Summary
In “Antisocial behavior in online discussion communitites,” the authors discuss the multitude of ways they tried to determine antisocial user accounts in such a way that the likelihood of a future ban could be predicted. The studies conducted focused on three sites with fairly large user bases; IGN, Breitbart, and CNN then divided users into two groups: Never-banned users and future-banned users. They then divided future-banned users into two more distinct categories of those who experienced high rates of post removals and those who had fewer removed over the course of their online life leading up to the ban. Their studies also indicated that everyone’s content quality slips as their life on a site increases, future-banned users overall had generally lower content quality to begin with.
Reflections
I found this article to be very interesting, but am not quite sure if this has any implications on prevention of trolling online. They didn’t go too much into how they determine which comments are considered to be instigator comments, but I imagine it would be difficult to differentiate between responses as more often than not the responder is more aggressive than the creator. Some users create accounts with the expressed purpose of being a troll account so their analysis that deviant users exert more effort into singular threads or conversations makes a lot of sense. Since they are trying to instigate and inflame others. However, how would they differentiate between actual trolls and users who are simply voicing their unpopular opinion. I think that this work is interesting from an analytical standpoint but in practice this could create a white-washed environment where unpopular or dissenting opinions could be quashed before a person even has a chance to defend themselves.
Questions
How, if at all, would they differentiate between users with unpopular opinions and genuine trolls.
Some antisocial users behavior degenerated due to response from the community. What could be done to stop the degeneration or backlash?
Censorship is a problem, but is it Ok to silence others who’s statements you perceive as inflammatory?
