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Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

theatlantic.com

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Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#121

Post by accountface »

problems wrote: post #101
accountface wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to take down the website for my business and can only accept brick & mortar transactions because of trolls... but sure I guess you can win at your commenting game by claiming everything is shit. I've been running a business with multiple locations for 10 years and I've never had a problem more serious than trolls on the internet doxxing me.

See, this is the problem. Don't blame it on "trolls", analyze where you screwed up and how you could have defended yourself better so you know what to do next time. Then open up shop under a different alias. If you're not vigilant about your own security and safety, no one else will do it for you. Take responsibility for your own actions.

Someone literally came to my house, where I live.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#122

Post by matt4077 »

bigtimeidiot wrote: post #102
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in the top 1% or 0.1% of filtering for quality, IMO. Go spend some "quality time" on /r/the_donald for a more typical experience.

> Go spend some "quality time" on /r/the_donald for a more typical experience. /the_donald has almost 400k subscribers. It is what it is. Do you assume these people are stupid, or do their beliefs and interests (and sense of humour) differ from yours?

Just checked it out. I see a meme with the text: "[..] There is no bigotry here. We do not look down on snowflakes, cucks, neckbeards or landwhales. Here, you are all equally worthless".

> Do you assume these people are stupid

probably, although it's their morality that's more of a problem than their IQ.

> do their beliefs and interests (and sense of humour) differ from yours?

yes.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#123

Post by Chathamization »

I would be interested in seeing more places try posting limits. It's easy for someone to shoot off hundreds of thoughtless messages, but it takes time and effort to make a single thoughtful post. A minority trying to do the former is going to inundate those doing the latter. And for those (probably most of us) who do a bit of both, it's likely that our less thoughtful and more rapid fire output is going to dwarf our thoughtful output (just because the latter requires so much more time and effort).

Even in the cases where someone provides a lot of thoughtful output, a minority of active users can often drown out the majority of visitors. It would be interesting to see what kinds of communities would develop if there were efforts to encourage more even output.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#124

Post by gatsby99 »

ElatedOwl wrote: post #71
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't found sources or people being confirmed as CTR shills after the election was over. If you could provide some I'd appreciate these. I agree shills can be a problem but I haven't found conclusive evidence of their influence.

Sure, he's a compilation post from Reddit. https://np.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/56u8vz/new_evide...

Good read

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#125

Post by defined »

jumpkickhit wrote: post #56

It think the problem is now too many people are on the internet. Back in the 90's, it was a great place to hang out. In the 2000's, you had fun sites with great user commentary like Fark, Digg, Slashdot, and Reddit. Now everybody and their kid has a cellphone with internet access. Your average person is an asshole, so that's reflected online because of how saturated it all is now.

This is a good point.

You know Sturgeon's Law? Something along the lines of "90% of science fiction is crap, because 90% of everything is crap?"

Well, if you more or less agree with that, there is just so much more of everything that there is so much more crap.

Another commenter expressed this as a signal-to-noise ratio problem. It is that, but it is also that O(N) is bad news for very large values of N.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#126

Post by M_Grey »

pervycreeper wrote: post #26

If we define "troll" as anyone who posts inflammatory, bad faith, needlessly aggressive, insulting, false, or otherwise unproductive content, then the entire class of authors of the genre of news article decrying trolling and harassment are themselves trolls. >Of course, this is already happening, just out of sight of most of us Why would they consider that to be such a big problem, if it's not bothering those who ar…

>The technology community must pick between enabling universal surveillance and censorship, or protecting the privacy of the vulnerable, including those who hold minority opinions and express themselves in ways that could be deemed "unpleasant".

They chose a long time ago. A lot of the issues that are slowly coming to the surface for most people (police/surveillance state, endless war driven by military-industrial complex and politics, climate disaster, etc...) are old issues. They're finally surfacing because most of them are so far beyond criticality that they're actually detonating in our midst.

These choices have been made again and again by the few people who really bother to engage with these issues, and we lost. This is what losing all of these battles over decades looks like when the bill starts coming due.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#127

Post by [deleted] »

aantix wrote: post #104
jknoepfler wrote: post #67

I don't understand this article at all. I participate in two large professional forums (one for poker, one for development). The professionals are winning the internet there. There are dedicated subforums for trolls and random bs, which are pretty funny sometimes, but serve as an outlet for the garbage. I browse hacker news... It is what it is, I'm happy with it as a content sharing platform. My biggest gripe is the…

Oh man, have you ever tried to have a political discussion on Facebook? Even citing sources, trying to be diligent... And then, the only response you get is... "that's not right!". And that response is somehow given equal weighting? I actually wish Facebook, the place where a majority of Internet discussion probably occurs, WOULD institute a dislike button and suppress those comments that get down voted too much (lik…

[deleted]

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#129

Post by defined »

return0 wrote: post #38

If you give people a big wall and free spray paint, of course they 'll fill it with dicks. Unlike real life, there is nobody to paint over them. Trolling is a natural part of the internet, its the price for having relative freedom, i dont have a problem with it. If that puts off people who don't have the capacity to tune it out, all the better.

Sure, but if the big wall is a map, and you're trying to find something on that map, all the dicks make it so much harder to find it that giving up in despair is often the reaction.

It's hard to tune out a cubic mile of dicks when you're looking for a pearl.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#130

Post by kristianc »

MR4D wrote: post #49
pervycreeper wrote: post #26

If we define "troll" as anyone who posts inflammatory, bad faith, needlessly aggressive, insulting, false, or otherwise unproductive content, then the entire class of authors of the genre of news article decrying trolling and harassment are themselves trolls. >Of course, this is already happening, just out of sight of most of us Why would they consider that to be such a big problem, if it's not bothering those who ar…

I think it's more of a signal to noise problem. We've had that issue before in society (e.g. the Middle Ages), when information flow was not constructive, and therefore not _additive_. The net result was that society moved sideways, not forward. Contrast that with Victorian England, where large parts of society had "manners", which allowed for information to be constructive, and society (technology, etc) could evolve…

One of the norms of Victorian society was that once you acquired wealth, you were meant to behave in a way that was befitting of that status - including in terms of morality. And indeed middle class and wealthy Victorians poured money into / agnonized over the condition of the working class.

What I believe you are seeing now is the entrenchment a significant minority of people who not only feel they have not 'won', but that the rich and well connected have broken that social contract. They, unsurprisingly, don't feel like playing the 'manners' game if they feel the system is abusing them.

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