Researchers Developing An Algorithm That Can Detect Internet Trolls

An anonymous reader writes Researchers at Cornell University claim to be able to identify a forum or comment-thread troll within the first ten posts after the user joins with more than 80% accuracy, leading the way to the possibility of methods to automatically ban persistently anti-social posters. The study observed 10,000 new users at cnn.com, breitbart.com and ign.com, and characterizes an FBU (Future Banned User) as entering a new community with below-average literacy or communications skill, and that the low standard is likely to drop shortly before a permanent ban. It also observes that higher rates of community intolerance are likely to foster the anti-social behavior and speed the ban.

Comments

In other words

[fustakrakich]

Automated censorship. Eh, saves us the trouble, I guess

This is fucking stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolls are usually above average literacy and trying to skilfully cause a fight. It's easy to identify "illiterate" people and humans are way too quick to judge someone who cannot spell as having nothing to contribute or (worse) malicious, but these are not trolls. This is just another classist meme where the person is judged positively by the overcomplexity of their language and convolution of their sentences, as this must mean they have been educamated right.

BTW I went to a £30k/year British boarding school, so I have no axe to grind, nor insecurity about describing things as they are.

Re:This is fucking stupid.

[plover]

While I believe that people who are less sensitive tend to thrive more than others, I don't agree that "thicker skin" is a workable solution. Too many people have fragile emotional states and simply don't have the neural hardware psychological capacity required to dismiss the hate and insults that often happen on line. There have been some high-profile suicides among teens who were attacked online, and who knows how many people remove themselves from public comment because of the hate they've received? For safety reasons I don't think society should completely abrogate the forums to the trolls.

Does that not mean some people are overly sensitive? Sure. But just as we shouldn't velour-line the internet to cater to absolutely every person with a psychological disorder; we also don't have to tolerate the diarrhea that spews forth from the trolls. We don't have to draw a hard-and-fast line on the ground, either, and define "these words are always 100% bad in 100% of situations". Instead, we should be welcoming humans in the loop, asking them to pass judgment when needed. That gets us to a more fluid state than full automation. It also lets the user choose. Don't like the judgment process on Slashdot? Don't hang out on Slashdot.

I know full automated filtering is the holy grail of internet forum moderation, but as soon as you deploy a filter it becomes a pass/fail test for the trolls, who quickly learn to adapt and evade it. Human judges can adapt, too, and are about the only thing that can; there are simply too few for the volume of trolls out there. A tool like this might help them scale this effort to YouTube volumes.

Unicorns, skittles, rainbows, etc.

[pla]

within the first ten posts after the user joins

So, this algorithm only needs nine more posts than a troll will actually make per throwaway account, then?

That's some mighty fine police work there, Lou!

Re:This, if true, will utterly destroy

[Stan92057]

Your talking about racism, this article is about internet trolls They are not the same. A person with a different view is not a troll. A person with a different opinion then you is not a troll. Ive been tagged a troll because of my views a few times.Many here will post as anomoue because they know there opinions will be viewed and tagged as a troll.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll