Saturday, December 10, 2016

What should we do about trolls?

At first, it's easy to think that the pros of the internet heavily outweigh the costs.  Why do people leave the internet over online trolling?  After all, in order to receive the attention of hateful trolls, you must be someone who is getting a lot of love and support too, so you can just look past the negativity, right?  Well, it's a lot more complicated than that.  Yet our society continues to recycle the same solution:  Ignore it.  Looking at our recently viewed examples, it's often hard to look past some of these individuals who have crossed the line.  And why should they?  I don't have to challenge someone's right to say to say that something isn't right to say.  Now this tongue twister has brought forth the question of how to deal with trolls who dwell shadows of the internet.  Most proposals have been either inconvenient or ineffective.
What do you suggest is the answer?

4 comments:

  1. I don’t think that simply ignoring comments is the best solution to overcome trolls. I find that ignoring comments is easier said than done. Most people who suggest this method most likely haven’t been a victim of trolls themselves and think it’s easy as just looking past them. There are some people who can just simply ignore and move on, but it is something very hard to do. Someone’s words whether they are negative or positive can really effect someone. The best method to deal with trolls is to have sites monitor their comments and taking away anonymity. I don’t think these suggestions will completely eliminate trolling, but it is a start. Trying to completely eliminate trolls is kind of trying to eliminate all the bad things in the world.

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  2. I think the highest given answer to the problem of trolling is to ignore because it's the simplest and the easiest. It doesn't prevent the act of trolling itself, but the absolute silence allows for a troll to reflect on why they didn't get a response, which would hopefully lead to them realizing that what they've done is stupid and pointless.
    The only way to get rid of a troll is to give it consequences for their actions. If they feel like they can get away scot free, that feeling becomes an enabler of their actions. As long as there is a system for punishment, a troll could at least evaluate the outcome of their actions and decide whether or not it's worth it.

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  3. I don't think that completely ignoring trolls is the answer, but it's a partial start. Most of these people don't know you well enough to mean what they say, they put words out there for fun. So a good start to dealing with trolls is to simply brush off stupid comments that come from uncultured, uneducated people

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  4. Alothough ignoring the trolls is the most common solution given, it's actually very hard to do. You can say that you'll just ignore the comment, but once you read it you continue to think about it and, unfortunately, the hardest thing to do is forget it. There's not much you can do to get rid of trolls, but a start would be by blocking them and, of course, trying to ignore them.

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