Attack of the Nazi Trolls: A Lesson for Message Board Moderators

Richardpoe.com ^ | 10-27-03 | Richard Poe

[SJackson]

Wednesday, August 13, 2003 at 13:41

Attack of the Nazi Trolls: A Lesson for Message Board Moderators

In a recent blog entry titled, "I've Been Red-Baited!", I wrote, "I'm not familiar with LibertyForum.org, but it appears to be an anti-Bush, anti-war message board with a distinctly anti-Jewish undertone."

A member of LibertyForum.org named Max Soldo (aka "thoughtcriminal") has responded by e-mail and provided further clarification of LibertyForum's political orientation. He writes:

This forum is a libertarian forum, and is devoted to the libertarian concept of unabashed free speech. With that principle in mind, most posters aren't libertarian as many fringe types have taken advantage of this policy (which includes a no-banning policy) to run amok...hence the preponderance of anti-Jewish posts on this forum.

All of this raises interesting questions for any message board moderator -- such as myself -- who has tried his best to allow a relatively high level of free expression. Inevitably, Nazi trolls find your forum and begin probing your defenses. If you allow them to post messages, they immediately spread the word to other Nazi trolls and soon your message board is infested.

At that point, all the normal people stop posting. It's a bit like when a fight breaks out in a bar and everyone stops talking and turns to watch the fight, transfixed. Suddenly, your message board becomes an arena for Nazi trolls and people arguing with Nazi trolls.

This is called "free speech."

I decided long ago that allowing Nazi trolls to occupy my message board and drive off everyone who does not share their idiosyncratic obsessions is a very poor method for encouraging "free speech." Therefore, I make frequent and forceful use of such allegedly un-libertarian methods as censoring and, when necessary, banning troublemakers, brownshirted or otherwise.

Apparently, the decision-makers at LibertyForum.org have adopted a different approach. As a result, their self-styled "libertarian" message board has become, by Mr. Soldo's description, a playground for non-libertarian "fringe types" to "run amok."

"It does get quite ugly at times, but that's the price one pays for sticking to one's principles," writes Mr. Soldo in a subsequent e-mail.

Well, if that's the price, I don't think I'm willing to pay it. I will add the sad fate of LibertyForum.org to my growing list of reasons for rethinking whether or not I wish to continue calling myself a "libertarian."

 

[Luis Gonzalez]

I'm not the one making the idiotic statements, am I?

[snopercod]

Thanks. I'll have to check out some of the other fora.

[veronica]

Try and be nice to OWK. He's having a hard time with this. He comes here and admits there are skinheads at LF, then he goes back to LF and gets slammed by the resident skinheads, because he admitted here - that there are skinheads there. :)

[JohnGalt]

No, Son.

I am a Christian who believes dispensation 'stuff' is heretical but I respect the right of others to post their anti-patriotic tinfoil hat stuff on this web site since I realize many people think that way and I hope to have light shown on their views.

If you read the posts I made I pointed out that each owner of a forum makes decisions on who they allow to post to create the environment they personally are looking for but I also made a point that banning certain sets of idea is a rocky road and made several examples throughout the thread.

[JohnGalt]

So easy to ignore you just had to respond. All that Orwellian groupthink is pretty boring isn't it?

[JohnGalt]

FR has people (several frequent posters in fact) who spend time discussing natural disasters that strike the United States when Israel is slighted.

Both forums have it's lunatics, only OWK is quite direct that he wishes them gone and he is quite clear that they contribute nothing.

Many on this forum think the anti-patriots who discuss natural disasters striking the United States when Israel is slighted are 'friends' of the forum's stated goals.

[JohnGalt]

That's great that they think they are patriots posting their anti-patriotic ramblings or anti-patriotic articles. It's great that they find it interesting.

I welcome light being shown on their opinions so that libertarians and conservatives will continue to be wary about the strange bedfellows they have made and question the friends they have discarded over the years.

They may call up, down and down, up all day long-- it does not bother me.

[JohnGalt]

When was I asked that? As written that is a perfectly legitimate position in 2003 America.

It's the belief that American is struck by natural disasters when Israel is slighted that is an unpatriotic position; it's equivalent to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming American culture for 9/11.

You may call it Christian and patriotic, I call it heretical and un-patriotic. The debate, I believe is worthwhile and should be conducted out in the open.

[Neets]

That's one of the ironies of the GI forum. People complain that we move all of the fun stuff there, yet no one goes there. I would think that if that is where all the fun stuff is, there would be more traffic there, but there isn't.

The majority of postings on the GI side are the "Daily Threads", (ATRW, WFTD, HOBBITS, Dimensional Door, etc.).

If I am not mistaken, Vanity postings and articles that are of a general nature and not necessarily news, are to be posted there too.

More often than not, migrating Vanities, general news items and such doesn't happen (maybe the Mods are too busy policing threads with the trolls/disruptors/ZOTS/Harpies/Cliques, etc.).

Perhaps if you guys/gals( AM's) had more time for policing the New/Activism side, the GI side would pick up traffic and more people would take an interest in it...just thinking out keyboard here.

Maybe the next time or two when a thread is ZOT'd, move it over to the GI side...food for thought..

[veronica]

There is nothing that goes on at FR that even comes close to the pro-Hitler, white supremacist, racist, etc. crap that goes on at LF, and for you to claim there is dishonest.

AND may I add the rah-rahing over there when American soldiers are killed in Iraq is as odious as the pro-Hitler stuff. You will NEVER see that at FR. Ever. Some of them were positively crestfallen when Wolfowitz was not killed in the attack on the Al-Rashid hotel.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Or perhaps there are other ways of dealing with the potential of these sources of noise that don't require censorship and overt control...

Many are under consideration. That's what makes the net fun.

IMHO your problem is centered in the conceit that people have to listen when you talk. We don't and, if your publication is boring, we won't.

The issue isn't your right to talk, or mine--it is the prudent exercise of the right to publish.

Basically, the market for schlock is filled by commercial journalism. If you want an audience you have to say things which give perspective, help to cut through the noise. IOW, you need conservatism. If you allow every Tom, Dick, and Harry to contribute as much as they like to your forum, people who may like Tom but can't stand Dick and Harry probably can't enough Tom in your site for all the noise from Dick and Harry, and won't bother reading the site.

Of course if you like Dick and Harry and can tolerate Tom, you will like the result even as you bemoan the lack of readership on your site. Trouble is, you will probably lose Tom to a moderated site with a character and audience which is more congenial to Tom's writing.

Quite simply I see no censorship in the moderation of a web site; the cost of entry into the field of web sites is just too low for that characterization to make any sense. The message is, "find the site best suited to the audience which appreciates you--or make it." The web as a whole is essentially uncensored; assaying to make a single site perform the function of the whole web is a grandiose conceit.

[JohnGalt]

But you will see people rah-rahing support for a policy of using teenage girls from West Virginia as human bait for terrorists.

I find both your example of rah-rah cheering with the death of US soldiers (I have never seen what you speak of, but trust you did, or were using hyperbole to convey a point)and the above example on FR, rude, less than compelling, and an affront to conservatism.

I am not in the business of running a forum, I am not even considered a libertarian (I am a rightwing radical localist) so I would be remiss to suggest a policy for keeping the pamphleteers of any stripe off a web site.

[JohnGalt]

Actually, next time, try reading my post. I stated conservative support for Israel is perfectly legitimate. I have no idea how you twisted my post into the ramble you just wrote-- I do hope you did not spend too much time on it.

I already conceded that you may call up down and down up all day long yet you still want to play that game? Your idea of patriotism and Christianity, may well be my idea of anti-patriotism and heresy. I say again, I do believe this is a worthwhile debate.



My whole premise is that the site should let the anti-patriotic heretics post on this site and I applaud Jim for letting them post here so that their ideas can be exposed to light.

[bvw]

Well, forum discussions tend to be Self-avoiding walks rather than Brownian Motion. But Brown's remarks are remarkable for the fractured sentences within them.