281–290 of 439 posts
If your favorite social network doesn't give you enough privacy to avoid trolls, or even abuse, go somewhere else.
People complain that trolls have the advantage of privacy, and recommend a police state as a solution.
Privacy is a tool. Use it. Don't let anyone take it away.
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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…
Adding to that - all the cool kids these days are saying "baiting" instead of "trolling". The concept (and metaphor) hasn't been lost.
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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.
My city publicly lists assessing information if you own property. Many do. Why are you so set on blaming me for this? Do you want copies of restraining orders I had to file on the two people who came to my house? When do you think someone should start being responsible for behaving dangerously?
If we define "troll" as anyone who posts inflammatory, bad faith, needlessly aggressive, insulting, false, or otherwise unproductive content, then the entire class of authors of the genre of news article decrying trolling and harassment are themselves trolls. >Of course, this is already happening, just out of sight of most of us Why would they consider that to be such a big problem, if it's not bothering those who ar…
If we define "troll" as anyone who posts inflammatory, bad faith, needlessly aggressive, insulting, false, or otherwise unproductive content, then the entire class of authors of the genre of news article decrying trolling and harassment are themselves trolls. 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 '…
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See, this is the problem. Don't blame it on "trolls", analyze where you screwed up and how you could have defended yourself better so you know what to do next time. Then open up shop under a different alias. If you're not vigilant about your own security and safety, no one else will do it for you. Take responsibility for your own actions.
Someone literally came to my house, where I live.
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It's just an extension of the Eternal September. Any community that comes in contact with a larger community that does not respect their customs has problems, but it Usenet, email conventions, Burning Man, victims of imperialism, or a local book club. We have lots of evidence of this. The unfortunate thing is that I can't come up with examples of anything positive coming about as a result: The smaller community is ei…
"the smaller community is either destroyed or weakened, and the larger community rarely replicates the strengths of the smaller ones" this is a great article on the stages of this phenomenon: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
My general thought was influenced by various communities (RPGs, IF, Usenet, coding, etc) I've been part of or witnessed, and how they were unable to survive the swarm of slightly-interested. A few interested are good and healthy: You need the fresh blood to both replace those that leave and keep old-timers engaged. Too many and your norms and conventions are crushed and at a minimum you lose the sense of community, most often you lose the ability to communicate effectively.
There are plenty of historical parallels as well, or at least they seem to be - history is not my strong suit, so while I'll suspect the parallels line up, I won't go asserting it too far and will stick with the communities.
Usenet in the face of AOL is one example (I was there, it was tragic, and though we live in a wonderful age with a lot more information available, I think it's harder to FIND an in-depth discussion). Another example is, say, Slashdot. Originally it was the haven for techies, which made it popular, which made it NOT the haven for techies. After /., I moved through a few attempts communities and currently HN is one of my sources for discussion. While every community has it's nostaglics, I definitely feel like the last 2-3 years have had an increase in people talking about the decrease in quality comments. At this point, I've come to expect that eventually HN will fall prey to popularity and I'll have to find somewhere else to go.
In light of the article you linked, I'm not really sure how it links up. I guess too many "mops" are attracted, and even if you don't get any "sociopaths", just throwing the ratio of people that want it close-to-the-way-it-was to people who this-is-nice-on-my-terms off too much can drown the community in noise.
The disturbing thing is that I feel like the tail of the "mops" there. I'm not the creators, I'm usually not a fanatic. For example, while I'm _willing_, I've never gone through the trouble of contributing to any open source project beyond the most thin of bug reporting or the rare cash contribution. OTOH, I don't think I qualify as entitled, and I try to learn and abide by the norms of each community, so maybe this is a variation of Imposter Syndrome, maybe I just know my limitations, or maybe I'm a mooch.
I will ponder this. It dovetails in disturbing ways with some thoughts I've had about societal futures in a Fifth Wave sort of way. Thanks for the link, I'll have to look into "The Gervais Principle" he mentioned as well.
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>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…
"People are being funneled into "ideological bubbles"" I'm not as convinced they are being funneled. I remember back in high school, my friends and I would sit around in a circle, in meat space. "War is wrong" And we would go around the circle: "yup", "absolutely", etc "Some other liberal talking point" yup, of course, so true.... I feel they are self selecting. Look at the election, when liberals were 3x more likely…
Don't let the electoral map fool you, there are very few places that skew overwhelmingly to one side. Many places may have a majority favoring one major political party, but the minority isn't that small. I live in the northeast, which is reliable electoral votes for democrats but there's not shortage of republicans around.
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> 2. They've never been the focus of a harassment campaign because they're not stupid enough to put their personal details out there on the internet and then be surprised that people will use that to harass them. They also don't feed the trolls in the first place. This is a) simple victim blaming and b) impossible to fix in some situations. Illustration of (b) is that the companies of which I'm a director are a matte…
Can't you use a POB and special business number? It's not "victim blaming". It's just what's so. With the Internet, every obnoxious jerk on the planet can come after you, if you attract enough attention.
I believe it is most certainly victim blaming. The existence of terrible people may well induce one to recommend countermeasures, but the phrasing "stupid enough to put their personal details out there" is first-class (and thoroughly obnoxious) assignment of responsibility for bad behaviour to the victim of that behaviour. It's the same logical construction as blaming rape victims for their clothing.
As for "attract enough attention", the bar for that has been lowered in recent times to "one tweet".
These are not happy times to be a private citizen communicating online in anything but the most closed fora.
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> 2. They've never been the focus of a harassment campaign because they're not stupid enough to put their personal details out there on the internet and then be surprised that people will use that to harass them. They also don't feed the trolls in the first place. This is a) simple victim blaming and b) impossible to fix in some situations. Illustration of (b) is that the companies of which I'm a director are a matte…
Can't you use a POB and special business number? It's not "victim blaming". It's just what's so. With the Internet, every obnoxious jerk on the planet can come after you, if you attract enough attention.
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My city publicly lists assessing information if you own property. Many do. Why are you so set on blaming me for this? Do you want copies of restraining orders I had to file on the two people who came to my house? When do you think someone should start being responsible for behaving dangerously?
Why were you selected over any other business owner? Just seems odd you would be selected at random and then two different people would make an effort to drive out to your house "for the lols".