BBC confronts Facebook troll
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
However, on a general note, I think it is important to realize that every text message you send, every cell phone conversation you have, every post to the CNN forum you make, every tweet you send ... is directly attributable to your IP whether you use your own name or not. With Facebook and Google tracking everything you do, whether you are logged in or not, I would go one step further, and say all of these things are directly attributable to you personally.
I would strongly urge young people to really think about what they are putting out there. Consider this, the military was doing the equivalent of credit checks for sensitive positions during the 60s. Now you need a credit check to do ANYTHING, even things that don't require credit. How long before an internet and phone background check is standard in the background checks organizations do before offering jobs?
I can tell you the military is doing this sort of screening right now for sensitive positions, but at least you are confronted about it. It still basically ends your career, but they will give you a chance to explain your posts. In the private sector in the future, they will just deep six your application and you won't know what happened. Or they'll let you in at entry level, maybe, and subsequently you'll start running up against an invisible barrier as you try to advance beyond the first or second layer of management. Or you will find resistance to you advancing into management at all.
Also be mindful, it can affect more than your professional life. Think about what the background checks for apartments will look like in the 2020s. Or what 'dating sites' will be like in the 2020s.
Please consider your future before you make comments on ... say ... Hurricane Katrina ... that might be misconstrued. Or post an opinion on ... say ... American soldiers in Afghanistan ... that could be taken out of context and viewed in a negative light.
All that said, the absolute best defense against these sorts of situations is just not to be a douche, which isn't very hard. If a guy or girl is dead...leave them in peace. If you can't say something nice...just don't comment.
Only very rarely do I get traceable IP addresses that can be dealt with in any meaningful way, and that's usually when there is an invasion of trolls for a day or two and some drop their guard.
The only time I've ever successfully stopped a troll was about a decade ago when I traced it back to a uni and was able to raise a sysadmin.
By and large, for the majority of forums and social sites out there (which is where most bullying happens) there is very little that the admins can do even if it's reported to us.
About the only thing working is stopforumspam.com , whereby hundreds of forums are blocking IP addresses for a short while across all of the forums. It's made for spam, but I and others submit trolls to it too (when we're absolutely sure there's nothing of worth in the person and it's not just differing views).
I would, in fact, be somewhat surprised if nobody has proposed deploying this kind of thing against, say, Anonymous.
From the article, we have a troll writing "Rest in piss" and "Rest in piss, you n*r". I'm pretty sure those won't personally identify anyone.
Say you use an n-gram analysis at the word level. I can just build a tool that processes a corpus, and then as I type, suggests the most probable next word for me. I can simply accept those words when appropriate and look like a different person.
i believe it's possible to run a node and just query it for the exit nodes, but I'm not sure.
Were you able to get a bayesian algorithm to learn whether specific users were likely to be spammers or trolls? (As opposed to specific posts.) I'm guessing this isn't easy to do, since I get spammed on other services on a regular basis (e.g. Twitter spammers will setup new accounts and spam on a regular basis).
One of my projects was shut down by Craigslist (NotifyWire.com). I took down the site and posted the details explaining why NotifyWire was going off-line.
Six months later, while attempting to refinance my house, I was told to take my name off the mortgage application because my corporation was under legal threat by Craigslist and thus was a liability that the underwriters might cite as a reason to decline the application.
That was an eye opener for me.
Since my income comes from my company (though mostly from consulting activities) the broker thought the underwriters might think my income future was in jeopardy.
He told me mortgage underwriters are doing web searches on applicants, which is the scary part.
Why wouldn't they? Why is it scary that they are?
[1] This rule only applies to Fannie Freddie and the SBA which do the majority of mortgages. If you go through a private bank the rules are off.
this is a typical scenario of unaware teen: he signs up for facebook, put bunch of pictures, then get in some sort of trouble due to that (stalker, troubles at work/home/school etc). That is like a cold shower. Most teens learns from first, second, third mistake. Then they stop posting photos OR at least think twice before clicking upload.
Not only it would be incredible abuse on FB part to share your history in a way that your data could be as valuable as credit card history, I am sure people would stop using Facebook had known their _private_ facebook life stopped them from getting a credit card or some other benefits.
That's great advice, both online and face-to-face. Well, probably "useful" rather than "nice", and say it respectfully; e.g. when debating an idea, arguing your position may not be seen as nice...
It is all so true that what you say can come back to haunt you. It is the responsibility that comes with the freedom (of speech, in this case). You cannot have one without the other, but while it is important to understand and accept the responsibility, you shouldn't let it frighten you into giving away your freedom.
Ultimately, the obnoxious-but-innocuous comments are just noise; it's the political views that run counter to the mainstream that will raise the most flags, and which require the most freedom from censorship, self- or otherwise.
...unless one is already a douche, in which case it might be very hard.
The behavior of insulting people for no reason, like bullying generally, seems to transmitted via anti-rational memes.
Which means that the people who engage in it don't understand why they do so; they just know that it gives them some sort of psychological relief.
...until Deja News came out - a cached, searchable store of all Usenet posts, which Google later acquired.
Everything we put out on the Internet can and probably will be stored by someone forever.
I don't know if it was on purpose, but when I read that the music of i'll be watching you popped in to my head
Nimrod 7 is an asshole cyborg character from a Cyberpunk game Bloodnet (Microprose 1993).
Basically Nimrod is an excellent cyborg warrior. But if you have him on team you will face A LOT of unprovoked attacks.
http://www.sysabend.org/champions/characters/mweisler@rz.uni...
This guy seems to have his character covered pretty well.
The angle was that people can be very immature and very nasty via the Web when their identity is obscured, which is hardly something to dispute. However, the programme seemed to be hinting that public forums should be more regulated to prevent this being possible, which seems to be a poor alternative.
One of the more memorable snippets involved them contentiously asking a Facebook representative why Facebook can't run phonelines to manage abuse complaints from users.
Which is kinda ironic, given that this guy apparently just doesn't care, despite knowing that his name and face are going to be broadcast on primetime BBC1.
What annoys me is there's a very simple middle solution: You are anonymous to other users, but not the company running the site. If you do something like this, then the company has the right to out you, similar to a DMCA takedown.
With that you could have those people who want to stay hidden from others, but you'd prevent idiots like this because it'd be easy for someone to report them and have them outed. It would only take a couple of bad trolls getting their "troll bit flipped" for the behavior to be reduced.
In theory that sounds nice, and to a certain extent there are some similar systems in place already...but I just don't see it working that well overall.
We already have a system like this for sex offenders, and it's got some serious issues. In such a system it would either be up to each site to have a public "troll list" or they would have to have some central repository. In the case of the former, anytime you look at a sites list you won't be able to tell which ones are just someone who made an offensive comment or two on a single site and "repeat offenders" who are on many sites lists. You'd have to collate the lists somehow and even then you'd have troubles of differentiating the various "levels", mistaken identity, etc. In the case of a central repository that's a whole 'nother can of worms.
Then there's the question of what constitutes an "identity" for the purposes of being able to post. A name? An address? Those don't seem suitable to me for such purposes, they're too fudge-able and temporary. A State ID# or SSN seem too personal and permanent. If the former are compromised, you can limit the damage somewhat, the latter less so. There's the issue of proliferation. Even if you use addresses, every single time you put your info out there is the increased risk of it being compromised. It's not unreasonable to want to limit the amount of times you expose yourself to the risk of security breaches.
There's the issue of the practical burden it would place on the sites. This isn't so much of an issue since it would be voluntary, but it's something to consider.
I think the ethical issue of whether it's ok to out someone who obviously has enemies on the internet is a tricky one. Again it gets to the issue of what constitutes an "identity" for these purposes. If it's too specific it becomes dangerous to release, or even store...and if it's not specific enough it becomes dangerous due to confusion, or loses it's sting.
There's also the question of whether it will really deter anyone. As much as they like to try and evoke the image of a deliberate prankster, I don't think most trolls really think things out that much. It strikes me as impulsive behavior. So they get hit on one site after an impulsive trolling and just move to another one.
Assuming that it's specific, I think the possibility of some sort of violent retaliation needs to be considered. You could argue one reaps what one sows, but I don't think that's an attitude that belongs in the consideration of organizing a society. We should value protecting everyone over punishing wrongdoers. A balance needs to be struck between removing the cause of harm from society and not discarding anyone.
Overall I wouldn't be surprised if such a system comes into being. Some walled gardens where members are authenticated based on a one way hash of some personally identifiable information, or a cryptographic key-fob or something...and if they cause a ruckus their access will be revoked. However I think such a system would have enough problems that it wouldn't take off except in isolated pockets that highly value having an exclusive discussion among a verified group, and there I think it would be more about that than preventing trolling.
For trolls, I think measures similar to what is mostly used now will continue to be the main defense. The ability to moderate, vote, etc.
Systems like we are discussing can and do exist, I just don't see them as a necessary or particularly effective solution...especially when compared with the necessary trade-offs.
Look at AOL, which during it's hey-day was basically this sort of walled garden. You needed a phone #, name, address, payment combination to register. Many chatrooms were patrolled by moderators...there were even investigations and "stings" of trouble-makers. If you got TOS'd too many times you were permanently banned.
However trolling, illegal activity, pornography, etc thrived pretty well regardless. It was easy to evade the bans and there was a steady flow of new trolls.
I think the best solution in terms of respect for privacy and effectiveness is a combination of crowd-sourced moderation and intelligent detection of likely "trolling" and problem posters by software.
You have to use a real name, address and credit card to register an account. But in-world, no one knows who you are and there is no practical way for anyone to find your real identity. And for misbehavior (griefing or harassment), they can block you (by IP I guess) for days, weeks, or forever.
Holocost Deniers: Tolerated
Breastfeeding Mothers: Not OK
Whether you like or dislike their particular choices, the very fact that they censor breastfeeding mothers means that they are accepting moral responsibility for what they decide not to censor.
I do not accept the statement that they “Abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive and ignorant. However, we believe people have a right to discuss these ideas and we want Facebook to be a place where ideas, even controversial ideas, can be discussed.” Where was that line of thinking when they censored breastfeeding?
Would you make the same argument if we were talking about Holocaust deniers and personal pornography? Because I am pretty sure that is the distinction that Facebook is making. You just disagree on what constitutes pornography. (I am not agreeing or disagreeing with either of you around that definition either way, just saying that I think you are arguing a different argument).
UPDATE: I have no idea, but I am curious: Can you write porn on FB? Soft-core? Hard-core? As suggested by another respondent, I’m pretty sure you can post a picture of yourself with skinhead tattoos. Can you post a hateful picture? Is this just words vs. pictures? Or is it ideas vs. so-called porn?
coughSteamcough
Less charitable explanation: FB knows that basically nobody cares about nazis, especially after you've trotted out "free speech", while there is actually a measurable number of people who'd give up Facebook over breasts.
I wonder what the ratio of flagged pictures to removed pictures is. I imagine it's pretty high.
However, the original argument is flawed. Holocaust deniers fall under First Amendment rights, breastfeeding falls under obscenity law.
So as a society, what do you do with such offenders? Freedom of speech wasn't really meant to protect garbage like that. Well, one option is you can publicly shame him, or at the very least engage in a real conversation to see what his logic is. The internet is a free place, but we can't become so desensitized to racism and hateful comments that we dismiss is at part of our daily lives, as nothing to be concerned about. People do end up reading nasty comments, and it does affect them.
If I forget my 'ignore them' position for a second: Either they do violate the law or they don't. If they do, the law is responsible here, not you/we. If they don't, it's a rather weird idea to hunt them down and blackmail them to stop that behavior or you're telling the employer/his wife/his mom about those Facebook posts.
Let's focus on improvements to moderation systems and teach people around us that they shouldn't take random posts on the internet serious.
Secondly, you ( and other people) shape society's culture and norms. Trolling is a matter of culture, not just law, and it is not simply the governments responsibility or not. The people pass laws which the government enforces (or at least that's how its suppose to work in a democracy).
Thirdly, I actually made the same comment as you the other day, regarding "don't take internet comments seriously". Here's a great reply:
I will play the part of the alarmist and also be the first to invoke Goodwin's law by stating that unchecked rhetoric was the first psych-ops that the Nazi's used. Group acceptance of dehumanizing a different group is the first step down a horrible path. It should be checked at every advance. The seed in America seems to have happened with Muslims, as it was acceptable in good company to view them all as fundamentalist psychopaths, the government and media where all to willing to reinforce such group think as it strengthen their case for war, now that the seed has set it has grown to bear fruit. Vilifying or dehumanizing a group of people always leads down a path of darkness. I would not hastily blow it off as being stupid and crap said on the internet, it is a dangerous mindset, that is easily infection to those susceptible to group think and the sewers of it tend to be far too willing to act when they feel emboldened by numbers and the echo chamber.
whether its a garbage or not, that your personal opinion. even if it would be opinion of 99% of population, you would still find people liking his writing.
I am not sure where the problem is: whether it is him writing this stuff, or others unable to ignore his writing. I don't mind trolls; they are sort of a challenge. If someone is smart enough to get intelligent individual involved in the garbage conversation, then its that individual fault. internet is a product of humanbeings and like in real life, there will always be statistical noise, an asshole in the neighborhood, one stupid dude out of 100s your working with, etc.
Checking with Wiki, troll is someone fed off someones responses to his comment. I bet if you ignore this guy long enough, he would stop trolling.
"I love that the whole thing is narrated like they're tracking down an animal in nature. I loved the end "So, there you go, an internet troll. That's what they look like." Yep, that's what they look like." - this did make me giggle though.
US has free speech.
Rest of world doesn't. (yeah yeah .. "we have free speech except for obectional material" ... right.
American develop an "idiot filter" and get good at using it: "dude's an idiot. whatever. move on".
Europeans don't and find the need for authorities "e.g. The BBC" to police their brains.
Big deal So what? Some clown is an offensive troll. I'd rather deal with that with big brother smashing anonymous complaints, no matter how off base.
EDIT: Not saying that murderous leftist radicals can't do damage, but the west's left has mellowed.
I'd like to see a Chris Hansen style confrontation, where they track down trolls, confront them with what they've written, and then see how they justify or apologize their way out of the situation.
Then again, I grew up in a place where the local paper's letters to the editor read like a best-of collection of racist trolling (pre-internet, even.) Most of the letter writers were over 70 and still spouting ungrammatical poorly-articulated vitriol.
http://boingboing.net/2011/10/18/internet-trolls-on-snl.html
First of all, how did they track this guy down? Sure, there are legal ways of doing it if the guy is sloppy. But how does a report on the ethics of the Internet perpetrate a huge invasion of privacy without so much as passing comment on it? Disturbing implications for what actions are justified when directed at people with the "wrong" ideas.
Second, notice the reporter's repeated emphasis on the illegality of racist speech. He's not just shaming this guy. He's beating the drum of state censorship. Again maybe it's just my ideals but this is just obviously disturbing, maybe even moreso than trolls themselves.
I am not able to watch the whole program but judging from the synopsis it doesn't sound like it entails any substantive discussion of the ethics of privacy and censorship on the Internet, e.g. interviews with civil libertarians, which is what any serious report on trolling should include. As it stands it reeks of sensationalism.
In addition it somewhat upsets me that someone could get jail time for making an offensive comment. Depending on the jurisdiction or culture, I know I have said things that would be offensive to someone (specifically regarding religion.) To be faced with jail time over something like that does not sound like something I would expect from a western country.
But did you say them with the specific, primary intent to cause that person harassment, alarm or distress? I would wager not.
Note that I don't necessarily agree with the legislation, but it's an important distinction.
What a ridiculous stereotype.
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he: (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_harassment,_alarm_o...
But my point more was that it was presented as if because it was illegal, it was ipso facto immoral.
"Confronting" people like this does little to change their behavior. At best, it publicizes their identities, and causes some minor level of disgrace, but why would that matter to them?
That's actually useful information because it contradicts the received wisdom that trolls won't troll offline.
Further, for those trolls that do care about the perception of their real identities, perhaps pointing to something like this and saying "you sound like this guy" is enough to change behavior, albeit at the margin.
Fortunately wikipedia still has in their definition:
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[4] The noun troll may refer to the provocative message itself, as in: "That was an excellent troll you posted".
So, a proper troll on HN might pop and point out that functional languages, while pretty and amusing, are largely unused because their performance is insufficient and make a comparison about, say, perl, provoking people to correct them and argue the point.
Look up adequacy.org to learn about proper trolling.
This guy is just a jerk.
Isn't that exactly what he was doing?
Proper trolling is like good teasing, it teaches people about their cognitive blind spots.
Probably the solution is not to react to the troll, and for their outbursts to be met with silence. Don't read their content, and avoid forums or lists where trolling regularly occurs. When that's not possible report them to the list/forum admin, without engaging with the troll directly.
It is time to engage: people with patience could engage them in good faith: instead of asking "how do you justify it?" ask "what is your life like that you feel the need to do this?" There are a number of violence-intervention programs that could be adapted. Alternatively, we can drive them to ever-greater heights of rage by armchair psychoanalyzing them and bombarding them with ridicule: laughing at fear can make it go away. We could shun them, alienate them, mock them and otherwise make trolling unpleasant to engage in. Right now the incentive to troll is there and there is no disincentive: we need to create one. In real life, the disincentive is that someone will take a fully-justified swing at the troll or they will be arrested for harassment, stalking and verbal assault. We need to enforce the internet-equivalent of getting punched in the face, since the government doesn't appear to enforce laws against harassment and assault online.
We don't accept it because it's abhorrent behavior but these people need mental health help. Getting them to seek help is a nearly impossible task though.
Ultimately, everyone has their foibles. It's what makes humans human. Only when someone become Internet Famous, though, do we start diagnosing them with illnesses. Why is that? Why can't we say, "wow, this guy has chosen a pretty worthless hobby. too bad he can't use his time to build model trains or something"?
The problem is, sometimes the way we interact with the world becomes so obtuse it inhibits our ability to communicate effective and form healthy meaningful relationships.
A diagnosis of what's traditionally classified as a personality disorder isn't necessarily going to elucidate any kind of universal truth, but it might provide context for self-improvement.
In this particular case, when the reporter caught up with the guy he appeared to have a wife and young child. So he seems to have at least one "healthy meaningful relationships". He's probably not a complete jerk when face to face with people. It's probably more along the lines of this: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
I think the concept of lulz to me is funny when it comes from a place of humor rather than hatred. Perhaps it's a gray area for some people at what point it stops being funny and starts being simply malicious.
I'm somewhat inclined to agree, especially when it's something a simple as a website comment that can be permanently erased with a single click.
It's like the people who play games like League of Legends and then help the other team or team kill or generally just play to tick folks off. There was a Wired article about this some time ago that had one line which stuck out in my mind: "They're playing the same game you are.. they are just playing to a different objective".
Personally, while I agree that trolling an obituary page is in >>incredibly<< poor taste and someone should probably clout the guy on the back of the head , invoking the government to do it is a step down a road that nobody wants to go down.
Kill the comment, report the loser, and move on. That's how you deal with idiots on the internet. Any of the other solutions mentioned here are below optimal for a number of reasons.
This guy seems to be aware that his behavior would be likely to land him "9 weeks" in jail which he dismisses as an insignificant punishment.
http://www.acluohio.org/about/historicacluohiolitigation.asp...
and again in Watchtower Bible vs. Stratton in 2002
Second case is about religious freedom and the government not having the right to out members of a religion.
Neither of the cases are about a person being totally anonymous, or someone spewing hate speech anonymously, or someone bullying someone anonymously.
But hey, people will spin this into "I now have the right to troll a guy's dead grandma."
Additionally, these are just court cases. Sure they have a slight force of law if applied narrowly to similar cases. When I say a right I mean in the constitution or an amendment. People say like to say the constitution allows anonymous speech but it doesn't by any stretch.
So, if I were to be exact: I stand corrected, there are two obscure cases that relate to two small situations not related to the internet which allows for a small amount of anonymous speech, which does not give people a total right to be anonymous all the time.
AFAIK, there's never been a supreme court ruling against anonymous speech rights. There have been lower court rulings against them, usually in cases that look like stalking.
Source?
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he: (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_harassment,_alarm_o...
I'm out.