A new study by researchers from the Harvard University brought forward a unique breakthrough which proved for the Godwin’s theory to be wrong, the research was specifically for the social platform Reddit which is a highly discussion focused website.
This might sound a bit confusing if you don’t already know what the Godwin’s Law is, Well the internet and social media as we all know, is a place of socialization and with human interaction and socialization comes in baseless arguments which goes on for long hours and end up blaming and name tagging each other. There is a specific principle for these arguments and comparisons on the internet. Named ‘Godwin’s Law’ this principle states that when a discussion on the internet starts to grow, the chances of person being compared to Adolf Hitler or other Nazi leaders starts to grow.
This principle over the past decade has proven to be quite true. Discussions on Social Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or almost any other has patterns similar to the ones mentioned in the Godwin’s law. Reddit, however in this study by Harvard researchers broke the pattern.
The Reddit comments in the research proved that the longer a discussion on Reddit goes on, the less likely Hitler is brought up. The research was done on over 200 million Reddit posts on top groups. This is a small number compared to the total number of posts on Reddit, however it is significant enough to prove this.
The Harvard researchers, when asked about the reason behind people not mentioning the name of Hitler or other Nazi leaders as discussion on the internet starts to grow, answered that this is due to the fact that nowadays people while discussing a topic on the internet tend to stick to it thus there is only a limited amount of words they use. The researcher in their papers mentioned that when looking at a large data, these words are rarely used in discussions thus disproving Godwin’s Law.
Read next: The Your Life in Weeks Infographic – Care To See How Long You’ll Live For?
This might sound a bit confusing if you don’t already know what the Godwin’s Law is, Well the internet and social media as we all know, is a place of socialization and with human interaction and socialization comes in baseless arguments which goes on for long hours and end up blaming and name tagging each other. There is a specific principle for these arguments and comparisons on the internet. Named ‘Godwin’s Law’ this principle states that when a discussion on the internet starts to grow, the chances of person being compared to Adolf Hitler or other Nazi leaders starts to grow.
This principle over the past decade has proven to be quite true. Discussions on Social Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or almost any other has patterns similar to the ones mentioned in the Godwin’s law. Reddit, however in this study by Harvard researchers broke the pattern.
The Reddit comments in the research proved that the longer a discussion on Reddit goes on, the less likely Hitler is brought up. The research was done on over 200 million Reddit posts on top groups. This is a small number compared to the total number of posts on Reddit, however it is significant enough to prove this.
The Harvard researchers, when asked about the reason behind people not mentioning the name of Hitler or other Nazi leaders as discussion on the internet starts to grow, answered that this is due to the fact that nowadays people while discussing a topic on the internet tend to stick to it thus there is only a limited amount of words they use. The researcher in their papers mentioned that when looking at a large data, these words are rarely used in discussions thus disproving Godwin’s Law.
Read next: The Your Life in Weeks Infographic – Care To See How Long You’ll Live For?