[ZS] Troll Attack Patterns

Sat Feb 9 07:42:40 PST 2013

I know a little bit about how trolls operate. There are different types of 
trolls, but most of them present a threat to the community that is trolled. 
So, the community needs some awareness of the attack patterns in order to 
withstand such attacks.

I was an active member of a certain small community, let's call it 
community X. X has a charismatic leader, let's call him Z, with radical 
ideas about progress, community, and stuff like that. Because Z wants a 
large high quality community and it is hard to find candidates with the 
required prerequisites ("really freely thinking individuals" or so), Z 
resorts to an unconventional strategy of member recruitment which I call 
"forum fishing" for simplicity. It consists in entering forums of other 
communities and advertising the ideals of X. Members are encouraged to 
check out X, because it's really great and so on (which is not too far from 
the truth actually). At the same time the targeted community C is 
criticized in different ways:
1. It is criticised for not upholding the ideals of X.
2. It is criticised for supporting destructive ideals which are detrimental 
to individuals.
3. It is criticised for being stupid, dysfunctional and inefficient.
4. It is criticised for not even sticking to its own ideals and rules.
5. It is criticised for a bad administration style, which is characterized 
as despotic.

Many points that the infiltration group of X make are thoughtful, true, and 
justified. But at the same time the group is quite vehement and aggressive, 
which sooner or later gets them flagged as trolls. They react by pointing 
out that they are acting in accordance with the rules, even if the C admins 
have erroneous differing positions and that they have good intentions. 
Often, a few members of C agree with the X members and consider joining X. 
These individuals may be painted as traitors by the C admins. But that 
reaction makes the accused traitors likely to question their allegiance to 
C and likely to join X instead.

Sooner or later, the infiltrators from X are kicked out of C, possibly 
together with some sympathizers. But they will have incited hot discussions 
about values, ideals, administration styles, and perhaps even recruited a 
few intelligent and open minded members for X. The reactions of the C 
admins will have antagonized a couple of C members, so they will leave, 
rebel, or generally will feel unwelcome, protest, and cause further 
trouble. In any case, the free expression of ideas will be restricted to 
some degree. The community C may become more dictatorial, up to the point 
of becoming an empty shell that doesn't remind anyone of the what it once 
was. It may split up because of that or just die silently.

And those were the benign trolls. Now I'll explain the methods of malignant 
trolls. The motive of the malignant troll is to destroy the targeted 
community, or to take it over, or to cause as much trouble as possible. 
Let's call the targeted community C. It is not without irony that I was an 
admin of X when it was infiltrated by malignant trolls.

Malignant trolls infiltrate hard and deep. They try to earn the trust of C 
members, and especially C admins. If they are good, they will not come 
alone, but as a highly coordinated trolling troupe "T". Once a single 
member of T gains admin status, the other members of T will also get that 
status soon. Sooner or later a significant fraction of C admins belong to 
T. Once they are in that position, it is hard to remove them. Here's what 
happens if someone identifies them as infiltrators and takes action against 
them:
1. T denies that they are a problem for C. Instead T members claim that 
they are highly beneficial for C.
2. The offending C member will be accused of being unjust and will be 
defamed until he loses his status in C.
3. Defamation campaigns can include banning the offending member (remember: 
T has a lot of admins) and creating fake accounts who claim to be the 
banned member. The fake account write lots of nonsense which makes the 
original C member look bad. Additional T members or fake accounts of T 
members join in to corroborate that the initial C member needs to be 
excluded from the community forever.
4. If members of T are banned, the bans are reversed by T admins and the C 
member who tried to remove a T member is blamed for his "misbehaviour" and 
targeted for further attacks.
5. If T is threatened with defeat nevertheless, T may make serious threats: 
Psychological terror, physical attacks, legal action, etc. These threats 
are probably not serious, but the problem is that one doesn't actually know 
that.

In general, a troll troupe T consists of many different accounts:
1. The account of the master troll
2. Accounts of other members of T
3. Fake accounts of T members for additional impact
4. Fake accounts that claim to be accounts of genuine C members.

With all these fake and supporting accounts it is really hard to delineate 
between T members and genuine C members. Without real awareness of what 
might be going on, there will be hell of a chaos. C can only resist the 
chaos effectively if it uses communication channels with are not 
infiltrated, yet. Private emails, phone calls, and private meetings are 
generally hard to be infiltrated and can therefore be seen as rather safe.

How to defend against such attacks?
1. Have a clear identity and sensible principles.
2. Stick to your principles.
3. Have a brilliant team of admins who are reasonable and not too paranoid.
4. Don't give potential trolls power. People with power should be 
"screened" to guarantee that they are loyal to the community.
5. Private communication - lots of it.

How to differentiate between trolls and genuine members?
* Know them!
* Trolls are generally not very constructive
* Malignant trolls are rather cynical, unfriendly, and nihilistic, but 
demand fair treatment nevertheless, or even preferential treatment.
* Trolls are unlikely to be loyal to the ideals of the community.

I hope this was helpful. Zero State is too precious to be a victim to 
trolls and other infiltrators.

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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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