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Troll level one million! I have a couple of friends that are trolls(they call themselves that). They frequent Facebook and they make silly comments are try to

Troll level one million! I have a couple of friends that are trolls(they call themselves that). They frequent Facebook and they make silly comments are try to rile people up, because....well i guess they're bored. They take pride in being banned from Facebook so shock humor. They are pretty funny. Why is this relevant? What I have learned from them is that high-speed internet is conducive to trolling at all levels. Facebook users want comments and reactions, so their post do just that. Large sites want clicks and attention, so their content does just that. A deep multifaceted conversation is boring and difficult to do. And above all else does not give you the same satisfaction as emotional content. The internet is an emotional medium, not a rational one. I treat it that way. To learn more on this check out neil portman, specifically his book "amusing ourselves to death". I try to remind myself that things on the internet could very well have been produced by an angry techsavvy teenager, rather than to attribute any authority to it.

dboreham 7y ago
Something I've noticed, and fallen victim to in recent weeks, is that FB will often display in my feed a post by a news site (for me, they're usually NPR, CNBC or the local TV station), and underneath they'll display exactly _one_ comment. That one comment is almost always something insane (no more serious than the flu, they're counting all dead people not just dead from the virus, you get the picture). But when I open the story to view all comments, there are hundreds of not-insane ones. In fact it is often impossible to find the "featured" comment if I wanted to reply since there are so many others. I get the distinct impression that FB has an algorithm that promotes disinformation comments in order to....well I assume in order to make more money somehow. I've had to train myself to read the news stories (which are useful to me) but brain-skip over the featured comment.
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago
  That's probably my buddy, don't bite ;) I would argue the case that facebook is not malicious and promote disinformation. If their algorithm promotes comments that get lots of emojis and responses you would see the same behavior. I see it in many forums, the top comments are usually controversial. Now add to that fact that all sites rely on web traffic to make money and you get a systems of incentives that breeds discontent and divisiveness. On top of all that high speed visual medium, such as the internet, produce an emotional response with little time to rationally process information.
  - phs318u 7y ago
    Dude, no offence to you, but your buddy sounds like a sociopathic asshole, and I say sociopathic because they surely have to know that their trolling is contributing to society-wide changes having really negative effects, yet they choose to do it anyway. Being "just one of a multitude" cheering on and enabling the grifters, sociopaths and wannabe tyrants - whatever the motivation - doesn't lessen their culpability.
    - oldsklgdfth 7y ago
      None taken, I get where you are coming from. They are pretty cool dudes with a messed up sense of humor for sure. They are in their 50s and they started small and it's snowballed into this. Sample troll from many years: "Wisconsin is the worst city EVER"! Outrage comment thread ensues. I guess my take away is that don't take everything seriously, especially when it's coming from people you don't know. I'll use the same buddy's quote: "Life is too important to take seriously".
      - phs318u 7y ago
        I sense an undertone (in your friend's quote) of, "why should I care if people are too dumb to realise that someone is just trolling the?". Would that be a fair assessment? If so, that's pretty tragic. It means that people who aren't as smart/savvy/wise are fair-game. In a jungle that law holds true. So perhaps, this is humanity reverting to type. Personally, my hopes have always been that we would continue to build on ideas of society that flourished post enlightenment (oh the irony when people rabbit on about protecting "western values" by offering to subvert them). I guess, I can't see that it's possible to hope/work/strive for a better world, and be a troll. One is constructive, the other nihilistic at best and actively destructive at worst.
        prawn 7y ago
        "It means that people who aren't as smart/savvy/wise are fair-game." Worst thing is it completely disrupts some of the best people who are completely genuine and take things at face value. It wouldn't surprise me if normally decent people have been quite corrupted by their experiences online with trolls and fakes and scams.
- hjek 7y ago
  I'm not on facebook but it sounds entirely plausible. Facebook conducts psychological experiments[0] to optimise for user engagement so if that anger can make you stay a bit longer and see a few more ads then that's money for them. Those precious hate dollars have deadly consequences though, especially for Muslims[1][2]. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-... [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-facebook-idUSKCN1GO2PN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-facebook... [2]: https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-muslims-islamophobia/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg...
  - oldsklgdfth 7y ago
    Also not on fb. It sounds plausible to me as well. But even in the best case scenario social media is not a robust system and will amplify controversy. In addition there is money to be made by fanning the flames. I mean it pretty genius, people get angry they go on fb to rant about it. Zuckerberg will be a name remembered like Carnegie, but not for making anything. Just for owning feelings and controversy. Second best to owning the color blue.
- gowld 7y ago
  Why don't you skip Facebook and read a reputable news site?
  - oldsklgdfth 7y ago
    What would you suggest as reputable news?
    - basementcat 7y ago
      Hacker News
      - zo1 7y ago
        Maybe so, but it's already quite leaning in one political direction. I would love for the great, smart people that frequent here to discuss controversial/right-leaning topics with critique, nuance and fair points, but it just doesn't happen because "downvotes". We're all human, and we have greater-than-zero tendency to emotionally "dislike" contradicting opinions, valid or not.
- JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
  Facebook does a weird thing where it prioritises "Top Fan" accounts on loads of pages in the comments, which very often wind up being some person with an agenda geared directly towards that page.
  - dboreham 7y ago
    In my experience though the "featured comment" is always from someone against the page owner. E.g. a rabbid Fox News conspiracy theory quoting poster commenting on an NPR story.
    - JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
      yep, that's what I mean, they prioritise the people who are most engaged with the page, and that seems to usually wind up being someone with a huge grudge.
- taneq 7y ago
  > I get the distinct impression that FB has an algorithm that promotes disinformation comments in order to....well I assume in order to make more money somehow. Controversial comments drive engagement. FB's algorithm is designed to drive engagement. They've literally built an AI troll.
- MisterTea 7y ago
  These are possibly "controversial" posts tagged as such because of it received a variety of positive and negative reactions. And no mystery as to "why". They want you to click on that conversation. Perhaps you visit the news site generating a click. Now you're all wound so you scroll some more, see some more ads, and get stuck posting another comment, more ads, more clicks, etc.
slg 7y ago
So is the internet actually increasing the number of these borderline psychopaths/sociopaths or is it just giving each individual more power to do damage?
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago
  The internet is a tool. Embedded in every tool is an ideological bias. Ex. To a person with a hammer everything is a nail. To a person with a pencil everything is a list. ... The internet makes us differently think in a number of different ways. 1. I no longer need to remember things, or remember where or how to find things (remember encyclopedias and librarians) 2. I no longer have to rely on one source of stimulus (i can jump to the next video, finish this article later, ) There are more things but just from these two you are conditioned to not retain knowledge or understanding and react to the new shiny thing. I would say that to a person with internet everything is to immediately respond to. What do you thing the end of the sentence should be "To a person with internet everything is _____"
- tren-hard 7y ago
  I'd say with no actual data to back up my position, that it is increasing. My reasoning would be because tech companies have designed social platforms to reward shallow hot takes. If you say something provocative in the fewest amount of characters you generate the largest response. You are rewarded with karma/likes/votes/retweets. This we all know fuels dopamine reaction so it creates a cycle. Short hot takes need to maximize the provocation of the statement. These short comments are easy to share and digest which is easy to create a short response towards. Doing this over and over you have to devolve into crazy ass statements that resemble something a sociopath would say.
  - oldsklgdfth 7y ago
    In addition to the negative the positive is rewarded. Positive status symbols are rewarded. Ex. pictures of a 5k, or the top of a hike or volunteering. All that feel good stuff has the same effect. You are curating your image for the audience and eventually you become that image. It really encourages clique mentality one way or another and shoves people into echo chambers.
kryogen1c 7y ago
> The internet is an emotional medium, not a rational one. utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it. "the information superhighway", indeed. im kind of speechless. this fits so well with everything: the degredation of media, the explosion of tracking and near-total destruction of privacy no one cares about, the most-used social media (twitter, fb, ig) having the smallest information exchange, the prevalence of easily disprovable conspiracy theories. people have always been irrational, emotional animals. im not sure why we thought itd be different now.
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago
  > utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it It's a combination of the confirmation bias of addiction and not being skeptical upfront about technology. It's sad, but empowering once you realize it.
- nonesuchluck 7y ago
  > utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it. "the information superhighway", indeed. Interestingly, there was a class of people who never missed that from day one. "Don't believe everything you read on the internet," our teachers warned us. We scoffed: if we could be so stupid. No one believes anything you read on the internet. Only looking back do I notice the slow change. We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet.
  - titzer 7y ago
    > We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet. And the "traditional" media scrambled, falling all over themselves, desperately trying to become relevant as their business model disappeared, moving their content online, competing in the cacophonic nightmare of screaming known as the internet. Little did they know that adding more signal to the noise just tricked us into believe that noise was signal.
  - brlewis 7y ago
    > We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet. Speak for yourself. I only believe things I see on the Internet if they fit my preconceived ideas.
AlexCoventry 7y ago
> The internet is an emotional medium, not a rational one. I treat it that way. What does it mean, to treat it that way?
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago
  It is a means of communication that can invoke a strong emotional response. Mainly cause it's visual. A movie might make a good point or make you feel sympathetic. But it is hard to build up a rational, logic argument. It's all feel. The emotional response takes away from rational processing of the information. A great example is the 1960 kennedy v. nixon debate. Nixon was doing well. He showed up sick, with a dark suit. Kennedy was young and handsome in a blue suit. It's hard to really listen to someone that looks bad. The internet is an extension of TV in that regard. HN is one of the few forums that you can have some serious conversations. In part because of the audience, but also in part of the format. There are no emojis, or gifs or pictures, nothing shiny to distract. It's just text on a screen. EDIT: Neil Postman is a great resource and describes it much better than I can
FireBeyond 7y ago
Yup, five or ten years ago they'd literally have said "for the lulz". It's just the same thing.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
  Faxing unlimited black pages to the church of Scientology is a little different from owning the libs by organizing protests and getting people killed.
205guy 7y ago
"angry techsavvy teenager" but your "friends" "are in their 50s." Riiiighht. At least you're able to have a multifaceted conversation in this context. "They are pretty cool dudes with a messed up sense of humor." I dunno but that sounds pretty sociopathic right there, like my friends are cool dudes with a penchant for stealing walkers from old ladies. There's a certain character type that revels in the rule of the strongest. Bullying and screwing with people because they can. They feel it's the natural order of things. If they don't take advantage of someone or some opportunity, someone else will and be ahead--and they'd rather be ahead. Or they justify it as a way to "teach" others to not be weak and fall for things. In many ways, I think it is a right-wing or conservative characteristic: rugged individualist winning by breaking social conventions. I also saw it prominently in the House TV series, not coincidentally on Fox. Every episode is a medical mystery, but also all about screwing over other people emotionally--it really seemed off to me. In my mind, they are low-trust players trying to undermine and benefit from breaking a high-trust society.
searchableguy 7y ago
How old are they? It seems they lack empathy depending on what they troll. It seems a childish.

dboreham 7y ago

Something I've noticed, and fallen victim to in recent weeks, is that FB will often display in my feed a post by a news site (for me, they're usually NPR, CNBC or the local TV station), and underneath they'll display exactly _one_ comment. That one comment is almost always something insane (no more serious than the flu, they're counting all dead people not just dead from the virus, you get the picture). But when I open the story to view all comments, there are hundreds of not-insane ones. In fact it is often impossible to find the "featured" comment if I wanted to reply since there are so many others. I get the distinct impression that FB has an algorithm that promotes disinformation comments in order to....well I assume in order to make more money somehow. I've had to train myself to read the news stories (which are useful to me) but brain-skip over the featured comment.

oldsklgdfth 7y ago
That's probably my buddy, don't bite ;) I would argue the case that facebook is not malicious and promote disinformation. If their algorithm promotes comments that get lots of emojis and responses you would see the same behavior. I see it in many forums, the top comments are usually controversial. Now add to that fact that all sites rely on web traffic to make money and you get a systems of incentives that breeds discontent and divisiveness. On top of all that high speed visual medium, such as the internet, produce an emotional response with little time to rationally process information.
- phs318u 7y ago
  Dude, no offence to you, but your buddy sounds like a sociopathic asshole, and I say sociopathic because they surely have to know that their trolling is contributing to society-wide changes having really negative effects, yet they choose to do it anyway. Being "just one of a multitude" cheering on and enabling the grifters, sociopaths and wannabe tyrants - whatever the motivation - doesn't lessen their culpability.
  - oldsklgdfth 7y ago
    None taken, I get where you are coming from. They are pretty cool dudes with a messed up sense of humor for sure. They are in their 50s and they started small and it's snowballed into this. Sample troll from many years: "Wisconsin is the worst city EVER"! Outrage comment thread ensues. I guess my take away is that don't take everything seriously, especially when it's coming from people you don't know. I'll use the same buddy's quote: "Life is too important to take seriously".
    - phs318u 7y ago
      I sense an undertone (in your friend's quote) of, "why should I care if people are too dumb to realise that someone is just trolling the?". Would that be a fair assessment? If so, that's pretty tragic. It means that people who aren't as smart/savvy/wise are fair-game. In a jungle that law holds true. So perhaps, this is humanity reverting to type. Personally, my hopes have always been that we would continue to build on ideas of society that flourished post enlightenment (oh the irony when people rabbit on about protecting "western values" by offering to subvert them). I guess, I can't see that it's possible to hope/work/strive for a better world, and be a troll. One is constructive, the other nihilistic at best and actively destructive at worst.
      - prawn 7y ago
        "It means that people who aren't as smart/savvy/wise are fair-game." Worst thing is it completely disrupts some of the best people who are completely genuine and take things at face value. It wouldn't surprise me if normally decent people have been quite corrupted by their experiences online with trolls and fakes and scams.
hjek 7y ago
I'm not on facebook but it sounds entirely plausible. Facebook conducts psychological experiments[0] to optimise for user engagement so if that anger can make you stay a bit longer and see a few more ads then that's money for them. Those precious hate dollars have deadly consequences though, especially for Muslims[1][2]. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-... [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-facebook-idUSKCN1GO2PN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-facebook... [2]: https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-muslims-islamophobia/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg...
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago
  Also not on fb. It sounds plausible to me as well. But even in the best case scenario social media is not a robust system and will amplify controversy. In addition there is money to be made by fanning the flames. I mean it pretty genius, people get angry they go on fb to rant about it. Zuckerberg will be a name remembered like Carnegie, but not for making anything. Just for owning feelings and controversy. Second best to owning the color blue.
gowld 7y ago
Why don't you skip Facebook and read a reputable news site?
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago
  What would you suggest as reputable news?
  - basementcat 7y ago
    Hacker News
    - zo1 7y ago
      Maybe so, but it's already quite leaning in one political direction. I would love for the great, smart people that frequent here to discuss controversial/right-leaning topics with critique, nuance and fair points, but it just doesn't happen because "downvotes". We're all human, and we have greater-than-zero tendency to emotionally "dislike" contradicting opinions, valid or not.
JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
Facebook does a weird thing where it prioritises "Top Fan" accounts on loads of pages in the comments, which very often wind up being some person with an agenda geared directly towards that page.
- dboreham 7y ago
  In my experience though the "featured comment" is always from someone against the page owner. E.g. a rabbid Fox News conspiracy theory quoting poster commenting on an NPR story.
  - JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
    yep, that's what I mean, they prioritise the people who are most engaged with the page, and that seems to usually wind up being someone with a huge grudge.
taneq 7y ago
> I get the distinct impression that FB has an algorithm that promotes disinformation comments in order to....well I assume in order to make more money somehow. Controversial comments drive engagement. FB's algorithm is designed to drive engagement. They've literally built an AI troll.
MisterTea 7y ago
These are possibly "controversial" posts tagged as such because of it received a variety of positive and negative reactions. And no mystery as to "why". They want you to click on that conversation. Perhaps you visit the news site generating a click. Now you're all wound so you scroll some more, see some more ads, and get stuck posting another comment, more ads, more clicks, etc.

slg 7y ago

So is the internet actually increasing the number of these borderline psychopaths/sociopaths or is it just giving each individual more power to do damage?

oldsklgdfth 7y ago
The internet is a tool. Embedded in every tool is an ideological bias. Ex. To a person with a hammer everything is a nail. To a person with a pencil everything is a list. ... The internet makes us differently think in a number of different ways. 1. I no longer need to remember things, or remember where or how to find things (remember encyclopedias and librarians) 2. I no longer have to rely on one source of stimulus (i can jump to the next video, finish this article later, ) There are more things but just from these two you are conditioned to not retain knowledge or understanding and react to the new shiny thing. I would say that to a person with internet everything is to immediately respond to. What do you thing the end of the sentence should be "To a person with internet everything is _____"
tren-hard 7y ago
I'd say with no actual data to back up my position, that it is increasing. My reasoning would be because tech companies have designed social platforms to reward shallow hot takes. If you say something provocative in the fewest amount of characters you generate the largest response. You are rewarded with karma/likes/votes/retweets. This we all know fuels dopamine reaction so it creates a cycle. Short hot takes need to maximize the provocation of the statement. These short comments are easy to share and digest which is easy to create a short response towards. Doing this over and over you have to devolve into crazy ass statements that resemble something a sociopath would say.
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago
  In addition to the negative the positive is rewarded. Positive status symbols are rewarded. Ex. pictures of a 5k, or the top of a hike or volunteering. All that feel good stuff has the same effect. You are curating your image for the audience and eventually you become that image. It really encourages clique mentality one way or another and shoves people into echo chambers.

kryogen1c 7y ago

> The internet is an emotional medium, not a rational one. utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it. "the information superhighway", indeed. im kind of speechless. this fits so well with everything: the degredation of media, the explosion of tracking and near-total destruction of privacy no one cares about, the most-used social media (twitter, fb, ig) having the smallest information exchange, the prevalence of easily disprovable conspiracy theories. people have always been irrational, emotional animals. im not sure why we thought itd be different now.

oldsklgdfth 7y ago
> utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it It's a combination of the confirmation bias of addiction and not being skeptical upfront about technology. It's sad, but empowering once you realize it.
nonesuchluck 7y ago
> utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it. "the information superhighway", indeed. Interestingly, there was a class of people who never missed that from day one. "Don't believe everything you read on the internet," our teachers warned us. We scoffed: if we could be so stupid. No one believes anything you read on the internet. Only looking back do I notice the slow change. We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet.
- titzer 7y ago
  > We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet. And the "traditional" media scrambled, falling all over themselves, desperately trying to become relevant as their business model disappeared, moving their content online, competing in the cacophonic nightmare of screaming known as the internet. Little did they know that adding more signal to the noise just tricked us into believe that noise was signal.
- brlewis 7y ago
  > We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet. Speak for yourself. I only believe things I see on the Internet if they fit my preconceived ideas.

AlexCoventry 7y ago

> The internet is an emotional medium, not a rational one. I treat it that way. What does it mean, to treat it that way?

oldsklgdfth 7y ago
It is a means of communication that can invoke a strong emotional response. Mainly cause it's visual. A movie might make a good point or make you feel sympathetic. But it is hard to build up a rational, logic argument. It's all feel. The emotional response takes away from rational processing of the information. A great example is the 1960 kennedy v. nixon debate. Nixon was doing well. He showed up sick, with a dark suit. Kennedy was young and handsome in a blue suit. It's hard to really listen to someone that looks bad. The internet is an extension of TV in that regard. HN is one of the few forums that you can have some serious conversations. In part because of the audience, but also in part of the format. There are no emojis, or gifs or pictures, nothing shiny to distract. It's just text on a screen. EDIT: Neil Postman is a great resource and describes it much better than I can

FireBeyond 7y ago

Yup, five or ten years ago they'd literally have said "for the lulz". It's just the same thing.

2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
Faxing unlimited black pages to the church of Scientology is a little different from owning the libs by organizing protests and getting people killed.

205guy 7y ago

"angry techsavvy teenager" but your "friends" "are in their 50s." Riiiighht. At least you're able to have a multifaceted conversation in this context. "They are pretty cool dudes with a messed up sense of humor." I dunno but that sounds pretty sociopathic right there, like my friends are cool dudes with a penchant for stealing walkers from old ladies. There's a certain character type that revels in the rule of the strongest. Bullying and screwing with people because they can. They feel it's the natural order of things. If they don't take advantage of someone or some opportunity, someone else will and be ahead--and they'd rather be ahead. Or they justify it as a way to "teach" others to not be weak and fall for things. In many ways, I think it is a right-wing or conservative characteristic: rugged individualist winning by breaking social conventions. I also saw it prominently in the House TV series, not coincidentally on Fox. Every episode is a medical mystery, but also all about screwing over other people emotionally--it really seemed off to me. In my mind, they are low-trust players trying to undermine and benefit from breaking a high-trust society.

searchableguy 7y ago

How old are they? It seems they lack empathy depending on what they troll. It seems a childish.