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Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

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Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#221

Post by serve_yay »

pekk wrote: post #205
serve_yay wrote: post #62

What I really care about: Who gets to decide who is a troll and who isn't?

People have been trying to automate moderation and make it perfectly fair for a long time now. It's basically impossible. If you do it at all, you have to use people, which makes it suck. If you don't do any moderation, you get a sewer, and then you get shut down. You can try to exclude only illegal stuff and stand on free speech, but in terms of content you still have a sewer. To be fair, most of the stuff that move…

That's not really what I mean. I have no problem with, say, reddit deciding that a "fat people hate" forum is not fit for its site. It's their site, they get to decide that.

Rather, what I am concerned about is the broader conversation which takes place in articles like TFA, by prominent people such as Pao, and by journalists. This broader conversation uses the word "troll" - but who gets to decide which opinions are in that bucket, and therefore not acceptable?

It is easy to say racists are trolls, it's uncontroversial for the most part. But what about, say, gender-critical radical feminists? These are people who challenge certain received beliefs around what gender means, or should mean. They are not hateful, and they are 100% serious about making the world better for women, yet are often accused of transphobia (and worse) for what they believe. They get death threats (from other people who also call themselves feminists) and the rest of it. And it would be so easy to place them in the "troll" category.

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#222

Post by ewzimm »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #203
ewzimm wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss those days when I was proud to be a troll, when it meant tricking people into thinking in ways that they normally wouldn't. People used to love trolls! Of course, it didn't just mean that. There were also troll raids when friends would get together and make silly comments on every thread they could find, crashing the party but having fun with it. The incendiary ones used to be called flamers, but I think that…

I think I remember the term flamers being retired as people began to misinterpret it as a negative term for homosexual individuals (based off of flamboyant). This would've been around a decade ago, maybe a bit more, so it could just be a false memory.

Yes, I think that's definitely it. That's what I meant by being too trollish. It's too much like something a troll would say. But I never even realized the anti-gay term was based on flamboyant, although it makes perfect sense. Thanks for pointing that out.

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#223

Post by lingben »

keedot wrote: post #217
lingben wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but some things are self evident and it makes no sense to waste public funds on them. If you hurt my feelings, that's neither a criminal nor civil offense. "Sticks and stones..." silly me, I thought we all learned this in elementary school

And yet teenagers still commit suicide because of online harassment. So words do hurt, and can even kill.

I didn't say they don't. I said that 'hurt feelings' are not grounds for a criminal nor civil legal case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#224

Post by DanBC »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #201
babygoat wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit does not owe you free speech. You can say whatever you want, and they can choose not to broadcast it to millions of people.

Or does it? Now, no company would owe you freedom of speech just for existing, but in the previous promises Reddit made, it did promise to be a bastion of free speech. It wasn't an explicit contract that they can be taken to court over, but do we really want to say that, unless there is an explicit contract, there cannot be any agreements?

Can't they change their mind?

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#225

Post by EvenThisAcronym »

keedot wrote: post #91
lingben wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." - Ralph Waldo Emerson edit: although tangentially relevant, this case in Canada is hair raising: http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchfor...

Christie Blatchford's skew is quite heavy in this reporting. I've seen the other side of the argument with some of the behaviours and tweets in question, and it's not so clear cut. I would definitely feel harassed by this individual, and in Canada, we do not claim to have the free speech as defined in America. Hate speech is not tolerated here, and most Canadians are in agreement with this. You can have a difference…

>...and in Canada, we do not claim to have free speech and defined in America. Hate speech is not tolerated here...

One of the worst aspects of our country IMO. I wish we had millions of people willing to defend the basic right to say what you want.

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#226

Post by smacktoward »

msandford wrote: post #58

The trolls won the war for usenet too. It didn't destroy the internet. Just because trolls are making reddit unpleasant doesn't mean that they will destroy the internet. reddit isn't the whole internet, not even close! Furthermore, supposing that reddit users revolting against the clamping-down of reddit management constitutes the "biggest trolling attacks in history" is a little disingenuous. What about all the peop…

> The trolls won the war for usenet too. It didn't destroy the internet.

It sure as hell destroyed Usenet, though. I remember, because I was there when it happened.

At least when we lost Usenet there was somewhere else for all those discussions to migrate to: the Web. If they destroy the Web, where are the discussions supposed to go then?

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#227

Post by Lawtonfogle »

msandford wrote: post #220
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better example would be anti-vaxxers. You can point to actual cases of dead children and say this is the penalty of free speech. Speaking of which, why is anti-vaxxer rhetoric protected even though it contributes to the harm of children. I can think of illegal speech that was banned because of it being harmful to children (and which is likely less lethal than anti-vaxxer rhetoric).

> I can think of illegal speech that was banned because of it being harmful to children (and which is likely less lethal than anti-vaxxer rhetoric). That's very interesting. Could you elaborate please? I'd really like to know more.

Images/videos are considered speech. There was actually a few different First Amendment cases concerning different images/videos being made illegal, but of those only one ban clearly stuck (a second ban was struck down but reinstated with slightly different laws and is still waiting a second SCOTUS ruling on it).

(As a side note to any lawyers, is text protected speech when it originates as a description of an actual harmful act of which video/images would not be legal speech? I don't think it was made illegal, but I wonder if it could be (at least if it were at some level of detail).)

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#228

Post by songshu »

jon-wood wrote: post #124
songshu wrote: post #29

Misquoting Bart Simpson "If you never experience the abuse, you'll never get desensitized to it", and with that in mind, and talking here only about written abuse, these are my favorite three outcomes for, let's say, my daughter: 1) No one abuses her online 2) People abuse her, she dismisses it as noise 3) People abuse her, and she reacts and attempts to control it I think we should be aiming for number 2.

Why do you believe it's better for your daughter to receive abuse and dismiss it than not to receive it in the first place? If we're aiming for ideals, let's go for the ideal of a world in which people aren't subjected to so much abuse that they just filter it out as background noise, because that sounds like a shit future.

To be clear, I presented the options in the order that I favor them. It's just that I see 1 as unobtainable.

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#229

Post by [deleted] »

jon-wood wrote: post #124
songshu wrote: post #29

Misquoting Bart Simpson "If you never experience the abuse, you'll never get desensitized to it", and with that in mind, and talking here only about written abuse, these are my favorite three outcomes for, let's say, my daughter: 1) No one abuses her online 2) People abuse her, she dismisses it as noise 3) People abuse her, and she reacts and attempts to control it I think we should be aiming for number 2.

Why do you believe it's better for your daughter to receive abuse and dismiss it than not to receive it in the first place? If we're aiming for ideals, let's go for the ideal of a world in which people aren't subjected to so much abuse that they just filter it out as background noise, because that sounds like a shit future.

[deleted]

Re: Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

#230

Post by [deleted] »

jon-wood wrote: post #124
songshu wrote: post #29

Misquoting Bart Simpson "If you never experience the abuse, you'll never get desensitized to it", and with that in mind, and talking here only about written abuse, these are my favorite three outcomes for, let's say, my daughter: 1) No one abuses her online 2) People abuse her, she dismisses it as noise 3) People abuse her, and she reacts and attempts to control it I think we should be aiming for number 2.

Why do you believe it's better for your daughter to receive abuse and dismiss it than not to receive it in the first place? If we're aiming for ideals, let's go for the ideal of a world in which people aren't subjected to so much abuse that they just filter it out as background noise, because that sounds like a shit future.

[deleted]
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