Guest Talk with Renee DiResta | A Troll's Guide to the Internet

Renee DiResta traces how 'trolling' evolved from a good-natured in-group initiation ritual on early BBS and blog communities into a weaponized tactic used by state actors like Russia, ISIS, Turkey's AKP, and Pakistani and Tanzanian operatives who exploit platform design gaps and policy loopholes (e.g., fake DMCA takedowns, mass-reporting gamification, hacked accounts) before platforms develop corresponding moderation protocols. She argues social platforms are designed for 'best case' use, creating a persistent gap between technological design affordances and reactive content-moderation policy, and discusses the historical collapse of the distinction between 'propaganda machine' (one-to-many broadcast) and 'rumor mill' (peer-to-peer salience-driven spread) in the social media era. She closes by weighing whether decentralized, federated protocols (Mastodon, Bluesky's AT Protocol) can offset this dynamic given they lack the large-scale moderation infrastructure of major platforms.</summary_truncated>