14 DAY TRIAL // A study performed by the researchers from Cornell and Stanford universities has shown that it is possible to single out a troll judging by only five of their comments.
Looking into the posts people have left on three big websites, namely CNN, Breitbart and IGN, the researchers have reached the conclusion that by checking out just a few comments that people leave, you will be able to identify those who are in fact trolling, The Guardian reports.
It seems that they have taken into consideration the people who ended up being banned from the sites in question due to antisocial behavior.
Trolling around will get you banned from the site, in most cases
They looked into similar traits that the posts of those people had and tried to identify a general pattern that could indicate that they would end up being banned from the site.
“Studying the evolution of these users from the moment they join a community up to when they get banned, we find that not only do they write worse than other users over time, but they also become increasingly less tolerated by the community,” researchers added in a pre-publication paper titled Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities.
For most websites, the interaction with users via posts and comments is vital, but not all users are there to engage in civilized discussions on a certain topic. On the contrary, some people log in just to leave behind undesirable comments, initiate heated discussions with other commenters or just rant off-topic for the fun of it.
What the trolls seem to have in common is the fact that they tend to stay off-topic and write down things that are entirely unrelated to the subject, mainly because they are not interested in debates or a regular exchange of opinion, but in creating havoc online.
Furthermore, it seems that the posts of banned users are harder to read than those of non-banned users, although approximately equal in length.
Another common trait that they pointed out was the fact that Internet trolls have a tendency to “spend more time on individual threads” rather than interact with the other members.
These are just a few signs which might help you single out a troll, or at least this is what the researchers claim, and they even provide some factors that could help you pinpoint them faster and even avoid them, if needed.