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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

#321

Post by scythe »

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…

Targeted harassment is only a fraction of all harassment. Some harassment is not easily avoidable, but some of it is easily avoidable.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#323

Post by frik »

kartan wrote: post #63
kordless wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an irrational belief that trolls have infinite time and energy. This is, in fact, the very idea of irrationality, who's concept indicates additional work must be done to determine outcome of choice, either by individual or by group. Note that I did not disagree with your assertions here, but simply seek to restate them in slightly different terms so they may be visualized by others more effectively. Trolls may…

> It is an irrational belief that trolls have infinite time and energy. Unless they are well paid state-sponsored trolls. They still don't have infinite time or energy, but neither we do. > The only way to prevent this is to educate people on the concept of double bind statements, their use in removing choice for others, and the possibility that these concepts may spread virally, on their own accord, in a population…

State-sponsored and company-sponsored trolls with near infinite money are a problem.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#325

Post by problems »

ryandrake wrote: post #209
problems wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We made Nigerian scams illegal. We defend against them partly by prosecuting them. We work hard to reduce the frequency and the impact of them. And guess what? They still happen. We already have the laws to attack the kind of "troll" that shows up at your door in many cases - but guess what? It still happens. Ultimately the law only gets you so far. So we must defend against them in more effective ways - like indiv…

I tell my kid not to run in the street for a reason. On the Internet, you can run in the street all day, and if someone hits you, it's not your fault because "victim blaming is wrong".

Yeah, its one thing to say victim blaming about something that's difficult or expensive (monetarily, freedom or time) - it's quite another to use it to discourage individual defense.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#326

Post by empressplay »

fao_ wrote: post #222
kebman wrote: post #213

That fact is, there are no more trolls than before. No really. There aren't. Not even since the time of Socrates, and we all know what happened to him. There are however a lot of people who'd like to silence pesky individuals and organizations who have recently started winning even more pesky debates, such as all those anti-establishment rednecks, patriots, anti-immigrationitsts and right wingers who got Trump into p…

> We absolutely must have democracy and freedom of speech. You're conflating "Freedom of speech" with "The right to be listened to" and "The right to have a platform". The government isn't going to hunt these people down because they have expressed Foo views, nor is, for example, Google. Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc. as private companies are allowed to decide what they do and do not want on their platform (Excludin…

There's an inherent contradiction in the arguments here.

You can't on the one hand say "people have the right to use Twitter free of harassment" because it's ubiquitous, but then on the other hand say Twitter has the right to censor or ban people whose views it as a company doesn't like. These are contrary positions.

Either Twitter is a "common carrier" and thus has the responsibility to ensure its users have a common standard of experience and ability to access regardless of their political views, or it's not and thus it can both censor users _and_ not respond to their specific concerns because nobody has an inherent right to access it.

You need to choose one of those two.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#327

Post by semi-extrinsic »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #301
bandushrew wrote: post #224

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…

>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 at…

> banking accounts

How would they do this? Access to my bank account requires a password I never use for any other service, and a physical non-internet-connected 2FA token I keep on my person.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#328

Post by SticksAndBreaks »

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…

The only thing that has changed is the ability to demand opinion segragation and discussion protection, without beeing called out as undemocratic hyper-critter.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#329

Post by nebabyte »

jknoepfler wrote: post #67

I don't understand this article at all. I participate in two large professional forums (one for poker, one for development). The professionals are winning the internet there. There are dedicated subforums for trolls and random bs, which are pretty funny sometimes, but serve as an outlet for the garbage. I browse hacker news... It is what it is, I'm happy with it as a content sharing platform. My biggest gripe is the…

> I participate in two large professional forums (one for poker, one for development)

"Large" is subjective, and I'm inclined to argue that anywhere "non-trolls are winning" simply doesn't have the size that forums which fight against 'actual' trolling at its scale do.

A simple BBS system or IRC channel can "let the professionals win" simply by being so niche that the professional : troll ratio is well within the manageable bounds for a handful of mods to be able to casually moderate every so often. Hell, this pattern is visibly demonstrable with smaller 'niche' subreddits and subcommunities. It's the whole "there goes the neighborhood" pattern in its digital form.

"By obscurity" doesn't isn't really an anti-troll 'win', it's just escaping trolls' attention. It only works so long as trolls don't hear about or aren't interested in the forum.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#330

Post by nebabyte »

steauengeglase wrote: post #198

Really it all boils down to a lack of community. Yeah I know, it sounds like something the dad from Leave it to Beaver would say. My favorite example goes back to the days of Quake(World). It was a surprisingly bright and sunny place. You'd pop on to a few community run servers to say "hi". Maybe play a few rounds of whatever mod you were into. When bad actors showed up, they were punted. If they came back they were…

the "community" solution only works at small scale/for niches. Given any degree of mainstream attention, 'just gunning them down' is like fighting the hydra.

Niche sites thus chug along fine, but any generalized effort to form communities falls victim to this. For niche communities on reddit, this has basically become a repeatable lifecycle (not including the countable-on-one-hand subreddits with leadership large and dedicated enough to wrangle their topics into submission.)

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