> The cost of being a jerk online is too low - it's almost entirely free of any consequences.
Couldn't agree more here.
Going back to the "US Postal service allows spam" comment made by Yishan, well yes, the US postal service will deliver mail that someone has PAID to have delivered, they've also paid to have it printed. There's not a zero cost here and most businesses will not send physical spam if there weren't at least some return on investment.
One big problem not even touched by Yishan is vote manipulation, or to put it in your terms, artificially boosted reputation. I consider those to be problems with the platform. Unfortunately, I haven't yet seen a platform that can solve the problem of "you, as an individual, have ONE voice". It's too easy for users to make multiple accounts, get banned, create a new one, etc.
At the same time, nobody who's creating a platform for users will want to make it HARDER for users to sign up. Recently Blizzard tried to address this (in spirit) by forcing users to use a phone number and not allowing "burner numbers" (foolishly determined by "if your phone number is pre-paid"). It completely backfired for being too exclusionary. I personally hate the idea of Blizzard knowing and storing my phone number. However, the idea that it should be more and more difficult or costly for toxic users to participate in the platform after they've been banned is not, on its own, a silly idea.
There is no such thing as "Reputation", or rather - Reputation isn't one dimensional, and it's definitely not global. There will naturally emerge trusted bastions, but which bastions are trusted is very much an individual choice.
Platforms that operate on, and are valuable for, their view of reputation are valid and valuable. At the same time, that's clearly a form of editorial control. Their reputation system saying "Trust us" becomes an editorial statement. They can and should phrase their trust as an opinion.
On the other hand, an awful lot of platforms want to pretend they are the public square while maintaining tight editorial control. Viewing Twitter as anything other than a popular opinion section is foolish, yet there's a lot of fools out there.
Couldn't agree more here.
Going back to the "US Postal service allows spam" comment made by Yishan, well yes, the US postal service will deliver mail that someone has PAID to have delivered, they've also paid to have it printed. There's not a zero cost here and most businesses will not send physical spam if there weren't at least some return on investment.
One big problem not even touched by Yishan is vote manipulation, or to put it in your terms, artificially boosted reputation. I consider those to be problems with the platform. Unfortunately, I haven't yet seen a platform that can solve the problem of "you, as an individual, have ONE voice". It's too easy for users to make multiple accounts, get banned, create a new one, etc.
At the same time, nobody who's creating a platform for users will want to make it HARDER for users to sign up. Recently Blizzard tried to address this (in spirit) by forcing users to use a phone number and not allowing "burner numbers" (foolishly determined by "if your phone number is pre-paid"). It completely backfired for being too exclusionary. I personally hate the idea of Blizzard knowing and storing my phone number. However, the idea that it should be more and more difficult or costly for toxic users to participate in the platform after they've been banned is not, on its own, a silly idea.