
How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet - prostoalex
http://time.com/4457110/internet-trolls/
======
reader5000
I guess we have what, 10 years until they carve a "trolling" or "hate speech"
exception out of the first amendment?  Such already exists everywhere else
except for U.S.

It's interesting.  It used to be that the average American's 5-6 hours of daily
media consumption was produced entirely by what 4-5 corporations?  Thats
literally ~400 million people's media coming from maybe a couple thousand
people.  How is that good?  If "trolling" [which I think is really just a code
word for "exposure to interpretations of reality with which I disagree"] is
the price of more diverse, more informative media, then so what? 

~~~
Sideloader
Shhh...don't make the people think about, like, complicated stuff or accept
the presence of ideas or opinions they may not agree with.  Because that's what
is happening.  A person who floats a "controversial" opinion that goes against
or challenges "accepted" (i.e. imposed) orthodoxy is considered barely more
acceptable than a bitter asshole with issues who threatens to rape or kill his
ex-girlfriend. 

Simply asking how encouraging perpetual victimhood empowers women and ethnic
minorities is more often than not met with incredulous outrage and
accusations.  There is no room for debate - one either is with them or against
them.  Nuance and honest debate are for privileged people dontcha know.  Only
POC, LGBTQ who buy into victim culture and "womyn" are allowed to express
their opinions without interference.  Check your privege buddy or GTFO! 

------
Cuuugi
I think it's hard to say that Trolls are ruining the internet.  They have been
a part of the internet since the first BBS. 

Sensitivity to them is what's causing this current push back (and emboldening
them).  I'm not defending them as some of them go way out of line, but I feel
like language policing is a large step in the wrong direction. 

~~~
orcdork
Yes, obviously it's everyone else that's at fault, not the vocal toxic
minority. 

~~~
Cuuugi
I'm not really blaming anyone (or intending to).  All i am saying is that there
should be a logical disconnect between someone calling someone an asshole on a
forum, and someone Doxxing a 14 year old girl because she made the mistake of
showing her boobs on the internet. 

"Trolling" means different things to different people(just as what people find
offensive), and legislating that is dangerous IMO. 

------
tdkl
> _Trolling is, overtly, a political fight.  Liberals do indeed troll–sex-
> advice columnist Dan Savage used his followers to make Googling former
> Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s last name a blunt lesson in the
> hygienic challenges of anal sex; the hunter who killed Cecil the lion got it
> really bad._ 

> _The alt-right’s favorite insult is to call men who don’t hate feminism
> “cucks,” as in “cuckold.”  <snip> Trolling is the alt-right’s version of
> political activism, and its ranks view any attempt to take it away as a
> denial of democracy._ 

I honestly don't like this burden of trolling to be placed on the right,
because both sides consist of people with emotional issues and incapability to
handle them.  And to be honest, such people don't deserve online access. 

The 90's and early 2000's were refreshing where you had to be a certain geek
to get to the web, which was a filter enough. 

[edit] To clarify, my impression of the article is that it's not balanced
between both sides.  Might have something to do that "troll" doesn't
necessarily mean the same, as user Fifer82 suggested in his comment "I don't
mind trolls.  There is a difference between a troll, a bully, a wanker and a
psycho"[1]. 

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12321968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12321968)

~~~
honkhonkpants
This is an odd bit of false equivalence.  Santorum got what he had coming,
because he's a galactic-scale asshole.  Making up a funny joke about an
ignorant reactionary seeking to impose theocracy in America makes perfect
sense when that person has been elevated to a position of rare power. 

On the other hand making up a name for people who fail to hate women doesn't
have quite the same logic. 

~~~
dragonwriter
The _logic_ may well be the same.  The _moral axioms_ on which that logic
applies obviously differs between the people who support one and oppose the
other and those who either see them as equivalent or who have the reverse
support/oppose position. 

~~~
honkhonkpants
I can't tell what you meant. 

Mocking a powerful politician is fair game.  Indeed, mocking the powerful is a
necessary function in a republic or democracy, and should be practiced in
direct proportion to the hypocrisy openly demonstrated by the target. 

Mocking random members of the public (calling them cucks or faggots in threads
on reddit) serves no function. 

~~~
htns
That was exactly the original point.  The article is weasely in its cherry-
picking of examples.  The veneer of civility is very thin. 

------
bradfa
It's unfortunate that the word "troll" is starting to define someone who
bullies, threatens, and harasses people.  There's plenty of ways to goad a
reaction out of someone without being an asshole or threatening their safety. 

------
oolongCat
Honestly, if you really think "trolls" are ruining the internet, you have no
idea what the internet is capable of, about the amazing things it brings us
and about the communities that are built around the internet that has adopted
to these trolls.  Yes trolls make things harder, but they are not able to
"ruin" the internet. 

Garbage journalism on the other-hand might actually have the power to do it. 

Just like anything in life when it comes to the internet I think you have to
use it for sometime before you can somewhat manage to spot whats right and
wrong on the internet. 

The author also mentions something about how the internet is eager to help
with technical details and is bad for medical advice?  Seriously?  I mean, I
once saw someone advice a guy to place his router higher than his computer, so
that gravity will make the internet faster :) and I have seen complete
strangers on places like reddit come together to help people who were having
trouble with something, genuinely helping and making a better change in
people's lives. 

The damn internet doesn't care about trolls or there's no ruining these trolls
can do to the internet.  People are always going to be people, you are going to
have to use some common sense when you are living your normal life and when
you are on the Internet. 

------
forgottenpass
Time, as a print magazine assumes it role to pontificate on the lower class of
publishing medium.  In it's knowed position of media, they point out surface
level and uncontroversial annoyances.  Trolls are easy to spot, but it's a
distraction from what Time isn't going after: the under-informed and
sensationalized media assaulting the public non-stop from every direction. 

Time, as a print magazine, doesn't dare acknowledge this fact.  They're in the
same exact business as tabloids, just at different rungs on the respectability
ladder.  So they're both going to go after the trolls.  The fact Milo works for
Breitbart only gets a parenthetical mention.  They don't stop to question the
quality of Breitbart's content, just play a bit of guilt by association
towards it's board. 

Of course it only gives more power to Weev and Milo's actions.  But Time needs
the trolls to be powerful, because if they weren't Time couldn't teach you to
hate them. 

------
overcast
I posted this in a previous discussion about NPR getting rid of their
comments. 
[http://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2016/08/17/489516952/n...](http://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2016/08/17/489516952/npr-
website-to-get-rid-of-comments)

This is an interesting move, and a topic I've been discussing with friends. 
I've stopped using sites like Reddit, because the comment sections are just
toxic.  I've gone as far as installing Chrome extensions that make comment
sections disappear from popular sites like YouTube.  It's too easy to get drawn
into the negativity, and I'm completely over it. " Social Networking" has
reached it's low point as far as I'm concerned.  Hacker News is about the only
civil place I'm capable of contributing to a discussion to at this point. 

~~~
autotune
The whole appeal about reddit is it's not just one "community," it's multiple
subreddits with different rules and different types of comments.  If a
subreddit becomes too negative, just hit the unsubscribe button and find a
better one. 

~~~
overcast
I understand what Reddit is about.  Here was my response to someone making a
similar comment in the previous thread. 

You know, I get this response every time I talk about this topic.  I really
dislike the "well no one is making you use / buy / watch / listen" to
something.  People can be critical of something they want to succeed.  It
happens a lot in certain game communities.  What if I WANT to talk about
politics, in a civil manner?  Any sufficiently popular subreddit, just devolves
into complete trash. 

~~~
cableshaft
Well that's part of the problem, stick to less popular subreddits, and you'll
get less of the 'riff raff', to quote Basil Fawlty.  And when they start
getting popular find an even less popular one. 

I've been a part of many forums and internet communities and chat rooms, and
they always tend to go the same way:

The people who have been around for awhile get increasingly annoyed by the
newcomers and their lack of decorum or 'idiotic statements' or whatever, so
that segment of the group starts posting in a new more secluded place and use
the other place less and less. 

Eventually more and more people find out about the 'secluded place' and it
becomes more and more cluttered with 'undesirables', (often a few people from
the previous group are now part of the old farts, or have become the new old
farts), so a chunk of them break off from that community or forum and start
posting somewhere even more secluded.  And eventually it happens again.  And
again.  And it's turtles all the way down. 

I saw the same exact shit happening in real life too with Meetup.com.  People
stopped posting stuff to meetup groups because they didn't want certain people
to come, then there's a smaller group that's secret from the others, then
either some people find out about it that shouldn't or one of the people in
the secret group starts acting in a way that the other people don't want to
deal with them anymore (for example, one time it was because they started
dating someone who was a real jerk), so a new, smaller secreter group is
formed, and so on...turtles all the way down again. 

~~~
overcast
Do you think it's right that the good standing users, have to go out of their
way to find alternative routes to use the product?  Start at the source, and
clean up the problem.  All you're doing is letting the trash take over, and the
current system encourages it. 

The Meetup scenario is depressing.  Thankfully the one Tech Meetup I attend
every so often is positive. 

~~~
cableshaft
When you get the admins to clamp down, they're probably going to clamp down on
some people or behavior that was tolerated or used by even the 'good' people
because of some positive thing, and then those people start another group and
take a bunch of those people with them, and it effectively becomes the same
thing as before.  I think it only works if you always had the rules in place,
and even then, there will be some well liked people that will see how much
they get away with, get removed, post a fit "I was ONLY doing blah and blah"
and everyone else in the group gets mad and demands you let them back in, and
blah, and blech. 

The meetup thing started innocently enough a couple times (with a couple
people I was told explicitly they didn't want certain people to come), it's
like 'we found some people we like hanging out with now thanks to meetup and
now we're just inviting them over to our place', but eventually they stop
posting their normal stuff on meetup and it gets harder and harder to keep the
group going. 

I was a forum admin for way too long.  Kinda glad I'm out of that now.  Although
now I'm an organizer for a meetup group, and it's not much different. 

------
1281083181
Another word that had an intelligent meaning and now just means "bad behavior
or something ...". 

Unfortunately pg was one of the first who started this when throwing the
t-word at arc critics.  Really sad. 

------
JoelBennett
I'm really curious - I've heard no one mention the concept of "hell-banning". 
Basically, instead of outright banning destructive users, you make all of
their content only visible to themselves.  It reminds me of the phrase "in
space, no one can hear you scream".  Eventually, after a while they stop
posting.  If they don't notice this for a while, they waste efforts posting
content that no one will ever see.  It's a bit like an automatic cold shoulder
from the community. 

------
woah
This is a great article in a lot of ways, but tells lies by omission about
Andrew Aurenheimer (who is, by the way, a neo-nazi asshole). 

> He served just over a year in prison for identity fraud and conspiracy. 

This refers to his sentence for revealing AT&T's ridiculously lax security
practices to a journalist.  This sentence was overturned. 

Using this as some sort of anecdote to illustrate weev's untrustworthiness
without mentioning what it was for, or that it was overturned is the epitome
of lazy and dishonest reporting. 

------
Fifer82
I don't mind trolls.  There is a difference between a troll, a bully, a wanker
and a psycho. 

~~~
bogomipz
That sounds like the opening to a funny joke. 

------
karma_vaccum123
If you want to see a site that starts off with noble ambitions but descends
into a swamp of thinly-veiled trolling masked in good intentions...I present
Nextdoor.com.  Brigading, a tactic employed to great effect on Twitter, is just
as present in these so-called community discussions. 

Righteous, uptight, indignant, spiteful, entitled...I never knew how much I
despised my neighbors until I joined my local Nextdoor. 

~~~
cortesoft
I am pretty neighbors have always been like that, with gossip and shit
talking.  It just was never in a place where you could see it all at once, and
where as before people would only say those things to people in their
confidence, now they can say it to everyone anonymously on a forum. 

------
vilmosi
Finally found out what "cuck" meant. 

------
kelvin0
I finally understand what the IoT is! :) 

------
Sideloader
I know it's not a popular position to take but I still think if the worst
trolls were starved of oxygen they would crawl back under their bridge and
die.  An ignored troll is a defeated troll.  Nasty people will always exist of
course online and in the material world and thankfully even the meanest,
nastiest button pushing trolls very rarely act on their threats to harm or
kill the people they target. 

A more important question is what drives so many people to attack non-white
people and women online?  Is it simply a reaction to a drop in status as
traditionally oppressed groups assert themselves or is there more to this?  We
likely won't know anytime soon as the trend today is to dissect and discuss
symptoms to the point of absurdity but talking about the causes or possible
causes is almost taboo.  E.g. Trump.  Endless articles and opinion pieces
bullshitting about how "evil" and "fascist" he is but serious discussions
asking if, say, widespread economic disenfranchisement and the Democrats
alienating the white working class in favor of identity politics has something
to do with it. 

The culture of outrage that identity politics has morphs into treats words as
the fotemost evil in our world. " OMG Drumpf SAYS he's going to build a wall
and make Mexico pay for it and HE SAYS he will "ban" Muslims from entering the
US!!  He must be stopped!"  Meanwhile Obama is deporting so many illegal
immigrants he earned another nickname from it (Depoter in Chief) and firing
Hellfire missiles on wedding parties and other funny acting Muslim civilians. 
Thousands have been killed or injured by "mistakes".  But never mind about that
because Trump.  And don't ask if the economic lot of black people has improved
during Obama's eight years in office or what he has done to stop the deaths of
young black men at the hands of police.  That would destroy the fantasy of
America's first black president as a hip, progressive dude who really
cares...and we can't have that. 

Back to trolls "ruining" the Internet.  Instead of cutting off their oxygen
(the only proven way to kill trolls) Time gives them a massive infusion of the
stuff and a hysterical headline to go with it.  Of course possible root causes
won't be explored and government surveillance, censorship etc.  of the Internet
in conjunction with business interests (the MPAA and RIAA to name two very
prominent ones) that sends American LEA to foreign lands to violate the
liberies of people suspected of...sharing links to pirated movies/music and
running a cloud storage service that may have been used to store and share the
aforementioned files. 

It does sometimes feel like the world has gone over a cliff and the media, the
establishment political parties and their wealthy owners/donors have glumped
together into a mass of crazy that is stealth infecting people around the
world. 

------
Aelinsaar
...Or how people learned to ignore online, what they long have been forced to
ignore offline. 

~~~
tdb7893
I don't think that trolls are something that comes up often in real life.  I
can't imagine people acting like that in person unless they were middle
schoolers.  For example when I played soccer with people in real life I never
had people tell me that I suck and to kill myself but people do it all the
time in some video games. 

~~~
Aelinsaar
I would argue that the 2016 race has been characterized primarily, by
trolling.