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Researchers Developing An Algorithm That Can Detect Internet Trolls

Posted by samzenpus on from the don't-forget-the-fire dept.

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.

4 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. In other words by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:In other words by Kyogreex · · Score: 5, Informative

      The original paper doesn't seem to be about automatic banning at all; that seems to have been added to the headline and the article linked to here (and therefore the summary). The paper says this: "automatic, early identification of users who are likely to be banned in the future."

      While that identification could be used for automatic banning, I think it would be more likely to be used to flag potential problem users, which could be very useful in determining which reported posts to investigate first rather than dealing with all of the "I don't like this post so I'm reporting it" instances.

  2. This is fucking stupid. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. "Old" vs "new" trolling by RogueyWon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Your mistake is in using the "classic" definition of "troll" - somebody who sets out to deliberately cause fights on a forum. Trawl through the archives of Slashdot and you will find many instances of this kind of trolling - and yes, the people doing it are often highly literate (and, when they do it right, sometimes very funny with hindsight).

    But the term "trolling" has gone political these days and is routinely used to describe any form of online behaviour that the speaker doesn't approve of. So everything from outright criminal behaviour (eg. threats of immediate violence) at one end of the scale through to disagreeing with a forum's established groupthink (however respectfully) at the other.

    And yes, it has become a favourite term of the intellectually insecure, whenever they want to shout down an opposing point of view without engaging with it. In fact, conflating those two extremes I mention above under the same term is outright beneficial for the easily offended, as it allows them to group polite dissenters together with the mouth-foaming loons.