bd7b308302abcc370a69aae7b0842b0e
Trolling in IRC
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
THE series started by explaining how any agent provocateur du jour (disguising oneself as manners, yet provoking people) can do a lot of damage if given access to "the press", i.e. to a large audience. Well, the same people who did this to Linus Torvalds have been trying for years to do it to us. Today's story, told in the form of a video, explains how provocation, impersonation and Code of Censorship (CoC)-boosting by malicious trolls (some of whom received a salary from Google and from Red Hat) leads to IRC chaos, typically around the time Microsoft announces very bad news like tens of thousands of workers being more stressed than ever (morale crisis) with most of them laid off again (they lie to the media about the real numbers and the atmosphere inside the company). While it's somewhat expected -- especially in light of impending mass layoffs (again) -- that attempts will be made to distract/discredit us, it's worth documenting this phenomenon. We're not alone in this; other communities too have been targeted and are being disrupted by shills and astroturfers, even sophisticated trolls (who just call everyone else a troll, demanding a ban). ⬆