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

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241–250 of 263 posts

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

#241
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.

It can't be a great idea to aim for the "ideal" situation if it's impossible to do. So much wasted time. Surely it's a better idea to aim for something that one can control, and is obtainable, even if not easy.

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you change your mind on a verbal agreement? That a court is likely to not find sufficient evidence to enforce it doesn't make changing you mind about it right/ethical once you've gained benefit from the agreement. If I get the community to help me build a orphanage, it is wrong for me to decide I rather do something else with the building once built.

I believe you're conflating laws which are objective and shared with morals/ethics which are subjective and personal. Something legal to you and me can be unethical to you while being ethical to me. Something illegal to you and me can be unethical to you while being ethical to me.

I believe you are confused about the law. Laws are not objective. There are many, many cases brought before the courts where the facts are not in dispute.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaining knowledge for example. What is the point of interacting with others if you continuously offended?

Do you think you could gain knowledge without using slurs and ad hominems? The only reason to do that is to provoke and hurt feelings.

Could I or could anybody? Funny you mention ad hominem and targeting the question to me, implying that I use slurs and ad hominems. :)

I seriously don't care if somebody is smart and I have something to learn I will regardless of her style, slurs or whatever. I learned that in primary school where I was exposed to underpaid teachers who hated everybody who was smart. :)

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you're conflating laws which are objective and shared with morals/ethics which are subjective and personal. Something legal to you and me can be unethical to you while being ethical to me. Something illegal to you and me can be unethical to you while being ethical to me.

I believe you are confused about the law. Laws are not objective. There are many, many cases brought before the courts where the facts are not in dispute.

Can you clarify?

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

#245
post #91
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…

>Hate speech is not tolerated here, and most Canadians are in agreement with this.

Please don't speak for the majority of Canadians. I am not in agreement with this and I speculate that many people living in Canada would object to it as well.

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

#246

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?

Please remember that just because someone says a thing, that does not make it true.

Reddit is not the WHOLE internet. Just because trolls are causing havoc at reddit doesn't mean that they're winning everywhere.

Further any one website isn't the whole internet. Usenet was a unified system, the myraid websites that people troll on right now are not. Facebook is different from Reddit which is different from slashdot which is different from HN which is different from etc.

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

#247
post #217

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.

Words may hurt. No one denied this. Saying words killed because of the actions a person took after being hurt is incredibly disingenuous. Only the person who took the action is responsible.

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

#248
post #171
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…

> People used to love trolls! No they didn't. > crashing the party but having fun with it. I'm sure you and your friends were having fun with it. The people whose parties you crashed? Probably not so much.

>> People used to love trolls!

> No they didn't.

... Poe's law?

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

#249
> Reddit is the Internet.

That's an insane thing to say. I know she's the former CEO but anybody saying this is losing perspective. There are countless communities not on Reddit and they can't be represented by Reddit. I know it's probably a conscious exaggeration but it's getting hard to tell, people take this forum shit so seriously.

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

#250
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never actually saw a post saying "ching-chong cunt". Can you point to one? I searched for [ching chong cunt reddit] and didn't find anything either. I did see lots of posts saying things like "Ellen Pao is LITERALLY Hitler", but not any overtly racist ones that I can recall.

(Edit: removed rudeness.) Here's one. There were lots of others that used the term cunt or used racial slurs. https://np.reddit.com/r/punchablefaces/comments/39dl6s/ching... I mean, it's a comment on a thread in a sub called "punchable faces", the thread links to an Imgur image of Pao labled "ching chong ding dong", has 2,400 upvotes.

Can you point one which wasn't downvoted to oblivion? This one is pretty bad example to give, when you're trying to convince people that "thousands" were of this opinion. I really recommend reading comments in that thread.
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