Slashdot Mirror
Web Trolls Winning As Incivility Increases
mdsolar sends this story from the NY Times:
The Internet may be losing the war against trolls. At the very least, it isn't winning. And unless social networks, media sites and governments come up with some innovative way of defeating online troublemakers, the digital world will never be free of the trolls' collective sway. That's the dismal judgment of the handful of scholars who study the broad category of online incivility known as trolling, a problem whose scope is not clear, but whose victims keep mounting. "As long as the Internet keeps operating according to a click-based economy, trolls will maybe not win, but they will always be present," said Whitney Phillips, a lecturer at Humboldt State University and the author of This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, a forthcoming book about her years of studying bad behavior online. "The faster that the whole media system goes, the more trolls have a foothold to stand on. They are perfectly calibrated to exploit the way media is disseminated these days."
Just respond with a "U mad Bro?"
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Nothing better to do with your time then vandalize sites?
If people dislike slashdot editors, perhaps you could just stop using the site?
Market supply and demand, if ppl leave then perhaps the editors would change?
Its not worse now than it's ever been in the past. Get the fuck over it
easy way for the 'government' to drastically cut down on internet trolling: stop funding it.
or didyou think that operation mockingbird was a one-time deal?
If you care that much, install Stylish and increase the text size and contrast.
I'm fine with sites regulating trolls. I'm less fine with government curtailing freedom of expression, regardless of how offensive it may be.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The only reason trolls win is we give them the reaction that they are looking for. If people just ignored them more often instead of getting all bent out of shape, the trend would go away. Trolls would quickly get bored because they won't have an outlet for their frustration. Trolls are nothing more than school yard bullies that never quite grew up.
You're opening this topic up for comments? Really???
The scope of the problem isn't clear, the goal is ill-defined. What, exactly, are trolls winning?
I think the only one "winning" anything here is the author trying to sell her book by engaging in much the same inflammatory business as the trolls she purported to study.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
... is often another person's legitimate opinion. If large sites, the government, and advertisers get to determine what is "trolling", we're toast. So much for the "I may disagree with your opinion, but I will defend to the death your right to express it". The new Intarweb - 100% Politically Correct, no dissent allowed, citizen. I for one won't welcome our new anti-troll overlords.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Fucking Obama and the libtards made this happen. It wouldn't happen if the sheeple would just wake up and elect Rand Paul as king/President. THEN maybe we'd live in a utopian world where we hand out AR-15s to every baby as soon they come out of the birth canal. Gee, that'd be so sweet.
Wait, what were we talking about?
I like the suggestion that's floating around for hard-news sites to actually drop user comments. User comments for major media sites (and Huff Po for that matter) are nothing but pure unadulterated drivel. They serve no purpose to anyone BUT the trolls. Take away their candy.
Yup. A better title would be "Troll study demonstrates general population too easily offended."
A troll is still a person, and you can beat a person with a sack full of oranges.
TFA didn't target the random goatse cluttering up comment systems, but they've targeted real evil trolls harming people, obviously a reaction to Zelda William's quitting to twitter.
For me, its funny when a companies naming competition gets trolled, but targeted campaigns against innocent people are truly too much even for me.
Inflammatory comments draw more responses. It's easier to illicit an emotional reaction in a reader via such comments. Once you react emotionally you are more likely to engage with a troll.
Unfortunately unless you truly know the motivation of the other person is to piss you off you can to be sure they are trolling you. Sometimes just having a different opinion on a hot topic like climate change will label you a troll no matter what your aired views are.
On the internet a person could potentially have exposure to many thousands of times more people than they could ever hope to know and so trolls get the attention they so crave/desire.
As people we are hardwired to notice things that do not fit patterns. Social patterns, behaviour etc. In fact when we are displeased or angry we tell more people about it than when we are happy.
Don't blame so called "trolls", they will always be there.
In many ways this is an exercise in social maturity; the collective intelligence not to feed the trolls.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Because we wouldn't anyone meddling with the tweets of our latest small-c celebrity (don't upset the beliebers!), or mocking human interest stories about heroic talking dogs, or critiquing instagram posts of various culinary abominations or leaving snide comments on your facebook page. Because that's the "way media is disseminated these days", and this is what generally passes for social communication and interaction, apparently.
I would normally agree that people get offended too easily, but that's only when people express their honest opinion.
Trolls are a different matter; they only do it for the lulz. Their whole purpose is to create discord. It's a pointless, unproductive waste of time, and the fact that people get jollies out of deliberately aggravating other people bespeaks of a certain level of sociopathy.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
It always comes down to insults unless you will agree that Adm. Rickover was a traitor.
This problem is already solved. It's called the "ignore user " button. Push it and you no longer see the posts from the offending troll. Troll can see your posts, but you can't see theirs. So troll has unpleasant (for a troll) experience of seeing a conversation carried on as though what he was posting simply didn't exist, because it didn't for anyone who regarded him as a troll.
If a troll is like porn, we know it when we see it, then this solution works very well. Everyone sees and ignores the troll, depriving the troll of their motivation for trolling in the first place.
The only problem we have is sites don't use the available technology.
I have been on sites where this virtually eliminated the troll problem. Of course the automated accounts that are spamming viagra require something else, but that is not what the article was complaining about. The article was complaining about civility.
I really have to wonder if there are ulterior motivations at work here. Trolls are the new "we must save our children" rallying cry, an argument designed to force people into ID ing themselves, tagging themselves as "legitimate" so they can be better tracked and monetized. I feel like these pieces are set pieces, ready to roll out as soon as their beneficiaries and creators think their might be some temporary, rising sentiment against anonymity on the web.
Current example- Robin William's daughter's recent Twitter experience.
Sure, a troll gets one off but that is all anyone will see of him.
There is no free speech without anonymity and giving it up because some asshole made someone cry is ceding my freedom to assholes. That wont' be happening.
Yup. A better title would be "Troll study demonstrates general population too easily offended."
I can't believe you would say that!
The only way to defeat a troll (like the parent) is to ignore it. When you find yourself thinking "what the hell is wrong with this guy?" just let it go.
I would argue that some amount of trolling in society is necessary to keep the sanity of the society as a whole.
1. Place immature people (of any physical age) in an anonymous, no consequences environment.
2. Give them the ability to address people whom they would never have the opportunity to approach outside of a virtual environment.
3. Supply a conduit such as Twitter or Facebook or email that requires very little effort compared to writing and mailing a physical letter.
The result is completely predictable.
There have always been more art critics than successful artists. Apparently everything that anybody disagrees with online is termed "troll" now, from patent trolls to opposing views. Actual trolling is mostly harmless. It's a vaccination for online communities: They either develop an immunity or they don't. If they don't, they will succumb to worse influences. In a disembodied world of pure information, not taking every bit of information at face value is a critical survival skill.
Trolls are a different matter; they only do it for the lulz. Their whole purpose is to create discord. It's a pointless, unproductive waste of time, and the fact that people get jollies out of deliberately aggravating other people bespeaks of a certain level of sociopathy.
I'm not sure you can make any generalization about trolls. I think it would be a more interesting study if they attempted to study
why trolls exists. My guess is that alot of the trolls are infrequent. They've had a bad day, drunk, etc.. There was even
a slashdot article recently about someone being shocked that their vandalism they did when they were drunk in college was
still there 10 years later. There are also people who are using it to vent some non-politically correct opinion that they are
unable to talk about in real life and probably a few who are out to watch the world burn but my guess is that the latter category
is actually the minority not the majority. On slashdot, for instance, what percentage of the AC are probably people with
accounts that just click the "post anonymously" button because they are stating a controversial position or otherwise don't
want their nickname associated with that one particular comment.
It's a pointless, unproductive waste of time, and the fact that people get jollies out of deliberately aggravating other people bespeaks of a certain level of sociopathy.
Nonsense. The kind of amusement that comes from trolling fulfills a need. Not unlike other wastes of time. such as watching professional sports and pleasure reading, there is a gratification from being a troll. Crafting your skills and taking it to the next level fills the troll with a sense of accomplishment. There are metrics involved in this pursuit just like any other to measure the effectiveness of the troll. I won't tell you what my goals are or what results give me the most satisfaction as a successful troll but there is gratification nonetheless.
-Anonymous Troll.
Thank goodness we don't have any here, otherwise they'd jump all over this.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
But rickrolling is still OK!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0
Trolling is necessary evil and the last line of defense against monolithic group thinking. Humans are hard-wired to seek consensus and to avoid conflict, both are beneficial traits, but when combined can and do lead to worst kinds of groupthink. Our ideas and understanding, be it social sciences, morals and religion, or even hard sciences are only as good as out ability to question it.
For example, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a trolling organization, but almost everyone here would agree that what they do can be categorized as "greater good".
This has been going on for 20 years. Perhaps more if you include Usenet news groups.
I'm not going to argue that all trolling is good, but some of it definitely is - trolling is the internet's means of self-regulation. For instance, the article mentions people harassing Zelda Williams on twitter. Does she deserve it? No, she most certainly doesn't. However, what the idiots sending her pictures on twitter don't know is that 4chan likes her (and /v/ reveres her as a goddess ever since the time she posted there), and 4chan also likes her father and his work. I would not be surprised in the slightest if those people wind up doxxed, because they've done something assholish enough to pick up the attention of the internet hate machine. That's the internet regulating itself.
The reverse is true for Jezebel - they're a website run by a company (Gawker Media) that thrives on "click-baiting" and "nerd-baiting", writing overly inflammatory articles about how much they hate men in order to get men (and the angry, militant, extremist feminist sect and tumblr SJW that are Jezebel's typical readership) to click on their articles and comment on just how stupid they are. This is how they make money. Assuming the gore flood isn't Gawker themselves trying to drum up more attention (and thus more clicks and more money), it's the internet regulating itself.
No matter what they do, there will always be internet trolls. There is nothing that can be done about them, short of going full-on 1984 and requiring surveillance cameras and ID cards to access the internet - and I'm not sure even that would stop them. There are always going to be assholes, online or offline, but they always get dealt with eventually.
... Charge to comment. Even at just a penny per comment, You could easily discourage a number of Trolls.
maybe moderation tools for all is a good thing, and meta-moderation too (to stop the trolls from abusing their moderation powers). If there's one thing slashdot gets right, its this.
Notice how mr PC World has disappeared, as has the GNAA.
The alternative is to allow trolls, but ensure the police have easy access to the 'source' metadata for all accounts. It wouldn't be hard for Twitter (for example) to provide special user accounts to all police forces that can show the IP address and date and time, plus linked accounts (eg those used from the same IP) and similar. Then instead fo having to ask the site ops who someone was, the police can look it up themselves and then ask the relevant ISPs for that IPs account details.
If we allow all but the most obnoxious trolls to hide behind anonymity, then they'll stick around and continue to harrass the sites with enough anti-social behaviour that the site becomes a chore to use.
you can use scripting to create infinite users.
"Ignore user" only works if everyone does it. Unfortunately there's always someone who wants to engage with the troll, wanting to put them straight, or show them up for the idiots they are. They don't realise that a troll doesn't care what is said to them. As long as they're given attention they are getting what they came for, and it ensures they keep coming back for more. Usually under multiple accounts.
I don't know if it's a cause or an effect of our politically divided culture, but the bigger problem seems to be people's hyper-sensitive reactions to everything.
You can't disagree with someone spouting the conventional wisdom on many topics without screaming about race, gender, class, political orientation, etc.
Pretty much everything gets immediately turned into a "kill topic" where you're judged to be racist, homophobic, a Nazi, or some other person whose opinion and reasoned disagreement is to be suppressed, not debated.
Dealing with trolls on the internet is good practice for dealing with them in real life. Think of it at the next meeting where someone is trying to distract you from the argument you're making by going for an emotional reaction. Incivility may or may not be increasing, both on the internet and in real life, but it's better to develop the social skills to deal with it than to always be protected from it. Additionally, trolling trolls is good practice for being able to make your points in real life when encountering such obstructionism. It's called "helping them dig their own grave." Never interrupt your nemesis when they're making a mistake, and all that.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Whatever dude. There's no such thing as trolling. It's thin skinned treehuggers like you that go and complain to thier facebook "friends" that are the real problem with the internet. Grow a pair or go back to facist Nazi-Russia. And take Obama with you. We don't need him spreading any more lies and ebola to our children. And another thing, Janeway was twice the captain that Kirk ever was.
For Christs sake... stop misusing the word "Troll"
It's has a very specific meaning, but everyone uses it now as a derogatory term for anyone on the internet they disagree with. That is not what a troll is.
A Troll, very specifically, lurks, and posts to try and get you to over-react. A troll will rarely overtly offend you. Often a troll will be on your side! Egging you on, to get you to blow up at others. Sometimes a troll will simply IM you to point out other people that are deserving of your rather. A troll is an instigator, troublemaker, rabblerouser, etc...
What a troll is not, is a contrarian. I'm a contrarian, I like to argue my point. I seek out those I disagree with or subjects I feel are incorrect (Like this post!) and I argue my point. I like having people disagree with me, and like to refine my arguments. It's something I enjoy. Contrarians enjoy debate.
Trolls do not care about debate, they care about the emotional anguish of their victim. I rarely, if ever, see a real troll anymore. There used to be clubs of them all over the net, but not really anymore. You can find them on Reddit at times. A troll, for example, may be African American and go to an African American forum and argue for white supremacy. Not because he supports it, but because he knows that's what will get a reaction.
And in regards to the main point of this article... It's total BS. Argument and Debate are good things. The internet is still relatively new. People that couldn't talk before, can now. That's great. By its very nature internet debate is non-violent, which is fantastic. Let the debate continue.
So you're saying you don't like to debate then?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
True. I meant the ones that troll consistently, especially those that create special accounts just for that purpose. It's not that evident here on slashdot, but on Memedroid, for example, they're all over the place. They're not even trying to sell anything.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
If Jezebel or NYT writers receive such communications, it's because mixed in with reasonable articles, they post clickbait, articles that they know are going to be offensive to many. It's both a business strategy (it generates lots of clicks) and an in-your-face political tactic (presenting radical views as if they were mainstream). If you make lots of people angry (i.e. you "cause them emotional damage"), don't be surprised if some people express their anger. This doesn't just happen to feminist and progressive web sites, it also happens to fiscally conservative and Christian websites.
I don't see a problem here that needs fixing. These sites (on the left or right) can choose to stand up for what they believe in and/or engage in a clickbait business strategy; in that case, they have to accept that they are offending many people and people will vent their anger; or they can choose to tone it down and write in dull, rational prose and arguments; in that case, the angry responses will stop.
Oh c'mon, give us a little insight. Even a tiny bit? Is it political motivation?
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Priest Vito Cornelius: I try to serve life. And you seem to want to destroy it.
Zorg: Oh, Father. You're so wrong. Let me explain.
[Puts and empty water glass on his desk]
Zorg: Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder and chaos. Now take this empty glass. Here it is: peaceful, serene, boring. But if it is destroyed
[Pushes the glass off the table. It shatter on the floor, and several small machines come out to clean it up]
Zorg: Look at all these little things! So busy now! Notice how each one is useful. A lovely ballet ensues, so full of form and color. Now, think about all those people that created them. Technicians, engineers, hundreds of people, who will be able to feed their children tonight, so those children can grow up big and strong and have little teeny children of their own, and so on and so forth. Thus, adding to the great chain of life. You see, father, by causing a little destruction, I am in fact encouraging life. In reality, you and I are in the same business.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
...feeding the trolls! Geeze people, this kind of headline is just what all those internet trolls have been waiting for. Now they'll be even more relentless!
Seriously folks, on the internet, you gots the trolls. Just look the other way.
Why would the police ever get involved with such a thing? That's a pretty draconian 'solution' to something that isn't even really a problem. Not only would that be a waste of police resources, but it would be anti-free speech (of the government variety); unacceptable.
It's a false dichotomy, anyway. There are plenty more alternatives than that.
Provide a common forum without restrictions by having a two-tiered forum: Serious Discussion and Peanut Gallery. How sites impliment this is optional, but it does allow for both the serious and the silly, the thinkers and the trolls. Requires quality supervision and moderation, yet here is the rub -- sites which either don't want to moderate their forums or do a really crappy job of it (Slashdot, this mirror is for you) are the ones that have the most trouble with trolling.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
"their left leaning stupidity"
see? that right there invalidates everything you said.
the major news media trends centrist.
its only according to the far right wing / Fox News definition of bias that they can be considered "leftist"....ie, "they disagree with me, therefore they are liberal commie tyrants".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
They don't realise that a troll doesn't care what is said to them.
The same is true of people who hold a belief strongly one way or the other in many cases. They have all the evidence they need to defend their position and will do so vehemently. So how do we go about defining who is a troll and who isn't?
Probably best to allow those who wish to have a debate do so, and you just have another person you can ignore if you aren't interested.
TFA assumes all 'trolls' are doing so just for the "lulz"
that's certainly not the case...these articles written by tech illiterates are ruining our industry (or at least making it difficult by not covering the problem properly)
Public Relations and other media companies pay grey-hat contractors to "boost their social media presence" meaning post fake comments by fake accounts or just by having paid monkeys doing it
Disquss & the facebook.com plugin for sites both have this problem
even here on /., look at a thread about Uber, there will be many high UID comments from random-named Google+ accounts linked to /.'s system
if you're examining online "trolls" and you don't factor in sock puppets, you're missing half the problem
Thank you Dave Raggett
If people just ignored them more often instead of getting all bent out of shape, the trend would go away.
Some might, but in many cases they'll just increase the level of trolling to intolerable levels. It's like a certain "church" in the U.S. that trolls funerals, they troll whether if you feed them or not, but if they're ignored they'll just do even crazier/nastier stuff.
For those we are intolerant of, we also like to come up with labels that immediately serve to invalidate what they are saying, or make it dangerous to side with them. With all the talk in society about the need to stop using words that label others in a derogatory fashion, we certainly like to do it a lot. By slapping a generic label on people we can quickly and easily minimize anything they have to say. It's too powerful of a tool to give up entirely apparently.
Broken Window Fallacy trolls...
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
AC wrote: "It's not as much a problem of trolls as it is a problem of people being incapable of simply filtering out stuff on the Internet, ..."
That is much the same message as Izzy Kalman has about how to deal with most bullies (who are driven by seeing the victim's reactions):
http://bullies2buddies.com/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
When you're interacting with a proficient troll, by the time you realize you're being trolled, it is too late.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You're a monster, Zorg.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
It's not like there aren't already rbl systems like this, and it's not like they're already abused on a daily basis by posioning them.
More an this topic. There is also perhaps an issue with labeling people "trolls" or "bullies". Most people can and will act differently in different contexts. There is also a continuum of human behavior all people engage in. In the case of "bullying", it is fairly human for people to banter back and forth and insult each other in what might generally be seen as healthy relationships (as Izzy Kalman suggests). So, bans on all perceived insults in a classroom or workspace may actually be counterproductive by ramping up the stress of the situations when they do happen for whatever reason.
And it is all too easy to call an unpopular opinion a troll. Also, for the person responding to the "troll", it is hard to know sometimes when some person saying a rude thing or clueless thing or factually incorrect thing might benefit from a response. Or even to say someone has an agenda when they maybe just made a mistake; a recent example of that:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...
I do feel we need better tools for online discussions though, including being able to tag message after-the-fact by crowdsourcing like Slashdot does. Here is one of many posts I've mode on that, this one when in 2010 someone reposted an email Adrian Bowyer wrote when he unsubscribed from the RepRap list:
https://groups.google.com/foru...
Still, there are no doubt people out there at any given time trying to hurt others or do shocking things purely for the shock value for whatever reason. It is hard to know what to do with the worst sort of trolling, as mentioned by someone else in another comment:
"Robin William' daughter gives up social media due to abusive messages"
http://www.japantoday.com/cate...
Such really awful messages probably comes in part out of the fact that the internet deprives people of social cues that would happen in face-to-face interactions. See also on progressive desensitization:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
"Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) is a non-fiction book by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, first published in 2007. It deals with cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias and other cognitive biases, using these psychological theories to illustrate how the perpetrators (and victims) of hurtful acts justify and rationalize their behavior. It describes a positive feedback loop of action and self-deception by which slight differences between people's attitudes become polarized."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Just tear down all the bridges, then the trolls have nowhere to go.... ;)
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
Some trolls are hard to ignore. There are some really malicious ones (I'm not malicious) that will do everything they can to get a reaction, including getting you fired from your job, harassing your family, creating false personas to interact with you that appear genuine for years, only to use new things they've learned against you to evoke further responses.
Such trolls are not defeated by non-reaction, they take that as a challenge.
Also, it seems you're not familiar with trolls that aren't in it for reactions either.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The role of satire is to comfort the afflicted by afflicting the comfortable, or so Doonesbury said. Trolling does not do that. It is either cheap attention grabbing for shit and giggles, or more often, an attempt to intimidate a certain group of people into leaving the Internet.
If you disagree then explain to me the subtle social commentary of posting photoshopped pictures of Robin Williams' body to his daughter. Or bombarding a feminist website with gore, and rape porn.
The majority of trolling these days is about bullying people of opposing viewpoints into submission. They only seek their victims' attention in order to affect that.
Wrong. Free speech is the notion that you can speak freely. The first amendment (and things like it) deals with the government specifically. It may be a property owner's right to suppress free speech on their own property, but that's still what they're doing.
The jester is not a psychopath. The joker is. There are trolls and there are griefers. One laughs at misfortune, the other thrives on it. There needs to be a distinction before unjust laws might be enacted under which nobody will be able to experience Natalie Portman's hot grits: that would be the real tragedy.
I do it on occasion to fulfill the need to pick a fight. Sometimes the aggression just comes surging forth and rather than go down to a bar or a club and risk life, limb, and jail time, I come on here or on other sites to troll. Not saying I'm proud of it, but getting into a rhetorical fight is almost as satisfying as getting into a physical fight. I don't care about politics or philosophy, I just focus on some guy (usually another troll) who's a little too certain for my tastes, and go at it. Then afterwards, win or lose (and I lose a LOT more than I win, but that isn't the point), I feel better and I'm able to rejoin the real world and be decent and human and polite.
I'm not saying I'm evil or sociopathic, I'm just saying I troll because sometimes a man has just gotta get into a fight. Given that, sometimes I think the trolls over on Jezebel are doing the same thing... they're not necessarily misogynistic so much as itching for a fight with their female counterparts.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Somehow I knew that this was going to be the NYT complaning about 4chan and uncivil speech coming from certain types of people and not all uncivil speech, of course. If you're at all familiar with the "social justice" crowd, you probably know that they don't believe that the rules of civility apply to them. Asking them to watch their language or to be considerate is usually denounced as attempts to "control" them and to "silence" them. Those who are the targets of their policing, the ones whom they "call out", though, are just supposed to sit there, shup up and listen while the "approved trolls" from the social justice world dress them down. This is of course understood already by many on slashdot. I saw a commenter abvove approve of trolling by followers of the flying spag monster. That's fine actually but I wonder if the commenter is also ok with trolling by the those who wish to defend christianity in vigorous manner. I rethorically wonder, that is.
"I would normally agree that people get offended too easily, but that's only when people express their honest opinion. "
It isn't just disagreeing. You may disagree with me all you want. The problem is that for a lot of people things like solar power, antinuclear, open source, and many other subjects seem to have taken the place of a religion for people.
I once had a commenter on slashdot say that they wanted to lock me in their basement and rape me. "I did reply that I was happily married and that was really not my thing".
The subject of the discussion was Solar vs Nuclear as a baseload solution!
Being a 49 year old male programer that threat was easy for me to dismiss. Had I been a 17 year old girl or boy that had been a victim of sexual assault in the past it would have been terrifying.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I mostly agree with your points, but I differ on the generalization that Trolls "care about the emotional anguish of their victim". Many trolls, and I have done it myself, are really just there to poke fun by getting a some response, I know I never wanted to cause anguish, and would always draw the line somewhere. I do think words can be violent, as not all violence is physical. If the words are expressly directed towards either a physical violent conclusion, such as "kill all ****", or even are intended to cause psychic pain, such as seems to have been the case recently with verbal assaults on people who have just lost a loved one, then the people responsible deserve opprobrium, which can only happen if, in the context of the medium, the "attacker" can be identified. I rather such people are not identified as Trolls, they may or may not be. Trolling != Violence I see a lot of hate speech out there, and you can play with words and argue that one persons hate speech is another persons "constructive criticism" but is really isn't the case.
Posting AC because of the "C" aspect in AC:
I have posted a number of times as AC, mainly as a devil's advocate, or taking an unpopular stance and defending it, even though it would strip my real account of every single karma point I ever have earned.
Crazily enough, I've been on /. long enough that yes, there are trolls, and one in every 50 posts gets an AC post attached which is pretty bad... but all and all, the replies have been fairly constructive, even though there are disagreements in how to do things.
Of course, there are third rail topics that one can't disagree with (such as the demand by the general masses for undying love for Snowden, Manning, and Ames), and mindless anti-US digs left and right, but all and all, /. is probably one of the sanest forums out there that allows user comments.
People are just becoming bigger wimps. Oh so sensitive! Somebody is really trying to push censorship here.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
APK for example... Let me invoke him...
Hosts files and Adblock Plus!
Hosts files and Adblock Plus!
That should have him trolling me for another 4 weeks.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'll take a stab and guess that you were pro nuclear.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Actually I am pro both. Solar makes a good source of opportunistic power. It is terrible as baseload. WInd is much better as a baseload replacement but it still needs backing plants using natural gas.
I support reducing carbon output by replacing coal baseload plants with nuclear and wind with natural gas backing plants, and using solar to help reducing peaking loads during daylight hours.
But what does the opinion matter? Is one side or the other of the discussion worthy of threats of physical harm?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...but ensure the police have easy access to the 'source' metadata for all accounts. It wouldn't be hard for Twitter (for example) to provide special user accounts to all police forces that can show the IP address and date and time, plus linked accounts (eg those used from the same IP) and similar. Then instead fo having to ask the site ops who someone was, the police can look it up themselves and then ask the relevant ISPs for that IPs account details.
The police? Since when did being a troll or an obnoxious asshole become criminal?
As Louis Brandeis (correctly, IMHO) pointed out:
Freedom of speech/expression is critical to a free society. Assuming that one day we have a free society (AFAICT, we've been going backwards recently), it's important that we don't stifle the expression of others -- regardless of how obnoxious/nasty/moronic/trollish they are.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
It doesn't matter what trolls do. In a print media like this, they are too easy to ignore. People need to control their reactions. What we are looking at is an attempt to censor and control who can say what. This is no different than the FCC's "seven dirty words". We needs the trolls to make the rules unenforceable. All the freedoms we have now are because of the troublemakers.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
yeah we've gotten rid of a bunch of them and frankly the whole label removing campaign just leads to more labels or consolidation of labels. If you don't like a president because of his incompetent policies and because he's black, you're now a racist. See that label is still in play but dumb shit, commie pinko, fat ass those are hurtful. Blah...
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Actually I did make an error and left out pro nuclear in the list.
I am actually very fond of Open Source, Solar, and Wind as well as Nuclear.
And yes I find the right wing nuts just as annoying as the left wing nuts. If you want me to fill out the list there was the guy that when I tried to explain the benefits of bringing the US missionaries with Ebola to the US for treatment some one replied that they hoped the plane carrying them would crash on take off and kill them.
You can be pro many things but when you take to fanatic things go bad. A little bit of cost for being a nut job might just make online a better place.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Trolls are hackers of social interaction. Unlike social engineering, trolling isn't a means to an end. The artful manipulation of the social interaction to elicit a revealing reaction or to derail a discussion is a goal in itself. Trolls are social engineers without a cause, so to speak. "Why? Because we can." Sound familiar?
So you say, but what about when you legitimately come up against someone who says something sincerely, that you'd assume was a troll? I was called all kind of nasty names for not being a Socialist when I recently encountered a self-proclaimed Marxist who denied Mao and Stalin were mass murderers. When I told him I absolutely thought Stalin was responsible for the Holodor and more, he called me a Nazi sympathizer.
I couldn't tell at first if he was trolling, but I later learned from a friend he was completely serious. It was like being on a different planet.
I assumed the trolls we're talking about are the ones who are a bit more obnoxious than just saying "Bing is the best search engine ever, I use it and so should you". The ones who are issuing rape and death threats on twitter, for example.
The only way to not lose is to not play.
And that's the mistake the people make: they think (and I use the term loosely - there's no actual thinking involved) the trolls matter. They think they can educate people who know full well what crap they'll shoveling. They think they can teach a lesson to someone who knows exactly how much the internet doesn't matter. They think they can somehow win.
And other people try to make a living advising them on how to do it. This entire article is, itself, nothing more than a subtle troll, trying to get people worked up over something that somebody is selling a "solution" to.
Eventually, the internet will teach people to stop being so overly sensitive about shit that doesn't matter. If nothing else, those who can't learn that lesson will all have strokes and die.
Some people who are big fans of intellectual property, and locking up of all knowledge to blackmail everybody else for it, hate Wikipedia, which teaches everyone for almost free, and lets anyone contribute. There is a lot of crap at Wikipedia, even downright incorrect things, but it's the first site I check for any information, and learn to take it with a grain of salt anyway. By the way scholarly articles or even books published a century ago have downright incorrect information in them all over the place, even if written by experts, but such is scientific published literature. You can't always believe everything you're told, in fact if you have to rely on it, you should double check and verify it first. That's one of the most important things I learned from a woman scientist She don't believe in no DOE, not statistical design of experiments. When you investigate any material, the very first thing to do is to have a control, a sample of known properties, that you send along with the batch of investigees, just to cover your ass, let alone skip or exclude any of them in a statisctical way. Even when you walk the full matrix instead of using some software to give you a set of DOE runs, so, instead of 10 combinations you do 120, which is a lot of work, you still look at your data and it's inevitably crap, almost useless, but at least you covered your butt by running a standard each time, and you ran every possible combination. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics is the superlative of all of them. I'm a fan of lots of data, even if it duplicates work, I hate and despise DOE, and conclusions drawn from it. DOE is for lazy people. Doing lab work is like prayer. And if anything strikes you with prayer in church, like the rosary, is how monotone, repetitive and boring and useless waste of time it seems to be. Instead of praying your time away in church, waste it by walking the walk on a full matrix of 100 combinations of experiments, instead of hand picking 10 of them and drawing conclusions from those 10. Even with redundancy it's hard to trust the data, and such is science, a single experiment without duplications by others, in other places, in other times, is not very trustable. Neither is published literature without verification. Another scientist told me, when reading published sicence, is to trust, but always verify. Which is like an oxymoron. But that's what I can tell wikipedia readers, or commercial encyclopedia readers, always trust, but verify.
Theft, rape, and murder are still with us despite millenniums worth of efforts to get rid of them...
Why would trolling be any easier to dispense with?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Of course, there are third rail topics that one can't disagree with (such as the demand by the general masses for undying love for Snowden, Manning, and Ames), and mindless anti-US digs left and right, but all and all, /. is probably one of the sanest forums out there that allows user comments.
That's a main reason I continue to come to this site after all these years. The comments are often intelligent and worth reading. Contrast that with most other sites where people just get their stupid on.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Maybe if the NYT wasn't a kneejerk checkbox All Hail Obama hamster cage lining piece of shit that it is, people wouldn't hate on it. Until then they can suck cock in hell.
Like this one? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
Or this one http://woburnferalcats.org/yah... ....
or this one http://gkimagery.files.wordpre...
That's the same argument as me walking down the street and smashing windows in with bricks, to create jobs.
No, life's job is to sustain order, by no unnecessary destruction.
It's a pointless, unproductive waste of time, and the fact that people get jollies out of deliberately aggravating other people bespeaks of a certain level of sociopathy.
Feeling pleasure from the misfortune of others is common in humour. Being the dominant, accepted form of humour in most societies, it's the opposite of sociopathy.
Sometimes you have to act like a fanatic and stand at the very extreme of a beam, when you're trying to balance a huge counter weight, even if that's closer to the pivot point, and does not seem as extremist as you do, in this balancing act. But there are different ways of being a fanatic, and it's usually best not to resort to violence at all, but speech, or writing, as the pen is mightier than the sword, in most of the cases. Extreme nonviolence can be bad too, and one has to be balanced, or flexible even on that. For instance one could be completely unwilling to go over to Afghanistan and shoot hillbillies over there, or even to Iraq, but have absolutely no problem picking up a gun and shooting invaders, if say there were a military invasion of the US homeland by a foreign nation.
"To have a more civil society, we must destroy privacy and anonymity. Except, of course, for the wealthy and powerful."
Yeah, that mycleanpc guy does not even bother me at all, I know how to use the scroll button. And sometimes I find him funny too. After all he did invest a lot of effort trying to be funny, and annoy everybody, so I give him some credit for that, even if it gets boring after a while.
George Carlin did a gig on those 7 dirty words, way back, decades ago. He also did a gig on the bigger dick foreign policy.
The broken window fallacy describes spurring economic activity with destruction. While that is what Zorg is describing, it actually works as a means to maintain "life" with busywork jobs. It may not create any economic value overall, but it certainly allows people to thrive.
A better way to describe destruction encouraging life is through competition of resources and culling the established players every now and then. If a particular species (or whatever) is allowed to establish dominance over a resource to the exclusion of others, diversity in that arena diminishes (though diversity in other arenas may increase). Destruction changes things and allows resources to be exploited in new ways. In this way, Cornelius is also stifling life by protecting the status quo and trying to preserve the current order.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
"There is no free speech without anonymity"
Can't disagree more. All anonymity does is protect people from consequences or having to stand by their opinions. In certain cases, this is useful (a protected source for a news story), but in most cases, if you can't say something without the cloak of anonymity, you shouldn't say it. In a lot of cases, it's cowardly.
The First Amendment just established the right of free speech, not that you shouldn't suffer the consequences of that speech. And if you are worried about being monetized, create your own forum.
Trolls who enjoy tormenting others when they might not even realize they are being toyed with? Or know-it-alls who spout off useless nonsense pretending to know and/or care about the subject at hand when neither is true.
Trolling used to be prevalent in published literature too, before the Internet, for anything published under pseudonyms, just like slashdot use names, which give some degree of anonymity to the author, and loosen the boundaries of free speech, to go past those dictated by proper etiquette. Of course the trolling was a lot higher quality when more effort had to be invested into it, such as printed material. Also, of course, usually it's easy to track down who the actual author is, through the book publisher, or through the internet logs for online, but it may not be so easy for say an underground political pamphlet printed in a basement somewhere, and distributed as a flyer. By the way most pseudonym authors did not want to be fully untrackable, in a free and open society, but they wanted to open the minds or provide valuable thoughts beyond the boundaries of etiquette, to the rest of the society. And everyone needs to learn how to ignore things, or even if they read something, to think critically anyway and think for themselves. A lot of very funny things that George Carlin says are very sarcastic, and some may not seem so, such as when he says that the powers that run this country own you, they are not interested in a quality education, and the proper stance is that there is an element of truth to that, but you are not owned, at least not to the level of a freethinking slave, because you can be freethinking and also be able to move about, and be in charge of your life. The proper answer is that there are different degrees of being owned, and nobody is completely independent and free from the rest of the society, even if they wish to be so, unless they live like Yeti with caveman tools in a forest or a deserted island. I don't think anyone wants to be that independent, and not be blessed by the technology benefits provided by society. So nobody wants to be completely free and independent, but nobody wants to be a completely owned dependent being either, and in that, mind control owned by other people. Everybody likes to think for themselves freely, as an individual. Though the Borg come close to mind control ownership, but that ownership is one of equality and mutual benefit of the hive, through the hive, and often people don't mind entering totally dependent service, often in a being completely owned sense, even in thoughts handing over control to someone else to think for them, such as handing over decisions over your life to a military platoon commander, and trusting him, in that by sacrificing yourself, you both act for some common greater good, such as protecting your families back at home.
I for one welcome our troll overlords
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Attract trolls and then whine about it once they have answered your clarion call. Sounds like a plan.
dagnabbit.
Did these academics even cite the FAQ?
If a complete stranger offers his/her opinion in a caustic way it really doesn't affect me. Why should it? However, if a friend/family member does the same thing it does affect me. Then we can hopefully discuss the issue and agree to disagree if that's how it has to be. Big difference. If you respect the opinion of trolls enough to get all teary eyed and suicidal about it, you have WAY bigger problems. When it comes to young people dealing with this stuff, I think the way to handle it is to help them deal with the inevitable negativity rather than try to block the trolls and over-protect the little kiddies. I say this as a dad. There are bad people. Bad things happen. Learn to live with it. I'm not saying that slavery, genocide, murder, rape etc. are acceptable - you know what I mean...
http://www.acetonestudio.com
and he was not the least bit funny.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I assumed the trolls we're talking about are the ones who are a bit more obnoxious than just saying "Bing is the best search engine ever, I use it and so should you". The ones who are issuing rape and death threats on twitter, for example.
Point taken. Perhaps I'm splitting hairs here, but the folk you're talking about (assuming the threats you refer to are credible) aren't "trolls," they're would-be rapists and murderers.
IMHO, there's a big difference between a troll seeking to piss off or harass folks with inflammatory images or speech and a psycho- or socio-pathic individual making credible threats against someone's life, health or property.
I disagree that we should implement police-state tactics which degrade the rule of law and what little privacy we have left by giving unfettered (read: warrantless and/or covert) access to law enforcement. If there's a credible threat, a search warrant should be requested from and issued by the appropriate judicial authority. Allowing law "enforcement" groups full access to server logs and network traffic reports is a recipe for clamping down on freedom of expression and abuse of power.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Klan rallies down Main St. are part of the price we pay for free speech. So are rude comments, trolls, etc. Just like in real life, you send the cops in to make sure it doesn't get out of control. This story probably has hundreds of useless comments. They've been modded down. That would be like the cops arresting a KKK guy or a counter-demonstrator who were about to assault somebody.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If you admit they're trolls, then you're basically admitting that you don't think that their threats are serious, indicating there's no need to waste resources on something that is unimaginably unlikely.
It's probably good that we are regularly reminded that the world is full of assholes, and that walled gardens are not the sum total of reality. It may be that many people are assholes simply BECAUSE they are excluded from some of these gardens-- no doubt many of those within the gardens are assholes too, just of a different type. And if you can't figure how to deal with assholes without becoming one yourself, you deserve what you get...
Nice try, but Facebook saved the world from internet trolls by implementing their commenting system on the vast majority of popular websites. I haven't seen internet trolling for years!
And as another benefit, all those years that I tried to feed Facebook false data, or give it nothing to work with are now nullified. From all those links everywhere it now knows where I live, that I am a male who should be beginning to settle down but that I still need companionship. That I like computers, charity, technology and art. Now instead of ads targeted at old people I get relevant ads (if I unblock them)
Two birds with one stone! Thanks Facebook!
In a lot of cases, it's cowardly.
Bullshit. That's like saying not jumping off a building is cowardly; if you want to risk being stalked, being harassed in real life, not being hired/being fired at a future job, or any number of other things, then go ahead, but don't call the rest of us cowardly for not being fucking suicidal. For instance, being on the 'wrong' side in a child porn debate can get you labeled a pedophile, and without anonymity, you may very well find yourself surrounded by an angry mob - literally.
The First Amendment just established the right of free speech, not that you shouldn't suffer the consequences of that speech.
Are you suggesting that the government get involved here? If so, that would be a violation of the first amendment. Removing messages or punishing people for not saying something you'd like them to say in your message (in other words, reveal their identity) is definitely unconstitutional. The constitution simply does not give the government the power to do such a thing.
And were that logic true, what would the point of the first amendment be, if not to protect you from the government punishing you for your speech? That would mean every country on Earth has the same amount of free speech; after all, you're technically free to speak... you may just be murdered for it, depending on where you live. No, the point of the first amendment is to protect you from government punishment. It may not protect you from others criticizing you for that speech, and property owners may kick you off their property, but it does protect you from the government.
If you were saying something entirely different, then I'm honestly not sure why you brought up the first amendment.
The trouble with the anti-troll, trolls is they end up typing to themselves. Empty chat rooms empty forums and empty BBS boards and so on. The trouble with the anti-troll trolls, is they follow the "trolls" to stop them from being "trolls." Megalomaniacs are destructive their anti-troll trolls ruined newsgroups a long time ago. Also what happened to AOL, ICQ and so on the megalomaniacs were left with nobody to filter.
They're spamming this thread with nonsense because they don't want us even discussing it. Check out any thread talking about Snowden or Wikileaks--you'll find plenty of them there, lile cold fjord.
Depends on the troll...
In the bad/good old days, many of us did it for two reasons: one, to elicit responses and anguish (many of which were often hilarious), and two, to learn a bit more about the 'opposing' side, while forcing them to think harder as well (and not just rely on soundbites.) Many of the most classic trolls were witty, devastating, and sharp as a scalpel... enough so that even if you were the target, you often laughed your ass off in spite of yourself.
It was, sadly, nothing at all like the dreck you often see today.
Call it a nasty side-effect of Eternal September (the AOL/WebTV crowd) - along with the masses coming online, you wound up with their level of thinking. :(
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
By the way scholarly articles or even books published a century ago have downright incorrect information in them all over the place, even if written by experts, but such is scientific published literature.
True - though to be fair, the really old stuff was based on what they knew at the time (with the rest being based on theories and suppositions; e.g. where posited that "ether" existed in space, where we know hard vacuum exists today.)
It's still fun to read, though - anyone with sufficient knowledge on the subject and a love of the evolution of human thinking can see and appreciate how far we've come, no? For instance, I have a 2nd Edition copy of Worlds Other Than Ours, printed in 1870-something (forgot exactly which year - it's at home.) It even came with color illustrations of various planets that were known about at the time. A huge chunk of it is grossly and flat-out wrong about what our environment is like viz. the Solar System. Some of it is so far off kilter that it's funny that folks seriously thought certain things were true, but at the same time you can still see in those words the yearning to learn more, and to know more - even in a book that claimed to be authoritative on the subject.
So yeah - I wouldn't go too hard on those now long-dead folks. I just wouldn't take everything they wrote as gospel, either.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Question is, would the more proper term be "disruption"? :)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It's easy to remove trolls. Just implement full blown input moderation. Otherwise expect it and be prepared to deal with it.
well, people need to learn to filter all prose they ready for valid arguments and facts, then discard the rest. When this is done, it doesn't really matter what motivations the author had. The statements stand or fall on their own.
Indeed. Things like "Ignore User" are only useful when it's one half-hearted troll. When you get a dedicated troll or, worse, a mob of trolls, it's a stop-gap measure you can use to plug holes in the dam as the wall falls down around you.
A better option would be to allow users to auto-ignore accounts that are under a specified age (perhaps with an option to exempt "verified" accounts). This doesn't completely preclude multi-account attacks--either through hacking existing accounts, buying botnet accounts, and/or creating a cache of accounts for future use--but will make it extremely prohibitive for trolls to attack in the heat of the moment, as they did Zelda Williams.
To deal with the zealous troll, then, you would have a final defense: an account lockdown where the only messages you see/receive are from users you've personally friended/followed. (So none of that bullshit like Pintrest making you a follower of a few thousand accounts; why is that even a fucking thing?) It would be nice to have a complimentary system where you can grant other accounts (either people you trust or, for larger celebs/businesses, paid staff) the ability to whitelist individual messages so you aren't completely cut off from fans/followers in general (and the morale boost they might bring.)
From the youtube videos I've seen most of the time his audience was laughing, and never seen them boo him. So he made a living at it somehow. In fact if I ever have lots of money, I'm gonna blow it on George Carlin's "All my stuff" DVD released after he died, and get it transcribed to VHS tapes by somebody else, kosher style. As long as I'm not messing with the DVD's it's cool. It's like with chicken, as long as somebody else has to do the killing, I'm cool with eating chicken, but if I had to do it myself, in the present world, in the city, I would opt to eat something else instead. My mother used to buy live chicken back in the old days at the city market, and bring it home and kill it and cook it. The feather cleaning part is really stinky, with hot water. And the guts that get tossed are disgusting. Selling live chicken at places like a farmer's market has the advantages of getting really fresh meat, and not have to sell it at too low a price because it's about to go bad. If a live chicken does not sell at the market, take it back home and let it go in the backyard, and catch it next weekend when you go the market again, and it's still fresh, without refrigeration, and it lasts a very very long time. On the west side I see Halal meats, hand slaughtering, by Arabs. So if people bought live chicken, they still don't have to kill it themselves, but bring it to the professionals who do it for a fee. And it's guaranteed kosher or halal, because it's done by someone you locally know and trust, as opposed to who knows what kind of torture sometimes people put animals through at industrialized butcher places. But you may also become attached to the chicken, and start loving it as a pet, as it's pooping the pet cage full of chicken poop on its way to the halal or kosher butcher shop, and if your life is not in enough dire straits, you might choose to be more vegetarian, and less carnivore.
I absolutely love reading old books and don't care if what they say is wrong, but I can get into their way of thinking. Just like when I observe and kibitz when strong players play Go, I learn to think like they do. I'm a monkey see monkey do kinda person. I learn by imitation, and if those people knew how to do anything right, it was how to do the thinking. But I posted that as an illustration to anyone reading anything today anywhere, just because it's written it's not set into stone, if for nothing else, because, like your case illustrates, someone comes around 100 years later, and it's the same thing all over again, wrong facts that we don't know at the present time, especially at the hot topics, at the boundaries of knowledge that we're pushing. One of the things in science is constant evolution of facts, but there is relatively little evolution in the way of thinking, in fact people 100 to 500 years ago, or even 1500-2500 years ago, might have been better at thinking scientifically than in between, or what we have today.
And by the way your style gave me a really creepy deja vu feeling, then went to read some of your comments, and it got reinforced. But I'll leave it at that. Naw, I can't help it, gotta say this: Lucky you, you got a lower Slashdot id than me. I might have got more than one back in the day, I don't remember, but just like on Ebay, I'm on like the 3rd account after I lost access to email of the previous accounts, but the very first thing I bought on it was a VLB IDE caching controller, with 4 30-pin RAM sockets on it, for my cousin's 486 computer, in like 96? I don't remember, but it was early, and ebay was barely anything, and Google did not appear until 98. So I beat you to Ebay first, for sure, because you were not old enough at that time to have a bank account or a credit card. :) There, I'll leave it at that now.
Why are you co-opting the term "trolling" - which historically had only negative connotations, and referred to actions such as inciting flamewars or consistently derailing online discussions and actively counteracting efforts to get them back on track - by conflating it with the (much older) term satire, which does neither of those things at all? Those aren't "crusades"-style examples, either; that's actually what the term has meant from its inception in this context of online discussion. Another (relatively minor, given the moderation system here) example is that flood of HOSTS file BS that came through here a few months back.
Seriously, trolling already had a definition (and it doesn't even approximate yours). There's no need to redefine it. What benefit do you obtain by attempting to paint trolling as a somehow more noble or victimized than it is? Do you just get you jollies out of calling what you do "trolling" despite it having a different, well-established, and considerably more positive definition already?
Are you trying to say "Don't call those people trolls; *I* am a troll and I'm not that bad" or something like that? Fine, call them griefers - that's another relatively well-established term, for people who want to cause pain rather than merely anger or confusion - but don't then try to pretend that trolling is some noble but misunderstood practice. It's not, and there's absolutely no benefit I can see to trying to make trolling as a whole more acceptable; it will just grant the real trolls legitimacy.
Or are you just attempting to divert the discussion from the subject of what the people mentioned in TFA are doing, and the harm it causes?
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
While I agree with your central claim...
Are you aware of the inherent hypocrisy of saying those things together?
The major news media trends in whatever direction will get them the most subscribers. That is frequently done by being *more* polarized than society as a whole, because most people appreciate being told things that align with their biases and don't like being told that issues are complicated or that their point of view isn't entirely correct.
Politicians, on the other hand, trend centrist. Most people will put up with a lot of stuff they don't like so like so long as they get a candidate who claims to agree with them on their few key issues, so the two non-trivial political parties divide the key issues between themselves and take the centrist view on everything else. Sure, they *blame* the other party when they compromise in a way their constituents won't like, but you rarely catch them actually going all out on a non-centrist view that isn't one of those few key issues; it costs them too much bargaining power on those issues for too little gain.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I really have to wonder if there are ulterior motivations at work here.
Indeed.
So it goes in the realm of social science, public information, and journalism of any color. How much of the phenomenology is social engineering, propaganda, or product placement? Where do the lines of credibility blur if in fact there are also ulterior motives being served by some, while by others the intent is legitimate. In situations that are varied and complex whereby "all of the above" possibilities are valid, how can we proceed with a one size fits all response that could possibly be adequate? This is why we must take the good with the bad and keep an open mind, else the ulterior motives you consider may become a more potent threat, in fact.
Depends on the circumstances of the troll. One example could be to show others the ignorance of someone.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Unfortunately, not, none of the idiots who spout rape and death threats against someone would actually do it in reality. When you see them finally prosecuted you see them for what they are: sad little individuals who obviously find an outlet for their internal impotence by being "big men" on the internet and making these threats.
So that's the definition of a troll in my book.
Now I imagine the police and authorities already have the powers to ask for the details of anyone on the web already, its just a time consuming process that many just don;t bother - not unless it gets really bad, and/or affects someone in the public eye (ie us ordinary plebs will not get the cops to do anything about online abuse). Making the process easier doesn't affect anyones rights as the police already have that power. I just hope that making it easier would make them use it more effectively (not forgetting that any prosecution still has all the judicial checks in place to go anywhere) or at least remind the trolls that they can be held accountable for what they say online just as if they'd said it to someone's face.
It's only a reflection on the real world, with a significant percentage of troublemakers.. Of course the 'net would reflect it..
Back when mailing lists and discussion forums with threading and contextual reply were the standard for Internet communication, trolling was less of a problem. It is because of the flat, linear form of the blog that trolls have more power today. It is also why other forms of disruption in blogs lead to self-censorship and even to the premature end of conversation, that the blog, adopted as a standard for its business value, is actually hurting communication of the Internet.
It doesn't take a new academic study to reveal this or why. It is because of the ox being gored that the press wishes to make this much more of a mystery than it really is, and the solution comes from the past. It existed 30 years ago but was dropped by Google and Facebook because their engineers don't know how to use regular expressions :-) The solution to this is to provide more structure in conversations than the blog allows, to reintroduce some of the features of the discussion forum. These exist in Slashdot and Reddit, somewhat.
What contextual reply and sub-treading to do trolls is that they move the distraction out of the main flow of the conversation and the single out the perp. for a direct response. When uses can create a sub-thread by changing the topic line, they can tag the message with something like "Troll-Alert" and what a reader who sees the list of collapsed threads by topic lines does is to avoid the tagged sub-thread. It doesn't matter if the troll has an identity; he is hung by his own petard. His inane remark can be directly and pointed shown for what it is. This approach applies to other distractions, to change of topic and thread hijacking, Because blogs do not allow flexibility in replying, normal tendencies in conversation are blog killers. We must kill the blog to bring back useful human discourse.
from responding to trolls and incitement, this would be a non-issue.
A really shitty book by a really shitty psychologist that can not even manage to ask an intelligent question or provide any insight is not really news. It's just business as usual.
Why do people get suckered into having meaningless non-discussion with strangers high on outrage is a far more fascinating question.
Trolls have zero impact on people that just don't care what some anonymous stranger has to say about anything. In the real world, the context of who is saying what is as significant as what is being said.
The internet is an enormous septic tank of nonsensical emoting and projection of the contents of the collective psyche. It is not the trolls that make it un-pretty. It's what humans are that makes it un-pretty and a potentially dysfunctional waste of time and effort.
Now I imagine the police and authorities already have the powers to ask for the details of anyone on the web already, its just a time consuming process that many just don;t bother - not unless it gets really bad, and/or affects someone in the public eye (ie us ordinary plebs will not get the cops to do anything about online abuse). Making the process easier doesn't affect anyones rights as the police already have that power. I just hope that making it easier would make them use it more effectively (not forgetting that any prosecution still has all the judicial checks in place to go anywhere) or at least remind the trolls that they can be held accountable for what they say online just as if they'd said it to someone's face.
The appropriate way would be getting a warrant from a judge. I realize that it's just oh so inconvenient, but we have this little thing here in the US called the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Since you (apparently) are unaware of either its existence, its strictures or both, I'll post it here for your reference:
What you suggest violates pretty much every provision of the amendment. What is more, government actions to identify or act against those whose speech is unpopular (even when it's nasty, hurtful and insensitive) is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Again, I'll post it here for your reference and highlight the relevant parts:
Freedom isn't necessarily safe, nor is it necessarily always roses and chocolates for everyone. In order to protect and preserve the core freedoms of the US system (which we're not doing very well these days, IMHO), we need to be tolerant of those with whom we disagree, even when they're, as you put it, "idiots who spout rape and death threats against someone" and "sad little individuals who obviously find an outlet for their internal impotence by being "big men" on the internet and making these threats."
If the police (or other government folks) can trash those folks' (however repulsive they may be) free speech and privacy rights, they can do so to everyone, and that's unacceptable.
I find it disgusting that some people choose (for whatever reason) to use hateful, nasty, insulting or idiotic speech on the internet (or anywhere else for that matter). Misogynistic stuff makes me especially mad (and I'm not a woman, BTW), but unless there is a credible threat and/or real risk of harm (e.g., stalking, incitement to violence, etc.), no action should be taken by the government to stop it, IMHO.
I quoted Louis Brandeis (US Supreme Court Justice from 1916-1939) in my earlier post as follows:
I agree and take that to mean that the jerks who troll or harass on the Internet should be drowned out by the voices of the rest of us. One of the key concepts here is the Marketplace of Id
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
that they are "winning" ?
should not join discussions, online or offline.
Next time use a rickroll video without GEMA blocking ;).
I do not agree. What happens is you stop working for solutions and just become a tool. Time and time again people forget that the ends do not justify the means it does is give power to those that make power and wealth to those that are talking heads and professional activists who have no incentive to solve anything. That groups egos are stroked and pockets lined by conflict not solutions.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
At that point we have a different word for them. When you harass the same person for a long period of time like you are talking about then we call them a stalker.
I wish I hadn't already posted on this thread so I could mod you up for this comment. I personally think that trolls do us a great service by exposing those among us who have deep-seated anger issues and lack intellectual honesty.
Hi APK. Hows it going?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I believe we could have an interesting conversation on this subject.
While I wish that we could just use solar for our energy needs, It is clear we do not have sufficient energy storage to pull it off as of now, but hopefully in the near future. Nuclear is not a bad option until then, but we have some major roadblocks to deal with. One of the major problems with nuclear is the current regulations that dictate what types of reactors we can build. The only type that is legal is the uranium reactor. This type creates a large amount of radioactive waste, but if other types were allowed we can simply use this waste as fuel in them, repeat process until there is very little radioactive waste left.
Then there is the problem of enrichment. As current policy stands, uranium can only be enriched to 15% U-235. In our military we can use up to 85% enrichment, this allows for a couple of major advantages. There is a much higher percentage of the fuel which is useable, so there is less radioactive waste for the amount of energy produced. Then there is large difference in how the plant itself can be designed. When using 15% fuel, the reactor must be designed to be refueled on a somewhat regular basis because the amount of usable fuel in it is so low. In the military reactors are only refueled once every 15 - 20 years, or are replaced altogether instead. This allows for a much safer design.
I don't really troll on Slashdot.
It's interesting how some people end up over reacting when they hear you're a troll and you just have a pleasant conversation with other people as they yell and scream.
Unlike most trolls, I don't need anonymity. I can also form long lasting relationships with people regardless of them knowing of the label too.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Calm down, all I did was greet you.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Yes, I did:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Looking at the post you linked, you used question marks in few places:
I still think you have a reading comprehension issue.
Your evidence was that you posted TL;DR content still... (Remember, my post was "APK does not understand this. Also, expect more TL;DR type posts from him now.")
That doesn't even sound like a common saying.
Anyway, I have now answered your questions, so we return to my comment...
Hows it going, APK?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I had no words to eat because I noted that you would do 'TL;DR' posts and you did make them.
I answered the questions in the post as you asked, you like changing the goal posts, don't you?
Nope.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I don't need to sockpuppet, APK. I don't sockpuppet on Slashdot either. Feel free to report me to DICE if you feel so strongly on the matter.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I have no idea what you're even saying any more.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You're posting from his account!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I don't use sockpuppets, nor do I need to.
I spoke the truth. Call me troll if you like, doesn't make your TL;DR posts any less TL;DR.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I already did.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Non-sense, everyone knows that "Anonymous Coward" is always APK.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
It proves? How do you prove it's not argumentum ad nauseam then?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Which doesn't prove it.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.