TechCrunch – Ciaran Laval

I don’t like Facebook, let’s be clear from the start, I don’t like the way it tries to share info, I don’t like the way it operates beyond what it tries to sell itself as, it’s great for people who know each other and want to keep in touch, but it goes much deeper than that spreading all kinds of personal info to people whom people don’t know. Therefore it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I’m not keen on sites who employ Facebook comments, one such site is Techcrunch.

Techcrunch introduced Facebook comments at the start of the month, they felt this would help cutdown on trolling and within a week were saying it had, as described here. However they weren’t exactly jubliant about this because, they’ve stifled comments full stop, admitting themselves that comments are dramatically reduced, therefore suggesting there are plenty of people who weren’t trolling, who now aren’t posting. There are those who use Yahoo to comment there, but generally comments were down.

Continue reading “Techcrunch slay the trolls – Collateral Damage Is Heavy”

Last summer, in an attempt to improve their forums, Blizzard announced people would need to use their real names on the forums, this went down like a lead balloon. Blizzard backed off after many pages of annoyed forum posts.

This week, TechCrunch decided to introduce the new Facebook commenting system, which some believe will help to reduce trolling, unlike Blizzard TechCrunch doesn’t have a link back to an account holder so anonymous trolling there is easier, however like the Blizzard issue, some people will shy away from commenting there because they don’t want their life analysed by some twerp on a forum who will comment on their real life location instead of the issues of the article and anyone who has spent more than ten minutes on Facebook knows that a lot of trolling goes on there, indeed there’s bullying there too, which is why many education organisations have people watching Facebook and other social networks for signs of bullying.

Facebook comments will stifle debate and put people off from commenting, some people aren’t allowed to comment on certain issues due to workplace social networking policies, you can of course still comment on TechCrunch via Yahoo, but this is yet again a sign of Facebook being a lot less of a supplement to a system and more of an egging of people to use Facebook.

This week Linden Lab rolled out their new community platform, one noteable absentee at launch is a General Discussion Forum, some described the old one as a cesspool but the discussions that happened there will find their ways to other areas, to the detriment of the intended purpose of that area, LL really should know this by now and just create a General Discussion area.

Continue reading “Trying to make people play nicely does not work”