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Comment by rjbwork | Hacker News Reader

So your solution is to be given tools to enforce your cognitive bias reinforcing filter bubble? That's not a solution, that's a technology provided lobotomy.

A dialogue takes two - if you don't like the dialogue taking place, instead of attempting to quiet the other voices, perhaps just remove yourself from the dialogue.

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As a counterpoint, the biggest gripe of "trolling" that I have is that it prevents dialogue rather than adding to it. It's one thing to argue for say Nazi ideology in a relevant conversation with the purpose of expressing a genuine point (this would be a rare event indeed), but that is not what trolls are doing. Instead, they are invading a conversation with ad hominem attacks as well as distracting and attention-seeking behaviors.

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".

Filtering out thousands of "Obama is a monkey" type comments is not reinforcing anyone's cognitive bias...

The conflation of "Obama is a monkey" type comments with people who legitimately dislike the man's policies is not a good faith definition of trolling.

That's what they're trying to do.

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.

I would agree with you there. I think the problem is we are talking about 2 separate issues, but due to intentional conflation of the two by ideologically motivated factions, we're crossing the streams by using the, now overloaded, term "troll".

If i say "leslie jones sucks" am I trolling or do I think she actually sucks at her job. If a million people one after another go on leslie jones profile and say "leslie is a horrible actress" is that trolling ? harrassment ?

If someone says "Trump sucks" should they be filtered out ?

Do I think its a dialogue, heck no. Do I think it should be filtered, double heck no.

If you send her dick pics, dead animals pics or photos of apes with "this is how you look like" under it, all that from hundreds of different accounts so that she can not effectively filter it, then yeah, you are trolling and harassing.

Likewise, if you flood someone employer customers with the above material to get him or her fired, you are harassing.

Let's not pretend this was just about "slightly impolite words". Or misunderstood dialog.

No. I am rejecting your reply. Go back and look at what happened to Leslie Jones, then try again. This is not simply "Leslie Jones Sucks".

You are conflating. I simply asked a question. I did not say that is what happened to Leslie. I do notice you avoid the question like the other who responded. That to me is very telling.

It looks like your account is teetering on the edge of using HN primarily to argue about politics and ideology. That's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that use it this way—we have to, in order to preserve the intended use of the site, which is stories and conversation that gratify intellectual curiosity.

Hmm this kind of surprises me, but do what you feel is best. I am not attached to ideology or politics.

The post you responded to was me wanting to find out where respondees would want to draw the line on what is harrassment and what is open discourse online. I think this is extremely on topic, relevent and devoid of ideology.

As far as arguing I dont see it in my posts. I usually make one comment then read responses. I will take your warning to heart but I dont really see my post style changing.

When I look at your account history, it's mostly civil, but it does look like you're (bordering on) commenting primarily on political issues. The key word here is 'primarily': that's our present criterion for whether the site is being abused or used as intended. I realize the reason for that takes some explaining, so let me try again.

HN is for stories and conversations that gratify intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). That implies a wide range of things that are interesting just because they're interesting. We want people to comment here because their "oh!" circuitry gets activated—not their "burning issue" circuitry. (I'm using that word metaphorically.) It's not primarily a question of the topics since these things overlap, but of the spirit of the discussion.

Ideally there are larger lessons learned here than "there are assholes on the internet"

Like I would hope people now recognize that stoking a culture war to market a shitty movie is a bad idea.

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