They say this after years of study of FB and Twitter, but anyone who participated actively of USENET already knows that this is the inevitable outcome.
Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
401–410 of 439 posts
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trolling is scraping the bottom, stirring the muck up into a net; not quite analogous to luring/baiting, a much more sporting tactic.
No, that's trawling. Trolling is also called longline fishing, with many baited hooks.
Ohhhhh... it should be called trawling then! : P
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#403I 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…
Oh man, have you ever tried to have a political discussion on Facebook? Even citing sources, trying to be diligent... And then, the only response you get is... "that's not right!". And that response is somehow given equal weighting? I actually wish Facebook, the place where a majority of Internet discussion probably occurs, WOULD institute a dislike button and suppress those comments that get down voted too much (lik…
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Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
> LE have abdicated their responsibilities in this area. On the contrary. One of my side-projects is involved with the running an Internet-to-PSTN wake-up-call service. The service is free-to-use in the US (because domestic calling is so cheap) which also means it gets used by criminal-harassers who send wake-up calls at 4am to their targets (we do aggressively rate-limit which helps mitigate these issues). We are fr…
If that were my business I'd charge $.01 to a credit card per call. A bit harder to hide anonymously then. Or even charge a one-time $1 to sign up, and then free wake-up calls for the life of the account.
Or don't accept requests from known Tor exit nodes and open proxies. Lists of these do exist, though you'll have to pay.
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#405The 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.
Not true. It depended a lot which newsgroups you frequented. There were some where pseudonyms were common and conduct was civilized. There were some where flaming trolls roamed freely.
Generally things get worse - ask your parents. Crime is on an all time high - just ask Sessions. It always was getting worse ask people from the antique. I someone asked me these days the getting worse is getting worse.
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#406If 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…
Interesting definition of a troll in a recent New Yorker [article][1]:
> …young, understimulated men whose main goal is to be the chaos they wish to see in the world.
[1]: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/trolls-protest-...
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#407Earlier 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.
I have a contact on my phone named "Spam" which currently has about 25 numbers associated with it. I have it set to "Route to Voicemail" (option in the Google Contacts app).
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's been a victory for those peddling the fear articles and soliciting victim bucks. It's really simple. First you make outrageous claims, then you define everyone who disagrees as a harasser. Find the one tweet or comment that's a bit off color, and pretend that's representative. Or just false flag it. It's the digital version of how to discredit an opposing view or protest, you just need one person smashing a…
Deciding who's the victim and who the harassers seems quite subjective. Let's say that I hit the beach sidewalk wearing a leather-sack-style thong jockstrap, an 18" Bowie knife, and roller blades. Right out of Wild Boys . But totally legal. And let's say that I attracted a crowd of critics, who felt threatened, and who threatened me. And supporters. Who would be the victim(s), and who would be the harasser(s)?
When I think of harassment, I think of it as an intentional action. If you did that with the intent to disturb people, I think it would then fall under you being the harasser and others being the victim. But then on the other hand if they intentionally threaten or make you feel threatened, they are harassing as well. My definition based on intent may be incorrect, but I feel as though it makes the argument slightly less subjective.
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not true that nothing has changed. Facebook and Twitter will show you posts that they think you're likely to interact with, and hide other stories. That didn't happen on Usenet. Those services will also recommend that you follow/friend other users with similar interests, which automatically builds up mobs. That's not how the Internet used to work.
Right but if people are never going to click on stories they're not interested in then does it really matter? Can we really blame increasing silo-mind on certain demographics not seeing links that they demonstratively wouldn't have opened anyway?
Yes, I would say that just browsing a table of contents gives you an idea of what's being talked about and what's getting the most attention, even if you never click through anything. And I don't think the algorithms are that good. It's probably just sorting people into a few discrete buckets.
Re: Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 .
That's stupid and you know it. No matter how much you might want it to be otherwise, people exist. People disagree with you. To varying degrees, they might be hostile about it. Some would characterise my comments in this thread as hostile and worthy of being censored. I think that's ludicrous, and yet there we are. I think everyone can agree that the most egregious examples of harassment are bad. Sending someone a ne…
You've gone into flamewar and incivility in this thread. That's an abuse of HN and not allowed here. Other people broke the site guidelines too, but that's no reason to respond in kind and certainly not to keep perpetuating a tedious spat. We ban accounts that do these things, so please fix this. Specifically, please eliminate name-calling and incivility from your comments and if you can't post thoughtfully, don't post until you can.