The trolls are winning and the Internet is losing

The Internet may be losing the war against trolls. At the very least, it isn’t winning. And unless social networks, media sites and governments come up with some innovative way of defeating online troublemakers, the digital world will never be free of the trolls’ collective sway.

That’s the dismal judgment of the handful of scholars who study the broad category of online incivility known as trolling, a problem whose scope is not clear, but whose victims keep mounting.

“As long as the Internet keeps operating according to a click-based economy, trolls will maybe not win, but they will always be present,” said Whitney Phillips, a lecturer at Humboldt State University and the author of “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” a forthcoming book about her years of studying bad behavior online. “The faster that the whole media system goes, the more trolls have a foothold to stand on. They are perfectly calibrated to exploit the way media is disseminated these days.”

“Troll” is the fuzzy term for agitators who pop up, often anonymously, sometimes in mobs, in comment threads and on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, apparently intent on wreaking havoc. The term is vague precisely because trolls lurk in darkness; their aims are unclear, their intentions unknown, their affiliations mysterious.

http://nyti.ms/1pi9G6h

 

Humboldt State? Surprised he/she got past the laziness to write this.

 

Something we can't be bothered to precisely define is winning in ways we can't be bothered to precisely define.

Waste of pixels.

 

Skilled trolling does not include criminal or sociopathic behavior, as illustrated in this piece.
Trolls reflect the neuroses of the group and use irony to make fun of the free-range stupid.
Without good trolls, the Internet would be much less fun.

 

One can only assume the end goal of trolling is to have an Internet entirely populated with trolls. That's what happens when enough reasonable people decide it's just not worth it. Which it isn't. At least for most people.

 

Just shocking that fart boy would be defending trolls. Truly. I never would have expected it.

 

Speaking of sociopaths who ruin civil discourse ...

 

I'm going to choose to ignore the angry child, for once. I think the topic is interesting.
Frankly, the Internet has provided individuals access to a darker side of themselves.
Zelda Williams was criminally harassed. There was nothing light about it.

 

Says the guy who really does post nothing on this site other than personal attacks against other posters.

 

It's okay. We're used to you being unable to respond properly to the truth.

 

Do you have a point to make? It would be great if you ever made one.