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A harassment campaign on Goodreads

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270 points ilamont | 1 comments | 06 Jan 20 20:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source
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Brain_Thief ◴[06 Jan 20 21:17 UTC] No.21973411[source]▶
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.
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1. elfexec ◴[07 Jan 20 07:59 UTC] No.21977978[source]▶
> 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".