“There are a lot of digital “truths” that have been instilled in our society about accessibility and findability, meaning we were taught, as users, that we needed to be trackable, we needed a visible footprint to exist in society, such as credit, a listed address, etc. Being trackable, and being “seen” meant safety. But online harassment has proven otherwise.”

— That Time the Internet Sent a SWAT Team to My Mom’s House | Narratively | Human stories, boldly told.

Frightening. Just frightening.

The web has become noisier and noisier of late, with the constant chatter of its denizens. Not just the din of ads, trackers, and signup forms, which can be avoided with minimal effort, but with “social” interactions. Not just our streams, like Facebook and Twitter, but on social aggregators, news sites, anywhere that needs people to come, and people to stay. Social is the glue on the flypaper of the modern web, and the flies will not stop buzzing.

Why is “social” so prevalent? It’s easy, it’s cheap—if you don’t want to bother with moderation—and it’s effective. More clicks, more impressions, more ad views, more metrics: social is an easy way to get it. The voices of friends and strangers alike cry out into a din, filling the Internet, that void that cannot be filled, with endless noise.

I want out.

Part of why is because too many of the voices you can make out above the din are those of anger, violence, racism and sexism, transphobia, and hatred of all kinds. They drown out the good voices, the voices of kindness, understanding, acceptance, and support. And, worst, the people running the sites, setting out the flypaper for us to land on, they don’t see this as a problem. To them, the noise is just noise, a sign that people are coming and people are staying. Sure, if someone gets too loud, too obnoxious, does something truly beyond the pale, they get a smack down, but this happens all too rarely.

I find myself seeking places of calm online, or making them myself with clever hacks from other people just as fed up as I am. There is a wonderful browser extension called “Shut Up” that hides comment sections on websites, so that when you hit the bottom of an article, you don’t have to see someone screaming vitriol into your face. A clever programmer recently found a way to create a fake comment section where the only comments a user sees are their own. You, the site owner, see nothing.

This isn’t to say I want to become a digital hermit. We all, even the introverts, need some human contact in our lives. There are some wonderful oases on the social web. If only they weren’t enmeshed between the garbage fires. It just seems like there’s more garbage fires than oases these days. Fourteen years ago, I met the love of my life on a message board for a now defunct humor website. The web was different then, less interconnected and more siloed. There’s always been a social component to the Internet, but it happened at a slower, quieter pace. You could negotiate it on your terms.

There’s an idea, now twenty years old, of calm technology, “in which technology, rather than panicking us, would help us focus on the things that were really important to us.” A more recent manifestation is “The Slow Web”. Neither have gained much traction, largely because calm and slow isn’t the sort of thing that gets the big VC bucks. The current social web, and its constant demands, constant clamoring, and constant conflict, is the opposite of calm technology. Part of it is a function of volume in that there’s more people using the Internet and its social spaces now than ever before, and we’re still navigating the societal changes that come when everyone has a megaphone. I’m sure it’ll shake out in time, but that doesn’t mean we all have to be standing in the middle of it.

“Reddit is the Internet, and it exhibits all the good, the bad and the ugly of the Internet. It has been fighting this harassment in the trenches. In February, we committed to removing revenge porn from our site, and others followed our lead. In May, the company banned harassment of individuals from the site. Last month, we took down sections of the site that drew repeat harassers. Then, after making these policy changes to prevent and ban harassment, I, along with several colleagues, was targeted with harassing messages, attempts to post my private information online and death threats. These were attempts to demean, shame and scare us into silence.”

— Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao: The trolls are winning the battle for the Internet – The Washington Post

After this, I’m amazed Ms. Pao is as optimistic as she comes across in this piece. One thing is certain—the lassiez faire, “free speech” above all attitude is no longer going to work on the Internet and its communities. The trolls are winning, but only because the opposing forces are just beginning to mobilize.

Sarah Jeong, a journalist trained as a lawyer at Harvard Law School, discusses the problem of “online harassment,” with various accounts of harassment that have made their way into mainstream media, as well as lesser-known ones. The Internet of Garbage considers why and how to recalibrate this ongoing project of garbage-removal from content platforms and social media networks. It’s not as simple as policing offensive material and hitting the delete button online: Jeong tackles precarious issues like free speech, behavior vs. content, doxing and SPAM.

— The Internet of Garbage

This looks like it will be a fascinating, and timely, read. I’ll be throwing down to buy it tomorrow, and you should too.

“Algorithms are not designed in a vacuum, but rather in conjunction with the designer’s analysis of their data. There are two points of failure here: the designer can unwittingly encode biases into the algorithm based on a biased exploration of the data, and the data itself can encode biases due to human decisions made to create it. Because of this, the burden of proof is (or should be!) on the practitioner to guarantee they are not violating discrimination law.”

— What does it mean for an algorithm to be fair? | Math ∩ Programming

There is a sense that technology is something separate from humanity, that it is free of our human flaws and foibles. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very human biases we have, conscious and unconscious, are infused into the technology we create. To claim otherwise is disingenuous and dangerous.