Slashdot Mirror
Leaving a Comment? That'll Be 99 Cents, and Your Name
netbuzz writes "Anxious to lift a ban on comments brought about by incessant trolling and anonymous slander, a Massachusetts newspaper has begun requiring two things of online readers who want to leave their thoughts on stories: a one-time fee of 99 cents and a willingness to use their real names. Says the publisher: 'This is a necessary step, in my opinion, if The Attleboro (MA) Sun Chronicle is going to continue to provide a forum for comments on our websites.'"
I guess speech is no longer free.
Requiring real names is a great idea. There is a reason that newspapers have generally confirmed the identities of people who write letters to the editor before publishing those letters. The same should be done for on-line comments. The 99 cent fee, however, seems silly.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
posting here is still free
Slashdot has for a long time had a way of filtering the trolls out, why can't a newspaper have their own scheme to do so?
i wanted to post this comment, but does anyone have change for a dollar?
Someone is taking the phrase "Money talks" a bit too literally, huh.
Although, I've always wanted every time someone says "that's my 2 cents", that he's charged 2 real cents.
you aren't dealing with sophisticated tor and proxy users and ip spoofing, you're dealing with the local technically barely literate cranks. so just enforce ip bans. or even cookies. these guys are sitting at home on one computer, not even in a coffee shop. and you're probably only dealing with 12-24 committed griefers only, so its not an endless problem
finally, i was always a fan of the rubber room (there may be a better term for this technique):
once you've flagged the committed griefer, make it so his comments only appear to him. oftentimes these hacks will comment freely and continually for months on end, completely oblivious to the fact that no one is reading their comments except themselves
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and a willingness to use their real names.
Somewhere in this country, there's a Hugh Jass who feels silenced.
One issue that I've seldom seen mentioned is that those who often know the most about public issues (the directors of various public institutions) can seldom use their real names because they necessarily report to political or quasi-political bodies. It would be professional suicide.
Forget ordering laptops and flat screen tvs with all those stolen credit cards; I'm gonna brew me up an Attleboro Shitstorm.
I wish I could mod you Off Topic.
Can I a pay a little extra to make my post all caps?
100 cents is too much to poast an internet. All internets should be poasted for a discounted 99 cents.
Somewhere in this country, there's a Hugh Jass who feels silenced.
That's what a middle initial is for, unless someone's name is already Hugh Gerald Rection.
chaos everywhere! How do we control it? (light bulb) .... 99 cents at a time. (grin)
Two Week Later:
Why have the online comments drop... oh yeah...
(Dr. Chaos & his side-kick Over-Reaction Boy strike again)
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
so when they say 'real name' they mean , string that matches our interpretation of a real name, 'nae intention' normally passes that weak test
if they aren't in eastern MA or RI, deny them the ability to comment
yes, the attleboro expat in san francisco will be severely saddened at being unable to comment on a story from back home
but that sounds like a fair trade off for effectively blocking a stumbleupon or 4chan trollpocalypse
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My local newspaper site, madison.com , is pretty new to comments. They disable them on crime stories I've noticed but anything doing with politics, the proposed high-speed rail service between Madison and Milwaukee, or state workers will attract trolls by the dozen. It makes reading the news stories like taking a walk through Craigslist's Rants and Raves section. When it turns to /b/ I'll just quit reading I suppose.
The concept of paying to comment seems a little too far though. That said, I'm all for having to publish your real name, address, phone number, and a JPEG when leaving a comment on a news site. Anonymity breeds stupidity and the best way to combat trolls is to force them to stand by their comments. Slashdot's system works, and I've seen other half-assed attempts to mimic it, but in the end people just need to be held responsible for their own actions.
In fact, I'll start. My name is Jay and yes, I've trolled before. I try very, very hard not to do it now and I've said things in online forums that'd I'd never say to someone's face. I'd promise not to do it again but the dumb republicans are still out there and need to be told what's what.
"This food is problematic."
Naturally, the newspaper in question has a right to do this, and especially if they are a small paper they may feel they don't have the resources available to consistently moderate user comments. Traditionally, newspapers confirmed the identity of people who wrote letters to the editor - which also is helpful in eliminating spoofing.
However, there is certainly a downside. Sometimes, the things that most need to be said require anonymity. When the prevailing dogma - whether secular or religious - precludes the truth, those who wish to speak the truth must take steps to protect themselves. Slashdot has found a pretty good way of reducing the impact of trolls while both preserving anonymity and allowing the use of pseudonyms that allow regular posters to develop a good reputation without revealing their true identity.
I hope and expect that most online media will follow Slashdot's example, rather than the example of the Sun Chronicle.
If you want to post anonymously and for free (although this is a one-time ninety-nine cent fee, so it doesn't exactly break the bank) then there are lots of venues in which to do so.
Different parts of the internet offer different ways to screen out trolls, with varying degrees of success and with varying costs and benefits. Some newspapers impose lengthy delays (and incur significant costs to themselves) on comment posting to allow for their own moderators to screen comments. Slashdot has a moderation system which is generally good at elevating comments supportive of our constituency's preferred varieties of groupthink, but which may handle less-popular viewpoints less well (even when expressed cogently, politely, and coherently, such views face a toss-up between up- and down-moderation), and which also allows well-written posts that don't appear within an hour or two of the story to disappear from the radar of most readers.
And this isn't exactly a new concept for newspapers. Are there any serious newspapers with appreciable circulation numbers that allow anonymous letters to the editor in their print editions?
See also: The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, Penny Arcade. Maybe this is the right solution to the GIFT problem for this particular institution. I look forward to seeing if this is effective in improving signal-to-noise.
~Idarubicin
What with the recent spate of popular reading devices, (iPad and the followers soon to come), not having keyboards in the first place, one almost gets the impression that these papers want people to shut up and listen. And then shut up some more.
So there's three levels at work here. On the top level we have the primary motivation for this. . .
"Hey, if we publicize contentious issues which are designed to engage people on an emotional level, then we can expect to see a fuck-ton of cash come our way as people debate endless infernal issues! Hey! What stories do we have in the slush pile on the abortion issue? What a great way to monetize our web presence and save this sinking ship!"
On the next level down, we have a nice bias against exploited humans: Opinions don't count without good credit. And good credit doesn't happen if one is not plugged tightly into the human industrial exploitation market. And anyway, who wants a bunch of slaves complaining about their lives while you're trying to read the morning news? That's just gaudy!
But on the final level, where I bet most of the people working at the paper are not aware of what is actually happening. . . This becomes a great way to astroturf the corporate/government spin on relevant news stories into place while keeping barriers high against informed dissenters. If you really want to prevent people from speaking out, you just suspend their credit and 'poof' they have no voice. And the fact that they cannot be anonymous is a great incentive for them to keep their mouths shut. Take a look at the way the various papers in Toronto responded to the G20 protest issues and the way the comments were handled there.
Charming. Kiss another paper goodbye.
-FL
It cannot be denied that the discourse will certainly be more civil with real names. I suspect the fee is not a money-raiser; it's so it can be checked that the name is real, by virtue of it matching a valid credit card.
Where does that leave people that would rather remain anonymous so they can express unpopular views? In a hard place. OTOH, it is quite routine that Letters to the Editor are written with real names.
SirWired
I don't want future employers googling me for my political views, so I want to use a pseudonym, but I'd be happy to give them my full name to activate the account.
to cmdrtaco!
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
Stewbacca is my real name.
Like many people on Slashdot, I have a day job where I'm known to a number of our customers. Sometimes I want to pass out some information that favours one of them but not another (e.g. product comparisons.) The wonder of Google means that I can't even do that on the website of our small-town paper using my real name.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
http://www.theprivacyguy.com/2007/03/30/anonymous-prepaid-credit-cards/
Posted anonymously...in the spirit of things.
i tremble at the power of 4chan
i give up. 4chan wins
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If I pay money to post, am I allowed to post whatever I want?
Presumably, everyone who can qualify via cc is an adult, so will there be any moderation for language or general douchebaggery? After all, if you pay to be there, shouldn't you be able to say whatever you want?
I'm sure some people would love to have a forum where they don't have to watch their language and can speak as strongly as they wish, knowing that only people committed enough to pay money are able to involve themselves in the conversation.
Either this newspaper has a workable idea or they've found a way to remove from their posters everyone except the few who are totally dedicated to being jerks and will go so far as to pay for the privilege. And they'll probably pay via anonymous gift card with a plausible but entirely fake name and address. :-)
So does this mean that the newspaper will also start identifying all sources by their real names instead of using "anonymous" and "unnamed"?
I doubt it.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Shashdot has a desperate need to adopt the same policy, and it's probably the most troll-free forum on the internet.
> The 99 cent one-time fee is a great way to verify user identity by using the banking / credit-card system.
Yeah, umm... The thing about that is that they don't verify your identity. At all.
No, seriously you can get a credit card in ANYONE'S name so long as you're paying the bill. They verify the transaction, not the person's identity.
You see, this is the problem. Only the fruitcakes and the "Mr Irate of Littlebottom" will pay 99c to say something on a local rag.
Look, they don't have to have a comment section.
If it's too much trouble, get rid of it.
Paper newspapers required you write in. what's wrong with that?
Ben Franklin didn't use his own name when using the newspaper as a forum. He wrote as Silence Dogood
Franklin was 16 years old at the time and apprenticed to the printer, his elder brother, James, something of a hell-raiser himself, and probably none too too pleased at being so casually out-done.
99-cents is too expensive! I can barely handle 2 cents in this economy.
I don't agree at all with publishing commenters' real names (though the city and state of the billing address strikes me as useful), but a one-time fee coupled with halfway decent forum moderation policies really is the way to go. The financial aspect causes idiots to think very hard before shitting in a thread, and light-handed and pragmatic moderation helps keep a discussion civil.
MetaFilter has been doing this for a long time now, requiring a one-time $5 signup fee and employing a small handful of fantastic moderators (4 or 5 mods for 100K+ users), and the level of discourse is some of the highest I've read on the Web.
the coolest club on
Joe Schmoe.
If you want to post but not use your real name, buy a prepaid Visa and make up a reasonable-sounding name. Last I checked, prepaid Visas don't do a name check, because the money is already in the account.
As long as you pick a real-sounding name and not "Hugh Jass" or something, and you're not rude or spammy about it, you can post all you want under your pseudonym for the same buck everyone else pays.
It'll be enough effort that most of the spammers and trolls won't bother, since the account would be shut down too quickly to make it worth $1 per post.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I have $1.37 left over on a gift VISA card. I can change the name to anything I want. Turd Fergason coming to a comment section near your.
Recently the Buffalo News website attempted to implement a system requiring your full name and a home phone number to verify identities in hopes of decreasing racist comments. I'm not sure what happened with it but it either was quickly changed or people didn't care because there are still tons of racist comments on there..
no comment.
all that time generating content, looking for feedback, and getting back nothing: its debilitating. then they find out they've been tricked. a second negative dose: even more discouragement
the point is to discourage the troll, stop them in their tracks, get them to think before posting. the rubber room is a huge dose of poison for their behavior. of course they will find out what happened, but you've given them a big amount of grief, to make them think about their behavior
and that's really the best you could ever hope to do with some of these cranks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...you have a point. I mean, our paper has always been very strict about verifying the identity of writers of letters to the editor. So what's the difference? Google. No employer is going to sift through thousands of newspapers to see if you wrote any LTE's they don't approve of. But googling? Oh heck yes, in a heartbeat.
I still agree with the newspapers on this, but it sucks that some people will be--justifiably--afraid to speak up.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
This should work out wonderfully, you see in real life I've never met a person who was mean or spiteful so this is totally the solution to getting rid of the anonymous menace on message boards. My hats off to the newspaper for figuring out such a great solution! /end sarcasm
Of all the things in life what do you want to be remembered for? A snarky comment on a newspaper website that probably won't exist a decade from now or a clear synthesis of your ideas and vision? Write a book if you are disappointed in your own family's genes. There are few ways to immortality. Mega structures, grand children, gene therapy, and reincarnation. Any structure that has a face is more than likely to be broken up to make room for housing in city limits. Children can die any number of ways. Genes are a programming challenge that has yet to be completely debugged. The rise of night-shot consumer grade cameras combined with EMF detectors that electricians use is another of histories greatest discoveries. Not unlike mistakes that led to great inventions like galvanized rubber. The market for taking your money with after you die has yet to arise. When it does we can expect greater divisions in society. Currently anyone can reincarnate as a wealthy individual by being born to rich parents. As an example of personal worth the Queen of England is tied to a desk job for life but is poorer than J.K. Rowling. A woman in poverty can earn more from fiction than a descendant of royal blood. The paradigm shift has happened. The more frequent that these shifts happen the healthier our society gets. When wealth is shoved from place to place the exchange is what drives our economy and leads to new discoveries. Would there be any ghosts at hospices if pregnant women were required to spend time at the place where their own grandparents died? Most of us don't think about what we want to do after the inevitable. So far M-theory does allow for another universe but not heaven or hell. http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/hell.asp
"incessant trolling and anonymous slander"
First, newspapers suffered from "incessant trolling and anonymous slander" always. They dealt with it by limiting the number of pages given over to 'letters to the editor'. "incessant trolling and anonymous slander" BY the editors was considered expempt. of course.
Second, North Attleboro (and Mass by extension) is pretty much ALL "incessant trolling and anonymous slander". What the hell are they gonna put up on the blog now? Movie reviews and cat stories? Welcome to the Massachusetts experience. We don't call them 'Massholes' in Maine for no reason.
ps - You can't slander a Massachusetts politician. The truth is an absolute defense.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
so just enforce ip bans. or even cookies
In general IP bans are not a good idea but for community related comments, it's even worse.
After all, why should citizens of the community not be able to post comments from a library or otherwise shared computer system? You just blocked out everyone with that IP block and prevented a lot of voices being heard. For a small enough community you could be blocking a pretty significant number of people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's as if a million trolls suddenly cried out, and were silenced...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It costs 44 cents in postage to mail a letter to the editor. Why not charge the same amount for each letter? If the post office is missing out, someone ought to make money on it. Besides, paying for postage has never stopped me or other nut jobs, so why do they think a one-time charge of 99 cents will?
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Comments on random newspaper articles are pointless and inane rubbish from people who think "I have an opinion and therefore it must be valid"? It almost never is.
Why the fuck would you ask the general public for their opinion on, say, science, dentistry, mathematics, epidemiology, the financial crisis, or... any number of subjects? The general public are fucking uninformed blithering idiots who think they have something to say.
I may be a blithering idiot, but at least I have the decency/intelligence to think... maybe I don't have anything interesting to say and therefore I'm not going to comment on this news story. ... but then I just have. So there.
Just goes to show you can't be too careful.
HAND.
Krotch ScroteGuzzle
No U. >:(
It's not filtering of different opinions, it's filtering of the trolls who post off-topic graffiti and goatse links rather than actually taking part in the discussion. OP was spot on. Slashdot's moderation system works because it has a huge army of visitors that can be tapped for mod duties.
No it most certainly doesn't work. It rates a comment according to popularity. Now it may just happen that a comment is unpopular because it is off topic or it is a troll, but there are many other reasons for a view expressed to be unpopular. The moderation is routinely misused by people who disagree with content or find a point of view unpopular regardless of whether it is valid. You only have to look at any topic involving Apple, or better yet post to one, and watch the moderation roller-coaster. That "huge army of visitors" is more biased than a politician that's just received a large bribe.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I can't find anything like that in the UK.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I sort of like they payment idea, at least in this context. While there is clearly value to "raw" discussion fora (e.g., Slashdot, or at least Slashdot % idle section), restrictions intended to increase signal-to-noise ratio aren't necessarily a bad thing. Apparently this paper prefers the "comments" section to more resemble a "democratized" version of "letters to the editor" than it does the "comments" section of a random blog (with the latter most likely the status quo). For my time, that doesn't sound like such a terrible idea — it's not as if "anonymous discussion fora" are a scarce resource on the Internet, after all.
Half the steeper-than-required-to-dissuade-spammers-and-trolls $0.99 price point probably comes from transaction costs; the other half can probably be chalked up to a combination of corporate politics and delusions of grandeur (someone probably positioned the proposal as a much-needed revenue source in this age of dwindling newspaper readership, most likely based on fuzzy numbers ["we get 10,000 posts a week; at $1/post, that's over $5 million/year!"]), but the idea of asking for some token payment is sound — in essence, they're collecting money for their "automated editorial control" on behalf of their readership. IIRC, something similar was proposed for email (where it's unlikely to work for logistical reasons — who runs the "Internet post office," and where does the profit go? Incidentally, this is a much better idea, in principle, than similar "antispam" requirements that require relatively costly challenge/response computations, which is roughly equivalent to the same thing, but since we can't decide who gets the money, we just burn it, literally, with the resulting environmental costs when the "solution" runs at scale).
The requirement for a real name strikes me as misguided; those who claim that people should be willing to "stand behind their words" often forget the importance of anonymity in speech, especially in political speech. To take just two obvious examples from American history, consider Common Sense, written by "an Englishman," a.k.a. Thomas Paine, and The Federalist, written by "Publius," a.k.a. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.
I suspect the "real name" requirement came about because, while nearly all "junk posts" use fake names, the majority of "well-reasoned posts" (appear to) use the poster's real name, and the newspaper figured that the "false negatives" aren't worth wading through the mountain of garbage. Maybe, maybe not (of all the "good posts" I might inadvertently censor, the "false negatives" might be the ones with the most value), but my solution would be to try the payment thing alone first, then review the results before imposing further changes.
-jtm
Usually, simply having to go to the trouble of creating an account on a particular site is enough to deter me from leaving comments, even when I want to. (Thankfully I've had an account on Slashdot for so long!) Do I really need a $1 fee to deter me as well? This certainly won't affect me. They need to focus on making it *easier* to encourage more people to leave comments, not more difficult!
I think it's only fair, if i write an article and put my real name under it you are allowed to comment anything you want as long as you put your real name under the comment. Posting crap under some random123 user is not free speech.
I'd never pay any platform simply to allow me to comment. If money is to change hands, I'm the one who should be paid since I'm increasing the value of their product with my carefully considered opinions. I wouldn't comment under my real name either - the legal arena for false accusations of libel, false accusations of terrorism etc is already heavily biased towards the state/the combatant with the most money so I am in no hurry to provide information that would make it easier to connect me to my comments.
Just see how much impact their idea had! (And of course, how well it worked.)
A few names that came up on the first page of a Google search in the UK are "Virgin Money", "PayPal TopUp Card", "Sterling Pre-Paid", "Freedom Prepaid", etc.
I was under the impression that prepaid credit cards were available in various stores (gas stations, drug stores, etc) in Europe, though I don't know if that also holds true in the UK.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I would LOVE for cbc.ca to pick up on this. The comments on cbc.ca usually serve to accomplish little but expose rampant prejudice and ignorance across Canada. I swore off reading the comments after an actor from my hometown was shot in Mumbai and was interviewed in the hospital where he was recovering. A commenter criticized him have "hamming up" the interview.
you have no rights whatsoever about what is done with that post
you act like it's your property, and that you have certain rights about how your post is treated
which is obviously insane, and i have no idea why you have this silly idea
why do you think an internet forum owns you any warranty about how your post is treated? what is the basis for this premise in your mind?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I sort of like this idea. However rather than 99 cent one time fee, I think I would be more inclined to say have a 10 cent fee on every post.
I think if I wanted to share my thoughts on something I feel strongly about, I wouldn't really care about an amount as trivial as 10 cents. Also it might make discourse more well thought out and intelligible. It also may discourage the jerk who just want to post "You suck man meat fagbag!" as it will cost them 10 cents to do so. It wouldn't however limit discussion as if I do feel strongly contrary to your opinion on some subject I would also be likely to not care about the 10 cent fee to counter your argument.
I know this goes against a lot of stuff but, it might at least be an interesting experiment on social interaction in forums on the internet. I would also ditch the real name thing. Using only the fee as the deterrent against flamers and trolls. Likely wouldn't stop it, but it may be a positive step. Of course it might keep me from commenting on topics I am not all that invested it also, for good or bad.
Slander is spoken, libel is written. It'd be difficult for someone to commit slander via a web forum, unless they're linking to an audio or video file in which they're speaking.
I bet only the kooks who made the forums so awful in the first place will pay the fee. They'll be the only ones with enough motivation to pay the money for the privilege of commenting.
I have not seen anything here with the "Visa" or "Mastercard" logos, the closest thing I could find was what they call "prepaid cards", but those require you to register your personal details and then let you transfer money via phone credits, bank account transfers etc.
I haven't noticed these abroad either, but I haven't exactly looked for them abroad. I did ask some friends who are currently in Germany, Poland and Denmark - They've all told me that they don't have those there either.
That's not to say there aren't gift cards, there are gift cards, however, I doubt any worthwhile site will accept a Starbucks gift card.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.