Trolling and how Instagram is trying a different strategy
When I heard of “trolling” I had never really thought of the word other than that it was someone commenting randomly. For myself, I have always kept my social media accounts private with very little followers. I would only add the people I know and that I’ve met or seen. I would never let myself accept a friend request from someone who had, for example, one friend in common. So by doing this I rarely have had users troll my account. I think that an important take away from all the articles is to know what is trolling. I personally didn’t know how large of a problem it was and what specifically trolling was. I like the article by Elise Moreau, which give an example of the urban dictionary definition of the word trolling which is, “the deliberate act, (by a Troll — noun or adjective), of making random unsolicited and/or controversial comments on various internet forums with the intent to provoke an emotional knee jerk reaction from unsuspecting readers to engage in a fight or argument”. I also found it important to know that trolling can happen in many types of online settings. In the article by Moreau, it lists many places that trolling can happen like Youtube, Facebook and Instagram, Blogs, and even emails. I think that its important to know that trolling can happen on many different online platforms.
As I have all of my social media accounts on private I have seen examples of trolling on other accounts that I follow. For example, I follow a couple of different meme accounts on Instagram and sometimes I look at the comments on some of them because some of the images I know may entice people to comment. As I look through them from time to time, I see a lot of hateful comments that you can tell are to specifically rile people up and make people want to comment back. Because this isn’t my own account I just find it strange that people want to deliberately start fights with strangers online. In the article by Moreau, she states “Trolling makes a lot of cowardly people feel stronger”. Which I can see happening because they are in the safety of being in their own home, behind a screen, and don't have to be accountable for their actions.
The top social media platform I use is Instagram so I wanted to research what they are doing in the wake of trolling. I found an article that shows how Instagram is trying out “restricting”. In an article by Instagram, they state how restricting can best protect you, “Once Restrict is enabled, comments on your posts from a person you have restricted will only be visible to that person. You can choose to view the comment by tapping “See Comment”; approve the comment so everyone can see it; delete it; or ignore it. You won’t receive any notifications for comments from a restricted account”. I found this a great option for people who may not want to fully block someone but they have this option of turning off their comments on their photos. I think that it's hard for online platforms to monitor and filter out trolling so this gives the user the ability to limit comments of who they don’t want on their platforms.
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