[Discussion] The Inconceivable Power of Trolls in Social Media

This is a follow-on to the nearly two year old topic "Trouble at the Kool-Aid Point." The intention is to provide a place to discuss the unreasonable power social media trolls have over women and minorities, with a primary focus on video games (though other examples are certainly welcome).

For most of the protest the fascist side was chanting something about pedophiles. They’re really hung up on this made-up idea that one side is somehow guilty of attacking children.

A part of me wonders if that’s their own guilt speaking and another part of me assumes that’s a systemic attempt to start a moral panic.

Well, they’re openly fascist white supremacists that like to use Nazi iconography. When you openly embrace sh*t like that but still want to make your ideological opponents look worse basically the only thing left is pedophilia.

ruhk wrote:

The Proud Boys actually tried to “infiltrate” the counterprotestors but quickly got shut down because they are idiots. One of them in particular was running around in Antifa costume yelling loudly about how glad he is that leftists are welcoming towards pedophiles and how much he loves molesting children. I’m sure he thought he was being sneaky and subtle.

These little sh*ts posted their intent several days before the rally in either a public forum or a private one and someone snitched. I saw the screenshots well before the weekend. Antifa was more than ready.

The most disturbing thing about this rally was how boldly the Portland PD was in attacking the anti fascists and protecting the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer. It was enough to generate calls for an inquiry into the makeup of the Department.

Also - just so you know who antifa is fighting: this is a picture of Tiny, one of the leaders of Patriot Prayer. That shirt says “Pinochet did nothing wrong.”

IMAGE(https://media.koin.com/nxs-kointv-media-us-east-1/photo/2018/08/04/patriot%20prayer%20antifa%20protest%20m%2008042018_1533410637037.jpg_50704913_ver1.0_640_360.jpg)

I'm seeing a lot of outrage about this Twitter fiasco with Infowars. I mean it's pretty obvious over the years Twitter's stance on stuff like this and harassment is lacking to say the least. Yet, people continue to use it. I don't understand why people continue to support companies like this. I deleted my account last year and never regretted it. I understand that some peoples jobs require them to connect with the public but if Twitter is the only way to do that then there's something very wrong.

Twitter has the mass numbers to be too important to ignore for many companies/people.

While I almost never use twitter, I keep the account since it can be the best way to get customer support from a company.
You are right that it's a stupid system.

Twitter is one of the easiest way for minorities and freelancer artists, etc etc to communicate and conduct business. Many can't just walk away from it at this point.

It'd be difficult, but not impossible for people to move to a different platform in stages. Their CEO is clearly never going to get better, but everyone has to answer for themselves when the company's enabling and encouragement of dangerous people becomes too much to justify.

Vox had an article up explaining why turning off social media is not easy, nor really the best solution to the problem. The solution is to treat social media like a utility. Yes, these networks and ways too connect are beneficial and help improve life, but they I've also become integral to how we conduct business.

Social media ought to be more like a utility.

karmajay wrote:

Twitter is one of the easiest way for minorities and freelancer artists, etc etc to communicate and conduct business. Many can't just walk away from it at this point.

Yeeeep. As much as it's becoming clear that Twitters support of White Supremacy and harassment is deeper than just money, it's still a powerful platform for grassroots organising. Especially, as you say, for minorities despite the fact that they also face the worst harassment. I stay to support them.

I've been following the Sarah Jeong kerfuffle at the NYT. Very frustrating to see people unable to grasp sarcasm and context. I found the below article at Vox to be really insightful, especially the references to #NotAllMen from a few years ago (the similarities are almost exact).

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...

Jayhawker wrote:

Vox had an art pile up...

If this is a typo or auto-correct thing, it's amazing.

Jayhawker wrote:

Vox had an art pile up explaining why turning off social media is not easy, nor really the best solution to the problem. The solution is to treat social media like a utility. Yes, these networks and ways too connect are beneficial and help improve life, but they I've also become integral to how we conduct business.

Social media ought to be more like a utility.

Seems silly to equate leaving twitter with turning off social media though.

Tyops wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Vox had an art pile up...

If this is a typo or auto-correct thing, it's amazing.

Yeah, auto-correct is the bane of my existence sometimes. I should turn it off for posting at my desktop. I'd rather see the red underline than for it to "fix" what I wrote.

JeremyK wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Vox had an art pile up explaining why turning off social media is not easy, nor really the best solution to the problem. The solution is to treat social media like a utility. Yes, these networks and ways too connect are beneficial and help improve life, but they I've also become integral to how we conduct business.

Social media ought to be more like a utility.

Seems silly to equate leaving twitter with turning off social media though.

Seriously? Seems silly to be unable to see how the penalties of leaving Twitter are not similar to the penalties of leaving Facebook, Youtube, and other apps. They may have different takes on the issues facing social media, but the culprit is largely the same. Social media apps have the ability to generate insane profits off of our trust, but yet, are not trustworthy.

In this one case, Twitter is the outlier. But we can present a crapload of evidence that all of the apps are causing or contributing to a lot of social problems. Who benefits if we take away the tools of disruption?

Jayhawker wrote:
JeremyK wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Vox had an art pile up explaining why turning off social media is not easy, nor really the best solution to the problem. The solution is to treat social media like a utility. Yes, these networks and ways too connect are beneficial and help improve life, but they I've also become integral to how we conduct business.

Social media ought to be more like a utility.

Seems silly to equate leaving twitter with turning off social media though.

Seriously? Seems silly to be unable to see how the penalties of leaving Twitter are not similar to the penalties of leaving Facebook, Youtube, and other apps. They may have different takes on the issues facing social media, but the culprit is largely the same. Social media apps have the ability to generate insane profits off of our trust, but yet, are not trustworthy.

In this one case, Twitter is the outlier. But we can present a crapload of evidence that all of the apps are causing or contributing to a lot of social problems. Who benefits if we take away the tools of disruption?

I think it's possible to have social media platform that does a far better job preventing/discouraging harassment than twitter does. People would be better off using their time and energy to make that happen than trying to somehow guilt/shame twitter's corporate overlords to somehow be less sh*t. I think we've seen enough by now to know that's not going to happen.

Harassment is not the only issue facing social media. And if building a new social media app was so easy, then there would be one going right now.

The problem is, you are tilting at a straw windmill. For some reason, you think Twitter is the issue, and none of your other social media accounts are problematic. The issue is the insane profits they get from operating exactly as they do. And you think a do-gooder app is going to compete? That's the answer?

Instead, I would prefer to see expectations set for social media companies, and regulations created to ensure that those expectations are the focus of said companies. Force them to be profitable while taking into consideration the concerns of the community they are serving.

You know, like utilities.

Studies of Twitter have shown that its users naturally cluster themselves into groups based on interests. It is a very complex web of associations, but it is similar to the kind of structure you see in sociological studies of association groups in populations.

What if... rather than the default being exposing everyone to everything on a social media platform, the default was to expose people to a select set of groups based on a survey of interests. Companies and groups could pay for priority placement on this list, but the initial set would be chosen at random among the "interesting" groups. A personalized list of more to explore could be generated for each individual.

There would be no public global feed. People like twitter's current high profile influencers could help others discover new groups to join. The platform could also provide discovery services based on popularity, "people who liked this also liked this" and that sort of thing.

Would this kind of soft, user-friendly segregation make it more difficult for trolls and disruptive forces to spread lies and anarchy?

BadKen wrote:

Would this kind of soft, user-friendly segregation make it more difficult for trolls and disruptive forces to spread lies and anarchy?

It might. But I doubt it. Trolls will spread lies on other platforms, where folk in your bubble will import it from, into your segregated bubble.

It's a double-edged sword though, right? Because in the wingnut bubbles, ALL they'll see is lies, because that's all their bubble is interested in.

Jonman wrote:

It's a double-edged sword though, right? Because in the wingnut bubbles, ALL they'll see is lies, because that's all their bubble is interested in.

Of course, but that's true in the real world, too. The danger posed by Twitter and Facebook is that those ideas are spreading outside the wingnut bubbles. That's how more Angry Internet People are recruited.

BadKen wrote:
Jonman wrote:

It's a double-edged sword though, right? Because in the wingnut bubbles, ALL they'll see is lies, because that's all their bubble is interested in.

Of course, but that's true in the real world, too. The danger posed by Twitter and Facebook is that those ideas are spreading outside the wingnut bubbles. That's how more Angry Internet People are recruited.

Right. So you've got wingnut bubbles that are hotbeds of bullsh*t.

Your notion of segregated bubbles is going to have to be fricking airtight to prevent that seething cauldron of bullsh*t from spilling over. Given how intersectional our identities are, my guess is that the kind of thing your proposing isn't technically feasible.

Nevermind the fact that what you describe is largely how Facebook has been working for ages. How many Breitbart articles has FB shown you in the last couple of years?

None, because I don't use facebook.

The point though is that the platform does not send you unsolicited "news." That itself may make it infeasible because it tosses out a large source of revenue. But, if that news comes from within one of your association groups, you can have a civil discussion with like-minded individuals, or you can leave the group.

As far as leakage is concerned, my imaginary system would have to include some kind of smart self-moderation tools. Something like "block this person and everyone like them." With knowledge of association groups, the platform could feasibly do that. That would obviously cause collateral damage but in the service of filtering blather from people who are only interested in sowing discord, I think it's worth it.

The thing that's bothering me most about this idea is that it does not work well at all with small groups (less than on the order of millions of individuals).

Jayhawker wrote:

Harassment is not the only issue facing social media. And if building a new social media app was so easy, then there would be one going right now.

The problem is, you are tilting at a straw windmill. For some reason, you think Twitter is the issue, and none of your other social media accounts are problematic. The issue is the insane profits they get from operating exactly as they do. And you think a do-gooder app is going to compete? That's the answer?

Instead, I would prefer to see expectations set for social media companies, and regulations created to ensure that those expectations are the focus of said companies. Force them to be profitable while taking into consideration the concerns of the community they are serving.

You know, like utilities.

I find all social media platforms I've used problematic. I've just found Twitter to share most of the problems they all do and then some. As well as a general attitude of indifference about these issues from the people that run it. So while I'm not disagreeing that all social media could use some regulation I still would be very happy if people abandoned Twitter all together. It was by far the worst social media experience I've had. Maybe you've had a different experience.

Jayhawker wrote:

The problem is, you are tilting at a straw windmill. For some reason, you think Twitter is the issue, and none of your other social media accounts are problematic. The issue is the insane profits they get from operating exactly as they do. And you think a do-gooder app is going to compete? That's the answer?

Instead, I would prefer to see expectations set for social media companies, and regulations created to ensure that those expectations are the focus of said companies. Force them to be profitable while taking into consideration the concerns of the community they are serving.

You know, like utilities.

Except that people actually pay for water and electricity every month and don't (or won't) for Facebook, Twitter, or any social media platform.

Most people simply don't understand that they're not the customer of social media companies. They're the product.

OG_slinger wrote:

Most people simply don't understand that they're not the customer of social media companies. They're the product.

That is so quote worthy it hurts.

Top_Shelf wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Most people simply don't understand that they're not the customer of social media companies. They're the product.

That is so quote worthy it hurts.

I don't think it is attributable to anyone specific, but that quote has been making the rounds for over a year now. II saw an article somewhere suggesting that the real answer to Facebook was that users should get paid for participating as the only way to save the platform. I don't think that works either, though.

Jayhawker wrote:

I don't think it is attributable to anyone specific, but that quote has been making the rounds for over a year now.

Quite a bit longer than that... I had looked into this a while back.

There’s a mini-pizzagate fauxspiracy brewing around Portland tourist trap Voodoo Doughnuts.

This could potentially turn bad very quickly as their downtown location is only a short walk from where the Patriot Prayer/Proud Boy sh*theads have been marching.

ruhk wrote:

There’s a mini-pizzagate fauxspiracy brewing around Portland tourist trap Voodoo Doughnuts.

This could potentially turn bad very quickly as their downtown location is only a short walk from where the Patriot Prayer/Proud Boy sh*theads have been marching.

Build a wall between Vancouver and Portland