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Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

theatlantic.com

261–270 of 439 posts

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#261
post #109

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.

I agree that /r/the_donald is a poor quality experience, but it's analogous and in response to the poor quality experience of the /r/politics. They're both "circlejerks" that don't allow competing views to be posted. So while you may need to take the_donald with a huge grain of salt, if you're only get your news from left wing site like /r/politics, npr, huff po, new york times, and even hacker news for the most part…

politics might downvote something they don't like to oblivion, but TD will ban you for violating the narrative.

And if by take it with a grain of salt you mean that nothing in there is actually relevant or related to reality.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have multiple internet presence's. My "real" presence is empty of anything except professional presence. LinkedIn, github etc etc. My "real" presence never engages, never debates and is effectively not there except when it engages with the real world via resumes etc. My actual presence is scattered across the internet in multiple pseudonymous social networks and eagerly discusses topics I am passionate about. It oc…

I don't say this to troll you but googling your HN name reveals more than enough to know your real name, where you live and start linking it all to other non-programming hobbies (piano!).

There's an amazing number of people who will disassociate their identities online, but still cross one used name over to an auction or property site, where it's easy to deduce someone's real name v

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

These terms tend to get conflated, especially in parts of the web where people use their real names.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

These terms tend to get conflated, especially in parts of the web where people use their real names.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#265
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the newbies don't understand that "troll" refers to "trolling" as in "fishing troller": evoking the metaphor of casting a net to collect responses like fish. They imagine "troll" as a metaphor invoking the humanoid creature from Scandinavian folklore, which, in the Three Billy Goats Gruff story, is a nasty, unpleasant, violent creature who wants to eat everyone who crosses his bridge: https://en.wikipedia.org…

As always with human language, the word ends up meaning whatever a substantial plurality believe it to mean.

[deleted]

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The internet doesn't magically make social, political, religious, and ideological rifts magically disappear, it just seemed like it did because nobody could associate users with their backgrounds. But one could argue that our modern "Social Media Internet" gives exactly that impression. Whether it's Google, Facebook, Twitter or whatnot: People are being funneled into "ideological bubbles" based on their preferences…

Well, for a lot of the world, Facebook is synonymous with the internet as an idea. In India, FB has negotiated with a lot of mobile carriers to exempt themselves from being counted towards data usage. This means that some double digit percentage of the world thinks that FB is the internet. How can you expect people to not be in a filter bubble when their idea of the net is FB and FB only?

Just in case anyone wants to see the numbers on this, I can't find a better collation.

https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id...

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Harassment is arguably a kind of trolling. And trolling is arguably a kind of harassment. But then there's the ideal of free speech.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#268

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 p…

Reddit's attempting to bridge this gap already by addin a Facebook-like profile where you can build an identity or following based on your screen name.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

These terms tend to get conflated, especially in parts of the web where people use their real names.

Yeah. Total OpSec failure, as I see it. I learned that hard on Usenet.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#270
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some examples would help illustrate your points.

Be spontaneous, is the quick and dirty example. ;) It's hard to have intent to be spontaneous, given it's the inverse of intent. Other examples of internally held double-binds would be jobs, or relationships. Holding a job you do not like in order to live in a place which makes you happy is a double bind. Quitting the job can be imagined to increase happiness, but cause loss of place to live, which itself makes you h…

Thanks! I suppose that makes sense.
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