How do racists and racist trolls engage on well moderated social media (like Redcafe)?

[Rhyme Animal]

I’ve often wondered about this…

Reading the Portsmouth racist players thread currently in the football forum and the back and forth between those condemning the racists and those trying to explain away their behaviour, it struck me that I’ve not previously seen a thread where such obvious and malicious hatred was being treated in that way - ‘they’re probably not even proper racists’, ‘everyone says things with their mates they don’t mean’ etc.

There’s a lot of talk in that thread, and in society in general at the moment about how people speak differently when engaging on different platforms.

Likewise, there’s a lot of talk about better moderating on social media.

My question is - how do you think racists and racist trolls behave when on better moderated platforms like, for example, Redcafe?

They obviously can’t behave the same way they do on Twitter, Insta etc because they know they’ll be immediately banned, and so are too wary / cowardly / smart to openly state their true opinions…

On one hand this is obviously better, as no one has to read their vile output, but on the other hand it reduces their output to covert ‘what about isms’ and tedious devil’s advocate postings that pick apart proper debate and ultimately create a culture of paranoia, as it’s difficult to ascertain a genuine poster who wants to put forward an actual point in the debate, and a racist troll who wants to very subtly derail it.

It’s an interesting point / question and it’s often the elephant in the room in such threads.

How do other posters feel about it and the environment it creates?

 

[NotThatSoph]

This is focusing on those who stick around, and while that's interesting another part of it is how moderation impacts who the userbase consists of.

There has actually been some research on this, based on actions on the site Reddit. On Reddit anyone can create subreddits, which functions basically as a forum. The one creating the subreddit has control of it, who gets to be moderator, what the ruler are etc. Reddit users can subscribe to and participate in the subreddits of their choosing. So you'll have subreddits for United, politics, skincare, how Jews run the world to destroy the white race and so on. The research looked at what happens when the Reddit admins ban hateful subreddit, something they do in irregular batches. The finding is that in the immediate aftermath of a ban wave users of the banned subreddits will flood other subreddits, but that a lot of them will dissappear after a while. Net result therefore being less hate and fewer hateful posters.

There are probably several reasons for this, but I'll speculate. One factor I think is likely is that some hateful people aren't interested in playing coy, so explicit content not being allowed lessens how attractive it is for them to participate. Another reason, partly a consequence of the former, is that culture and community (both online and in the real world) both impacts what kind of people it attracts, how the people behaves and at least in part the views of those in the community. We can see a microcosm of the attraction in the Trump and US politics in the Current Events forum; while Redcafe (or Libcafe or even Marxcafe according to some) have a diversity of views ranging from pretty far left to liberal to centrist to center right, those explicitly on the right or far-right are few and far between (though not absent). You'll not find many Trump supporters. When one occasionally turns up they'll be faced with a lot of opposition and replies, which is overwhelming, and they don't tend to stick around. If those threads had a large[r] share of Trump supporters they'd be more likely to stick around, and the share of Trump supporters would increase. It doesn't, and the share of Trump supporters trends towards zero.

A scenario I can see being true is that this sort of moderation both increases the amount of covert hateful people and decreases the total amount of hateful people (covert + open). If this is true then the actual effect on the environment is debatable, I suppose, which is what your post is about and therefore makes mine a bit off topic. This is purely looking at the consequences, though, another factor people might weight (heavily) is the moral imperative to shut up the hateful people out of respect to the people targeted by the hate. This is also relevant for the point about attractiveness; just as an environment welcoming - or even just permissable - to hateful people might attract more of them it might also drive other people out. To again point to Reddit, or other places like the chans, places with little to no moderation tend to evolve into far right places over time. In my opinion both because hateful people will want to hang out in places they're allowed to, and because the far right, and especially the online far right, have a very focused and organized effort to recruit where they'll actively target communities they see as vulnerable.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

Report them if you feel that way. You're insinuating that the thread is full of racists.

 

[Charlie Foley]

This is focusing on those who stick around, and while that's interesting another part of it is how moderation impacts who the userbase consists of.

There has actually been some research on this, based on actions on the site Reddit. On Reddit anyone can create subreddits, which functions basically as a forum. The one creating the subreddit has control of it, who gets to be moderator, what the ruler are etc. Reddit users can subscribe to and participate in the subreddits of their choosing. So you'll have subreddits for United, politics, skincare, how Jews run the world to destroy the white race and so on. The research looked at what happens when the Reddit admins ban hateful subreddit, something they do in irregular batches. The finding is that in the immediate aftermath of a ban wave users of the banned subreddits will flood other subreddits, but that a lot of them will dissappear after a while. Net result therefore being less hate and fewer hateful posters.

There are probably several reasons for this, but I'll speculate. One factor I think is likely is that some hateful people aren't interested in playing coy, so explicit content not being allowed lessens how attractive it is for them to participate. Another reason, partly a consequence of the former, is that culture and community (both online and in the real world) both impacts what kind of people it attracts, how the people behaves and at least in part the views of those in the community. We can see a microcosm of the attraction in the Trump and US politics in the Current Events forum; while Redcafe (or Libcafe or even Marxcafe according to some) have a diversity of views ranging from pretty far left to liberal to centrist to center right, those explicitly on the right or far-right are few and far between (though not absent). You'll not find many Trump supporters. When one occasionally turns up they'll be faced with a lot of opposition and replies, which is overwhelming, and they don't tend to stick around. If those threads had a large[r] share of Trump supporters they'd be more likely to stick around, and the share of Trump supporters would increase. It doesn't, and the share of Trump supporters trends towards zero.

A scenario I can see being true is that this sort of moderation both increases the amount of covert hateful people and decreases the total amount of hateful people (covert + open). If this is true then the actual effect on the environment is debatable, I suppose, which is what your post is about and therefore makes mine a bit off topic. This is purely looking at the consequences, though, another factor people might weight (heavily) is the moral imperative to shut up the hateful people out of respect to the people targeted by the hate. This is also relevant for the point about attractiveness; just as an environment welcoming - or even just permissable - to hateful people might attract more of them it might also drive other people out. To again point to Reddit, or other places like the chans, places with little to no moderation tend to evolve into far right places over time. In my opinion both because hateful people will want to hang out in places they're allowed to, and because the far right, and especially the online far right, have a very focused and organized effort to recruit where they'll actively target communities they see as vulnerable.

Do you think the restrictions on what email can be used to create an account impacts it at all?

 

[Sandikan]

Ill behaviour is a lot easier to clamp down on, with small forums like redcafe.
Even more so when you used to have to spend months to even be able to post properly on here, with the newbies system.

Very few are going to bother spreading their bile on some footy site, as the audience is so small in comparison. with a platform where you can instantly get close to 1,000s of big name celebs, and be seen by 100,000s of people with just 30secs to set an account up.

 

[NotThatSoph]

Do you think the restrictions on what email can be used to create an account impacts it at all?

To a degree, yes. Not allowing fake temporary ones like 10minutemail is probably the biggest one, though it's not very time consuming to set up a gmail either. Anything involving a cost, and time and effort is a cost, is likely to deter. On Redcafe the newbie system is probably a huge factor, though, both because it takes a commitment to get promoted and because comparatively a larger share of the deplorables are likely to get weeded out. These things do deter all kinds of posters, though, not only the explicitly unwanted ones. Personally I've been browsing this forum for around two decades, but I only created this account like two years ago. Reason being that I couldn't be bothered to post in a forum I wasn't interested in (the newbies) to get through the eye of the needle, so to speak. Whether or not I should have been let through I guess is debatable (hello @Zlatan 7, I hope you're well), but if I shouldn't it's probably not for reasons relevant to this thread.

The question then is if these efforts deter a larger relative share of people this thread is about than "normal" people. I think the answer is likely yes but I'm not certain.

 

[ivaldo]

Good question. @Sancho7?

 

[GloryHunter07]

I’ve often wondered about this…

Reading the Portsmouth racist players thread currently in the football forum and the back and forth between those condemning the racists and those trying to explain away their behaviour, it struck me that I’ve not previously seen a thread where such obvious and malicious hatred was being treated in that way - ‘they’re probably not even proper racists’, ‘everyone says things with their mates they don’t mean’ etc.

There’s a lot of talk in that thread, and in society in general at the moment about how people speak differently when engaging on different platforms.

Likewise, there’s a lot of talk about better moderating on social media.

My question is - how do you think racists and racist trolls behave when on better moderated platforms like, for example, Redcafe?

They obviously can’t behave the same way they do on Twitter, Insta etc because they know they’ll be immediately banned, and so are too wary / cowardly / smart to openly state their true opinions…

On one hand this is obviously better, as no one has to read their vile output, but on the other hand it reduces their output to covert ‘what about isms’ and tedious devil’s advocate postings that pick apart proper debate and ultimately create a culture of paranoia, as it’s difficult to ascertain a genuine poster who wants to put forward an actual point in the debate, and a racist troll who wants to very subtly derail it.

It’s an interesting point / question and it’s often the elephant in the room in such threads.

How do other posters feel about it and the environment it creates?

We had a high profile one on here for ages but he was relatively careful about the way he went about expressing his views. @rednev

 

[rimaldo]

i like the fact that it’s open for people to express their opinions and you can soon work out who is worth listening to and who is worth ignoring. i think it falls down a little with the “attack the post, not the poster” philosophy. i’m all for not calling someone a massive cnut because they rate phil jones/don’t rate phil jones, but any one being overtly and seriously racist/xenophobic/homophobic etc should get called out on it properly and aggressively.

 

[Boycott]

Contrarianism /devil's advocate.... "just asking the question" etc.

 

[Fearless]

i like the fact that it’s open for people to express their opinions and you can soon work out who is worth listening to and who is worth ignoring. i think it falls down a little with the “attack the post, not the poster” philosophy. i’m all for not calling someone a massive cnut because they rate phil jones/don’t rate phil jones, but any one being overtly and seriously racist/xenophobic/homophobic etc should get called out on it properly and aggressively.

And who makes the call on whats racist and what isn't? What system of metrics is utilised? My robust defence of Israel has landed me in hot water and temporary bans yet many posters would seriously fail the IHRA definition of antisemitism while pretending they wouldn't, while camouflaging their posts as merely and innocently political.

They ain't fooling this Jewish sod.

 

[Vidyoyo]

Good topic but I think there's a big difference between social media sites and forums and it largely comes down to one word - community.

Open-ended platforms like the big social media sites aren't online communities. They can create sub-communities within them, but it's not exactly their bread and butter. On the other leg, communities like this -- and by proxy most xenforo sites/sub-reddits/etc -- are better at ensuring a code of conduct, whether it's implied, set in the terms and conditions upon sign up, or explained by moderators doing their jawbs and tapping the sign (like Damo).

It's partly why I think the idea of moderation on social media is a misplaced argument. By design, they're moderation-less which is why they're so popular and I can't see them enforcing any real prescriptive action that eats into their userbase. It's sad but, hey, it's why I don't use social much myself.

As for your racism angle, I guess people tone it down but I'm inclined to think most here aren't weaponised racists otherwise they'd let it slip very quickly.

If the football/united forum has taught me anything, it's that people don't put that much thought into what they're posting.

 

[fergieisold]

I didn’t comment on the pompey thread but I’m not sure how anybody can defend the comments that were made by the players. The only defence could be ‘it’s a joke’ ...but that’s just not funny.

 

[Hectic]

And who makes the call on whats racist and what isn't? What system of metrics is utilised? My robust defence of Israel has landed me in hot water and temporary bans yet many posters would seriously fail the IHRA definition of antisemitism while pretending they wouldn't, while camouflaging their posts as merely and innocently political.

They ain't fooling this Jewish sod.

To be fair I saw a lot of that and I even made a thread in support for you trying to get it to stop. It was deleted though so I agree the moderation team had a bit of an agenda going on there.

 

[caid]

Im definitely a contrarian, sometimes play devils advocate and frequently say dumb, ignorant shit (probably in the portsmouth thread today for one? I wasn't paying that much attention to the conversation). I'm not playing 4d chess trying to trick people into being racists. To be honest i think i'm pretty blunt and if i didn't explicitly say it i don't think it.
I think you need to take people at face value pretty much as a default rule but maybe more so on a forum. They'll reveal themselves over time dont you think?

 

[Fearless]

To be fair I saw a lot of that and I even made a thread in support for you trying to get it to stop. It was deleted though so I agree the moderation team had a bit of an agenda going on there.

I never knew that, though the mods were under fire for not banning me.

The absolute hypocrisy of those calling me a racist was stunning.
And to be fair the mods understood this, or at least that mother of all echo chambers was taking shape which is never healthy.

Thanks for your support though. Really appreciated.

 

[Scarlett Dracarys]

To be fair I saw a lot of that and I even made a thread in support for you trying to get it to stop. It was deleted though so I agree the moderation team had a bit of an agenda going on there.

I never knew that, though the mods were under fire for not banning me.

The absolute hypocrisy of those calling me a racist was stunning.
And to be fair the mods understood this, or at least that mother of all echo chambers was taking shape which is never healthy.

Thanks for your support though. Really appreciated.

Our Hectic is a good chap. One of a kind.

 

[Zlatan 7]

To a degree, yes. Not allowing fake temporary ones like 10minutemail is probably the biggest one, though it's not very time consuming to set up a gmail either. Anything involving a cost, and time and effort is a cost, is likely to deter. On Redcafe the newbie system is probably a huge factor, though, both because it takes a commitment to get promoted and because comparatively a larger share of the deplorables are likely to get weeded out. These things do deter all kinds of posters, though, not only the explicitly unwanted ones. Personally I've been browsing this forum for around two decades, but I only created this account like two years ago. Reason being that I couldn't be bothered to post in a forum I wasn't interested in (the newbies) to get through the eye of the needle, so to speak. Whether or not I should have been let through I guess is debatable (hello @Zlatan 7, I hope you're well), but if I shouldn't it's probably not for reasons relevant to this thread.

The question then is if these efforts deter a larger relative share of people this thread is about than "normal" people. I think the answer is likely yes but I'm not certain.

Thanks, I guess.

 

[Rado_N]

There’s been a handful of blatant racist posters over recent years. Stuff like Brexit and Trump brought them out even though it was usually shrouded in “I’m just asking questions/trying to understand” type guff or whatever.

I can’t decide if it’s annoying or comforting that I can’t think of their names right now.

 

[Revaulx]

I didn’t comment on the pompey thread but I’m not sure how anybody can defend the comments that were made by the players. The only defence could be ‘it’s a joke’ ...but that’s just not funny.

I dont think anyone was either defending the comments or suggesting that they may have been a "joke". I hope not anyway.

What some people were suggesting was that the perpetrators might just be idiots, rather than evil cnuts. I wouldn't regard that as a defence, though quite a few posters clearly did.

 

[AllGoodNamesRGone]

I think a forum, especially one as big as red cafe, is much like society and over time you will see changing attitudes as too what is acceptable and what isn’t.

For example, this thread is from 2005. Could you imagine that being allowed to get past the first post in today’s climate?
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/being-gay.99262/

When it comes to issues like racism it can be very frustrating when you see that oh so obvious “I’m just asking questions” type post but unless it’s loaded with baiting language I think it’s fine having the occasional one or two pop as there are plenty of enlightened and articulate individuals who post here that can pull apart such ludicrous Devils advocates and whatsboutism style posting with a truly and genuinely educating reply.

When people are so entrenched in their own positions it does sometimes feel like it’s a waste of time but I remember a thread in the CE forum from when I was just a lurker and had not signed up.
I believe it was about Ireland having a referendum about gay marriage. One poster was dead set against it and was going to vote no to it being legalised.
After many pages and back and forth arguments and debates, come the day of the referendum he posted that his mind had been changed from the informative dialogue he had in that thread and would now be voting in favour of it.

It may only happen once or twice but when people can be reached out to in that respect and be educated on topics they may have held backwards views towards then it’s doing more good in the long run.

 

[Fearless]

There’s been a handful of blatant racist posters over recent years. Stuff like Brexit and Trump brought them out even though it was usually shrouded in “I’m just asking questions/trying to understand” type guff or whatever.

I can’t decide if it’s annoying or comforting that I can’t think of their names right now.

I hope you're not suggesting that all Brexit and Trump supporters are racists. Because you know what that is.

See how easy it is to think you're immune?

 

[Rado_N]

I hope you're not suggesting that all Brexit and Trump supporters are racists. Because you know what that is.

See how easy it is to think you're immune?

I guess some Brexit supporters are just stupid or naive, but every single person who continued to be a Trump supporter is racist. 100% of them.

 

[Scarlett Dracarys]

I hope you're not suggesting that all Brexit and Trump supporters are racists. Because you know what that is.

See how easy it is to think you're immune?

He didn't say that. He said those threads tend to bring out those types of people. It triggers the deep type of hate that's embedded into their souls.

 

[Ecstatic]

I am not sure to understand the purpose of this thread.

It is technically possible to report a post and contact moderators who will be happy to ban unhealthy posters.

 

[Welsh Wonder]

There’s been a handful of blatant racist posters over recent years. Stuff like Brexit and Trump brought them out even though it was usually shrouded in “I’m just asking questions/trying to understand” type guff or whatever.

I can’t decide if it’s annoying or comforting that I can’t think of their names right now.

Those cnuts are so transparent yet they think they're being clever.

 

[GDaly95]

There’s been a handful of blatant racist posters over recent years. Stuff like Brexit and Trump brought them out even though it was usually shrouded in “I’m just asking questions/trying to understand” type guff or whatever.

I can’t decide if it’s annoying or comforting that I can’t think of their names right now.

There are armies of these stupid little Dave Rubin's everywhere

 

[Maagge]

I hope you're not suggesting that all Brexit and Trump supporters are racists. Because you know what that is.

See how easy it is to think you're immune?

Every single Trump or tory voter can be classified as being fine with racism though.

 

[Scarlett Dracarys]

I guess some Brexit supporters are just stupid or naive, but every single person who continued to be a Trump supporter is racist. 100% of them.

The justifications they come up with are quite funny.

 

[Superden]

All lives matter innit

 

[Trequarista10]

I’ve often wondered about this…

Reading the Portsmouth racist players thread currently in the football forum and the back and forth between those condemning the racists and those trying to explain away their behaviour, it struck me that I’ve not previously seen a thread where such obvious and malicious hatred was being treated in that way - ‘they’re probably not even proper racists’, ‘everyone says things with their mates they don’t mean’ etc.

There’s a lot of talk in that thread, and in society in general at the moment about how people speak differently when engaging on different platforms.

Likewise, there’s a lot of talk about better moderating on social media.

My question is - how do you think racists and racist trolls behave when on better moderated platforms like, for example, Redcafe?

They obviously can’t behave the same way they do on Twitter, Insta etc because they know they’ll be immediately banned, and so are too wary / cowardly / smart to openly state their true opinions…

On one hand this is obviously better, as no one has to read their vile output, but on the other hand it reduces their output to covert ‘what about isms’ and tedious devil’s advocate postings that pick apart proper debate and ultimately create a culture of paranoia, as it’s difficult to ascertain a genuine poster who wants to put forward an actual point in the debate, and a racist troll who wants to very subtly derail it.

It’s an interesting point / question and it’s often the elephant in the room in such threads.

How do other posters feel about it and the environment it creates?

I don't think they would engage in communities or social media platforms outside of their echo bubble, to be honest.

As someone who engages in devil's advocacy, I firmly reject the notion that anyone playing devil's advocacy is being disingenuous or covertly attempting to derail discussions. I have been accused (ironically, covertly) of that on here. I'm a Labour voting nurse and have been accused of being a right wing troll by a mod for saying a high profile academic is probably not a secret Nazi trying to lure unsuspecting youth towards a fascist dystopia. Put me in a forum of right leaning people and I'll argue against them about the merits of increasing the minimum wage and nationalising public services. Put me in a forum of left leaning people and I'll argue about the potential dangers of increased state power. I'm not on a fecking team and I see little value in discussions where everyone agrees. It's not always enjoyable as people are keen to twist your words and accuse you of all kinds of things, so anyone who goes to the effort to try and engage in conversation with people who disagree with them likely has genuine intentions, IMO.

 

[syrian_scholes]

I think the mod team is very lenient on certain topics while very harsh on other topics, I know at least two posters who got perma banned for trivial reasons while people like Fearless are still able to post here.

 

[AkaAkuma]

I think you have to consider that a small percentage may be trolls whilst are larger proportion may not agree with your pov or are still on a journey of enlightenment.

I don't think it's healthy to group the above into one opposing faction.

... But I've not witnessed the Pompey thread.

 

[one340]

Do you think the restrictions on what email can be used to create an account impacts it at all?

Absolutely I think this is the case. I remember back when I was a newbie how quick the banhammers and locking of the threads came when inappropriate posts.

 

[Moby]

For example, this thread is from 2005. Could you imagine that being allowed to get past the first post in today’s climate?
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/being-gay.99262/

So this is the golden age of caf people on here keep being nostalgic about. feck that.

 

[P-Nut]

So this is the golden age of caf people on here keep being nostalgic about. feck that.

That first page

Suprised its not been permenantly deleted

 

[Hectic]

I don't have any problems with Gays as long as they don't disturb me.

But I personally don't sanctions gay marriage etc. Gays should and must be treated equally, they should get no discrimination, BUT for them to ask to be legalise is way too much, what's next? pedophile?

If you're saying that both of them consent the relationship yes, but if you legalise them, there'll be pedophiles saying that their prey consent with them based upon a few candies they give her.

15 years later Sky, where do you stand now? Same sex marriage has been legalised in many places but I'm not sure your "what next" fears have come true.

Do you accept your last sentence is perhaps the worst cause and effect example possibly made in the entirety of history?

 

[Gehrman]

Every single Trump or tory voter can be classified as being fine with racism though.

I guess that makes all the people of colour who voted Trump or Tory fine with racism or i guess just plain racists. It would be interesting to ask them anyway.

 

[JPRouve]

So this is the golden age of caf people on here keep being nostalgic about. feck that.

Nope, that's unnatural.

 

[KirkDuyt]

I think a forum, especially one as big as red cafe, is much like society and over time you will see changing attitudes as too what is acceptable and what isn’t.

For example, this thread is from 2005. Could you imagine that being allowed to get past the first post in today’s climate?
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/being-gay.99262/

Ah, now I understand why all these old hipsters keep whinging that the caf used to be so much better

Edit: ah @Moby beat me to it.