Posted by doxogenic boy on March 1, 2014, at 12:21:35
First I want to say, this is a post about trolls and freedom of speech in suppport groups and other Internet forums _in general_.
I am a strong supporter of unlimited freedom of speech. But does this mean that I have to think that all support groups should be 100 % unmoderated/uncensored? As long as there are uncensored discussion boards where trolls can speak freely other places on the Internet, and as long as everyone, including trolls, can start their own uncensored blogs, I think there are room for censored forums too.
It isn't that difficult to know if a poster is a troll - basically, if a person makes a lot of noise with his/her provocative, aggressive and/or insensitive posts, it most likely is a troll.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29In fact, I think censored support groups/discussion boards can give more freedom of speech, because then will people who are afraid of aggressive posters, dare to use the forum. If trolling was allowed everywhere, these people would rarely or never be able to use a support group, because of a rational fear of being harassed.
So allowing trolls to use support groups blocks the ability for a lot of people to use their freedom of speech. And for some people, it is so hurtful with the trolls that they even have to stop reading the support group.
There is no reason for giving the troll a second, third, fourth, fifth ... chance, because they are often cyber psychopaths, who hurt other people for fun. And psychopaths never learn, it is a waste of time to try to heal them with love and forgiveness.
If a poster on a support group earlier has been harassed by a troll on Usenet, [1] such as in alt.support.depression.medication (search the Google Groups archive here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.support.depression.medication and click on the small arrow at far right in the search field to find advanced search [2] ), and therefore has left the newsgroup, it will be terrifying to meet the same troll again on a moderated support group.Then the harassed, earlier Usenet poster, has nowhere else to go. He or she may even commit suicide, and no one knows that it was the troll who caused it. If a troll harasses a person for a long time, he/she also is a cyber stalker. When the cyberstalking cyber psychopath can post within a moderated support group, then the worst case scenario has turned into reality.
So, therefore it should be allowed to say in a support group that a troll is a troll, a cyber psychopath is a cyber psychopath and a cyber stalker is a cyber stalker, to warn other users on the support group, and to stop the troll from posting.
If this is not allowed, then the moderated support group just as well can be made into a completely unmoderated forum. Generally, I think the existence of both censored and uncensored Internet forums gives freedom of speech to both the trolls and to anxious and vulnerable people. Exposure therapy works, but it is a human right to choose when and where and with whom the exposure therapy should take place.
[1]
About usenet in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
[2]
Read this thread to figure out how to find advanced search in Google Groups - you have to go into a group, and then you find it:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/news.software.readers/IdRY8FQh8xE/L1mW99PwL1kJ
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/news.software.readers/IdRY8FQh8xE/6f-vB93z82oJ- doxogenic
Earlier TRD/anxiety
300 mg tianeptine, 6 X 50 mg successfully since Oct 2009
20 mcg liothyronine
40 mg escitalopram
100 mg trimipramine
50 mg agomelatine
600 mg quetiapine
poster:doxogenic boy
thread:1061607
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20131217/msgs/1061607.html