I have a huge problem with the word troll. Call me oldschool, but to me a troll is someone who claims to believe something when they really don't, and that just can never be proven either way. So why even go there? Trolls just like anyone else make statements, those statements are either off-topic or can be dealt with. If they're very aggressive, or just wrong in their claims, there is no need for the additional charge "troll". "Don't feed distractions", "don't feed negativity", "don't waste time on this, it's red herring because [insert solid argument here]", having rules for accepted behaviour, those and more all work perfectly fine, and they have the added benefit of not making someone an unperson with the word "troll".

The author(s) really just could put two things they said in separate places together:

> Mob mentalities seize hold of "the villian of the moment", and no person has any incentive to stick up for someone who is the 'bad guy du jour' of the crowd, regardless of whether or not all claims are merited.

and

> With dewDrop, those making the baseless charges can just be denied, with the subject issuing a DISTRUST statement. Anyone who trusts the subject can now immediately know to distrust those issuing the baseless claims - as well as anyone who trusted them.

... surely you can see how the combination of those two things could be a problem, right? I mean, what is a "baseless claim", who gets to decide that, and how?

I've been baselessly called a troll before simply because my claims were NOT baseless, and I asked others to back up their claims about me. And the best bit is, the FB page admin let that thread exist as long as someone else calling me a troll had the last word; but when I replied, insisting that just calling someone names does not constitute addressing what they said, and that my points stand, the whole thread got deleted like 30 mins later, and I had to fish the whole comment thread out of a browser process dump with a hex editor because I was so dumbfounded.

In my eyes then and now, I wasn't trolling, I was throwing pearls to pigs; I posted a "wall of text" which I had indeed thought about quite a bit in a forum where 99% of all responses to anything ever posted is just "you're doing a great job, keep it up, it would be so great if everybody was aware that you're just so great". Which is not even something I disagree with, I just wanted to add to that :/ But oh well, I was banned from posting too, though that I only realized weeks later when I pondered wether to translate something for that page, because they asked for volunteers.

So.. sure, I can flag a whole page with ten thousands of likes as "they all suck at reading comprehension, admin may even be dishonest", but where would the fact that I can back my claim up, and they can't, that I'm the one fishing that stuff out of memory which they swept under the rug, fit in there? What if I don't want to flag a whole page? What if I think someone is absolutely wrong about topic A, or for some reasons unable to learn, but has no stake in topic B, or is intellectually honest about it even though they do?

Sorry for rambling, but the anecdote I described actually did hurt me a bit when it happened. It's the discussion equivalent of getting killed by a drone without trial, simply not cool. Now imagine one "trusted admin" being able to simply delete the voice of people from this vague group of everybody representing "human progress"... ugh!

It's tricky over the web, but in person, the idea is generally, the more healthy and sane you are yourself, the easier you notice the bad "vibrations" others send out. It's just we usually are all over the place or unhappy ourselves, but the less you are, the easier you notice the patterns and disguises around you. And while we don't have pheromones and body language and a lot of other things over the web, I do feel something more limited but similar applies there too, it just can't be formalized easily and tattooed to people's foreheads or user ID, just like we can't do that with character, sanity, intelligence, knowledge, and all the other things that go into the one word "trust".

"I trust this person" is just one simple word for something you could not fully describe in a book. I trust various people to various degrees, each relation is completely unique, and I cannot easily or at all transfer my experiences with a person in one area to another area. I would also never say "Oh, you need a (dis)trust relationship with person X you never met? Here, just copy mine". It's like I wouldn't make a copy of my toothbrush for them, I'd rather help them get their own. Of course that's not entirely true, we gossip and criticize or laud others in their absence all the time, and we take that into account; but I would rarely let that keep me from getting to know a person, at least from even getting a first impression of my own. I know people do that, but I consider it harmful.

If anything, the very idea that someone would rather talk about the person who said something, than what they said, would count against them in my books. I'd say "the" (any) mob itself is standing in the way of its own progress, the appeal to authority or current consensus, sometimes expressed in just numbers, and always coming with labels. To put a point on it, the problem is that too many people can't or don't want to think for themselves or examine evidence, not how to do it for them (kinda like IMHO the problem is also that people don't configure the software they use or read manuals, not just what the best default setup or tutorial would be). Tools can help people reach maturity, but they cannot replace maturity, which to me implies such things as critical thinking and climbing that "hierarchy of disagreement", instead of getting stuck in one of the lower floors.

Last but not least, either you require each physical human to have just one root identity, or you already have lost to anyone willing to make more than one account, if not hundreds. If it can be done it will be done, if it can lead to influencing what people vote or buy, doubly so. This already happens, sure, it would just be more of that, but the more it was trusted the worse it could be abused.

If you read this far, thanks, and apologies :)