Dealing With Offensive Comments
One of my rules for myself: “Don’t let assholes turn you into an asshole.”
Why? Well, I don’t want to be an asshole, and I certainly don’t want to cede power over my actions to assholes.
This rule isn’t always easy to follow. Like anyone else, I can feel provoked by the words and actions of others. Insults, obnoxiousness, offense, condescension, callousness, cruelty, ignorance, idiocy, and various combinations thereof can raise my hackles. Sometimes I fail at following this rule. And since one doesn’t always know how one comes off, I probably fail more than I realize. Still, I think it’s a good rule, and—keeping in mind the previous sentence—I think I’m pretty good at abiding by it.
If I am any good at abiding by it, one reason is that I have a lot of practice trying to do so. That’s just part of running an online space and putting one’s words in front of a lot of people. Your ego develops some callouses. You realize you can’t respond to everything—there’s no time—so you just respond on a subset of the occasions in which responding would be worthwhile. And when you do respond, you think about whether what you say is likely to produce bad behavior by your interlocutors or others that you’ll have to deal with in some way, and whether that’s worth it.
Apologies to Randall Munroe
Anyone online at least a moderate amount of time runs the risk of coming across offensive or foolish commentary, be it directed at them personally or about someone or something they care or know about. Protected from retaliation by distance and sometimes by pseudonym, people are more prone to bad communication behavior, subject to more of it themselves, and feel fewer constraints against responding in kind. Sometimes the “don’t let assholes turn you into an asshole” rule may apply and would be helpful, but sometimes it may be inapt or too vague.
So I thought I’d share with you the advice of psychologist Alicia del Prado, who has a recent essay up at Psyche about how to respond to offensive comments. I urge you to go and read the whole thing (and to donate to Aeon Media, which publishes a lot of public philosophy at Aeon and Psyche, while you’re there). But I’ll pull out three pieces of advice she provides.
The first is “check in with yourself,” and ask yourself whether the following is true:
- It is very important to speak up about this.
- I am up for the risks involved in speaking up.
- I have enough energy to speak up.
- I will regret it if I don’t say something.
- Speaking up will be empowering for me.
- I’m open to the possibility that it might not turn out how I hope.
- I can handle it if this person is not receptive to my words.
Another is to “consider what your goal is.” Doing so will help you focus what you say, and stating your goal will help others better understand you. She shares some examples, just so people understand the kind of thing she’s referring to by “goal” (it’s not meant as an exhaustive or universal list):
- I want to stand up for myself.
- I want to share a different perspective.
- I want to support someone I care about.
- I want to stand up for a marginalised group.
- I want to challenge injustices I witness.
It sounds basic, but I see lots of online commentary in which it does not seem like the authors have asked themselves what their goals are.
A third piece of advice from del Prado is “anchor yourself in your values.” This involves reflecting on what your values are, and crafting your communication in light of the most important relevant ones.
del Prado elaborates on each of these in her essay, and offers some other advice as well. One concerns calming down and getting in the right mindset, and reminded me of something that has been at the top of the comments policy here at Daily Nous from its start eleven years ago. If it has been a while, or if you’ve never looked at it, please do so.
As usual, discussion is welcome, and particularly welcome is advice on participating in online discussions.
I should add that I know what popped to the forefront of many a reader’s mind just now is: “Advice? Don’t read the comments.”
I get that. And I laugh at some of the humorous complaints I see on social media about the comments at Daily Nous. Here’s a recent good one:
Still, I think having a place for us all to discuss issues of common concern is worthwhile, and if we can figure out improved ways to do that, great.
Avoidance is always an option, but better is to be the comments section you want to see in the world.
I am glad the you wrote this, Justin. And I think that the points you make are good as far as they go. However, I also think that you are missing out on a bigger picture. Let me give you an example. After I wrote “While Tables Burn,” I was strongly urged by my friends not to read the comments section. And, of course, my first response was to go ahead and read them anyway. One of the things that was so shocking about them was how badly my piece was misunderstood by many of the commenters. It was almost as if they assumed that because I was a trans person, I must be defending x, y, and z. Many of the comments seemed egregious to us (trans philosophers, feminist philosophers, other allies) because of the place that they were coming from. There was – it seemed -a certain presumed starting point that we found stunning from a socio-political point of view. After the news about Byrne broke, a trans colleague of mine joked that they couldn’t wait to see all of the folks defending him on DN and yet, in the end, they remained shocked when it all went down. I say all this to point out that your remarks really only focus on psychological attitutes. “Don’t be an asshole.” What they don’t do is consider the social/political structuring of a blog space such as this. Who tends to respond? What are the shared presuppositions? What is considered acceptable by way of assumption or convention? I could go on. But, honestly, the reason so many people say “don’t read the comments” is not because people can be assholes in this space. It is because this space tends to marginalize those who are already marginalized. And if your advice was intended to be advice for those who ARE marginalized (i.e., don’t let the assholes provoke you), then I am afraid you are not sufficiently clear about what the problem is here.
Thanks for posting this Justin. Obviously it’s up to you what you do with DN. Despite some of the ways we talk about this is still your blog and you can do whatever you want with it. It doesn’t belong or represent the APA, your university, or even Anglo-American philosophy. It’s one person’s blog – yours.
That being said, I think that the real crux of the question is who do you want Daily Nous to be for? How you structure this blog and what you allow on it can only really make sense in relation to your answer to that most basic question.
TMB suggests in their comment that Daily Nous is not really for Trans Philosophers (maybe not even for Trans People) because of the way that you choose to moderate comments. I disagree about that but my disagreement isn’t really relevant. What I see revealed in these “century threads” is that:
(1) They’re almost always threads on race or gender issues
(2) There’s a divide between the content in the majority of comments (which tend to be very progressive/left) and the comments that get the most upvotes (which tend to be centrist/moderate)
(3) That divide in post content/upvotes is probably reflective of a genuine divide within the discipline (i.e., most philosophers are moderates/centrists but the most vocal philosophers are progressives/leftists).
TMB suggests that Daily Nous can’t be a space meant to cater to both groups at the same time. It can’t, in other words, function as a space where moderate and leftist philosophers can reasonably discuss and/or disagree with one another about (and only about) questions of race or gender. I say this because these are the topics that generate “century threads.” It’s your blog but the way I see you have a few (or a combination of a few) options:
(A) Keep Daily Nous exactly as it is
(B) Stop posting topics that will generate century threads
(C) Disallow comments either in general or for “century thread” topics
(D) Change the structure of Daily Nous so that it becomes more democratic (so that others have equal control over its content and policy)
(E) Only allow comments from verified posters (either in general or who you personally approve of)
You can’t please everyone and any of these options, or combination of options, is going to either drive people away or, if TMB is right, keep people away. My own preference would be for (D). It’s always felt to me that both in design, post content, and the fact that you market the site as “New for & About The Philosophy Profession” that you’ve always wanted Daily Nous to be aimed at all philosophers and not just a select subset.
But if that’s the case then the tight control you exercise over posts and moderation cuts against this. This is one of the (admittedly rare) cases where a representative democratic committee would be better off running Daily Nous than a single (well meaning) authoritarian blog owner. So long as those responsible for running Daily Nous have the right mindsets about how it should be run (i.e., in line with your Comments Policy) then we’re never in danger of becoming Philosophy Reddit or something like that. But if (D) isn’t possible then I think (A) is the best bet. Despite the turmoil you’ve managed to (mostly) be a good steward for really important and difficult conversations.
I think (D) would open so many new cans of worms that (A) is infinitely preferable. Since blog readers have an easily exercised right of exit, the loving tyranny of the current regime is not a problem that needs fixing.
My thinking here is that: Justin has already had occasional guest editors (especially in the Summer) who take temporary control of DN so I think that cuts against the “can of worms” concern. It’s there but I think it’s addressable if the committee is set up well.
Secondly, although people have a right of exit…where else would they go?
To the first point, delegating sole authority for a limited time is a rather different thing than establishing a new, self-sustaining “democratic” state of affairs.
To the second point, they can go wherever they want.
Edit: Also, I think “if the committee is set up well” is doing mountains of work here.
The “committee” (minus Justin), could set up their own blog. I bet Justin would even link to it.
Daily Nous is still vibrant after 11 years; Leiterreports is still going strong after 25+. No group philosophy-profession sites can match that (Feminist Philosophers shut down after about 11 years, NewAPPS was largely moribund after seven). It’s small-number statistics, but I suspect having a blog be the clear vision of a single person is good for longevity. Of course, anyone else (individually or collectively) is welcome to start a new project, but it’s hard to do and not many people have the energy and skill.
There is a rational, interpersonal logic of discourse at work in online discussions, and an algorithmic, mechanical logic at work as well. While engaging with negative commenters in ways (rhetorically, logically, psychologically) that would be salutary in the real world may serve to “be the change you want to see”, it’s important to remember the medium-specific consideration of “what will the machines do with this?”. Ignoring bad comments often isn’t just good for one’s own well-being, but for the well-being of online platforms, because the mere fact of engagement can matter more to how negative comments and their authors are handled by algorithms than the mode or content of that engagement.
There are nonmechanical aspects of this too. Often (especially later in discussion threads when people are paying less attention) it’s better to let bad comments die quietly rather than call attention to them by engaging.
As a general observation about DN comment threads: I think that while DN’s de jure comment policy is exemplary, it inevitably relies quite a lot on self-policing since usually it isn’t realistic for Justin to actively enforce it – especially on very popular threads. That means that the de facto comment policy differs from the official one and depends to a large extent on how actual commenters choose to interact.
Mostly I think the blog has succeeded in having a functional discussion space that has allowed very wide latitude to express differing views while keeping discussion polite and civil. For what it’s worth, I think that has deteriorated quite a lot in the last 18 months or so, which is one reason I’ve started to spend less time here now. I don’t have a terribly strong theory as to why (though Gaza and the US election probably have something to do with it), and of course different commenters are going to have different preferences for what should be permitted and encouraged both in content and tone: some people would probably like a narrower latitude for views and/or a wider tolerance for aggression. (This isn’t a free speech issue: Justin should run the blog however he likes.)
I consider commenting here a vice, one that I am weak to. When I have the energy and see blatant misinformation, farcical bad faith arguments, or just plain idiocy, I often feel compelled to step in. I’d prefer not to. But I’d like it even less if it would stand uncorrected.
Justin, you seem to imply that the well-deserved derision that DN comments sections attract is due to a harsh tone or general ashholery. But most of what I’ve seen is in fact ridiculing the sheer absurdity of the positions taken on here and the silliness of what is focused on. Taken as representative of the profession at large (however inaccurate that would be), it paints a pretty damning picture of the value of a philosophy education.
And so it has become a jocular but depressing truism that no matter how absurdly someone behaves, philosophers will flock to defend them in the most preposterous ways. The generic use of “philosophers” in this sentence is probably not accurate, but this very website promotes the impression that it might be.
I don’t think this is by chance. Online comment sections aren’t suitable spaces to “to discuss issues of common concern”. Everywhere and always, they attract the entitled mediocre, the perpetually outraged, the angsty privileged and the outright trolls (tag yourselves). Such people have infinite capacity for airing their grievances and eventually run off everyone else.
Just turn them off. Post your _Nous_, keep us informed about what you find noteworthy, solicit your guest posts, you seem to have a good nose for it. But let the mud slinging happen elsewhere — mediocrity, misinformation, bad faith and idiocy are less likely to cast a shadow upon the profession if they remain confined to personal Twitter accounts.
One way to lower the risk of toxic, overheated, over-provocative comments, I think, is to have fewer “hit pieces.” By “hit pieces” I mean posts whose bottom line is some version of ‘Here’s Why So-and-So is Bad.’ I think there is never any reason to do such a post, no matter what is filled in for “Bad” and what are the merits of the case. One reason is that every one of these pieces can be tweaked slightly to make a constructive argument — as in “here’s why some practice is bad” — stopping short of impugning the motives or character of particular people. The evidence for character assassination is almost always insufficient in light of the risk of undue harm, anyway. Several recent posts come to mind, which would have been much better received — and, frankly, would have been better in many senses of the term — had they been altered in just this way.
In the same spirit as your suggestion, there is also “breaking news” that is better handled after some delay, to allow more information to emerge and be corroborated. If a short post on an academic philosophy blog has multiple updates and corrections within 48hrs of publication, it probably should have been published later.
More spicy posts and comments = more traffic. I don’t think Justin is really looking for suggestions to avoid them.
With respect to not being an asshole, one of my rules is to try to only write what one would be willing to say to a person’s face. This is why I also attach my name to what I write, though I concede that there are certainly times when commenting anonymously is warranted.
The century threads are great. I’ve learned a lot about philosophical culture from these threads. So what if they get heated at times. The best thing about the century threads is watching philosophers get pushed to their limits, and sometimes over them, outside of the really boring venues (I’m looking at you, journals).
And these threads can be motivational: after the first big trans thread, I went and read some articles pro-trans and anti-trans about the metaphysics of gender. And that’s way outside of my usual interests. It was really interesting stuff!
And DailyNous has really handled these conversations well, so we all owe a debt to Justin for managing it. And it’d be cool if all the threads went into the triple digits!
I think it’s rude and cowardly the insult the people who work in journals like this and not name names. Which Imprint or Ergo or JAPA articles are boring, and what should we have done differently before approving them?
Respectfully, I think you might be taking Eric’s comment too personally. I immediately understood him to mean only that journal articles are more structured, more professional, less incendiary, etc.–all for good reason, no doubt, but in a way which does make them less immediately “exciting” than the dialectical, provocative (because more freewheeling), antagonistic nature of a comments section. I didn’t even see your reading (on which *people* who work in journals are at all implicated) until you mentioned it. And, frankly, I still don’t see it.
I’m pretty sure Brian was joking. (I hope he was.)
Damn it.
(I still don’t get it.)
This has got to be a joke response, right?
One piece of advice for replying to comments is to actually, carefully read the precise text of the comment you’re replying to. Imagine it is a philosophical text and that, as a scholar, you need to get its interpretation right. I think a great deal of pointless back-n-forth can be avoided if people improved their care in reading.
My sense is that comments tend to go crazy when trans issues are under discussion. I suspect that’s because those debates involve a combination of features which make them particularly likely to get philosophers agitated:
a) issues around trans rights are intimately connected to a pile of other topics – across social ontology, philosophy of science, political philosophy – where philosophers have disagreements. People want to have those debates because they are linked to their expertise
b) At the same time, it’s also the case that these issues are ethically and politically sensitive- we aren’t just discussing the ontology of tables – so some people think we shouldn’t have them at all. But, once you say that, you are invoking a norm which philosophers will disagree over. So, even philosophers who couldn’t care less about first order questions in social ontology, say, feel an itch to pushback because they have views on second-order issues around norms of debate, links to free speech etc.
c) We can add to that the fact that trans debates – particularly in the US, but also elsewhere- aren’t just ethically complex, but linked closely to party politics and to group membership. Other topics are also ethically complex and raise hard issues around norms of debate – say, issues around assisted dying – but not so obviously politicised in everyday life
d) And, finally, there’s complex links to the sociology of the profession- in the UK, Sussex University was just given a massive fine by a body led by an ex-philosopher for its treatment of a philosopher with gender critical views.
Given a to d, I think it’s almost impossible to imagine a situation where you can post anything about trans issues without a massive fight breaking out: some readers want to insist that we need to rethink social kinds, others that people are misinterpreting norms of civility, still others will be keen to talk politics (both academic and proper politics).
And I don’t see the problem with that; I think the benefits of allowing these debates to happen outweighs the costs – it’s like a massive safety valve. But that reflects my views on b. and it’s not my blog. So, a safer option is just to avoid trans issues
Avoiding trans issues for the reasons you cite seems like conceding to the heckler’s veto, no? Hardly a safe option, given the precendent it sets.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. What I was trying to say was that in a debate with these features, there is bound to be very strong feelings on all sides. As such, I’d be very cautious about thinking there are ‘hecklers’ (if that’s intended as a pejorative term). Rather, there are just lots and lots of people who want their voice heard. If you’re on the other side of debate, those comments may come across as heckling (or worse), but I doubt the ‘hecklers’ think of themselves as ‘heckling’ rather than trying to make their (in their mind) legitimate views heard. (Or, even more precisely, even if some people are just being idiots, disrupting debate, it will be very hard to distinguish those people from the sincere). I can see that this is a real nightmare for the moderator, but I don’t see a way around the problem
So if I understand you correctly, the incendiary nature of contemporary trans debates invites so much engagement from a whole range of motivations (personal, political, ethico-theoretical) that the resulting comment sections become dauntingly large, and contain many comments that may ride the line of civility and collegiality, and this creates a unduly difficult task for a single moderator? I am sympathetic to that.
I don’t want to start a thing here, but for the record: most of what you say here is highly contested, especially (a). Trans rights do not at all depend on how certain ontological questions turn out, just like gay rights do not depend on the metaphysics of attraction. There’s interesting theoretical questions here but they are orthogonal to questions about rights and politics.
That some people believe (or purport to believe) otherwise is a big part of the problem here. Also, that some DN users debate the theoretical questions as if they could thereby settle the political questions is a big reason for the ridicule that DN comments attract.
Sorry I wasn’t clear (and to pre-empt derailing): my claim wasn’t that the social ontology does determine the political issues; rather, it was that some people think it does. Denying the metaphysics has political relevance is itself a philosophical position: it’s one I’m quite sympathetic too myself, but I can see why others might disagree. So, it’s a way in which the topic is bound to get philosophers agitated
Thanks for this Justin! This helpfully frames some practices that I already follow and identifies a few new things I’ll try out. I admit that I hadn’t read the comments policy before today. Your mindset prompt is very nice!
The post is about controlling affect and commenting, but I’d like to bring up affect and “liking.” Sometimes the most frustrating thing about big discussion threads is seeing low quality posts getting dozens of likes. It’s hard to know what’s behind those likes. I suspect that people don’t like only what they 100% agree with. So it’s hard to know what precisely people approve of in a post. I often wish that people who are liking would make their opinions more explicit in a higher information way.
This leads to a larger worry, which is that “liking” detracts from the overall quality of a comment section. I suspect that many people “like” posts they haven’t fully read and/or before they’ve fully considered the specific topic at issue. (I’ve caught myself doing this when I’m quickly skimming through a discussion). Of course, there are many high-quality “likers” with well-considered opinions who like only after reading comments thoroughly. But I worry that the majority of “likers” are not like this, and the high-quality “likers” get drowned out. If this is so, then perhaps DN should get rid of liking for comments.
It’s well known that there are many other problems with liking that go beyond low-quality engagement. These problems include value capture in writing comments to get likes, likes transforming discussions into debates with “winners” and “losers,” and likes disincentivizing people from expressing their opinion if they think they’ll get less likes than someone who disagrees with them. With these problems known, why keep the liking system?
To make my biases clear: my political views are progressive. I agree with Caligula’s Goat that comments tend to be progressive and that likes tend to be centrist/moderate(/conservative). So, one might suspect that I’m questioning the like button because its politically advantageous. But this isn’t the case. I hope that more people express their considered opinions in a higher information way through comments. This might make the comment section overall more centrist. I hope that the discussion would be better (and less anger-inducing) with fewer low-effort, low-information, and polarizing contributions through likes.
A final thing. I found this communications article about allowing “liking” on new articles interesting. It might have some implications for liking in comments sections. Wang & Sundar (2022) “Liking versus commenting on online news: effects of expression affordances on political attitudes” in Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/27/6/zmac018/6700671). Here’s a quote from the “Results” section that lends some support to getting rid of the like button for comments:
Many social media platforms (Instagram, Youtube) have deemphasized liking in the 11 years since DN started. Perhaps it’s worth changing liking here too.
Hi Zach,
I’m not sure I directly disagree with much you’ve written, but in reference to this:
“These problems include [1] value capture in writing comments to get likes, [2] likes transforming discussions into debates with “winners” and “losers,” and [3] likes disincentivizing people from expressing their opinion if they think they’ll get less likes than someone who disagrees with them.”
It seems as though this point that you concede, “that comments tend to be progressive and that likes tend to be centrist/moderate(/conservative)”, is prima facie evidence that dynamics [1] and [3] are not playing out, or in any case are not dominant, in the Daily Nous comments.
Hi Simon,
That’s an interesting point! I hadn’t thought about that. You’re right that it is prima facie reason to think (1)-(3) aren’t occurring. Given my priors about the prevalence of (1)-(3) across social media platforms, I’m still inclined to think they are in effect. However, even if not, my concern is primarily that liking is low-effort and likely low-quality engagement.
I think it would be interesting to consider candidate explanations as to why comments are progressive despite centrist liking. I would love it if our community was one in which (1)-(3) didn’t have significant effect. My guess is that, likely, progressives comment with the belief that their opinion has wider support in academia and this makes them less dissuaded by others getting more likes. It might also be that progressives that post are more likely to get positive feedback outside of the comment thread. These are just some off the cuff speculations. Thanks for your great point!
There are some blogs whose comments sections have eliminated likes for reasons related to these. Unfortunately, in my experience, the result hasn’t been an improvement in the comment section. A comment that seems to me to be very good and clear up a confusion sits all alone at the tail of a long thread, the same way as a boring comment does, while one that perpetuates confusion gets lots of engagement.
Allowing a kind of engagement that doesn’t prolong the discussion seems to have some advantages (though I admit that the full set of consequences of either structure in an actual community is a difficult empirical question to answer from the armchair).
Can you elaborate on the advantages of providing some kind of engagement that doesn’t prolong the conversation? Are these advantages to the community of commenting users, the site owners, spectating readers, etc? I’m inclined to agree that there are such advantages but I’d like to hear your take.
Justin trialed getting rid of ‘likes’ about five years ago (https://dailynous.com/2020/07/10/discussion-about-discussions-here/), not coincidentally during another period of broader political turmoil. It didn’t seem very popular; at any rate, ‘likes’ were restored a month or two later, though I don’t remember that Justin made a public announcement about it (I can’t find one at any rate.)
For myself, I find ‘likes’ useful feedback about how clearly I’ve expressed myself, but also about when some part of a discussion thread is actually being read. Sometimes I’m engaged in a conversation with someone because I’m finding that conversation first-order interesting (in which case it doesn’t matter who else is reading) but often I’m interested in participating because I think there might be a broader audience, and if no-one is actually reading then I’ll preserve my time.
I agree that the mismatch between ‘comment’ and ‘like’ political views is interesting. It can’t plausibly be that people are differentially afraid of consequences, since the vast majority of people commenting on controversial issues do so anonymously. My guess is that there is a correlation between political views and amount of available time to do online discussion: people who have more time to write comments also tend to be more left-wing; centrists find the time to read but not to engage in more depth. Speculatively, as you get older then ceteris paribus you have less free time and also more centrist views – though I was a milquetoast centrist Democrat even as a grad student, and also seem to spend as much time on blogs as then, so it’s scarcely universal.
A possible explanation of the comment/like mismatch is that people further left may (generally) care more about the topics under discussion, and so are more willing to invest time and emotional reserves to write on these topics.
Compare, e.g., Hanania on ‘Why is Everything Liberal?‘ (where by ‘liberal’ he means ‘left’). His answer: cardinal preferences.
Even the most vitriolic discussions on here are pretty benign by the shameful standards of much of the online world. Personally I enjoy the ‘century threads’, when they occur, and if the status quo is an option and this were a democracy I’d vote for it. But it’s our host’s blog: your gaff, your rules, and thanks for all you do to provide a more than usually interesting corner of the Internet.
Ps I do think that using one’s own name should be strongly encouraged. But I recognise that it is easy for me here as I am not an academic and face no repercussions for what I post. And full disclosure, I also discuss stuff in the FT comments sometimes and there use a anonymous handle, as it relates more to my work and could become awkward.
The Aeon piece has a lot of constructive advice but suffers from an important omission: it does not address epistemic humility and is consistent with absolute certainty that one is right, and one’s interlocutors are merely offering “insults, obnoxiousness, offense, condescension, callousness, cruelty, ignorance, idiocy, and various combinations thereof.”
Especially for any application in philosophical spaces, and especially when it ultimately concerns minors taking puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and having double mastectomies, the “Check in with yourself” list should include:
“Consider what your goal is” should include:
I gather that a lack of epistemic humility and an associated embrace of Manichean outlooks ultimately makes a significant contribution to people acting like assholes.