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Get rid of them entirely? Not happening.
Severely reduce them? Ban advertising. As it stands, you can spin up hundreds or even thousands of free accounts on any given site for not much investment, which means banning a troll account doesn't do much. Without advertising, the web would require you to pay for access. If people have to pay real cash for every BS bot account and trolling shitpost, they would be less inclined to spam or harass people.
As far as the whole web, you can't, and if you care about free speech you shouldn't try to. Everybody talks about getting rid of these people, but the unspoken assumption is that the person making the statement or people in their in-group will be deciding who gets a voice. A rule of thumb I use when thinking about laws or administrative controls is to consider whether they could be used against me should someone who doesn't like me gain power.
As far as individual sites, have clear guidelines and enforce them. Be open with people why they're being banned (looking at you, YouTube). On the Fediverse, block and defederate.
Bots seem to be the biggest problem though
got me. Is there any aspect of the web that is not more bot than human. I love the web but I trust it as far as I can throw it and it has no physicality. Its interesteting to converse but my decision making is with people I know face to face.
As long as the internet remains easily accessible, you're not going to.
As long as the internet remains easily accessible, you’re not going to.
Let's say there's a news website that didn't allow any comments on their articles before, out of fear for bots, trolling, bullying, and other kinds of rotten behavior. At some point they implemented a way to comment that requires logging in with one's identity card, information that remains publicly unreadable/unavailable through a myriad of safeguards.
Considering the amount of bots and other bad actors, wouldn't this decrease the stench significantly?
requires logging in with one’s identity card
Fastest way to get me to never use your site again. I'd rather deal with a few trolls and bots than have to give my ID to every site I want to interact with. That's some ridiculously invasive stuff right there. Turning every website into their own private Big Brother is the opposite of progress.
Plus, what about when the site's database inevitably gets compromised, and now my personal info is public?
This is an argument to an incomplete quotation that misrepresents the hypothetical; reading articles doesn't require ID, writing comments underneath them does.
Plus, what about when the site’s database inevitably gets compromised, and now my personal info is public?
Well, if you're not bullying other people in the comments I'd say you'd be fine. What if your hospital's database gets hacked and all your private health issues are public? Will you stop seeking healthcare in hospitals? The whole world is based on trust. Moreover, I'm pretty sure there are ways to do zero-knowledge encrypted ID card verification that doesn't require a database. Similarly to Amazon reviews, a comment could simply show "verified ID", but, retain no other information.
they'd get less page views and lose revenue
the bots/trolls/bad actors make them more money than the casual user.
they’d get less page views and lose revenue
No. The site never allowed comments before, they do after. ID is only necessary for commenting, not reading. So, losing revenue doesn't make sense. Also, not all websites exist to make revenue.
That would just cause the bad actors to move elsewhere, or not be there in the first place, since they initially weren't allowed to comment. If every site implemented such measures and people just ignored the privacy and security issues, then you would have to trust that the site operators would act in good faith. Look at all the garbage on Facebook. FB keeps trolls and such around because they're good for engagement, and bad actor advertisers because they pay a lot of money.
Facebook. FB keeps trolls and such around because they’re good for engagement, and bad actor advertisers because they pay a lot of money.
Sounds like pretty good arguments in favor of per-site identity verification. On Facebook I obviously wouldn't, but there are some news websites where I definitely would.
Only by mass culling of humans as a whole. There's no other way because humans inherently want to make things worse and have to be taught empathy and respect.
Bad news, 1. It's impossible 2. They aren't just on the web.
right, has OP ever not had a noisy neighbor? or like been in public outside?
barely a week goes by I don't meet some horrible person who goes off on a service worker and at least once a month someone goes off on me. periodically i have neighbors who harass me for not good reason if I spend too much time outside in porch or my garden, to come and 'helpfully' tell me what is 'wrong' with my property. even though i live in a condo building, as if I am solely responsible for the entire building...
last week i was returning my shopping cart and this lady like came running at me and started screaming at me that i was 'being too slow' and grabbed my cart and ran off with it. it was BIZARRE. there was an entire row of them by the entrance to the market, but she zeroed in on me in the middle of the parking lot and decided to harass me because my walking was too leisurely for her or something.
has OP ever not had a noisy neighbor? or like been in public outside?
It's not because people can be turds in real life that it has to be so online as well. Moreover, in real life accountability can be imposed because one knows who they are. Online, not as much.
Anyway, I started this thread to seek for potential solutions. Saying "it's impossible" does a disservice to human ingenuity, or more people than I imagine are smurfing as trolls.
By creating upright societies, I guess.
"Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear... but it was never the streets that were evil."
Damn the writing in SMAC was so good. How do they get you nodding along to a Christian theocrat thinking "Well I dont like her, but she makes some good points"
Everyone else was insane. 🤷
Well, Morgan was just a self-centered capitalist and Lal was consumed with the fantasy of reviving his wife (understandable tbh), but the others were cuckoo extremists, lol. And then the space nun comes around saying things like "hey maybe creating self replicating colonies of nanobots is NOT the best of ideas".
How to rid the Web of trolls, bad actors, misinformation, et cetera?
M U R D E R
flashbacks to batmetal
Destroy capitalism
Uhm.. block them? Or what I love to do, don't interact with them, dislike their posts if they are really shitty. Then you'll either get blocked by their communities(shoutout to those weirdly specific AI "communities") or you just see them often enough to know their name and just block them, because after all it's not like you want to see their posts anymore. As long as there is no harm in what they're posting, there's no need to annoy mods about it.
the mods on fedi often agree with the trolls though, because the mods themselves have troll beliefs.
reddit was the same. i got banned from many subreddits for not agreeing with the mods political or social agenda.
one time it was for posting a picture of my cat, it got me a site-ban for 'inciting violence'. by the indoor-only cat people.
Kakapoo
Don't feed the trolls.
It's a rule almost as old as the intranet. It doesn't work, but there isn't anything better.
Trolls are a dying breed now. It's all automated bots that don't care whether you "feed" them or not.
I do t agree with “block them”
Actively bully them. Call out misinformation.
On my Nextdoor a guy was constantly posting stuff that was just false. They would occasionally get a response from other neighbors. After the 3rd “I don’t think this is legit info” responses I finally called them out with “stop posting things that are factually incorrect. Take this post down. I’m reporting you.”
Holy shit did the neighbors unload on him. 30 responses later, which is likely the most active post of the month, he took it down and apologized.
People just needed one person to get the ball rolling.
all that does is further solidify them in their delusional beliefs.
and on fediverse, they just label you a nazi/facist/zionist and tell you that you are brainwashed by nazi/facist/zionist 'propaganda'.
im not trying to give out redemption arcs i wanna reduce the quantity of bad guys' political activity and reduce the effectiveness of their remaining political activity
and what if your actions just have the opposite effect?
hostility breeds hostility. resentment breeds resentment.
you're shooting yourself in the foot to spite the other guy. just like they are doing. you are them.
There’s no reaching these people but they can get booted off their platforms so others don’t get sucked into their nonsense.
they control the platforms on fedi.
That mostly worked because you're talking about neighbours, they knew where the troll lived and he was aware of that.
Actively bully them. Call out misinformation.
I strongly disagree with the former, I agree with the latter. Imagine you're your neighbor and you read the same advice you just wrote. You've now justified him bullying other people despite him likely being in the wrong. Moreover, one rarely knows the mental stability of strangers met online and offline, and some people really, really cannot handle criticism and will resort to unhinged behavior.
i mean unless they can dox you they are not a real world threat. at most they will report you and try to get you banned, which is annoying, but not going to really impact you in a large way.
in real life, yes, troll type people will try to ruin your social reputation. i had women in college spread claims of sexual assault when i rejected them for sex. they got their comeuppance eventually but it sucked to be harassed by random people who believed their lies. and a lot of people are increasingly mentally unwell and unhinged and will resort to violence if you upset them.
I love that you did this, and that it was successful, but TBH I don't have the time and energy in my life for doing the lord's work this way. I just block and move the fuck on. I assume if they don't get attention they will go away, but either way I'll have made it not my problem and others can make the same decision or not.
I had a friend I used to argue with all the time. He would post blatantly false shit on Facebook and I'd call him out. And we'd go back and forth until ultimately he would concede that he "didn't really know that much about it." And then the next day he would post the exact same lies like we'd never even danced that dance.
I can't confront that level of willful idiocy. It cost him nothing to post lies, while I'd spend an hour or so researching facts, providing links, and explaining that oil industry insiders might not be a great source for climate science (for example).
I’m not arguing with the poster, I’m speaking g up so others aren’t afraid.
You're not going to.
Go outside or read a book.
Go outside
Believe me I do, plenty, and increasingly so.
For starters we need someone to set what is a good or a bad actor, what is misinformation and what is Truth.
that's easy, it's who/what agrees with me and my beliefs.
that's all it means to people.
if you think that's wrong, well, you're probably an academic. but in the real world nobody cares about anything other than whether something makes them feel good, or feel bad. including academics outside of an academic context.
some of the most petty dumb and vile people i ever met were academics.
For starters we need someone to set what is a good or a bad actor, what is misinformation and what is Truth.
Common sense really isn't that difficult, nor is being a decent person without being ingratiating.
Good actors go into dialogue*, they address the idea: "Hey. I don't agree with your argument X because Y. What do you think about compromise Z?"
Bad actors rant, they attack the person, and deliberately use fallacies: "Only idiots believe X. Two plus two equals fish so only Z is true. If anything else, the world explodes."
Disinformation is when a bad actor maliciously spreads information they know is false to further their or someone's agenda. Misinformation is when an unsuspecting benign reader absorbs that information and spreads it. The latter happens more than the former.
What is true or false can be discerned with the scientific method: experiments, statistical analysis, et cetera, and most importantly reproducibility of said results because mistakes obviously do occur.
What are valid or invalid arguments can be discerned with logic—mathematical reasoning basically. Unfortunately most people suck at or dislike math because the archaic education system does it a disservice by subtracting from it all the fascination.
To answer your question, because I think your phrasing implies the verity of most information is "arbitrary", subjective, it's not. "Drop a feather and it's gonna fall." Truth. "Dogs are plants." False. The majority of politics isn't much different, but due to the amount of misinformation/misunderstanding, it creates the illusion as if it is. Politics is about policy making on things based in physical reality which can be objectively studied. That is, in an ideal society, where politicians aren't corrupted by greed and don't succumb to lobbying from the ultrarich parasites on top. Find out who has the most money and one will see who has the most manipulative power.
So any passionate actor is a bad actor. Which is necessary for wrong information to be disinformation according to your definition.
I will argue that a disinformation campaign could find agents that are able to remain calm and engage in 'polite' debate (via training, scripts and other forms of support, perhaps AI can help write some posts/articles etc). Meanwhile ordinary users are more likely to lose their cool when presented with propaganda even if it is well presented.
I am also going to address you suggesting that I believe most information is "arbitrarily" subjective. I don't. The issue is that of course we cannot actually apply the scientific method in a lot of cases, including news and politics.
For example either the US attacked first or Iran did in the most recent case. How would one apply the scientific method to find out? In a lot of cases there is simply not enough data accessible to people.
Even in science, both physical and especially social ones we have this issue. We don't really do experiments on whole countries etc.
I think you are handwaving away the issue. I am sure you know who the bad actors are and what is disinformation.
There is one way, but we don't want that.
first you have to stop the bots. you do this by requiring a phone number to MFA to. by doing this, you also stop people from making multiple accounts. you also stop (most) extremely young children from interacting.
second, you send out random validations to the phone number between 2-4 weeks. they have 24 hours to verify they are active. if they fail to activate more than twice in a row, their account is disabled and the phone number is greylisted.
if your phone number becomes greylisted, you can whitelist it after further validations, maybe calling into an automated hotline to validate post history, etc.
if you are banned for some reason, your phone number is blacklisted for as long as the ban is in effect.
at no point do we track a users identity outside of a unique number that is never shared or sold. the phone number is simply held as collateral to ensure the social contract is maintained by the user.
It's the nature of social networks. People mostly upvote (or whatever term) content they like/agree with, without vetting it. Contradictions or discomfort are voted down.
Some of what we call misinformation is just ignorance, some is people who lack context and some is on purpose but for a "good" cause. Similarly, one person's bad actor is another's reasonable critic. (In debate, you often examine something through someone else's lens/given framework, which necessitates examining from a position with which you do not agree. Which is often called bad faith acting.)
Trolls are the silliest and I don't get it but again, any community large enough will attract a weird subset who want to mess with it or, legit don't have the social skills. (I think of a sad account that saw a star trek or wars joke and wandered in to tell people they didn't like the series because it was for kids and then seemed to relish in the backlash. But looking over their comment history, they seemed an otherwise normal person.)
So, unless we really fundamentally change the nature of social media, I don't see those as solvable problems.
And if we could solve those issues, would people even want it? Would folks want to constantly see things that implied they might not be good people or that their politics or beliefs might be wrong? I think back to a post, somewhere on the fediverse about a vegan criticizing carnivores re: climate change. Even in the Leftist fediverse, it was downvoted to oblivion. But had it been about say cars, ai etc making the same point...
my favorite part about fedi is people demanding to see your sources, you show them, and they tell you to f yourself you're nazi/zionist anyway. and that if you belied well-sourced facts and news, you're a troll, because THEY KNOW the truth and if you don't agree with it, then you are just a baby-raping monster of a human being.
