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Politicized Trolling is More Harmful than Fake News

posted by martyb on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:15AM   
from the I'd-rather-be-trolling-for-fish dept.

canopic jug writes:

Bloomberg is covering a report from the Institute for the Future (IFTF) on an attempt to describe the phenomenon of state-sponsored trolling from a qualitative and quantitative standpoint. While partially conflating trolling with astroturfing in the body of the report, the IFTF defines online trolling as deliberately targeting an individual for "hate" and harassment. Since it is only occasionally possible to attribute the attacks, the IFTF's aim with the report is to empower individuals, researchers, and policy makers to spot the phenomenon in the wild and at least attempt to combat it.

The report itself is entitled, State-Sponsored Trolling: How Governments Are Deploying Disinformation as Part of Broader Digital Harassment Campaigns (warning for PDF)

Ed: How accurate does the report appear to be and are the suggested countermeasures harmful or helpful or both?

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Original Submission

• Re:TFA is shit (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:06PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:06PM (#713151)

  It conflates not just trolling and astroturfing, but tries to paint actual, voluntarily and autonomously acting trolls into the same corner as the for-profit gang stalkers hired by politicians and regimes.

  Troll or troll not. There is no reason.

  Parent

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