Comment by kadenshep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kadenshep | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of people who actively moderate truly public forums/media channels understand this. Not doing anything is the worst thing you can do. At this point in my online life, claiming that "if you ignore them they'll go away" paints you as a co-conspirator/pseudo-supporter or just foolishly naive in my mind.

>there has always been a myth about the time and place where things were more innocent, when trolling was all in good fun.

And it IS a myth. It's a do nothing attitude and it's easy to take when it doesn't affect you personally. Summed up perfectly by the very next statement in the article:

>But what everyone really remembers about these proverbial times isn’t their purity. It’s how they didn’t see the big deal back then. They remember how they felt a sense of permission, a belief that it was all okay. But that was only true for those who were like them, who thought exactly like they did.

It was refreshing to see this view point espoused on a rather large technology site.

People who weren't online in an earlier time should probably refrain from making statements about how it was different, just as people who weren't actually at a company, in a battle, etc. should refrain from making statements about how it was for the participants. It just makes them look ignorant and quick to judgment. From my own experience, trolling back in the Usenet was generally less serious back then. There was more of a tacit understanding that you were there voluntarily, that you could leave or even come back under another name. Trolling was usually transient, didn't spill over into people's real lives, and only worked because somebody chose to be invested in the subject matter. That doesn't make any of it OK, but it was different.

As for the point about feeding or not feeding trolls, I think another commenter already made the important point that it's different for users vs. administrators. Users should ignore trolls, for all the reasons historically given. It does work. I've seen it hundreds of times, even when I was a moderator on a millions-of-posts political site. On the other hand, administrators need to take a more active approach. Back on Usenet, or even to a large extent on early web forums, there were no administrators. The approach for users was the only approach. Nowadays, when trolling has much more serious affects on people's lives and it's harder to get away, a more active approach is called for. The OP's basic thesis is right, if you make the distinction between what users should do vs. what administrators should do, but some of their and your facile generalizations about the past are still rather amusing.

P.S. It should also be noted that there are legal issues affecting whether a site owner should be involved in moderating content, and those legal reasons change all the time, but that's a whole separate thread.

I think your view point is directly addressed in the article. Are you saying I was not around during the time periods discussed?

Also you have a rather lengthy response but most of it is just vague dismissals based on aggressive assumptions. Care to get into specifics?

I concur. The author of the piece was there, which passes notacoward's (IMO too-)strict requirement that those who were not there should not talk about it.

I also think the author's description of '"gatekeeper" behavior' is a good description of this view point.

Going back to notacoward's comments, starting with "trolling back in the Usenet was generally less serious back then".

1993 is when one of my students tried to email me a death threat anonymously. Yes, I know email isn't Usenet. I bring it up because one of the negatives of looking through one's personal experience is that past often looks rosier than it was. So much of it is new, and you don't know what's happening with others.

I think the author already addressed notacoward's comment with:

> But what everyone really remembers about these proverbial times isn’t their purity. It’s how they didn’t see the big deal back then. They remember how they felt a sense of permission, a belief that it was all okay. But that was only true for those who were like them, who thought exactly like they did. All the while, someone else was getting stepped on and bullied while others laughed. The story of the internet has always been the same story: disaffected young men thinking their boorish and cruel behavior was justified or permissible.

I think the author also addressed notacoward's comment "you could leave or even come back under another name" by quoting Quinn: “The internet was my home, and treating it like a magical alternate dimension where nothing of consequence happens was insulting. Telling a victim of a mob calling for their head online to not go online anymore is like telling someone who has a hate group camped in their yard to just not go outside.”

Notacoward also proposes "administrators need to take a more active approach". This is also what the author proposes, saying:

> “Don’t feed the trolls” also ignores an obvious method for addressing online abuse: skilled moderation and the willingness to kick people off platforms for violating rules about abuse. At one website I used to write for, everyone constantly remarked that we had the most amazing, thoughtful commenters. How did we achieve this? Easy: a one-strike policy.

Notacoward wrote "but some of their and your facile generalizations about the past are still rather amusing."

Would you care to point out some of those facile generalizations about the past? I started on BITNET with Listserv back in 1989, so I am also a member of the old-fogey/pre-Eternal September club. I didn't see anything which came close to an amusing generalization.

And yes, I remember the trolls calling for "free speech" even back then, as cover to permit continued abusive behavior.

> one of the negatives of looking through one's personal experience

So your anecdote trumps mine? Sorry, but no. Sounds like you had a worse-than-normal experience. That's bad, but it doesn't change the fact that the environment at the time didn't lend itself to serious trolling. There was less persistence or verification of identity, for example. Finding out who "Alba Troll" on M-Net was, or "Burrito" on LambdaMOO, would have been non-trivial, and so would finding an address for that person (me BTW). Now just about anyone can find my real name on Facebook, and map that real name to a real address, in seconds. That's a huge difference. What's funny is that we're having this discussion on HN, under pseudonyms, which makes it much more like the old 'net than a lot of other places. And not surprisingly, the rampant trolling here has a different flavor than the trolling elsewhere.

"So your anecdote trumps mine?"

How well did you understand what was happening with other people back then? My anecdote was meant to show that perhaps your knowledge wasn't as broad as you might have thought.

I'll quote from the 1993 paper "Gender Swapping on the Internet", at http://public.callutheran.edu/~chenxi/Phil350_132.pdf to give an idea of how even back then women might feel like they needed to hide their gender in order to prevent unwanted attention from anonymous people:

> "Back when I had time for MUD, I, too, played female characters. I found it extraordinarily interesting. It gave me a slightly more concrete understanding of why some women say, "Men suck." It was both amusing and disturbing."

> Female characters are often besieged with attention. By typing using the who command, it is possible to get a list of all characters logged on. The page command allows one to talk to people not in the same room. Many male players will get a list of all present, and then page characters with female names. Unwanted attention and sexual advances create an uncomfortable atmosphere for women in MUDs, just as they do in real life.

> ... Male characters often expect sexual favors in return for technical assistance. A male character once requested a kiss from me after answering a question. A gift always incurs an obligation. Offering technical help, like picking up the check at dinner, can be used to try to purchase rather than win a woman's favor. While this can be subtle and sometimes overlooked in real life, in MUDs it is blatant, directly experienced by most, and openly discussed in public forums such as this USENET discussion.

No, these are not examples of trolling per se, nor is it meant to trump your statement. It is meant to re-enforce my question "How well did you understand what was happening with other people back then?"

"which makes it much more like the old 'net than a lot of other places"

Umm, HN has a strong moderator presence here, like https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang . That's rather different than "the old 'net", yes? (To be certain, there were moderated BBses and MUDs even back then too. But that's not what you were talking about.)

> I'll quote from the 1993 paper "Gender Swapping on the Internet"

...for which I was interviewed and quoted BTW. I was present for many of the other events Bruckman has written about, and was a principal target/victim/whatever in one. Ditto for Turkle.

> "How well did you understand what was happening with other people back then?"

See above.

Now that we have established our bona fides, let's get back to kadenshep's comment. You originally wrote:

> People who weren't online in an earlier time should probably refrain from making statements about how it was different, just as people who weren't actually at a company, in a battle, etc. should refrain from making statements about how it was for the participants.

To whom was your comment directed? To the author of the article? But the author clearly states "I was there in 1993, too, equal parts young, naïve, and shy, but so damn excited about the idea of suddenly communicating with people around the world."

The author also brings up the concept of 'gatekeeper behavior', saying:

> ... his esteem rests on the fact that he knows certain things that others do not. Like all gatekeeper behavior, it was ostensibly a check on the credibility of the target. Also like all gatekeeper behavior, it wasn’t really about whether or not someone passes the test, but rather the gatekeeper feeling like they can control what is true and not true about the subject. Alas for him, I was there in 1993, too, equal parts young, naïve, and shy, but so damn excited about the idea of suddenly communicating with people around the world.

I read kadenshep's comment "I think your view point is directly addressed in the article." in that context. That is, it's easy to interpret what you wrote as gatekeeper behavior.

This of course can also be poisoning-the-well sort of argument, as it is hard to address by simply saying "From my own experience". Which is all that you did.

You still have not pointed out some of those facile generalizations about the past that kadenshep made.

> Are you saying I was not around during the time periods discussed?

I wouldn't presume. Such assumptions are the OP's game, not mine.

> most of it is just vague dismissals

That's simply untrue. I was quite specific about how trolling was different, about the distinction between what users should do vs. what administrators, and why they should be different. Far more specific than you have been. Apparently an imagined slight in one or two sentences prevented you from reading the rest before you replied, but that's not the same as it not being there.

> People who weren't online in an earlier time should probably refrain from making statements about how it was different

> But some of their and your facile generalizations about the past are still rather amusing.

Would you care to contextualize these statements in a manner that upon first, second, or third reading doesn't qualify as assumptions and/or general grand standing?

Ordinary users and commenters should ignore trolls, but administrators and moderators should not. They should use every underhand trick in the book, just as trolls do.

Users only add fuel to the fire. Administrators can extinguish it.

I'm not sure how to interpret "ordinary users". I read several blogs with an actively enforced moderation system. However, they are still personal blogs, with a single moderator who can kick people off, and the moderator can't be there all the time.

What I've seen is that there are long-time commenters who will reply to the abusive behavior of trolls, not taking the bait but calling out the abusive behavior for what it is.

They cannot moderate, but as long-time users they are also not "ordinary." In the cases I'm thinking of, their responses don't seem to add fuel to the fire.

Here's commentary from someone who deals with far more trolling than I (quoting from https://jezebel.com/dont-ignore-the-trolls-feed-them-until-t... ):

> I feed trolls. Not always, not every troll, but when I feel like it—when I think it will make me feel better—I talk back. I talk back because the expectation is that when you tell a woman to shut up, she should shut up. I reject that. I talk back because it's fun, sometimes, to rip an abusive dummy to shreds with my friends. I talk back because my mental health is my priority—not some troll's personal satisfaction. I talk back because it emboldens other women to talk back online and in real life, and I talk back because women have told me that my responses give them a script for dealing with monsters in their own lives. And, most importantly, I talk back because internet trolls are not, in fact, monsters. They are human beings—and I don't believe that their attempts to dehumanize me can be counteracted by dehumanizing them. The only thing that fights dehumanization is increased humanization—of me, of them, of marginalized groups in general, of the internet as a whole.

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