
The Internet Trolls Have Won. Sorry, There’s Not Much You Can Do - dredmorbius
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/technology/personaltech/internet-trolls-comments.html
======
Anita_kiss
Everybody is going to hate this comment.

People are going to be assholes, Always. They will yell at you for standing in
their way They will insult you and your entire family if they don't like the
way you drive your car. They will try to undermine your competence at the
workplace and spread rumors.

All of this has happened to me in real life before social was that big. I'm
not even going to start saying what happened to me on the Internet. Let me
just say that after what I have experienced I only upload pictures that are
guaranteed free of metadata double and tripple checked for content
(reflections, business fronts, street names,etc)

Is it okay? No! should we just take it? No! Should we just ban everybody and
everything? Also No!

Either you can handle that or you don't

I totally agree that some things are going too far and should have
consequences. Telling somebody that they completely suck at coding is not nice
but is an expression of free speech. Telling somebody that they are a useless
piece of shit and should be shot is completely over the line.

~~~
dredmorbius
This in part addresses your remarks:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17722767](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17722767)

------
DarkWiiPlayer
I have never really understood the extend to which people take troll comments
seriously. It just seems no more than a bit annoying to me, to start reading a
comment and find out halfway through it's just a bunch of insults with no real
content. I won't let a few wasted seconds make my day worse than it would
otherwise have been. Why do people get so invested in what others say online?
Don't they realize it's nothing more than a cheap attempt to get some
attention?

EDIT: Note that I am not talking about anything that actually incites
violence. There's a big difference between "I hope X gets shot" and "Here's Xs
address, let's all meet up at their house and actually shoot them". The latter
is (rightfully) illegal in most places anyway.

------
f_allwein
> our faith in the internet may erode until we distrust it as much as we do TV
> news

strange comparison from a European perspective, as TV news are seen as
balanced and trustworthy (at least in UK and Germany, where I lived).

~~~
VladTheImplier
How did you come to this conclusion? In Germany survey after survey shows some
deep mistrust. Between 40%-60% depending on where and how the survey took
place describe mainstream media as "not trustworthy", whilst a certain survey
asked for malicious intent specifically and 20% agrees with the notion main
stream media is manipulating the public with false information on certain
topics.

Source: [https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Das-Vertrauen-in-Medien-
ist...](https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Das-Vertrauen-in-Medien-ist-nicht-
nur-in-Deutschland-gering-3176801.html)

~~~
f_allwein
Interesting - wasn't aware of that...

------
axilmar
About the comments, here is a solution that might work: a persistent
upvote/downvote score along with a default view filter based on voting.

Say you are someone who consistently spews out racist comments? as you are
being downvoted, the initial vote number for new comments goes down. Any new
comment you make will start with a negative number, and hence people will not
see it if the number goes beyond what is the current view filter limit.

This number will go up as you are upvoted or not downvoted.

~~~
flukus
Aside from the whole echo chamber problem this wouldn't be granular enough.
Imagine the perfect HN user, always giving well thought it, well reasoned and
informative posts and they usually only post about topic X which is their
expertise. When they then post something not so well thought out about topic Y
in which they are not well versed should their comment by at the top?

~~~
dredmorbius
I'll freely admit that despite my considered screed above, it's often far
simpler to merely downvote.

HN mods _are_ responsive to emailed notices of questionable (or flagrant)
misbehaviour. Not always in agreement, though often so.

------
blablablerg
Does the writer realise that a clickbait title followed without any statistics
to back up the claim is also just a form of trolling?

~~~
DarkWiiPlayer
It's not though. The title already makes it quite clear that what follows is
just an opinion. That being said, the article seemed kind of lacking in
substance beyond what was already said in the title.

