An interesting article. Certainly I'd prefer to moderate ourselves. Hopefully I or we don't push Saeed or Don to this point.


Times Topic: Social NetworkingTHERE you are, peacefully reading an article or watching a video on the Internet. You finish, find it thought-provoking, and scroll down to the comments section to see what other people thought. And there, lurking among dozens of well-intentioned opinions, is a troll.

“How much longer is the media going to milk this beyond tired story?” “These guys are frauds.” “Your idiocy is disturbing.” “We’re just trying to make the world a better place one brainwashed, ignorant idiot at a time.” These are the trollish comments, all from anonymous sources, that you could have found after reading a CNN article on the rescue of the Chilean miners.

Trolling, defined as the act of posting inflammatory, derogatory or provocative messages in public forums, is a problem as old as the Internet itself, although its roots go much farther back. Even in the fourth century B.C., Plato touched upon the subject of anonymity and morality in his parable of the ring of Gyges.

That mythical ring gave its owner the power of invisibility, and Plato observed that even a habitually just man who possessed such a ring would become a thief, knowing that he couldn’t be caught. Morality, Plato argues, comes from full disclosure; without accountability for our actions we would all behave unjustly.

This certainly seems to be true for the anonymous trolls today. After Alexis Pilkington, a 17-year-old Long Island girl, committed suicide earlier this year, trolls descended on her online tribute page to post pictures of nooses, references to hangings and other hateful comments. A better-known example involves Nicole Catsouras, an 18-year-old who died in a car crash in California in 2006. Photographs of her badly disfigured body were posted on the Internet, where anonymous trolls set up fake tribute pages and in some cases e-mailed the photos to her parents with subject lines like “Hey, Daddy, I’m still alive.”

Psychological research has proven again and again that anonymity increases unethical behavior. Road rage bubbles up in the relative anonymity of one’s car. And in the online world, which can offer total anonymity, the effect is even more pronounced. People — even ordinary, good people — often change their behavior in radical ways. There’s even a term for it: the online disinhibition effect.

Many forums and online communities are looking for ways to strike back. Back in February, Engadget, a popular technology review blog, shut down its commenting system for a few days after it received a barrage of trollish comments on its iPad coverage.

Many victims are turning to legislation. All 50 states now have stalking, bullying or harassment laws that explicitly include electronic forms of communication. Last year, Liskula Cohen, a former model, persuaded a New York judge to require Google to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger who she felt had defamed her, and she has now filed a suit against the blogger. Last month, another former model, Carla Franklin, persuaded a judge to force YouTube to reveal the identity of a troll who made a disparaging comment about her on the video-sharing site.

But the law by itself cannot do enough to disarm the Internet’s trolls. Content providers, social networking platforms and community sites must also do their part by rethinking the systems they have in place for user commentary so as to discourage — or disallow — anonymity. Reuters, for example, announced that it would start to block anonymous comments and require users to register with their names and e-mail addresses in an effort to curb “uncivil behavior.”

Some may argue that denying Internet users the ability to post anonymously is a breach of their privacy and freedom of expression. But until the age of the Internet, anonymity was a rare thing. When someone spoke in public, his audience would naturally be able to see who was talking.

Others point out that there’s no way to truly rid the Internet of anonymity. After all, names and e-mail addresses can be faked. And in any case many commenters write things that are rude or inflammatory under their real names.

But raising barriers to posting bad comments is still a smart first step. Well-designed commenting systems should also aim to highlight thoughtful and valuable opinions while letting trollish ones sink into oblivion.

The technology blog Gizmodo is trying an audition system for new commenters, under which their first few comments would be approved by a moderator or a trusted commenter to ensure quality before anybody else could see them. After a successful audition, commenters can freely post. If over time they impress other trusted commenters with their contributions, they’d be promoted to trusted commenters, too, and their comments would henceforth be featured.

Disqus, a comments platform for bloggers, has experimented with allowing users to rate one another’s comments and feed those ratings into a global reputation system called Clout. Moderators can use a commenter’s Clout score to “help separate top commenters from trolls.”

At Facebook, where I’ve worked on the design of the public commenting widget, the approach is to try to replicate real-world social norms by emphasizing the human qualities of conversation. People’s faces, real names and brief biographies (“John Doe from Lexington”) are placed next to their public comments, to establish a baseline of responsibility.

Facebook also encourages you to share your comments with your friends. Though you’re free to opt out, the knowledge that what you say may be seen by the people you know is a big deterrent to trollish behavior.

This kind of social pressure works because, at the end of the day, most trolls wouldn’t have the gall to say to another person’s face half the things they anonymously post on the Internet.

Instead of waiting around for human nature to change, let’s start to rein in bad behavior by promoting accountability. Content providers, stop allowing anonymous comments. Moderate your comments and forums. Look into using comment services to improve the quality of engagement on your site. Ask your users to report trolls and call them out for polluting the conversation.

In slowly lifting the veil of anonymity, perhaps we can see the troll not as the frightening monster of lore, but as what we all really are: human.


Julie Zhuo is a product design manager at Facebook.

I personally love sarcastic wit.

While some of the post are indeed hurtful and rude, there is also a great deal of sympathy and support given when needed. You can't have it all one way.
To begin with "a little bit of restrictive legislation" is a slippery slope to start down.
As you drive along the streets, you see where some dysfunctional drooler has written "fuck you" on a wall. If you angst on that as a character comment about you and do not see it as simply the work of an asshole with the price of a can of spray paint, you have problems too.

A while back I read an article in "The American Spectator" that claimed that being able to post opinions anonymosly was essential to freedom and democracy, and, indeed, that it played a part in the founding of our country.

Dictators need to know who said what so that they can shut down dissenters. Those who live in freedom, on the other hand, should not feel threatened by what others say.

Graffetti vandals, of course, do not fit into this category because that is not an issue of free speech; that is simply property damage.

quote:

Originally posted by Wismon:
A while back I read an article in "The American Spectator" that claimed that being able to post opinions anonymosly was essential to freedom and democracy, and, indeed, that it played a part in the founding of our country.

Dictators need to know who said what so that they can shut down dissenters. Those who live in freedom, on the other hand, should not feel threatened by what others say.

Graffetti vandals, of course, do not fit into this category because that is not an issue of free speech; that is simply property damage.

I doubt the graffitti vandals would agree with you.

Your point is excellent and I appreciate the modest influence our benefactors here apply to us. I was involved recently with a discussion that early on I assisted in getting way out of hand. Later as some participants were banned for un related to that thread mischief, the thread returned to mostly civil disagreement. I am mildly remorseful I acted and typed the way I did.

Patriotic fervor aside it is suprising to me how many internet posters remind me of the little yapper poodle behind the fence. Threats, pontifications and belligerent bloviations define their existence so long as the safety of the fence/ computer screen remains in place. I do not believe these posters behave the same with their neighboors on their street.

quote:

Originally posted by Scott King:
I doubt the graffitti vandals would agree with you.

Your point is excellent and I appreciate the modest influence our benefactors here apply to us. I was involved recently with a discussion that early on I assisted in getting way out of hand. Later as some participants were banned for un related to that thread mischief, the thread returned to mostly civil disagreement. I am mildly remorseful I acted and typed the way I did.

Patriotic fervor aside it is suprising to me how many internet posters remind me of the little yapper poodle behind the fence. Threats, pontifications and belligerent bloviations define their existence so long as the safety of the fence/ computer screen remains in place. I do not believe these posters behave the same with their neighboors on their street.

Thanks Scott, but that's just the point: it's only by way of anonymity that people can be assured of being able to post their views without physical reprecussions from bullies who would otherwise beat the crap out of those with the effortry to disagree with their magnificant meatheadedness.

The converse of that is, of course, why unions want open ballets, but perhaps that's a topic for another time.