Trolling on the Internet
Trolling has existed for a very long time in the world as a deliberate attempt to get a certain reaction out of someone by doing or saying something, and the internet has only give trolling the ability to be even more widespread. As the internet and especially social media have grown over the years since their creations, trolling has grown in abundance as more users join the platforms and start to make their own posts online. I’ve learned how many people have different views of what constitutes “trolling” when they are looking at replies certain users make on other’s posts which makes it hard to make a definite definition of the term. Because of the internet’s constant changes, that fact is understandable because each day brings new opportunities for people to interact with each other as new websites are created or new features are added to websites that already exist. Some people’s inability to easily understand the tone of text also plays into that as some people aren’t able to detect if a message is sarcastic or meant to be serious and thus will often end up playing into the troll’s trap in a misunderstanding of the situation.
While the definition of trolling may not be the most well developed, trolling does still happen in abundance and seems to be growing over the years. However, I found out that a significant amount of people do believe there can be an end to online trolling. Because trolls most often hide behind the ability to be anonymous on the internet, I saw a lot of people stating that the ability to be anonymous needs to be removed for certain discussion forums, forcing any incidents of trolling to be under the user’s real identity. Removing the ability to anonymous could be a hindrance to some people though as some people are using the ability to be anonymous as their only way to use the internet safely due to personal issues. People in unhealthy relationships or trying to keep someone like an Ex from finding their social media account using the ability to be anonymous to feel safer using the internet and being able to get help for their situations.
In an attempt to limit or get rid of online trolls, the idea of introducing AI to filter through messages sent online to remove any messages meant to troll someone was also brought up. However, in the same sense, limiting the ability of trolls to be able to speak can also hinder the ability of people to also freely speak in general if the AI’s system marks their messages as possible trolls even if they are not. In a statement to the Pew Research Center in one of their articles, Stowe Boyd, chief researcher at Gigaom, said “Free speech will remain possible, although AI filtering will make a major dent on how views are expressed...” which acknowledges that fact. While removing the ability to troll without as much limitation seems like a good idea, it’s hard to create a method that will still benefit all sides and not hinder the abilities of others to use the internet.
Personally, I have never been subject to online trolling, though that is mostly due to my lack of public posting on the internet. While I have social media accounts, I do not often make posts on them and in turn, I don’t have much interaction on the internet with online trolls. I have witnessed many cases of online trolling though that happen to people I know or other public instances. One of my friends who is trans and very openly states that has had to deal with many instances of trolls who decide they want to mess with her as many people in the LGBT community end up becoming targets of trolls. In most cases, those people either get blocked, or banned depending on the site that it occurs on, and reported. In cases like on Twitter, replies can be hidden by the person who originally started the post which in turn, takes away the troll’s platform they had tried to start.
Twitter, a social media I will go on often to keep up with my friends, has a Hateful Conduct Policy in their rules and policies that states the general rules regarding certain cases of trolling, though not all cases which hinders the ability of users to effectively report and remove trolls from the site. Also, with the number of people using certain websites, it can sometimes take a while for things like reports to get fully processed and receive the correct punishment for the offense.
Overall, it’s a complicated matter when trying to determine the best method to deal with online trolls effectively. As an article by The Atlantic states, “The uncomfortable truth is that humans like trolling. It’s easy for people to stay anonymous while they harass, pester, and bully other people online — and it’s hard for platforms to design systems to stop them.” Because the internet is becoming more complex as each day passes, it’s hard to find any sort of way to stop trolls on a large scale without negatively affecting all the other users of the website as well. In the end, the best we can do is simply ignore the trolls because if we don’t feed their desire to get a response, they lose the reason to be a troll in the first place. As the author of The Atlantic article does, if you want to, write out a response to the troll, but don’t actually send it so you don’t give them a reason to continue. Simply block and report internet trolls and hopefully, the lack of interaction will help to slowly lower to amount of trolls out there one day.
