A sickening example of why I now proactively disable comments on some postings
Recently, in: https://plus.google.com/+LaurenWeinstein/posts/QBmRxhy5tZ3 I announced that I was proactively disabling all comments on my Google+ postings involving particular controversial topics, as an anti-troll measure. In: https://plus.google.com/+LaurenWeinstein/posts/bN4FvaLDPmS I briefly discussed the perceived effectiveness of this policy after it had been in place for a couple of weeks. Today I've seen an example that reminds me yet again why I have chosen this course, at least until better moderation tools are available. Google has a donation matching program for European refugee relief, and provided a status report in a G+ posting today. While there are *some* good comments there, the thread in general has (at my last viewing of it) been overrun with horrendous, vile, hatred and racism. It literally made me want to vomit. My posting regarding this is here: https://plus.google.com/+LaurenWeinstein/posts/DGvywz6M3Vn and the original Google posting is here: https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/L8hHaT362j3 It's pretty horrific reading. In potentially related news, it appears that Facebook is contemplating the implementation of a "dislike" button. I would note that virtually every study suggests that "dislike" as opposed to "like" (or "plus") buttons tend to encourage both trolling and other forms of social media abuse. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
