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 user’s posts and replies. It indicates the user’s 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.

The fake motivational picture in question.

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.

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 history—positive 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 trolls—both hostile and benign—who 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 TrollWe 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 SignalingBiologists 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 don’t 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 user’s past activity in pertinent subject category visible: “Ben has 190+ answers in Graduate School Education.”

• User’s 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 replier’s username is their individual post’s karma (upvotes minus downvotes) followed by a slash and their subreddit community karma.

• One’s community karma serves to signal one’s 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 user’s 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 troll’s antagonistic behavior, people will be able to detect and deflect them earlier.