In the article “Women and Minorities as Targets of Attack Online” by Kristy Tillman I believe she is giving software developers and engineers a bad reputation for something that is not their fault. She comments “App and platform makers show a glaring lack of empathy and a poor understanding of their role in the culture.” of online trolling , it's not that these people don't care. The problem of lack of empathy and poor understanding rest with the people using and paying them to make these applications and software. It’s a society problem not a developer problem .We don't blame people who make baseball bats when people decided to miss use them to break something or hurt someone , the focus of the problem is the wielder of the bat. The focus of this problem is still the wielder, software developers make a product that people want to use and security for online trolling is not the best .But big data analysis of millions of users is far from a simple task especially when people who aren't trolling also want to remain anonymous it's near impossible to detect which people are the problem. Anyone can simply create a new email and have a whole new account in less than five minutes.
“The makers of technology must take some moral responsibility for the creations they profit from.”, but shouldn't the society who fund them take some moral responsibility also.
I agree with you that its not all the developer's fault on not regulating the trolls. They try their best on fighting the trolls with anti spam bots and using programs to scan certain words to help single out the trolls for the moderator. They even have a system where people can report stuff like that but that system is flawed because the trolls might use it to their advantage and report the people who aren't trolls, but like how you said there will be no end to trolls without getting rid of anonymity.
ReplyDeleteI liked your analogy on the baseball bats it was easy to understand and was very creative.
I agree with you Malik that they developers aren't at fault for not regulating the trolls. It's extremely difficult to snoop out the trolls because they can easily just make another account. However, when I read her article I saw it as Tillman calling out the developers to do something to try and regulate the trolls. As developers I think she thinks since they made the websites, they need to do a better job. Which I don't think is fair to them.
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