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What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

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Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#61

Post by CM30 »

mdip wrote: post #58
vkou wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't work. They are perfectly happy to revel in the attention of their friends. http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2012/02/28/dont-f...

This is what caused me to wonder if allowing trolls, but eliminating their conversation from everyone but other trolling users might be an option. Let them revel in the attention of their friends, but have that attention only serve to give them the illusion that they're affecting others while directly causing others to ignore them (and thus, prevent unintentional feeding). It'd be tricky to get right and probably not…

So in other words, like a multi user version of Shadowbanning?

It's an interesting idea (and I'm 100% sure it's been done before), but it doesn't really work out on any site with a significant audience. I mean, all you need is one of those trolls to access the site at work/school/wherever and notice their posts are being shown if they're not logged in, and then suspicions are raised.

Too easy to bypass and figure out. It's like how people figured out Twitter's shadowbans, because people who followed them said off site that they weren't seeing their messages.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#62

Post by dang »

throwaway21816 wrote: post #9
throwaway21816 wrote: post #6

Not being a cry baby. Just because someone called you fat/doesnt agree with you doesnt mean you need to cry about it on the internet all day. The internet is an aggressive place due to its indirect nature, when you put 'soft' people on it they will get upset. The perceived increase in trolling is just a result of more 'soft' people being on the internet.

Im being downvoted, oh no I better cry about it

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines. This is not a legitimate use of throwaway accounts on HN.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#63

Post by CM30 »

theseatoms wrote: post #43
apozem wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "toughen up" sentiment sounds nice in theory but it's absurd in practice. Listen to writer Mindy West's story on This American Life about confronting one of her worst trolls [1]. Her troll made a fake Twitter account in the name of her dead father just to mock her. That's grotesque. Not being online or in a community not full of jackasses (what you derisively call a "hugbox") isn't an option for West. She's a wr…

What options do well-intentioned people have to fight back? Doxxing the doxxers? Maybe someone will eventually form an online version of the Guardian Angels [1] to combat this issue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels

Oh god. Trying to troll the trolls and fight back just tends to lead to a cycle of revenge and an online civil war. This sort of reasoning is partly why GamerGate blew up the way it did, because people (on all sides) were attacking the hell out of everyone who disagreed with them. What was a disagreement over a fairly minor matter soon exploded into people trying to find excuses to get their opponents fired/arrested/swatted/etc.

The internet doesn't need more excuses to form social media vigilante mobs.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#64

Post by DanBC »

qb45 wrote: post #56
zorpner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that modern harassment (particularly on Twitter) involves being targets by thousands of accounts over a period of months or years, how long do you think would be appropriate to turn your devices off for? This isn't about someone "[taking] things personally" -- this is about organized groups making existing platforms unusable for their targets.

I think that's called DDoS, not trolling. Who is targeted by that and why? Who organizes that - I mean, why would thousands of people suddenly have reason to hate you?

Caroline Criado Perez noticed that UK banknotes were changing. Bank notes have an image of a notable person on one side, and the monarch on the other. Criado Perez noticed that the new designs didn't include any women (apart from the queen, and she's only there through luck of birth).

Criado Perez started a petition to ask Bank of England to consider including a woman on the notes, and to remember to include women in future re-designs.

That's not much.

For that she was subjected to months long campaigns across all her social media accounts, extending to her AFK addresses, with severe threats of sexual violence.

One man was sending 50 messages an hour over 12 hours across multiple accounts.

It's disappointing that some people are defending those who make death threats. It's common over a keyboard, but AFK a death threat is serious business.

https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Document...

> Here there were a series of communications (not just a single one as referred to in the guideline) where extreme language was used and substantial fear was caused.

> Indeed it is hard to imagine more extreme threats (death, rape, and worse [Sorley]) and rape [Nimmo]. The harm is, and (despite what is said on your behalf) must have been intended to be, very high.

> The fact that they were anonymous heightened the fear. The victims had no way of knowing how dangerous the people making the threats were, whether they had just come out of prison, or how to recognise and avoid them if they came across them in public.

And about blocking:

> The messages were posted on a number of different sites, and continued after being blocked and or warned

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#65

Post by toyg »

khedoros wrote: post #59
qb45 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's called DDoS, not trolling. Who is targeted by that and why? Who organizes that - I mean, why would thousands of people suddenly have reason to hate you?

One scenario: A celebrity with a million followers says something. A non-celebrity tweets an opposing response. 0.1% of the celebrity's followers take that as an attack on their idol and start heaping abuse on that person. (numbers sourced from rectal data repository, for illustrative purposes) In that case, it's not really "organized" by anyone in particular.

The real-life equivalent of that scenario is a random Joe showing up at some political rally shouting "you're WRONG!". Of course shit will fly; the best realistic scenario is being corteously manhandled out of the venue. Why would you expect it to be different on teh intertubes?

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#66

Post by javajosh »

Easy: introduce laws that require all communication to be consensual. We don't allow people to force food down your mouth, and we shouldn't allow people to force words into your brain either.

What would this be like? Before seeing something, you'd be asked if you want to see "An advertisement for a home care product." Or "An angry personal attack" (Maybe with some indication of who it's against.)

This solution allows everyone to say whatever they want, and adds the ability for everyone to not be exposed to what they don't want to be exposed to.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#67

Post by beeboop »

apozem wrote: post #39
beeboop wrote: post #18

If you're so sensitive that your day is ruined or you feel uncomfortable by what a random, anonymous idiot says on the internet, you need to either A. Stay off the internet or B. Only participate in communities where you control who has the ability to post content you see (i.e. facebook). The world doesn't owe you a safe-space hugbox. Trying to censor people for being mean is just as shitty as trying to censor them f…

This "toughen up" sentiment sounds nice in theory but it's absurd in practice. Listen to writer Mindy West's story on This American Life about confronting one of her worst trolls [1]. Her troll made a fake Twitter account in the name of her dead father just to mock her. That's grotesque. Not being online or in a community not full of jackasses (what you derisively call a "hugbox") isn't an option for West. She's a wr…

I think you leave out some extremely relevant points in your comment and have mischaracterized the situation. Lindy West is one of the poster children for the "fat acceptance movement", a self described activist, cofounded a social media campaign called "Shout Your Abortion", and just released a book titled "Shrill" whose subtitle includes "Feminists don't have to be nice".

She has extremely controversial views that she expresses in the most public way possible. Even if she is not deliberately trying to incite discord against her, I am not sure how she could possibly do it any more effectively.

From what I can tell from my brief searching about her, she shoves extremely offensive (to many people) opinions in the faces of the public at large. She is just as complicit in creating an offensive environment on the internet as all the people who send her mean messages on Twitter. Just because she is on "the right side of history" in many of her viewpoints doesn't make it any more justified. Which is essentially my entire point - everyone offends everyone. You cannot stop it and it will never end. All you can do is insulate yourself from it.

I think it's a pretty far stretch to call it victim blaming if I were to tell Lindy West to maybe not make a public, professional career out of advocating the most controversial opinions possible in the most public way possible if she didn't want to get called mean things on Twitter by people she's deeply offended.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#68

Post by makomk »

CM30 wrote: post #54

Moderation is the best way to stop them. If you've got actual people going through posts and content and removing the low quality stuff, you'll maintain a much more well ordered and useful community than you would a mostly 'uncensored' platform. Unfortunately, this has a few issues... 1. You need the manpower to actually check what's being posted on a regular basis. Or enough active members willing to help out that t…

> You need to really, really limit bias as much as possible, so that you're booting out people or bots because of their behaviour rather than their political/social stances.

This is a political non-starter right now, which is why Twitter doesn't do it. Seriously, when they accidentally ban someone for threatening violence against other Twitter users in the name of left-wing activism a huge swathe of the tech and security community launches a campaign to reinstate them and accuse Twitter of all matters of evils fro banning them in the first place.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#69

Post by mdip »

CPLX wrote: post #8

I feel like an odd man out every time this topic comes up. Like I'm sure many others here I've been involved in online communities and discussions in some form or another since it was all green text on a black background, and I don't think things are any different now than they have ever been in any way that really matters. The secret to dealing with internet trolling is some combination of ignoring it, turning your…

These are good points on dealing with trolling as an individual. Ignoring it is the best, and most often ignored, advice. It's too easy to get emotionally drawn into a trolling comment, which is why I've always liked the idea of sandboxing trolls in a way that allows them to think their comments are being accepted while eliminating them from the rest of the participants of the site.

At a higher level, though, sites and moderators of discussion have to participate in the reduction of trolling. Failure to do so dooms a community. I've left my share of communities, mailing lists, usenet message boards and the like due to it being tiring to participate in a discussion that devolves into name-calling and wasteful trolling. My favorite example was Digg about a decade ago. At some point the trolling problem got so bad that you couldn't leave a comment of any kind without encountering a land-mine. I remember the "straw that broke the camel's back" was when I spent a few minutes leaving a multi-sentence comment and had copy/pasted part of a sentence to a place where it made more sense. I had accidentally doubled an "and". I was met with "Learn fucking English, asshole!" and was like "huh?!". The guy read my entire comment and grammar trolled me over an obvious typo? I deleted my account shortly after that. I wasn't angry -- I just came to realize that the site stopped providing me any value.

Re: What Is the Best Way to Stop Internet Trolls?

#70

Post by rwj »

CPLX wrote: post #8

I feel like an odd man out every time this topic comes up. Like I'm sure many others here I've been involved in online communities and discussions in some form or another since it was all green text on a black background, and I don't think things are any different now than they have ever been in any way that really matters. The secret to dealing with internet trolling is some combination of ignoring it, turning your…

At an individual level, I agree. At the community level, I don't think it will be that easy. If trolls can destroy the SNR, the community will also be destroyed.
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