Sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether someone is a troll "just asking questions" or actually just asking that question. More so on HN than in most of the world, I mean.

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retromagik 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yep that's why the trolls lick that strategy

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hypfer 3 hours ago | parent [-]

An interesting realisation there which I believe will shape the upcoming years of discussion spaces is that one can shift the burden of proof there.

Instead of leaving it with the moderation to prove without a doubt that someone is trolling, one can default to assume trolling and demand prove that it is not the case.

As it is impossible to bring up proof for either of those things, the house wins and people make damn sure to quintuple-check if their messaging is decent.

I don't think that that is a good solution, but the status quo was horrible, so maybe the pendulum swinging in another direction for a while might help us discover saner solutions.

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cowlevel 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It works until trolls figure out how to prove they are not trolls, even though they are trolls, while non-trolls have difficulty proving it.

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hypfer an hour ago | parent [-]

I suspect that the energy required scales exponentially though, and, eventually, it might just become less of a hassle to just behave.

That and the fact that each increase in difficulty filters out people that do not have the capability to pass it. So the pool shrinks every time.

Though, valid counterpoint: Eventually prefabs emerge and get shared.

But then we innovate once more. We always did. We always will

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cowlevel an hour ago | parent [-]

It doesn't scale exponentially. Another user already gave the example of someone persistently using "he/she", talking about gay marriages as "partners" while straight ones are "husbands" and "wives", etc. How much effort do you think it takes to perform that versus to moderate it?

	▲	hypfer an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not quite sure what your point is tbh. Do not even try?

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cowlevel 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And that ambiguity is precisely something that trolls hide behind.