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I don't understand this article at all. I participate in two large professional forums (one for poker, one for development). The professionals are winning the i

I don't understand this article at all. I participate in two large professional forums (one for poker, one for development). The professionals are winning the internet there. There are dedicated subforums for trolls and random bs, which are pretty funny sometimes, but serve as an outlet for the garbage. I browse hacker news... It is what it is, I'm happy with it as a content sharing platform. My biggest gripe is the obvious advertorial/astroturfing that I think is probably something hn offers as a service, but I'm not stupid, so I ignore it. I get news through economist.com and npr.org and scattered other sources. I don't feel overwhelmed by trolls, except when I read yet another fucking headline about gluten. My social media is so boring and predictable I'll probably delete it all shortly. I've never had a problem there, but I respect that some people do. I shop on the internet frequently. I get trolled by counterfeit goods sometimes! Also by fake reviews, but that's what professional forums are for in the post cluetrain world. I get scholarly articles on the internet every other day as part of a professional masters program. Sometimes open comments on academic articles read like troll fests, but not really. I participate in open source on github, that's not being trolled to death (Although big os project maintainers may disagree). And on and on... The internet (as I know it) isn't being won by trolls at all. So what is the article actually about? Twitter? Comments on news sites (lol)? The pessimistic attitudes of "technologists"?

aantix 10y ago
Oh man, have you ever tried to have a political discussion on Facebook? Even citing sources, trying to be diligent... And then, the only response you get is... "that's not right!". And that response is somehow given equal weighting? I actually wish Facebook, the place where a majority of Internet discussion probably occurs, WOULD institute a dislike button and suppress those comments that get down voted too much (like Hackers News or Reddit). Right now, it's either a "thumbs up" or a neutral stance, and that's just not enough to accurately describe the level of discourse occurring.
- jknoepfler 10y ago
  I mean, I can hop on the gripe-train about Facebook, but the only way I've found to have meaningful political conversations is over a very narrow topic with the expectation that parties come well-researched and willing to continue researching. Politics is excruciatingly complicated, trying to have a cogent conversation about it on Facebook is like trying to have a deep talk about religion while riding bumper cars.
- wtf_is_up 10y ago
  The problem with downvotes is they are susceptible to brigading and in political discussions, there are essentially 2 hivemind brigades. In the end, any point that doesn't agree with the majority hivemind on the platform gets buried. /r/politics is a case study in this.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- self-diversity 10y ago
  Political discussions in any forum have rarely been productive, and no number of tools designed to build echo chambers will change that.
- astrodust 10y ago
  The problem with services like Facebook is they give everyone equal footing on any topic no matter the person's expertise on the subject, their relationship to the matter at hand, or their overall attitude towards discussions in general. This means a black person who's been repeatedly victimized by police has no more credibility than some white dude who thinks everyone's making it up and it's a bunch of cry-babies going on about nothing. It means a cryptography expert can get shouted down by some idiot that's just parroting something they read on CNN that's dangerously misinformed. There's a lot of factors in play here but the "like" button skews the conversations towards things that earn votes which are not necessarily things that are true, accurate, or meaningful. Sometimes the truth is ugly and painful and that's hard to like.
- ahartman00 10y ago
  "And then, the only response you get is... "that's not right!". And that response is somehow given equal weighting?" I noticed this long before the internet became this popular. Its more about the anti intellectualism than it is technology.
- hamstergene 10y ago
  Political discussions with general public have always been like that, in every country and every age. It's not Facebook's problem, that's just how people are. Any topic that indiscriminately concerns almost any person (e.g. politics, religion, weight loss and bodybuilding, how to parent and educate children, cooking, healing common pains/sicknesses), when discussed with random people, is automatically doomed to turn into a mess of uninformed opinions, misinformation, trivial logical slips and ordinary quarrel. Tech/science discussions are usually constructive because they imply harsh entrance filter on education and intelligence, because most of those who upvote "that is not right!" can not join a public discussion of pharmacokinetics of a certain organic molecule no matter how welcome they are. When filters are absent, you get what you have described. The real problem is that over 95% of people do not even value being constructive, checking facts, citing sources, etc. That is not a technical problem, you can't solve it by tweaking voting buttons.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
You're in the top 1% or 0.1% of filtering for quality, IMO. Go spend some "quality time" on /r/the_donald for a more typical experience.
- 0xCMP 10y ago
  Vote with your feet/filter/time. Don't go to to /r/the_donald. I just use HN and twitter mainly. I keep Facebook because many friends can only be kept in touch with (out of the blue) via facebook. Otherwise, just block a lot of it.
- anothercomment 10y ago
  Nobody is forced to go to "the_donald". What would "the_donald" without trolling supposedly be? I dont know "the_donald", but doesn't the name itself already say "this is for trolling"?
- welanes 10y ago
  Yeah, but you don't have to go there. That's the point. Trolls aren't winning the Internet, for the most part they're loitering in those corners of the web you'd expect to find them.
  - Barrin92 10y ago
    if the internet is supposed to be a truly public platform, that is to say a space where different opinions can collide productively then the internet at the moment is clearly losing. It's not that the trolls occupy the corners, it's that they occupy the big, visible public spaces of the internet, while everybody else is driven into digital sanctuaries. That clearly is a failure if the stated goal is to genuinely democratise knowledge and discourse. I'd even go further than the author and say that we're way past a 'potemkin internet with a nice facade'. The facade is pretty darn ugly as well. The kind of stuff people are willing to post under their actual name is pretty scary.
    - anothercomment 10y ago
      big, visible spaces of the internet - you mean the media?
Steko 10y ago
Just because you don't have cancer doesn't mean cancer isn't a problem.
- ruleabidinguser 10y ago
  No one would have cancer in the internet if they didn't visit cancerous sites. You're hitting yourself.
  - Steko 10y ago
    I'm merely pointing out that "just say no" isn't a real solution to the fact that a large swath of the population falls for propaganda cancer (which is hell of a lot bigger than which sites you go to on the internet).
michaelkeenan 10y ago
The author is a prominent woman journalist, so her experience of the internet probably involves more harassment than most people's.
- petre 10y ago
  So should model the internet after a victorian society where proeminent women jorunalists could drink tea, play the piano and have a meaningful conversations about marriage?
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    Yes. Those are the only two possible options.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      Harassment or corsets. Pick your poison!
- jknoepfler 10y ago
  sure, but here her voice is at the top of a widely read internet forum, and there's a polite conversation going on about it. This seems like a win for the internet. I can't stress enough that I respect the pain of public personalities in the age of the internet, to the extent that they suffer harassing emails, fake police calls, stalking, and lord only knows what else. That's not what the conversation is about though (those aren't examples of 'trolling on the internet' those are examples of illegal harassment). The internet is and continues to grow as a powerful tool for people who want to learn, converse, share ideas, entertain themselves, build things, etc. The idea that 'the trolls have won' seems misplaced and strange.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    It's also a heavily moderated forum. Let's see what the response to the article is on Reddit or one of the Chans.
ocschwar 10y ago
"I don't feel overwhelmed by trolls, except when I read yet another fucking headline about gluten." You may not feel overwhelmed by trolls, but if you live in the United States, you have been overwhelmed by trolls.
TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
> My biggest gripe is the obvious advertorial/astroturfing that I think is probably something hn offers as a service, but I'm not stupid, so I ignore it. I've been warned that I would be banned for implying that astroturfing was happening on this site without proof.
nebabyte 10y ago
> I participate in two large professional forums (one for poker, one for development) "Large" is subjective, and I'm inclined to argue that anywhere "non-trolls are winning" simply doesn't have the size that forums which fight against 'actual' trolling at its scale do. A simple BBS system or IRC channel can "let the professionals win" simply by being so niche that the professional : troll ratio is well within the manageable bounds for a handful of mods to be able to casually moderate every so often. Hell, this pattern is visibly demonstrable with smaller 'niche' subreddits and subcommunities. It's the whole "there goes the neighborhood" pattern in its digital form. "By obscurity" doesn't isn't really an anti-troll 'win', it's just escaping trolls' attention. It only works so long as trolls don't hear about or aren't interested in the forum.
camillomiller 10y ago
This was exactly the point of the article. You seem to have built your perfect Elysium, and you surrounded yourself with likeminded enlightened users. This is not representative of the state of the Web, tho. Plus: forums are still great because they're one of those places where you can still have a full anonymity while discussing something you care about.

aantix 10y ago

Oh man, have you ever tried to have a political discussion on Facebook? Even citing sources, trying to be diligent... And then, the only response you get is... "that's not right!". And that response is somehow given equal weighting? I actually wish Facebook, the place where a majority of Internet discussion probably occurs, WOULD institute a dislike button and suppress those comments that get down voted too much (like Hackers News or Reddit). Right now, it's either a "thumbs up" or a neutral stance, and that's just not enough to accurately describe the level of discourse occurring.

jknoepfler 10y ago
I mean, I can hop on the gripe-train about Facebook, but the only way I've found to have meaningful political conversations is over a very narrow topic with the expectation that parties come well-researched and willing to continue researching. Politics is excruciatingly complicated, trying to have a cogent conversation about it on Facebook is like trying to have a deep talk about religion while riding bumper cars.
wtf_is_up 10y ago
The problem with downvotes is they are susceptible to brigading and in political discussions, there are essentially 2 hivemind brigades. In the end, any point that doesn't agree with the majority hivemind on the platform gets buried. /r/politics is a case study in this.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
self-diversity 10y ago
Political discussions in any forum have rarely been productive, and no number of tools designed to build echo chambers will change that.
astrodust 10y ago
The problem with services like Facebook is they give everyone equal footing on any topic no matter the person's expertise on the subject, their relationship to the matter at hand, or their overall attitude towards discussions in general. This means a black person who's been repeatedly victimized by police has no more credibility than some white dude who thinks everyone's making it up and it's a bunch of cry-babies going on about nothing. It means a cryptography expert can get shouted down by some idiot that's just parroting something they read on CNN that's dangerously misinformed. There's a lot of factors in play here but the "like" button skews the conversations towards things that earn votes which are not necessarily things that are true, accurate, or meaningful. Sometimes the truth is ugly and painful and that's hard to like.
ahartman00 10y ago
"And then, the only response you get is... "that's not right!". And that response is somehow given equal weighting?" I noticed this long before the internet became this popular. Its more about the anti intellectualism than it is technology.
hamstergene 10y ago
Political discussions with general public have always been like that, in every country and every age. It's not Facebook's problem, that's just how people are. Any topic that indiscriminately concerns almost any person (e.g. politics, religion, weight loss and bodybuilding, how to parent and educate children, cooking, healing common pains/sicknesses), when discussed with random people, is automatically doomed to turn into a mess of uninformed opinions, misinformation, trivial logical slips and ordinary quarrel. Tech/science discussions are usually constructive because they imply harsh entrance filter on education and intelligence, because most of those who upvote "that is not right!" can not join a public discussion of pharmacokinetics of a certain organic molecule no matter how welcome they are. When filters are absent, you get what you have described. The real problem is that over 95% of people do not even value being constructive, checking facts, citing sources, etc. That is not a technical problem, you can't solve it by tweaking voting buttons.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

ThrustVectoring 10y ago

You're in the top 1% or 0.1% of filtering for quality, IMO. Go spend some "quality time" on /r/the_donald for a more typical experience.

0xCMP 10y ago
Vote with your feet/filter/time. Don't go to to /r/the_donald. I just use HN and twitter mainly. I keep Facebook because many friends can only be kept in touch with (out of the blue) via facebook. Otherwise, just block a lot of it.
anothercomment 10y ago
Nobody is forced to go to "the_donald". What would "the_donald" without trolling supposedly be? I dont know "the_donald", but doesn't the name itself already say "this is for trolling"?
welanes 10y ago
Yeah, but you don't have to go there. That's the point. Trolls aren't winning the Internet, for the most part they're loitering in those corners of the web you'd expect to find them.
- Barrin92 10y ago
  if the internet is supposed to be a truly public platform, that is to say a space where different opinions can collide productively then the internet at the moment is clearly losing. It's not that the trolls occupy the corners, it's that they occupy the big, visible public spaces of the internet, while everybody else is driven into digital sanctuaries. That clearly is a failure if the stated goal is to genuinely democratise knowledge and discourse. I'd even go further than the author and say that we're way past a 'potemkin internet with a nice facade'. The facade is pretty darn ugly as well. The kind of stuff people are willing to post under their actual name is pretty scary.
  - anothercomment 10y ago
    big, visible spaces of the internet - you mean the media?

Steko 10y ago

Just because you don't have cancer doesn't mean cancer isn't a problem.

ruleabidinguser 10y ago
No one would have cancer in the internet if they didn't visit cancerous sites. You're hitting yourself.
- Steko 10y ago
  I'm merely pointing out that "just say no" isn't a real solution to the fact that a large swath of the population falls for propaganda cancer (which is hell of a lot bigger than which sites you go to on the internet).

michaelkeenan 10y ago

The author is a prominent woman journalist, so her experience of the internet probably involves more harassment than most people's.

petre 10y ago
So should model the internet after a victorian society where proeminent women jorunalists could drink tea, play the piano and have a meaningful conversations about marriage?
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  Yes. Those are the only two possible options.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Harassment or corsets. Pick your poison!
jknoepfler 10y ago
sure, but here her voice is at the top of a widely read internet forum, and there's a polite conversation going on about it. This seems like a win for the internet. I can't stress enough that I respect the pain of public personalities in the age of the internet, to the extent that they suffer harassing emails, fake police calls, stalking, and lord only knows what else. That's not what the conversation is about though (those aren't examples of 'trolling on the internet' those are examples of illegal harassment). The internet is and continues to grow as a powerful tool for people who want to learn, converse, share ideas, entertain themselves, build things, etc. The idea that 'the trolls have won' seems misplaced and strange.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  It's also a heavily moderated forum. Let's see what the response to the article is on Reddit or one of the Chans.

ocschwar 10y ago

"I don't feel overwhelmed by trolls, except when I read yet another fucking headline about gluten." You may not feel overwhelmed by trolls, but if you live in the United States, you have been overwhelmed by trolls.

TheRealDunkirk 10y ago

> My biggest gripe is the obvious advertorial/astroturfing that I think is probably something hn offers as a service, but I'm not stupid, so I ignore it. I've been warned that I would be banned for implying that astroturfing was happening on this site without proof.

nebabyte 10y ago

> I participate in two large professional forums (one for poker, one for development) "Large" is subjective, and I'm inclined to argue that anywhere "non-trolls are winning" simply doesn't have the size that forums which fight against 'actual' trolling at its scale do. A simple BBS system or IRC channel can "let the professionals win" simply by being so niche that the professional : troll ratio is well within the manageable bounds for a handful of mods to be able to casually moderate every so often. Hell, this pattern is visibly demonstrable with smaller 'niche' subreddits and subcommunities. It's the whole "there goes the neighborhood" pattern in its digital form. "By obscurity" doesn't isn't really an anti-troll 'win', it's just escaping trolls' attention. It only works so long as trolls don't hear about or aren't interested in the forum.

camillomiller 10y ago

This was exactly the point of the article. You seem to have built your perfect Elysium, and you surrounded yourself with likeminded enlightened users. This is not representative of the state of the Web, tho. Plus: forums are still great because they're one of those places where you can still have a full anonymity while discussing something you care about.