Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

Obviously this is just my experience though.

https://archive.fo/203tP

https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id...

Don't let the electoral map fool you, there are very few places that skew overwhelmingly to one side. Many places may have a majority favoring one major political party, but the minority isn't that small. I live in the northeast, which is reliable electoral votes for democrats but there's not shortage of republicans around.

On social media, this happens on a less conscious level because with every choice you make some algorithm slowly "personalizes" everything you get to see a little bit more, thus it increases surfacing things/people that you are more likely to agree with while pretty much "hiding" anything/anybody that you wouldn't like/agree with. This is a slow process and it's mostly hidden from the user, as such most people are not even aware of being funneled in different "circles" in such a way, so they think their personalized social media reality represents the reality of everybody as a whole.

The big difference to geographic filter bubbles being that those still leave you aware of there being an "other side to the story", case in point: You know there are red states and there are blue states. On social media that other side gets blended out in such a way that it might just as well not exist at all because it won't be surfaced to you unless you make a conscious effort looking for it.

Now a troll is just an asshole on the internet.

This is a cop-out. You may not need Twitter for your work, but a lot of us do. If I can't use Twitter, I lose an important way to connect to others in my profession (specifically in open source). And I'm an unimportant software developer. What about women in journalism? What about women in entertainment? They need Twitter, and they need it connected to their real-world identity. You might as well tell them "quit walking on the street, or wear a burka, and you won't get harassed or assaulted." It would be the same cop-out. We have police to keep the streets safe. We need Twitter to be safe too.

This is a) simple victim blaming and b) impossible to fix in some situations. Illustration of (b) is that the companies of which I'm a director are a matter of public record, and for very little money indeed you can buy online a copy of that record including my home address and telephone number.

It does what it says on the tin-- "Twit", right there in the name.

And while it's a different discussion all together, I think examining why conflating criminal harassment and "trolling" has become in vogue would teach us a lot about how power is used in the modern age.

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.

Sure, we can personally stay safe, but public discourse cannot.

If you assume that the word troll does not mean "anyone who posts inflammatory, bad faith, needlessly aggressive, insulting, false, or otherwise unproductive content" then someone claiming it does is pretty clearly expanding the definition of the word.

Which is as (or close) to how it has always been defined, and how the authors of TFA use it.

I actually disagree with both of these assertions. Sometimes people expand the word troll to encompass too large a group, but that doesn't necessarily change the definition and I definitely don't see how the article uses it in that manner.

Though, I can definitely understand the desire to expand the definition of the word 'troll' into usefulness. It does make it easier to dismiss other's complaints.

I agree that west is more free then anything else. However that freedom in general sense or relatively new thing for large parts of population. And for that matter, marihuanna is still illegal and harms no one.

I think that west ultimately created system where groups were able to succesfully win fight for their right to not harm others. But it took fight and abuses happened every single time.

The imperial exam is good example of just how advanced the Chinese nation was for most of history. China as a country remained politically united for most of known history, quite a remarkable feat if you think about it. One of the enablers was a professional bureaucracy that allowed the state to remain strong without being challenged by regional usurpers.

This is a huge topic of course but one of the reasons why China fell behind is because certain isolationist policies took hold just when the modern era dawned, pushing China farther and farther behind simply due to the backbreaking speed of modern development.

Another reason why I don't think "manners" matter is Japan; isolationist until the Meiji Restoration, rapidly modernized after despite the "manners" remaining intact.

People will act like they understand this, but if they did, they simply wouldn't have a problem. Theres really no issue here if you actually understand this advice.

You can see it even on here. Instead of a thicker skin, or not using something like Twitter, people espouse ideas such as enforcing non 'harassing' language. But in my mind there is a clear difference in the 'harassment' online, and real harassment, e.g. you're swatted at 4am, they poison your pets, they stalk you, not just once but could continue for weeks or months or years on end.

At the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon, I do understand that now more than ever, we have an entire generation that has never been taught anything except their online persona is as important, if not more important than who they are in meatspace. It's easy to understand, they have really become a brand, their own brand, which is both good and unfortunate. The reality is that life will continue on regardless of data pipes working or not.

The growing outcry for safety and homogeneous thought is larger than ever, in almost every aspect. But with regard to the internet, the issue is that as this group becomes the majority, their calls carry more and more weight for moving the internet into the same world as many US universities.. Every campus now has a Free Speech zone, an XX meter square that you can freely speak your mind, and even hand out constitution pamphlets. Step outside that, speak your mind and you are charged with 'harassment'.

I'm not that hopeful though. As we move more into the world of where the government continues to take a larger role in making the internet fair, we relinquish certain other things. Of course, it starts benign, but it ends up quite different.

It's not that the trolls occupy the corners, it's that they occupy the big, visible public spaces of the internet, while everybody else is driven into digital sanctuaries. That clearly is a failure if the stated goal is to genuinely democratise knowledge and discourse.

I'd even go further than the author and say that we're way past a 'potemkin internet with a nice facade'. The facade is pretty darn ugly as well. The kind of stuff people are willing to post under their actual name is pretty scary.

> Do you assume these people are stupid

probably, although it's their morality that's more of a problem than their IQ.

> do their beliefs and interests (and sense of humour) differ from yours?

yes.

I dunno... every time Trump fucks up in a big way, the_donald folks genuinely think he is playing "five-dimensional chess" and that he fucked up on purpose as a way to outmaneuver his opponents without them realizing it.

So yes, they are absolutely, definitively stupid. I mean how else do you explain the attribution of superhuman intelligence to someone who is an incredible cretin?

And if by take it with a grain of salt you mean that nothing in there is actually relevant or related to reality.

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.

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.

No, they're really not. The one has a strict legal definition and is enshrined in law, and the others don't and aren't.

"But in actuality, de-platforming as practiced on college campuses often results in a group of people too intimidated to talk and too intimidated to attend, contrary to their desires. "

And what about the people who have felt intimidated by the hate speech and haven't attended because of that?

"If "de-platforming" has the effect of censorship, then it might as well be censorship."

But it isn't censorship. That person can speak their views outside of that building. They are only prohibited from having a platform to spread their views. They can still publish a book of them and market it. Nobody has lost any of their rights, unless you're stating that you automatically have a right to enter any building and preach your views. Nobody would get upset if $person was denied entrance to a funeral home for preaching their views there, because we all understand that that is inappropriate behaviour.

A church can expell a person for preaching atheistic views, and nobody gets annoyed. But as soon as someone does it for a white supremacist, a nazi, andor a person preaching for the extermination of certain groups, it's suddenly "against their free speech".

Or, for an even better example, think of twitter as a publishing company. If I go to twitter with a book (tweet), they are not legally obliged to publish it. The fact that they do not wish to publish it, or that they stop publishing it (removal of the tweet), is not an infringement of my free speech. I can start my own publishing company (with pretty much every website host), or go to another publishing company (like /pol/) to have my ideas heard. In addition, people writing to the publisher and stating that my book (tweet) should not be published, because of the views that are held in my book (tweet), that is also not an infringement of my free speech.

If the government decides that what I say is unseemly, and they purge it from all forms of media, from libraries, etc. and state that my views are not to be published, then that is censorship.

[An orthogonal point here is that people like yourself often argue that these people should not be able to write protests to the publisher (twitter). As per your own definition, wouldn't that count as infringement of their free speech? It's interesting how you readily support that views should not be removed, but condone that people should not be allowed to protest against views, or that people should not be allowed to write their point of views in emails and posts about twitter. Surely the right to advocate what you call 'censorship', falls under what you call 'free speech'?]

Common carrier also specifically lists certain communications as being prohibited, namely, that which obscene, intent to abuse, threaten, or harass another person.

At that point, it becomes the interpretation of what is harassment? Is it being swatted or stalked, or as it seems to be the trend that now, language or the crime of non similar thought can be considered harassment.

Twitter as a private company has the right to remove things that it finds abhorrent, such as hate speech (i.e. stating that jews should be killed, black people should be bred out of existence, etc.).

People can put pressure on twitter to change their policies on what they find abhorrent.

The people with those views can find or create other places to express them.

The argument with 'Twitter as a common carrier' is null and void, because twitter is not an ISP. Twitter clearly falls under "public forum", and is therefore able to state what sort of content it wants to host, and what sort of content it does not. This does not preclude the neonazis finding somewhere else to host their views, like /pol/. Because they can host their views somewhere else, it is not censorship.

Think of it like publishing. If a publishing company does not want to publish my book, that is not censorship. I can go to another publishing company, or start my own. If the government states that what I say is wrong, and enforces a purge of it from all libraries, servers, bookshops, media, etc. then that is censorship.

Preventing trolling does not inherently involve silencing points of view. All it should be doing is removing unhelpful, unsolicited, and off topic nonsense. Even the most evil views that I can think of should not be censored, under the condition that they are actually being discussed with the interest of discourse, for that truly is what "dialogue" is. But again, in that event it isn't really "trolling".

But I'm getting really, really, really tired of people conflating the "other side" stuff with the trolling stuff. Look at all the stuff sent to Leslie Jones last summer. Do you honestly think that was meant to be a dialog? Of course not. That was trolling. That was harassment. And that is what people are trying to filter out.

But the problem is the business model. No one has been able to come up with a solution to make money on quality. Its all volume advertising. NYT is competing with BuzzFeed for eyeballs. Its a competition to come up with the most clever hook and target peoples emotions to drive traffic.

In the print days there was a small number of publications and it was very expensive to start one. The more serious publications published monthly. Its totally different now.

Think about that up until just a few years ago serious Journalists had to produce about one piece a month and they had supporting staff and a budget.

There is very little now that comes close to the quality and analysis that there use to be.

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 not want in your community anyway. Unlike actual beginners, who learn and then proceed to become valuable contributors (unless of course they are treated harshly by veterans, in which case they simply leave), help vampires are never helpful. They ask the same question again and again, don't pay attention to any cues, don't read anything, and seldom provide context or follow-ups to their problem. And when you've wasted time with one (more often than not fruitlessly), the next one comes in. And they are legion. The end result, like the first article I mentioned claims, is that your community of well-intentioned volunteers is destroyed. So a polite RTFM is often the best response: if the person was an actual beginner, they'll read TFM -- and follow-up questions are often welcome, since they show the asker has actually made an effort. If not, they'll leave and you haven't wasted any valuable time.

In fact, help vampires are often indistinguishable from trolls, in that they have the same community-disrupting effect.

RTFM has always been part of the hacker culture (also see: How To Ask Questions The Smart Way, http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html). It has nothing to do with trolls.

Other than that, I agree they are not necessarily more senior or experienced. That's why I used the term "veterans": they are old timers in the community in question, have seen countless newbies come and go, and must suffer the onslaught of help vampires with needy requests and an ungrateful, instant-gratification attitude every day. They may not necessarily be seniors, but they are the people who actually form the community, because help vampires ask their poorly-formulated questions and go away forever, only to be replaced by newer ones. They do not tend to "grow" the community, only destroy it by attrition. How would you deal with them?

Again, "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" ( http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html ) should be mandatory reading for online participation in online communities. Some of it is even common sense. And if you don't have the time to read it or TFM or the FAQ, why should volunteers take the time to help you, anyway?

One way to address this problem is to give service providers an easy way to enforce their terms of services. This would have the effect of also making those service providers honest, in other words if you claim to want to create a welcoming space for all your users but you refuse to take effective actions against those who violate your terms then your hypocrisy is laid bare...Today twitter can claim they can't verify everyone's account, but if that was not an excuse anymore, then they'll have to effectively deal with those who violate their policies even if it means losing certain users.

I might disagree wildly with you in a number of cases but I try to be reasonable in how I argue my points.

I stay away from pages that use Facebook comments because I don't want to be part of the problem with fake profiles and I don't want everyone to be able to trace everything I ever said back to me.

Not because I intend to say something unreasonable. Not because I fear law enforcement but because I will apply for jobs in the future. And I might want to visit arab countries in the future. Or Israel, who knows?

I think this is a reasonable position. I expect and respect if you do the same - even if I disagree wildly with your opinions I don't want you to get in trouble for them bext time you fly into a country were your ideas aren't so correct.

Or next time a president goes rogue like Erdogan.

I think full name policies scare away lots of reasonable people.

The ones who stay either don't think that far, or don't care or use a fake Facebook profile. I guess none of these attributes correlate well with insightful and polite.

> People are simply not trustworthy, ...

In my experience the vast majority of people are trustworthy. The problem is that the tiny minority of people who are not trustworthy are winning the internet because they have time, and shout loudly. More, some of them do obnoxious and potentially dangerous things.

That's why people get upset - because it is a tiny minority that spoil the whole thing. If only we could stop that tiny minority ...

I've been running a business with multiple locations for 10 years and I've never had a problem more serious than trolls on the internet doxxing me.

That can mean professional or social isolation for quite a lot of people - or at least disadvantage. The moment your blog, github account, facebook account or twitters matters for employers, peers, business, conferences you would like talk at or negotiations is the moment when walking away affects you.

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.

My general thought was influenced by various communities (RPGs, IF, Usenet, coding, etc) I've been part of or witnessed, and how they were unable to survive the swarm of slightly-interested. A few interested are good and healthy: You need the fresh blood to both replace those that leave and keep old-timers engaged. Too many and your norms and conventions are crushed and at a minimum you lose the sense of community, most often you lose the ability to communicate effectively.

There are plenty of historical parallels as well, or at least they seem to be - history is not my strong suit, so while I'll suspect the parallels line up, I won't go asserting it too far and will stick with the communities.

Usenet in the face of AOL is one example (I was there, it was tragic, and though we live in a wonderful age with a lot more information available, I think it's harder to FIND an in-depth discussion). Another example is, say, Slashdot. Originally it was the haven for techies, which made it popular, which made it NOT the haven for techies. After /., I moved through a few attempts communities and currently HN is one of my sources for discussion. While every community has it's nostaglics, I definitely feel like the last 2-3 years have had an increase in people talking about the decrease in quality comments. At this point, I've come to expect that eventually HN will fall prey to popularity and I'll have to find somewhere else to go.

In light of the article you linked, I'm not really sure how it links up. I guess too many "mops" are attracted, and even if you don't get any "sociopaths", just throwing the ratio of people that want it close-to-the-way-it-was to people who this-is-nice-on-my-terms off too much can drown the community in noise.

The disturbing thing is that I feel like the tail of the "mops" there. I'm not the creators, I'm usually not a fanatic. For example, while I'm _willing_, I've never gone through the trouble of contributing to any open source project beyond the most thin of bug reporting or the rare cash contribution. OTOH, I don't think I qualify as entitled, and I try to learn and abide by the norms of each community, so maybe this is a variation of Imposter Syndrome, maybe I just know my limitations, or maybe I'm a mooch.

I will ponder this. It dovetails in disturbing ways with some thoughts I've had about societal futures in a Fifth Wave sort of way. Thanks for the link, I'll have to look into "The Gervais Principle" he mentioned as well.

Ello is, as I've just noted in a post there, very search-resistant, which is becoming a major pain-point. My post index (see my profile page there) is very sadly out of date, though it has a few items on it.

https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/dlz9c2z6x-tvkd7rxtxwpw

I'd put some thoughts together on Reddit and community and what seems to work, or not: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/20yhxc/reddit_...

In the spirit of Thomas Edison, a long list of things that don't work: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1w73g4/on_comm...

You've found two of the better items I'd put together on trust and dialectic discussion at Ello.

Though not directly related to size, I've also suggested standardising topical "channels" of discussion: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/ftpx7lwnfjtopygu5xrkhg

Somewhere amongst my writing is a suggestion for a tiered set of vaguely Dunbar's Number sized network clusters. Say, 50-150 people per group, themselves organised into clusters of perhaps 50 groups themselves. A small level of tiers gets you to current global population size (5-7 levels as I recall). If each group surfaces, say, 10 - 100 items per day of choice public content, and the filtering is applied upwards, then ... maybe there's a way to have both local and global discussion.

Topical interests might be overlays on that, based on net interest. A topic with a 1:50 interest level would draw from all 50 neighbouring clusters for its own base level. A topic with a 1:2500 interest would scale to two levels up -- this retains some level of "locality" whilst also allowing for broader discussion.

And branching out between clusters would be possible, but effectively with some additional cost -- UI/UX-imposed or other. Not large, but present.

There's an existing (or was) network that was organised somewhat on these terms, though I believe it's not done much. Building initial interest is difficult.