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Do you think it's meaningfully different when the discussion is under active attack by bad actors? How do you moderate to keep genuine propaganda techniques fr

Do you think it's meaningfully different when the discussion is under active attack by bad actors? How do you moderate to keep genuine propaganda techniques from successfully working on your discussion without calling them out? I'm asking because I think your point is really good: it sucks that we can't follow the directions of a conversation organically, and I find it a bummer that I'm personally advocating for tactics that will reduce that organic development. So what are the techniques moderators and good-faith participants can apply, in your experience?

Natsu 9y ago
> Do you think it's meaningfully different when the discussion is under active attack by bad actors? I defend my positions instead of attacking people based on largely unproveable accusations. Sure, there really are a lot of bots/shills/etc. but the times you get that wrong hurt people and turn them away. > How do you moderate to keep genuine propaganda techniques from successfully working on your discussion without calling them out? By defeating the argument instead of the person. The shill type never engages in real conversation, anyhow, in general. They're like pellicans--fly in, crap over things, fly out. > So what are the techniques moderators and good-faith participants can apply, in your experience? Smaller communities where you can actually recognize posters over time. Being able to give elevator pitch style summaries of points I want to make without having to resort to copypasta of 800 links the other person will never actually read and maybe brief FAQs if something just comes up too often. But another part of it is to try to engage the other person, to converse with them. I'm not just here to say "accept everything I tell you or leave the forum!" but I'll actually engage with and try to understand the other person's point. I'm not perfect, there are things I can learn. I have a friend who is dyslexic, but loves to argue. A lot of people treat him like he's some idiot troll even though he's highly educated because he can't spell to save his life. He has interesting ideas that are worthy of thought and constant frustration communicating them. These days people are like "you're a troll!" and won't even talk any more. But sometimes the conversations that go off the rails actually venture into interesting territory. But maybe I'm just weird because I can type really fast and compose something like this post in just a few minutes. I do think that might help a bit too, because I can rattle off words on the keyboard just about as fast as I can talk so it's not so bad to explain something for the 27th time in an hour. Anyhow, thank you for listening.
- zaksoup 9y ago
  I appreciate a lot of what you're saying about engaging but the success of trolling often lies in taking up your attention at the expense of other things > By defeating the argument instead of the person. When literally every thread in HN about GDPR/FB has a top-3 comment asking "What about Obama?" how does continuing to defeat that point actually discourage or defeat trolling? The question has been asked and answered, but that doesn't stop people, troll and genuine, from continuing to ask it ad nauseam. At what point does 'defeat the argument' mean we have to entertain conversations about global warming potentially being a hoax, or Obama's birth certificate being fake, or any other number of obviously political and mostly bad-faith because 1 out of 100 commenters have 'genuine' interest in 'conversation' about it?
  - Natsu 9y ago
    You always have to defeat the argument or people will see it succeed and be convinced of the opposite because they've never seen any good rebuttals. There are something like 9 lurkers for every poster and sometimes you're posting for them too. You'll never stop trolling or spam whatever you do, anyhow. For global warming, you can give a simple elevator pitch version about how we have data on a global rise in temperatures and while yes, it was really warm long ago, it's still bad for the people here now. For Obama, well, what does it even matter at this point? I don't think anyone disputes his mother being a citizen so it's pretty much whatever at this point. Regarding Facebook, well, there is a valid point that breaking the Facebook ToS probably isn't the thing we should be the most upset about, and we really do have to deal with the thousands of other companies who compiled massive databases of info whether or not they happened to break the Facebook ToS. Then point out that, yes, privacy advocates have long been against Facebook hoovering everyone's data, including when Obama was president and people are freaked out now because 'privacy violation' didn't mean much to them before but after CA, it's starting to click.

Natsu 9y ago

> Do you think it's meaningfully different when the discussion is under active attack by bad actors? I defend my positions instead of attacking people based on largely unproveable accusations. Sure, there really are a lot of bots/shills/etc. but the times you get that wrong hurt people and turn them away. > How do you moderate to keep genuine propaganda techniques from successfully working on your discussion without calling them out? By defeating the argument instead of the person. The shill type never engages in real conversation, anyhow, in general. They're like pellicans--fly in, crap over things, fly out. > So what are the techniques moderators and good-faith participants can apply, in your experience? Smaller communities where you can actually recognize posters over time. Being able to give elevator pitch style summaries of points I want to make without having to resort to copypasta of 800 links the other person will never actually read and maybe brief FAQs if something just comes up too often. But another part of it is to try to engage the other person, to converse with them. I'm not just here to say "accept everything I tell you or leave the forum!" but I'll actually engage with and try to understand the other person's point. I'm not perfect, there are things I can learn. I have a friend who is dyslexic, but loves to argue. A lot of people treat him like he's some idiot troll even though he's highly educated because he can't spell to save his life. He has interesting ideas that are worthy of thought and constant frustration communicating them. These days people are like "you're a troll!" and won't even talk any more. But sometimes the conversations that go off the rails actually venture into interesting territory. But maybe I'm just weird because I can type really fast and compose something like this post in just a few minutes. I do think that might help a bit too, because I can rattle off words on the keyboard just about as fast as I can talk so it's not so bad to explain something for the 27th time in an hour. Anyhow, thank you for listening.

zaksoup 9y ago
I appreciate a lot of what you're saying about engaging but the success of trolling often lies in taking up your attention at the expense of other things > By defeating the argument instead of the person. When literally every thread in HN about GDPR/FB has a top-3 comment asking "What about Obama?" how does continuing to defeat that point actually discourage or defeat trolling? The question has been asked and answered, but that doesn't stop people, troll and genuine, from continuing to ask it ad nauseam. At what point does 'defeat the argument' mean we have to entertain conversations about global warming potentially being a hoax, or Obama's birth certificate being fake, or any other number of obviously political and mostly bad-faith because 1 out of 100 commenters have 'genuine' interest in 'conversation' about it?
- Natsu 9y ago
  You always have to defeat the argument or people will see it succeed and be convinced of the opposite because they've never seen any good rebuttals. There are something like 9 lurkers for every poster and sometimes you're posting for them too. You'll never stop trolling or spam whatever you do, anyhow. For global warming, you can give a simple elevator pitch version about how we have data on a global rise in temperatures and while yes, it was really warm long ago, it's still bad for the people here now. For Obama, well, what does it even matter at this point? I don't think anyone disputes his mother being a citizen so it's pretty much whatever at this point. Regarding Facebook, well, there is a valid point that breaking the Facebook ToS probably isn't the thing we should be the most upset about, and we really do have to deal with the thousands of other companies who compiled massive databases of info whether or not they happened to break the Facebook ToS. Then point out that, yes, privacy advocates have long been against Facebook hoovering everyone's data, including when Obama was president and people are freaked out now because 'privacy violation' didn't mean much to them before but after CA, it's starting to click.