schmevil | silence=consent & the internet

silence=consent & the internet

Does the idea that silence=consent work on the internet? Without a way to be sure that someone is fully participating in a discussion - let alone aware of it - is this a practical position?

(I should note that I don't actually believe that silence truly equals consent - though it sometimes implies consent - because there are all kinds of reasons why silence might be necessary or compelled).

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The Internet is full of lurkers, so most of the time, silence does not mean consent. It means nobody gives a shit.

About the closest you can come is if you decide to do something and you want feedback. You post, "I'm planning to do X. Does anybody have any objections?" If nobody replies, you can conclude that either there are no objections or the potential objectors weren't paying attention, and go ahead.

Yeah, in that case you made a good faith effort to achieve consent, or hear from objectors and no one spoke up. But that situation implies a... captive audience? Or at least an interested one.

I think it implies an audience. Nobody's really captive on the Internet, but it's possible to build up a group of people who pay attention to what you post. Part of that building process is just plain asking them stuff. What do you like? What do you want to see more of? If I do X, will it cause a problem for you? Sooner or later you'll hit something they care enough to talk about.

Polling your readers and just seeking their input really does a lot to get them feeling involved and invested. The more your involved the audience, the more likely you can take silence as consent. Surely they would have objected, right? But that might require a community culture that prizes openness and critical feedback.

>>But that might require a community culture that prizes openness and critical feedback.<<

It does, and that's up to you to cultivate. Cyberspace is malleable, like Underhill or the Shore Leave Planet. It becomes what we bring into it. So if you set up your blog or whatever as a space that welcomes discussion, and you put some interesting posts in there, and you step on any trolls so they don't terrorize your audience ... then you will develop a community that prizes open discussion. It'll have its ups and downs, but it's definitely worth the effort.

Those places that have very low traffic and interaction are either suffering from poor interfaces (I've had that problem) or they are just not good at engaging people (I've seen that problem). Those that have a fricative atmosphere have that problem because they allow it, which is quite common. Making a place for discussions will require actual work.

It could also mean someone who might've had an objection was afraid to voice it, in certain cases. Especially if there's an overwhelming amount of people vocally not objecting.

goddammit i just need to switch out the keywords for these icons or something, that's the second time i've made that mistake today

Absolutely, which is why I prefer "implies consent" to "equals consent". But even assuming consent can be problematic - what if everyone was at the beach? What if people felt pressured to conform?

I think you can reasonably act on that silence, but if objections come up later, you shouldn't assume that they were formed after the fact.

Also, bear in mind your venue and its trends. One thing I've noticed about LiveJournal is that it usually has the most activity on Monday-Tuesday, then Wed-Fri fall off, and Sat-Sun are mostly dead. So anything important, I post on Mon-Tue. I'm still learning Dreamwidth's patterns.

Yes yes, this is a good attitude to take.

That's true too. If you get a lot of support, though, you can ping again: "Does anyone have a counterpoint to this?" You have to make sure folks don't trash the other side, too.

Yeah, I wonder if places like FandomSecrets would even exist if dissent weren't so often flamed and yelled at.

Some people like ranting and flaming. Better they have a place to gather and not bother other folks. Some people prefer more rational discussions, and they have places too. There's room in the net for all kinds of venues.

Does the idea that silence=consent work on the internet?

I think in terms of modding decisions on a comm, you can take it that way ("We posted several times asking if anyone objecting to our proposed new 'everyone must use the subject line "Snoot Snoot" when posting meta' rule on cap_ironman, and no one objected,"), but in terms of the huge imbroglio things that are what people are generally referring to when they toss the phrase around, I don't think so.

Maybe someone didn't check metafandom/their flist for a couple days and missed the whole thing. Maybe they don't feel like it's their place to speak because they're not part of whatever group's being directly affected (ex: I didn't really feel comfortable joining in the recent Vividcon/access/warnings discussion because I'm not a vidder and am not going to the con). Maybe they are one of the people directly affected by it, and talking about it publicly is too difficult/stressfull/etc. Maybe everyone else has already said what they wanted to say. Or maybe they disagree, but are afraid to publicly say so for whatever reason (social anxiety, peer pressure to agree, "everyone knows BNF X is super-wanky and will tear viciously into anyone who disagrees with her," "I don't want to let Clan Mitchell down and prolong the wank," etc.).

Without a way to be sure that someone is fully participating in a discussion - let alone aware of it

That's the key, I think; guessing who's participating. If you post something to a community you can mostly assume that members will read it - they made the effort of joining it, even if they later took it off their reading filters - but if you make a post that gets picked up by an aggregator like metafandom you should still only assume your subscribers will pick it up - they subscribed to you directly, after all - not metafandom's subscribers. There's only so much of a network that one can rely on when it comes to shared interests or attitudes.

ETA: I'm also wondering if there isn't a whiff of one of those geek social fallacies, the one about friendship (not) being transitive - in this, except it's a mix of association and interests instead of RL friendship. Say I friended Kitty344 because of her posts on growing petunias, but in the wider fandom/internet she's best known for her feminist activism, something I'm only marginally interested in when online. If she issues or "signal-boosts" a call to do with her activist interests and I don't react, am I a bad feminist? She probably knows I'm only there for the petunias, but what will other people in her "circle" (DW term) think? Should I pre-empt expectations by association by putting up a sticky post about things I am and am not interested in, and would such a sticky post itself offend people?

Edited 2010-07-16 10:05 (UTC)

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silence=consent & the internet

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