Whatever The Times is doing to encourage intelligent commentary from readers, please keep it up. The postings from readers are often as or more insightful and enlightening as the articles themselves.
On the other hand, the decision by our local paper to temporarily suspend reader comments has been a wise one. It has freed us from posters who are too often immature, uneducated, and even racist or anti-Semitic. Without these sorry distractions, we can focus on the articles themselves and our fellow readers can feel comfortable they won’t be offended every time they click on a story,
5
There is so much garbage and junk online that I get completely turned off.My response is"Who needs this" and I turn it off and go live a real life by doing something that I love to do. I highly recommend it. Yes, there is a fascinating life offline.
2
When people are invisible in the real world and feel like they have no control in their life many turn to writing in comment sections in so many sites and forums. I have always wondered if trolls actually read the piece they are commenting on or say read the first couple of sentences then skip down to the comment section to be the first to write a comment that will start up a flame war. The troll then controls the comments with bitter back and forth comments from other readers. The article then been long forgotten
Once an indie film director made vicious fun of my Internet name after I complimented him on a short film he made. I never engaged in his behavior as his comment to me was begging me to engage in some comment war with him. I let him be and never bothered.
The question is turn off comments only to inundate the editor with email letters? Trolls are here to stay the only way to deal with them is, not to deal with them.
Rox of Spazhouse Intuitive Research
1
People get nasty on line because there are no consequences for bad actors saying foul, insulting things. Put them in the same room with others, some of course will act badly until someone they attack responds and breaks them of their bad habit. On the internet we are dealing with keyboard warriors. The only available help online to someone being attacked is to block their antagonist on line as they see fit.
2
Despite all of the handwringing over the Internet, the fact remains that millions of people use it quietly and congenially - to connect with others about shared interests, hobbies and support groups. If you are being trolled, you are either a troll yourself, or you are hanging around trying to inject yourself into scenes where trolls hunt. Twitter has become all about people with blue check marks posturing against each other. But the real world, even on the Internet, is not like that.
11
The problem of offensive content on the Internet is really a problem of how to live comfortably within a society that has radically changed how we socialize. Trying to fix offensive comments or offensive content with censorship goes against the strong belief we have in America that ideas are never harmful; we as Americans have the ability to tolerate hate speech, it is deeply ingrained in our ethos, and that is why we have the 1st Amendment. I see no reason to change that oldest of American ideas now.
The reason why we are having so much angst over Alex Jones and other purveyors of hate has more to do with us being forced out of our comfort zones than the content itself. Social media and the Internet has allowed such content to be very in-your-face, at times difficult to avoid, and voluminous. But that is a problem of us not having the personal skills to ignore it and move on, much like we all (or most of us) ignore National Enquirer at the check-out stand at the grocery store.
If we feel that the garbage promoted by Alex Jones and others are so dangerous that they require censorship by Twitter, Facebook and others, than we have lost our way and are letting Jones steal the American idea away from us, the idea that our democracy is strong enough to hold up against verbal assaults.
Schools need to be better preparing our kids for living in a world that has lots of unfiltered info at them, a lot of which is junk or worse. Give them the skills to sort through it.
3
Trolls, comments and negative articles have become "weaponized", for both good and evil.
We--society--are still figuring out this ten year old medium.
Think about early advertising as an example of the evolution of the new technology of television. Nearly any product, such as cigarettes, was unregulated until various government entities were formed to restrict ads' claims.
And it might be similar in today's social media platforms. But while Facebook, Twitter or YouTube have their own guidelines, there is no standard.
Personally, I'm not sure there should be.
While I find Alex Jones to be reprehensible, I think he should be free to say them. I know his comments are racist; if others can't discern this, silencing the broadcaster won't solve the problem.
1
We all agree to conditions to use these services, let the services provide some level of control over the Alex Jones types. Jones and the alt-right will never found a successfull Facebook competitor as long as Facebook encompasses say, 98% of the user space.
I do indeed believe in free speech. Everyone should be free to say what they want. But they should have the courage to stand by their opinion. If someone is not willing to use their real name I do not respect their opinion. I believe that responsible publications should not allow anonymous or fake identity comments to be published. Period.
7
Got rid of my Facebook account. Never did Twitter or Pinterest or Instagram. Haven't missed a thing. Too much vacuousness, rudeness, and having to refer "friends" to snopes.com who posted potentially harmful health advice. The only thing I haven't given up wasting time on yet is writing comments in response to NYT articles, and that day may yet come. My vanity is still a little tickled when people like my comment. :)
Social media, as far as I can tell, has given us nothing and taken a lot away.
12
Duh- it’s called a boycott. Boycott social media platform and then trolls lose.
2
It sounds to me like this author wants to ban free speech. This is exactly the kind of thing that is plaguing liberals these days. You have the right not to use social media platforms if you find some content to be offensive.
3
“Why should I be good if you’re not?”
'the right-wing conspiracy site Infowars. For years, the site distributed false information that inspired internet trolls to harass people who were close to victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting. This week, after much hemming and hawing about whether to get involved, some giant tech firms banned content from Infowars'??
This is extremely selective censorship! Many, many right wing conspiracy sites distributed false information that inspired patriotic men and women to bomb Iraq and kill millions of civilians.
Granted, they were all dusky foreigners, which makes it sort of OK, but a little harassment of people who were close to victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting seems a small price to pay for freedom of speech.
Which is what we said when we bombed those dusky foreigners, come to think of it.
Even a well-moderated site like the Times is starting to have problems. I have yet to experience any ad hominem attacks or personal insults, but some of my comments on the op-ed pages have received replies that I am “wrong” simply because the other commenter has an opposing point of view. If my comment highlights a citation from the column itself, sometimes that column content is also “wrong”, and a fact-free counter-assertion is provided to that effect. Alternative facts.
3
I think the NY Times and all new sites should disable comments. It was a bad idea from the start.
3
Yes, and one of them is now part of the NYT's editorial board.
My comments on how this reflects poorly on the NYTs, specifically how it makes them no better than Facebook, Twitter, etc, have not been published. Let's see if this one is.
9
A really fine article on this topic Brian. Thank you.
Down here in Oz one of our public figures said: "The standard you walk past is the standard you accept". What Jack Dorsey allows he supports, though he lamely claims the ability and the obligation to be free of prejudice. That's not how the human condition works. You must take a stand actively, or you take one passively.
5
I would like all comments posted here and elsewhere on the internet to include the author's full name and home town. It should be the responsibility of the web site to verify the name and address of the poster just as most reputable print media do for published letters to the editor or op-ed pieces. If access were denied to those folks who call themselves "Everyman from the Midwest" or "Sixofone from the Village" life on the internet would be much more pleasant and honest.
Trolls and foreign agents and idiots would be unable to promote their rants except on sites which were known to be undisciplined, lackadaisical, and unprofessional. Any site committed to open, transparent, public discourse should monitor itself and keep the uncivilized out.
For example, I have no idea who or what or why "Ensign, USA" represents or why anyone should pay the slightest attention to their comment. I ignore comments which are not signed by a real person from a real place.
5
When I deleted my Facebook account I thought I would go through withdraw. Guess what? Nothing happened. I read more, I worked more diligently on my craft, and not once, did I miss the nasty discourse and vehemence of trolls. I'm better than that and happier having tuned out from the fray. Try it. You'll like it.
5
Any comment which challenges liberal, progressive dogma is met with replies of "troll" or "boris". It's like they can not believe anyone has the right to challenge their sacred beliefs and so it must be a troll or Russian meddling.
6
You’re a Nazi!! (Just kidding. I couldn’t resist)
With all due respect I disagree with the expert quoted in this article. There is no breaking point. We have all become hopelessly sullied. There is no way civility will reassert itself in the online comment world.
1
Technology companies (Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter etc) could spend some time & money verifying that advertisers were from genuine companies trying to sell stuff, and not pushing propaganda and division. Likewise they could much more carefully check posts were from real people, not robots or pushers. And they could require all participants to prove their identities, if not publicly proclaiming them, at least providing private bona fides.
If there was no chance of anonymity and hidden agendas, social media would be much healthier.
Of course, the big conflict of interest remains - money can be made spreading muck, and money is the highest priority, not “don’t do evil”.
3
Some Russian and other trolls have telltale signs, IMHO. They typically use the "what about-ism" technique of changing the subject, usually to something they claim is egregious that Hillary or Bill has done. Occasionally one detects a slight grammar or spelling error. And there are a number of these trolls that post nearly the same comment throughout a discussion. So oddly, one will raise an issue about alleged Hillary misconduct then a bit later another will make the same point. These are clearly trolls, Russian or otherwise.
5
If the rules we followed brought us to this, of what use were the rules?
2
A bully only wins when you give up, or in particular when you give them a platform or voice. - the press is especially derelict in doing so each and every day when they elevate the biggest troll of them all: The President of the United States.
Having said that, free speech has to be free for all, regardless if someone is screaming at the top of their lungs to which you may find abhorrent. That is the deal for freedoms.
The whole idea is to wear you down (which I will readily admit they have done to a certain degree as more and more people switch off social media altogether) However, you have to understand that there will ALWAYS be more of us than there will be of them,
Continue on saying what you believe and simply ignore the noise wherever you can. The most powerful idea of free speech comes from voting. You vote everyday when you decide what to say, ignore and where to ply your business. You also vote with actual votes in the ballot box.
Make it all count.
7
"Ms. Papacharissi said that in her 20 years of researching and interviewing people about online behavior, one conclusion has remained consistent: people use the internet to get more of what they do not get enough of in everyday life. So while people have been socialized to resist being impulsive in the real world, on the internet they cave to their temptations to lash out."
Unfortunately for all of us, they do this behind the closed curtain of the voting booth too.
2
Technology companies cannot make people be kind to one another. That is not their function in society. Moral values have traditionally been the domain of religion, but religion has broken down into a fanaticism that is divorced from kindness. "Religious liberty" today means seeking a legal exemption from being kind to certain classes of people.
Science and technology cannot replace the role of religion. Science is a method, not a moral philosophy. The main western religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, are based on books rooted in a world view from two thousand years ago (or more) that doesn't exist today.
Science has given us the technology to destroy the world, to amplify messages of hate throughout the globe, and no moral compass to stop ourselves.
We need modern, self-evident truths to guide us. Truths not owned by any particular religion, not written in any particular book. Truths of the heart, not the pocketbook. These truths will never be found in corporate user guidelines of social media.
13
Technocracy is crushing the life out of humanism
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/opinion/oh-the-humanities.html?action...
we need our fairy tales. Who knows ? the story about a man put to death becoming god will be banned by the technocrats if push comes to shove logically speaking
It's time to make social media platforms public utilities. Regulate them. Ownership of a platform should not include profiteering off online communities. We need to enter a new age of acknowledgement of "virtual citizenship." Online communities need norms, protections, and self-governance. It's time to make social media public utilities.
6
Humanity finds itself in a place it has never been before, something new we have to work our way through. As "civilization" and tech has developed increasingly at warp speed the pressures of adjustment take a toll. I think of cordless phones and how long it took me to adjust, which was seconds. That's the simple part. People of the World should use intelligence, tact, and grace to converse online comments, but the devil in the woodpile is being anonymous where you can unleash your thoughtlessness, as has already been mentioned. Again, never been here and before one knows it all sort of ugliness has spewed forth. Tact and discipline and curiousity and grace can go along ways if we choose that path. The learning curve is steep?
1
And the professional trolls working for foreign enemies, like those at Putin's Internet Research Agency? How do media organizations weed them out? How does The Times weed them out? Or, do they?
3
In 2165, there will be maps of the Internet. On the borders, in Times New Roman, will be the words "Here there be Trolls."
Yes, oh great humans of 2165, we saw them. They are real. You can't beat them. You can't join them. They are our white whale.
Here they be. Here they will stay.
Here's a comment about how comments are generally a dumb idea:
Let's take one of the better online sites: Sean Carroll's Preposterous Universe. Here, an interested lay person can gather a wealth of absolutely AMAZING info on the latest findings and theories in cosmology and theoretical physics. It's a gold mine and represents the internet at its best.
I NEVER read the comments, because I'm there to hear what Sean Carroll has to say. Other serious physicists, some who may differ with Sean, have sites too and one should visit them as well (and read their books and listen to their online lectures) to have a more rounded and nuanced picture of these topics.
This mad race to democratize everything and to give everyone their say is ultimately destructive. If you really have something to say (in music, film, philosophy, neuroscience or cosmology), you put your work out there and allow it to be judged by people competent to do so. That's positive. That's the sort of thing that makes the internet a wonderful source of inspiration and knowledge for anyone with an internet connection.
The flip side is con artists and hucksters like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones and Sam Harris who spark endless "debates" about absolutely nothing and spread disinformation to the masses in their ceaseless quest at self-aggrandizement and cash. These are not places where anyone goes who is interested in learning something. They are places to sound off and behave in an infantile manner.
3
This is not a complicated issue. One should close all social media accounts and read/post comments only on reputable sites like this one. Facebook, Twitter and their ilk are locusts.
15
Hello! Do not be a part of it. Walk away. Turn the other cheek. Ignore them. What is the point? I do not think anything is ever resolved. Dumb and dumber. U wake up the next morning and ............
3
Frankly, I have the power. So do you.
I quit all social media. Twitter went first. It’s vile and turns good people into rude monsters. It’s like a giant psychological experiment gone wrong, like those studies in the basement of the University of Chicago, decades ago. People lose their civility, they say in public what maybe they should only say to a therapist.
Facebook went after it was obvious what they were doing to us. I would look at threads and good friends would be hammering each other, calling each other terrible things, making assumptions, pushing stupidity and self-righteousness. There was a moment when two friends were in a vicious debate, on my Facebook thread. These were two people who had never met, but it they had, at a party, would become fast friends, clink beers. Online, they were at each other’s throats.
I will not facilitate that, while making Mark Zuckerberg wealthy.
So I dropped it all. There was a period of mourning, I must say. Maybe more like withdrawal from an addiction. Then the colors returned to life. Conversation, face to face, bloomed. I had time to participate in my life, rather than being distracted by a constant flow of needless information.
I make a point of calling friends, getting together with them, doing things. The computer, the internet, is now kind of boring. It’s a last resort.
I do like to comment here. It harkens back to Ben Franklin. As El Jamon, I am free to contribute in a thoughtful way. I like this better.
32
If Infowars doesn't violate Twitter's rules, Twitter needs new rules.
21
In 1450 the printing press was invented, by 1475 it was really up and running. In the next century it produced over 100 million books, about two for every adult in Europe. And so people learned to read.
The result was not enlightenment, but violent argument as they all read the bible and found they disagreed about what it meant. Suddenly the forum of public debate, till then mostly left to the leisured and priestly educated, became flooded with all sorts of half-educated people and their half-baked ideas, eager to prove the old maxim that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. There followed more than 100 years of bloody religious warfare.
In 1990 the internet was invented, by 2000 it was really up and running. In 2007 came the first smartphone and soon everyone was connected all the time.
Suddenly the forum of public debate, till then mostly left to the readers of broadsheet newspapers, was flooded with Archie Bunkers, red-pilled Infowars addicts, half-educated pseudo-scientists and xenophobic grandmas. Suddenly people were brought face to face with the violence of their disagreement, even as they also found silos where everyone saw things their way... The result was not enlightenment...
8
I completely disagree - in fact, we have ALL the power! The power to refuse to participate in this online free-for-all fiasco. Practice cerebral hygiene and get off twitter, facebook, instagram, etc. Engage in REAL social contact where you actually talk to people face-to-face. It will do wonders for your mental health.
52
It shouldn't be that hard for the social media companies to implement some simple rules which would help with the trolling. For example, why should someone be able to generate an email account, and then be able to post the very same day (as this very site is doing). We have a waiting period for guns, why not for online posting? The social media companies should be onboard with things like this.
9
Joyn Updike once wrote, that he thought America was a vast conspiracy to make him happy. Times have changed, now it's a vast conspiracy to make you mad.
It's not surprising that Jack Dorsey refused to ban Alex Jones and InfoWars since Twitter is the social networking platform that's actually losing users over the past few years. Lately Twitter has been only useful to hate mongers and journalists. If he didn't have them then Twitter would be bankrupt.
3
Disqus is the worst case scenario. You can't block people from following you, so they stalk you to places you are commenting. And then they come over and falsely flag comments to completely eradicate opposition.
The scientists I know have terrible experiences with this. Cranks are much more motivated to manipulate the system and most sites don't moderate well. If sites aren't going to do it properly, they should just stop having comments.
2
Back when I had social media accounts (since deleted), I learned to pick out the trolls/bots. Instead of directing my anger online at a real person, I would direct the anger at the bot and basically verbally abuse it and use it as a punching bag. It was quite cathartic. No, I do not miss it one bit.
2
Online comments being nasty, brutish, and too infrequently short are not the problem.
The problem is that social media consists of privately owned public platforms whose relationship to free speech is fundamentally different to that of protected speech in the public sphere.
Social media monopolies are the danger because their monopoly gives them outsize political, economic, and cultural influence. They are not so much poisoning public discourse as supplanting it with "public-like" discourse that is subject to the algorithmic whims of people like Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and their ilk.
Google, FB need to be reined in and made responsible to the public they should serve. The question is how.
3
In his recent book "Antisocial Media", Facebook founder Siva Vaidhyanathan explains how Facebook devolved from an innocent social site hacked together by Harvard students into a force that, while it may make personal life just a little more pleasurable, makes democracy a lot more challenging. It's an indictment of how social media has fostered violence and served to disseminate disinformation around the world, from Russian intervention in the Great Catalonian Cyber War of 2017, to the exploitation of the platform by murderous authoritarians in Burma and the Philippines.
2
There is actually a very simple solution to this. Turn off Facebook and the other platforms. I have done this, restricting my surfing to those accounts that focus on local concerns and have a local moderator. Otherwise, the internet is a haven for people who have nothing to say but insist on saying it anyway. After I activated the 'ignore' button, I found myself to be much more productive in those things that matter to me.
4
If you want to use the internet or comments to enlighten yourself, you must determine when to ignore some/most of the content. OK, yes, some people just want to rant. But I think most of us are getting our news, our information about the USA and world just from the internet. I think if you're not putting a critical eye on 80+ % of what's on the internet, you're not treating the info there with the disrespect it deserves. Now for the soapbox: Do you think our children are learning real critical thinking in our K-12 schools these days? They are told they are, but is it real? My two cents, thank you for listening.
I agree with Mr. Chen's analysis right up to his conclusion that we cannot do much about it. I am a commenter on many sites, and have had some interesting, fact based discussions often, about very contentions ideas at times. I do have one simple rule, however. If you respond with personal attacks on me or anyone else, I just ignore you.
Trolls thrive on attention, responding to them just feeds their need. Even laughing at them does the same. Ignore them and they will starve away. Do not block them, do not even tell them you are no longer responding, just do not respond at all.
14
Better to allow all expression and let the audience decide what to do with it, than to have censors make the decisions. I want to see even abhorrent expression, because the information that it conveys about those who create it is invaluable to me. Don't protect me from it and lull me into a false sense of the state of the world. Nothing could be more dangerous.
9
@David Anderson The problem with valuing even "abhorrent expression" is that it's impossible to know how widespread -- or authentic -- it may be. Does it represent the views of a lunatic fringe? Of most members of a growing hate group? Of a segment of a major political party? Or is it merely a provocation posted by a foreign government hacker? The real problem with Internet comments -- I guess we've so internalized this trope we no longer think about bringing it up -- is *anonymity*. As long as we're all anonymous we're free to be as outrageous or destructive as we'd like, especially if our mission is to pretend to be a citizen of a country whose values we've been ordered to undermine.
15
I wrote a whole dissertation on this concept:
"Rhetoric and the Architecture of Empire in the Athenian Agora." Don't be put off by the ponderous title. Without accountability, speech tends to bully and pummel, and aggressive loudness trumps decent thoughtfulness. Are we an empire of force or an agora of persuasion?
Google released Perspective (https://perspectiveapi.com/), a service to detect toxic comments. Tech companies, as private organizations, of course will always have the final say on which comments make it onto their platforms. However, non-profit organizations or governments can issue open-source and well-researched algorithms (along the lines of Perspective) for companies to detect and filter toxic comments. Governments can enforce or encourage this behavior.
A dark side of this that doesn't get much attention is the people who have to vet comments and content uploaded to social media platforms. This work is quota driven, forcing human content moderators to view thousands of obscene and violent images (suicides, rapes, assaults, animal abuse), vulgar comments and other horrific content daily. Companies like Facebook are hiring veritable armies of analysts to this end. But what about the analysts’ mental health? What are these companies doing to protect their analysts (many of whom are outsourced, low-wage labor)? Are these analysts being burnt out and discarded, afflicted with PTSD? Check LinkedIn for social media analyst positions and you will find many, many vacancies. Per Jarod Lanier’s excellent book “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now,” I think the business model these platforms are built upon encourage people to be their worst selves, and do far more harm than good. I would like to see more reporting on the human costs associated with maintaining these platforms.
3
Social media can quickly become Mob Media. Those who use the internet to express themselves are hardly “shouting out into the air”. The internet takes us far beyond TV and radio talk shows. If some crazy clown puts their ideas onto the internet, they can have a million followers in a very short time. If the message is that now is the time to fight for this idea, the civil society we take for granted is placed at great risk.
I think the best solution is to remove “social media” from your life. Perhaps Facebook is acceptable as a way of staying in touch with family and friends. Other uses are questionable.
1
I was an early adherent to blogging/commenting around a debate over a local issue (A proposed wind farm off of Cape Cod). I began responding to articles on a local paper's website. Later, I established my own blog on a local "online newspaper".
Over and over, the right wing trolls caught up with us and ruined the discussion. 1st, the local paper tried to limit the toxicity, then they dropped commenting all together. The site with my blog tried several things to limit the toxicity. In one attempt daily and monthly maximums for the number of comments were tried. Nothing worked.
In my experience, it's only a matter of time before right wing trolls take over on-line commenting
3
The two cultures - offline and online - have diverged. Norms arrived at over thousands of years - treat others as you yourself would like to be treated, for example - have yet to be adopted in online discourse. The internet is still a child.
There is plenty that can be done. First, remove the anonymity of the commenter. Would they be willing to defend their comments in front of people they love and respect? In most cases, likely not. Anonymity is the first line of defense of the coward. Second, add more moderation. We have machine learning technology now that could be used to simply flag possibly offensive or hateful content for viewing by a human moderator (it's not reliable enough to allow for full automation - yet.) Third, crowd source monitoring for offensive/hateful content. If enough people agree that a comment is hateful, remove it, and if the same user is found to commit multiple abuses, revoke their login.
As usual, solutions are available - we just need to act.
4
"People use the internet to get more of what they do no get enough of in everyday life."
As someone who deleted his Facebook account several years ago and never wasted my time with a Twitter account, I can tell you that there's A LOT you can do ... starting with living a real life. You'll find that the Alex Jones of the world (and the controversies around them) will attract much less of your limited time and attention span here on Earth. And if more of you do that, you'll get to revel in watching these tech companies lose their market value right before your eyes. Trust me ... it's pretty sweet.
38
There is only one way to get rid of trolls and that is to make everyone register with their real name, address and personal information. When people know their words and comments will follow them forever and possibly ruin their name, lives and careers, perhaps they will use common sense and stop all the hate, bullying, misogyny, sexism, racism and inflammatory comments.
I refuse to believe this is out of our control. Hiding behind a computer and spewing vitriol isn't acceptable in a civilized society. We must have the will to change this, if not for ourselves, for our children.
116
I couldn't agree more. Anonymity is the biggest reason for bad behaviour on line.
An online identity should be the equivalent of a physical passport.
People could be rated by those who view their posts (like Uber drivers or AirBnB hosts) on (say) credibility and civility, giving others instant context.
It would be relatively easy for social media to accept comments from only those with a validated identity.
@Pamela L. This sounds so reasonable, but if a story is about, say, sexual assault and someone wants to share personal information about an experience, they're less likely to share if their identity is not somewhat protected. Part of having a degree of privacy in comments means many people are more open to sharing good and interesting (yet personal) information, too, that they wouldn't otherwise share.
1
@Pamela L.
But using initials means anonymity doesn't it Pamela L.? Humility too. I could use my full name in ALL CAPS but that's not how I'm inclined to roll.
1
Europe has a much more clear and logical position and structured response to "tech companies" and their assault on society, via "social media". They (Europeans) are not corrupted by the financial "power" wielded by those companies in this country, at least no to the same extremes we are witnessing. Privacy is still protected there. It is not protected here. Nor is truth. More regulation is a logical next move, as these businesses, profit-driven all, are, in no way, accepting any social responsibility for the destruction they have caused and continue to cause to the world. Especially galling was the barely-hidden contempt shown by Zuckerberg in his Congressional "testimony". So fitting to see him sitting on a 4" cushion to make him seem taller. It didn't work.
4
There is a simple solution. Close your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. accounts. Don't waste time and emotional energy online. Interact one on one with real people.
37
@DAK
But you're so far away from my local coffee shop DAK. We're better suited to discrimination, than abstinence. Cheers.
Follow the logic. Unless the question "why are people so toxic online?" leads you to specific solutions, you can ignore it. The only solution I've seen it lead to is wishful pleas to play nice. (See today's article by Bloom & Jordan.) So I ignore it.
How about bots, hackers? The only solution there is validated individual identities. An "ID card for the internet." No, it doesn't have to be universal, just required for entry into certain spaces online, the same way you need an ID to get into a country or a corporate office, buy a cellphone or (if you're young) get a drink at a bar. Don't want to show your ID? Go play elsewhere.
Why can't tech companies impose rules? Their business is profit, not policing. They can enforce rules (at your cost), but the rules have to be regulations derived from law. Besides, they already have leeway to trample on constitutional rights, so long as they trample with their products on their property with your contractual consent. You want them to have even bigger feet?
A technology fix? You mean, the way seat belts prevent auto accidents?
Why can't we make laws now? Because we have really antiquated, contradictory and impractical concepts of privacy, anonymity, speech rights and conduct freedom when we enter public infrastructure. Look at cars and trucks, invented around 1890, but really just iron horses until safety regulated in the 1960's.
We're a long way from solutions. But we should start by discarding false answers.
2
I understand the struggle of this article, yet I feel as if the entire situation is over dramatized. When someone posts an offensive comment, I agree, reporting it is the best option. But besides that people need to learn not to take every rude comment to hear, because no matter what you do people will always find some way to say mean things online.
Whether or not I think you should respond to a hurtful comment online is an entire different situation. Internet trolls love to argue and fight with others, and will only be pleased when you fight back with them. You are much better off being the mature character and leaving it be, which is best for them and yourself.
All in all, I think this article was interesting but slightly unnecessary for me and others to read.
1
Trolls are, unfortunately, a natural consequence of the modern media economic model: These days (really, since at least CNN demonstrated its viability) "News" is expected to be a source of revenue, not information. One gets revenue for news in the form of advertising money. And one gets advertising money by attracting more attention so advertisers will pay that money. The easiest way to attract more attention is to be sensationalist (see Fox). Or, at the minimum, phrase some news item or headline to sound more sensationalist than it really is to get a strong emotional reaction and, presumably, more attention (see this very article). Those sensationalist headlines/stories naturally attract more sensationalist/emotional reactions, including potential trolls.
Critically, just add anonymity and a lack of consequence to that mix and you are guaranteed to get trolls every time. It has always been so. In the real world, the troll is the anonymous person that could transform a crowd into a mob by throwing a rock through a window. Almost no one knows who threw the rock, but the mob gets triggered. Today it's mostly called "hooliganism," but the mechanisms are the same.
Those tactics work just as well on the internet, probably better, since you can aggregate more trolls from around the world into the same virtual location and feed them into a pre-emotionally charged discussion (thanks advertising-based news!), and not just the few in any given crowd at any given time.
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I'm confused. If I understand correctly, the FCC, under Ajit Pai, has ruled against net neutrality, stating that ISPs can charge what they want for content, with "fast lanes" and "slow lanes." Under that view, the Internet is not commonly owned, like roads or utilities. It's not a "public commons."
Seems to me the right wing wants it both ways. They want to control access to content if they can make money from it (private companies), but also treat the Internet as a public space (free speech) for all kinds of odious, hateful, and ignorant conspiracy theories.
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@jrinsc You are indeed confused. Net neutrality is a commercial issue, not a content issue. Net neutrality was an attempt by high data usage sites like Netflix and Youtube (which are on their own 30% of peak internet usage in the US every day) to shift the costs of that usage to the ISPs, a cost shift supported by the previous administration, which received significant campaign donations from these companies (as well as a juicy development deal for Obama from Netflix, not that the media will ever look into that quid pro quo). This issue here is thought suppression: progressives and actual conservatives don't like Infowars, but that pesky First Amendment, which I am sure the left will dispose of soon, does allow for freedom of speech. So while I dislike Infowars as well as, say, MSNBC, they both should have their voices heard. Your side might not agree with hearing different voices any more, but I think it is still the American thing to do. Hope that clarifies things for you.
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I have the perfect solution. Purchase your news from reputable sources. There are quite a few, including this one. Cancel your "social media" apps, including Facebook and Twitter and obnoxious ones like Pinterest. Use email. It's great. You will feel much better.
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Robert B Are there any reliable sources left?
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As Twitter has underlined, Alec Jones and Infowars were not suspended because they violated no Twitter rules. No surprises there! Twitter rules allow and facilitate lying, bullying, inciting violence, championing bigotry, promoting lawbreaking, and other bad behaviors. Twitter is the favorite megaphone of President Trump. Perhaps decent people should leave twitter. Perhaps decent people already have left Twitter.
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@Marvant Duhon Or never went there in the first place. An outlet for "monsters from the id" cannot be good.
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@Marvant Duhon
In British and Australian English "a twit" is a "a silly, foolish or annoying person". Somebody didn't do sufficient research. Or maybe they did? Anyway I'm not a tweeting twit on Twitter.
"What does that show us? That you as an internet user have little power over content you find offensive or harmful online. It’s the tech companies that hold the cards."
I could not disagree more with this assertion. You hold the cards! Leave Twitter! Delete your Facebook account. Leave Instagram. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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NYT headline: "Sorry, There's Not Much You Can Do". I dont believe that. When as a technology-driven culture, have we ever said that? There's a tech solution for everything. "Sorry ..." is s just an excuse to get censorious, I suspecyt. If people feel harassed by comments, there's surely a tool for that. If not, the tech companies have a duty to create it and make it available. Then it's up to the User. It might take a few minutes of tweaking on the User end. But if you're not willing to spend those few minutes setting your preferences, you're probably not as offended as you say you are.
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Offensiveness is a terrible criterion for shutting down a website or an opinion. To date, the social media have generally skewed in the direction of SJWs, and have been overly censorious (often arbitrarily) of opinion. (I'm not talking about "opinion" that advocates vigilante action.) I don't believe that consumers should be waging war on social media to reduce offensiveness. The bar is far too low.
On the other hand, there's something to be said for social media shutting down clearly fake news, but who is going to do the research? Snopes? And what about websites that claim the world is 6,000 years old and that evolution is a lie -- truth-claims that are demonstrably false, and clearly fake news. Do they get a pass because the people who write such drivel base their fake news on an allegedly holy book?
Fake news, and public pressure, appears to be really why Infowars was shut down, not 'racist' or 'anti-Semitic' or any other offensive speech. (In fact, look up Alex Jones on ADL's website, and you'll see that he is not deemed by the ADL to be overtly anti-Semitic.) This is the direction that should be explored, but whatever the social media decides should be made clear and transparent, with the possibility of appeal for a decision that is in error.
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I am seriously considering canceling my Twitter account. The CEO's explanation for not acting in the case of Jones is specious at best. Saying that it the job of reporters to debunk false statements is a joke. The average Twitter user doesn't bother to find out if the statements made by people like Jones are actually true. In his case, some of his statement have resulted in citizens being harassed to the point of receiving death threats and in one case, being forced to move away from the home. Opinion is one thing. But it should be made clear that it is just an opinion. That means more than simply labeling an untrue story as "opinion."
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I am surprised that neither the author nor the expert raised the issue of anonymity and false identities. If there is no risk to one's reputation, of course people will spew back. Agitators like Jones may be in it for the money or because they "have issues", but are just cheerleaders for the legions of shadowed identities.
As for the comment "Given the way things are going, our faith in the internet may erode until we distrust it as much as we do TV news", hasn't that ship already sailed? Is the author giving a free pass to "print-first" media like The Times?
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@Steve Raaen
The secret ballot is part of our democratic tradition. Would you want a light to indicate who you voted for to go off when you cast your vote at the polling place? Why not?? Wouldnt this be "risk to one's reputation" that you think is so salutary? Be consistent.
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@MI That's a false equivalence, if there ever was one.
Why are people so toxic online?
Simple. There is no retribution.
Internet trolls, and Liberals and conservatives both have theirs in large numbers, will call your mother names and demand you die. I know, I get many such comments from people demanding open borders when I say 'no'.
And there is no way you can fight back. You report them in FB, a month later FB says 'it's all good bro', meantime they spit venom your way, and you cannot do a thing about it.
While in real life, the same people would never say that to your face.
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@Shark
People saying what they really think seems a lot healthier to a democracy than people holding it in as you suggest they do. "Venom" is a subjective, ultimately useless, word in this context. Are people's negative opinions about something you for some reason treasure necessarily "venom". The people who spew it probably think it's a tonic for you.
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I am relatively new to Facebook and social media, but for years I have posted reviews on Amazon and the occasional comment on NYT, usually with satisfaction for having contributed my two cents worth into a discussion.
But on Facebook the thing that has stunned me is how gratuitously nasty people can be in response to the most benign of comments. I once posted a comment about how I had always thought plastic was biodegradable, given enough time underground, and how I had presumed waste management companies effectively recycled plastic items. I was fully acknowledging that I had been wrong in my presumption. I was immediately attacked by enviro-trolls who made numerous offensive comments about what an idiot I was, and questioning how I could have been such an ignoramus....and worse. My point had been that I think a lot of people have a misconception about plastic, and I felt it was imperative to educate the public about how plastic does not go away. Well, suffice it to say, I've learned there is a mean-spirited lunatic fringe even amongst the environmental movement.
And, there is this element apparently amongst every movement, as anytime you comment on any issue, no matter how benignly, you open yourself up to ridicule and attack.
I've learned: there are a lot of mean and angry people out there.
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@LG It’s true how some people can surprise with their gratuitous negativity. I once posted a comment to an online chat in another well respected newspaper that generated some blowback. I said that when I was living in a large city and taking public transportation every day it really made me aware of challenging life was for some people with various disabilities who were navigating the bus system with walkers, wheelchairs, canes, etc. I felt gratitude that I was not so challenged. I was accused of having a superior attitude toward these people and someone looking down on them, apparently because I was “choosing” to take buses and they had to. Honestly, I did not get it then and I still don’t get it, as I think back. Sharing buses with people who had to work harder than I did to get around town opened my eyes and my heart. I guess internet trolls don’t necessarily want either opened.
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@LG
There are. And your story shows that it is too simplistic to suggest that people registering their real names would solve the problem. Facebook is often a cesspool— I’ve seen horribly misogynistic, racist, just plain mean comments, and when I click the person’s name, I can see their hometown and their place of business. Many people are happy to be beasts online, even if they are not anonymous.
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The author is correct; the trolls won. The reason is wrong. The trolls won not because they have successfully turned the comments fields into cesspools. The trolls won because their behavior lead to a reporter for the NYT to chastise large corporations for not protecting our precious eyes from offensive content.
This is awful.
The way to fight trolls is to ignore them. Close up the comment field. Stop supporting the sites that encourage such commenting if that brothers you so. But this notion that we have to beg huge corporate entities to protect us from speech we might not like is childish at best, and extremely dangerous at worst. This is censorship and it’s a very slippery slope.
Finally, unless and until we stop rewarding trolls by paying them, it will continue unabated. Trolling has been monetized and it is lucrative. Remove that incentive and we’ll see a decline in the problem.
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@Dinny FitzPatrick And just who do you think is "monetizing" these trolls you refer to? It's the very same "huge corporate entities" you refer to in the previous paragraph. This isn't about free speech. It's about the BUSINESS of encouraging extremes by the same process to which you seem opposed.
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Hey Brian, not too worry. Your employer makes sure that any comments to disrespectful of any Liberal-Left public figure or agenda never see the light of day. Of course, when it came to Bush and now with Trump, no obscene label is considered out of bounds.
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I have read several articles like this and no on discusses the monetization of clicks. Producers of content provide the content which these companies use for profit. Typically the more dramatic or emotionally the content the better it will perform on social media. Content is not rewarded for its accuracy or contribution to society it is awarded for engagement. It is click porn. All of this is run by algorithms. Social media companies algorithms should be forced to reward content creators for accuracy based on multiple independent sources. if your post ranks low for supporting sources or for hate your post should rank low in the search and be tagged with poor rating icons such as a thumbs down imogi. Stupid people respond to stupid graphics. This would reduce clicks and the spreading of misinformation.
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It’s safe to assume that one man’s troll is another’s political counterpart. Here’s an easy solution for the author of his piece: if you don’t like the comments on Infowars, then don’t go there. No one is forcing you to. Attempting to censor comments simply because you don’t agree with them is Orwellian and quite frankly somewhat shocking coming from an apparently liberal young tech writer. Scary.
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Much of what the article says is correct. I am surprised that Mr. Chen does not make reference to the excellent comment section provided by the NY Times.
It would be interesting to see statistics as to the extent to which the Times excludes comments for failing to meet the paper's published comment standards. It may be that readers of the Times naturally have a higher degree of writing civility than average, or that the Times prior moderation has trained its reader base to be more civil or that the Times effectively continues with human moderators or with automated moderation. Probably all of the above.
I have not seen a better comment section, anywhere on the the internet, as to substance, form and civility.
As regards Facebook, Twitter, etc, they have a built in conflict of interest. Their marketing plans create an artificial appearance of community in order to generate as much participation and comment as possible, regardless of content. The objective is to mine participation for the kinds of user personal information that can generate more income for their network. Often, even what looks like a security measure, is actually used by them as one more effective way to extract personal information.
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@HJB Excellent comment. I was going to say something very similar. Of course you realize that you and Mr. Chen are opening yourselves up to a rash of trolls exercising their First Amendment rights to display their bad manners while spewing their utter nonsense.
We are told that if we don't like Infowars not to go there, missing the point of this discussion altogether while failing to see the irony of their own words.
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I think that one way to improve social media overnight is to make people use their real names.
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@Dennis Martin
what is a "real name" ? your social security number ?
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@Dennis Martin Nothing stops some one else from using your name. And then you're on the hook for comments made by others.
Trying to prove in court that you did not post that is impossible.
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Now that our leaders are also posting toxic content, which then gets played on every news outlet, everyone seems to be in a contest to see who can be the biggest bully and hope their comments get attention. Tech companies are expected to control speech where our government and laws cannot. Are we providing any education on how to communicate online and how to ignore toxic speech? I think not. As long as there is a perceived emotional/egotistic "payoff" for toxic speech, it will continue. If toxic speech is ignored and looses it's audience, it will fade over time.
what i find is interesting is that the written word without social context is given much more weight than the face to face spoken word...
if much of the stuff repeated in tweets etc was said to most people at a bar by a stranger...most people would simply walk away and either not think much of it or say “ok that is the person’s opinion...but what do they know...”
or that most opinions are not serious or well thought out and this commonly would be acknowledged by the person giving the opinion...just a thought that crosses ones mind...but again when written it is treated as if it is a PhD thesis or a legal court opinion that must be treat with the utmost gravity ...instead of saying “that doesn’t make much sense”....
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The ultimate power the consumer has is to cancel their accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, et al. I did it over a year ago and I haven't missed it for a minute. While they provide a useful way to interact with friends, sadly the evil aspect of all of them now outweighs the good. They are dependent on users providing their personal information for free so that they can sell that information to advertisers. When tens of millions of people simply stop using these platforms they might clean up their act.
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@Jeffrey Davis
NYTimes has the same dependency. The "free press" has been replaced with advertizer supported content publication. Internet Trolls are central to low cost engaging content production.
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This article was very interesting to me because I think that it speaks very well on the issues we face in this highly computerized world. In my opinion, it is unfortunate but what they are saying is true. I think we should keep examining why people are so hatred online and try to target how to fix these problems.
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