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If our technology is creating a widespread problem where people are no longer able to emotionally differentiate between serious and frivolous threats, that seems like a problem, no?
I think a lot of it is done in bad faith. No doubt there are people who are legitimately anxious, but there’s also political actors/journalists that know they can shut down opposition by calling opposition as violence or overplaying some vague anonymous threats to shut down legitimate non threatening opposition. (As gottlieb did in my opinion).
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I don't know whether it's something that is caused by tech or merely exacerbated by the tech.
I suspect a lot of these folks couldn't emotionally differentiate between threats and insults and, say, criticism or jokes in any case.
Tendency to parse innocuous statements as threats is, it turns out, a symptom of an anxiety disorder.
INCIDENTALLY, anxiety disorders are on the rise too, and tech seems to be playing a part in that.
Maybe this is what you were getting at and we're describing the same thing?
The synthesis here is that people are more anxious than before and thus more likely to perceive danger/threats where there is actually minimal risk, and tech plays a role in both increasing people's anxieties AND in exposing them to potentially threatening stimuli.
And I would ask the question of whether this is something that is better 'fixed' at the technology level (I suppose censorship is one option here) or on the human level (getting people off of public forums if it is causing an adverse reaction).
At any rate, I certainly agree that there is a problem, I don't know if focusing on internet death threats leads to a good solution.
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The problem is with the people, not the technology. Not just the people getting the threats, but the people rewarding those people for overreacting.
It's also not particularly widespread; plenty of people still get (non-credible) death threats and shrug them off. But it doesn't take many to become a problem when there is a taboo on laughing at them and telling them to HTFU.
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