[seph-reed]

I think they should have just banned him without any reason but that they felt like it and they could.

Instead, this was an attempt to high-road one of the most powerful trolls in history, and high-roading a troll is the absolute most losing strategy around. Basically, however imperfect you are, that's how much ammo you've just given the troll. Twitter is very imperfect, so 1/10, tactless strats imo.

And the whole "fact-check" thing is just such a bad idea in general. Twitter really needs to hire some trolls to pass these ideas passed first.

[pas]

Why would it be bad idea? It's pretty easy to just throw WikiPedia links at lies. Of course with AI/ML/deep-learning. Will it be perfect? No, of course not. Would it help? I think it would. At least it is worth a few tries.

[seph-reed]

> Why would it be bad idea?

Because whether you want it to or not, it empowers trolls.

The following is counter-intuitive, it goes against our best nature, it's even tragic: you can't high-road a troll. Trolls are in a race to the bottom, so being on the high-road is setting yourself behind.

You want to fuck with Trump? You're going to have to either force a race-to-the-top narrative on him and his followers (not even a pandemic could), or beat him in a race to the bottom. Or just shoot him.

----

That being said, having it be ML would at least lend itself to "take with a grain of salt."

[pas]

Why would it be counter-intuitive? What exactly do you mean by our best nature? (What kind of behavior, bias, habit, etc goes against it?)

Oh, you mean "fact checking" empowers trolls. Yeah, sure, strictly speaking any interaction, any expenditure of energy/attention/resources on the troll is a "win" for the troll.

I don't want to "fuck with Trump", I want Twitter et al. to provide some sanity, the proverbial common sense, a grounding for reality. Even if that's just the tyranny of them damn techno-elitist valleywags.

I want twitter to empower me. The users. To help the users to spend less time on trolls. Basically Twitter, by investing in fact checking, helps others. And that's a big win in my book.

Trump and the usual populist will fizzle out. But it'd be nice to prevent the next one, and the next-next one to gain a foothold by spreading lies uncontested. (Yes, of course they'll just find the Twitter of that decade, or do some other media hack, parasites always find the weak spots, but none of this means Twitter and the various online community providers have to capitulate and just give up because trolls.)

Twitter is obviously less moderated than, let's say a subreddit, or HN, because it has a very direct financial dependence on a basic level of drama. And they're trying to rope-walk between irrelevance and first-past-the-post idiocracy.

[seph-reed]

> Yeah, sure, strictly speaking any interaction, any expenditure of energy/attention/resources on the troll is a "win" for the troll.

I don't think you have a much developed "troll framework" in your mind.

I believe you're a good, noble person, and I really want your life to be amazing for that. Unfortunately, what you said implies you think trolls are just trying to take energy. That they have no point. Seemingly, you're missing even the most basic and fundamental aspect of trolling: to show the other person is also a self-absorbed asshole who cheats and lies when they can, but then on top of that is too weak to admit it to themselves.

Trolls pick on "holier-than-thou" people because they live in a self-centered illusion about how good they are. The truth is, we're all garbage, selfish beings that do everything for ourselves and take credit for anything we can get away with. Fact checkers included.

The only way to approach a troll is as a fellow stupid piece of shit. So ignoring trolls is a pretty POS move... ignoring anybody is shitty. But to really show you're a piece of shit, you have to same something lame before you ignore them like: "ur mom." You need to prove not only that you don't give a shit what they say, but also that you've got no "good human" bubble to pop. Whoever says the most loses.

[prawn]

Banning him would be great for popcorn.gif but it almost guarantees you create a rising threat plastered over mainstream media when he picks a rival network. Surely that would be a monstrous commercial risk?