Why does anyone publish stuff from trolls?

[redqueen]

Everyone who's in the public eye gets hate mail. How many publish the filth that gets sent to them?

I think it's counterproductive to publish hate mail or trolling tweets or comments especially regarding our elections. We already know that bad faith actors have used these tactics to divide us before.

So why are some people still amplifying those voices? Why are we helping disruptors - whether Russians or conservatives or just generic trolls - to meddle in our process?

Sure when it's not anonymous, then it's fair play to criticize those people for their words or actions - but anonymous online trolls?

IMO it's downright irresponsible to help spread disruption and discord.

[Cary]

1. The problem is that trolling works

[redqueen]

2. It only works if people pay attention to it.

It's meaningless noise. If people do not learn to discern signal from noise we are doomed.

[BeckyDem]

3. Never made sense to me. Anonymous trolls have no real value and

the idea they have power is not credible imo so why elevate them?

[redqueen]

8. My question exactly - since we already know this part of the playbook,

why are we falling for it again?

[BeckyDem]

9. Pundits use it for cheap fodder when they have no tangible criticism.

LOOK what so and so said! Its a useless and overall meaningless distraction, but convenient, I guess.

[Dem2]

4. I just happened to have switched tabs after reading this post

And there's a poster there who has a thread in the top 25 posts of the politics page of reddit who I have tagged as "pro-rape" who is also tagged by another plugin as a /thedonald user who I have a record of downvoting 23 times. How does this person's post get to the "Hot" page? For the record, they're promoting a Bernie poll in NV.

[redqueen]

7. Can bots function on Reddit?

If so, that's what I would chalk it up to, and move on.

[Dem2]

11. Lots of regulars commenting and upvoting

People seem to not do their due diligence, or they just don't care if the poster is a troll, as the story itself is from a legitimate source.

[redqueen]

12. I doubt many notice who's saying it, if the topic is a poll result.

If the post is just poll results I don't know why anyone would bother checking to see who posted it before upvoting.

[TwilightZone]

16. There was a fake news story a while back...

posted on DU, within the past couple of months. I don't even remember what it was, but it got over 200 Recommends, even though it was debunked in the first few replies and countless times throughout the thread responses.

I've been here a long, long time, but that was a little eye-opening and a little depressing.

[TwilightZone]

5. Human nature

I agree with your premise, but I think it's human nature to call out the ridiculous.

Same thing happens on DU with trolls. We should all just flag them or whatever and move on instead of giving them attention, but not all of us do.

[redqueen]

6. It has already affected the outcome of an election.

I get that people online talk about it, even though it's stupid and counterproductive, but publications? Organizations?

They aren't allowed to use the excuse that it's human nature - they have a responsibility to avoid repeating the same mistake as last time.

[TwilightZone]

13. They have time and pages to fill.

I think that's what it boils down to. 24/7 "news" stations have to fill time, plus websites, newspapers and other publications are trying to survive by sensationalizing everything, thinking that's what the public wants. Part of the problem is that they're right to some degree. They wouldn't do it if it wasn't somewhat effective.

It's also an indication that we've moved almost entirely from journalism to reporting and that *everything* is considered "news" now, no matter how mundane, irrelevant or uneventful.

[redqueen]

14. Infotainment. It's a disease. nt

[TwilightZone]

15. Can't argue with that.

[cwydro]

10. I agree.

It annoys me no end when people post Fox nonsense here, twitter nonsense, Facebook nonsense, etc.

The usual excuse is we “need to know what they’re saying.”

So transparent.