Trolls and comments
Periodically I get an infestation of trolls here. It’s always interesting to me to note that trolls tend to proliferate any time Israel is being discussed.
Those of you who’ve been following this blog know what I’m referring to when I say “trolls,” but for others I’ll just summarize by saying that trolls are not just those who disagree with me. Trolls are people who come to a blog only to stir up trouble, move goalposts, get the commenters agitated, instult (sometimes quite viciously and/or obscenely), and ultimately ruin a blog and its comments section by causing commenters to leave or the blogger to shut down the comments function.
I ask the serious, nontroll commenters here, whom I highly value, to please bear with me as this gets corrected. It may take a while since I’m very busy and I use a friend to deal with technical matters such as these. In the meantime, please don’t respond to trolls in any way.
I instituted Haloscan comments rather than Blogger some time ago in order to have better control over trolls. This worked for a while, and it still works to a certain degree. But it’s relatively ineffective against what I will now refer to as semipro trolls–meaning trolls of a certain sophistication, who use proxies and other forms of hiding in order to avoid being banned.
I am in the process of considering another comments system that will be more effective against this type of troll as well. In the meantime, I will be deleting comments from those trolls who use proxy IP numbers and IP shields, as well as those who post under multiple identities (sock puppets). One example of the first category is “justaguy,” and an example of the second is Robert and Dave the Rabbit.
Robert/Dave the Rabbit is an interesting case, because many of his/their comments are not really trollish. But by definition, posting under multiple identities is troll behavior, unless it’s done only once in a while for reasons of humor.
I find it difficult to come up with a good troll definition. Trolls share many of the same attitudes and rhetoric as honest, sincere debaters. And there are different types of trolls.
Some are misguided folks who have lost their temper. They’ve stumbled into rhetoric and ideas that challenge their world-view, which frightens them and produces rage. How DARE they! We must remember that most are daily inculcated with a totally opposite viewpoint. I daresay many who comment here would have much the same reaction prior to 9/11 or some other epiphany that started their evolution to being in favor of a more proactive US foreign policy.
The factor of relative anonymity seems to exponentially insure that tempers will be lost. It’s a phenomenon akin to road rage where the actors are anonymously encased within the armor of their vehicles. Flashpoints can be reached quickly.
Neo notices that the subject of Israel draws them like flies. Perhaps the worldwide upsurge in sanctioned anti-Semitism has something to do with the reaction. After a brief post-WW2 hiatus hating Jews has again become the norm.
Justaguy is trolling my site too. What a pain. My sympathies, Neo.
“But it’s relatively ineffective against what I will now refer to as semipro trolls–meaning trolls of a certain sophistication, who use proxies and other forms of hiding in order to avoid being banned.” What a pathetic existence that must be.
The best definition of “troll” that I know is someone who is not attempting to debate, discuss, or even preach but to interrupt. It handles every single case – it’s too hard to list every possible way they can do so, but each method is still intended to be disruptive.
Take for example something that is usually trollish – posting a long list of headlines and nothing else. It can be simply someone preaching, this differs with a troll in that this person does it just once and that’s pretty much it. Easy to ignore and mildly amusing. The troll version posts it everywhere and constantly.
As stated above, you can have a troll using normal (not necessarily sane – can be full of conspiracy theory) rhetoric and language. But they post so much that they are trying to do a comments version of shout everybody down (they may do this under one account, use sock puppets, or bring a friend or more in) and/or make people leave. In computer science langauge they are committing a denial of service attack – these are almost always properly formed traffic just at such a high volume it can not be handled. It’s an attempt to get around the rules.
Of course, you have the classic trolls, little reason to go into that.
Still, in each and every case the intent is disruption.
“I don’t have time to babysit the internet. Hardly anyone does, and if they do, it’s not exactly a compliment.”
– Tycho Brahe, Penny Arcade
I am amused that the ads at the bottom of this comment thread are for local plumbers.
My daddy was an awfull racist troller in the early days of call in radio. But he was funny. He had a unique ability to get people screaming mad with a minimal number of words. Not a nice person. But I inherited it. Stop me before I troll again!
“But it’s relatively ineffective against what I will now refer to as semipro trolls–meaning trolls of a certain sophistication, who use proxies and other forms of hiding in order to avoid being banned.” What a pathetic existence that must be.
–All too true. At least while they are wasting their time trying to wreck a website they aren’t doing something physically harmfull.
I read your page though I rarely comment here. I must admit after a while that I’ve mostly avoided even reading the comments at all. It’s the foodfight aspect that gets to you.
I can also tell you that a pleasant man told me something of immense value to me on this site once, for which I am grateful to both you and him.
Many comments are a kind of graffiti. Your internet walls are prominent so they can say things to an audience they could never attract themselves. They wish to shock and upset- nothing more.
There is an aspect of it where outrageous and far reaching things are said, which rise to the level of an affront to the dignity of the hostess and the entire proceedings, that seem to require a kind of debunking, but that’s a fool’s errand. Replying to them is like being assigned a sisyphean task. Why do trolls get to assign work to non-trolls?
The only purpose of joint intellectual forums is to compile the disparate information held by the participants. Some merely impede this compilation by distraction and agitation.
In the end, they drive people away, and I believe ultimately that’s what they are trying to do. They wish to make your corner of the public square uninhabitable.
I don’t have any advice for you. I just thought you’d like to know that many persons like to read what you write, and find value in your analysis, and wish you well.
Some of these trolls are taking their political pathology to the next level.
I’ve had some pose as me posting pornographic material on other peoples sites.
Then there was one of the Daily Kos freaks who got made that I banned him and posted what he thought was my address, phone number and a map to my house. Got the wrong me, but it was the intent that is troubling.
These folks call Bush a Nazi but then go around behaving like the Gestapo.
‘conned,
if you think what you do is “debate” than your are more delusional than I suspected.
You have been banned on more than one site, as I recall and you fit Neo’s definition to a “T”. You morph and spoof and use proxies to avoid doing what you have been asked to do; leave by the site owner.
You remind me of the ancient Usenet troll, ace agincourt; also a rabidly anti-American left wing spittle flinger. As I recall he eventually wound up down at his neighborhood cop shop “helping them with their inquiries” when he went over the line once too often. He eventually wound up doing a jolt in the slammer and had to take a court ordered “vacation” from computers.
Mike’s America:
“I’ve had some pose as me posting pornographic material on other peoples sites.,,Then there was one of the Daily Kos freaks who got made that I banned him and posted what he thought was my address, phone number and a map to my house. Got the wrong me, but it was the intent that is troubling.”
About the level of maturity Ive come to expect from the un-hinged tantrum throwing left.
At the risk of being accused of selfish self-promotion, I came up with some guidelines a little while ago after dealing with trolls. Humor helps in dealing with them in any form.
How to Spot a Trollhttp://latticesofbogosity.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-spot-troll-updated.html
You’ll note that post attracted a Troll in the comments who I suspect had a different name elsewhere.
IP blocking is only useful for those who are honest. The dishonest don’t care a bit about it. Here’s a good disscussion of IP blocking. It’s like the instructor in Defense Against Methods of Entry used to say, “Locks just keep honest people honest.”
IP blocking doesn’t work against those who feel they are on a mission from Marx and have a Marx given right to comment.
Most troll spray solutions are variants of anti-spam tools and make it difficult to control the “semi-pro” troll, especially one “on a mission”.
I saw a demonstration early last year of an interesting “proof of concept” app based on the way commerical spammers turn whole groups of computers into “zombies” for spam runs.It was much more sophisticated and very hard to detect at insertion and in use. The app had a very large feature set including one that set a random delay in bringing up, say a web page. Eventually, the delays would increase and the user would conclude that it was traffic or a technical problem and stop going to the particular address. This is a variant of a method that used to be used on the server side but was now insterted into the users side.
The whole demo was pretty scary since it showed a computer behind a firewall with several examples of anti-virus software, multiple browsers and all the major flavors of op systems being infected undetected. It had two modes called over the shoulder real time and phone home. It was remotely configurable, invisible to all virus scans currently in use and required an advanced packet sniffer to detect and the sniffer had to know what it was looking for. It was like having a little ‘bot inside your computer with a telephone.
When I got home, I immediately wrote a script that checked the common areas for insertion on my OS for size and flagged any growth.
But, think of the advantages for troll control? You’d train the user to stay away and they’d never know.
Did a bit of research for neo this….and wasp is correct. The generally accepted consensus is that IP blocking serves only to block legitimate users. Trolls can easily get around it. It appears the only ‘sure’ way to avoid them is to have a strictly email comments section…but who has the time or energy to peruse and check each and every one prior to posting? So we are left with the admonition to not respond to them at all…but as I told her, sometimes it takes 2-3 posts before one can be sure you are dealing with a troll. Different names, and attempts at style, makes the initial post sometimes difficult to tag. Sheesh…don’t they have enough left blogs of their own to monitor? If ya’ll catch me getting sucked into a ‘troll shout down’….speak right up and tell me to drop it! I tend to think any commenter is ‘honest’…but that is most decidedly an outdated view these days.
Thanks! I needed a good guffaw this afternoon.
Here is a link to BTNet’s Acceptable Use/Terms of Service document. BTNet is used by at least one of the more objectionable trolls: threats, obscenity and more; who violates the terms of service by using methods to circumvent site security and acceptable use standards here on Neo’s blog.
BTNet is currently having its feet held to the fire on another case similar to this one and will soon run out of choices. Fortunately, there are those who recall a previous “situation” involving BTNet when they did take action and cancel an account and ban the user. Since records of that case were archived subsequent ones will be harder to avoid especially where identity morphing is involved.
It is not as simple as “disagreement” but is as simple as following rules. Notice the common left wing “victimology” being applied here.
I will be deleting comments from those trolls who use proxy IP numbers and IP shields, as well as those who post under multiple identities (sock puppets).
Aww, does this mean that I have to reign in my alternate egos?
I’ve been seeing a lot of commenters that I know from other blogs. Like Zhombre, Synova, and Grimmy. Sometime ago, they started coming in regularly.
I just call trolls, agent provocateurs. Back in the olden days, we used to use them to stir up trouble in neighboring city-states. Piss off the opposition noble houses, start riots and revolts, and do all kinds of underhanded and duplicitous operations designed to curtail the operations of the enemy.
Back then, we used to hang these saboteurs and spies if we caught them. Or maybe send them back to who sent them, in pieces, as a sort of birthday present and warning.
All glory to the Golden Age created by the United States. It has rendered an excuse to get out of the dark ages. Although it doesn’t get rid of the problems, it just gets rid of the symptoms.