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Some Reddit users just love to disagree, new AI-powered troll-spotting algorithm finds
(theconversation.com)
Yeah i enjoy arguing online
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Survivor bias aside, I'm not sure the UI doesn't make this drive-by trolling worse. The reddit UI (hi Lemmy) is threaded but disjoint, and the excellent response to one tree of responses isn't useful to or seen in another tree -- and those trees will develop in parallel in almost every discussion.
I worry that quips and cheap takes stand out because they're fast and block actual discussion more, so have that mock 'finalising' effect. Ending a discussion thread is not concluding it .
.. and we all have that cousin whom no one invites anywhere because he'll argue the shit out of something like a jackal worrying a carcass, until people just give up and let him wander smugly off to his little corner in contrarian triumph.
In breaking news; The sky is blue.
More at 4.
I have a reddit coworker, he just disagrees and follows up with "fucking retard" while being blatantly wrong...i hope they fire the guy soon.
Unmanageable human being, impossible to learn anything to keep him from killing himself (my job is technically life threatening, if you're too stupid to listen)
He also mamaged to call in sick for 2 weeks in his first 4 weeks of employment, i was surprised when they kept him on after that.
I want to know what the five basic kinds of users are to see which kind I am!
Devils advocate is very much in my nature but not so much when things are being done so obviously badly. Its great when discussions are more philisophical in nature.
Disagreeing isnt trolling. On reddit you see so much stuff that is so plain and agreeable its not worth adding agreeable comment #2000. So it only becomes worth commenting if you see a post where you actually have a disagreement with the majority.
Read the article. It's not about normal run of the mill disagreement. It's about:
...an entire class of Reddit users whose primary purpose seems to be to disagree with others. These users specifically seek out opportunities to post contradictory comments, especially in response to disagreement, and then move on without waiting for replies.
whose primary purpose seems to be to disagree
What's survivor bias again?
I mean, aside from the thing everyone is saying, to which you're replying 'read the article', that is.
Disagreeing is often treated as trolling by those you disagree with, depending on the subject. Mostly because those disagreements are often bad faith talking points from some groups of people.
The person who identifies disagreement as trolling needs to grow up.
Yep. The skin appears thin at points.
Hey, stop trolling!
Oh, disagreeing with the post, huh? Looks like we found the AI troll, get 'em everyone!
But this isn't about people seeking worthwhile debates
These users specifically seek out opportunities to post contradictory comments, especially in response to disagreement, and then move on without waiting for replies.
Ah okay but you won't respond to this.
This is a great point, not sure what kind of bias it is, but you’d literally see thousands of people agreeing (the upvotes) and then 10 people circling around in a knife fight. Did we need science to tell us Reddit is full of trolls? Trolls existed on Reddit before LLMs became popular.
Absolutely. Someone will always disagree and that‘s a good thing, actually. Bubbles are just as if not more problematic than the disagreeing „troll“. Sometimes there are reasons to play devil‘s advocate and sometimes you just bring up concerns that you‘d like to be eliminated.
I remember when I was part of a tiny minority bringing up concerns over Elon Musk and let me tell you the pushback and ridicule I received IRL was even worse than discourse online at the time. It took a long time until someone came up to me and actually admitted that I was right about Musk the entire time. I just failed to bring my point across earlier because they were better at debating but I like to think I sped up their process of becoming disillusioned about tech billionaires a little bit.
There‘s also a case where I got temporarily banned from a community I was very active in and labelled as a „right wing troll“ when almost every comment I made on Lemmy pointed to the opposite. A moderator probably had a bad day, read a comment they disagreed with and let the hammer fall down before even doing as little as to check my post history. Not much harm done I guess but man we should learn to embrace other opinions a little more.
If you actually think about things and form your own opinions you'll usually be treated as "the other side" by everyone who signs and follows any pre-made set of opinions.
If you hate AI but thinks there is some specific situation in which it doesn't 100% suck, you'll be treated as a troll in anti-AI communities. If you're MAGA but disagrees with anything Trump says, you'll be called a leftist in conservative circles. If you're a fierce active defender of LGBTQ+ rights but thinks it's OK for a white American to dress up as a Mexican character for Halloween, you'll be ostracized in many left wing groups.
I disagree.
I think you're wrong.
I disagree
OBJECTION!
OVERRULED!
Well ackshually...
It's not something you can agree or not, it's a fact!
Then we agree to disagree
"Then you are banned." -- Redditor Jannie
those are the people who no one irl talks to anymore because they impulsively take the opposing stance, regardless of how stupid that stance may be, any time anyone says anything
Yup and guess what they are way more vocal online since they can still have an audience there and this is one of the reasons social media sites are so skewed from representing generalizable opinions. It's a contrarian incubator.
No they are not
I'm in this comment, and I don't like it
MAGA??
Disagreeing is not trolling. I hate post where everyone just comments the same thing. It's has no value, it's boring.
When people have different opinions and exchange ideas it gets interesting.
read the article.
Perhaps our most striking result was finding an entire class of Reddit users whose primary purpose seems to be to disagree with others. These users specifically seek out opportunities to post contradictory comments, especially in response to disagreement, and then move on without waiting for replies.
So if you look at my comment history at Reddit you would find few "totally agree, here's an upvote" comments and a lot "I totally disagree with this statement" type of comments. Not because I was trolling. I just find "you're so right" type of comments boring. I don't know what the "move on without waiting for replies" part implies. Who waits for replies on reddit? Do they mean they just never reply bak? If so that's also not typical trolling.
I mean if you’re on r/star wars or a political subreddit, then yeah lol.
It might be quicker to list the subreddits where this doesn't happen
(Lookin at you, r/stardewvalley)
But they all agree on one thing:
"Fuck. Spez."
Apparently not since most of them stuck around. Fuck Reddit.
You must have missed where they culled a lot Musk and Trump critics.
No u.
There's something quite funny about making a few replies to people on a topic, doing something else with your life for several hours, then logging back in to a shitstorm. I've done it unintentionally a few times.
How to get rid of the last few human reddit users ... and freedom of speech.
In other news, water is wet.
No it's not. You are.
Some people while cleaning a table just love to scratch it a bit. Why not leave that fossilized fat stain alone.
Same vibes. There's no use in agreeing. You are just adding to a clueless crowd.
Disagreeing helps everyone.
This should be illegal. As a person who was once false flagged manually by network attribution. Of course the anti troll flagging network was itself socially destroyed by time and is frequently cause of scandals while nobody cares for me.
Add certain language patterns and political stances and you have an excellent oppressive tool.
The behavior the study is referring to, is actually result of reddit's algorithms and human psychology. Often the contrarian view of whatever the post is about will automatically float to the top, no matter the topic, opinionated, factual or debunking, nature.