Study Finds That Banning Trolls Works, To Some Degree (vice.com) 341
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On October 5, 2015, facing mounting criticism about the hate groups proliferating on Reddit, the site banned a slew of offensive subreddits, including r/Coontown and r/fatpeoplehate, which targeted Black people and those with weight issues. But did banning these online groups from Reddit diminish hateful behavior overall, or did the hate just spread to other places? A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, and University of Michigan examines just that, and uses data collected from 100 million Reddit posts that were created before and after the aforementioned subreddits were dissolved. Published in the journal ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, the researchers conclude that the 2015 ban worked. More accounts than expected discontinued their use on the site, and accounts that stayed after the ban drastically reduced their hate speech. However, studies like this raise questions about the systemic issues facing the internet at large, and how our culture should deal with online hate speech. First, the researchers automatically extracted words from the banned subreddits to create a dataset that included hate speech and community-specific lingo. The researchers looked at the accounts of users who were active on those subreddits and compared their posting activity from before and after those offensive subreddits were banned. The team was able to monitor upticks or drops in the hate speech across Reddit and if that speech had "migrated" to other subreddits as a result.
Remind me... (Score:2, Insightful)
...who gets to define who the trolls are and what constitutes Trolling?
Is it like Pornography?
Re:Remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Coontown was banned because of the speech it contained, not because of what our users did. Reddit's CEOs Steve Huffman and Ellen Pao both admitted this.
The Board of Directors pushed for the banning, spez complied.
Reddit is a left-wing propaganda mill, they hire employees specifically to promote social justice (this has been admitted too!), and they also banned my subreddit /r/alternativeright simply because they didn't want to give /r/altright 's userbase to me. My sub didn't have any doxing info on it.
Re:Remind me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps a public push for more people to host USENET servers for free or something.
If the speech is short of actually inciting someone to bodily harm, then people should be allowed to post and express it, even if it is distasteful.
Re:Remind me... (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of us have moved to Mastodon [joinmastodon.org], which is like Twitter but federated like email. You can host your own Mastodon instance (server) and set your own local policies. Then your users can talk to users on my instance, just like Outlook users can email people at Gmail.
But! I can set my own policies, too. If your users are causing problems for mine, I can completely disconnect from you and end the problem from my side. This is an excellent situation. Instances that are too tolerant of trolls find themselves disconnected from the network. Instances that are too thin-skinned and that server connections too quickly end up the same. Either way, their more mainstream users are likely to flee to more moderately administered instances, so there's a nice feedback loop that optimizes for common decency above other extremes.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
Re: Remind me... (Score:2)
A great instance is called mathstodon.
Re: Remind me... (Score:2)
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
Perhaps a public push for more people to host USENET servers for free or something.
If you do so, expect a saturated connection as the pirates flock.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
The problem with Usenet is that there is no effective way to block people. All you have is a useless plonk file, which is trivially defeated by changing username/email.
I guess if you like reading at -1 all the time that sounds great, but most people want some kind of filter.
Better solution time? (Score:2)
Can I interest you in a cup of public-reputation-based proactive filtering? Wouldn't you rather spend your time with nice people, perhaps with a tilt in favor of people who have even better reputations than your own?
Re:Better solution time? (Score:2)
Maybe... The problem with reputation based systems is that they are wide open to trolling as well. Slashdot almost works, but periodically people going against the groupthink or getting mod-bombed have their karma destroyed.
Effective filtering seems to be the best option.
Re:Better solution time? (Score:2)
Sounds like a bit of a request for more information and a suggestion about the direction of the information you seek?
I think that by making the reputation-source-data available (via links on the analysis page), you can prevent the trolls from gaming the system. You would be able to apply various algorithms to detect trolls and even networks of sock puppets, basically by using the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon approach. Legitimate people would eventually link to legitimate people you actually know, while sock puppets would only link to each other. Not absolutely, but I think the different degrees of connectivity would be sufficient to separate them.
Essentially I'm arguing for an improved filtering using for OUR purposes the same kind of information that soulless corporations like the google are already using against us and to manipulate us. Not sure how the filtering could become more effective than that?
Re:Better solution time? (Score:2)
Stack Exchange uses a reputation system like the one you describe. They try to detect unwanted behaviour, but it's still extremely hostile to new users and vulnerable to dog-piling.
The one thing they do have right is that down-votes carry a cost for the voter, but it's too small. At the moment it's only -1, and people are happy to take that hit to push their political agendas or harass users. Plus it's easy to create new accounts with a +100 rep bonus, giving them plenty of ammunition to down-vote people they dislike.
Re:Better solution time? (Score:2)
I think that much of your concern would be addressed with a "maturity filter", even though it is a relatively trivial aspect of the public reputation. A new identity is young, and I'm willing to wait a month or two for it to mature and develop a ripe reputation--at the expense of people who are more tolerant of newbies than I usually want to be.
Actually, I would prefer a mixed mode if it were possible. I'd be willing to see top-level comments from newbies, at least most of the time, but I don't want any personal replies from possible sock puppets. If some new identity (or possibly annoying identity for other reputation-related reasons) wants to reply to me, there should be a warning that I won't see that reply, and if they insist on replying anyway (instead of going to the top level of the discussion or replying instead to someone who is willing to listen to them), then that reply would get a special preface, something like "Insincere reply not sincerely intended as part of any discussion."
I should go look at Stack Exchange again. Pretty sure I've looked at it in the past, but I don't seem to have any record of actually joining the system. From your description, it sounds like they give too much reputational credit to newbies for my tastes. In contrast, I think Reddit goes too far in the other direction.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
Usenet is dead. News at 11. (Score:5, Informative)
One of the things that destroyed usenet was rampaging trolls. The kill-list was a weak response that ultimately availed naught. That is why I advocate for a more proactive reputation-based-filtering solution. You might choose to stuff your eyes and ears with tripe, but I would prefer not to.
There is a great deal of confusion about "freedom" and "free speech". Your freedom to speak freely should not block my freedom to ignore idiots. Not that I'm calling you an idiot. Yet. However, if I had to make a prediction based on your short comment...
Re: Usenet is dead. News at 11. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mate, that's a really sodding stupid comment. All you've done is ignore everything he wow and go work "you're so emotional!!111!1one".
Not wanting to have every thread infested with trolls is not the same as being ruled by emotions. Sometimes, most times actually, grown-ups want to have grown up conversations that aren't interspersed with pejoratives about black people, neo Nazi rhetoric and so on and so forth.
Re: Usenet is dead. News at 11. (Score:2)
Not sure who he ["Mate"] was, but it seemed to be a bit of extraneous and rather dull-witted trollage that, as I mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, ought to be rendered invisible by the troll himself. I don't care about the public masturbation of the trolls. I simply prefer not to see it, and I speculate that many other people would agree if that were a feature of any discussion board. (The civility-promotion system of the Denver Post sounds like an interesting step in the right direction.)
However I wonder about your [serviscope_minor's] usage of "wow" in a context that seems to call for some synonym of "wrote".
Re: Usenet is dead. News at 11. (Score:2)
The use of wow was a phone keyboard autocorrect which I didn't notice. Was meant to be wrote. Swipe keyboards are great but give the most peculiar typos.
Re: Usenet is dead. News at 11. (Score:2)
Thanks for the clarification. I sometimes get similar hard-to-explain peculiarities from voice dictation.
Re: Usenet is dead. News at 11. (Score:2)
Look at that raw emotion.
Just ignore them. Don't feed the trolls. It's not hard to ignore them. We managed for years.
Re: Usenet is dead. News at 11. (Score:2, Flamebait)
I appear to have you marked as a friend which means I must often see value in your posts. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now and simply recommend that you step away form the keyboard for a while.
Re: Usenet is dead. News at 11. (Score:3)
Your plan only works as long as the signal-to-noise ratio is low enough that you can FIND the posts worth reading/replying to among the trolls.
Without some kind of filter, sooner or later, the adult conversations are simply drowned out by the shitposters. And the more that happens, the more the adults simply don't bother showing up because finding a good conversation now takes more effort than adults have time or energy to provide.
Very soon, the trolls are all that's left.
The reason to ban trolls, all else besides, is because if you fail to do so you have, de facto, banned all the non-trolls.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
Maybe we all just need to go back to USENET
- and we will have Kibo back! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Parry)
Re: Poor snowflake (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Remind me... (Score:2)
I think all of those happened, except maybe the body cam one. If that one happened, I didn't read about it. The rest did happen, however. You can easily Google them.
Re:Remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a right to free speech, but nobody owes you a soapbox.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
Damn right we'll start our own site! With blackjack, and hookers! In fact, forget the site!
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
with blackjack, and hookers
Are you talking about voat.co [slashdot.org] ?
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/... [knowyourmeme.com]
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
Who ever runs the website gets to decide the trolls
Remember all the reddit trolls like the GNAA who always attempted to get upvoated first posts?
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
There has to be compromise. I agree with you so long as everyone has the ability to start their own site and not worry about being shut down by a few select over powered companies. (assuming only legal content)
Right now, you forfeit your ability to have a site if you say the wrong thing that a few companies may not like as stormfags showed us. Nobody owes you a phone line or access to a road didn't work why would it work now?
Re: Remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Remind me... (Score:2, Interesting)
I never said they were, only implied that they should do so, especially if they want to encourage lively discussion. I also think it's interesting that the side they've chosen has a history of bitching just as loudly (if not more) when they are denied the 'soapbox' due to organizational limits or laws.
Re: Remind me... (Score:2, Insightful)
If restricting the use of their product by people operating under the name 'coontown' as a platform for racist abuse amounts to choosing a 'side' then fuck it, I'm on that 'side'' too. What the Hell's wrong with you?
Re: Remind me... (Score:4, Informative)
Surely if they want to encourage lively discussion they should ban the people who try to sabotage it with fat shaming and extreme racism.
Trolls aren't trying to improve the quality of discussion. They aren't trying to put forward unpopular opinions (you can do that without calling someone a n!gger). They are trying to sabotage the debate, to drive people away or silence them.
Trolls actually stop people discussing controversial topics. They make lively debate impossible.
Re:Remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its more like common decency.
You know how your parents eventually taught you not to shit all over the house? It is essentially the same thing. My cousin works in a day care and has the unfortunate job of doing this kind of training when the (wealthy, in theory well educated) parents fail to do so.
I suspect this will be much the same but much older children will have to be educated.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
You know how your parents eventually taught you not to shit all over the house?
But I still shit all over the house...
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
The company running the site does. As long as it's not the government, that's fine.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
It's fine because part of the 1st amendment is that they're free to hold those beliefs, and act upon them, and you're free to not use their services and ostracise them as a result.
What makes you think corporations becoming larger than the government will happen? That's one of many things that anti-competition law is designed to prevent.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
If companies can do anything they want like you allude. Why don't phone companies ban nazi's from their service?
Reddit does (Score:2)
Re:Remind me... (Score:3)
A company operating a site without government funding should be the one to define who the trolls are on their site. Simple as that.
The First Amendment is immensely important and must be defended, even when doing so means defending abhorrent people, but we need to get over this false sense of entitlement that suggests organizations have no right to interfere with, discourage, or otherwise supervise the use of the platforms they've built. As the creators of those sites, that's their prerogative. The Constitution does not entitle anyone to use Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook. And, frankly, disallowing certain types of speech may be in the best interests of those companies, in much the same way that a business catering to families would be smart to throw out someone who refused to stop shouting obscenities. Again, it's their prerogative.
We need to stop pretending that the First Amendment means there are no consequences to the things we say.
Could this mean that those "trolls" may eventually be marginalized and/or cut off from access to businesses that the rest of us take for granted? Absolutely! But that's how things are supposed to work. While there may not be legal consequences to (most of) the things we say, there still are consequences, both good and bad. Whether that's a YouTube celebrity like PewDiePie losing financial sponsors because he used racial slurs, Target being boycotted over their bathroom stance regarding transexuals, or talking heads landing high-paying jobs at partisan news organizations because of their willingness to say sensationalist things, there are consequences to the things we say.
Again, we need to stop pretending the First Amendment protects us from all consequences.
Or don't, in which case you'll have to deal with some massive cognitive dissonance as you have to reconcile that you keep getting kicked off of sites with your false belief that you're entitled to use them.
If a troll screams in the forest, do you care? (Score:2)
I'm going to pretend that was a sincere question instead of another bit of first-post drivel.
Each person should be free to define what to regard as a waste of time. Given that freedom, I would certain define trolls as worthless wasters of my precious time. Sometimes a troll can be thought-provoking, but it's only accidental, and I'd much prefer to spend my limited time with nice people, which leads to my suggestion:
Let the trolls flush themselves. Simply by being rude trolls, their negative reputations should proceed them and allow me to render them invisible. Unfortunately, the sock puppet problem calls for tipping the scales a bit against newbies (until they earn a positive reputation), but public dialog would be greatly improved by a system to aggregate and display earned public reputations. Even if you didn't want to filter them out entirely, you would be able to better decide where to focus your attention. AtAJG, LMDSAuPR.
By the way, many corporate websites are already aggregating all sorts of information about you. Unfortunately, they are harvesting that information for their greater profit, NOT to benefit you or people who might be interested in you for positive reasons. It's really a religious thing: There is no gawd but Profit, and Profit's prophets are Apple, Gilead, Google, Exxon, and some big gamblers. (By "gamblers", I mean large banks and other speculators playing "profitable" games with money. This list of 2016's biggest prophets is due to Fortune.) I think we could do better, but Slashdot will NOT lead the way.
Now for the more important question: Is it even worth the time to search the discussion in hopes of an actually funny comment? Were I only able to help fund new features for Slashdot, a search for funniest comments of the week might be worth a few of my bucks...
Re:Remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who are the spoiled children again? The ones who demand free speech or the ones who bitch when it is used to say things they don't like?
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
The ones who insist free speech means no one can object to what they say, or make any negative social or economic decisions based on what they said.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2, Insightful)
You need to stop and think about what free speech actually means. Your beloved First Amendment, that only applies to the government curtailing your speech. It sure as hell doesn't apply to something like Reddit, nor does it shield you from the responses of other people.
Correct, yet a strawman. I never said the first amendment applies here. Stop pretending you don't understand the difference between arguing what should be vs arguing what is. It's the socjus crowd demanding that institutions (eg reddit) give them their gilded safe spaces, at taxpayer expense no less. They've demonstrated they've got no problem infiltrating such organizations to get what they want at everyone else's financial and political expense.
For all practical purposes, Reddit is private property. They can decide what they are willing to tolerate, and what they're not. As I said, they don't owe you a platform.
So if some site decided to toss all them "pinko commis" off their site for expressing left wing views, you'd be ok with that? It's possible your view is at least consistent on this, but I doubt it.
I've seen a lot of lame attempts to turn the tables on the effective 'special snowflake' label the socjus crowd's been aptly branded with. These people sound like the religious right, demanding blasphem..err I mean 'hate speech' laws in the name of 'decency' so that their fragile political views won't be challenged.
Who are the spoiled children? The ones who think they can say anything, anywhere they like, that other people should be required to tolerate it, and that there are no repercussions from being an idiot. Don't want there to be consequences of your free speech, keep it to yourself.
Spoiled children are usually demanding that big mommy/daddy step in to solve their conflicts for them. That sounds more like the reddit/pro socjus crowd than the pro free speech people. I'm sure you'd say the same thing to the online SJWs getting flamed for their illogical arguments? Oh, right, when they're criticized, it's 'trolling'...
The rest of your post reads like the sniveling whiny spoiled brat you describe. It's about the right amount of hypocrisy I'd expect from a progressive.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2, Interesting)
So if some site decided to toss all them "pinko commis" off their site for expressing left wing views, you'd be ok with that?
Yes, of course!
I'm not the OP, but this has already happened multiple times. Gab and PewTube both regularly ban left leaning users and channels. One of PewTube's most popular videos was about communism, until they deleted it.
And that's fine. That's how it should be. If videos about communism trigger the poor snowflakes, they are welcome to build a safe space for themselves.
Let me ask you a question. Would you be okay if I came and set up my soap box in your living room? Ideally right in front of the TV. Come on, don't censor me bro. Support free speech, let me into your home to show just how dedicated you are to hearing the full range of opinions.
Re:Remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
> You need to stop and think about what free speech actually means. Your beloved First Amendment, that only applies to the government curtailing your speech.
It's a principle that is valued as the cornerstone of democracy.
You are attempting to use a "legalistic" argument to pretty much completely ignore a principle. You want to pretend that free speech is only defined by a single bit of law. You are eager to demonstrate WHY that law exists.
If not for that law, people JUST LIKE YOU would use the government to do bad things.
The Bill of Rights is not a comprehensive list of human rights. It's merely a set of limits placed on the federal government.
Re: Remind me... (Score:2)
TL;DR "The 'right' to 'Free speech' is a toothless legalism. Actual freedom of speech is a privilege of the financialist ruling class, their sycophants, and loyal nomenklatura. I've got mine so screw you Jack."
Re: Remind me... (Score:2)
Remember what you just said. It absolutely will come back to bite you in the ass when network neutrality falls.
Re: Remind me... (Score:2)
Hey there capitalist running dog - how's that bootleather taste?
Re: Remind me... (Score:3, Informative)
> Oppressors and the oppressed are not morally interchangeable. It's amazing that there are still people that don't get that.
We don't get it because it's WRONG. You are trying to claim that moral rules obey identity politics. That's pretty much the opposite of what liberalism is supposed to believe in. All rules apply to everyone equally.
You don't get a free pass or an automatic death sentence just because of a label someone can hang on you.
Re:Remind me... (Score:2)
Reddit's admin moderating policy (as opposed to those of their countless amateur moderators) is not 'SJW' in nature. It's a pretty simple "is it going to cost us?"
I think they'd ban people sharing stories about saving kittens from trees if they thought it was going to get them bad press and a risk of legal action.
Re: Remind me... (Score:2)
Nothing is in a vacuum. Every look at Trump was in comparison to Clinton. Taking 10 months to figure out why you lost to me sounds like we dodged a bullet.
The problem is defining "troll" (Score:2, Insightful)
Trolling is making inflammatory statements for the sake of getting people to respond. Disagreeing with a position does not make it a troll post.
Re:The problem is defining "troll" (Score:2)
Moving to Other Places (Score:4, Informative)
Seems the trolls came to Slashdot after the ban.
Re:Moving to Other Places (Score:2)
Seems the trolls came to Slashdot after the ban.
Good sir, they prefer to be called Libertarians! ;)
Re:Moving to Other Places (Score:2)
Re:Moving to Other Places (Score:3)
creimer mainly got shit for spamming Amazon Affiliate links.
When he appeared a few months back, he was just your typical idiot poster getting called out on stupid shit. Then I saw a bunch of posts attacking him on a personal level, for no reason. I actually defended him on one occasion, saying the attacks were unnecessary/irrelevant to his shitty posts. Then I saw all the Amazon Affiliate link spam, and the increased harassment got to the point that my guess is he was doing it himself sometimes.
Re:Moving to Other Places (Score:2)
He's been around longer than that, at least a year. I thought the trolling started because he had some odd stories that he repeated a little too often, including lots of mentions of his weight and being under-employed. Odd, but nothing too obnoxious. I didn't notice the affiliate links until after the serious trolling started, and while I haven't combed his history, it seemed like he only started doing that to taunt them back. The trolling is way over the top, but his response with the links is definitely just egging them on, to the point that I'm really tired of both. It's only about half a step shy of the APK obnoxiousness.
Re:Moving to Other Places (Score:2)
I know he's been around longer, but he started posting frequently a few months back. That's when I first noticed his shit and recognized him name.
Re: Moving to Other Places (Score:2)
I'm not familiar with the history, I just saw him as another shitposter.
Black with a capital B now (Score:2)
which targeted Black people
People with the surname Black?
word based seems flawed (Score:4, Insightful)
First, the researchers automatically extracted words from the banned subreddits to create a dataset that included hate speech and community-specific lingo. The researchers looked at the accounts of users who were active on those subreddits and compared their posting activity from before and after those offensive subreddits were banned. The team was able to monitor upticks or drops in the hate speech across Reddit and if that speech had "migrated" to other subreddits as a result.
How do they know if the person using the "N" word is black, in which case it's considered OK, or non-black, in which case it's an obvious crime against all humanity? Or calling someone a fag is OK for Milo but wrong for normal people? Granted certain sub-forums are likely largely one demographic but word based still seems flawed.
Re:word based seems flawed (Score:3)
That's why they didn't ban words, they simply banned subreddits dedicated to things like fat-hate and racism. It's hard to imagine any context in which "coontown" isn't simply overt racism.
Re:word based seems flawed (Score:2)
But in a sub does overt anything mean much? You aren't likely to stumble across niche subs like that by accident. Hell, I still find useful normal subs I didn't know existed because finding subs by topic isn't all that easy on reddit, especially if the title and description don't contain the right key words.
Re:word based seems flawed (Score:2)
/r/fatpeoplehate has 150,000 subscribers. The study is really interesting - they didn't have to ban any specific users, just those subreddits, and the main fat haters moved to Voat and the rest of the community stopped being such asshats.
This is a well understood principal in sociology. A small number of people behaving like asshats gives others "permission" to do the same. It normalizes it.
Re:word based seems flawed (Score:2)
I think you overstate "normalizing" when describing a subreddit subscription as "normalizing" as well as confusing cause and effect of fat hating. I'd wager the majority of those subscribers didn't visit the sub regularly and none of them had positive or neutral views of fat people -- they didn't become fat haters because they saw the sub.
If Reddit was comprised of some small number of subreddits, I could see where this would be a problem but the quantity of subs and their isolation makes this seem like much less of a problem. These people are still fat hating, they're just doing it in a slightly less visible manner.
Re:word based seems flawed (Score:3)
If there is no causal link between the existence a fat-hating subreddit and poor behaviour, why was banning it so successful? The study says that users who were part of that subreddit and used a great deal of abusive/foul language actually changed their behaviour afterwards, being nicer on other parts of the site.
crowdsourcing deletion of comments (Score:2)
A few months ago, the Denver Post switched their comment section to something called "Civil Comments"
Our article comments have been a cesspool of trolls and spam for years. Enter Civil Comments. Civil Comments is intended to bring back the civil in online discourse [denverpost.com]
The idea is every time you post a comment you are required to rate several other comments as either "Civil" or "Not Civil", but if you are "wrong" too many times you might get banned. That is, if you rate a comment as "Civil" when enough other people say it's "Uncivil" you get warnings at first and are told to click a button saying you agree to rate comments fairly.
It's also persistent - once I was asked to rate the same comment 4 or 5 times in a row and I kept saying it was "Uncivil" (it was a response to someone with "Richard" in their name and the comment called him "Dick" as an obvious insult).
I took the same approach as I do here - I'm not going to downvote (or rate as "Uncivil") a comment just because I disagree with it but I soon discovered that rating a comment as "Uncivil" was much less risky than rating a questionable comment as "Civil".
And abuse still exists although it has curtailed some of it. I still see uncivil comments and I see what I consider civil comments removed presumably just because someone disagreed.
If a post is removed it reads:
this comment did not meet civility standards
None of my comments were ever removed AFAIK, but I kept getting warnings for misrating other people's comments. The last straw was when I rated a questionable comment as "Civil" even though I disagreed with its point. It was mostly opinion, but the facts stated were true. It was the kind of comment I'd have rather recused myself from rating but in the interest of fairness and not rating anything I disagreed with as "Uncivil" I rated it as "Civil". I guess I was wrong.
Since then I haven't even bothered to comment or even log in to rate other people's posts. I don't think I'm actually banned as long as I'm willing to click that button.
And I'm better off for not participating. There are a handful of regulars who post there and you can probably predict what they're going to say about any particular article. Very few comments are anything but the usual partisan BS that isn't funny and certainly doesn't add any insight to the article.
Fascism (Score:2)
Expectation of good behaviour ... (Score:2)
... results is good behaviour.
This should not be surprising, the majority of people will follow the community leaders, and the social standards they espouse.
another study 2005 (Score:2)
Here is another good point from a 2005 munich university study - hate speech wasn't a topic back then, only flaming:
allowing flaming on a respectable website will
1. drag down this websites standards in all aspects
2. make flaming more widely accepted especially on this website but also outside
3. drives out old customers objecting flaming
4. brings in new customers prefering flaming
All of this is pretty obvious but you will be surprised how little the editorial staff is aware of this.
I have seen exactly this on several local major web pages. If you don't clean up you yard it will start to smell.
You want a really nice hate speech web site? Visit Telepolis, the most radical main stream anti-West/US/EU/Democracy hating site on german internet. The US has created Stalin, Hitler, cancer and whatever and everyone and their pillow is a CIA slave. But thanks there is golden angel putin around to protect us with his nuclear weapons. The same site is also running Heise Tech News. Their forums are cleaned with a more strict rule but still consider it ok to spread radical propaganda as long as noone gets called bad names. Every third forum message is stupid and worth reporting and it never stops. Then visit Computerbase.de, Golem.de. Basically every unproven accussation is removed. Yes, this leads to less forum traffic but also to a much higher quality. Also People do not even try to post stupid stuff over there coz it gets removed anyway. On the other hand I even read good critic about the west there instead of mindless hating.
Seriously, kick out the idiots and get a smarter forum.
I left Reddit over this. (Score:2)
Fat People Hate was a terrible place, without a doubt, but they stayed in their little box and didn't attempt to invade other subreddits. They moved to Voat, which has also become an awful place, but they maintained their standards of behavior -- being dicks to people who don't really deserve it (and a few who do), but not trying to stir up shit in other groups. Since what they did was deliberately steered away from abuse of the network, I felt they had every right to continue. Of course, advertisers call the shots now, so if it's not palatable to Big Money, it's banished or at least demonetized.
I can't say the same for subreddits that escaped the purge, like Shit Reddit Says. They survived because they are left-leaning trolls rather than right-leaning, despite being much worse about direct abuse of other groups and users.
In any case, I nuked my entire Reddit history before closing my account there, and although I have read a few subreddits when I need information found only there, I accept that I cannot respond or ask questions myself. I moved to Voat for a while until it became nothing but an extension of /pol/.
On the contrary (Score:2)
Re:FIRST POST (Score:2, Insightful)
OK, I'll ask you something.
Back in the days of Usenet (e.g. alt.syntax.tactical), the point of trolling was to be as clever and sharp as possible. Today, the point is to be as blunt and moronic as possible.
What happened? Was it weev?
Re:FIRST POST (Score:2)
Re:FIRST POST (Score:2)
I just wish we could hear a few wise words on this subject from our now-retired chiropractor troll.
Re:FIRST POST (Score:3)
Because the internet is for regular people now. Most clever trolls wouldn't even be noticed....
I'll just leave this right here. [wikipedia.org]
Re:FIRST POST (Score:5, Insightful)
I tried some clever trolling, but got modded +Insightful instead. Very frustrating.
Re:FIRST POST (Score:2)
Wake me up when September ends.
Re:FIRST POST (Score:2)
Eternal. It never ends.
Re:You don't want them underground (Score:2)
Oh, there's really no such thing as "underground" on the Internet. Even on the dark web, insofar as they can find each other, other people can find them.
Re:Violent crimes (Score:3, Informative)
No, there was no such study.
Re:Violent crimes (Score:2, Insightful)
Counterpoint: Canada. Up here we don't have a first or second amendment and surprisingly we're not on the verge of exploding. Unless our team doesn't win the Cup.
Re:Violent crimes (Score:2)
> You don't even have a football team.
What are you on about? We have 9, and we play the superior 3 down CFL rules. Sad American teams need that 4th down as a crutch.
> You'll be overrun by "refugees" soon enough
Hysterical xenophobes have been saying that for decades and yet here we are.
> If it wasn't for the Brits, you would have lost the war of 1812 to the American freedom fighters.
Uh, in 1812 we WERE Brits. So your argument is if it wasn't for us, we would have lost? Sure. I guess that's true for any victors anywhere. Another interpretation of that would be that the Colonies managed to win their independence when the Empire got bored of fighting them, but then they thought they'd try and take some of the Empire and got their asses handed to them. Nice second White House. Pity about the first.
Re:Violent crimes (Score:2)
Whenever I see an American and a Canadian arguing about Canada versus America, I think of this:
http://www.harkavagrant.com/in... [harkavagrant.com]
Re:Violent crimes (Score:2)
As I'm sure you're aware, he's making an argument, not interpreting the law. Free expression does diffuse the need for physical violence. It doesn't matter whether the censor is the state or private. Shut down communication (especially the uncomfortable kind) long enough and the conflict will escalate.
Re:Violent crimes (Score:2)
Re:Did the hate just spread to other places? (Score:2, Insightful)
Researchers answered the question of "did the hate just spread to other places" by checking only the place that banned it...
I caught that as well.
Unimaginably bad conclusion they drew given the data. Almost as if instead of scientists that they are lowly sociologists, a professions where getting away with pretending that its science is its only redeeming quality.
Re:Did the hate just spread to other places? (Score:2)
Shame neither of you actually read TFA. They did actually look on other sites, particularly Voat since that's where people said they would go, and found a lot of identical usernames with similar use of racist language on similarly names sub-boards.
That's why they concluded that the ban worked for Reddit, and pushed the people affected to Voat which is, as you might expect, a complete cess-pit.
Re:Ban the wrongthinkers! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you oppose the rights of Silicon Valley organizations to not host content they find offensive? (As if it makes sense to talk about "Silicon Valley" as a monolithic entity, like Tinder and Tumblr are likely to have similar codes of ethics.)
Re:Ban the wrongthinkers! (Score:3)
You realize, of course, that those aren't related in any way. There are many reasons [eeoc.gov] you can't discriminate against someone, but many more reasons why you can. I can refuse to serve you because I don't like the shirt you're wearing or your cologne or your haircut (as long as those aren't proxies for your race, sex, or national origin).
But more importantly, there's an enormous legal gap between who you are and what you've done. It's not OK to kick you out of my restaurant because you're white. It's way OK to kick you out because you crapped on the floor and peed on another diner's cheeseburger.
The closest real-world analogy to your straw man is that you can't refuse to bake cakes for a Methodist. That's explicitly illegal. You can surely refuse to bake cakes for the specific Methodist who knocked up your sister. Now do you understand how this all works in reality-land?
Re:Ban the wrongthinkers! (Score:5, Insightful)
What the summary fails to mention is that most of the people who left Reddit went over to Voat. They were not silenced, just asked to leave the venue and take their speech somewhere else.
If you really want to indulge in some fat-hate you can still get your fix. Are you really arguing that Reddit should host whatever you deem fit to post? It's there any line that should not be crossed?
Re:Ban the wrongthinkers! (Score:2)
Re:Ban the wrongthinkers! (Score:2)
I'd be annoyed because Slashdot's ToS doesn't ban conservative hate, not that I actually hate conservatives as a group.
On the other hand, if I started /r/coontown I'd pretty much expect it to get banned. If I was serious about running such a discussion forum I'd try Voat or 8chan.
Re:Ban the wrongthinkers! (Score:2)
Free speech is an idea that came out of the age of enlightenment and the general gist is that we should let people have their say rather than censoring them because that just bottles up their anger and pisses them off even more.
Turns out, we're debating this in an article about a study that concludes otherwise.
Expressing thought and emotion is one of those basics rights
To be clear, you have the absolute right to express yourself. You have no right to express yourself in my living room after I've told you to leave.
Re:No - you morons (Score:2)
I don't know. While I had the same thoughts as you at the start of the post (just because they're no longer on Reddit, it doesn't mean they no longer exist) your subsequent claim--that they definitely all moved elsewhere and are doing the exact same things they used to--is also unwarranted. I'd say there's at least a chance for other alternatives, including 1) deciding maybe it's not that cool and stopping, 2) shrugging it off and giving up, 3) wanting to move on but not finding another community and then effectively giving up.
Without more data, I'd say the headline is incomplete, but so is most of what you've concluded. It's possible they've quit. It's possible they're doing the same thing elsewhere. And even if it is going on elsewhere, if it's less visible, might there still be a lot of people leading happier lives not seeing as much junk? It's definitely complicated.
I'm all for your conclusion -- rational discussion to promote understanding -- and while that may be the best solution, we all know there's cases where even that doesn't get anywhere with some people.