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 a
comparison to one of the worst genocides in history.
An implicit assumption* is that conversation
is 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...
TTG (time-to-Godwin)
happens in the first few hours...
PTG (posts-to-Godwin)
happens early comment order ... but comments continue!
Godwin invalidated...?
Limiting probability of Godwin is about 0.00065, or 1 out of every 1500 posts.