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Trolls drown out even people motivated to give voice to dissent. You could have a handful of people convinced that some politician is a satanic pedophile and w

Trolls drown out even people motivated to give voice to dissent. You could have a handful of people convinced that some politician is a satanic pedophile and will write hundreds of comments about it, while someone who just would like the pothole in their street fixed, or who disagrees with their vote on a zoning issue never gets a word in.

mcpackieh 3y ago
You've missed the point, there is no objective measure of a troll. If you strongly believe A and think nobody could believe B in good faith, and I strongly believe B and think nobody could believe A in good faith, then you are a troll to me and I am a troll to you. Go on a forum with lots of republicans and argue standard democratic talking points; they'll call you a troll. Do the inverse and they'll call you a troll. People use the label of "troll" against people who are being earnest when they say something the listener strongly disagrees with. It's little more than a generic insult for people you disagree with, like "idiot". In the example you give, the people calling politicians satanic probably earnestly believe that in many if not most cases. You might think that nobody could have that point of view in good faith, but this is a country with many millions of Christians who earnestly believe all kinds of wacky nonsense. I know Christians who think Halloween is a satanic holiday. They're not trolling, they really do believe that. You say that people who accuse politicians of satanism are trolls because you strongly disagree with what they're saying and you think they don't have a rational reason to believe what they say (which is probably true) but you don't have any evidence that they're misrepresenting their true beliefs to get a rise out of you (which would be "true trolling".) If they really do believe what they say, then they're not trolls. Even if what they believe is totally irrational, that's the way some people are. If the problem is a small number of people dominating the conversation by leaving 100x more comments than anybody else, then solve that problem by requiring commenters to identify themselves and rate limiting people. This doesn't require you to read their minds to determine their true intent.
- empath-nirvana 3y ago
  All of that might be true, but the end result is that the social media feed for all politicians will be dominated by crazy people yelling at each other, and the politician won't participate and nobody normal will read it. Basically the same as comments on newspaper articles, really. Any unmoderated forum is going to be worthless as a forum. That might be the constitutionally mandated outcome, but it's probably preferable to just not allow comments at all.

mcpackieh 3y ago

You've missed the point, there is no objective measure of a troll. If you strongly believe A and think nobody could believe B in good faith, and I strongly believe B and think nobody could believe A in good faith, then you are a troll to me and I am a troll to you. Go on a forum with lots of republicans and argue standard democratic talking points; they'll call you a troll. Do the inverse and they'll call you a troll. People use the label of "troll" against people who are being earnest when they say something the listener strongly disagrees with. It's little more than a generic insult for people you disagree with, like "idiot". In the example you give, the people calling politicians satanic probably earnestly believe that in many if not most cases. You might think that nobody could have that point of view in good faith, but this is a country with many millions of Christians who earnestly believe all kinds of wacky nonsense. I know Christians who think Halloween is a satanic holiday. They're not trolling, they really do believe that. You say that people who accuse politicians of satanism are trolls because you strongly disagree with what they're saying and you think they don't have a rational reason to believe what they say (which is probably true) but you don't have any evidence that they're misrepresenting their true beliefs to get a rise out of you (which would be "true trolling".) If they really do believe what they say, then they're not trolls. Even if what they believe is totally irrational, that's the way some people are. If the problem is a small number of people dominating the conversation by leaving 100x more comments than anybody else, then solve that problem by requiring commenters to identify themselves and rate limiting people. This doesn't require you to read their minds to determine their true intent.

empath-nirvana 3y ago
All of that might be true, but the end result is that the social media feed for all politicians will be dominated by crazy people yelling at each other, and the politician won't participate and nobody normal will read it. Basically the same as comments on newspaper articles, really. Any unmoderated forum is going to be worthless as a forum. That might be the constitutionally mandated outcome, but it's probably preferable to just not allow comments at all.