Shame Storm
As I&#x27;ve mentioned before, one of the interesting things I like to study in a casual way is the effect of social community structures on behavior. At this point it is not terribly controversial that modern social media systems encourage shame storms, via things like easy &quot;viral&quot; sharing, the existence of moderation systems that can be used to nuke any attempt to defend oneself out of existence, and the way modern social media encourages cheap virtue signalling by its nature (if nothing else, because there isn&#x27;t really a way to demonstrate an expensive commitment to anything, everything is cheap words).<p>So, as an interesting constructive exercise rather than just  bemoaning the situation, how could a social system be <i>engineered</i> in a way that it might address the staggering ease with which this sort of shame storm arises, feeds itself, and flings itself against individuals? You can either start from an existing system and try to tame it, or start from scratch.<p>It&#x27;s worth thinking about both because it&#x27;s fun, and because the people who may actually someday fix it may well be here.