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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

#41

Post by YCode »

kordless wrote: post #32
wvenable wrote: post #13

The real problem is that bytes are effectively free. Here I am, using up your bytes right now. Using up the bytes on Hacker news. The only limit is my own time, effort, and energy. You think this means that we're all equal; we all have equal access to sharing bytes. But the problem is that trolls have infinite time and energy to post bytes. They have significantly more power and influence than you do because of that…

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…

Some examples would help illustrate your points.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#42

Post by michaelchisari »

the_af wrote: post #37
michaelchisari wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think that hand-holding beginners can be one of the best services a community can provide, and it can go a long way to growing the community. That doesn't mean everybody needs to be teacher/mentor/educator. But the people who don't want to be can also just keep out of the conversation, instead of rudely pointing to some 300 page manual and telling someone with passion and interest to screw off.

Hmm, RTFM is not aimed at beginners (and note: I do agree with the sibling comment that the aggressiveness of the response leaves a bad taste. I do agree pointing to a 300 page manual, without any guidance at all, is unhelpful). RTFM is aimed at help vampires (recommended reading: http://www.skidmore.edu/~pdwyer/e/eoc/help_vampire.htm ). Help vampires do not grow a community; they destroy it. These are people you do…

Sure, I could see that being a problem, but if the question that the "help vampire" is asking is a valid one, then you have to remember that all online conversations have an audience, and that your response is as much to the audience as it is to the person you're directly responding to.

Even just politely linking a similar question and response is better than responding with RTFM.

> RTFM has always been part of the hacker culture

That doesn't necessarily make it a good thing, or anything worth keeping.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#43

Post by syphilis2 »

I don't like the loose language used in this article and others that uses "trolling" as a catch-all for online harassment, violence, privacy violations, and more. It's misleading and gets people riled up as they talk past each other. Conflating 'baiting someone into looking stupid online' with 'sending threats to their family members' muddles the conversation. Worse, it erodes the meaning of the term. I'd call it cultural appropriation but that'd be too obvious.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#44

Post by michaelchisari »

ElatedOwl wrote: post #40
michaelchisari wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is CTR on your radar, but Russia employing thousands of online trolls isn't?

It is; but they're employing shills, not trolls. It doesn't even have to be political, I'm sure we've all seen the forced corporate memes that totally aren't an advertisement.

they're employing shills, not trolls.

I disagree. CTR was known for promotion, shilling, just as advertisers are, but people in Russian employ were known for disruption. They aren't pushing the merits of Donald Trump, Marine LePen, etc., as much as they're fomenting discord through fake news and aggressive bias.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#45

Post by kordless »

YCode wrote: post #41
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…

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 happy. Loss of happiness is not desired, so quitting is not an option given moving may result in loss of happiness.

Let's look at a troll's use of a double bind, with intent to spread the double bind:

> Only by enlisting the full potential of women in our society will we be truly able to #MakeAmericaGreatAgain - @potus

This is a recent tweet by the President of the United States, Donald Trump. Trump presents two concepts, which are both shown to be irrational: 1. "We" do not enlist the full potential of women in society, and 2. "Our" society, America, is not currently great. Linking them together is achieved by saying "only", which implies that #1 must evaluate to truth in order for #2 to evaluate to truth. i.e. If women, as a group, do not attain their "full potential", and do so by choice for all of us, America will not be great again.

"Enlisting" is considered engaging someone in their support of a cause, by either willing or unwilling removal of choice. This statement is, technically, unwilling removal of choice from the group women AND unwilling removal of choice of an individual woman, given she is a member of group women. In this case, the removal of choice is actually done via the hypothesized, and forced, attainment of "full potential" of a woman and women, by "us" (which is really Trump speaking for all of us at this point). This is an impressive play on Trump's part, given this statement, in and of itself, is a double bind. Women, or any other entity or group for that matter, may only achieve their full potential by having internal choice for themselves. No other entity may speak for the potential in another without applying judgment, or removal of choice, from that individual AND be capable of staying rational while doing so.

By tacking on the idea of "making America great", any dismissal of the first concept, which again is itself a double bind, enables the use of blame for not wanting to make America great again. As with potential, America is only "great" if people think it's great. If it is to be made "great again", that implies it is not currently great, which itself is an irrational statement.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#46

Post by maxerickson »

kordless wrote: post #32
wvenable wrote: post #13

The real problem is that bytes are effectively free. Here I am, using up your bytes right now. Using up the bytes on Hacker news. The only limit is my own time, effort, and energy. You think this means that we're all equal; we all have equal access to sharing bytes. But the problem is that trolls have infinite time and energy to post bytes. They have significantly more power and influence than you do because of that…

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…

Look how much more you expended than the person trolling you though. If you are willing to be manipulative, you can hassle people into wasting their time with pretty short comments.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#47

Post by the_af »

michaelchisari wrote: post #42
the_af wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, RTFM is not aimed at beginners (and note: I do agree with the sibling comment that the aggressiveness of the response leaves a bad taste. I do agree pointing to a 300 page manual, without any guidance at all, is unhelpful). RTFM is aimed at help vampires (recommended reading: http://www.skidmore.edu/~pdwyer/e/eoc/help_vampire.htm ). Help vampires do not grow a community; they destroy it. These are people you do…

Sure, I could see that being a problem, but if the question that the "help vampire" is asking is a valid one, then you have to remember that all online conversations have an audience, and that your response is as much to the audience as it is to the person you're directly responding to. Even just politely linking a similar question and response is better than responding with RTFM. > RTFM has always been part of the h…

Help vampires do not ask valid questions very often. It's very unlikely a community will have RTFM as a standard response to valid questions (i.e. those that provide context and show effort on the part of the asker), with one exception: when the question has been asked countless times already, and the asker could have seen it if they had made the minimum effort of reading the community's FAQ. In which case, RTFM -- or rather, a link to the FAQ -- is the best response.

> That doesn't necessarily make it a good thing, or anything worth keeping.

But it does make it not trollish behavior, which we were discussing. Hacker culture was not trollish, this was always part of hacker culture, therefore it's neither new nor trollish behavior.

I think a variation of RTFM, let's call it GentleRTFM, is both worth keeping and necessary.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#48

Post by primitivesuave »

I stopped reading after the third paragraph when I realized the entire basis for this article is a survey given to 1500 "technologists" with a loaded question that basically equates to "is trolling getting better or worse?". First of all, not everyone who could be described as a "technologist" is qualified to answer that question, and people are naturally biased to say things are getting worse. I have seen non-opinionated ways to research trolling, e.g. at a hackathon I saw a couple high schoolers use IBM Watson's sentiment analysis API with Twitter feeds.

In a sense this article is just a more educated form of trolling - someone with an opinion grasps at fallacies and bad statistics to back it up, and uses the Internet to disseminate it.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#49

Post by MR4D »

pervycreeper wrote: post #26

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…

I think it's more of a signal to noise problem. We've had that issue before in society (e.g. the Middle Ages), when information flow was not constructive, and therefore not _additive_. The net result was that society moved sideways, not forward.

Contrast that with Victorian England, where large parts of society had "manners", which allowed for information to be constructive, and society (technology, etc) could evolve.

When the signal-to-noise ratio gets low enough, people leave groups, and progress cannot occur at any reasonable rate.

Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

#50

Post by pcmaffey »

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?

Given that identity is the basis for most trolling, I'd say identity is a poor proxy for trust. Despite what Facebook and the CIA / NSA may want us to believe, there's no evidence that a lack of anonymity/privacy leads to greater accountability.
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