Controlling hate and trolls?

This is a positive step but I am not sure that we all understand and accept that it is possible. I hope that it works.Is it workable for small sites such as SLF?

From: http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/onlin...city-1.4001767

The misanthrope's view of the internet is that it's a hotbed for hate speech and angry trolling, and that it will forever be so.

That's because, according to this view, the online world is basically lawless frontier where we're free from the structure, confines and civility of real life. Another perspective is that the internet simply acts as a massive floodlight, exposing the ugliest parts of human nature.

But new approaches to taming trolls show that the current state of online toxicity may just be an issue of bad design. Companies such as Google and Riot Games — the makers of the massive multiplayer game League of Legends — are implementing new strategies to tackle poisonous speech, and these solutions might also prove successful in taming trolls on news sites and other online communities...

Beyond that, a number of studies show that anonymity might not be driving online toxicity after all. Rather, it could very well be the lack of repercussions and real-life consequences — coupled with anonymity — that fuel nasty behaviour online. Indeed, anonymity might set the foundation for aggression, but the lack of consequences is arguably what keeps the harassment...

Now Google is trying a similar approach. The company's tech incubator, Jigsaw, along with its Counter Abuse Technology team, recently launched Perspective, a public API that uses artificial intelligence to automatically flag toxic online speech. By comparing new comments with a large data set of archived comments, previously flagged as toxic, from sources such as Wikipedia or online news comment sections, Jigsaw believes it can positively identify hateful speech. As a result, a user's commenting privileges may be revoked, or else, he or she might be subject to "shadowbanning," whereby comments appear invisible to other members of the community.

On this site it is not very often that people get nasty. I think this forum is pretty civil most of the time.

I wasn't insinuating the SLF was plagued by trolls but rather questioning whether if controlling the trolls and hate speech would be limited to the big leagues like Google etc. Smaller sites have problems, too.

I'll bet I could beat the program and get my trollish comments through.

God, I miss the IMBD boards that closed Feb20. I dont know where I go to look up tiny things about films and tv shows.
edited to add: he Internet Movie Data Base discussin boards closed duemto trolls.

Not really sure where your getting the free from civility, etc?
That seems a very relativistic standard. I don't like your speech, so your not civil. Free speech, is about speech that you do not like or agree with, but believe they have a right to say. Then you have the anonymity issues, which will affect everything from whistle-blowing, to peoples safety (stalking victims, those exploring aspects of themselves, sexuality, etc).
There are hate filled people out there. White supremacists, black separatists, prejudices of all kinds.
That said, every site that you sign up to, has a contract, terms of service that you agree to. So you don't have freedom, but a contract. There are sites that are looser with their rules and enforcement, some out of size issues (how many moderators are paid, how many work for free on their time?), but again, you agree to this. I did look at several other forums, besides this one, when I joined. But one which interested me, you had to join, to be able to preview it. I tried contacting the moderators/site owners to see if I could preview it some other way, but received no contact from them.

I think that censorship, by algorithm or otherwise, generally creates more problems than it solves. "Hate" can mean anything from lashing out at me personally to taking grievous offense at some view I hold in all good faith. And one person's sputtering, vulgar, all-caps rant may simply be seen as a passionately held view by another. I don't know how you can really draw the line. How do you enforce mutual respect?

On the other hand, I have no problem with a specialized site trying to limit discussion to certain subject matter. If you're a philately discussion board, and people insist on talking about philodendrons, you have every right to ask them to leave.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

How do you enforce mutual respect?

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GREAT question, and makes me think of SEVERAL forums I have and am on. There are TWO thoughts on respect and they generally don't go together well.
1: You should respect everybody, until they loose your respect.
2: Respect is EARNED.

I tend to fall into the later.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ToomuchStuff

GREAT question, and makes me think of SEVERAL forums I have and am on. There are TWO thoughts on respect and they generally don't go together well.
1: You should respect everybody, until they loose your respect.
2: Respect is EARNED.

I tend to fall into the later.

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I'm inclined to agree with you. I think there's a sense in which people are entitled to tolerance (although that may be another difficult term to define in practical terms), civility is preferred, but respect is earned rather than granted.

It may be that the essence of maturity is speaking politely to people you despise. Or it may be the essence of hypocricy, I'm not sure.

I tend to think that we should all speak politely to everyone, which argues for universal, unearned civility. I base this on the idea that I should do unto others as I would have them do unto me.

I generally agree that it's not necessarily the anonymity that enables trolling, although it certainly doesn't reduce the likelihood of trolling. Two anecdotes that came through my world today. Admittedly not scientific, but whatever. If you don't like it you can slam my in follow up comments.

First example. The gay couple that got beat up in key west by a drunk dude shouting racial slurs and saying "this is trump's America now." When someone is standing in front of you they aren't exactly anonymous.

Second example. A comment thread on LinkedIn that a coworker showed me had turned into a massive troll fest from both sides. One of the commenters, a pro trump person based on the rest of the thread, wished that everyone in California would die. LinkedIn is absolutely not anonymous. And also probably a really stupid place to post political opinions, but I suppose that's a topic for a different thread.