Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say

Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by pdelbarba on Friday March 31, 2017 @04:46PM (#14008007)

Honest question: how would you reconcile privacy-centric communities like Reddit and definitely-not-privacy-centric communities like Facebook? They both have the same patterns of information bubbles generally feed content in similar ways (broadly speaking) and they both have strong troll subgroups. If anything, Facebook might have a lower overall incidence of trolling because you run the risk of having your profile picture on the evening news.

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Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by ouid on Friday March 31, 2017 @05:27PM (#14008465)

it's not about quantity of trolls, it's about the effect of trolls. No one cares if you're a troll on reddit, because there's no personal investment. You're just an account. There's an upper bound on the damage that can be inflicted on you. That is not the case with Facebook. Reddit doesn't have to do anything about trolls except give people a downvote button.

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Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by pdelbarba on Friday March 31, 2017 @05:37PM (#14008536)

Fair point. It is worth noting that they occasionally stalk users and try to de-anonymize them though this is a fairly "niche" practice.

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Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by mlonkibjuyhv on Saturday April 01, 2017 @05:47AM (#14011388)

That would be harassment, no?

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Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by nradov on Friday March 31, 2017 @05:11PM (#14008266)

Does Facebook actually have less trolling? I don't know how anyone could quantify it but subjectively there seems to be a lot. It's easy to create fake accounts, and some people just don't care.

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Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by pdelbarba on Friday March 31, 2017 @05:17PM (#14008353)

In an absolute sense I imagine they probably have more, given that they have something like 1.5 billion users. I think the type of trolling might be more mild in general though, back when I used it regularly it was mostly just 20 page political debates hinging on gross misunderstandings by both parties...

Obviously this is just my experience though.

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Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by dredmorbius on Saturday April 01, 2017 @03:41PM (#14013761)

Enough so that the retiring US Attorney for Chicago specifically called it out for the city's murder problem.

https://archive.fo/203tP

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Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by nradov on Saturday April 01, 2017 @08:11PM (#14014924)

Criminal street gang members threatening and dissing each other doesn't qualify as trolling. If we're calling that trolling now then the term has lost all meaning. And that retiring US Attorney didn't cite any evidence of one social media system being worse than the others.

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Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by dredmorbius on Saturday April 01, 2017 @11:36PM (#14015622)

"Trolling: A person who posts inflammatory or otherwise unwanted material on an electronic forum, especially anonymously."

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/trolling

"Troll: One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument."

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=troll&defid=...

Provoking gangland warfare to the tune of http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-open-le...

There's been an absolute epidemic within this thread of people attempting to redefine trolling in such a way as to minimise either the problem or the source article. It's beyond stupid, beyond credible, and beyond sustaining any credibility of those doing it.

Ya trollin' me, bra?

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Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by dredmorbius on Monday April 03, 2017 @03:03AM (#14021082)

For some reason, most of what I'd posted to the above comment (quotes from the letter) don't appear to have made it through. Sigh.

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Re:Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say by H4CK3RM4N on Friday March 31, 2017 @09:19PM (#14009801)

Reddit's attempting to bridge this gap already by addin a Facebook-like profile where you can build an identity or following based on your screen name.

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