Register
Home > News > 5 Ways to Stop Trolls From Killing the Internet

5 Ways to Stop Trolls From Killing the Internet

By David Wong November 11, 2008 423,002 views
article image

You might not be aware of this, but there are a lot of dickheads on the Internet.

Since this phenomenon seems to get worse with the size of the crowd, it is theorized that we will reach a critical mass; an Asshole Apocalypse, if you will. That's when casual Internet users--and the corporations who want their business--will step in.

There are ways to solve this crisis, but I'm telling you now, you won't like some of them.

But first, the problem...
Right away let me shut down everyone who's snorting derisively into their can of Mountain Dew and saying, "Trolls will be trolls!" You should know that there are billions of dollars at play here. The trolls are driving away business, and that simply won't be allowed to continue. I'm not saying I'm rooting for it--I'm saying that's the economic reality.

There are two huge, growing industries at stake: social networking and online gaming.

Social networking is at the heart of "Web 2.0," the future of the online world, the Facebook/MySpace/Twitter web where users create all the content and their parent companies make billions just for hosting it. It's a pretty sweet deal.

Or it would be, if they could only convince everybody to use it. But they're finding that lots of users will communicate online with people they know (virtually all use email and 37% use private text messaging), but only 8% use message boards or blogs or anything else that exposes them to the Internet's assheads.

Hell, look at this site. We just had an article that was read by 305,396 unique users in a few days ... but fewer than 100 of them joined the conversation down in the comments. That's .002%, folks. It's not that the Cracked comments are mostly retarded or nasty; it's that for a normal person, the memory of getting called a fucktard in public even one time is striking enough to make them avoid the comments forever, even if it was accompanied by 10 non-fucktard comments. It's human nature to remember the fucktard.

It's the same in gaming. There are reports that most people who give up online gaming aren't frustrated by the games themselves or technical issues. It's the sheer number of fuckwads they have to play with. Even on the most popular online multiplayer game, World of Warcraft, 70% of new players stay in modes where they don't have to interact with anybody else.

So there is a clear barrier to entry for the vast majority who haven't joined the Web 2.0 party, and that barrier is a moat full of dipshits. How can we bridge it? I see five ways:

#5.
Develop Anti-Troll Software

Imagine a world where you get in a heated argument in a hallway, but before even one sentence can get fully out of your mouth, a robot voice pipes up and tells you to cool it. Well, what sounds like really stupid science-fiction in real life is entirely possible online. Of all the futuristic movies to turn out to be cruelly accurate, who would have thought it'd be Demolition Man?

I'm talking about programs like:

StupidFilter:

This highly experimental piece of software is in beta and will some day be able to recognize comment stupidity the moment it's posted. They have a demo on their site you can play with.

You plug this code into your comment section and it's like a strap of tape over the mouth of every teenager who can't type a sentence without including the word "fail."

Robot9000:

This is a program invented by Randall Monroe, the XKCD webcomic guy that requires every post to be unique. If someone types "First!", no other post can ever consist of just that.

This sounds pointless to anybody who's never been in a chat room or message board before, but the rest of us know better. Mindless repetition of jokes (or "memes") is one of the primary tools of bored trolls who want to fill a thread with noise to drown out the signal. For once, many will find themselves using keys other than Ctrl-V.

Audio Preview:

Linguists speculate that no single body of written communication in the history of human language has ever been as collectively retarded and horrible as the comments under YouTube videos. After the aforementioned Randall Monroe suggested a feature to force users to hear their comment read aloud before they can post it, YouTube implemented that very thing (though only on an optional basis). Many a YouTuber has sat in dismayed silence after realizing that "lol wut", when spoken aloud, did not sound as clever a they had first believed.

Real-Time Voice Censor:

Now we're in the realm of the real Demolition Man-type solutions. Want to know how bad Microsoft wants to control the trolls on Xbox Live? They've patented a real-time voice censoring program. Yeah. You curse into your headset and it bleeps it in real time. How does it know the difference between "The cock crows at midnight" and "My cock grows at midnight"? With technology. Don't question it.

Of course, widespread use of this stuff will just kick off the same "DRM vs. pirates" arms race we see any time they try to control human behavior with software. The humans always win.

Also, the technology has to get a whole lot smarter before we can even try. Playing with the StupidFilter demo I linked earlier taught me that it doesn't find any stupidity in the sentence, "lol, wut your mom farts lolcats."

There are better ways. For instance, you can...

#4.
Start a Posse of Moderators, and Arm Them

Right now if you have a blog or forum or anything else with open comments, and you don't have a human moderator to watch it, you're going to wind up with a wasteland. As soon as more than one troll shows up, they will feed off each other until everyone else is gone. You have to control them. And don't start talking about free speech; the troll's goal is to shut down speech, to either fill the channel with noise until no one can talk to each other, or to get everyone talking about him instead of the subject at hand. He's a guy in a coffee shop screaming nonsense over a bullhorn.

And it's here where the marriage of creative software and human moderators can make all the difference. With things like...

Disenvoweling:

This is a bit of code that will suck all of the vowels out of a targeted post, so that this:

"What an unfunny piece of shit. Somebody should be fired for letting this guy write for the site."

Becomes:

"Wht n nfnny pc f sht. Smbdy shld b frd fr lttng ths gy wrt fr th st."

The theory is that it makes people slow down and try to parse what was being said and thus robs the post of its impact. Also it makes the troll look retarded.

Karma:

Geek megaportal SlashDot was among the first to use this, a way of allowing the community to moderate itself. Registered users can vote every post up or down, and each user winds up with a karma "score" that is just the sum total of all the "up" votes minus the "down" ones they've ever gotten.

We use this in the Cracked forums (where each member's karma score is visible to other members at all times). You can only vote once per day, so even a coordinated karma voting campaign couldn't change a score faster than the rest of the community could correct it.

Yes, it works. Everyone claims they don't care what their karma is, yet any time a person sees an unexplained drop, I get an email complaining about it. You just can't ignore a number right next to your name that announces what the community thinks of you.

But we're still thinking small, on a site-by-site basis. After all, assheads will simply migrate to places where security isn't as tight. If this is an Internet-wide problem, we need to think big. But how?

Recommended for Your Pleasure

238 Comments

You mean.... *shudder* ....that I will have to actually PAY for the stuff I download??? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So the freedom of the internet is bypassed for the majority when a few stakeholders wish to monitor an absolute minority?

7/2/2009 11:55:35 PM
Sicarri

Good grief. Trolls suck, but let's all remember on what this country was founded. "I may not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -Voltaire. (In case anyone doesn't know, Voltaire was a Frenchman who lived from 1694-1778, and his and Locke's ideas were the basis for our Constitution. Yes, I've had to explain who Voltaire was...many times.)

7/2/2009 8:28:30 PM
AshsWorkshed

I'm all for neutering the trolls.
Unfortunately, the problem I see with laws preventing internet anonymity is that once you weed out all the trolls, you are left with an environment entirely under the control of a single organization (i.e. a dictatorship).
What's to stop them from controlling the flow of information? If you can be banned (or tracked) for inappropriate conduct, the same can happen whenever you set one foot out of line with those in power.

7/2/2009 7:58:38 PM
Chaos624

@sarahofburg
I don't know that much about the technical side of the Internet, but if you have a dynamic IP address, your IP address pretty much changes every few days right?

7/2/2009 5:21:43 AM
cornflakes

I think persistent IDs would actually be pretty awesome. Then everybody I know would recognize me everywhere and vice versa.

..and bans would be permanent. f**k.

7/2/2009 3:59:19 AM
Lorknirn

This might be biased, seeming as I don't go on forums or blogs much and therefore don't experience more popular places where trolling takes place, but I have been on quite a few mediums where nearly every last soul typing on their keyboards deserves to be made fun of. Take Habbo Hotel, it's full of emos and people who pretend to be in virtual gangs. I don't TRY to say something witty and absurdly funny to set them down a peg or two, it just happens. It ALWAYS happens. Most sane people ONLY log onto it to make fun of them. I dare any of you, log on to that online conformist redneck stomp, and listen to people's conversations in public rooms for an hour WITHOUT saying anything mean. I agree, trolls who say the same thing over and over again should be shot, but people who just have schadenfreude-based humour shouldn't be ridiculed for getting a cheap laugh out of people who suck. I would love the non-anonymous internet browsing, as I have dickishly high self-esteem and would laugh hysterically at all of the "girls" on the internet who were realy 40 year old jackoffs.

7/1/2009 5:33:04 PM
TheAutomaton

Oh you silly fool, there is no such thing as internet anonymity. That's just a myth perpetuated by 4chan, a site that regularly permabans it's "anonymous" members. Every site you go to, even when you're just posting in a comment box, you can be tracked by your IP address. Now, unless you're a hacker of some sort, you can usually only get the IP address if you run the website yourself, so it's rarely public info.
But if you download through most of the common pirating programs, your IP address is free to anyone who cares to look. Anyone will know what you're downloading. And they can track that address to the very computer you're using with some research. In fact, that info is usually very necessary if you want to get anything done on the internet at all.
The only way around it is through a proxy, which is rather easy to use if you want but very inconvenient for general use. You can change your address, but it'll always lead back to you.

7/1/2009 12:40:26 AM
sarahofborg

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. "

- Ben Franklin

6/30/2009 11:04:53 PM
McWipp

I have the "Greater Internet Dickwad Theory" shirt.

6/30/2009 10:38:44 PM
McWipp

I don't want to be called a Shitwhale more than anyone else, but I personally think that a law ending internet Anonomity would kinda suck, but then again, I do have quite a passion for music and movie piracy.

6/30/2009 9:01:18 PM
xStephan

I've never understood the "First!!" people. What is it??

6/30/2009 7:48:48 PM
MarvAlbert

Alright. The internet is amazing. Of course trolls f**k up blogs, mmorgs etc. I wouldn't mind the pin system, except that it ruins alot. If they put it into effect, things like non-mainstreme subbed anime, which is what my life is about. Also pins would requires tons of regulations, i would still like it semi anonymous to a degree, because if my mother sees me even saying f**k she would flip. Someone stealing your pin etc. would such. Chat filters can suck... ever play runescape? That sucked. Paying membership requires getting a way to pay, which is annoying. Trolls suck and are annoying, and arming admins and stuff would be awesome, but don't go too far. Also im only posting to bring up % of people who post vs those who read, im usually just too lazy to post. Don't read this if you want to call me a f******d or such.

6/30/2009 7:24:35 PM
janimefreek

I am a strong supporter of individual rights, and I see the Internet as one of the only safe havens left, a free world where art, music, and literature are free, but also as a testament to the malevolence of human nature. Just because the average man is truly evil at heart, that should not stop the rest of us from enjoying our freedom. The Internet is an anarchy, and as such it should have no "laws." We must take the bad with the good. Why should we allow corporations and government to penetrate this realm of liberation because ignorant Neanderthals decided to unleash their inner insecurities on the masses? I assure you anonymity and freedom are good, nay, amazing things, and we should do everything in our power to conserve these, even if it means enduring the hate-speech of the desolate.

6/30/2009 4:06:41 PM
VelicodeIgnarus

First of all I just want to applaud this article. You have no idea how absolutely refreshing it is to read a well thought-through, logical, intelligent piece of writing on the internet. Thank you very much. But now moving into the content, I have to say that I am not convinced by your arguments, or compelled by your suggestions. While I understand the shock and awe most web users, corporations, and Oprah mom's experience when they are exposed to the Internet's gigantuan population of douchebags for the first time (and the frustration they encounter after exeriencing the same douchebags for the 500th time) it is unreasonable to believe that they will actually have the power to shoot down the people responsible for the coming "a*****e Apocalypse" that you talk about without creating an internet that the average person will reject, especially in America. You seem to be suggesting that the Internet needs a much more powerful moderator force. And it's possible that I'm totally misreading you, but it seems you would rather have a totalitarian internet than a wild west internet overrun with asshats. This next comment is probably going to make me sound like a total p***k, but your ideas remind me alot of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes thought that people naturally are inclined to attack each other out of fear and resentment, but the social contract keeps them in line. (In other words, attacking every person you encounter out of fear and resentment will land you a smack in the balls) His solution was to establish an absolute monarchy arguing that although it would require a surrender of certain freedoms, but would be worth it because it would protect the citizens. While this sounds sort of okay, (like your article) fast forward a couple hundred years and Marx was using this to justify Communism. To relate this to your article, Internet 3.0 might be heavily regulated but overall a decent deal, but Internet 4.0 is a shitstorm of Communist agents buying, selling, and trading our daughters for erotic entertainment; enlisting our sons as Kamikazi bombers; and throwing rocks at our windows. I don't know about you, but I would much rather keep the internet the way it is and encourage people to develop a thicker skin or at least a sarcastic viewpoint regarding the internet and its douchebags.

So what do you say DAVID!? Are you about to let commie's sodomize your little baby boy, or are you going to replace this article with my above comment and give me $300? We're at war Dave, it's time to pick a side.

6/30/2009 3:26:05 PM
ClayReynolds

I agree with all of this accept the law thing, that is going to far.

6/30/2009 12:49:03 PM
trojangoat

I hope it never comes to this. What will happen to 4chan? I love 4chan.

6/30/2009 12:33:08 PM
Seddah

A lot of people in these comments hate the ideas of regulating the internet because it seems thats where they get their feelings of online security. As a pirate myself, I hate the idea of regulating the internet in such a way that they can track piracy. But at the same time, piracy IS illegal and I think that as a breaker of the law I don't have a right to complain about an instituted change that would eliminate piracy or make it more difficult to cover up.

I mean, you can call the changes to the internet and Web 3.0 fucktarded and you can hate it till the day you die, but the internet USERS aren't the ones making the calls here. We ARE all US citizens so if thats the law, then thats the law.

As you can see I take kindof a Que Sera Sera approach to things.

6/30/2009 11:54:04 AM
megabe14

No laws coming, there is a Constitutionally protected right to anonymous free speech.

6/30/2009 9:08:09 AM
proctornc

Number one, this article is assuming that people are only civil to each other out of fear of punishment and that's not the case for everybody. Some people are nice to each other out of empathy or because they genuinely want to; others simply don't give two shits about maintaining social status or about potential retaliation from others. What do you do about the latter?

Number two, there's one very glaringly obvious solution to trolling that the article conveniently forgot to put in: a f*****g ignore button! How hard is it to just get everybody affected by a troll to just click on f*****g ignore? Plenty of sites have them, use them, and I can honestly see the logic in forcing all comment/blog/chat/social networking websites that don't have an ignore button already to put one in.

6/29/2009 5:02:52 PM
namewastaken

The last one has its pro and cons. Thats a tough one. As much as I enjoy being annoymous (expressing views and free music), I also hate others that use it, just to annoy (not to mention the pedifile stuff..ect). However: Law Vs Annoymous?? Now that could be interesting.

6/27/2009 5:15:52 AM
Superstar2559

More on News

Fark Logo
Recent Videos

Copyright © 2005 - 2009 Cracked Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. CRACKED, CRACKED.COM and the "CRACKED" logo are trademarks owned by Cracked Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.