Slates Anne Applebaum stirred up a hornets nest recently by arguing that websites should stop allowing people to post comments anonymously. Although its not a new argument -- in fact, its one that we at The Times have struggled with for years -- Applebaum gives it a powerful new rationale: Readers views can be influenced more by trolls than by the piece they just read. Its an interesting argument, but I dont think banning anonymous comments would solve the problem Applebaum is trying to solve. As Ill explain below, The Times dalliance with Facebook-based comments is a case in point. Requiring people to comment under their real names is no guarantee that theyll behave less like trolls According to Applebaums piece, Multiple experiments have shown that perceptions of an article, its writer, or its subject can be profoundly shaped by anonymous online commentary, especially if it is harsh. In other words, the work that a writer does to bring facts to light can be negated by the invective spewed (OK, typed) by the peanut gallery. Facts, logic, even reasoning dont matter, just vehemence. Whats worse, Applebaum reports, special interests are deploying trolls to neutralize reporting they dont like. The comment mercenaries include Russian teens hired to praise the Kremlin while blasting its opponents (and the United States) -- a model of disinformation that politicians around the world may be putting into service. And how many times have you read comments on a hotel or restaurant review that read as if they were written by an employee of the company? Hence the interest in banning anonymous comments, which is easier and less expensive than hiring moderators to review comments before theyre published and display only the ones that add the most to the conversation. The problem is, requiring people to comment under their real names is no guarantee that theyll behave less like trolls. For the record, Im not talking about readers who react strongly to a news story or opinion piece. I define a troll as someone who posts a comment thats off-topic and inflammatory, or who responds to other peoples comments in a demeaning way to provoke a response. The underlying subject is immaterial to trolls, other than it helps define the audience of people to offend. Trolls have been most active here on emotionally charged pieces, such as those involving immigration, race and birth control. So back in 2011, the paper plugged Facebooks commenting platform into its blogs in the hope that Facebooks real names policy would weed out the trolls and raise the level of discussion. The main effect was to reduce the volume of comments, as some readers balked at joining Facebook just for the privilege of commenting on our site. Other than that, it was hard to detect much change, if any, in the comments posted. Thats my unquantified and unscientific analysis, but that opinion is shared by Martin Beck, who was The Times director of social media and reader engagement. One of Becks jobs was to help moderate comments, which gave him the best seat in the house when it came to watching trolls. According to Beck, who now writes about social media for Marketing Land, the switch to Facebook really didnt do too much to deter trolls, especially on the subjects that typically drew the most vitriolic comments. The level of discourse wasnt remarkably improved, he said in an interview Wednesday. When the Times moved its blogs onto a different publishing platform, it replaced Facebook with a system from Viafoura. It also hired an outside company to help moderate comments. Those changes have resulted in more comments being blocked, which has caused its own blowback. Readers have accused The Times of being thin-skinned, enforcing political correctness and censoring remarks that disagree with the papers reporting. Weve been guilty of all three, but not consistently and not as a matter of policy. Some moderators seem to equate sharp criticism with abuse, and they occasionally err on the side of not publishing remarks that might offend, rather than waiting for someone to raise a valid complaint. In the face of such shortcoming, the easiest thing to do would be to stop allowing people to comment on stories, period. That wouldnt be a meaningful change for many readers, who already take their comments about our stories to other venues (e.g., Twitter, Facebook and their favorite blogs). And it would solve the troll problem once and for all. Personally, I think the right solution to bad speech is more speech. I cling to the view that readers have the critical-thinking skills necessary to separate signal from noise, and theyre so inured to trolls that theyre not fooled or driven off by them. Granted, that runs counter to the research cited in Applebaums piece, as well as the oft-repeated observation that people are quick to accept information if it reinforces their preconceived notions of reality. But other research suggests that were more open to new sources of data than the conventional wisdom holds...
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 04:59:30 +0000
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