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Why is it so easy for someone to assume that someone they're talking to online is acting in bad faith? I don't mean taking precautions for security reasons, I mean people jumping on someone who misinterpreted some post. There's the whole "you feel like you can say anything when you're anonymous" thing, but not all websites are anonymous. Is it just because you don't know the other person?

>>29964 This also isn't about something in particular, just something I've been thinking about.

This suspcion is something I'm guilty of, I think the reason is sometimes simply that we've experienced other people working in bad faith, perhaps that sometimes we've done it ourselves, too ;^}. Trolling is a big part of Internet Culture and many times a troll acts in bad faith as part of his work. A savy internet user is aware that he may be trolled and generally tries to avoid getting drawn into it, so he is on the lookout for possible trolling. Sometimes of course he likely misidentifies it. Sh*lls and glow-nigg*rs are also real. Some sh*lling is trolling but not all of it, and either way these are both personae that are fundamentally acting in bad faith. Online communities generally require ways of limiting and controlling the presence of these bad faith actors, but in many places, especially like here where barrier to entry is low and moderation isn't as hard as it might be it often ultimately falls on the individual users to assess the nature of an interaction, and whether its done in bad faith.