The Week the Internet Trolled the Internet's Comment Trolls

Trolls run the internet. It's pretty much a fact. We've known this for a long time. Love them or hate them, the unruly, based, largely anonymous commenting masses keep the gears of "digital" "media" oiled and kicking. What do trolls equate to? If you're doing it right, even wrong, trolls equate to all-coveted eyeballs, watch-throughs, high time-on-page, and lively discussion threads. Who are you kidding?

Indeed, to a much larger degree than most of us are willing to admit, trolls keep the lights on. OK, so I wasn't the greatest dab hit. You got me. Thanks for the view!

But something is happening to the amount of shit we're willing to put up with from comment trolls. Which is to say, in just the past few days a handful of big players in the content-creation and content-sharing game have all announced, to varying degrees and fanfare, that they're just not going to take it anymore. They're trolling the comment trolls right back, cleaning up their dens of discussion and in one case, outright pulling the plug on comment sections.

At least that's what PopSci.com just did. For the long-running science and technology publication it was a matter of—what else?—SCIENCE.

"Comments can be bad for science," wrote Suzanne LaBarre, online editor of the news arm of the 141-year-old Popular Science. LaBarre sited research that suggests how "even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception" of a story and, similarly, how only firmly worded (but not uncivil) spats between commenters can inflect on a reader's perception of science. The move wasn't something PopSci "took lightly", but alas:

If you carry out those results to their logical end--commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded--you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the "off" switch.

Slate didn't go that far. The online news magazine's trollover isn't as hard and fast as PopSci's, but as part of a sweeping site design overhaul Slate is retaining it's registered-commenters-only model, and is even making already registered members re-sign in. The idea, editor David Plotz noted, is to foster constructive discussions and give nod to active participants: Slate's new comment widget allows "editors to feature especially smart or interesting comments in the article well, giving our lively contributors more visibility. And the new system can also notify commenters by email if their comments spark replies."

And finally, there's YouTube. Ah, YouTube. What's YouTube but a dingy virtual basement for actual basement-dwelling no-lives to hang out in seemingly all day, every day, spouting spittle on how your "somber" documentary was really funded our shape-shifing overlords, how Obama is (still!) a Muslim, and on and on, ad infinitum. It's arguably the bottom rung of internet comments, home to the lowest of the low of brain-numbing trollery.

YouTube knows it. The logical answer? Make comments powered by Google+. Per ReadWrite, YouTube will:

…prioritize comments from recognizable profiles, like the video creator or friends. Posted comments can be shared privately or in users’ Google+ circles, and additional moderating tools will give video creators the ability to block phrases or auto-approve comments.

“The grand idea," said Matt McLernon, a spokesperson for YouTube, "is to try and turn these one-off comments into conversations that you really care about,”

A cure all? Hardly. (A way to try and resusciate the search giant's still-limping social network? Absolutely.) But it does stand to weed out a lot of the riff raff.

What all this says about our willingness to allow a platform, sometimes carte blanche, for you, readers, to chime in on, remains to be seen, written and, of course, trolled. Have an idea? Hit the comments. And thanks for reading.

@thebanderson