Web visits are ever increasing. Many visitors are regular users, but we expect to encounter astroturfing marketers, coordinated activists for moral and immoral causes, state funded shills, and Large Language Models. But outside of an obvious paper trail in someone’s comment history, (self doubt + stupidity over malice).

If it’s possible to make a great clear point without getting angry, it may have a better shot at converting an idiot or someone yet-to-be-educated to your side. Other times you’ll waste your effort on bad faith actors. It’s a balance and nobody’s perfect. And in the right communities and at the right times, there’s no need to even really try. It’s all what we make of it, but adding this small shoutout to the potential benefits of civility.

/late night ramble I can clear up later 🌚

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

Hanlon’s razor, while useful, absolutely cannot be used as a blanket policy these days, because many (if not most) bad actors will plead ignorance if you really logically nail them on something.

The discerning factor is their historical behavior. Basically, checking chat history to see if they try to rehash the same arguments with the same levels of (not actually) “good faith” and confusion over time.