Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say • Hacker News Board

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#291

Post by problems » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 2:29 AM UTC

accountface wrote: post #277

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.

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?

> My city publicly lists assessing information if you own property. Many do.

People tend not to just browse city property listings for fun.

So why were they able to get to that stage - did they have your name? Why? What did you do to piss them off? Could you have done it anonymously?

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#292

Post by Qantourisc » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 2:32 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #267

Qantourisc wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always seen it like this: trolling: silly arguments, maybe attacking a person in a thread about their viewpoint (ad hominem) during a thread. While harassment is insulting a person, everywhere regardless of the thread going on, as well as attacks while the person is not participating in a/the discussion.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#293

Post by mirimir » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 2:40 AM UTC

inopinatus wrote: post #288

mirimir wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, here in Australia, director's information must be place of residence; although there is a process for suppression or replacement based on personal safety needs, for most that'd be closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. What's more, the information is still in the database, it's just masked in standard extracts; the data is one weak password away from exfiltration. I believe it is most certainly victi…

OK, but as director of whatever, perhaps one shouldn't be tweeting controversially. And if one is tweeting controversially, perhaps as part of one's job, then one ought to practice good OpSec.

This isn't a new issue: http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/anonymity-and-doxing-in-the...

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#294

Post by mirimir » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 2:46 AM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #289

mirimir wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is victim-blaming and it's shitty to say that people shouldn't use services like twitter to protect themselves from harassment while omitting that people shouldn't be assholes online in the first place .

Yes, of course, "people shouldn't be assholes online".

But there are at least two problems. One is subjectivity. As in "terrorist" vs "freedom fighter". The other is that there are lots of assholes out there. Billions of them. It's like spam. You just gotta filter it out.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#295

Post by mirimir » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 2:50 AM UTC

Qantourisc wrote: post #292

mirimir wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I always seen it like this: trolling: silly arguments, maybe attacking a person in a thread about their viewpoint (ad hominem) during a thread. While harassment is insulting a person, everywhere regardless of the thread going on, as well as attacks while the person is not participating in a/the discussion.

Yeah, I get that. But what happens is that threads on one site become trolling topics on other sites. So harassment becomes part of the trolling game.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#296

Post by milesrout » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 2:57 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #154

Mendenhall wrote: post #4

What I see is some people dont like foolish words on a screen so they want to clamp down on open discourse to control dialogue because in their opinion its fruitless or mean or whatever they feel. Some silly troll spamming idiotic statements is not nearly the threat that controlling dialogue on the net and deciding what is trolling and what isnt. Socrates would be labeled a troll these days if he was on social media.

If you're using Twitter to communicate with some people, and you're getting a hundred stomach-turning tweets in your feed every day, then you can't communicate with those people any more. Abuse isn't about discourse.

Stop fucking using Twitter!

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#297

Post by milesrout » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 2:57 AM UTC

ksenzee wrote: post #225

milesrout wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. 'Trolling' is not harassment. You can harass someone by trolling them incessantly , but harassing people is not 'trolling' them. Don't use them as synonyms. 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 plac…

> 99.9% of people that complain about being harassed would be well-served by just not using Twitter. This is a cop-out. You may not need Twitter for your work, but a lot of us do. If I can't use Twitter, I lose an important way to connect to others in my profession (specifically in open source). And I'm an unimportant software developer. What about women in journalism? What about women in entertainment? They need Twi…

No it is not the same, it's not the same at all. There's a massive, massive difference between someone on the other side of the world sending a nasty message on Twitter and being harassed in the real world by someone on a dark street at night. These are so completely different that I can't believe that you are so tied up in your views that you forget that. Anyone that would suggest they are the same has clearly not been the recipient of the latter.

People have a right to be safe in the real world. Harassing someone physically or verbally as they're walking down the street for wearing religious clothing or a short skirt is completely unacceptable and makes people not feel safe in their own neighbourhood. It's not possible to anonymise yourself in real life.

That's completely different from having someone send you a nasty message on the internet. Completely different.

Twitter is safe. Nobody can harm you through Twitter. It's simply impossible to harm you through Twitter. What people can do is send you nasty messages through Twitter. You have two solutions:

1. Stop using Twitter, an utterly worthless dis-service that has never produced anything of value, or

2. Get over yourself and grow a thicker skin.

>You may not need Twitter for your work, but a lot of us do.

No, you don't. You think you do, but you don't. The only people that 'need Twitter' are 'social media' people and quite frankly they're the worst part of Twitter.

>If I can't use Twitter, I lose an important way to connect to others in my profession (specifically in open source).

No you don't. Twitter is not a good way to connect to anyone. Nobody can have any sort of technical discussion through Twitter without completely subverting Twitter's model through hacks like multi-tweet messages, self-replying, twitlonger, etc. Twitter has never been, is not and never will be a good platform for discussing anything. Use email, like the adult you claim to be.

>What about women in journalism? What about women in entertainment? They need Twitter, and they need it connected to their real-world identity.

Don't use Twitter. Female journalists have existed for a very long time, much (much) longer than Twitter, and the vast majority of them don't use Twitter. Twitter is a shitty, toxic platform. It's not some sort of official place. It's not a public service. It's not part of our culture. It's a shitty social media site that you should stay away from.

Twitter is not useful to journalists. Twitter is not useful to entertainers (and you'd be a fool to think that hate mail to celebrities didn't exist before twitter. They employed people to filter and reply to their fan/hate mail before, they can employ people to filter and reply to their fan/hate tweets now).

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#298

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 2:57 AM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #273

eikenberry wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More phones should just come with whitelist support. Where calls will automatically go to voice mail if it isn't on your list. I have this on my phone due to lots of wrong numbers and it works great.

Details puhlease.

iOS 10 doesn't seem offer a built-in Contacts whitelist feature, but iOS does expose an API allowing third-party applications to filter-out incoming calls and messages: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099 - someone could easily write an app that would use your Contacts as a whitelist, assuming one doesn't already exist.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#299

Post by WhitneyLand » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 2:58 AM UTC

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 internet is as it always was

I remember buying computer parts via e-mail. Occasionally they arrived before I sent money. Think the odds are fairly low of that happening now.

Sadly, I guess a lot of it is no more complicated than road rage. Being kind, empathetic, a good citizen is negatively correlated with emotional proximity.

Add tons of people? Less emotional proximity = trolls. Add thousands of miles of distance? No public will to help child war refugees in Syria, and so on.

Such of large percentage of the nastiness would never happen face to face or with a neighbor.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#300

Post by freeflight » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 3:12 AM UTC

ahartman00 wrote: post #254

freeflight wrote: post #152

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…

"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…

Keep in mind that in the meat space people consciously chose to socialize with alike people, that's why you called them "friends" and why only "liberal talking points" were discussed.

On social media, this happens on a less conscious level because with every choice you make some algorithm slowly "personalizes" everything you get to see a little bit more, thus it increases surfacing things/people that you are more likely to agree with while pretty much "hiding" anything/anybody that you wouldn't like/agree with. This is a slow process and it's mostly hidden from the user, as such most people are not even aware of being funneled in different "circles" in such a way, so they think their personalized social media reality represents the reality of everybody as a whole.

The big difference to geographic filter bubbles being that those still leave you aware of there being an "other side to the story", case in point: You know there are red states and there are blue states. On social media that other side gets blended out in such a way that it might just as well not exist at all because it won't be surfaced to you unless you make a conscious effort looking for it.