Web Trolls Winning as Incivility Increases

[Blue_Tires]

The Internet may be losing the war against trolls. At the very least, it isn’t winning. And unless social networks, media sites and governments come up with some innovative way of defeating online troublemakers, the digital world will never be free of the trolls’ collective sway.

That’s the dismal judgment of the handful of scholars who study the broad category of online incivility known as trolling, a problem whose scope is not clear, but whose victims keep mounting.

“As long as the Internet keeps operating according to a click-based economy, trolls will maybe not win, but they will always be present,” said Whitney Phillips, a lecturer at Humboldt State University and the author of “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” a forthcoming book about her years of studying bad behavior online. “The faster that the whole media system goes, the more trolls have a foothold to stand on. They are perfectly calibrated to exploit the way media is disseminated these days.”

“Troll” is the fuzzy term for agitators who pop up, often anonymously, sometimes in mobs, in comment threads and on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, apparently intent on wreaking havoc. The term is vague precisely because trolls lurk in darkness; their aims are unclear, their intentions unknown, their affiliations mysterious.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/technology/web-trolls-winning-as-incivility-increases.html?hpw&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. pseudonymity is the biggest issue.

When you're unwilling to put your own name to things you post, you're a lot more likely to say things you wouldn't want people to know you said. Most trolls don't want people to know they're trolls.

[seabeckind]

3. Disagree

There are some very nasty people on the intertubes. They will cyberbully. That's why I quit posting on any forum that uses facebook as their comment engine.

These people don't care if you know who they are. One of the characteristics of being an asshole is that the asshole doesn't care if you think he's an asshole.

Solving the troll problem in this way would introduce a different, worse problem.

[pscot]

4. The internet has given Society's asshole the means of speech

Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his ass to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I had ever heard.

"This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.

"This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called "The Better 'Ole' that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, "Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?'

"'Nah! I had to go relieve myself.'

"After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.

http://www.oocities.org/moondogged/lunch2.html

[HuckleB]

2. The real problem is the lack of desire to challenge ourselves.

Anyone can find BS to justify the most bizarre fiction on the Internet. A lack of ability to discern good information from bad information leads to huge portions of the public not just falling for scam artists, but working hard to advocate for them.

Our education system is doing absolutely nothing to fill the gap, and adults wouldn't benefit from it, if it did.

[arcane1]

5. That's going to be an interesting book. I can't wait!