It hurts me so much that hate in general and in particular against groups of people seems more and more accepted since our extensive social media use these days

I cannot imagine how terrible it must be on 'the receiving end' but I want to do all what I can to stop this and turn the tables

It's NOT okay to spread hate off- or online and we should not accept that

@stux agreed, however it’s not usage that’s the problem, it’s the algorithm that amplifies hate speech. Commercial social media is the problem. The last 6 years I’ve been here in the fediverse and I’ve not experienced any hate events. However, my faf.social instance is heavily curated and sources moderated.

@imklg @stux I am not sure the algorithm is the problem. Online interaction seems to so often involve “forgetting” that the other person is a person. Apparently it’s easy to hate a group when you don’t remember that every group is made up of individual people.

It’s heart-breaking, but I don’t think it’s just the algorithm.

@pwinn @stux hmmm, pretty sure it’s the amplification. internal research from Meta clearly identifies harm from users due to the addictive design of the software. Raise disgust and outrage, raises contempt and divisiveness. Mix in some ads in this heightened state of suggestibility and you get record profits.

@imklg @stux I guess what I worry about is that blaming the algorithm let’s us all off the hook. I’ve seen bad behavior here on mastodon, too, where there is no algorithm and no advertising. Those things may have made that site exceptionally execrable, but they’re not necessary for people to behave horribly toward others, unfortunately.

For this to be a good place, we all have to occasionally choose to swallow the first witty reply that leaps to mind. All of us. We have to choose to be kind.

@pwinn @stux interesting view, however, without an algorithm, I believe normal everyday people, not bad actors, will act better. When regular people know that there is no algorithm working against kind behavior, hey will take more care because their messages will not be suppressed at a rate of 7 to 1. Bad actors are rewarded. Over time and at scale, this difference is key. I’m not against algorithms at all, I’m against algorithms that amplify hate. I will repeat, for profit algorithms amplify hate. Note well that when people migrated here they acknowledged a fundamental change in tone and behavior. Distributed moderation works well when hate is not amplified.
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@imklg @stux I hope that, with the judicious application of moderation, this remains the sort of place we all want it to be. I’ve seen already things that make me concerned, and the reports from BlackMastodon aren’t consistently encouraging, but time will tell.

I guess I’ll believe it’s working when the “traditional” targets of hate say it’s working. I want to believe!

@pwinn @stux as a way to encourage, i will share my philosophical approach. I have been an opensource dev and advocate since the beginning of the movement. In my mind only opensource can provide the scale and transparency needed for our collective town square. Without licensing costs and silos of intellectual property, opensource software stacks cannot be owned. Without commercial owners, centralized control becomes distributed. This model has completely wiped out commercial entities wherever it has found purchase in commodity business use cases. Server rooms? Opensource. Blogging platforms? Opensource. Microcontrollers? Currently in transition to opensource. Embedded tech? In transition. Databases? Low end opensource, high end commercial and closed. When the current monopolies in business tech are further weakened, we will see the change. Mobile phones and tablets are way behind. manufacturing the hardware is just so costly, but we’ll see. Open hardware and automation for big manufacturing is still forming but accelerating in acceptance, especially at the low end. Micromanufacturing? 3d printing? Opensource.
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