4 ms·

It's not the catalyst, it's the accelerant - when you have 1000 points for your troll post you're sure as heck gonna do more of them.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
neffy 6y ago
That's the basic problem. All the motivation and encourgement is towards extreme, attention grabbing content.
- Rebbitor 6y ago
  I am sorry that you are unaware of life before the internet. People have been trolling each other before the internet. A well known troll was sending packages that exploded on people. In fact I think we have gotten a lot more civil lately. Exploding packages sounds a lot worse and uncivil than your comment internet trolling and uncivility.
  - taurath 6y ago
    Thats a fairly extreme statement - you're saying that "because extreme events also used to take place, the internet is not involved, and in fact is a help". So to you, the internet is a completely neutral platform with no side effects? I do not think you will find many people on the planet that will agree with you.
- taurath 6y ago
  To me it seems like an extremely solvable problem. Facebook could do an A/B test right now of removing all likes and see what happens. You'll get an answer as to some of the effects in a week. The question is what metrics you decide on determines "moderate" as opposed to "extreme". To anyone at facebook - please dissuade me if I'm being naive here - I'm always looking to update my mental model of this.
  - neffy 6y ago
    I suspect the only naivety is with respect to what that would do to facebook's revenue.
anigbrowl 6y ago
Sure, if you have a network of troll buddies to upvote you. But you're assuming that everyone is motivated by the same incentives, in this case popularity. This is necessarily true, and one reason we know this is because some people keep trolling even when their accounts are banned or they're recognizable enough to be rejected by the community. A lot of trolls are 'salt collectors' - saying obnoxious things to garner offended reactions and then screenshotting the comments of upset people to share with frens on a different platform. They don't care about popularity, only engagement. In organized influence operations, the goals of troll groups are to steal time or resources, or disrupt the cohesion of target groups. All these negative behaviors existed before social media; they're well known to operators of fora, usenet discussion groups and so on, as well in the multiplayer game space. This taxonomy of motivators for 'griefer' gamers might also broaden you understanding of what drives trolling behavior: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2017.1306109 https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2017.1306109

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

neffy 6y ago

That's the basic problem. All the motivation and encourgement is towards extreme, attention grabbing content.

Rebbitor 6y ago
I am sorry that you are unaware of life before the internet. People have been trolling each other before the internet. A well known troll was sending packages that exploded on people. In fact I think we have gotten a lot more civil lately. Exploding packages sounds a lot worse and uncivil than your comment internet trolling and uncivility.
- taurath 6y ago
  Thats a fairly extreme statement - you're saying that "because extreme events also used to take place, the internet is not involved, and in fact is a help". So to you, the internet is a completely neutral platform with no side effects? I do not think you will find many people on the planet that will agree with you.
taurath 6y ago
To me it seems like an extremely solvable problem. Facebook could do an A/B test right now of removing all likes and see what happens. You'll get an answer as to some of the effects in a week. The question is what metrics you decide on determines "moderate" as opposed to "extreme". To anyone at facebook - please dissuade me if I'm being naive here - I'm always looking to update my mental model of this.
- neffy 6y ago
  I suspect the only naivety is with respect to what that would do to facebook's revenue.

anigbrowl 6y ago

Sure, if you have a network of troll buddies to upvote you. But you're assuming that everyone is motivated by the same incentives, in this case popularity. This is necessarily true, and one reason we know this is because some people keep trolling even when their accounts are banned or they're recognizable enough to be rejected by the community. A lot of trolls are 'salt collectors' - saying obnoxious things to garner offended reactions and then screenshotting the comments of upset people to share with frens on a different platform. They don't care about popularity, only engagement. In organized influence operations, the goals of troll groups are to steal time or resources, or disrupt the cohesion of target groups. All these negative behaviors existed before social media; they're well known to operators of fora, usenet discussion groups and so on, as well in the multiplayer game space. This taxonomy of motivators for 'griefer' gamers might also broaden you understanding of what drives trolling behavior: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2017.1306109 https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2017.1306109