Trolls are winning the internet, technologists say
The internet is as it always was, the only difference is more people, and more importantly more people without technological prowess and forum/bbs/irc experience, are accessing it and moving increasingly larger chunks of their life to the internet.As someone who fell in love with the internet when I was young because nobody knew I was young, it constantly surprises me when people put intimate details online and then become outraged that they are targeted or harassed. The internet didn't magically make everyone equal, it made everyone equally anonymous (to at least their fellow users, privacy down the stack notwithstanding)... that's why it was/seemed like an egalitarian paradise. Everyone was equal, including the trolls, because nobody knew who you were. Is it that surprising that once people started telling others who they truly were discrimination, harassment, and invective started showing up again? The internet doesn't magically make social, political, religious, and ideological rifts magically disappear, it just seemed like it did because nobody could associate users with their backgrounds. Now that we know who everyone is, the internet just makes you encounter more of these rifts due to it's global nature.But when your first experience with the internet is twitter, facebook, or any other social media this lesson is not only dismissed, but outright refuted. The internet is synonymous with identity to those people. They come completely unprepared and completely open, expecting the internet of the 90's. Obviously things are going to go sideways.In my ever so humble opinion this is the disconnect that is causing a lot of fervor around "trolls" and "harassment". Those that have been battle hardened by the early internet saw how to treat trolls: you ignore them ("don't feed the trolls") because they didn't actually have any ammo. We've given them ammo now, so here are the consequences.