16 ms·

Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

125 points by gwintrob 11y ago

wxs 11y ago
I just posted this in the earlier submission[1], but I'll put it here too: I really worry that if we don't find a way to fix the abuse problem, pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood. Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online. Platforms need to take a stand and find a way reduce hate and abuse, or public opinion (and my own) will turn against support of privacy. If it turns out pseudonymity is fundamentally incompatible with safety of the abused online then I'll take the latter, but I'd rather search for a way to have both. Platforms banning abusive subcommunities seems like a good start. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9898366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9898366
- mahouse 11y ago
  That's supposing the public opinion is against the trolls. In my experience, people support trolls as long as they align with their ideas.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    That's exactly it. "It's trolling when they do it, it's arguments on their level when we do it". What bothers me is that members of the general population have little self-respect and ridiculously low standards of discussions and reasoning. And sadly, this is as much a problem off-line as it is on-line.
  - deathhand 11y ago
    First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
  - forgetsusername 11y ago
    >In my opinion, people support trolls as long as they align with their ideas Exactly. These communities form because there are people that share the beliefs, for better or worse. And it any online community, a "troll" is someone who goes against the norms. Censorship is a slippery slope. The fact that you have people, like the OP, stating that if bullying doesn't stop he'll turn "against support of privacy" is downright scary.
- pc86 11y ago
  > pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood This may be one of the most hyperbolic things I've read on HN in a very long time.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - fixermark 11y ago
    I'm not so sure. Looking at the history of the Internet, the communications technology seems to have grown from a system of necessary pseudonymity to increasinglhy-non-pseudonymous interactions (social networks with real names, merchant systems with credit cards, and increasingly initiatives to use one authoritative account system to authenticate with multiple services). A social shift to consider people who don't use their real names online as "creepy" or "with something to hide" may not be as impossible as you want it to be.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- diamonis 11y ago
  Why are you posting anonymously? [EDIT: no, I don't go around clicking on profile links so some SJWs can accuse me of stalking.]
  - jgrahamc 11y ago
    He's not. Did you click on his username?
  - uncoder0 11y ago
    He isn't his contact info is in his profile.
  - dsp1234 11y ago
    Clicking on the profile link: "Co-founder and CTO at Whirlscape, makers of the Minuum keyboard http://minuum.com http://minuum.com, xavier@whirlscape.com" I'm not sure that's really "posting anonymously"
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- DanBC 11y ago
  People are just as hateful under their real names. The Facebook ad featuring a Sikh artist got a lot of really unpleasant comments from people using their real identities. I don't think anyone suggests the Youtube comments were any better after real-name policy.
  - mahouse 11y ago
    For reference about that ad: http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_when_i_starred_in_a_facebook_ad/ http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_w...
  - bkjelden 11y ago
    Facebook's userbase is so large, many users are functionally anonymous. Before online communities, most people interacted in social circles small enough that their identity actually meant something to the other participants. But on widely circulated/public posts on facebook, the audience is so large, that "John Doe from Indiana" might as well be anonymous.
  - existencebox 11y ago
    Quite to the contrary, in fact. One of the big learnings from the Google real names policy was that people are JUST as willing to be terrible under their real names. What I think it is, if I may hypothesize, is merely that there is fundamentally no incentive to NOT be however you want on the internet. 9 times out of 10 nothing you say will be traced back to you, or will reflect on any aspect of your day to day life. I consider the internet a window into the uninhibited mindset of the average person, and that although we may find it distasteful, to censor it would be paramount to burying our heads in the sand about our own nature. What's worrying is that rather than find avenues to deal with it in reasonable or moderated fashion, the narratives often seem to shift to the most extreme and often dogmatic-seeming angles, more as talking points than measured response.
    - wxs 11y ago
      These points are all well-taken. Real names don't magically make people good to one another. I don't think the problem will go away with the removal of pseudonymity. I do see cases of people behaving hatefully in a way that is connected to their real identity sometimes having consequences in the real world, for instance this case recently in Toronto: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/firing-of-shawn-simoes-for-off-duty-fhritp-video-reflects-employment-trend-1.3071919 http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/firing-of-shawn-simoes-for-o... Of course that case is controversial, but social consequences are one thing that can help protect against this sort of behaviour (note that this is not really a free speech issue in that he was not put in jail). So what are social consequences we can levy online, if we want to support psudonymity and stay disconnected from our meatspace identities? One such consequence is having your hateful platform (the FPH subreddit in the Reddit case) closed. I am fine with this approach.
- brock_r 11y ago
  I've seen plenty of horrible Facebook posts as well, real names notwithstanding. The problems run deep. Much older than the internet.
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    People have lost the fear of being ostracized by their antisocial acts because communities that thrive on such behavior are becoming increasingly easy to find.
- kinghajj 11y ago
  > pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood That's an extremely bad analogy. It's reasonable to expect that anyone wearing a Klan hood has inflicted some kind of harm or pain onto others, but it's not at all reasonable to expect that the typical user of a pseudonymous forum has participated in abuse.
- ra1n85 11y ago
  >Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online I don't feel embarrassed to support free speech when I see it abused. Your line of thought would have us all registered with the state before we could use the internet - a tragic outcome that some on this planet are already subjected to.
- pdeuchler 11y ago
  So what's your definition of abusive? Who's definition do we pick? Can we vote on it? What happens when a vocal minority disagrees with a consensus? What happens if that consensus harms a non-vocal minority? What happens when no matter your decision, someone will be affected adversely? Which side do you choose?
  - wxs 11y ago
    No doubt it will be a constant complicated debate, as social norms tend to be. But we don't throw up our hands and say "we can't have social norms! Who picks them? How do we vote?!" Unfortunately I don't think we'll come up with a simple set of universally applicable rules and move on. I do know that my abuse-free internet experience is very much a bubble, and every time I have been given the opportunity to see the experience of a "woman with an opinion" online I get to realize this. So let's as a society say "this isn't acceptable" and then deal with the much more difficult question of "what to do about it". In any other commercial venue if a patron started shouting racist and sexist epithets, we would be ok with the owner throwing them out. We don't get caught up in slippery slope fallacies. I can't scientifically prove that Fat-people Hate was objectively abusive but that's the beauty of social norms, I can say "I think it's abusive" and put pressure on businesses to remove its platform. Which is what I'm doing :)
- istvan__ 11y ago
  You are saying we need censorship. Growing up in a country that had very strict censorship rules I can tell you two things: - it never works because people just simply fool the censors with twisting words the right way so the censors don't understand it but the smarter readers do. Entire genre was created for this sort of stuff in my country. - just by trying to censor people you are pushing many different groups to the same platform and they gonna overthrow the ruling class anyways because together they are stronger and they are going to get rid of censorship. Look at the history for some countries with censorship. On the top of that, how will define what safe means? This is really a double edge sword. Please watch this video, this sums up pretty nicely my opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJyDyCocGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJyDyCocGQ Guys who disagree: I do not care about karma loss because representing a non-popular view on things, but if you take the effort to downvote please have the courage to put a comment in as well.
- wcummings 11y ago
  >Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online. Sounds like a personal problem.
- ashwinaj 11y ago
  > pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood I don't think we'd like to trivialize online abuse and threats, but comparing it to the klan? Seriously. With Ms. Pao, she's shrewd in trying to get all the sympathy mileage from the Kleiner case to Reddit. Everyone loves a victim. EDIT: Thanks pc86
- yellowapple 11y ago
  Except that an enforcement of a real-name policy will make it even easier to abuse online users, since now a harasser (or "troll", if you will) has that much more information to go on when doxxing or otherwise imposing offline consequences for online activities. In other words, pseudonymity is, if anything, the one safeguard we have left against the sort of cyberbullying that happens with disturbing regularity. Advocating for its removal for the sake of "online safety" is the textbook definition of "backfire" (and, I'd imagine, would count as tragic irony).
itg 11y ago
From what i've seen on reddit, twitter, and sometimes even on hn, some are quick to label people whose opinion differs from theirs as trolls. It doesn't matter if it is a polite or well-though out comment, they are quick to shout the word harassment or whatever -ist allows them to hold some moral high ground.
- lingben 11y ago
  "Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." - Ralph Waldo Emerson edit: although tangentially relevant, this case in Canada is hair raising: http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-ruling-in-twitter-harassment-trial-could-have-enormous-fallout-for-free-speech http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchfor...
  - seivan 11y ago
    I love that quote, especially since some claim vulgarity is harassment, abuse and bigotry. You're just going to alienate people with that kind of thinking. How do you define hate, abuse and trolls? In certain countries atheists are considered terrorists. Those who blog about atheism are haters and a bigot. It's justified to hack them to death, imprison them or whip them. In other countries female drivers are abusing the sensibilities of men. Who is to say which ones are doing the censorship right, lol.
  - keedot 11y ago
    Christie Blatchford's skew is quite heavy in this reporting. I've seen the other side of the argument with some of the behaviours and tweets in question, and it's not so clear cut. I would definitely feel harassed by this individual, and in Canada, we do not claim to have the free speech as defined in America. Hate speech is not tolerated here, and most Canadians are in agreement with this. You can have a difference of opinion, but if you attack someone with words, there are legal consequences.
    - danielweber 11y ago
      > if you attack someone with words, there are legal consequences. What a horrible country. I hate it deeply.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
joelrunyon 11y ago
> The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet Does anyone honestly believe this? Even Ellen in the op-ed says > As the trolls on Reddit grew louder and more harassing in recent weeks, another group of users became more vocal. First a few sent positive messages. Then a few more. Soon, I was receiving hundreds of messages a day, and at one point thousands. These messages were thoughtful, well-written and heartfelt, in stark contrast to the trolling messages, which were usually made up of little more than four-letter words. Many shared their own stories of harassment and thanked us for our stance. I think most people see trolls as just trolls. People are going to be jerks sometimes - whether under their real name (facebook / youtube) or anonymously.
- rqebmm 11y ago
  Ususally titles are written not by the author, but by the editors, in order to be attention grabbing
- fixermark 11y ago
  The major issue is the notion that "jerks sometimes" is evolving into "jerks all the time." Not yet sure how much of this notion stems from the focus on the problem and how much is actual increase, but it's a problem nonetheless. Why do we tolerate as much trolling as we do? Why do we continue to see trolls as just trolls when we have evidence of people being bullied to suicide via the signal-magnification effect of online interaction?
  - joelrunyon 11y ago
    > The major issue is the notion that "jerks sometimes" is evolving into "jerks all the time." I would doubt that. I think it's an outgrowth of more information created (so the trolls, if you're looking for them, will have more trolling as well). It's just like how the news is claiming things are always getting worse. They're not. Things are better than ever, we're just getting much better at hearing about the outlier cases of when bad things do happen.
jmount 11y ago
Definitely an interesting read. Mostly I am with Pao. But I do feel Reddit has been in the business of supplying a troll friendly environment that is just interesting/safe enough to monetize for quite some time. So, in my opinion, nobody truly "anti-troll" would have stepped into the situation.
deathhand 11y ago
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
songshu 11y ago
Misquoting Bart Simpson "If you never experience the abuse, you'll never get desensitized to it", and with that in mind, and talking here only about written abuse, these are my favorite three outcomes for, let's say, my daughter: 1) No one abuses her online 2) People abuse her, she dismisses it as noise 3) People abuse her, and she reacts and attempts to control it I think we should be aiming for number 2.
- seivan 11y ago
  One could argue that she should never be subjected to it to begin with. It's not bad argument either. I am not disagreeing with you, just saying you can't expect people not to pick #1 or use #3 to make a buck or two.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  We absolutely should be aiming for number 1. I think I get your point, that it is healthy to be able to deal with the world as it is, but that doesn't mean that we have to accept or embrace it as it is.
  - icpmacdo 11y ago
    I agree with you. I dont think that that would be practical though so teaching #2 is probably going to help the most amount of people.
  - sssilver 11y ago
    What her daughter may perceive as "abuse" can be very subjective. That's why censorship in general is never a good idea. Learning to "dismiss" it as noise is a more scalable and elegant approach, and doesn't limit anyone's freedoms in a subjective way.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      I'm not advocating for censorship when I say that we should be aiming to not have people abusing each other. We should be aiming for a society where no one wants to abuse other people. Maybe that's dreamy-eyed nonsense, but I think when you talk about aims you have to let ideals in, not just stick to what is practical tomorrow.
lhnz 11y ago
Does anybody remember when trolling was a term used to describe an activity in which users wielding enough understanding of other's perspectives would attempt to give other's cognitive dissonance? It seems that one of the most powerful online political classes have lumped hatred and abuse in with disagreement, mockery and satire. I don't think it's good for the conversation between the group of user's that dislike where Reddit and other big social media sites are headed and the people that are taking them there.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  EDIT: Removed overreaction to grammatical pet peeve that distracts from the main point. > It seems that one of the most powerful online political classes have lumped hatred and abuse in with disagreement and mockery. Its pretty common, online and off, for people of all classes to ascribe disagreement with their preferred position with "hatred and abuse". Mistaking this common error for a feature of a particular "powerful online class" is, AFAICT, the same kind of misperception of persecution as the error itself.
- lcswi 11y ago
  It is really easy to define the meaning of terms if you are the easy-to-agree-with side of a conflict. And now you cannot even mention the elephant in the room anymore without being immediately flagged, banned or at least called a women hating privileged white boy.
- ewzimm 11y ago
  I miss those days when I was proud to be a troll, when it meant tricking people into thinking in ways that they normally wouldn't. People used to love trolls! Of course, it didn't just mean that. There were also troll raids when friends would get together and make silly comments on every thread they could find, crashing the party but having fun with it. The incendiary ones used to be called flamers, but I think that term is too trollish to use against trolls these days.
  - imron 11y ago
    > People used to love trolls! No they didn't. > crashing the party but having fun with it. I'm sure you and your friends were having fun with it. The people whose parties you crashed? Probably not so much.
dominotw 11y ago
Reminded me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co5jTvGlt6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co5jTvGlt6Y
MrDosu 11y ago
People like to gossip and trashtalk. We can act like it is not human nature and philosophize about ideal conversation, but one look at the afternoon TV programme will quickly convince you otherwise. Imo the way forward is not demonizing either social group, but to give each their own forum for expression. The word 'troll' is an extremely slippery slope...
facepalm 11y ago
Where can you actually still have an uncensored discussion on the internet?
- intrasight 11y ago
  Setup a chat server and invite people
- qznc 11y ago
  On your blog.
- fixermark 11y ago
  USENET, via email, via your own server, via a blog you host on your own server. But those solutions (a) take effort and (b) implicitly decrease your potential audience because you aren't piggy-backing on some other organization's social networking. So it's understandable why people who get their jollies on upsetting other people would prefer an easier solution for them, like Reddit letting them say whatever they choose to unhindered because "Freedom of speech." I'm 100% in favor of people who want to talk about topics Reddit has rejected setting up their own competitor. Maybe it will even become as big as Reddit. It's happened before.
antrover 11y ago
The trolls are a small, small percentage of users but some of the loudest.
ForHackernews 11y ago
She's still a millionaire executive. Obviously nobody deserves the kind of abuse she's gotten, but I think I could put up with a whole lot of nobodies saying mean things about me on the internet in return for being in her position.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > She's still a millionaire executive. I would presume she's still a millionaire, though I don't have access to her current finances. Of what is she still an executive?
  - ForHackernews 11y ago
    Fine, she's technically between positions. You know as well as I do that she will shortly be made an executive or a board member of some other firm(s). She is part of the executive class.
trhway 11y ago
may be, yet it is still doesn't help them win in court ... Without any reason, just as a fishing expedition for millions of dollars, she basically publicly labeled a bunch of men as sexist pigs. Talking about trolling, ehh..
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dimino 11y ago
Trolls used to mean (and I think still does mean) a person who attempts to voice an opinion they don't hold with the intent of invoking a negative reaction out of someone else. Most of the folks spewing bile at Ellen Pao probably don't actually hate her, but can't help seeing their actions have an effect. Trolls don't win if you ignore them -- the shitshow that's been Reddit this past month is almost entirely because Ellen and co. can't/won't stop reacting to short-sighted outcries from Reddit's userbase. Yishan, Ellen, Alexis, Steve, even Sam, and everyone else involved needs to shut the fuck up (publicly) about Reddit for a few weeks. This whole "airing of grievances" is actually what's killing Reddit, not the trolls. What I want to see is legal action taken against Yishan for fueling this well beyond its natural life. He had to violate an NDA of some kind with all the extra fuel he's been throwing onto this...
- danielweber 11y ago
  http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/troller.htm http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/troller.htm It referred to trolling the way fishermen troll for fish. It didn't really have anything to do with the "ogre" definition of troll, but that's what it means in most people's minds now.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    That's kind of what happens when you noun a verb that is already a noun with a very different meaning.
msandford 11y ago
The trolls won the war for usenet too. It didn't destroy the internet. Just because trolls are making reddit unpleasant doesn't mean that they will destroy the internet. reddit isn't the whole internet, not even close! Furthermore, supposing that reddit users revolting against the clamping-down of reddit management constitutes the "biggest trolling attacks in history" is a little disingenuous. What about all the people who got internet famous for dumb stuff like the mustard guy or folks that got pranked by Sacha Baron Cohen or the jackass guys? Those were arguably trolling, and they got made into major motion pictures that got commercials and put into theaters! Reddit trolls just post nasty comments on reddit, a place that probably half of America barely knows about and definitely doesn't care about. I'm not saying that the nasty stuff that happened to her didn't happen, or that it's somehow not a big deal. It obviously is a big deal to her, and a great many other people as well. But that doesn't make it the "largest trolling attack in history"
- smacktoward 11y ago
  > The trolls won the war for usenet too. It didn't destroy the internet. It sure as hell destroyed Usenet, though. I remember, because I was there when it happened. At least when we lost Usenet there was somewhere else for all those discussions to migrate to: the Web. If they destroy the Web, where are the discussions supposed to go then?
  - msandford 11y ago
    Please remember that just because someone says a thing, that does not make it true. Reddit is not the WHOLE internet. Just because trolls are causing havoc at reddit doesn't mean that they're winning everywhere. Further any one website isn't the whole internet. Usenet was a unified system, the myraid websites that people troll on right now are not. Facebook is different from Reddit which is different from slashdot which is different from HN which is different from etc.
dgfv1 11y ago
Maybe they shouldn't have started the war in the first place. Stop trying to gentrify the internet. Also, people who disagree with you == trolls? Nice.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- pekk 11y ago
  I'm seeing a lot of this meme that the internet is gentrifying, and I think it's worth discussing. I'm certain the internet isn't getting more gentrified over time. The internet was extremely gentrified when it was populated only by a relatively tiny elite which tended toward prestigious academic affiliations and higher status. Even the old BBS scene, though a little more populist and accessible to people at home with phone lines and home computers, looks pretty genteel and exclusive by modern standards. The internet sure felt a lot more democratic when issues like DDOS, doxing, spam, child porn distribution (just to name a few) were not that hard to avoid, so measures against them did not feel that urgent. But that atmosphere is directly related to the selective nature of the audience. Things as small as the introduction of AOL users to USENET caused massive upheavals back in the day. The "barbarians" were at the gates. It's not coincidental that Facebook built traction against Friendster, etc. largely by restricting to people with academic affiliations, Reddit got its start from a userbase that was more "selective," etc. But then the floodgates are gradually opened to the "barbarians" who were very unlikely ever to have patronized USENET, a BBS, or even an early-2000s phpBB. In reality, that ratchet only moves forward, and the internet population gets more and more like the general population. Pervasive commercialization is actually part of that trend away from gentrification. It's not gated communities, it's Wal-Mart, payday loan joints, low-end casinos and hawkers in the streets. It's not Singapore, it's a developing country. And for better or worse, nobody can do anything about that.
serve_yay 11y ago
What I really care about: Who gets to decide who is a troll and who isn't?
- pekk 11y ago
  People have been trying to automate moderation and make it perfectly fair for a long time now. It's basically impossible. If you do it at all, you have to use people, which makes it suck. If you don't do any moderation, you get a sewer, and then you get shut down. You can try to exclude only illegal stuff and stand on free speech, but in terms of content you still have a sewer. To be fair, most of the stuff that moves through sewers is not deadly poison, just crap and water. Some people like sewers, so sewer cities continue to be built for people to live in, but most people find them unattractive, so they never take over the world. To make something more attractive out of all the crap people emit, you need a modicum of moderation, which always comes from other people. Which means it is essentially unfair, capricious, and creates incentives to endless mediocrity and pandering. But even if we accept that rather than going back to the sewers, one man's perfect moderator is the other man's little Hitler. So maybe we should just crowdsource moderation! Brilliant! But "democratic" crowd moderation is essentially a way of diffusing responsibility for censorship. The censorship of whoever happens to brigade your posts (maybe with sockpuppets, or external links) is not any more free, or pleasant, than any other censorship. Meanwhile, upvoting and downvoting takes on a massive life of its own and creates arenas for endless meta-gaming like subcommunities trying to push each other out. This takes over the site. If you manage the site, have fun managing all that effectively, and try not to get sucked in. If what you want is fairness, all you can do is publish explicit policy (NOT legal ToS) so people know and agree to what they're getting into - then enforce that policy universally to the letter. That will be fair only in the limited sense that everyone agrees to it the same, like the rules of chess. But human-based moderation will never be fair.
  - serve_yay 11y ago
    That's not really what I mean. I have no problem with, say, reddit deciding that a "fat people hate" forum is not fit for its site. It's their site, they get to decide that. Rather, what I am concerned about is the broader conversation which takes place in articles like TFA, by prominent people such as Pao, and by journalists. This broader conversation uses the word "troll" - but who gets to decide which opinions are in that bucket, and therefore not acceptable? It is easy to say racists are trolls, it's uncontroversial for the most part. But what about, say, gender-critical radical feminists? These are people who challenge certain received beliefs around what gender means, or should mean. They are not hateful, and they are 100% serious about making the world better for women, yet are often accused of transphobia (and worse) for what they believe. They get death threats (from other people who also call themselves feminists) and the rest of it. And it would be so easy to place them in the "troll" category.
ajkjk 11y ago
I wish that there was some sort of Internet-wide 'reputation system' that would accumulate one's reputation across all websites they use - while preserving their pseudonymity on each site. As an analogy, Steam and Battle.net and other gaming platforms have something going for them, maybe by accident: by using one account across lots of games, the risks incurred by cheating are amplified. If you cheat (or harass) in one game, your account can be banned across all games. This means that if you care about your account on one game still existing, you're disincentivized from cheating in other games, even if you don't care about them. I play League of Legends regularly, and Riot Games has put in huge amounts of work in figuring out a way to discipline abusive players that will actually induce them to reform. They have shown that most people, when branded as abusive, will often reform their behavior immediately - as if they did not realize (or did not internalize) what kind of person they were being. See, for example, http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/6/7500045/riot-games-league-of-legends-bans-rewards-behavior http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/6/7500045/riot-games-league-of... . But it's saddening that all of Riot's work in reforming players or banning them if they can't get along with others cannot be used to weed out these toxic players in other games. I love gaming, but, for me, the absolute worst thing about this hobby is how awful everyone is to each other, and I would love to see a systematic solution. I wish something like Steam's centralized identity existed across online forums. I wish we used one account everywhere, and the use of a widely-connected account was required to sign up to things - but the details of who you are, and how to associate your identity on one site with your identity on another site, is totally masked to everyone. Site owners and users cannot tell that userA on reddit is also userA on, say, some Disqus blog. But your reputation would still be preserved across sites: if you were reported as a spammer or a bully or a cheater on one site, it would be visible to the other sites you were on. And if those sites wanted to ban you based on your common reputation, they could. This puts a large burden on the identity management platform. They have to handle everyone's privacy and security, deal with accounts being hacked and used for spam or abuse, provide mechanisms for people to prove their behavior has improved and remove black marks from their records, deal with websites that submit false abuse claims, etc. And (hopefully) they have to be resilient to law enforcement trying to use these records to complete expose users on every website. But at least they could do it in one place, instead of every website having to solve all of these problems independently. It seems to me that good behavior in 'tribal' human society was enforced by having to, well, remain in one's tribe, and having to convince everyone to put up with you if you want to survive. It also seems that being labeled, with numbers, as a 'bully' or a 'cheater' can have a positive effect in reforming people's behavior. We would need a centralized reputation system like what I've described to do this. This is on the list of "things I would like to build". [edited for awkward phrasing]
omarforgotpwd 11y ago
"I have just endured one of the largest trolling attacks in history" I don't know enough about what Ellen went through to comment on it, but I find this comment very funny, and it made it hard to take the rest of the article seriously.
partiallypro 11y ago
I'm going to disagree. I've been in IRC, Forums, Newsgroups, lurked 4Chan, Reddit, and Slashdot for years. It has actually been evolving to a point, especially among the younger crowd to get bent out of shape about essentially nothing. Maybe that is because more of our lives are online than before, but if you were to go through Twitter and Tumblr and just browse around it is a huge mess of people constantly being offended and wanting an apology. I'm not defending the Redditors that legitimately harassed Ellen Pao. However, modern media (like Gawker, Vox, Salon, Slate, etc) can somehow turn 3 tweets from anonymous people with no followers into a national shit storm. These media outlets feed the trolls, because it gets them clicks. So, it is of my opinion that the "trolls" aren't "winning" the battle, they just haven't left, and never will. The news outlets are click junkies and know they can foment faux rage by enticing people who otherwise we would have just ignored 10+ years ago. Of course they look large in numbers if you're putting them under the microscope. The thing people who have little online experience miss is that they are making things worse by giving people attention and trying to "silence" them.
- fixermark 11y ago
  Does "Just don't feed the trolls" continue to work in a world where trolls know that SWATting someone is as easy as picking up a phone, and doxxing someone can have significant long-term consequences?
  - msandford 11y ago
    Should we repeal the first amendment because people sometimes used racial or ethnic slurs? Or they deny the moon landing? Or say things that your preferred political party happens to disagree with? Or maybe only things that YOU disagree with?
    - fixermark 11y ago
      Nobody is recommending a repeal of the First Amendment. At best, the conversation is about whether orgs like Reddit have any obligation (moral, business, or otherwise) to allow people screaming racial or ethnic slurs to stand on (metaphorically speaking) their property and use their megaphones. Usenet still exists, and nobody is stopping people from using it. It's just not where trolls go to be heard anymore, because nobody is there to hear them. ;)
Claudus 11y ago
I've been following the Ellen Pao debacle on Reddit, and her misuse of the term "troll" in the article illustrates her ignorance of Internet and Reddit culture that led to her stepping down as CEO. I'm sure there were many offensive, harassing, and vitriolic comments and directed at her, however they were a result of her incompetent actions and failure to understand the culture that caused the problem, not due to trolls or trolling.
tosseraccount 11y ago
Don't like trolls. Don't visit reddit.
rbanffy 11y ago
The Internet? They are gaining ground everywhere. Winning the argument is more important than being right.
DanBlake 11y ago
The situation at reddit is appalling and the death threats and egregious harassment against Pao were wrong, and likely illegal in some cases. That said, my opinion of her is that she is far from the champion that this battle needs. I believe that the most common view of Pao is not too savory, between her husbands ponzi scheme, the details that came out of the KPCB trial and the plethora of other poor decision taken by her, she has made it easy to find faults with her character.
- x0x0 11y ago
  shorter: Pao is subject to appalling abuse but she brought it on herself because of her supposed character faults and the things her husband did. I think that nicely proves her point. Even if you don't care for her decisions, she still shouldn't be treated the way she is.
eonw 11y ago
i just think its dumb how people want to "change" the internet, or anything for that matter. its not a tamable creature, its anarchy and chaos and humanity in all of its glory, good or bad. it bothers me when people say we need to take something off the internet... no really, we dont, it was put there for a reason, no matter how misguided that reason may be. hate speech, no matter how distasteful is still free speech. dont want to see it on reddit, dont look for it! i mean quite frankly, if you are fat and self conscious, going to a "fat haters" forum is probably going to end poorly for you. as for her statistic about 40% of internet users saying they have been bullied... welcome to the real world lady! run that same quiz in a random highschool and i'd bet its double that percentage... people are mean. why should the internet not reflect real life? art imitates life. it also bothers me these people saying we need to change hiring practices and other such nonsense. many things self regulate, leave them alone.
balls187 11y ago
Given her past, Ellen Pao is not very credible. Her opinion seems part of her self serving rhetoric that is now focused on presenting herself as a martyr. Incivility has always been a problem in human society--it's magnified by the internet, because of the lack of consequences.
dade_ 11y ago
Rule #1: Never feed the trolls. She has just given them a feast. I miss FidoNet, it used to be so easy to shut down abuse and the conversations were so much more thoughtful. I wonder if we can ever get that back.
escobar 11y ago
> I have just endured one of the largest trolling attacks in history. I feel bad for Ellen and have nothing against her, I don't really go on reddit much. I am aware that she was more or less a scapegoat. But still, for some reason, AND even though the second sentence of the article almost saves face, this statement still bothers me. Sure, she got picked on by reddit quite a bit for lack of transparency, and got thrown under the bus by other high-ranking officials at Reddit. But to come out and make yourself seem like a champion still illustrates her inflated sense of importance - she's a millionaire exec in an interim position who made mistakes, and got called out in an online forum.
angersock 11y ago
Ugh. But that balancing act is getting harder. The trolls are winning. The success of the original balancing act was that there wasn't one--it was an open platform, it was a loose federation, and it was decentralized. By creating these massive walled gardens and trying to monetize them, companies like Reddit have suddenly had to take a stand. Short surprise that they're running into problems that didn't exist before they decided to create these massive platforms. If you democratize access to mass point-to-point communications, guess what? By definition, half of your users are of below average empathy and responsibility. But to attract more mainstream audiences and bring in the big-budget advertisers, you must hide or remove the ugly. Gentrification of the Internet. As the threats became really violent, people ended their messages with “stay safe.” Threats can be graphic, not violent--if they're violent, they're not threats.
ElComradio 11y ago
Unfortunately we can't trust the intentions of this piece. She might not actually care about trolls at all, just brushes them off like I do. It's an image piece, designed to fulfill specific purposes, and I doubt the purpose is merely to spread the message of the positive potential of humanity on the Internet.
krstck 11y ago
I'm not sure that the solution is to completely prevent trolling rather than to inoculate ourselves against it. Part of 'trolling' (in the sense being talked about here) is knowing what to use against the victim for maximum shock value or impact. I don't think Pao was hated because she was a woman or asian. I think that she was hated, and therefore they found an easy way to disparage her by throwing slurs about her gender and race. It's shocking to see such words and that's precisely why people use them. I don't think that the world would be a better place if it we cloned it as is and scrubbed all negative references for race/gender/other protected characteristic. I think people will be just as nasty. They'll be nasty using different words to strike at different vulnerabilities. The problem isn't "racism" or "sexism", it's people being plain, old-fashioned mean.
upofadown 11y ago
Trolling is not a new thing. As long as hateful and/or sociopathic and/or sadistic people exist there will be trolls and trolling. You can only manage trolling, you can't eliminate it. That's the mistake Reddit made, they thought they could eliminate it, or at least hide it, and that isn't something that anyone knows how to do. In their efforts they make some basic mistakes. They removed areas where the trolls had self segregated (ex. fatshaming) forcing them back into the rest of the community. They failed to properly ignore the trolls and reacted to them up to the extent of claiming that the resignation of a member of their executive had something to do with their actions. I predict that the Reddit troll problem is going to get much worse before it gets better.
georgemonck 11y ago
There are a few underlying issues here. There is a lot of denial about the nature of the intellectual bell curve. The majority of people are not that smart and cannot make thoughtful contributions to most discussions. The majority of people will at least some of the time lose decorum and make vicious personal attacks when they perceive themselves as being threatened or as being wronged. Upvoting and downvoting is an action, and action requires motivation. Thus, unless an audience is especially smart and valuing of rationality, comments are most likely to get upvotes when they provoke an emotional reaction. To have a high quality discussion board you must have a critical mass of reasonable, smart people. You must avoid letting in the hoi polloi. And you must quickly ban users who make dumb comments or violate decorum. However, most internet business models are based on advertising. Advertising revenues are based on eyeballs. And a normal stupid person's eyeballs are worth just as much as smart person's eyeballs (perhaps more, the smart person probably has adblock installed). Thus the central conflict. Business models are based on making it as easy as possible for normal people to get engaged in the platform. But the result of normal people getting engaged will be vicious and unsavory content. Also if it is easy to create account, then it is easy to switch accounts if one account is banned. So it becomes impossible to silence the unsavory users. I think that ultimately Reddit will end up as sort of the Wikipedia version of a newspaper. All pretense of being free speech or democratic will be dropped in the major subreddits. Rather it will be a media site on a variety of issues that is mostly top-down, and controlled by the actions of entrenched, established users and moderators.
godgod 11y ago
I can't stand this Ellen Pao fraud. Has she not used the internet before? It has always been this way. Pao is grossly naive in so many capacities. She failed to understand her audience at reddit and clearly doesn't understand one of the fundamental tenants to using the internet; being able to scream and shout at people in my underware is a right. Poke the hive, expect angry bees. I wish Ellen Pao would just, GO AWAY! I'm sure she will resume suing her way to the top very soon.
anthony_romeo 11y ago
Many of responses I read here are infuriating because many are deliberately ignoring the issue of harassment by claiming it's a free speech issue. In the US you do not have 100% freedom of speech. If you deliberately incite violence against another person through speech, you can be charged with a crime. You can face a lawsuit for assault without touching the victim. You can be charged for, say, harassing others in the workplace. You certainly have the right to speak your mind, but if you think you have the right to deliberately cause severe mental distress, not through mere discussion of your points, but through repetitive and abusive language and getting your cohorts to join you in the assault, you are absolutely mistaken. Even if we were to assume some enshrined right to harass individuals, perhaps it's not the best way to go about a disagreement. Further, people are choosing to get angry over the false binary of freedom vs harassment, and choosing to ignore the third option of choosing empathy, tact, or clear and fair discussion over slinging barbs at others. I'm reading comments along the lines of 'well, it couldn't have been that bad' or 'I don't know enough about the extent of the harassment, but I'm going to comment about semantics or the 100 percent accuracy [as opposed to, say, 90 percent] of her claims anyway!' Your comments are pointless and dance around the actual issue of abuse. You fail to feel any sort of empathy because you yourself are not the victim. I hear people making fun of the concept of 'microaggression' because they fail to adequately understand its meaning. The point is that it's really easy to throw a one-line insult to someone, but in aggregate it can cause great distress, because the throwaway comments of a thousand people can feel like one very persistent stalker. People dismiss this by saying 'oh it's normal' and recommend they just ignore it. Frankly, the point is that it should not be normal, and some people have difficulty ignoring it. And I know some will deliberately choose to misconstrue what I'm saying here. No, I'm not saying that we should censor the Internet and ban all controversial discussion. I would just hope that more people become aware that it is a real issue that people face, and that commenters should be aware of their own actions and reevaluate how they choose respond to conflicts.
wf 11y ago
Reading all of this has given me the beginnings of an idea. Although I'm not a machine learning/NLP expert the idea is obviously non-trivial to an extreme (maybe impossible, currently): What if there were a forum similar in style to reddit that had a form of auto-moderation that identified logical fallacies and other irrelevant information and then highlighted those within arguments. For example if there was an ad hominem attack "Fuck you Ellen Pao." The auto moderator would allow the post but would highlight the text red with a small bubble identifying it as ad hominem, users could react appropriately. Or, maybe you have a long well thought out argument that has a straw man in it. The auto-mod could highlight the straw man to point out that it exists and maybe even format the post to show the point from which the rest of the position is based on that. Maybe this wouldn't have to be actively presented but just a tool that comments were run through so users could be warned prior to their submissions. Obviously the complications with this would be ridiculous and you could never stop training the algorithm that was processing your text. But the implications of having such a thing seem pretty incredible.
slang800 11y ago
> The trolls are winning the battle for the Internet The trolls aren't "winning" because "the trolls" aren't an organization. They don't have an ideology that they're pushing, or some end-goal that they're hoping to achieve. They're a byproduct of free speech that we all have to deal with. But most importantly, they're not even able to be categorized uniformly. What is trolling to one person, may be comedy, satire, or even just _disagreement_ to another.
hellbanTHIS 11y ago
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/Antisocial_Behavior_files/antisocial_behavior_trolls.pdf http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/Antisocial_Behavior_file... tldr; heavy moderation actually causes trolling on sites like Reddit. >taking extreme action against small infractions can exacerbate antisocial behavior (e.g., unfairness can cause users to write worse). Though average classifier precision is relatively high (0.80), one in five users identified as antisocial are nonetheless misclassified. Whereas trading off overall performance for higher precision and have a human moder- ator approve any bans is one way to avoid incorrectly blocking innocent users, a better response may instead involve giving antisocial users a chance to redeem themselves. The whole thing with Pao got out of control because somebody was routinely deleting comments and shadowbanning people who mentioned the trouble her husband was in. Whether it was her, another admin or a moderator doing the banning that was what fueled the fire. Moderation on Reddit is insane, a single basement dweller with sociopathic tendencies (99% of forum moderators everywhere) can control the conversation totally, they constantly ban discussion that they don't agree with and there is absolutely no transparency. It happens to be a wonderful way of incubating hate groups by eliminating cross pollination of ideas, but it also tends to piss people off.
klunger 11y ago
I am afraid that she is right. The few times I have tried dipping my toes into Reddit, I have been attacked by users so filled with bile they seemingly could not communicate without spewing it up. It left me just flabbergasted by how little provoked them, or how they somehow thought their behavior was appropriate or justified. These scattered but blessedly brief experiences have been so horrible that I have completely given up on it. I wish it were not the case -- Aaron Swartz is one of my heroes - but I am afraid this particular legacy of his has just spoiled.
rabbyte 11y ago
> Reddit is the Internet. That's an insane thing to say. I know she's the former CEO but anybody saying this is losing perspective. There are countless communities not on Reddit and they can't be represented by Reddit. I know it's probably a conscious exaggeration but it's getting hard to tell, people take this forum shit so seriously.

125 points by gwintrob 11y ago

wxs 11y ago

I just posted this in the earlier submission[1], but I'll put it here too: I really worry that if we don't find a way to fix the abuse problem, pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood. Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online. Platforms need to take a stand and find a way reduce hate and abuse, or public opinion (and my own) will turn against support of privacy. If it turns out pseudonymity is fundamentally incompatible with safety of the abused online then I'll take the latter, but I'd rather search for a way to have both. Platforms banning abusive subcommunities seems like a good start. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9898366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9898366

mahouse 11y ago
That's supposing the public opinion is against the trolls. In my experience, people support trolls as long as they align with their ideas.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  That's exactly it. "It's trolling when they do it, it's arguments on their level when we do it". What bothers me is that members of the general population have little self-respect and ridiculously low standards of discussions and reasoning. And sadly, this is as much a problem off-line as it is on-line.
- deathhand 11y ago
  First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >In my opinion, people support trolls as long as they align with their ideas Exactly. These communities form because there are people that share the beliefs, for better or worse. And it any online community, a "troll" is someone who goes against the norms. Censorship is a slippery slope. The fact that you have people, like the OP, stating that if bullying doesn't stop he'll turn "against support of privacy" is downright scary.
pc86 11y ago
> pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood This may be one of the most hyperbolic things I've read on HN in a very long time.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- fixermark 11y ago
  I'm not so sure. Looking at the history of the Internet, the communications technology seems to have grown from a system of necessary pseudonymity to increasinglhy-non-pseudonymous interactions (social networks with real names, merchant systems with credit cards, and increasingly initiatives to use one authoritative account system to authenticate with multiple services). A social shift to consider people who don't use their real names online as "creepy" or "with something to hide" may not be as impossible as you want it to be.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
diamonis 11y ago
Why are you posting anonymously? [EDIT: no, I don't go around clicking on profile links so some SJWs can accuse me of stalking.]
- jgrahamc 11y ago
  He's not. Did you click on his username?
- uncoder0 11y ago
  He isn't his contact info is in his profile.
- dsp1234 11y ago
  Clicking on the profile link: "Co-founder and CTO at Whirlscape, makers of the Minuum keyboard http://minuum.com http://minuum.com, xavier@whirlscape.com" I'm not sure that's really "posting anonymously"
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
DanBC 11y ago
People are just as hateful under their real names. The Facebook ad featuring a Sikh artist got a lot of really unpleasant comments from people using their real identities. I don't think anyone suggests the Youtube comments were any better after real-name policy.
- mahouse 11y ago
  For reference about that ad: http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_when_i_starred_in_a_facebook_ad/ http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_w...
- bkjelden 11y ago
  Facebook's userbase is so large, many users are functionally anonymous. Before online communities, most people interacted in social circles small enough that their identity actually meant something to the other participants. But on widely circulated/public posts on facebook, the audience is so large, that "John Doe from Indiana" might as well be anonymous.
- existencebox 11y ago
  Quite to the contrary, in fact. One of the big learnings from the Google real names policy was that people are JUST as willing to be terrible under their real names. What I think it is, if I may hypothesize, is merely that there is fundamentally no incentive to NOT be however you want on the internet. 9 times out of 10 nothing you say will be traced back to you, or will reflect on any aspect of your day to day life. I consider the internet a window into the uninhibited mindset of the average person, and that although we may find it distasteful, to censor it would be paramount to burying our heads in the sand about our own nature. What's worrying is that rather than find avenues to deal with it in reasonable or moderated fashion, the narratives often seem to shift to the most extreme and often dogmatic-seeming angles, more as talking points than measured response.
  - wxs 11y ago
    These points are all well-taken. Real names don't magically make people good to one another. I don't think the problem will go away with the removal of pseudonymity. I do see cases of people behaving hatefully in a way that is connected to their real identity sometimes having consequences in the real world, for instance this case recently in Toronto: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/firing-of-shawn-simoes-for-off-duty-fhritp-video-reflects-employment-trend-1.3071919 http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/firing-of-shawn-simoes-for-o... Of course that case is controversial, but social consequences are one thing that can help protect against this sort of behaviour (note that this is not really a free speech issue in that he was not put in jail). So what are social consequences we can levy online, if we want to support psudonymity and stay disconnected from our meatspace identities? One such consequence is having your hateful platform (the FPH subreddit in the Reddit case) closed. I am fine with this approach.
brock_r 11y ago
I've seen plenty of horrible Facebook posts as well, real names notwithstanding. The problems run deep. Much older than the internet.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  People have lost the fear of being ostracized by their antisocial acts because communities that thrive on such behavior are becoming increasingly easy to find.
kinghajj 11y ago
> pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood That's an extremely bad analogy. It's reasonable to expect that anyone wearing a Klan hood has inflicted some kind of harm or pain onto others, but it's not at all reasonable to expect that the typical user of a pseudonymous forum has participated in abuse.
ra1n85 11y ago
>Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online I don't feel embarrassed to support free speech when I see it abused. Your line of thought would have us all registered with the state before we could use the internet - a tragic outcome that some on this planet are already subjected to.
pdeuchler 11y ago
So what's your definition of abusive? Who's definition do we pick? Can we vote on it? What happens when a vocal minority disagrees with a consensus? What happens if that consensus harms a non-vocal minority? What happens when no matter your decision, someone will be affected adversely? Which side do you choose?
- wxs 11y ago
  No doubt it will be a constant complicated debate, as social norms tend to be. But we don't throw up our hands and say "we can't have social norms! Who picks them? How do we vote?!" Unfortunately I don't think we'll come up with a simple set of universally applicable rules and move on. I do know that my abuse-free internet experience is very much a bubble, and every time I have been given the opportunity to see the experience of a "woman with an opinion" online I get to realize this. So let's as a society say "this isn't acceptable" and then deal with the much more difficult question of "what to do about it". In any other commercial venue if a patron started shouting racist and sexist epithets, we would be ok with the owner throwing them out. We don't get caught up in slippery slope fallacies. I can't scientifically prove that Fat-people Hate was objectively abusive but that's the beauty of social norms, I can say "I think it's abusive" and put pressure on businesses to remove its platform. Which is what I'm doing :)
istvan__ 11y ago
You are saying we need censorship. Growing up in a country that had very strict censorship rules I can tell you two things: - it never works because people just simply fool the censors with twisting words the right way so the censors don't understand it but the smarter readers do. Entire genre was created for this sort of stuff in my country. - just by trying to censor people you are pushing many different groups to the same platform and they gonna overthrow the ruling class anyways because together they are stronger and they are going to get rid of censorship. Look at the history for some countries with censorship. On the top of that, how will define what safe means? This is really a double edge sword. Please watch this video, this sums up pretty nicely my opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJyDyCocGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJyDyCocGQ Guys who disagree: I do not care about karma loss because representing a non-popular view on things, but if you take the effort to downvote please have the courage to put a comment in as well.
wcummings 11y ago
>Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online. Sounds like a personal problem.
ashwinaj 11y ago
> pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood I don't think we'd like to trivialize online abuse and threats, but comparing it to the klan? Seriously. With Ms. Pao, she's shrewd in trying to get all the sympathy mileage from the Kleiner case to Reddit. Everyone loves a victim. EDIT: Thanks pc86
yellowapple 11y ago
Except that an enforcement of a real-name policy will make it even easier to abuse online users, since now a harasser (or "troll", if you will) has that much more information to go on when doxxing or otherwise imposing offline consequences for online activities. In other words, pseudonymity is, if anything, the one safeguard we have left against the sort of cyberbullying that happens with disturbing regularity. Advocating for its removal for the sake of "online safety" is the textbook definition of "backfire" (and, I'd imagine, would count as tragic irony).

itg 11y ago

From what i've seen on reddit, twitter, and sometimes even on hn, some are quick to label people whose opinion differs from theirs as trolls. It doesn't matter if it is a polite or well-though out comment, they are quick to shout the word harassment or whatever -ist allows them to hold some moral high ground.

lingben 11y ago
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." - Ralph Waldo Emerson edit: although tangentially relevant, this case in Canada is hair raising: http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-ruling-in-twitter-harassment-trial-could-have-enormous-fallout-for-free-speech http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchfor...
- seivan 11y ago
  I love that quote, especially since some claim vulgarity is harassment, abuse and bigotry. You're just going to alienate people with that kind of thinking. How do you define hate, abuse and trolls? In certain countries atheists are considered terrorists. Those who blog about atheism are haters and a bigot. It's justified to hack them to death, imprison them or whip them. In other countries female drivers are abusing the sensibilities of men. Who is to say which ones are doing the censorship right, lol.
- keedot 11y ago
  Christie Blatchford's skew is quite heavy in this reporting. I've seen the other side of the argument with some of the behaviours and tweets in question, and it's not so clear cut. I would definitely feel harassed by this individual, and in Canada, we do not claim to have the free speech as defined in America. Hate speech is not tolerated here, and most Canadians are in agreement with this. You can have a difference of opinion, but if you attack someone with words, there are legal consequences.
  - danielweber 11y ago
    > if you attack someone with words, there are legal consequences. What a horrible country. I hate it deeply.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

joelrunyon 11y ago

> The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet Does anyone honestly believe this? Even Ellen in the op-ed says > As the trolls on Reddit grew louder and more harassing in recent weeks, another group of users became more vocal. First a few sent positive messages. Then a few more. Soon, I was receiving hundreds of messages a day, and at one point thousands. These messages were thoughtful, well-written and heartfelt, in stark contrast to the trolling messages, which were usually made up of little more than four-letter words. Many shared their own stories of harassment and thanked us for our stance. I think most people see trolls as just trolls. People are going to be jerks sometimes - whether under their real name (facebook / youtube) or anonymously.

rqebmm 11y ago
Ususally titles are written not by the author, but by the editors, in order to be attention grabbing
fixermark 11y ago
The major issue is the notion that "jerks sometimes" is evolving into "jerks all the time." Not yet sure how much of this notion stems from the focus on the problem and how much is actual increase, but it's a problem nonetheless. Why do we tolerate as much trolling as we do? Why do we continue to see trolls as just trolls when we have evidence of people being bullied to suicide via the signal-magnification effect of online interaction?
- joelrunyon 11y ago
  > The major issue is the notion that "jerks sometimes" is evolving into "jerks all the time." I would doubt that. I think it's an outgrowth of more information created (so the trolls, if you're looking for them, will have more trolling as well). It's just like how the news is claiming things are always getting worse. They're not. Things are better than ever, we're just getting much better at hearing about the outlier cases of when bad things do happen.

jmount 11y ago

Definitely an interesting read. Mostly I am with Pao. But I do feel Reddit has been in the business of supplying a troll friendly environment that is just interesting/safe enough to monetize for quite some time. So, in my opinion, nobody truly "anti-troll" would have stepped into the situation.

deathhand 11y ago

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

songshu 11y ago

Misquoting Bart Simpson "If you never experience the abuse, you'll never get desensitized to it", and with that in mind, and talking here only about written abuse, these are my favorite three outcomes for, let's say, my daughter: 1) No one abuses her online 2) People abuse her, she dismisses it as noise 3) People abuse her, and she reacts and attempts to control it I think we should be aiming for number 2.

seivan 11y ago
One could argue that she should never be subjected to it to begin with. It's not bad argument either. I am not disagreeing with you, just saying you can't expect people not to pick #1 or use #3 to make a buck or two.
maxerickson 11y ago
We absolutely should be aiming for number 1. I think I get your point, that it is healthy to be able to deal with the world as it is, but that doesn't mean that we have to accept or embrace it as it is.
- icpmacdo 11y ago
  I agree with you. I dont think that that would be practical though so teaching #2 is probably going to help the most amount of people.
- sssilver 11y ago
  What her daughter may perceive as "abuse" can be very subjective. That's why censorship in general is never a good idea. Learning to "dismiss" it as noise is a more scalable and elegant approach, and doesn't limit anyone's freedoms in a subjective way.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    I'm not advocating for censorship when I say that we should be aiming to not have people abusing each other. We should be aiming for a society where no one wants to abuse other people. Maybe that's dreamy-eyed nonsense, but I think when you talk about aims you have to let ideals in, not just stick to what is practical tomorrow.

lhnz 11y ago

Does anybody remember when trolling was a term used to describe an activity in which users wielding enough understanding of other's perspectives would attempt to give other's cognitive dissonance? It seems that one of the most powerful online political classes have lumped hatred and abuse in with disagreement, mockery and satire. I don't think it's good for the conversation between the group of user's that dislike where Reddit and other big social media sites are headed and the people that are taking them there.

dragonwriter 11y ago
EDIT: Removed overreaction to grammatical pet peeve that distracts from the main point. > It seems that one of the most powerful online political classes have lumped hatred and abuse in with disagreement and mockery. Its pretty common, online and off, for people of all classes to ascribe disagreement with their preferred position with "hatred and abuse". Mistaking this common error for a feature of a particular "powerful online class" is, AFAICT, the same kind of misperception of persecution as the error itself.
lcswi 11y ago
It is really easy to define the meaning of terms if you are the easy-to-agree-with side of a conflict. And now you cannot even mention the elephant in the room anymore without being immediately flagged, banned or at least called a women hating privileged white boy.
ewzimm 11y ago
I miss those days when I was proud to be a troll, when it meant tricking people into thinking in ways that they normally wouldn't. People used to love trolls! Of course, it didn't just mean that. There were also troll raids when friends would get together and make silly comments on every thread they could find, crashing the party but having fun with it. The incendiary ones used to be called flamers, but I think that term is too trollish to use against trolls these days.
- imron 11y ago
  > People used to love trolls! No they didn't. > crashing the party but having fun with it. I'm sure you and your friends were having fun with it. The people whose parties you crashed? Probably not so much.

dominotw 11y ago

Reminded me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co5jTvGlt6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co5jTvGlt6Y

MrDosu 11y ago

People like to gossip and trashtalk. We can act like it is not human nature and philosophize about ideal conversation, but one look at the afternoon TV programme will quickly convince you otherwise. Imo the way forward is not demonizing either social group, but to give each their own forum for expression. The word 'troll' is an extremely slippery slope...

facepalm 11y ago

Where can you actually still have an uncensored discussion on the internet?

intrasight 11y ago
Setup a chat server and invite people
qznc 11y ago
On your blog.
fixermark 11y ago
USENET, via email, via your own server, via a blog you host on your own server. But those solutions (a) take effort and (b) implicitly decrease your potential audience because you aren't piggy-backing on some other organization's social networking. So it's understandable why people who get their jollies on upsetting other people would prefer an easier solution for them, like Reddit letting them say whatever they choose to unhindered because "Freedom of speech." I'm 100% in favor of people who want to talk about topics Reddit has rejected setting up their own competitor. Maybe it will even become as big as Reddit. It's happened before.

antrover 11y ago

The trolls are a small, small percentage of users but some of the loudest.

ForHackernews 11y ago

She's still a millionaire executive. Obviously nobody deserves the kind of abuse she's gotten, but I think I could put up with a whole lot of nobodies saying mean things about me on the internet in return for being in her position.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> She's still a millionaire executive. I would presume she's still a millionaire, though I don't have access to her current finances. Of what is she still an executive?
- ForHackernews 11y ago
  Fine, she's technically between positions. You know as well as I do that she will shortly be made an executive or a board member of some other firm(s). She is part of the executive class.

trhway 11y ago

may be, yet it is still doesn't help them win in court ... Without any reason, just as a fishing expedition for millions of dollars, she basically publicly labeled a bunch of men as sexist pigs. Talking about trolling, ehh..

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dimino 11y ago

Trolls used to mean (and I think still does mean) a person who attempts to voice an opinion they don't hold with the intent of invoking a negative reaction out of someone else. Most of the folks spewing bile at Ellen Pao probably don't actually hate her, but can't help seeing their actions have an effect. Trolls don't win if you ignore them -- the shitshow that's been Reddit this past month is almost entirely because Ellen and co. can't/won't stop reacting to short-sighted outcries from Reddit's userbase. Yishan, Ellen, Alexis, Steve, even Sam, and everyone else involved needs to shut the fuck up (publicly) about Reddit for a few weeks. This whole "airing of grievances" is actually what's killing Reddit, not the trolls. What I want to see is legal action taken against Yishan for fueling this well beyond its natural life. He had to violate an NDA of some kind with all the extra fuel he's been throwing onto this...

danielweber 11y ago
http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/troller.htm http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/troller.htm It referred to trolling the way fishermen troll for fish. It didn't really have anything to do with the "ogre" definition of troll, but that's what it means in most people's minds now.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  That's kind of what happens when you noun a verb that is already a noun with a very different meaning.

msandford 11y ago

The trolls won the war for usenet too. It didn't destroy the internet. Just because trolls are making reddit unpleasant doesn't mean that they will destroy the internet. reddit isn't the whole internet, not even close! Furthermore, supposing that reddit users revolting against the clamping-down of reddit management constitutes the "biggest trolling attacks in history" is a little disingenuous. What about all the people who got internet famous for dumb stuff like the mustard guy or folks that got pranked by Sacha Baron Cohen or the jackass guys? Those were arguably trolling, and they got made into major motion pictures that got commercials and put into theaters! Reddit trolls just post nasty comments on reddit, a place that probably half of America barely knows about and definitely doesn't care about. I'm not saying that the nasty stuff that happened to her didn't happen, or that it's somehow not a big deal. It obviously is a big deal to her, and a great many other people as well. But that doesn't make it the "largest trolling attack in history"

smacktoward 11y ago
> The trolls won the war for usenet too. It didn't destroy the internet. It sure as hell destroyed Usenet, though. I remember, because I was there when it happened. At least when we lost Usenet there was somewhere else for all those discussions to migrate to: the Web. If they destroy the Web, where are the discussions supposed to go then?
- msandford 11y ago
  Please remember that just because someone says a thing, that does not make it true. Reddit is not the WHOLE internet. Just because trolls are causing havoc at reddit doesn't mean that they're winning everywhere. Further any one website isn't the whole internet. Usenet was a unified system, the myraid websites that people troll on right now are not. Facebook is different from Reddit which is different from slashdot which is different from HN which is different from etc.

dgfv1 11y ago

Maybe they shouldn't have started the war in the first place. Stop trying to gentrify the internet. Also, people who disagree with you == trolls? Nice.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
pekk 11y ago
I'm seeing a lot of this meme that the internet is gentrifying, and I think it's worth discussing. I'm certain the internet isn't getting more gentrified over time. The internet was extremely gentrified when it was populated only by a relatively tiny elite which tended toward prestigious academic affiliations and higher status. Even the old BBS scene, though a little more populist and accessible to people at home with phone lines and home computers, looks pretty genteel and exclusive by modern standards. The internet sure felt a lot more democratic when issues like DDOS, doxing, spam, child porn distribution (just to name a few) were not that hard to avoid, so measures against them did not feel that urgent. But that atmosphere is directly related to the selective nature of the audience. Things as small as the introduction of AOL users to USENET caused massive upheavals back in the day. The "barbarians" were at the gates. It's not coincidental that Facebook built traction against Friendster, etc. largely by restricting to people with academic affiliations, Reddit got its start from a userbase that was more "selective," etc. But then the floodgates are gradually opened to the "barbarians" who were very unlikely ever to have patronized USENET, a BBS, or even an early-2000s phpBB. In reality, that ratchet only moves forward, and the internet population gets more and more like the general population. Pervasive commercialization is actually part of that trend away from gentrification. It's not gated communities, it's Wal-Mart, payday loan joints, low-end casinos and hawkers in the streets. It's not Singapore, it's a developing country. And for better or worse, nobody can do anything about that.

serve_yay 11y ago

What I really care about: Who gets to decide who is a troll and who isn't?

pekk 11y ago
People have been trying to automate moderation and make it perfectly fair for a long time now. It's basically impossible. If you do it at all, you have to use people, which makes it suck. If you don't do any moderation, you get a sewer, and then you get shut down. You can try to exclude only illegal stuff and stand on free speech, but in terms of content you still have a sewer. To be fair, most of the stuff that moves through sewers is not deadly poison, just crap and water. Some people like sewers, so sewer cities continue to be built for people to live in, but most people find them unattractive, so they never take over the world. To make something more attractive out of all the crap people emit, you need a modicum of moderation, which always comes from other people. Which means it is essentially unfair, capricious, and creates incentives to endless mediocrity and pandering. But even if we accept that rather than going back to the sewers, one man's perfect moderator is the other man's little Hitler. So maybe we should just crowdsource moderation! Brilliant! But "democratic" crowd moderation is essentially a way of diffusing responsibility for censorship. The censorship of whoever happens to brigade your posts (maybe with sockpuppets, or external links) is not any more free, or pleasant, than any other censorship. Meanwhile, upvoting and downvoting takes on a massive life of its own and creates arenas for endless meta-gaming like subcommunities trying to push each other out. This takes over the site. If you manage the site, have fun managing all that effectively, and try not to get sucked in. If what you want is fairness, all you can do is publish explicit policy (NOT legal ToS) so people know and agree to what they're getting into - then enforce that policy universally to the letter. That will be fair only in the limited sense that everyone agrees to it the same, like the rules of chess. But human-based moderation will never be fair.
- serve_yay 11y ago
  That's not really what I mean. I have no problem with, say, reddit deciding that a "fat people hate" forum is not fit for its site. It's their site, they get to decide that. Rather, what I am concerned about is the broader conversation which takes place in articles like TFA, by prominent people such as Pao, and by journalists. This broader conversation uses the word "troll" - but who gets to decide which opinions are in that bucket, and therefore not acceptable? It is easy to say racists are trolls, it's uncontroversial for the most part. But what about, say, gender-critical radical feminists? These are people who challenge certain received beliefs around what gender means, or should mean. They are not hateful, and they are 100% serious about making the world better for women, yet are often accused of transphobia (and worse) for what they believe. They get death threats (from other people who also call themselves feminists) and the rest of it. And it would be so easy to place them in the "troll" category.

ajkjk 11y ago

I wish that there was some sort of Internet-wide 'reputation system' that would accumulate one's reputation across all websites they use - while preserving their pseudonymity on each site. As an analogy, Steam and Battle.net and other gaming platforms have something going for them, maybe by accident: by using one account across lots of games, the risks incurred by cheating are amplified. If you cheat (or harass) in one game, your account can be banned across all games. This means that if you care about your account on one game still existing, you're disincentivized from cheating in other games, even if you don't care about them. I play League of Legends regularly, and Riot Games has put in huge amounts of work in figuring out a way to discipline abusive players that will actually induce them to reform. They have shown that most people, when branded as abusive, will often reform their behavior immediately - as if they did not realize (or did not internalize) what kind of person they were being. See, for example, http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/6/7500045/riot-games-league-of-legends-bans-rewards-behavior http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/6/7500045/riot-games-league-of... . But it's saddening that all of Riot's work in reforming players or banning them if they can't get along with others cannot be used to weed out these toxic players in other games. I love gaming, but, for me, the absolute worst thing about this hobby is how awful everyone is to each other, and I would love to see a systematic solution. I wish something like Steam's centralized identity existed across online forums. I wish we used one account everywhere, and the use of a widely-connected account was required to sign up to things - but the details of who you are, and how to associate your identity on one site with your identity on another site, is totally masked to everyone. Site owners and users cannot tell that userA on reddit is also userA on, say, some Disqus blog. But your reputation would still be preserved across sites: if you were reported as a spammer or a bully or a cheater on one site, it would be visible to the other sites you were on. And if those sites wanted to ban you based on your common reputation, they could. This puts a large burden on the identity management platform. They have to handle everyone's privacy and security, deal with accounts being hacked and used for spam or abuse, provide mechanisms for people to prove their behavior has improved and remove black marks from their records, deal with websites that submit false abuse claims, etc. And (hopefully) they have to be resilient to law enforcement trying to use these records to complete expose users on every website. But at least they could do it in one place, instead of every website having to solve all of these problems independently. It seems to me that good behavior in 'tribal' human society was enforced by having to, well, remain in one's tribe, and having to convince everyone to put up with you if you want to survive. It also seems that being labeled, with numbers, as a 'bully' or a 'cheater' can have a positive effect in reforming people's behavior. We would need a centralized reputation system like what I've described to do this. This is on the list of "things I would like to build". [edited for awkward phrasing]

omarforgotpwd 11y ago

"I have just endured one of the largest trolling attacks in history" I don't know enough about what Ellen went through to comment on it, but I find this comment very funny, and it made it hard to take the rest of the article seriously.

partiallypro 11y ago

I'm going to disagree. I've been in IRC, Forums, Newsgroups, lurked 4Chan, Reddit, and Slashdot for years. It has actually been evolving to a point, especially among the younger crowd to get bent out of shape about essentially nothing. Maybe that is because more of our lives are online than before, but if you were to go through Twitter and Tumblr and just browse around it is a huge mess of people constantly being offended and wanting an apology. I'm not defending the Redditors that legitimately harassed Ellen Pao. However, modern media (like Gawker, Vox, Salon, Slate, etc) can somehow turn 3 tweets from anonymous people with no followers into a national shit storm. These media outlets feed the trolls, because it gets them clicks. So, it is of my opinion that the "trolls" aren't "winning" the battle, they just haven't left, and never will. The news outlets are click junkies and know they can foment faux rage by enticing people who otherwise we would have just ignored 10+ years ago. Of course they look large in numbers if you're putting them under the microscope. The thing people who have little online experience miss is that they are making things worse by giving people attention and trying to "silence" them.

fixermark 11y ago
Does "Just don't feed the trolls" continue to work in a world where trolls know that SWATting someone is as easy as picking up a phone, and doxxing someone can have significant long-term consequences?
- msandford 11y ago
  Should we repeal the first amendment because people sometimes used racial or ethnic slurs? Or they deny the moon landing? Or say things that your preferred political party happens to disagree with? Or maybe only things that YOU disagree with?
  - fixermark 11y ago
    Nobody is recommending a repeal of the First Amendment. At best, the conversation is about whether orgs like Reddit have any obligation (moral, business, or otherwise) to allow people screaming racial or ethnic slurs to stand on (metaphorically speaking) their property and use their megaphones. Usenet still exists, and nobody is stopping people from using it. It's just not where trolls go to be heard anymore, because nobody is there to hear them. ;)

Claudus 11y ago

I've been following the Ellen Pao debacle on Reddit, and her misuse of the term "troll" in the article illustrates her ignorance of Internet and Reddit culture that led to her stepping down as CEO. I'm sure there were many offensive, harassing, and vitriolic comments and directed at her, however they were a result of her incompetent actions and failure to understand the culture that caused the problem, not due to trolls or trolling.

tosseraccount 11y ago

Don't like trolls. Don't visit reddit.

rbanffy 11y ago

The Internet? They are gaining ground everywhere. Winning the argument is more important than being right.

DanBlake 11y ago

The situation at reddit is appalling and the death threats and egregious harassment against Pao were wrong, and likely illegal in some cases. That said, my opinion of her is that she is far from the champion that this battle needs. I believe that the most common view of Pao is not too savory, between her husbands ponzi scheme, the details that came out of the KPCB trial and the plethora of other poor decision taken by her, she has made it easy to find faults with her character.

x0x0 11y ago
shorter: Pao is subject to appalling abuse but she brought it on herself because of her supposed character faults and the things her husband did. I think that nicely proves her point. Even if you don't care for her decisions, she still shouldn't be treated the way she is.

eonw 11y ago

i just think its dumb how people want to "change" the internet, or anything for that matter. its not a tamable creature, its anarchy and chaos and humanity in all of its glory, good or bad. it bothers me when people say we need to take something off the internet... no really, we dont, it was put there for a reason, no matter how misguided that reason may be. hate speech, no matter how distasteful is still free speech. dont want to see it on reddit, dont look for it! i mean quite frankly, if you are fat and self conscious, going to a "fat haters" forum is probably going to end poorly for you. as for her statistic about 40% of internet users saying they have been bullied... welcome to the real world lady! run that same quiz in a random highschool and i'd bet its double that percentage... people are mean. why should the internet not reflect real life? art imitates life. it also bothers me these people saying we need to change hiring practices and other such nonsense. many things self regulate, leave them alone.

balls187 11y ago

Given her past, Ellen Pao is not very credible. Her opinion seems part of her self serving rhetoric that is now focused on presenting herself as a martyr. Incivility has always been a problem in human society--it's magnified by the internet, because of the lack of consequences.

dade_ 11y ago

Rule #1: Never feed the trolls. She has just given them a feast. I miss FidoNet, it used to be so easy to shut down abuse and the conversations were so much more thoughtful. I wonder if we can ever get that back.

escobar 11y ago

> I have just endured one of the largest trolling attacks in history. I feel bad for Ellen and have nothing against her, I don't really go on reddit much. I am aware that she was more or less a scapegoat. But still, for some reason, AND even though the second sentence of the article almost saves face, this statement still bothers me. Sure, she got picked on by reddit quite a bit for lack of transparency, and got thrown under the bus by other high-ranking officials at Reddit. But to come out and make yourself seem like a champion still illustrates her inflated sense of importance - she's a millionaire exec in an interim position who made mistakes, and got called out in an online forum.

angersock 11y ago

Ugh. But that balancing act is getting harder. The trolls are winning. The success of the original balancing act was that there wasn't one--it was an open platform, it was a loose federation, and it was decentralized. By creating these massive walled gardens and trying to monetize them, companies like Reddit have suddenly had to take a stand. Short surprise that they're running into problems that didn't exist before they decided to create these massive platforms. If you democratize access to mass point-to-point communications, guess what? By definition, half of your users are of below average empathy and responsibility. But to attract more mainstream audiences and bring in the big-budget advertisers, you must hide or remove the ugly. Gentrification of the Internet. As the threats became really violent, people ended their messages with “stay safe.” Threats can be graphic, not violent--if they're violent, they're not threats.

ElComradio 11y ago

Unfortunately we can't trust the intentions of this piece. She might not actually care about trolls at all, just brushes them off like I do. It's an image piece, designed to fulfill specific purposes, and I doubt the purpose is merely to spread the message of the positive potential of humanity on the Internet.

krstck 11y ago

I'm not sure that the solution is to completely prevent trolling rather than to inoculate ourselves against it. Part of 'trolling' (in the sense being talked about here) is knowing what to use against the victim for maximum shock value or impact. I don't think Pao was hated because she was a woman or asian. I think that she was hated, and therefore they found an easy way to disparage her by throwing slurs about her gender and race. It's shocking to see such words and that's precisely why people use them. I don't think that the world would be a better place if it we cloned it as is and scrubbed all negative references for race/gender/other protected characteristic. I think people will be just as nasty. They'll be nasty using different words to strike at different vulnerabilities. The problem isn't "racism" or "sexism", it's people being plain, old-fashioned mean.

upofadown 11y ago

Trolling is not a new thing. As long as hateful and/or sociopathic and/or sadistic people exist there will be trolls and trolling. You can only manage trolling, you can't eliminate it. That's the mistake Reddit made, they thought they could eliminate it, or at least hide it, and that isn't something that anyone knows how to do. In their efforts they make some basic mistakes. They removed areas where the trolls had self segregated (ex. fatshaming) forcing them back into the rest of the community. They failed to properly ignore the trolls and reacted to them up to the extent of claiming that the resignation of a member of their executive had something to do with their actions. I predict that the Reddit troll problem is going to get much worse before it gets better.

georgemonck 11y ago

There are a few underlying issues here. There is a lot of denial about the nature of the intellectual bell curve. The majority of people are not that smart and cannot make thoughtful contributions to most discussions. The majority of people will at least some of the time lose decorum and make vicious personal attacks when they perceive themselves as being threatened or as being wronged. Upvoting and downvoting is an action, and action requires motivation. Thus, unless an audience is especially smart and valuing of rationality, comments are most likely to get upvotes when they provoke an emotional reaction. To have a high quality discussion board you must have a critical mass of reasonable, smart people. You must avoid letting in the hoi polloi. And you must quickly ban users who make dumb comments or violate decorum. However, most internet business models are based on advertising. Advertising revenues are based on eyeballs. And a normal stupid person's eyeballs are worth just as much as smart person's eyeballs (perhaps more, the smart person probably has adblock installed). Thus the central conflict. Business models are based on making it as easy as possible for normal people to get engaged in the platform. But the result of normal people getting engaged will be vicious and unsavory content. Also if it is easy to create account, then it is easy to switch accounts if one account is banned. So it becomes impossible to silence the unsavory users. I think that ultimately Reddit will end up as sort of the Wikipedia version of a newspaper. All pretense of being free speech or democratic will be dropped in the major subreddits. Rather it will be a media site on a variety of issues that is mostly top-down, and controlled by the actions of entrenched, established users and moderators.

godgod 11y ago

I can't stand this Ellen Pao fraud. Has she not used the internet before? It has always been this way. Pao is grossly naive in so many capacities. She failed to understand her audience at reddit and clearly doesn't understand one of the fundamental tenants to using the internet; being able to scream and shout at people in my underware is a right. Poke the hive, expect angry bees. I wish Ellen Pao would just, GO AWAY! I'm sure she will resume suing her way to the top very soon.

anthony_romeo 11y ago

Many of responses I read here are infuriating because many are deliberately ignoring the issue of harassment by claiming it's a free speech issue. In the US you do not have 100% freedom of speech. If you deliberately incite violence against another person through speech, you can be charged with a crime. You can face a lawsuit for assault without touching the victim. You can be charged for, say, harassing others in the workplace. You certainly have the right to speak your mind, but if you think you have the right to deliberately cause severe mental distress, not through mere discussion of your points, but through repetitive and abusive language and getting your cohorts to join you in the assault, you are absolutely mistaken. Even if we were to assume some enshrined right to harass individuals, perhaps it's not the best way to go about a disagreement. Further, people are choosing to get angry over the false binary of freedom vs harassment, and choosing to ignore the third option of choosing empathy, tact, or clear and fair discussion over slinging barbs at others. I'm reading comments along the lines of 'well, it couldn't have been that bad' or 'I don't know enough about the extent of the harassment, but I'm going to comment about semantics or the 100 percent accuracy [as opposed to, say, 90 percent] of her claims anyway!' Your comments are pointless and dance around the actual issue of abuse. You fail to feel any sort of empathy because you yourself are not the victim. I hear people making fun of the concept of 'microaggression' because they fail to adequately understand its meaning. The point is that it's really easy to throw a one-line insult to someone, but in aggregate it can cause great distress, because the throwaway comments of a thousand people can feel like one very persistent stalker. People dismiss this by saying 'oh it's normal' and recommend they just ignore it. Frankly, the point is that it should not be normal, and some people have difficulty ignoring it. And I know some will deliberately choose to misconstrue what I'm saying here. No, I'm not saying that we should censor the Internet and ban all controversial discussion. I would just hope that more people become aware that it is a real issue that people face, and that commenters should be aware of their own actions and reevaluate how they choose respond to conflicts.

wf 11y ago

Reading all of this has given me the beginnings of an idea. Although I'm not a machine learning/NLP expert the idea is obviously non-trivial to an extreme (maybe impossible, currently): What if there were a forum similar in style to reddit that had a form of auto-moderation that identified logical fallacies and other irrelevant information and then highlighted those within arguments. For example if there was an ad hominem attack "Fuck you Ellen Pao." The auto moderator would allow the post but would highlight the text red with a small bubble identifying it as ad hominem, users could react appropriately. Or, maybe you have a long well thought out argument that has a straw man in it. The auto-mod could highlight the straw man to point out that it exists and maybe even format the post to show the point from which the rest of the position is based on that. Maybe this wouldn't have to be actively presented but just a tool that comments were run through so users could be warned prior to their submissions. Obviously the complications with this would be ridiculous and you could never stop training the algorithm that was processing your text. But the implications of having such a thing seem pretty incredible.

slang800 11y ago

> The trolls are winning the battle for the Internet The trolls aren't "winning" because "the trolls" aren't an organization. They don't have an ideology that they're pushing, or some end-goal that they're hoping to achieve. They're a byproduct of free speech that we all have to deal with. But most importantly, they're not even able to be categorized uniformly. What is trolling to one person, may be comedy, satire, or even just _disagreement_ to another.

hellbanTHIS 11y ago

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/Antisocial_Behavior_files/antisocial_behavior_trolls.pdf http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/Antisocial_Behavior_file... tldr; heavy moderation actually causes trolling on sites like Reddit. >taking extreme action against small infractions can exacerbate antisocial behavior (e.g., unfairness can cause users to write worse). Though average classifier precision is relatively high (0.80), one in five users identified as antisocial are nonetheless misclassified. Whereas trading off overall performance for higher precision and have a human moder- ator approve any bans is one way to avoid incorrectly blocking innocent users, a better response may instead involve giving antisocial users a chance to redeem themselves. The whole thing with Pao got out of control because somebody was routinely deleting comments and shadowbanning people who mentioned the trouble her husband was in. Whether it was her, another admin or a moderator doing the banning that was what fueled the fire. Moderation on Reddit is insane, a single basement dweller with sociopathic tendencies (99% of forum moderators everywhere) can control the conversation totally, they constantly ban discussion that they don't agree with and there is absolutely no transparency. It happens to be a wonderful way of incubating hate groups by eliminating cross pollination of ideas, but it also tends to piss people off.

klunger 11y ago

I am afraid that she is right. The few times I have tried dipping my toes into Reddit, I have been attacked by users so filled with bile they seemingly could not communicate without spewing it up. It left me just flabbergasted by how little provoked them, or how they somehow thought their behavior was appropriate or justified. These scattered but blessedly brief experiences have been so horrible that I have completely given up on it. I wish it were not the case -- Aaron Swartz is one of my heroes - but I am afraid this particular legacy of his has just spoiled.

rabbyte 11y ago

> Reddit is the Internet. That's an insane thing to say. I know she's the former CEO but anybody saying this is losing perspective. There are countless communities not on Reddit and they can't be represented by Reddit. I know it's probably a conscious exaggeration but it's getting hard to tell, people take this forum shit so seriously.