A harassment campaign on Goodreads

Situations like this make me think that public educational systems should experiment with some form of "digital literacy" courses / exercises for young children with the goal of humanizing the processes of online communication. Teaching standards for how to treat others (and how to respond to observed and experienced abuses) may provide some reduction in the number of individuals that seem to be finding their ways to toxic online communities. From a lay perspective it really does seem that people who participate in extremely toxic online communities are exhibiting signs of serious personality deformations; since the internet acts as a significant force multiplier on an individual's ability to spread their perspective, and since the problem of policing online speech without creating a locked-down surveillance nightmare seems unlikely to be solved any time soon, perhaps one of the better options would be to arm adolescents with a proper mentality for handling online harassment under the assumption that it is likely to occur.

I think this is a good intention but it would end up with little difference.

My iconic example is that Marin county with some of the highest levels of tertiary education are also the highest in terms of not getting their kids vaccinated.

Also seen in campaigns against drunk driving and campaigns for eating balanced diets. People become aware of the pros and cons (after exposure) but continue unabated in their behavior.

I’m a pessimist on this.

These are good points you raise. I suppose what I'm really thinking is that there needs to be some sort of "interpersonal digital communications normalization process" for young people that functions similarly to how being at school around teachers / outside at recess around peers functions to normalize children's behavior toward others (or at least serves to mitigate the most blatantly anti-social behaviors in many cases). As it stands, many children are introduced to the web and online communications without much (or any) guidance whatsoever as far as I can tell; it seems like the impact of this hands-off approach is quite negative in many cases, with young people lacking the tools to healthily manage their interactions with the web.

I think drunk driving campaigns are a great success story. We don't see them pushing drunk driving to dramatic new lows each year because we're already close to the limit of what they can accomplish. There are people who drink and drive despite them, but there would be far more people drinking and driving without them.

If you're a pessimist, maybe my pessimism has experienced integer overflow into optimism.

I admit that the DD was not a good example for two reasons:

One, there are very aggressive negative consequences --this has an impact on some people.

Two, we have a better chance of changing behavior if we do it in a coordinated manner with good methods when we start young. So, I may be a bit too pessimistic since I think we can make a difference if we start young but with good persistence practices. Given we indoctrinate kids against this since middle school, I think it's made a difference.

For a really long time I've wanted to start an organization for this explicit purpose: raising awareness of disinformation and exploitative online scams and how to identify and avoid them, and teaching people positive ways to interact online and make their online interactions more constructive.

People my age grew up with the internet and had to learn all of this the hard way, but we could really benefit from purposefully educating other people about these things based on our own experiences.

There is definitely value to gain from Digital Literacy as well as Digital Etiquette, but I'd take your suggestion a step forward and teach more people how to handle the mind games that stem from toxic internet cultures with lessons on Digital Fortitude.

A lot of people who grew up with the internet wised up and learned to tolerate/ignore troll behavior. This mostly comes with age, but we can do a better job teaching young internet users that the racist commenter is just looking for attention and should be ignored, that the 200 messages could be coming from a single anti-social person, and that a slew of 1-star reviews may not be coming from a reputable source. This would also involve warnings on the repercussions of handling a hostile situation the wrong way (by engaging in a troll and showing obvious signs of stress or by blithely trusting a DM who appears to be on your side) and more effective ways to cope.

One of the most memorable things I've come across on Hacker News was a link to this article about avoiding trolls: https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Avoiding_Tr...

Even as somebody that's used the Internet frequently for 25+ years, I was guilty of falling for some of the traps outlined in this article. I think something like this being taught in schools would shift the state of conversation on the Web dramatically.

This doesn't have much to do with "digital". Without the internet, these people might just set homeless people on fire.

It's some sort of cultural phenomenon. FTA:

> As to why they're doing it, well, this has been their entire culture for years, picking random innocent people to cyberbully past the breaking point.

From these low-lives to the highest reaches of government, you see people gleefully, and without shame, engaging in cruelty for entertainment. It's decadent, hollow, (self-)destructive.

What would help? No idea... I'd think a bit of philosophy in school might actually help: Stoicism and the like at least model the concept of thinking about purpose and emotions. The other side is probably social.

So long as your lessons include the information that this advice only works when you're dealing with low-level harassment. It fails catastrophically when you're dealing with a mob. It's like the advice to "eat healthy foods" - while it's probably right for a random person, when you share that advice with someone who has cancer, you are an insensitive ignorant dick. So if you share it as "basic approaches to normal life", fine, but when you hear "x hasn't been well", maybe you should avoid responding with this helpful simplistic nonsense.

edit: a more complete article on this https://the-cauldron.com/you-can-t-just-ignore-the-trolls-8f...

> Situations like this make me think that public educational systems should experiment with some form of "digital literacy" courses / exercises for young children with the goal of humanizing the processes of online communication.

The internet has been around for many decades now. The world hasn't ended.

> arm adolescents with a proper mentality for handling online harassment under the assumption that it is likely to occur.

Most teens are already armed with proper mentality. The only teens who aren't armed are those who have been coddled in safe spaces their entire lives. Maybe spending time in some "toxic community" would help toughen them up.

How about we worry about teaching kids the basics and stop wasting time with nonsense? I'm told by the "chicken littles" that schools are a complete mess. You want add more time wasting nonsense to schools? It's always the controlling old people who thinks the younger generation needs their help.

> since the problem of policing online speech without creating a locked-down surveillance nightmare seems unlikely to be solved any time soon

People like you scare me so much. I still don't understand how you ended up in a forum called "hacker news".

I disagree. I think there's absolutely something about the anonymity of the internet that leads to many people (particularly kids, but everyone) being worse versions of themselves. They are free to engage in their worst impulses, both without fear of social retribution, and without humanizing the person on the other end.

I'm sure that many of these trolls have friends and family in the real world who would never expect this kind of behavior.