Godwin's Law – Travis Hoppe – Featured on

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godwins_law

A empirical test of Godwin's Law

On Github thoppe / godwins_law

Godwin's Law

(on comments, Nazis, and internet civility)

Travis Hoppe

thoppe.github.io/godwins_law/

Featured on

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hamzashaban/godwins-law-is-put-to-the-test

Godwin's Law

Mike Godwin (Wired 1994)

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1".

No empirical studies to date! Let's test it!

I think of empirical observations as testable. Sorry Mike...

Why is this important? (aka the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory)

Any conversation is effectively over once someone makes acomparison to one of the worst genocides in history.

An implicit assumption* is that conversationis over once the atrocities of the third Reich are invoked.

...10 second digression on eponymous laws....

Wikipedia page of eponymous laws

how cool is this!?

Dataset

Recently, u/stuck_in_the_matrix downloaded _every comment_ from Reddit.It took 9 months, is 100 GB compressed, and is about 1 TB uncompressed raw json.

  • 105,925,637 submissions (posts)
  • 971,555,203 comments
  • 189,283 invocations of Godwin's law
  • 69,912 when considering conversations of length > 50

Methodology

A Nazi by any other name...

A Google Doc of pure evil

TTG (time-to-Godwin)

happens in the first few hours...

all Godwin posts with >50 comments

PTG (posts-to-Godwin)

happens early comment order ... but comments continue!

all Godwin posts with >50 comments

Godwin invalidated...?

Limiting probability of Godwin is about 0.00065, or 1 out of every 1500 posts.

all posts (Godwin/Non Godwin) with >50 comments

Ongoing research!

What does the null look like? e.g. The Hitler vs puppies?

Does a conversation stop post-Godwin?

What is the quality of conversation post-Godwin?

Can we try to prevent it? Should we?

Is Reddit pathological or representative?

Thanks you!

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Godwin's Law(on comments, Nazis, and internet civility) Travis Hoppethoppe.github.io/godwins_law/ Featured on http://www.buzzfeed.com/hamzashaban/godwins-law-is-put-to-the-test