5 ms·

What do you mean by "trolls"? Someone who disagrees with you? Like half the country is "trolls"? And what stops you from simply unfriending these trolls, if th

What do you mean by "trolls"? Someone who disagrees with you? Like half the country is "trolls"? And what stops you from simply unfriending these trolls, if they are so toxic? I'm not buying that narrative at all. What I think actually happened is that groups of people always had irreconcilable differences, but these groups were mostly physically separated, because people tend to form bubbles of like-minded people. But then FB came, and everyone's opinions became visible. Half of your coworkers that you went out drinking with turned out to be Trump supporters or antivaxxers, and that just makes you and them angry. The solution is to stop demonizing the other side, and start having rational conversations. But good luck with that. P.s. Calling them "trolls" will only drive them further away from your politics, you're helping Trump to get reelected.

emodendroket 8y ago
Anything short of enthusiastically agreeing with Trump someone will accuse you of being the reason Trump was elected. In one ear and out the other.
- bufferoverflow 8y ago
  That's false. I disagree with Trump all the time, nobody ever told me I was the reason he got reelected.
SllX 8y ago
I'm not going to disagree with you, because what you say is spot on. What I am going to do is point out that hey, maybe there are people out there that troll just to troll or troll for a particular cause, and there's a lot of them. When you have a few different sides that are generally isolated from each other and already struggling to have a conversation and throw trolls and paid trolls (astroturfing) onto the same platform, you don't have a platform that is conducive to these various sides having any kind of conversation because there are groups of people that are actively working to prevent this. It doesn't even take a very strong push to keep them apart either, they were already inclined to isolate themselves in meatspace, why would cyberspace be any different? Facebook has more than a quarter of the Earth's population on their platform. Undoubtedly this is a hard problem to solve. An authoritarian approach is probably what they are going to end up having to go with because they're not a country or a religion, they're a bloody online advertising company.
- bufferoverflow 8y ago
  > they were already inclined to isolate themselves in meatspace, why would cyberspace be any different? Because people generally "friend" everyone in sight. I got probably 50+ FB friends from work, the people I wouldn't call friends IRL. There's still some unhealthy obsession with the friend counts. When I used FB, I did the bi-annual purge, unfriended everyone I hadn't talked to in months. Got some weird reactions too! I agree with you, FB will likely implement/force the echo chambers in the end, the current open social network isn't working, and banning one side will lead to a massive loss of ad revenue.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- smallnamespace 8y ago
  To add to your point, nobody actually trolls in person or in real life because 1) the body language gives them away immediately and 2) they're risking getting punched in the face for their effort. The problem with online debate is that it's too easy for people to purposefully poison a discussion that is already on shaky ground by acting in bad faith. Usually when people on opposite sides of a discussion engage in good faith, they might not agree on everything afterwards, but it won't give them a terrible view of the opposing viewpoint and humanity in general.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    Plenty of people troll in real life: streakers, hecklers, cat-callers, bullies, performance artists, pranksters, protesters, radio personalities. The consequences for pissing people off are somewhat higher in real life, which means people tend to either troll only for causes really important to them (protesters, performance artists), or in ways that are innocuous enough they're not likely to get punched (streakers, pranksters). But if trolling is defined as "intentionally trying to get a strong emotional reaction out of people", that happens all the time. When BLM blocks an interstate, that's trolling (for a good cause IMHO, but it doesn't make drivers any less pissed). When Opie & Anthony started "Whip 'em out Wednesdays" or announced that Mayor Menino was dead, that was trolling. When people prank-call the neighbors or call in bomb threats to public places, that's trolling.
komali2 8y ago
I completely disagree. I grew up as the outsider in the south - liberal ideology, atheist, etc. Through the Clinton, Bush, and Obama eras it was No Big Deal. I'd have spats with friends and neighbors, and they'd end friendly. In South Carolina I went from being called the "n-lover whiteboy" to convincing my white friends that my black friends are just as cool, and have good BBQs. We'd all disagree with eachother, but it'd be respectful. Online and off. This is when Facebook/Myspace is just coming out, and "normies" are learning about interacting online, and about how easy it is to forget about the face on the other side of the screen. Even there it wouldn't flare out too horribly. Something's different, these last few years. Sometime around the tail end of the Obama era is when I began noticing it, that it wasn't a "political disagreement," it was a fundamental inability to reconcile values. It was "freedom of speech vs political correctness," it was "nazis vs antifa," it was "black lives matter vs all lives matter." People getting mass-defriended on facebook, me being mocked by my southern friends for my liberal values (that are the same as they've always been). Things have gotten far more divisive, and if I had to make a guess, I blame the political organizations paying trolls to disseminate divisive fake information across the internet, and prominent politicians engaging in disgusting divisive language (Duterte, Le Pen, Trump, Netanyahu, Erdoğan, ISIS high-production-videos).
- tdb7893 8y ago
  The Democrats were still on "don't ask don't tell" in the Clinton era and that policy continued to 2011 so it just seems to me that the rise of this divisiveness came as a natural reaction to Progressives views on race and gender gaining mainstream traction. If you look at how overall society has changed on those issues in the last 20 years the change seems pretty big.
- castlecrasher2 8y ago
  Maybe you're right. I wonder how much of it is non-stop political articles in our faces if we consume social media combined with the fact that we rely so little on our neighbors and friends because we don't have to so understanding and sympathy skills have plummeted. On the latter point I wonder if lower human social contact and ease of escape online means lower tolerance towards differing opinions, or even things we deem wrong. It feels more and more like typed opinions are people shouting into the sky, and when disagreed with they get offended and lash out or they say "you're not who I was referring to," almost like that racist grandma stereotype.

emodendroket 8y ago

Anything short of enthusiastically agreeing with Trump someone will accuse you of being the reason Trump was elected. In one ear and out the other.

bufferoverflow 8y ago
That's false. I disagree with Trump all the time, nobody ever told me I was the reason he got reelected.

SllX 8y ago

I'm not going to disagree with you, because what you say is spot on. What I am going to do is point out that hey, maybe there are people out there that troll just to troll or troll for a particular cause, and there's a lot of them. When you have a few different sides that are generally isolated from each other and already struggling to have a conversation and throw trolls and paid trolls (astroturfing) onto the same platform, you don't have a platform that is conducive to these various sides having any kind of conversation because there are groups of people that are actively working to prevent this. It doesn't even take a very strong push to keep them apart either, they were already inclined to isolate themselves in meatspace, why would cyberspace be any different? Facebook has more than a quarter of the Earth's population on their platform. Undoubtedly this is a hard problem to solve. An authoritarian approach is probably what they are going to end up having to go with because they're not a country or a religion, they're a bloody online advertising company.

bufferoverflow 8y ago
> they were already inclined to isolate themselves in meatspace, why would cyberspace be any different? Because people generally "friend" everyone in sight. I got probably 50+ FB friends from work, the people I wouldn't call friends IRL. There's still some unhealthy obsession with the friend counts. When I used FB, I did the bi-annual purge, unfriended everyone I hadn't talked to in months. Got some weird reactions too! I agree with you, FB will likely implement/force the echo chambers in the end, the current open social network isn't working, and banning one side will lead to a massive loss of ad revenue.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
smallnamespace 8y ago
To add to your point, nobody actually trolls in person or in real life because 1) the body language gives them away immediately and 2) they're risking getting punched in the face for their effort. The problem with online debate is that it's too easy for people to purposefully poison a discussion that is already on shaky ground by acting in bad faith. Usually when people on opposite sides of a discussion engage in good faith, they might not agree on everything afterwards, but it won't give them a terrible view of the opposing viewpoint and humanity in general.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Plenty of people troll in real life: streakers, hecklers, cat-callers, bullies, performance artists, pranksters, protesters, radio personalities. The consequences for pissing people off are somewhat higher in real life, which means people tend to either troll only for causes really important to them (protesters, performance artists), or in ways that are innocuous enough they're not likely to get punched (streakers, pranksters). But if trolling is defined as "intentionally trying to get a strong emotional reaction out of people", that happens all the time. When BLM blocks an interstate, that's trolling (for a good cause IMHO, but it doesn't make drivers any less pissed). When Opie & Anthony started "Whip 'em out Wednesdays" or announced that Mayor Menino was dead, that was trolling. When people prank-call the neighbors or call in bomb threats to public places, that's trolling.

komali2 8y ago

I completely disagree. I grew up as the outsider in the south - liberal ideology, atheist, etc. Through the Clinton, Bush, and Obama eras it was No Big Deal. I'd have spats with friends and neighbors, and they'd end friendly. In South Carolina I went from being called the "n-lover whiteboy" to convincing my white friends that my black friends are just as cool, and have good BBQs. We'd all disagree with eachother, but it'd be respectful. Online and off. This is when Facebook/Myspace is just coming out, and "normies" are learning about interacting online, and about how easy it is to forget about the face on the other side of the screen. Even there it wouldn't flare out too horribly. Something's different, these last few years. Sometime around the tail end of the Obama era is when I began noticing it, that it wasn't a "political disagreement," it was a fundamental inability to reconcile values. It was "freedom of speech vs political correctness," it was "nazis vs antifa," it was "black lives matter vs all lives matter." People getting mass-defriended on facebook, me being mocked by my southern friends for my liberal values (that are the same as they've always been). Things have gotten far more divisive, and if I had to make a guess, I blame the political organizations paying trolls to disseminate divisive fake information across the internet, and prominent politicians engaging in disgusting divisive language (Duterte, Le Pen, Trump, Netanyahu, Erdoğan, ISIS high-production-videos).

tdb7893 8y ago
The Democrats were still on "don't ask don't tell" in the Clinton era and that policy continued to 2011 so it just seems to me that the rise of this divisiveness came as a natural reaction to Progressives views on race and gender gaining mainstream traction. If you look at how overall society has changed on those issues in the last 20 years the change seems pretty big.
castlecrasher2 8y ago
Maybe you're right. I wonder how much of it is non-stop political articles in our faces if we consume social media combined with the fact that we rely so little on our neighbors and friends because we don't have to so understanding and sympathy skills have plummeted. On the latter point I wonder if lower human social contact and ease of escape online means lower tolerance towards differing opinions, or even things we deem wrong. It feels more and more like typed opinions are people shouting into the sky, and when disagreed with they get offended and lash out or they say "you're not who I was referring to," almost like that racist grandma stereotype.