Combating Trolls on Reddit

"Trolling is a game about identity deception,

albeit one that is played without the
consent of most of the players. The troll
attempts to pass as a legitimate participant,
sharing the group's common interests and
concerns; the newsgroup members, if they
are cognizant of trolls and other identity
deceptions, attempt to both distinguish real
from trolling postings and, upon judging a
poster to be a troll, make the offending
poster leave the group. Their success at
the former depends on how well they - and
the troll - understand identity cues; their
success at the latter depends on whether
the troll's enjoyment is sufficiently
diminished or outweighed by the costs
imposed by the group." Donath

How does Reddit work?

Reddit accounts are
anonymous and not linked
to any social media
account. Users can
choose to divulge
personal information,
however.
The karma score is the
grand sum of upvotes
minus downvotes
received on all the users
posts and replies. It
indicates the users
popularity.

The trophy case

showcases noteworthy
accomplishments. Note
the Inciteful Comment
trophy. (Flamebait.)
The user /u/
LE_TROLLFACEXD
frequently trolls threads
with absurd or inaccurate
posts. However, he is a
benign troll.
We will see examples of
malicious trolls.

Redditor /u/LE_TROLLFACEDXD
admits to intentional trolling: he
misattributed an incorrect quote
to Jack Black and posted the
picture to /r/GetMotivated.
The community assumed he was
a genuine participant and
engaged his content as if he
were serious.
Community resources are
wasted, cohesion is damaged,
and its reputation among insiders
and outsiders is slightly hurt.

The fake motivational picture in question.

Dennis Toeppen, owner of

Suburban Express, is notorious
for using throw-away Reddit
accounts to taunt his detractors
on /r/UIUC or astroturf support
for his bus company.
His accounts are usually
quickly detected and
denounced by the /r/UIUC
community. Dennis-y signals:

No historypositive or not
in the /r/UIUC community.

No history in the overall

Reddit super-community.

No discussion harmony: his

posts are universally
antagonistic.

Should all votes be equal?

Why should the votes of a
potentially hostile outsider
be weighed the same as
those of a longtime insider
dedicated to cultivating his
community?
How can we protect online
subreddit communities
from trollsboth hostile
and benignwho impose
costs to those
communities? How can we
defend community culture?
How do we accomplish
this without preventing the
inflow of new ideas and
members? Without
imposing stagnation?

Spotting the Troll

We perceive others not as unique
individuals but as patterned by
social categories (gender, race,
height, occupation, clothes, &c.).
On Reddit, we can make little of
users social patterns other than
what they choose to reveal about
or define for themselves. The troll
engages in category deception,
donning categories as his cloak.
Only when the contradictions
between the troll's actions and
[his constructed] expectations
strongly conflict does the
deception begin to unravel;
when, in Goffman's
performance metaphor, the
troll speaks out of character.
Donath.

Handicap Principle and Signaling

Biologists and game theorists developed analytical framework to
model interplay between honesty and deception in communication
system. Amotz Zahavi proposed the Handicap Principle

Assessment signals follow the principle and are costly and the
cost is directly related to advertised trait. Walk the walk. Very
reliable signal as it requires the sender to possess or obtain the trait.

Conventional signals dont follow the principle and are not costly.
Signal is correlated with trait by external custom or convention. Talk
the talk and talk is cheap. Reliability can be easily reduced through
dilution.

Reddit karma is one form of assessment signal. It directly relates to

users popularity across the entire site but not within specific subreddit
communities.

What is a strong community

like Quora doing right?

Identity and name are visible and

verifiable. However, this is not applicable
to Reddit. (The spirit of Reddit centers
around relative anonymity.)

Overview of users past activity in

pertinent subject category visible: Ben
has 190+ answers in Graduate School
Education.

Users following is visible. More valuable

is seeing which people I care about or
know are also following them: Sanny
and Zubin follow Jessica Su? She must
have awesome answers and insights.

These are costly assessment signals

that cannot be easily replicated by an
imposter or troll.

Applying lessons from

Quora to Reddit

A subtle addition: on the

right of a repliers username
is their individual posts
karma (upvotes minus
downvotes) followed by a
slash and their subreddit
community karma.

Ones community karma

serves to signal ones
commitment to and
relevance within a specific
community. A negative
community karma serves
as a major red flag.

Malicious troll or well-meaning ineloquent

Redditor? Community karma can help
frame and give clues about intention

Dropdown for Context and Mutual Understanding

Harmony value is another possible assessment signal. It

is a rating of a users antagonism.

Seeing shared memberships in communities builds trust

and helps identify users who have deeper roots than
trolls on fake accounts.

By gathering and broadcasting data about a trolls

antagonistic behavior, people will be able to detect
and deflect them earlier.