Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

AOL Sued For Over-Zealous Blocking

Posted by timothy on from the spy-vs.-spy-escalation dept.

mik writes "America Online has been sued by CI Host, a Texas-based hosting company for defamation, interference with contractual rights and unfair competition. CI Host has been awarded a temporary restraining order, though AOL has apparently not complied. This may be the first such in a series of suits leading up to, perhaps, to class-action status relating to AOL's recent zealotry in anti-spam policy resulting in the presumption that shared-hosting providers are guilty (of spamming) unless proven innocent."

2 of 546 comments (clear)

  1. The SLASHDOT TROLL HOWTO 0.65 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    This is version 0.65 of a troll HOWTO. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated :) By version 0.7, sections on karma whoring, and conning the Slashdot users in to clicking your links. If you would like to work on the ./ Troll HOWTO, please by all means modify it as you see if, please post the new version of your howto as Unofficial until I can come and pick it and merge the the two together. Make sure to make your version a minor release, as I will be in charge of posting all new major releases. Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, I was on vacation in DISNEYWORLD.

    Section 1 - Trolling techniques

    There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking /.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can break any or all of these and still be successful..

    * Timing

    Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favor of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customize them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since /. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar stories.

    Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway :)

    * Exposure

    Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies - /.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.

    * Accounts

    An alternative to the time-honored tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a troll account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anonymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though :)

    The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on /. and watch the karma roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent, and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.

    * Layout

    To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.

    * Size

    Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A

  2. AOL are clap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    AOL has geeven me terribool serfis. I tly to open da contrrrol seestems weebsite and ay is having t-ruble dew to blocking dew to bad clyterea.

    Plaise escuse my englais I has lern from america mofies.