I dunno, I believe strongly in an open free speech environment. I also hang out quite a bit on 4chan because of the open minded and (reasonably) moderated content that is discussed there.

There are always troublesome aspects to any group of people talking and the trick as I see it is to allow as much as possible, let the trolls either tire themselves out, lose interest, or simply change their minds.

There are very few real life consequences apart from missing my life while I interact with you people. I can play with my thoughts/beliefs as I see fit with little to no negative consequences apart from a few bad feeling that never last, and for the most part, evaporate back into nonexistence shortly after they appear.

Don't ban, allow for possible re-education.

There's such a thing as lost causes though. There's no point arguing with someone about whether or not the earth is flat, for instance, and yet that is (somehow) still a thing. In fact, being willing to discuss or debate with literally anyone is something that the alt right trolls take advantage of, because they know that as long as they're tying up someone's time, that person isn't able to pay attention to other, more important things that the trolls don't want them to be able to do. Liberal values aren't helpful when they're used against you.

Censorship is not a "Liberal value"

Bookmarked.

Censorship also isn't relevant, since this is a privately-owned site and numbers is being allowed to use it for free. If steele decided to ban some of the trolls it would be no different from telling a stranger they can't stand on your porch and yell at people.

That's the spirit!

Confront the bullshit when you see it and hope others will do the same have faith in community,

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

Repeating the bullshit over and over again while proclaiming how detestable you find it to be is how it travels half way around the world.

That's why I hate that stupid, childish thing of people asking, "Why haven't we had an official response to the rumor that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990?"

It's obvious why haven't we had an official response to the rumor that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990. Because there is no rumor that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990. It's made up. It's a meme. So stop asking Why haven't we had an official response to the rumor that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990!!!

Please copy/paste and send this so people will stop that stupid Why haven't we had an official response to the rumor that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990? meme!

This is so sad.

1000 likes

Because we're all too preoccupied with the rumor Donald Trump raped and murdered a young girl back in 1987

That's not true. That's a hoax. And even if he did, so what. That was 30 years ago. But he would never do that. I mean have you seen her, that face? Nah. I mean he could do it and not lose one voter. He could do that. And I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be him. He knows how the business world works. But these are rumors. No one talks about Glenn Beck and what he did or, some say, did not do. You know what I'm talking about. I hear he didn't do it, that horrible thing some are saying he did. People are saying things.

>And even if he did, so what.

WHAT?!

The "Glen Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990" meme was meant to mock the common right-wing media technique of smearing by reporting the smear with the pretense of doubting it. The rape and murder claim was so obviously over the top that, surely, no one could mistake that you were actually doing the technique rather than engaged in critical, reductio-ad-absurdum mockery of it.

But we now have the right literally claiming (or reporting on claims while acting above them) that their opponents are raping and murdering children in secret under-pizzeria bunkers. Beck's inheritor and surpassor, Alex Jones, has now accused Mueller of being some sort of ring leader for that while also fantasying about murdering him (throwing in some token "politically"s as cover).

You can't even use this meme anymore since the people most affected by the thing it's aimed at undermining wouldn't be able to parse the sarcasm anymore. It is literally what the right has devolved to.

I disagree that this is the only alternative to ignoring it; there's a difference between repeating bullshit as a means of decrying it, vs. fighting it "in situ" without spreading it. It's the difference between the "comment" and the "share" button on Facebook. One only appends to a unit of information, the other appends and reproduces it.

Granted there are nuances due to the way many popularity algorithms work: just commenting on something may cause it to appear more often, or with a higher priority, than other material. This is why I only use "reactions" in facebook for things I want to be prioritized i.e. I don't do "angry face" on things I don't want spread because that just makes them more interesting to the algorithms.

I've always taken the stance that nothing was ever accomplished by refusing to talk. I grant its possible to do harm by talking, but you are guaranteed to do harm by letting bullshit stand unchallenged.

Granted it's a moot point now that I'm sworn off playing with the trolls on here. It's Steele's playground and when the boss sends you a PM asking to you stop doing something, the respectful thing is to stop doing it. But I still disagree with it.

As far as facebook goes, your reactions, your interactions with a post on facebook encourage the algorithms to show that post to more people. Comment, share, react, it all spreads. Hiding posts, however, are a mark on the page's reputation and lowers the amount of people that post will reach if done early enough. It even shows up in the post metrics and over time punishes the page. OTOH, hiding comments from yourself means one less action on that comment that will bring it to the attention of the algorithm that determines whether a comment is popular, at the very least. At the most, though unconfirmed, it punishes the comment's ranking.

Source: I have 1,800+ facebook pages. I'm not making this site admin shit up as I go along, I'm speaking as an experienced expert on viral traffic, internet marketing, and web administration. On top of everything else.

FAKE NEWS! it is facebook that makes it travel from Russia to the United States.

It might have something to do with the fact that there is no other narrative to follow. That the bullshit is allowed to stand as truth. Because somebody read some where that if you ignore evil it will go away.

You can't be that freaking dumb...I guess you are just being an ass.

One of the most popular solutions that arose in online culture was, again, the mantra of “don’t feed the trolls.” This meant that any time a troll popped up in an online situation making inflammatory remarks, you were supposed to ignore them because responding would derail the thread and give them the attention they wanted. What no one seems to remember is it never worked, practically on any level.

I'm guessing true is a 5 year old. I can finish all the errands I'm going to run while my son is putting on his shoes to go with me.

I am going to put this here:

It looks like something you posted doesn't follow our Community Standards. We don’t allow posts that bully private individuals or harass anyone on Facebook. This could include altered images, photos or videos of physical bullying or any other post intended to degrade or shame a specific person.
We understand that you may not have known about these standards, so we'd encourage you to learn more about how we respond to bullying and harassment. If you’ve seen or experienced something on Facebook that you think goes against any of our standards, you can report it to us.
Thanks for your understanding and help in keeping Facebook safe and welcoming.

"Frankly, I welcome the 1st amendment well. If you are dumb, go ahead and speak cause that's just rope to hang yourself with. As for hate speech, legal or not, I also have the right to say things. Sometimes that's going to be "fuck yourself to death.""

Okay, so this is gonna be long winded and somewhat self aggrandizing and hopefully self deprecating enough you forgive me.

I think we should start this conversation with Ebin, a song by Sublime. If you click that link, you find this song on a playlist specifcially made to troll nazis fuck heads looking for songs related to the 14 words, or 14 88.

Ebin, whatever the fuck it was actually about before, describes in a somewhat hilarious way, what the fuck happened with 4chan. Trolls have always been sort of funny, counter-culture figures. With that comes some extreme views.

And that is what starts to happen here. You start making the jokes, and then when you find you have an audience that appreciates the humor. Except some of them? The most loyal ones? They actually believe that shit for real.

And eventually, you do too. You can watch it happen on youtube. If your sense of self, or financial existence relies on an audience you are fundamentally compromised by that audience's views.

I am certainly that asshole from 4chan. To this day, I troll nazis where-ever I can find them. If you like, there are some logs:

The Sign Said: "When Hitler said to keep the blood pure, I doubt he meant fucking your cousin."

Literal Nazi.
Racist Metal Head.

I used to have more, but in a wave of nihilistic fun I erased them. Anyway, I don't pretend I am doing anything useful there, because despite being a shitlord troll I actually cut my teeth on more formal debate.

Been on enough debate teams to know a debate is not about changing the mind of the person who is wrong. It's about showing an audience why they are wrong. If the audience is already aware, no point, since you wont change the mind of a bigot and your audience doesn't need a basic lesson.

Inclusivity requires all parties agree everyone should be at the table. Anyone that doesn't think that, doesn't get to sit at the table. It's not that I think anyone here is against conservatives, it's that conservative trolls time and again come into these places and shit on the basic principles and demand they be heard.

And if you think these people don't actually believe this shit, you are wrong. Of course I don't think they just woke up one day and started believing it. Just like how I am not stupid enough to think that embarrassing them in a public forum or letting them embarrass themselves is likewise not going to change their mind.

Might change yours though. Which is the same reason they are doing what they are doing. It's not about us. It's about the people searching google for certain phrases, and people looking for ready made arguments to grab to use elsewhere without context on the internet.

So spend a day on /pol/ and tell me I am wrong.

So, should we ban them? No comment there. What we shouldn't do, is fucking ignore them.

Steele, is it possible to adjust my profile so that comments don't get filtered?

You can change the filter threshold in your profile.

Don't comments rated -5 still get filtered? There seems to be no option to eliminate any filtering. Though I suspect this is a design feature, not a bug.

Correct.

It'd be nice if I could change it to a level where I could just see low rated comments and just brush past them. Instead of making me squint and focus on them before I disregard them. I'm sure most people would like to keep the settings where they are, but I'd appreciate the option to change them.

Same here. I want to read all the comments and make up my own mind about them, not have them curated for me by whoever happened to read the thread before me. The extra effort it takes to zoom and squint or click past the filtered comments message means the "bad" comments command more of my attention than the "good" ones. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

So you want upmodded comments to be too small to read?

Given that i've been begging for people to quit feeding the trolls and moderate for years now, it's very unlikely i'm going to make moderation less restrictive.

But if I point out to the troll why what he said is wrong, he'll realize the error of his ways and stop trolling, right? Right? Anybody?

So nice to hear you and yours settled down.

When is the house warming? Or are we lefties not invited?