attempt.
Anyway, when Facebook introduced its OWN Facebook-centric sign-on, years and years later, all I could do was shake my head at the fact that Zoints(!) management hadn't been brave enough to hand over the keys to their company to their own fifteen-year-old wunderkind.* They could have had it all. In so many ways they were well ahead of the game, and in so many other ways they had the Internet's best interest at heart.
* me. that is me. why am i not a controversial billionaire like mark is. you ruined me, zoints(!).
posted by rorgy at 7:02 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
I caught wind of Metafilter because it was on an aggregator aggregator (popurls anyone?)
Popurls is pretty cool, though less information dense since the site redesign.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:24 AM on June 9, 2016
Popurls is pretty cool, though less information dense since the site redesign.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:24 AM on June 9, 2016
I thought the framing in the article around anonymity was a little weird since imzy actually does allow for anonymous commenting and in a way that I think actually gets it right. If a community has anonymous posting enabled then anons get a unique ID per thread like "AnonymousBunnyInterociterExplosion" or whatever. The best conversation I've had so far on there was between me and another anon so it's a valuable feature IMO and the way that they set it up gives you both the freedom to say what you want without it being tied to your main identity but also the moderation tools to maintain accountability for what you might say.
The thing that gives me hope for imzy is how fundamentally committed the admins seem to be to listening to users and improving the site. There's a constant dialog on the /imzy community (perhaps one of the most active on the site as meta discussions often are) explaining why certain policies or mechanics are how they are or debating the merits of suggestions for changes and improvements. But beyond that the admins have a very inviting chat window that acts as a support and feedback system—it's a direct line to the admins and very inviting in terms of encouraging a dialog about what could be improved about the site to the point that I actually made myself back off on using it so much because I once got a reply of "I'm eating dinner now but will look in to that later and get back to you" and while I value being able to give feedback my RSS questions don't need to interrupt anyone's dinner. Still, it's really nice to know that someone is listening and getting to see the reasoning for design decisions and changes laid out so transparently and to have so many of those decisions feel revelatory in a 'maybe that's how you fix that entrenched problem' kind of way—I mean, it may not (probably won't) actually solve the problem entirely but I feel like it is at least moving the discussion forward and if it fails it will fail in a new and informative way.
posted by metaphorever at 7:29 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
The thing that gives me hope for imzy is how fundamentally committed the admins seem to be to listening to users and improving the site. There's a constant dialog on the /imzy community (perhaps one of the most active on the site as meta discussions often are) explaining why certain policies or mechanics are how they are or debating the merits of suggestions for changes and improvements. But beyond that the admins have a very inviting chat window that acts as a support and feedback system—it's a direct line to the admins and very inviting in terms of encouraging a dialog about what could be improved about the site to the point that I actually made myself back off on using it so much because I once got a reply of "I'm eating dinner now but will look in to that later and get back to you" and while I value being able to give feedback my RSS questions don't need to interrupt anyone's dinner. Still, it's really nice to know that someone is listening and getting to see the reasoning for design decisions and changes laid out so transparently and to have so many of those decisions feel revelatory in a 'maybe that's how you fix that entrenched problem' kind of way—I mean, it may not (probably won't) actually solve the problem entirely but I feel like it is at least moving the discussion forward and if it fails it will fail in a new and informative way.
posted by metaphorever at 7:29 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
if you were buried deep in social networking culture at the time, Facebook was a revelation
Oh, yeah, for sure. Though it's definitely lost everything that made it revelatory since then in its rush to grow and monetise. (I think it all went downhill as soon as signups stopped requiring a college-affiliated e-mail address.)
I thought the framing in the article around anonymity was a little weird since imzy actually does allow for anonymous commenting and in a way that I think actually gets it right.
GIFT is totally wrong, but lots of people still believe it. *shrug*
The anonymous commenting features you describe sound really cool, actually.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:45 AM on June 9, 2016
Oh, yeah, for sure. Though it's definitely lost everything that made it revelatory since then in its rush to grow and monetise. (I think it all went downhill as soon as signups stopped requiring a college-affiliated e-mail address.)
I thought the framing in the article around anonymity was a little weird since imzy actually does allow for anonymous commenting and in a way that I think actually gets it right.
GIFT is totally wrong, but lots of people still believe it. *shrug*
The anonymous commenting features you describe sound really cool, actually.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:45 AM on June 9, 2016
I'm extremely interested in what the next-level interface and UX paradigms look like. What is ethical design? Who's actually trying to make this progress? Facebook is largely an unpleasant user experience besides the little red number endorphin spike. It's not good for content, it's not good for discussion, it's not good for making new friends and it's not even good at keeping in touch with old ones. It doesn't even help with social anxiety. Because it isn't designed to.
So what I want to get involved with is the effort, if it exists, and I'll find a way to start it otherwise, to build out the actual paradigms of human-centric social networking beyond our current crop of economically opportunistic services. That's not to say anything will maybe ever stick that doesn't leech attention and stir animosity, but I'd like to know what we're missing out on.
Aside since phpBB is being floated around in this thread, let me give Flarum a mention. Best practices ground-up forum framework in the mid/late stages of beta.
posted by an animate objects at 8:48 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]
So what I want to get involved with is the effort, if it exists, and I'll find a way to start it otherwise, to build out the actual paradigms of human-centric social networking beyond our current crop of economically opportunistic services. That's not to say anything will maybe ever stick that doesn't leech attention and stir animosity, but I'd like to know what we're missing out on.
Aside since phpBB is being floated around in this thread, let me give Flarum a mention. Best practices ground-up forum framework in the mid/late stages of beta.
posted by an animate objects at 8:48 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]
Regarding the invites-only model, it can be very useful for moderating growth, so hardware and bandwidth can be scaled up as the user base expands. I haven't the foggiest whether this is Imzy's motivation, however.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 8:50 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 8:50 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
Invite-only also neatly sidesteps the 300kg-gorilla-question of "how are we going to keep people from making sockpuppets and such, torpedoing most of our claimed features, when we really launch?" I can't find any hard answers to that on their pages.
posted by introp at 8:54 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by introp at 8:54 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
I actually went back to ello (I'm hollyhudson there) after getting frustrated with Facebook plus hearing some of my friends were still posting to ello. It has matured beautifully. The phone and ipad apps (be sure to download the new version rather than updating the old.. should have a black icon) are easy to use and full-featured. There's gorgeous art being posted all the time on the site, feels like instagram a bit, and I have some friends who post thoughtful pieces to it.
They've also made it easier to find communities to follow, so now when I check the app there's usually new content.
Regarding the no porn issue.. ello is also letting you opt-in to explicit content if you don't mind seeing it in your feed, and while you are required to flag NSFW content (for the benefit of those who filter), they don't ban you from posting it.
I don't work for ello or know anyone who does, I'm just really enjoying using it right now.
posted by antinomia at 9:36 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]
They've also made it easier to find communities to follow, so now when I check the app there's usually new content.
Regarding the no porn issue.. ello is also letting you opt-in to explicit content if you don't mind seeing it in your feed, and while you are required to flag NSFW content (for the benefit of those who filter), they don't ban you from posting it.
I don't work for ello or know anyone who does, I'm just really enjoying using it right now.
posted by antinomia at 9:36 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]
The mods here do an awesome job, but to pretend it would be possible to clean up Reddit, if only they were willing pay their moderators, like we do, is naïve. Even with an infinite pool of money to pay moderators from, human moderators can only read so fast - with enough users, a US politics thread will devolve into the same tired argument before a moderator is able to interject. Paying moderators will help, but better tooling is critical, and it sounds like Imzy is willing to put work into trying things out in that realm.
Facebook might have the most users, but there aren't completely open conversations that are thrust upon the user as is done on the Reddit front page, so they don't have the same problem.
Blindly getting rid of anonymity is just as bad as blindly keeping it, and it's not like de-anonymizing YouTube changed comments on videos to be a shining beacon of online discussion. I'm a homosexual in the Middle-East, I'm a doctor performing abortions, I'm a transgender person who needs to use the bathroom in North Carolina, I'm Snowden trying to send documents over an Internet I know the NSA is watching. Anonymity is important, and if Snowden had kept his he wouldn't be exiled in Russia. So, I'm very interested in seeing how their semi-anonymous system works out.
One new approach to online forums I saw in passing, but now cannot find, was to have the author's viewpoint declared up front. A jumping-off point/title was presented, and then separate threads were given to comment on. Disagreement would go in the "however" thread, supporting things would go into the "also" thread.
posted by fragmede at 9:54 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Facebook might have the most users, but there aren't completely open conversations that are thrust upon the user as is done on the Reddit front page, so they don't have the same problem.
Blindly getting rid of anonymity is just as bad as blindly keeping it, and it's not like de-anonymizing YouTube changed comments on videos to be a shining beacon of online discussion. I'm a homosexual in the Middle-East, I'm a doctor performing abortions, I'm a transgender person who needs to use the bathroom in North Carolina, I'm Snowden trying to send documents over an Internet I know the NSA is watching. Anonymity is important, and if Snowden had kept his he wouldn't be exiled in Russia. So, I'm very interested in seeing how their semi-anonymous system works out.
One new approach to online forums I saw in passing, but now cannot find, was to have the author's viewpoint declared up front. A jumping-off point/title was presented, and then separate threads were given to comment on. Disagreement would go in the "however" thread, supporting things would go into the "also" thread.
posted by fragmede at 9:54 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
I actually went back to ello (I'm hollyhudson there) after getting frustrated with Facebook plus hearing some of my friends were still posting to ello. It has matured beautifully. The phone and ipad apps (be sure to download the new version rather than updating the old.. should have a black icon) are easy to use and full-featured. There's gorgeous art being posted all the time on the site, feels like instagram a bit, and I have some friends who post thoughtful pieces to it.
I tried going back to ello after hearing that they reinvented themselves as an artist's social network. I didn't last very long - the art in question is certainly nice, but the aesthetic I saw being pushed was very much of the sparse, clean, modern digital design which did not jibe well with my stuff at all. I'm aware that hand carved blockprints of medieval alien abductions pressed to wood is a bit of a niche of a niche, but I could not get my heavy physical stuff to blend with the airy digital environment.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:49 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]
I tried going back to ello after hearing that they reinvented themselves as an artist's social network. I didn't last very long - the art in question is certainly nice, but the aesthetic I saw being pushed was very much of the sparse, clean, modern digital design which did not jibe well with my stuff at all. I'm aware that hand carved blockprints of medieval alien abductions pressed to wood is a bit of a niche of a niche, but I could not get my heavy physical stuff to blend with the airy digital environment.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:49 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]
I just remembered the worst-of-all thing about the days when everything was a phpBB, which is that about 75% of those forums would email your password back to you in plaintext when you signed up, with no warning that this was something they intended to do. Although none of them enabled HTTPS, either, so it hardly even mattered.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:15 AM on June 9, 2016
posted by tobascodagama at 11:15 AM on June 9, 2016
Did Ello stop using fucking Courier as a font? That, to me, was the indication that no person on the Ello design team had ever had a friend or held a hand in their life.
posted by rorgy at 11:16 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by rorgy at 11:16 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
Yes. You are safe from courier if you visit ello.
posted by antinomia at 11:21 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by antinomia at 11:21 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm extremely interested in what the next-level interface and UX paradigms look like. What is ethical design? Who's actually trying to make this progress?
Well before action I think there are basic questions that haven't been answered clearly. How much of online toxic behavior is due to site design, and how much of it is because of Eternal September—more and more real people getting online access and they're just being who they are, warts and all?
That's the tension between inclusion—which is really dual to the scaling that is desirable for site operators—and platforms regulating what is appropriate communication. That's the self-selection problem and the fragmentation problem. So maybe instead of thinking in terms of new technologies and designs, maybe looking at this as a social process, etc., would be a first step, and answering those basic questions through research.
posted by polymodus at 11:32 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
Well before action I think there are basic questions that haven't been answered clearly. How much of online toxic behavior is due to site design, and how much of it is because of Eternal September—more and more real people getting online access and they're just being who they are, warts and all?
That's the tension between inclusion—which is really dual to the scaling that is desirable for site operators—and platforms regulating what is appropriate communication. That's the self-selection problem and the fragmentation problem. So maybe instead of thinking in terms of new technologies and designs, maybe looking at this as a social process, etc., would be a first step, and answering those basic questions through research.
posted by polymodus at 11:32 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
And a simple example of using existing research could be studies showing text-based communication such as emails omit nonverbal language and thus critical information about tone, causing misinterpreted or unintended communication. New technology could try to compensate for this missing information, by using video to recover attitude information, or audio dictation, or typesetting (emoji is a start), or even incentives and tools that let people write and express themselves clearly. So there is opportunity for positive technological change and use.
posted by polymodus at 11:48 AM on June 9, 2016
posted by polymodus at 11:48 AM on June 9, 2016
As of today, Reddit forces mobile users to their horrid mobile interface. So Imzy and Reddit now have equally awful interfaces.
I might just switch to the less-STEMslummy Imzy based on this alone.
posted by Yowser at 11:50 AM on June 9, 2016
I might just switch to the less-STEMslummy Imzy based on this alone.
posted by Yowser at 11:50 AM on June 9, 2016
I'm skeptical about anonymity alone as an explanatory mechanism because we know that academics in the early days of the internet engaged in flamewars without much more than token anonymity.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:55 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:55 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Now I've got invites to distribute, as well--MeMail meh.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:05 PM on June 9, 2016
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:05 PM on June 9, 2016
...engineers are, as we all know, fucking idiots...
Seriously? We're OK with name-calling directed at an entire profession?
posted by shponglespore at 3:31 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
Seriously? We're OK with name-calling directed at an entire profession?
posted by shponglespore at 3:31 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
Interestingly, the best discussion site I know is Ravelry, the knitting website. The forums are much, much more than knitting related, with groups devoted to pretty much everything under the sun. The groups are self-policed in a mostly rigorous manner, with very egregious violations of TOS going to overall site mods. There is a range of feedback buttons on every post (Educational, Interesting, Funny, Agree, Disagree, Love) and they are used in clear ways. Bad behavior generally quickly leads to users being banned from groups, leaving them to stick to small out of the way wild west groups or form their own groups. None of this modding is paid.
It's also interesting that it's a site that has a majority female user base.
Here's a short piece on Slate in 2011 about it.
That article makes a good point. When your profile is tied to all your knitting projects, all your pattern download storage, all your bookmarks and favorites, losing that account, starting over, making a sock puppet account, all those things have serious downsides. And it's easy to tell what's a real account and what's a troll or sock puppet account by looking at their activity besides commenting in forums.
posted by threeturtles at 3:49 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]
It's also interesting that it's a site that has a majority female user base.
Here's a short piece on Slate in 2011 about it.
That article makes a good point. When your profile is tied to all your knitting projects, all your pattern download storage, all your bookmarks and favorites, losing that account, starting over, making a sock puppet account, all those things have serious downsides. And it's easy to tell what's a real account and what's a troll or sock puppet account by looking at their activity besides commenting in forums.
posted by threeturtles at 3:49 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]
metaphorever (awesome name!): The thing that gives me hope for imzy is how fundamentally committed the admins seem to be to listening to users and improving the site. There's a constant dialog on the /imzy community (perhaps one of the most active on the site as meta discussions often are) explaining why certain policies or mechanics are how they are or debating the merits of suggestions for changes and improvements.
Ok, that gives me a lot more hope. Do you know if any effort is being made to attract communities of color, lgba communities, trans communities, disabled rights communities, etc... and address issues they might have of safety/utility/etc...? I worry about establishing demographics a lot these days, even if it makes me discriminatory against white men by not wanting them to be the majority again.
I love the idea of a temporary, stable anonymous identity; I've not seen that in a social media forum before, and it is a really clever/useful seeming idea.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:20 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Ok, that gives me a lot more hope. Do you know if any effort is being made to attract communities of color, lgba communities, trans communities, disabled rights communities, etc... and address issues they might have of safety/utility/etc...? I worry about establishing demographics a lot these days, even if it makes me discriminatory against white men by not wanting them to be the majority again.
I love the idea of a temporary, stable anonymous identity; I've not seen that in a social media forum before, and it is a really clever/useful seeming idea.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:20 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've tried MeMailing people for an invite but no one seems to be answering. Can someone hook a Mefite up?
posted by JHarris at 8:20 PM on June 9, 2016
posted by JHarris at 8:20 PM on June 9, 2016
“Over a decade later and there is no Reddit-killer. There’s a reason for that.”
Why does it have to be a Reddit killer? There's not room for multiple platforms with different focuses in the future?
posted by bongo_x at 9:17 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
Why does it have to be a Reddit killer? There's not room for multiple platforms with different focuses in the future?
posted by bongo_x at 9:17 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
I don't know if this will be a reddit killer, but the tipping is interesting. I have some invites if anyone needs one.
posted by Catblack at 11:27 PM on June 9, 2016
posted by Catblack at 11:27 PM on June 9, 2016
Just to note, I did eventually get an invite, thanks very much everyone who offered one. Apparently the problem was that Imzy is sometimes slow to notify those who have been invited.
That means I have some invites of my own too, if someone here is in need of one!
posted by JHarris at 6:42 AM on June 10, 2016
That means I have some invites of my own too, if someone here is in need of one!
posted by JHarris at 6:42 AM on June 10, 2016
Deoridhe They are definitely making an effort to attract and listen to the unique needs of people who experience oppression and marginalization. They actually just recently added a top level category for sorting communities called "diversity" which is kind of a catch all for communities that fit under that intersectional banner—Here's a sample of some of the top communities (by activity) listed there to give you an idea: Queeries, The Fempire, TwoXChromosomes, Transgender, Blackladies, Healthy Sexuality, gay dudes, Nonbinary, Body Positive Women's Fitness, Diversity in Gaming...
I really think that the fractal username policy is a great tool for fostering safer communities. One of the main goals is to make doxxing harder by letting you have one identity for posting in, say, /Transgender and a separate user name for posting to /gameofthrones. Except for the admins, no one will every know that those two posters are the same person unless they out themselves. They also have a "real name" posting option (although I think by 'real' they mean what people actually call you not some legal name bullshit like FB and G+). This, in addition to the anonymous options give users a lot of granular control over how connected the various parts of their online presence are and lets people choose what and how much about themselves they want to put out there on the web. The other thing is they offer private communities which are invite only and can never be made public (the community itself, obviously a mole could screenshot content or whatever), which allows for people who are very concerned about privacy to have an extra layer of protection.
polymodus How much of online toxic behavior is due to site design, and how much of it is because of Eternal September
One thing that I think people forget when they talk about Eternal September was that in the original context new users did eventually learn how to be not terrible by learning by example and through experiences with veteran users who enforced social boundaries. The story was that new users flooded in in September and by the next semester they had learned the ropes. Maybe that's just a myth, but since we're using the terminology it's worth remembering where it comes from. So Eternal September is when you add users faster than the existing users can teach them what is and isn't acceptable—this might give everyone an idea of why imzy is letting users trickle in via invites instead of opening the flood gates. In this sense 'September' is also a variable that the Admins have some control over.
In this context, then, I don't think UX and ES are different things, they are part of the same question of how do you onboard users and teach and enforce a site's policies. UX doesn't (usually) create shitty behavior but it can help immensely with mitigating it and showing that it has consequences—accessible flagging (and knowing someone will actually do something about it if you do flag) for example. Even if new users only learn "I can't be shitty on this website" it's still a win for that community. A user agreement that explicitly outlines that bigotry is unacceptable is an element of site design. Having admins, community leaders and users who enforce that policy is an element of the site design. Tools for blocking trolls, banning harassers and flagging questionable content for review are elements of site design. Eternal September is not just a concession that people are shitty, it's a cry for help that new users who could very well become valuable participants are joining too fast to be taught the site rules (or are being taught that the rules are 'it's ok to be shitty b/c free speech' or whatever) and that those veteran users lack the numbers, time, energy and TOOLS needed to teach new users those lessons. On the open web Eternal September is always going to be a problem due to the huge nuber of new users and the fragmented nature of the places they will go to online but for individual sites it's not as intractable of a problem, I think. Metafilter is a great example of a site that, by having a $5 speed bump, kickass mods, and a community full of people willing to enforce some basic standards of decency and good behavior that it has avoided taking in users faster than they can be taught the site culture. It's a hard problem, for sure, but everything I've seen indicates that imzy is very serious about studying the history of how and why other sites have failed in this regard and learning from those lessons.
posted by metaphorever at 7:52 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
I really think that the fractal username policy is a great tool for fostering safer communities. One of the main goals is to make doxxing harder by letting you have one identity for posting in, say, /Transgender and a separate user name for posting to /gameofthrones. Except for the admins, no one will every know that those two posters are the same person unless they out themselves. They also have a "real name" posting option (although I think by 'real' they mean what people actually call you not some legal name bullshit like FB and G+). This, in addition to the anonymous options give users a lot of granular control over how connected the various parts of their online presence are and lets people choose what and how much about themselves they want to put out there on the web. The other thing is they offer private communities which are invite only and can never be made public (the community itself, obviously a mole could screenshot content or whatever), which allows for people who are very concerned about privacy to have an extra layer of protection.
polymodus How much of online toxic behavior is due to site design, and how much of it is because of Eternal September
One thing that I think people forget when they talk about Eternal September was that in the original context new users did eventually learn how to be not terrible by learning by example and through experiences with veteran users who enforced social boundaries. The story was that new users flooded in in September and by the next semester they had learned the ropes. Maybe that's just a myth, but since we're using the terminology it's worth remembering where it comes from. So Eternal September is when you add users faster than the existing users can teach them what is and isn't acceptable—this might give everyone an idea of why imzy is letting users trickle in via invites instead of opening the flood gates. In this sense 'September' is also a variable that the Admins have some control over.
In this context, then, I don't think UX and ES are different things, they are part of the same question of how do you onboard users and teach and enforce a site's policies. UX doesn't (usually) create shitty behavior but it can help immensely with mitigating it and showing that it has consequences—accessible flagging (and knowing someone will actually do something about it if you do flag) for example. Even if new users only learn "I can't be shitty on this website" it's still a win for that community. A user agreement that explicitly outlines that bigotry is unacceptable is an element of site design. Having admins, community leaders and users who enforce that policy is an element of the site design. Tools for blocking trolls, banning harassers and flagging questionable content for review are elements of site design. Eternal September is not just a concession that people are shitty, it's a cry for help that new users who could very well become valuable participants are joining too fast to be taught the site rules (or are being taught that the rules are 'it's ok to be shitty b/c free speech' or whatever) and that those veteran users lack the numbers, time, energy and TOOLS needed to teach new users those lessons. On the open web Eternal September is always going to be a problem due to the huge nuber of new users and the fragmented nature of the places they will go to online but for individual sites it's not as intractable of a problem, I think. Metafilter is a great example of a site that, by having a $5 speed bump, kickass mods, and a community full of people willing to enforce some basic standards of decency and good behavior that it has avoided taking in users faster than they can be taught the site culture. It's a hard problem, for sure, but everything I've seen indicates that imzy is very serious about studying the history of how and why other sites have failed in this regard and learning from those lessons.
posted by metaphorever at 7:52 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
Scott Aukerman leads a small Comedy Bang Bang Ping Pong community there, so that's encouraging as far as adoption goes. (Then again, I'm pretty sure there's a CBB group on G+, too.) I really hope this will work, and it sounds like I should give ello another go. But it looks like there's no way to follow people, or their individual identities, or see who else has joined a community? Am I missing something?
Facebook is largely an unpleasant user experience besides the little red number endorphin spike.
I don't think this accounts for the hostility over there, but the reason I never got into Reddit is that the pages are too overwhelming. They're packed edge-to-edge with a combination of small type, smaller type, and tiny type, with rows of navigation menus...it's like reading a Dr. Bronner's label.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:42 AM on June 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
Facebook is largely an unpleasant user experience besides the little red number endorphin spike.
I don't think this accounts for the hostility over there, but the reason I never got into Reddit is that the pages are too overwhelming. They're packed edge-to-edge with a combination of small type, smaller type, and tiny type, with rows of navigation menus...it's like reading a Dr. Bronner's label.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:42 AM on June 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
I now have an Imzy account, and a few initial thoughts.
1) It's nothing like Reddit. It's not going to be anything like Reddit; the design is too different. It's picture-heavy and the format doesn't encourage in-depth conversation.
2) To me, it looks like a tumblr variant. (All input in one dashboard column; click on individual posts to see them & their comments.) Other people have compared it to Facebook. Since I don't have a FB account, I can't speak to that. It has communities, which tumblr doesn't.
3) As far as I can sort out, there's no privacy - anything you post is public on the site. No locked communities. However, I could easily be missing a setting somewhere.
When you sign up, you pick 5 or more interests from a list with cute icons, and then it demands you join three communities, although you can drop them. (Joining just means they show up on your dashboard.) Site skin is white background with darkish-grey text; I find it hard to read. I sent them a note; they're going to work on skins eventually, but it's not a priority.
There's not much activity yet. I suspect it won't take off, reach that critical point that shifts it from "random social startup" to "active social hub on the internet" unless it catches the attention of some specific group that's been searching for a site with exactly its features. I do worry about whether it'll eventually switch from "login needed to see anything on the site" to "viewable by public." If so, it'll be considered a tumblr clone; if not, it'll be a hotbed of copyright infringement.
Early signs do not show any indication that moderation will be better than Reddit or tumblr. Anyone can make a community.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:51 AM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
1) It's nothing like Reddit. It's not going to be anything like Reddit; the design is too different. It's picture-heavy and the format doesn't encourage in-depth conversation.
2) To me, it looks like a tumblr variant. (All input in one dashboard column; click on individual posts to see them & their comments.) Other people have compared it to Facebook. Since I don't have a FB account, I can't speak to that. It has communities, which tumblr doesn't.
3) As far as I can sort out, there's no privacy - anything you post is public on the site. No locked communities. However, I could easily be missing a setting somewhere.
When you sign up, you pick 5 or more interests from a list with cute icons, and then it demands you join three communities, although you can drop them. (Joining just means they show up on your dashboard.) Site skin is white background with darkish-grey text; I find it hard to read. I sent them a note; they're going to work on skins eventually, but it's not a priority.
There's not much activity yet. I suspect it won't take off, reach that critical point that shifts it from "random social startup" to "active social hub on the internet" unless it catches the attention of some specific group that's been searching for a site with exactly its features. I do worry about whether it'll eventually switch from "login needed to see anything on the site" to "viewable by public." If so, it'll be considered a tumblr clone; if not, it'll be a hotbed of copyright infringement.
Early signs do not show any indication that moderation will be better than Reddit or tumblr. Anyone can make a community.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:51 AM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Followup - just missed the "edit" option.
Users can only create 2 communities while Imzy is in private beta. (So, almost certainly planning on taking everything public someday.)
Communities can be set to private.
All posts go into a community - there are no personal posts. So, kind of a Reddit meta-structure in a tumblr-ish skin.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:01 AM on June 14, 2016
Users can only create 2 communities while Imzy is in private beta. (So, almost certainly planning on taking everything public someday.)
Communities can be set to private.
All posts go into a community - there are no personal posts. So, kind of a Reddit meta-structure in a tumblr-ish skin.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:01 AM on June 14, 2016
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posted by SansPoint at 7:02 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]