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The Internet Your Rights Online

Trolling Will Get Worse Before it Gets Better, Study Says (mashable.com) 208

If you thought that the internet had a chance of becoming a nicer place at any point in the near future, it might be time to give up hope. From a report: "Harassment, trolls, and an overall tone of griping, distrust, and disgust" will stay the norm on the internet over the next decade, experts told the Pew Research Center in a new report. The Pew Research Center and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University surveyed about 1,500 technology experts, scholars, corporate practitioners and government leaders in July and August 2016 for the study, and the results are pretty demoralizing. Forty-two percent of respondents thought the internet would stay the same sometimes less-than-pleasant place over the next 10 years, while another 39 percent said they thought the internet would become a more negative environment. Just under 20 percent of experts thought the internet had any chance of getting better over the next decade when it comes to harassment and trolling.
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Trolling Will Get Worse Before it Gets Better, Study Says

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  • Troll post (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

    This slashdot news story is clearly a troll.

    • Re:Troll post (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mellon ( 7048 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @09:48AM (#54143027) Homepage

      Yup. Basically, "we asked a bunch of people to predict the future, and there was a significant degree of pessimism, although there was also a plurality of optimists."

      What meaning are we supposed to gather from this? It's not even a well-characterized sample—it's just "we asked a bunch of people with strong opinions." This is not news—it's noise.

      • Re:Troll post (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @09:54AM (#54143091) Homepage Journal
        The internet was a LOT nicer before all the 'common' folks got on (started with AOL?).....

        I really like the increased content, but ugh..the people that came with it.

        But that's what you get. If you've ever had a job that deals with the general public, you quickly realize how fscked in the head 90% of the public is.

        • Yes, I remember those days, but it is not 90% of the population. The truth is that probably 90% of the trolls are gutless little 12-19 year old boys who get beat up at school every day and trolling makes them feel powerful the only way they know how. Trolling will always exist because there will always be assholes and sociopaths, but it's rampant nature right now is indicative of deep social problems in our society, and it will drop off dramatically if we address those problems.

          That or we can just go for

        • You're talking about Eternal September. The Internet was a lot smaller back then, and had a lot less idiocy for sure, however I'm not so sure about "nicer". USENET was infamous for "flame wars". But the difference was that, back then, the flamewars were generally between intelligent academics, and were very nasty arguments between people but with actual reason and intelligence. Whereas today, you just need to read the comments below and mass-media news article (esp. anything political), or YouTube comme

  • by lucasnate1 ( 4682951 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @09:42AM (#54142975) Homepage

    I suspect the future of trolling is something like this: https://sonichu.com/ [sonichu.com]

    Entire wikis created on people, documenting every mistake they ever did on their life, allowing online collaborations between thousands in phishing/harassing. AI and data mining will probably make this much easier as they improve.

    • So.. if various data breaches and other online information gets indexed and allows for at-will doxxing of anyone, with a wiki of things to shame them... would it stop having an effect? You'd have twitter bots auto-shaming everyone on the internet.
  • ... yeah, didn't think so.

    Hell we just gave an internet troll the nuclear codes. Now all the other trolls online have something even greater to aspire to.
  • by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @09:46AM (#54143015) Journal

    Trolling Will Get Worse; it Will Never Get Better.

    FTFY...

    • If trolling gets intolerable and pervasive enough, universal ID will get passed legislatively and all the trolls will wilt in the light of day. Trolls only exist because they can lurk in their mothers basement safe and sound. The minute you know that guy you are doxxing might come to your house and kick your ass, it stops being fun. This is why we can't have nice things.

      In the mean time, don't feed the trolls.

  • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @09:51AM (#54143061)

    Solution: Find sites that are moderated so trolls and the merely very uncivil are ejected.

    Unfortunately, proper implementation requires identity verification which stifles discussion since few people worth talking to are willing to put their entire life on public record for all eternity.

    There's a secondary problem in that most people will end up gravitating to echo chambers, which most often ends up reinforcing ignorance which is kind of the opposite of the Internet's optimal use - sharing information.

    • by Maritz ( 1829006 )
      Yeah all we need are a few islands of civility to cling on to. They do exist to some extent. Ars has a very mature commenting base compared to the shrill, opinionated whining you see on here.
      • Civility is left for the real world or at least that is how it should be. I don't come to the internet to necessarily be civil. I may or may not. Incivility is on the internet precisely because I cannot be uncivil IRL. Sometimes it is fun to troll an idiot.

        Sadly, it seems that the uncivil nature of the internet is creeping into the meat space. If there is ever a place for civility it is IRL. Civility online, while nice, is not necessary and any forced behavior online would be to the detriment of the interne

        • Civility , as in a form of respecting the others, matters everywhere. If it's absent the some guys can't handle it. Others may put up with it for a while, but then decide 'remind me again why I should I put up with this?' and leave. I've seen Kuroshin die like that. All the time while it was deteriotating there were the foulmouthed pricks convincing each other that they were just weeding out the wussies and once that was finished they'd have this really great site.

          • While I generally agree, each site and person has their own definition of acceptable behavior. Perhaps I should have worded the post a little different. I do not expect civility online. Nor do I look for it online (save business related matters). Any media or social interaction I have online is not something I expect respect from nor demand. My candor and civility will be a reflection of your interaction with me.

            I don't go online looking for great interactions because interacting with people is generally a

    • by tinkerton ( 199273 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @10:31AM (#54143433)

      I'd certainly prefer to get rid of the Anonymous Coward habit on here. People act a bit better (statistically) when they have a name on a forum. It doesn't have to be completely impossible to post AC. Just imagine you have to log in anyway but can choose to post as anonymous, possibly with a much longer waiting time before your post is committed. Sometimes people post as anonymous because they are scared. These people have a good reason and they still have the possibility to post AC.

    • Identity verification is not necessary for moderation. It is simply necessary to give new users a probation period during which their posts are invisible until cleared by a moderator. This -- and moderation in general -- is labor-intensive, but labor is the difference between a forum and a dumpster fire.

      The echo chamber effect happens when moderation goes beyond preventing abusive and uncivil behavior. Most community moderation systems tend to fail in this way, especially on political blogs. There's an old

    • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Identity verification need not involve people putting "their entire life on public record for all eternity" if you allow pseudonyms but just one per person per forum. Then the identity verification is only to ensure that you aren't already registered in the same forum under a different name.

      It's also helpful to be able to verify a person's credentials so that the claims of trolls and of experts aren't given equal weight in a discussion.

    • Something Awful requires a one time payment ($10) to post on the forums. Getting banned costs another $10 to reinstate your account. You can get put in forum-hell/time-out, where you can only communicate with other shit posters. You can get permabanned, where your account is not eligible for recovery, and your future accounts will be banned if the mods find out they belong to you.

      I haven't been active in years, but when I was, this was very effective at weeding out/discouraging bad behavior.
    • > Unfortunately, proper implementation requires identity verification...

      That might not necessarilly be true. I'm working on a site called kr5ddit [kr5ddit.com], which doesn't require any verification, but has a moderation system that cannot be gamed by having multiple sock puppets.

      You must earn your right to moderate, so no amount of sock puppets can give you any advantage.

  • Good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30, 2017 @09:55AM (#54143107)

    Social Media is what really ramped this up.

    I will never forget in 2009 when a guy I knew years before messaged my wife asking if I was in FB. He wanted me to get on FB. She showed me his profile and it was rife with right wing, nationalistic, xenophobic blather, conspiracties, etc; I was instantly turned off by the whole thing. As the years went by and I have gotten the pressure to join social media(and haven't) I am glad in my decision.

    Social Media, whether FB, Twitter or whatever, encourages Troll like behavior and political extremism. You would think that once people aren't anonymous anymore they would temper their "Yea, Cruz' dad killed Kennedy!" tweets, but they don't.

    I have access to a FB account, that I jump onto every couple of months or so, just to see whats up, and everytime I get on there I'm disgusted by what I see and read.

    • How are you disgusted by what you read on FB?

      I have a FB account too. I rarely use it. My main reason for having it before was for services which used it as an authentication mechanism, namely Tinder. I have a gf now (no thanks to Tinder, but rather OKC), so I don't even need it for that now, but I'll keep it around just in case this one fails. Anyway, I also have a small handful of "friends" on FB, mostly family members, and some other friends of friends who got in there. I only do this really to seem

  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @09:57AM (#54143123) Homepage

    The basic problem is that we have not realized that Internet's anonymity's lets people say anything they want to.

    It is compounded by humanity's innate trust, and the misunderstanding of exactly how full of garbage the internet is.

    The existence of valid news sources on the internet make it worse - they give the appearance of validity to the general internet.

    To make it even worse, Pravda, the Soviet Union's old ministry of propaganda, changed it's name to RT, and hired a bunch of anonymous posters, making it one of the single most effective propaganda organizations the world has ever seen.

    Their stated goals of disrupting the US, breaking the European Union up, and retaking the Ukraine are having an unprecedented success.

     

    • stated goals of disrupting the US

      Does that make Hillary a Russian troll for being so hateable and sabotaging her own campaign by having so many skeletons in the closet?

      Whenever I hear about Russian propaganda (a nation that does not value free speech and historically has stifled it) affecting the narrative in a nation like the US. I have to wonder how that is any different to any yellow journalism, corporate propaganda, commercial salesmanship or any other dishonest party trying to sell me bullshit that is against my own interests. I woul

    • Trolling happens when people make things personal, not when people take things personally.

      The trolls aren't the RTs of the world broadcasting lies and making you frustrated, it's all the shrill "centipedes" in our midsts.

      They work towards the same ends, but aren't the same thing.

      • In my experience, most Trolls claim they are making jokes and laughing at the outrage they create. They are not
        'making' things personal, they are outright lying for the purpose of enraging others for their own amusement.

        • I don't think you have to lie to troll. Call the target names? Egg them on? Sure. But you can be an epic jerk while telling the truth. That's part of why I think there's a difference. Trolls enjoy driving people nuts and the resulting negative attention is their source of amusement. Lies might make you mad, but no one is the sole arbiter of truth - you might be mistaken about some things, and there's more than one reason to lie, so while I think that qualifier might cover most trolls in most conversations,

    • To make it even worse, Pravda, the Soviet Union's old ministry of propaganda, changed it's name to RT, and hired a bunch of anonymous posters, making it one of the single most effective propaganda organizations the world has ever seen.

      You think that's bad? Fox News, USA Today, and CNN haven't even had to change their names!

  • Unless there is a universal identity source that can have a reputation tied to it, there is no incentive for people to play nice with others.You can get a good sense of how socialable people really are by looking at their anonymous behavior.

    Things do seem to be going downhill. Even the AC posts on this site have gotten worse. This suggests a new wave of miscreants. I am curious as to the nature of these miscreants.

    Are they simply children coming of age and venting their angst without fear of consequences fr

  • I'm inclined to believe that trolling is merely the outcome of removing consequences from bad behavior. The Stanford prison experiment showed how power can corrupt individuals and it seems like trolling is the internet equivalent outcome. Sadly, it may come down to needing to develop AI that can police internet forums for us if we want to keep things civil. It's a dangerous solution but it's the only way I foresee things drastically improving without radically overhauling how the internet functions.

  • Online bullies are the only variety where "just ignore them" actually works. If you don't like the internet, go the fuck outside.
    • I always thought that way until I realized that for the new majority of people on the internet today, the net is a tool for communicating mostly with people they know in person. So, to use old tech to give a loose analogy, online bullying is more like a real life bully who has put attack ads against you in all the commercial breaks on every channel of your TV. Even if you just want to disengage from the real world and distract yourself with electronic media, the real world jackasses can follow you there now

      • The only reason "online bullies" of that variety wouldn't just be the same people you deal with in real life is if you make a point of being inflammatory with your real name. It's almost like this is the entire purpose of pseudonymity, and why it's been the norm on the internet until quite recently when it became popular to use trolling as justification to censor and surveil.
  • We are likely to keep freedom of speech on the internet. All speech, including hate and abuse. And i'm happy with that.
  • by computational super ( 740265 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @10:29AM (#54143419)
    As far as I can tell, the only "solution" to trolling is the heavy-handed reddit-style safe-space morality police one where we trade trolls for the massively high and mighty self-righteous. I'll take trolls, actually, thanks.
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Angst Badger ( 8636 )

      If Reddit strikes you as a troll-free safe space, it is possible that you are a troll.

    • Want to speak your mind without consequence? Go outside.

      If some guy cuts you off on the road, flip him off. It's a free country.

      If he then gets out of the car and starts walking towards you, give him the business. It's a free country.

      If he then pulls out a crowbar, tell him about himself. It's a free country.

      Don't forget to give him a peace of your mind when he pulls you out of your vehicle. Though he's liable to take all of that and then some, at least outside you're free to escalate without moderat

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Subreddits are moderated by their owners. Reddit is very permissive, it still allows hate groups like MGTOW, red pill, white nationalists... The bans were only really for subs that posted stolen photos from social media or raided other sites, stuff like that.

  • I imagine it will continue to get worse.

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