

Are Trolls Ruining Social Media? - skwiggle
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/are_trolls_ruining_social_media.php

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codahale
_Online anonymity is just a leftover from the early days of the web - a time
when there really just weren't other options._

What, you mean when services expected your machine to be running identd? When
finger worked? When your IP uniquely identified you? When sysadmins knew your
phone number?

If anything, the internet has trended _towards_ anonymity as it's aged -- the
more people are online, the harder it is to track someone down.

~~~
DLWormwood
You nailed it. The original notion was that the Internet was "peer-to-peer,"
but people have forgotten what this originally meant. Machines on the 'Net
were expected to be somewhat sophisticated service and intelligence-wise
(since they were owned and operated by universities, military establishments,
etc.) IP addresses originally had identifying characteristics that could be
tracked to an employer, if not an individual or department. Even when
"anonymous" PCs and Macs were originally being hooked up the Internet (first
directly, then later via NAT) the initial connection tools still provided
support for identification via finger, message signatures and so on to
continue this tradition. (Anarchie, one of the first Mac FTP clients, also
doubled as a Unix-like identification stack when configured fully. Many PC
video game developers, like John Carmack, continued to use .plan files prior
to rise of the modern "blog.")

But then the Endless September came, and most end users by this point weren't
versed in "netiquette" or the whole RFC tradition to know how to use such
tools and protocols, so anonymity crept in as an accidental default state. (As
the drift towards the modern connotation of "peer-to-peer" demonstrates.) I
personally got online about year or so before this, spent time lurking and
learning the ways of the old Internet, only to watch in horror as my peers
didn't give a s--t and ruined it for the rest of us.

------
pg
"Online anonymity is just a leftover from the early days of the web - a time
when there really just weren't other options."

I disagree. I thought about this when we were starting HN, and I deliberately
opted for anonymity, though with profiles if people wanted to post stuff in
them. When all people know about you is what you say, they judge you based on
what you say, instead of who you are.

~~~
tokenadult
_When all people know about you is what you say, they judge you based on what
you say, instead of who you are._

But there is no such anonymity for the user known here as "pg."

~~~
mapleoin
maybe he's got more users?

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alex_c
_This could be easily accomplished by simply putting an end to online
anonymity - a trend that hasn't quite arrived yet. [...] Online anonymity is
just a leftover from the early days of the web - a time when there really just
weren't other options. You just created a handle, set up an account, and began
to write. Now that we have the tools to identify each other, shouldn't we
begin to use them? Think of all the problems it would solve[...]_

This sounds a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There's a lot
of talk of "the problems it would solve", but what would the costs be?

~~~
cosinepi
Lower participation and, as a result, maybe lower advertising earnings. On the
other hand, the cost of not controlling bad content could be much higher both
in monetary and non-monetary terms.

~~~
rue
...Says Mr. Cosinepi :)

------
GHFigs
_As tons of celebs flock to Twitter in an effort to regain control of their
image_

Control? You have control over what you put into the world and you have
control over what you pay attention to. You do not have control over what
people think or say. At best you have _influence_.

------
joshu
Delicious very explicitly did not have comments/discussion/etc in order to
make it a placid place. This probably cut down the engagement, because there
were no discussions to be in, etc.

I believe that most social features are really just mechanical coping
mechanisms. Generally to deal with traffic, but some for spam, trolling, etc.
We need to come up with some better coping mechanisms. (And news.yc has been
inspiringly innovative in this regard.)

------
madair
Another article to end anonymity while being utterly blind to the problems of
oppression that dominate the majority of the world's population.

People of fame need to accept the trade-offs, particularly people who strive
to become famous. So they may not be able to use Twitter like the rest of us.
Although I think most people of reasonable fame are using it just fine.

We're talking about about Trent Reznor here, not everyone encourages and
profits from typically very young people by writing consistently dark, sex-
infused and anti-authoritarian lyrics. He's gonna have to take his lumps.

Plus, like the article says, there are places he can go, like Facebook, where
he can deal with a more well identified group. This article is just pushing an
agenda that's removed from the real nature of Trent Reznor's online experience
and options.

I wish that people who write these calls for removing anonymity would get a
more mature world-view.

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TrevorJ
The internet, like the world, has neighborhoods. They change over time, and
they have there own characteristics. There are places you can go to have
healthy, civil debates, and places you can go to be exposed to flame wars and
adolescent behavior.

Big names (Like Reznor) have fans who follow them to whatever online
neighborhood they may move into. Reznors' experience may say more about the
type of people his music attracts than it does about the internet at large.
There are plenty of well-know people who are able to use the internet as a way
to engage a readership in meaningful ways, and a lot of it has to do with the
audience they attract. If Reznor was a classically trained Violinist, for
instance, I'm willing to bet his foray into social media would have had a
different result.

~~~
michael_dorfman
...and I'm willing to bet that a classically trained violinist with a
sufficiently large following would prove a very attractive target to trolls.

Are there really places on the internet you can "go to have health, civil
debates" that are a) troll-free, and b) unmoderated? The world has
neighborhoods, each one tnds to have its own police force.

~~~
TrevorJ
Everything is moderated to the extent that you can choose to remove yourself
from the situation. Moderation in some form has to exist to limit the chaos.
It's not black and white either, sure anyone of a certain level of popularity
will get trolls to some extent, you are right. That happens in real life too.
I'm just saying that it matters 'where' the discourse is taking place and it
matters who is involved. If you and I where having this conversation on
Reddit, somebody would probably have trolled us already.

------
jerf
Can anyone actually prove that forcing everyone to identify themselves would
cut off trolling? Everyone seems to take that as given, but I don't see the
evidence. Especially if you define "trolling" large enough to include things
like merely being anti-social, or being voluminous, or just anything in
general that would make you not want to be online.

You might _cut down_ on the trolling, but merely, say, cutting it in half
isn't going to change anything.

~~~
evgen
It is actually kind of simple really. If you have fixed identity (or even
psuedonyms that are tied to a "true name" a la Chaumian credentials) then
filtering out bad behavior becomes easier. Users cannot create sock puppets,
they get one chance to troll and then join the global killfile or get put a
sufficient number of user killfiles as to have the same effect. If the
identity was non-pseudonymous or the pseudonym systems supported cross-domain
joins it would get even harder to troll since a trolling attempt at site A
might get you added to user filters at sites B and C.

The trolls would not go away, but no one would ever see them and this would
have the same effect.

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icey
If the idea that we should all get identified on the internet takes foot (and
I seriously doubt it will), my guess is that we will see an almost immediate
fragmentation of the internet.

If you look at wifi maps of any major metropolitan area, they're almost all
completely covered with signal these days. A mesh system could be brought up
very quickly, with some point-to-point communication to get beyond metro
areas. Once that happens I'm sure there will have to be some people who will
end up having to tunnel to a "Free-speech zone", but many Chinese citizens are
already doing that today to circumvent the Great Firewall. The infrastructure
is already in place to escape any attempts at censorship or forced
identification now.

Of course, what I'm suggesting is ridiculous... but not quite as ridiculous as
recommending we all get on board and verify who we are for every site we visit
and every comment we leave.

~~~
tokenadult
_my guess is that we will see an almost immediate fragmentation of the
internet._

Are you saying that we haven't seen that already?

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tptacek
What, because rock stars don't like talking to (mental and physical)
adolescents in open forums?

------
beefman
Very funny

~~~
beefman
Downvotes, really? I thought it was quite clever. And accurate. We are talking
about the headline 'Are trolls ruining social media?' here.

