Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 439 posts

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#191

Post by pdelbarba »

ouid wrote: post #184
pdelbarba wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair point. It is worth noting that they occasionally stalk users and try to de-anonymize them though this is a fairly "niche" practice.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#192

Post by self-diversity »

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…

Political discussions in any forum have rarely been productive, and no number of tools designed to build echo chambers will change that.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#193

Post by weberc2 »

Goronmon wrote: post #87
coldtea wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't that a bit of a tautology? "If I expand the definition of the word 'troll' to include 'authors decrying trolling' then authors who decry trolling become 'trolls' themselves." No, it's not tautological. The parent doesn't propose to "expand the definition of the word 'troll' to include 'authors decrying trolling'". He proposes defining trolls as "as anyone who posts inflammatory, bad faith, needlessly aggressi…

The parent doesn't propose to "expand the definition of the word 'troll' to include 'authors decrying trolling'". He proposes defining trolls as "as anyone who posts inflammatory, bad faith, needlessly aggressive, insulting, false, or otherwise unproductive content". If you assume that the word troll does not mean "anyone who posts inflammatory, bad faith, needlessly aggressive, insulting, false, or otherwise unprodu…

> If you assume that the word troll does not mean "anyone who posts inflammatory, bad faith, needlessly aggressive, insulting, false, or otherwise unproductive content" then someone claiming it does is pretty clearly expanding the definition of the word.

I don't think the OP is advocating for any particular definition, but pointing out that the authors of these articles seem to be using a definition of "troll" (whether or not it's expanded is irrelevant) which would encompass said authors.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#194

Post by anothercomment »

Barrin92 wrote: post #116
anothercomment wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

big, visible spaces of the internet - you mean the media?

sure, those are affected to. The comment sections originally intended for discussion on most big media sites are toxic even with moderation or have become so bad that some news sites have ended the experiment altogether. That's a pretty sad result given that the whole idea was to break down the barrier between journalists and readers.

Not only the comments, the actual articles are full of trolling, too.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#195

Post by Qantourisc »

noobermin wrote: post #173
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…

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…

I'm confused, are we talking about trolls or harassment ?

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#196

Post by self-diversity »

st3v3r wrote: post #27
rjbwork wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your solution is to be given tools to enforce your cognitive bias reinforcing filter bubble? That's not a solution, that's a technology provided lobotomy. A dialogue takes two - if you don't like the dialogue taking place, instead of attempting to quiet the other voices, perhaps just remove yourself from the dialogue.

That's what they're trying to do. But I'm getting really, really, really tired of people conflating the "other side" stuff with the trolling stuff. Look at all the stuff sent to Leslie Jones last summer. Do you honestly think that was meant to be a dialog? Of course not. That was trolling. That was harassment. And that is what people are trying to filter out.

Ideally there are larger lessons learned here than "there are assholes on the internet"

Like I would hope people now recognize that stoking a culture war to market a shitty movie is a bad idea.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#197

Post by ocschwar »

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…

"I don't feel overwhelmed by trolls, except when I read yet another fucking headline about gluten."

You may not feel overwhelmed by trolls, but if you live in the United States, you have been overwhelmed by trolls.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#198

Post by steauengeglase »

Really it all boils down to a lack of community. Yeah I know, it sounds like something the dad from Leave it to Beaver would say.

My favorite example goes back to the days of Quake(World). It was a surprisingly bright and sunny place. You'd pop on to a few community run servers to say "hi". Maybe play a few rounds of whatever mod you were into.

When bad actors showed up, they were punted. If they came back they were literally gunned down (whoever had admin access would put them on a team by themselves and everyone would finish them off). As a result of having access to self-policing the number of bad actors were generally low in a healthy community.

As time wore on the goal became customer retention. I can remember publishers selling this as "curated team building" around the time the first X-Box came out. It all went downhill from there. You weren't a member of a community anymore, you were a license holder and a subscriber, and soon the very concept of community largely dissolved.

A likely "better" internet isn't a world of several thousand descending on a single comment thread. It's a hundred at most aimed at the goal of useful interaction. The internet as it stands doesn't need more pan-continental megalopolises, it needs neighborhoods of people seeking common interaction.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#200

Post by problems »

UncleMeat wrote: post #190
problems wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do it myself. It's completely possible.

Get a PO box or pay a corporate privacy company to forward your mail.

Depends how you operate though I suppose. Unless you're running a physical business from your house you probably don't need to disclose.

Post reply on HN