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Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

theatlantic.com

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Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#301

Post by WhitneyLand »

bandushrew wrote: post #224
noobermin wrote: post #173

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 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…

>they cannot reach out into my real life and actually harm me

I would be careful with that assumption. The reason you are not hurt is mostly because people don't want to hurt you. The reward is not high enough.

I'm not trying to diminish your importance, for all I know you could be facebook employee #17 or have gold bars buried in your yard.

But any of the top security guys will tell you safety is a function of an attacker's motivation and resources.

It's not theoretical either, you can google people who took lots of time building up their protections and then challenged a pen test. We're talking people with good above average safety practices, that got owned within 24hrs. Social media, banking accounts, everything.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#302

Post by aaron695 »

noobermin wrote: post #173
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 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…

This is junk.

'Don't feed the trolls' has nothing to do with harassment, it's about the quality of forums and user content.

But to be honest not sure if you are being meta? This is a bit of a troll statement.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#303

Post by ams6110 »

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…

Back when I first started using USENET (late 1980s) it seemed like most people used their real names. Maybe that was just the newsgroups I read.

I didn't really notices the pervasive pseudonyms until web forums and chatrooms started taking off.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#304

Post by milesrout »

mirimir wrote: post #293
inopinatus wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yeah I don't really understand why people want to be anonymous on the internet - and if you don't want people to have your personal information against you, then you do want to be anonymous - but hate the idea that anyone else is anonymous.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#305

Post by ThrustVectoring »

jdietrich wrote: post #243
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #73

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.

Check a Usenet archive and see what the alt.* groups looked like in 1997. Lunatics and assholes have always been present on the internet; the difference is that in 1997, we saw the necessity of creating private spaces that excluded undesirable people. Facebook and Twitter are virtually unmoderated. As long as your comment is legal and non-pornographic, it's probably staying up. The "communities" used by the majority…

And if you have civil debates on Facebook, your social circle is extraordinarily strange.

Also, Facebook is moderated by the person whose wall you are posting on. I've seen effective moderation in this way. If you have friends that value good discourse norms, and you shitpost in the discussion around their posts, they can and will delete your shit and tell you to knock it off.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#306

Post by mirimir »

milesrout wrote: post #304
mirimir wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yeah I don't really understand why people want to be anonymous on the internet - and if you don't want people to have your personal information against you, then you do want to be anonymous - but hate the idea that anyone else is anonymous.

Huh? You don't understand why people want anonymity? Or at least, pseudonymity?

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#307

Post by inopinatus »

mirimir wrote: post #293
inopinatus wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You've conflated "controversial" with "attracting harassment", which I perceive as pretty much in line with your earlier defence of victim blaming. This is something I reject outright as simply another angle chilling the speech of the victims of online harassment, instead of attenuating the bullies.

I'm responsible for my own OpSec, but we both know that public registries have their own vulnerabilities. Again, I think I detect a misattribution of responsibility. Nevertheless that was a single example, not the entirety of the means by which personal information can be gleaned by the unscrupulous.

My counter-position is that it is essential for we who have influence over systems design and policy to avoid unintended negative social consequences in the services we build.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#308

Post by ams6110 »

michaelchisari wrote: post #34
Edmond wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are folks like us working on this: https://www.cipheredtrust.com/ The trick is a scalable means to do identity verification on the internet...basically a way to do it that preserves user privacy and security and it is dirt cheap so everyone can leverage it.

I'm curious about something... I've seen reports that when places started using Facebook comments, they found that the lack of anonymity didn't prevent trolling, in fact, it made everyday people more hostile. Is it just about identity? Would that do anything more than just removing the occasional death threat, instead of actually addressing the more pervasive trolling?

I have found the opposite to be the case. A newspaper I read had a problem with their comments. The comment section on every story was pretty active but almost always quickly devolved into partisan trolling and bickering and name-calling. They switched to Facebook comments to show real names and there was a dramatic change. Now, most stories get no comments. The few that do are civil.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#309

Post by adrienne »

defined wrote: post #125
jumpkickhit wrote: post #56

It think the problem is now too many people are on the internet. Back in the 90's, it was a great place to hang out. In the 2000's, you had fun sites with great user commentary like Fark, Digg, Slashdot, and Reddit. Now everybody and their kid has a cellphone with internet access. Your average person is an asshole, so that's reflected online because of how saturated it all is now.

This is a good point. You know Sturgeon's Law? Something along the lines of "90% of science fiction is crap, because 90% of everything is crap?" Well, if you more or less agree with that, there is just so much more of everything that there is so much more crap. Another commenter expressed this as a signal-to-noise ratio problem. It is that, but it is also that O(N) is bad news for very large values of N.

*Sturgeon's Revelation. Sturgeon's Law was actually something else Ted said: "Nothing is always absolutely so."

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#310

Post by dredmorbius »

ams6110 wrote: post #303
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…

Back when I first started using USENET (late 1980s) it seemed like most people used their real names. Maybe that was just the newsgroups I read. I didn't really notices the pervasive pseudonyms until web forums and chatrooms started taking off.

Keep in mind that username policies were often specified by the institutions people were connecting through, largely major research universities.

So that may not have indicated personal choice.

(My own early / Usenet handles were ... pseudonyms.)

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