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What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

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Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#31

Post by threatofrain »

boopuyy1 wrote: post #27
threatofrain wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A straw man is a misrepresentation of someone else's argument, and the poster did not say something anything so unsophisticated as what you have suggested. Your argument, on the other hand...

Not to point out the obvious, but "is she cyberbullying him?" and "Should her access to Twitter be cut off" are both clearly attempting to misrepresent the argument of the other side. Just because they are rhetorical questions doesn't mean it isn't obvious what the poster is implying.

This is the parent-level post. There's no dishonest misrepresentation of anyone. The poster also didn't even come close to suggesting anything so unsophisticated as "therefore cyberbullying can't exist in any form!"

That is an awful misrepresentation.

The paragraph in question basically pushes the conversation toward, "Where are the brightlines?"

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#32

Post by DanBC »

stonogo wrote: post #26
DanBC wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "solution" means many people have to not use the internet. Sucks to be them, I guess. Meanwhile, people saying they want to rape you, or posting images of dead children to you, or posting your address and saying they're going to murder you, get to carry on without hinderance.

That behavior is illegal regardless of the medium. Report it to the police. It has nothing to do with the internet.

Wait, parent post is saying to just ignore it. You're saying to report it to police.

Which is right?

Thousands of reports are made to police each year. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24160004

> About 2,000 crimes related to online abuse are being reported to the police in London each year, according to new figures.

Over a thousand reach the threshold for court action: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23502291

> More than 1,700 cases involving abusive messages sent online or via text message reached English and Welsh courts in 2012, the BBC has learned after a Freedom of Information request.

The criado-perez trolls were enabled by the Internet. They saw other people trolling and thought it was okay; they were able to create many accounts rapidly; they were able to send very many messages.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#33

Post by voidz »

beeboop wrote: post #18

If you're so sensitive that your day is ruined or you feel uncomfortable by what a random, anonymous idiot says on the internet, you need to either A. Stay off the internet or B. Only participate in communities where you control who has the ability to post content you see (i.e. facebook). The world doesn't owe you a safe-space hugbox. Trying to censor people for being mean is just as shitty as trying to censor them f…

I know this one! The good answer is: A.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#34

Post by mdip »

I've wondered about this for a while. There's no shortage of dicks[1] on the Internet. It's too easy to spout off and attack someone online in a way you'd never do "in person" and there's plenty of people who make a sport of it. For the former, there's not much that can be done, for the latter, I think there are a few solutions (variations of which I've seen tried).

Personally, I think it starts first with community standards and moderation. Hacker News, Stack Overflow and such do a pretty good job already. You get a share of jerks here and there but by and large the community self-filters the tone[2] as much as the quality of the comments.

When the inevitable trolls appears, one of the best approaches I've seen is to silence them without their knowing it. I wonder how often this practice is figured out and remediated by creating a new account. It'd be possible to extend this further by categorizing troll posts and selectively providing them to each other (as well as providing all replies) so that they think "it's working" and don't bother switching accounts, all the while hiding all of the trash from everyone else. Perhaps that's a lot of wasted energy but I'd be interested in hearing if something like that has been tried anywhere.

[1] That word always seems to describe the behavior best, to me. I'll use "jerk" from now on. :)

[2] I've always believed that you can say "someone/something is wrong on the internet!" without having to be a jerk about it and have seen many examples of such on Hacker News and the StackExchange family of sites. Those who cannot lack creativity and are, unfortunately, less likely to have their (possibly) valid arguments heard.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#35

Post by jessaustin »

fweespee_ch wrote: post #29
jessaustin wrote: post #7

TFA mentions Twitter at the beginning, but doesn't follow up at all with how terrible their interface is and has been for targeted users. The "solutions" discussed in TFA require the coordinated voluntary actions of users and site administrators, and are therefore impractical. We need instant technical solutions. It should be possible to "un-@" any other user, with no questions asked. That is, after 'alice takes this…

> That is, after 'alice takes this step with respect to 'bob, no matter how many times 'bob includes the string "@alice" in his tweets, neither 'alice nor any of her followers would ever see those tweets or any other by 'bob. This would not be difficult, and would make Twitter much less threatening. The problem with is then @alice controls whose tweets I can read if I want to follow her content. :/ Just because I wan…

OK, split it down the middle. If you're already a @bob follower when you start following @alice or when @alice un-@s @bob, whichever happens later, then @alice's action has no effect on you. Even if @bob has been hidden from you by @alice's action, it only affects internal-to-twitter links like retweets. If you have a link directly to @bob or his tweet from Google or from an email, you can follow it successfully, and that action removes the hiding effect for you. These extra complications would probably be good for @alice, since it would make it much less obvious to bullies that she had taken this action in the first place. (Yes, if @bob has observant friends, they'll notice eventually, but that's probably OK.)

I agree with you, the main point is that @alice doesn't have to smell @bob's shit anymore.

The point isn't to nail it down exactly right here and now. The point is that this is a discussion that should have taken place many times at Twitter, and we should see some concrete results by now, rather than fluffy PR-focused fake-internal memos to the effect of, "ok guys now we gotta try hard!"

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#36

Post by lloyd-christmas »

DanBC wrote: post #16
CPLX wrote: post #8

I feel like an odd man out every time this topic comes up. Like I'm sure many others here I've been involved in online communities and discussions in some form or another since it was all green text on a black background, and I don't think things are any different now than they have ever been in any way that really matters. The secret to dealing with internet trolling is some combination of ignoring it, turning your…

Your "solution" means many people have to not use the internet. Sucks to be them, I guess. Meanwhile, people saying they want to rape you, or posting images of dead children to you, or posting your address and saying they're going to murder you, get to carry on without hinderance.

> Your "solution" means many people have to not use the internet.

Where was that said? I don't see this comment at all. "turning your devices off now and then" is akin to stepping out of a discussion when you start to take things personally. That doesn't mean you are banned from all conversations. It's healthy to take a break.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#37

Post by Zikes »

DanBC wrote: post #32
stonogo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That behavior is illegal regardless of the medium. Report it to the police. It has nothing to do with the internet.

Wait, parent post is saying to just ignore it. You're saying to report it to police. Which is right? Thousands of reports are made to police each year. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24160004 > About 2,000 crimes related to online abuse are being reported to the police in London each year, according to new figures. Over a thousand reach the threshold for court action: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology…

You're discounting the possibility that there's a difference. There's varying levels of harassment, and it should be up to the victim's discretion as to how severely it should be treated. If person A calls person B a jerk on Twitter, that's easily enough ignored (unless there's a pre-existing personal or parasocial relationship between persons A and B that would make "jerk" sting more than it otherwise would), but if person A organizes a campaign involving all of their followers whose sole intent is to make person B feel threatened then that's an entirely different matter.

The hardest part of dealing with online harassment and "trolls" seems to be drawing that line, or even acknowledging that it exists.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#38

Post by miguelrochefort »

There is no such thing as a troll.

There is such a thing as people being presented with content that's irrelevant to their interests.

I better way to semantically express what we need, as well as a recommendation system that goes with it, is what we lack today.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#39

Post by apozem »

beeboop wrote: post #18

If you're so sensitive that your day is ruined or you feel uncomfortable by what a random, anonymous idiot says on the internet, you need to either A. Stay off the internet or B. Only participate in communities where you control who has the ability to post content you see (i.e. facebook). The world doesn't owe you a safe-space hugbox. Trying to censor people for being mean is just as shitty as trying to censor them f…

This "toughen up" sentiment sounds nice in theory but it's absurd in practice. Listen to writer Mindy West's story on This American Life about confronting one of her worst trolls [1]. Her troll made a fake Twitter account in the name of her dead father just to mock her. That's grotesque.

Not being online or in a community not full of jackasses (what you derisively call a "hugbox") isn't an option for West. She's a writer who has to be on the internet and engaged with social media to do her job.

Before you say "Well if you can't handle that, get another job," think about that statement. You're normalizing people being jackasses and blaming their victims for trying to be regular people doing their jobs. You are literally saying, "It's your fault for being on the internet, what did you expect?"

West is a good example of how ridiculous this mentality is. We should all be able to participate in online communities without the fear of being stalked or harassed. Frankly, if the mostly white, mostly male tech community was less so, they might actually understand that.

This kind of victim-blaming is absurd. I understand a lot of people in tech are fond of free speech principles (and rightly so, they're important) and edgy South Park libertarianism, but this is not the right hill to die on.

[1]: http://www.themarysue.com/this-american-life-trolls/

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#40

Post by fixermark »

beeboop wrote: post #18

If you're so sensitive that your day is ruined or you feel uncomfortable by what a random, anonymous idiot says on the internet, you need to either A. Stay off the internet or B. Only participate in communities where you control who has the ability to post content you see (i.e. facebook). The world doesn't owe you a safe-space hugbox. Trying to censor people for being mean is just as shitty as trying to censor them f…

You're missing the outsized effect of mass-coordination allowing for thousands of people to harangue someone else on the Internet. Additionally, (A) isn't really an option in the interconnected world where (1) if you want to do business, you're probably doing it online to some extent and (2) trolls will now step up their 'game' to target people physically (in ways that are still asymmetric and hard for real-life law enforcement to interdict).

I don't have a good solution for this, other than to observe that there are some kinds of free expression that even Americans draw some solid lines against; when a civil demonstration becomes a riot, the police come to break it up (and, yes, the question of whether something is 'a civil demonstration' or 'riot' is one that can be debated ad nauseum by participants and observers; the presence of legal authority to break up a riot is what is undisputed).

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