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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?

#111

Post by st3v3r »

beeboop wrote: post #67
apozem wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wr…

I think you leave out some extremely relevant points in your comment and have mischaracterized the situation. Lindy West is one of the poster children for the "fat acceptance movement", a self described activist, cofounded a social media campaign called "Shout Your Abortion", and just released a book titled "Shrill" whose subtitle includes "Feminists don't have to be nice". She has extremely controversial views that…

"I think you leave out some extremely relevant points in your comment and have mischaracterized the situation. Lindy West is one of the poster children for the "fat acceptance movement", a self described activist, cofounded a social media campaign called "Shout Your Abortion", and just released a book titled "Shrill" whose subtitle includes "Feminists don't have to be nice"."

I fail to see how ANYTHING in that justifies the crap she got. You seriously need to reexamine your life if you think it does.

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

#112

Post by st3v3r »

qb45 wrote: post #103
st3v3r wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The secret to dealing with internet trolling is some combination of ignoring it, turning your devices off now and then, and realizing that the character you are interacting with online is not actually a real person." No. Gamergate has proven that "ignoring it" and "turning your devices off" is NOT the way to fix it. Neither of those things does anything.

I learned about the Gamergate drama from HN, well after the fact. This solution seems to have worked for some people :)

Not the people being targeted.

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

#113

Post by astrodust »

bornwithabeard wrote: post #101
astrodust wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just ignore it" is the same as recommending someone leave a party when they're being sexually harassed, as if that's a satisfactory solution. It's punishing the wrong person. Kick the jerks. Ban them if they are repeat offenders. Provide mechanisms for people to shrink or expand how much information is shared and how easy it is to contact them. I'm actually dismayed that to this day very, very few sites enforce a sy…

I've written a response about three times here and just deleted it because I rambled for paragraphs something that could be summed up by saying: i have no fucking idea what the correct answer is. I know services like Slack are kinda helping this along a little bit - I'm a part of one or two Slack groups that I've been invited to by other people, with a bit of a pep-talk at the start of like "here's the sort of shit t…

It's less a problem of "getting rid" of trolls and more a case of giving people control over them instead of it being such a one-sided deal where trolls get to dictate where, when and how you can socialize.

If people feel like they have tools to push back against trolls they'll use them. If they feel like they're powerless, they'll leave. If they leave the troll to user ratio skews a bit higher and might end up poisoning the entire community.

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

#114

Post by astrodust »

kefka wrote: post #108
astrodust wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If your solution is to "ignore trolls" then eventually you have to upgrade your ignore to the entire community. USENET is dead because they couldn't keep the troll/spammer population in check. Smaller forums with more control survived because they were more resilient and didn't offer as big a target.

Nope. Usenet died because of 2 reasons: The burden of carrying alt.binaries The burden of pirate media on distributed Usenet servers from alt.binaries They made a great point of attack for the MPAA and RIAA member associations. And traditionally, ISPs provided these services. I think it was 2006 when Comcast finally pulled the plug. Most other ISPs doesn't even offer a connection at all, which is a shame. But that's…

It was dead long before I saw any copyright issues being raised or before binary newsgroups were a problem.

The infamous "Green Card Spammers" (http://www.wired.com/1999/04/the-spam-that-started-it-all/) shifted the tone dramatically, and from there it was inevitable that the whole community would collapse. There was very limited control over what people could post, USENET was intended to be free and open. This succeeded wildly in an academic environment where if someone was seriously out of line you could address their university and get their account pulled.

As soon as the general population came on and there was no accountability to anyone it was simply a matter of time before unchecked abuse started to happen.

Most providers pulled the plug because the only thing of any value left on USENET was binaries. The discussions were virtually dead.

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

#115

Post by Sir_Substance »

st3v3r wrote: post #110
Sir_Substance wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We should all be able to participate in online communities without the fear of being stalked or harassed. My priority is anonymity and freedom of expression. You're never going to be able to satisfactorily reconcile that with your priority of not making anyone feel uncomfortable. Doesn't it then make sense to stick to different kinds of internet communities? You stick to facebook and real names, I'll stick to twitte…

"My priority is anonymity and freedom of expression. You're never going to be able to satisfactorily reconcile that with your priority of not making anyone feel uncomfortable." I'm 10,000% positive that it is possible to satisfactorily reconcile "freedom of expression" with not allowing rape and death threats. If you can't, then maybe you need to do some serious self examination. "Surely at some point every sane pers…

>That is extremely easy to say when you haven't had this done to you.

You should check my comment history dude. There's a chap named "assocguilt" who on this very site spent about two months stalking every post I made here posting snarky comments because I suggested the software industry should refuse to employ people who have job histories working for dodgy government departments. He started making references to my home city and former employer about half way through the process.

Everyone gets threatened and stalked on the internet. It's like getting burgled. It happens to pretty much everyone at some point. You can let it forever destroy your confidence, or you can recognize it as an essentially random happening and move on.

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

#116

Post by mdip »

Qub3d wrote: post #95
mdip wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are good points on dealing with trolling as an individual. Ignoring it is the best, and most often ignored, advice. It's too easy to get emotionally drawn into a trolling comment, which is why I've always liked the idea of sandboxing trolls in a way that allows them to think their comments are being accepted while eliminating them from the rest of the participants of the site. At a higher level, though, sites a…

As a younger internet participant, I'm starting to see this in Reddit (ironically, backed by Y-combinator, which i've now moved to). It seems as a site gets more and more popular, Sturgeon's Law takes effect and the site approaches a point where about 90% of everything is crap.

Funny you mention that. When I left Digg, I started participating in Reddit because it was far more civil at the time. Thinking about interactions in the last several years across several sub-reddits, it's long suffered from the same problems that wrecked Digg and as a result I've not participated in that community in quite some time.

Hacker News has been pretty rigid with its community standards and though there's (legitimate) complaints about the rigidity, the trade-off encoutered from a "downvote because I disagree" vs "downvote because comment is hostile" is well within my tolerances here.

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

#117

Post by st3v3r »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #115
st3v3r wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My priority is anonymity and freedom of expression. You're never going to be able to satisfactorily reconcile that with your priority of not making anyone feel uncomfortable." I'm 10,000% positive that it is possible to satisfactorily reconcile "freedom of expression" with not allowing rape and death threats. If you can't, then maybe you need to do some serious self examination. "Surely at some point every sane pers…

>That is extremely easy to say when you haven't had this done to you. You should check my comment history dude. There's a chap named "assocguilt" who on this very site spent about two months stalking every post I made here posting snarky comments because I suggested the software industry should refuse to employ people who have job histories working for dodgy government departments. He started making references to my…

Why should we allow it at all? Why should people have to accept it?

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

#118

Post by Sir_Substance »

st3v3r wrote: post #117
Sir_Substance wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That is extremely easy to say when you haven't had this done to you. You should check my comment history dude. There's a chap named "assocguilt" who on this very site spent about two months stalking every post I made here posting snarky comments because I suggested the software industry should refuse to employ people who have job histories working for dodgy government departments. He started making references to my…

Why should we allow it at all? Why should people have to accept it?

Because it's beyond your ability to prevent, and your inevitable failure has terrible side effects.

Are you seriously tell me that facebooks real name policy has made cyberbullying less hurtful?

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