Don't suffer internet trolls gladly
DailyKos
Don't suffer internet trolls gladly
It’s a new year, and no matter how many resolutions I make, they won’t change some of the problems and irritations from years past on the internet — namely trolls, keyboard racists, and misogynists. They are a very special breed who haunt the comments sections of blogs and boards, of news sites and book reviews, spewing vile and often violent screeds which tend to remain un-moderated and whose words are blazing beacons of bigotry.
The phrase “suffer fools gladly” is attributed to Saint Paul, and to “not suffer fools” according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is “to have very little patience with people who you think are stupid or have stupid ideas.” The trolls on the internet go beyond simply stupid: They have slimed over into dangerous and harmful territory. Yes, they are ubiquitous, and we have all been told repeatedly, since the early days of the net to “avoid feeding the trolls.” As a veteran of early bulletin boards and Usenet, I’ve lived through their birth and proliferation. That history can be found in Ashley Feinberg’s piece, “The Birth of the Internet Troll,” ...
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This isn’t the first time I’ve addressed this issue. In “Fighting racism … one keystroke at a time,” I talked of the need to push back, and not simply ignore the comments, closing with, “A few keystrokes a day can drive racism away." There is a need to expand on individual efforts and address the platforms that have given hate a license. This becomes even more imperative during an election year in which the Republican contenders are falling all over themselves to emulate their bigoted frontrunner in upping the ante on inflammatory rhetoric.
In Feinberg's piece, she links to Whitney Phillips’ “Don't feed the trolls? It's not that simple,” part of Phillips’ series on “The Anti-social Web.” In “Comment moderation and the (anti-) social Web,” Phillips takes on the oft-repeated defensive battle cry of “free speech” when hateful spew is confronted. ...
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Before anyone reading gets bent out of shape about her characterization of vile speech-spewers as white males of a certain type, I will state unequivocally that here at Daily Kos, there are many white males who regularly “flag” or “donut” vile speech. I agree with her pointing out that women, people of color, and LBGT internet users (and I will add Muslims and Jews to the list) are most often the targets of bigotry and hate. That translates into real-world meat-space data on who is actually physically harmed by haters. One need only add up the stats on domestic abuse, police abuse, rape, church burnings, mosque, and synagogue attacks to see that the spew online reflects what is a fact of life in the “real world.” Remember that the people sitting at a computer typing shit are actual live humans who may live next door to you, or work at the next desk.
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https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/3/1463556/-Don-t-suffer-internet-trolls-gladly?detail=email?detail=email