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Trolling Will Get Worse Before it Gets Better, Study Says (mashable.com)
If you thought that the internet had a chance of becoming a nicer place at any point in the near future, it might be time to give up hope. From a report: "Harassment, trolls, and an overall tone of griping, distrust, and disgust" will stay the norm on the internet over the next decade, experts told the Pew Research Center in a new report. The Pew Research Center and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University surveyed about 1,500 technology experts, scholars, corporate practitioners and government leaders in July and August 2016 for the study, and the results are pretty demoralizing. Forty-two percent of respondents thought the internet would stay the same sometimes less-than-pleasant place over the next 10 years, while another 39 percent said they thought the internet would become a more negative environment. Just under 20 percent of experts thought the internet had any chance of getting better over the next decade when it comes to harassment and trolling.
Yup. Basically, "we asked a bunch of people to predict the future, and there was a significant degree of pessimism, although there was also a plurality of optimists."
What meaning are we supposed to gather from this? It's not even a well-characterized sample—it's just "we asked a bunch of people with strong opinions." This is not news—it's noise.
I really like the increased content, but ugh..the people that came with it.
But that's what you get. If you've ever had a job that deals with the general public, you quickly realize how fscked in the head 90% of the public is.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This. I know it's one we've almost certainly lost, like "hacker" meaning anything other than "cracker" or "computer criminal", but "trolling" was a fine distinction of taking a deliberately inflammatory position (whether you actually held it or not) in an attempt to goad others into taking completely unreasonably positions on the other extreme in response, and laughing at the nonsense that ensued.
Degrading and broadening it to a simple "someone who's mean on the Internet" is another little piece of our culture slipping away...
I know, kids on my lawn and all that.