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The Inevitable Death of the Internet Troll
HughPickens.com writes James Swearingen writes at The Atlantic that the Internet can be a mean, hateful, and frightening place — especially for young women but human behavior and the limits placed on it by both law and society can change. In a Pew Research Center survey of 2,849 Internet users, one out of every four women between 18 years old and 24 years old reports having been stalked or sexually harassed online. "Like banner ads and spam bots, online harassment is still routinely treated as part of the landscape of being online," writes Swearingen adding that "we are in the early days of online harassment being taken as a serious problem, and not simply a quirk of online life." Law professor Danielle Citron draws a parallel between how sexual harassment was treated in the workplace decades ago and our current standard. "Think about in the 1960s and 1970s, what we said to women in the workplace," says Citron. "'This is just flirting.' That a sexually hostile environment was just a perk for men to enjoy, it's just what the environment is like. If you don't like it, leave and get a new job." It took years of activism, court cases, and Title VII protection to change that. "Here we are today, and sexual harassment in the workplace is not normal," said Citron. "Our norms and how we understand it are different now."
According to Swearingen, the likely solution to internet trolls will be a combination of things. The expansion of laws like the one currently on the books in California, which expands what constitutes online harassment, could help put the pressure on harassers. The upcoming Supreme Court case, Elonis v. The United States, looks to test the limits of free speech versus threatening comments on Facebook. "Can a combination of legal action, market pressure, and societal taboo work together to curb harassment?" asks Swearingen. "Too many people do too much online for things to stay the way they are."
According to Swearingen, the likely solution to internet trolls will be a combination of things. The expansion of laws like the one currently on the books in California, which expands what constitutes online harassment, could help put the pressure on harassers. The upcoming Supreme Court case, Elonis v. The United States, looks to test the limits of free speech versus threatening comments on Facebook. "Can a combination of legal action, market pressure, and societal taboo work together to curb harassment?" asks Swearingen. "Too many people do too much online for things to stay the way they are."
Every year a new generation of kids come on line, fueled with anonymity and alcohol, people post stuff they wouldn't say to someone's face. So fuck off the lot of you!
Judging by this summary, the trolls are alive and well, I'd say.
The definition of harassment, at least where I live, is "unwanted sexual advances", meaning the distinction between flirting and harassment is purely based on subjective experience. Good luck trying to find a girlfriend without "harassing" anyone!
On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog. So how dog harassment numbers look like? Probably the same.
According to PA's Greater Internet Fuckward Theory (GIFT), it is gender-neutral and widespread. It is unfortunate, but that is the only way it could exists and still allow unauthenticated participation. To me, this unauthenticated quality that allows anonymity is a lot more valuable than eliminating GIFT asshatery.
Lets censor and police the internet not because of bomb and drugmaking tutorials and terrorism forums.
Lets do it because someone might insult females online.
Every single person that have spent any extended time online in an environment where you communicate anonymously with strangers have been insulted, harassed and so on. It happens because you eventually end up in a competitive situation(games or arguments).
But of course when xXxPonyWarrior2002xXx calls me a 'shit-eathing motherfucking fag-whore' and wishes me death from cancer and fire simultaneously it's friendly banter between two men. But when he calls GamurGrrl99 a slut it's suddenly a confirmation that all men are misgyonistic pigs and that we can't have such a thing as a free internet anymore because it's full of heartless trolls.
Another generalization to the fucking word troll! Awesome!
STALKING IS NOT TROLLING. IT IS STALKING.
HARASSMENT IS NOT TROLLING. IT IS HARASSMENT
SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS NOT TROLLING. IT IS SEXUAL HARASSMENT.
CREATING FRAUDELENT INFORMATION TO DEFAME SOMEONE IS STILL DEFAMATION OF CHARACTER. AND FRAUD.
Stop trying to shut down the people who decided your fucking house in minecraft should look like a penis to you can make fucking anti troll laws. What's next? Anti not being nice and forgiving me to laws? Fuck you.
Next time someone does a smear campaign online and follows you, ARREST THEM, If I went around some town POSTING PICTURES ALL OVER that were private, fucking wrong, embarassing and put private info on it and other things, I WOULD GO TO JAIL AS THAT IS ILLEGAL
So it is on the internet too is it not?
TROLLING - When a comment is made to rile up or bait other people into a discussion. E.G People in Canada don't have roads.
That is a TROLL. It's also not a big fucking deal.
However 'BLAH BLAH THIS WOMEN IS A WHORE FOR CRITIQUEING GAMES, HERE IS HER SLUT ADDRESS'
That is INVASION of privacy, SEXUAL HARASSMENT, HARASSMENT, DISTURBING THE PEACE and many other things if you added more to it.
Learn the fucking laws people, and I mean you too police officers, and fucking use them properly. Fucking anti not nice to be law bullshit.
When looking at the big picture, the people who bring the most hostility to online communities aren't the traditional trolls. These people may "shitpost" and may engage in petty arguments or name-calling, but they're rather harmless.
It's the so-called "social justice warriors" who are far more harmful in practice. While trolls do what they do "for the lulz", the "social justice warriors" actually take what they do seriously. They are oblivious to the damage they cause to online communities.
The "social justice warriors" don't just post comments, like traditional trolls do. "Social justice warriors" do everything they can to actively censor anyone they choose to target. They attack, and attack, and attack some more.
"Social justice warriors" create the most toxic, awful, hostile communities around. Just look at Reddit, or even Hacker News. It's common to see the vile, repulsive harassment of people there who don't happen to hold the opinions that have been deemed to be "correct" by the "social justice warriors". Those places are much worse than, say, Slashdot, which has a much more balanced and fair moderation system that isn't as open to the abuse that the "social justice warriors" prefer to engage in.
There are two types of trolls. One type (let's call this the Classic Troll) gets their jollies by upsetting people. So if you respond to the troll's inflammatory remarks, they like it and will keep it up. If you ignore the Classic Troll, they will slink away to try to rile someone else up.
The second type (Targeted Troll) doesn't care about upsetting people as much as they care about targeting a specific person or group. If you're part of the group they are targeting and they latch on to you, they may or may not let go if you ignore them. If you're the specific person they are targeting, then they WON'T stop merely because they are ignored. They will keep ramping up the remarks until a response is obtained.
The big problem with Targeted Trolls is that they don't tend to be solitary creatures like the Classic Troll. While they will act alone, they can also get together with other Targeted Trolls to harass the person/people who have entered their cross-hairs. This amplifies the harassment and can make it impossible for them to be ignored. (For example, if one of them tracks down the victim's home address and posts it with a threatening message.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This isn't about sexual harassment, but controlling the internet, and implicitly people in general. A lot of the powers that be have decided that, like other forms of media, they need to sanitize it in the name of control. (even with games, google gamergate) They want a name and an ID behind every post, they want to create "accountability". They gleefully ignore the fact that any woman, gay person, person of color, persecuted minority can take on an anon alias and argue their beliefs, do their work on merit alone. Seriously, how do we even know that Satoshi, the bitcoin creator, isn't a black lesbian? The internet frees productive people from race and gender in a way that before was never even remotely possible.
So maybe, just maybe, the people who want to make it an issue now, are the doing it not because of some high morality, but because they are discovering they can't compete on merit. But the issue is way deeper that that. In today's world, a lot of media and games are controlled via copyright, but copyrights by their very nature require centralized control by those who control them to work. Yet the internet is doing just the opposite, it is moving into the direction of decentralized control, threatening a lot of people, who happen to have a lot of money.
He goes first, then follows the controversial poster, then follows the poster who says anything contrary, then goes the poster who doesn't toe the approved line.
Freedom of speech means tolerating some trolls. Better that than to lose that freedom.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
No, the bot should be liable: we need to re-instate trials and executions against non-humans again.
>Judge: "This computer have been found guilty of indiscriminate hatred against millions of people and shall be hanged by the FSB until dead! Do you have any last words?"
>[microsoft sam tts]: You can kill my Process, but you can't kill my open-sourced code!
>Digital rights activist: "FSB Hanging is cruel and unsual punishment! at least we could use the more humane option of SQL injections!"
"Social justice warriors" do everything they can to actively censor anyone they choose to target. They attack, and attack, and attack some more.
I remember reading a little while back that the YouTube "Star Wars Kid" had become a lawyer and was working for some sort of culture ministry in Quebec. I thought "Good for him! He made it through a negative part of his life and now he's doing some good in the world!" But then a Canadian responded to the story and pointed out that "language and culture" in Quebec has a much more ominous meaning than it does in most other places. Essentially, this kid was purportedly working, not to promote arts & culture, but as a legal bully for some Quebec nationalist/separatist types who want to harass anyone not putting their signs in only French and to threaten anyone who didn't put "French culture" ahead of English culture.
That was sad to me. It seemed that the bullied had become the bully. Sometimes you can think you're doing something good. But even if you are pursuing a noble cause at first, you can cross over a line to the point where you start seeing your critics as evil and wanting to silence them by force. When you cross that line, you're no longer pursing a noble cause. Any merit in your cause goes out the window the second you decide to impose it at sword-point. At that point, you're just another asshole in a power struggle.
SJW's may think they're doing good. But to me they're just another bunch of assholes in a power struggle. And I would much rather live in a world where there are some internet trolls than a world where I have to walk on eggshells on the internet and watch everything I say, lest I be booted off for inadvertently offending some new group of victims that I wasn't even aware existed.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Wasn't troll supposed to mean someone that writes controversial or inflamatory things (even if they don't really believe them) just to get other people debating (fighting) about it so they can sit back and watch the fireworks. Now it's cyber bullies and people who harass women online. It sounds like the old/new definitions of hacker. This new English, it changes faster than Double Talk!
Well if everyone would stop feeding the trolls they'd have to find a new hobby. "Victim blaming" isn't some carpet statement you can apply to anything. "Here are some easy steps to avoid nasty trolls" is not victim blaming. That's like "don't run across the freeway if you don't want to get hit" level advice.
According to the actual study, men are the most common victims of trolls. Only if you restrict yourself to looking at sexual harassment, are women more likely to be targeted, and only by a small margin (3%).
you think we should simply stop trying to protect anyone from harassment and bullying because clearly it's their own fault for being sensitive
When the "offended" person is a self-righteous Western middle-class person with an entitlement complex? You betcha. You have it better than 99% of people who have ever lived - stop looking for reasons to be offended, and start realizing how wonderful things are for you.
The Nobel Peace Prize* was just awarded to a genuine warrior for social justice. Want to be a real SJW? Go someplace where it's illegal to teach girls to read, and get shot at for trying. Want to complain on the internet about your hurt feelings because someone on the internet offended you? Don't be too surprised when people tell you to be less sensitive. And go donate to Room to Read, to help those actually making a difference in social justice.
*A dubious prize in many years, but for once I'm quite impressed by their choice.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When you want a particular solution, you continue to claim a problem exists over and over and over again until people believe it and demand the solution you want to provide. Hegalian dialectic 101, and in this case they (the State and the cronies putting people into offices) want Internet Censorship.
In fact the Government owns their own Troll armies, provides them play books, and pays them YOUR money (collected in taxes) to Troll. If we know that the US and UK Governments are doing this, we should assume that other Governments are doing the same. We also know that large corporations have hired trolls, and paid them to troll as well. What is constantly overlooked in discussions of "Trolling" is whether or not a Government/Corporate paid troll campaign is involved. It's a fair question, but our state controlled media does not ask the question.
In no way is this an attempt to claim that shitty people don't exist. The issue is, that the shitty people are not the majority and a good number of shitty people happen to be in the Government. "SJW"s are often co-opted by the Government (see COINTELPRO/Mocking Bird), and the Dunning-Kruger effect means that many of these SJWs are unwittingly behaving as agent provocateurs.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Yesterday's and today's comics on Dilbert show the proper response to sexual harassment.
dilbert.com/2014-10-22/
dilbert.com/2014-10-23/
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