Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say • Hacker News Board

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#141

Post by skylan_q » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:34 PM UTC

defined wrote: post #129

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.

That's a terrible analogy because you can refine your search nowadays.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#142

Post by ergothus » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:35 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #52

I think it's the opposite: I hardly see any truly malicious trolling these days, especially since 2013. What the author attributes to trolling may just be someone expressing a view that goes against the grain, but is not deliberately intended to provoke a negative reaction and or in 'bad faith', which is a closer definition of what trolling is. The reason why there is less trolling is because many forum communities a…

I'll agree the tolerance for extreme trolling is down, but I envy you your shelter: From trash talk to insults to casual "I'll drop this outrageous-but-believable statement and quietly leave", I see non-extreme trolling as mainstream anymore.

And I define "trolling" as "taking actions or communication with the sole goal of gaining pleasure from someone's misery and/or outrage"

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#143

Post by skylan_q » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:35 PM UTC

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #131

What's that, we're not marching smoothly towards the left wing socialist worker's paradise? Must be trolls.

The new owner of the Atlantic is a hardcore globalist. That means that if you disagree with him or his agenda on the Internet it's because you're just a troll.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#144

Post by woodandsteel » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:36 PM UTC

I think the only way that trolling can be defeated is if people are educated in productive discussion, including why it is beneficial and how to carry it out, and also in how to respond to trolls without simply attacking back.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#145

Post by petre » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:37 PM UTC

michaelkeenan wrote: post #135

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…

The author is a prominent woman journalist, so her experience of the internet probably involves more harassment than most people's.

So should model the internet after a victorian society where proeminent women jorunalists could drink tea, play the piano and have a meaningful conversations about marriage?

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#146

Post by st3v3r » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:39 PM UTC

welanes wrote: post #97

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.

Yeah, but you don't have to go there. That's the point. Trolls aren't winning the Internet, for the most part they're loitering in those corners of the web you'd expect to find them.

For something like /r/the_donald, you're right. But for something more general, like general Twitter, you're not.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#147

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:42 PM UTC

petre wrote: post #145

michaelkeenan wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is a prominent woman journalist, so her experience of the internet probably involves more harassment than most people's.

So should model the internet after a victorian society where proeminent women jorunalists could drink tea, play the piano and have a meaningful conversations about marriage?

Yes. Those are the only two possible options.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#148

Post by bittercynic » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:43 PM UTC

RidingQwerty wrote: post #74

THEY SEE ME TROLLIN THEY HATIN AND HOPING THAT THEY GONE CATCH ME RIDING QWERTY Look bruh, when we got on this internet, we could be whoever we wanted. It didn't matter what flesh machine was punching on the keyboard, if I said I was a white Nigerian female quantum physicist, it's on you to either accept my identity or challenge it. That's how it was for decades. Then social media came and incentivized personal ident…

Maybe they're downvoting because of the belligerent tone, even though the thrust of your argument has some validity.

I believe the downfall of the weird wide web has been greatly exaggerated. There are still plenty of interesting corners of the internet.

Don't let Facebook and its kind prevent you from finding the interesting parts of the web.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#149

Post by sp332 » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:45 PM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #139

No, Internet was always like this (even worse), just there was much less people on it, and expectations were different. Back in the days of USENET there was a lot of quite unpleasant people you'd run into occasionally, but we've seen it as a part of the scene. Like going on a punk concert and someone spills a beer on you or a fight breaks out. It's not nice experience, but it's the part of the show, partially it's wh…

It's not true that nothing has changed. Facebook and Twitter will show you posts that they think you're likely to interact with, and hide other stories. That didn't happen on Usenet. Those services will also recommend that you follow/friend other users with similar interests, which automatically builds up mobs. That's not how the Internet used to work.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#150

Post by pdelbarba » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:46 PM UTC

pdeuchler wrote: post #137

The 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 picture on the evening news.