It seems that trolls are also winning leadership positions across the world, so why wouldn't they win the internet as well?
Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
181–190 of 439 posts
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#182I 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…
Just because you don't have cancer doesn't mean cancer isn't a problem.
No one would have cancer in the internet if they didn't visit cancerous sites. You're hitting yourself.
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say: > People are simply not trustworthy, ... In my experience the vast majority of people are trustworthy. The problem is that the tiny minority of people who are not trustworthy are winning the internet because they have time, and shout loudly. More, some of them do obnoxious and potentially dangerous things. That's why people get upset - because it is a tiny minority that spoil the whole thing. If only we coul…
Sorry to burst your bubble, but citing your experience with people is equivalent to trolling. Your anecdotal evidence doesn't agree with what's been studied in Behavioral Economics. The problem is not that a tiny minority are untrustworthy; the problem is that a large majority lie (a little bit) often and by nature.
> ... citing your experience with people is equivalent to trolling.
That's an interesting point of view - thank you for sharing it. I will think hard on what you say.
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#184The internet is as it always was, the only difference is more people, and more importantly more people without technological prowess and forum/bbs/irc experience, are accessing it and moving increasingly larger chunks of their life to the internet. As someone who fell in love with the internet when I was young because nobody knew I was young , it constantly surprises me when people put intimate details online and the…
Honest question: how would you reconcile privacy-centric communities like Reddit and definitely-not-privacy-centric communities like Facebook? They both have the same patterns of information bubbles generally feed content in similar ways (broadly speaking) and they both have strong troll subgroups. If anything, Facebook might have a lower overall incidence of trolling because you run the risk of having your profile p…
it's not about quantity of trolls, it's about the effect of trolls. No one cares if you're a troll on reddit, because there's no personal investment. You're just an account. There's an upper bound on the damage that can be inflicted on you. That is not the case with Facebook. Reddit doesn't have to do anything about trolls except give people a downvote button.
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#185I 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…
The author is a prominent woman journalist, so her experience of the internet probably involves more harassment than most people's.
sure, but here her voice is at the top of a widely read internet forum, and there's a polite conversation going on about it. This seems like a win for the internet. I can't stress enough that I respect the pain of public personalities in the age of the internet, to the extent that they suffer harassing emails, fake police calls, stalking, and lord only knows what else. That's not what the conversation is about though (those aren't examples of 'trolling on the internet' those are examples of illegal harassment).
The internet is and continues to grow as a powerful tool for people who want to learn, converse, share ideas, entertain themselves, build things, etc. The idea that 'the trolls have won' seems misplaced and strange.
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#186What if most of them aren't "trolls" at all, but rather people who have something to say that is important to them and they choose a method to say it that upsets some people? The base assumption is that many of them are old-school variety: they seek disruption for its own sake. Suppose for a moment that this base assumption should not be taken as axiomatic. What else might motivate such a person? Some of you are quic…
"What if most of them aren't "trolls" at all, but rather people who have something to say that is important to them and they choose a method to say it that upsets some people?"
If the only way you can express your dislike of a black actress is to compare her to an ape, maybe just shut the fuck up.
"It is entirely too easy to dismiss a person if all you think they want is to make you mad with what they've said."
And it's entirely too easy to ignore the problem of real trolling and harassment if you think it's just people with "differing opinions".
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#187I don't think we can cut off trolls because of free speech. Its not even a good idea as some trolls aren't even trolls, they are just loud. Instead, if personal filters were controlled via browser settings or something independent of the actual provider, you could maintain privacy yet have nice content as well. An AI filter would be a good candidate for that.
Wrong. Most internet forums are privately owned, and thus the concept doesn't apply. Plus, trolling and harassment isn't free speech. Conflating the two is insulting to those who are fighting for actual free speech, in places where they will be arrested for advocating that.
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Help vampires do not ask valid questions very often. It's very unlikely a community will have RTFM as a standard response to valid questions (i.e. those that provide context and show effort on the part of the asker), with one exception: when the question has been asked countless times already, and the asker could have seen it if they had made the minimum effort of reading the community's FAQ. In which case, RTFM -- o…
>...one exception: when the question has been asked countless times already, and the asker could have seen it if they had made the minimum effort of reading the community's FAQ. In which case, RTFM -- or rather, a link to the FAQ -- is the best response. This is actually the RTFM-ish situations I hate the most; specifically as someone searching a forum and finding a thread or threads close to my own question, only to…
I suppose not answering at all is an acceptable solution; a RTFM response does imply a certain irritation directed at the asker (for not doing their homework). In the case of help vampires it does nothing more than signalling irritation to other community regulars, since the clueless undead -- by definition -- won't RTFM or even know what that means.
Answering with a link to the canonical question doesn't seem rude to me, however.
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#189The internet is as it always was, the only difference is more people, and more importantly more people without technological prowess and forum/bbs/irc experience, are accessing it and moving increasingly larger chunks of their life to the internet. As someone who fell in love with the internet when I was young because nobody knew I was young , it constantly surprises me when people put intimate details online and the…
The majority of people who say "don't feed the trolls" have never been the focus of a trolling campaign, I've found. It is easy to claim this when you aren't under constant violent harassment and scrutiny. It is not fair to expect everyone else to have a "battle-hardened" stoicism when you've probably never experienced such a life. I've never experienced such harassment myself and used to sing the "ignore" mantra too…
"Don't feed the trolls" was a useful thing to say back when the word meant something far more specific than just "someone behaving badly on the Internet."
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone literally came to my house, where I live.
Why was that information available on the internet? That's the kind of risk you take if you make that kind of information available on the internet. Think of all the possible things someone could do with your address and assume those will be done. That's the type of precaution you should be taking.
It is pretty hard to operate a business and not have this information be available for a sufficiently interested person.