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BBC confronts Facebook troll

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Re: BBC confronts Facebook troll

#111

Post by snowwrestler »

zedshaw wrote: post #53
rdouble wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do have the right to anonymous speech in the USA as upheld by the Supreme Court in McIntosh vs. Ohio in 1995: http://www.acluohio.org/about/historicacluohiolitigation.asp... and again in Watchtower Bible vs. Stratton in 2002 http://epic.org/free_speech/watchtower.html

Wrong again. First case she didn't have to put her full address on, but everyone knew who she was because she was actually walking around giving them out and she didn't mislead them. Second case is about religious freedom and the government not having the right to out members of a religion. Neither of the cases are about a person being totally anonymous, or someone spewing hate speech anonymously, or someone bullying…

By default, all speech is presumed to be permitted under U.S. law. The First Amendment, and related court cases, concern the power of the government to limit speech--not the right of free speech itself. So, to make the case that anonymous speech is not a right in the U.S., you would need to show a case where the Supreme Court specifically ruled that the government may limit anonymous speech. I'm not aware of any such case.

Re: BBC confronts Facebook troll

#112

Post by walkon »

zedshaw wrote: post #53
rdouble wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do have the right to anonymous speech in the USA as upheld by the Supreme Court in McIntosh vs. Ohio in 1995: http://www.acluohio.org/about/historicacluohiolitigation.asp... and again in Watchtower Bible vs. Stratton in 2002 http://epic.org/free_speech/watchtower.html

Wrong again. First case she didn't have to put her full address on, but everyone knew who she was because she was actually walking around giving them out and she didn't mislead them. Second case is about religious freedom and the government not having the right to out members of a religion. Neither of the cases are about a person being totally anonymous, or someone spewing hate speech anonymously, or someone bullying…

> People say like to say the constitution allows anonymous speech but it doesn't by any stretch

Source?

Re: BBC confronts Facebook troll

#113

Post by snowwrestler »

darklajid wrote: post #22
coryl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we can't forget that even trolls have day jobs, bosses, friends, family, acquaintances. This particular troll wrote some mean, racist, inhumane comments. He wants attention, but not to his real self, which is why he posts under a fake account. So as a society, what do you do with such offenders? Freedom of speech wasn't really meant to protect garbage like that. Well, one option is you can publicly shame him, o…

So .. we form a mob and lynch them? If I forget my 'ignore them' position for a second: Either they do violate the law or they don't. If they do, the law is responsible here, not you/we. If they don't, it's a rather weird idea to hunt them down and blackmail them to stop that behavior or you're telling the employer/his wife/his mom about those Facebook posts. Let's focus on improvements to moderation systems and teac…

It's free speech both ways. The troll is free to post nasty stuff on the web, and other people are free to tell his acquaintances that he did it.

Re: BBC confronts Facebook troll

#114

Post by panacea »

sien wrote: post #106

It's ironic on a site called 'hacker news' where everyone knows what the older 'proper' definition of hacker people don't seem to care or even to point out what the older, 'proper' definition of troll is. Fortunately wikipedia still has in their definition: In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, cha…

"a troll is someone who posts inflammatory ... messages in an online community ... with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response"

Isn't that exactly what he was doing?

Re: BBC confronts Facebook troll

#115

Post by pyre »

IanDrake wrote: post #58
joering2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow thats actually crazy! designing a simple bootstrap website that "failed" and later on Craiglist reported it somewhere that your future may depend on?? can you share some more details?

No, the mortgage broker did a google search on me, my wife, and my corporation. They found NotifyWire.com where I released the details of the Cease and Desist letter sent by Craigslist. Since my income comes from my company (though mostly from consulting activities) the broker thought the underwriters might think my income future was in jeopardy. He told me mortgage underwriters are doing web searches on applicants,…

Wouldn't it have been possible to just get Craigslist to submit some sort of documentation saying that they wouldn't sue you so long as the site remained offline?

Re: BBC confronts Facebook troll

#117

Post by YmMot »

roguecoder wrote: post #83
YmMot wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use the phrase "outed", which to me implies public exposure, so my post is based mostly on that premise. If that's not the case, please just clarify and ignore the applicable parts. In theory that sounds nice, and to a certain extent there are some similar systems in place already...but I just don't see it working that well overall. We already have a system like this for sex offenders, and it's got some serious i…

Well, Sex Crime Notification laws do appear to have a deterrent effect: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/231989.pdf So it may be that allowing trolls to be traced back to their original communities and their remarks publicized would be effective.

It has a small deterrent effect on first time offenders. However, the study also notes that it does not significantly affect repeat offenders, there's little difference in how "dangerous" (likely to reoffend) registered offenders are vs ones who forget/refuse to be registered, putting the list online had little effect. It also notes that in terms of community safety, it may be harmful because it encourages offenders to plea to non-sexual charges and the courts to allow them to due to the scarlet letter nature of the registry.

Systems like we are discussing can and do exist, I just don't see them as a necessary or particularly effective solution...especially when compared with the necessary trade-offs.

Look at AOL, which during it's hey-day was basically this sort of walled garden. You needed a phone #, name, address, payment combination to register. Many chatrooms were patrolled by moderators...there were even investigations and "stings" of trouble-makers. If you got TOS'd too many times you were permanently banned.

However trolling, illegal activity, pornography, etc thrived pretty well regardless. It was easy to evade the bans and there was a steady flow of new trolls.

I think the best solution in terms of respect for privacy and effectiveness is a combination of crowd-sourced moderation and intelligent detection of likely "trolling" and problem posters by software.

Re: BBC confronts Facebook troll

#118

Post by moss »

zedshaw wrote: post #53
rdouble wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do have the right to anonymous speech in the USA as upheld by the Supreme Court in McIntosh vs. Ohio in 1995: http://www.acluohio.org/about/historicacluohiolitigation.asp... and again in Watchtower Bible vs. Stratton in 2002 http://epic.org/free_speech/watchtower.html

Wrong again. First case she didn't have to put her full address on, but everyone knew who she was because she was actually walking around giving them out and she didn't mislead them. Second case is about religious freedom and the government not having the right to out members of a religion. Neither of the cases are about a person being totally anonymous, or someone spewing hate speech anonymously, or someone bullying…

You're proposing what sounds like a pretty novel interpretation of the first amendment. Do you have any evidence that it's widely accepted, or that it's correct?

Re: BBC confronts Facebook troll

#120

Post by sien »

panacea wrote: post #114
sien wrote: post #106

It's ironic on a site called 'hacker news' where everyone knows what the older 'proper' definition of hacker people don't seem to care or even to point out what the older, 'proper' definition of troll is. Fortunately wikipedia still has in their definition: In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, cha…

"a troll is someone who posts inflammatory ... messages in an online community ... with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response" Isn't that exactly what he was doing?

But with no style.

Proper trolling is like good teasing, it teaches people about their cognitive blind spots.

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