Trolling

   The World Wide Web has been a wonderful innovation for 27 years, enabling people to use the interconnected network of computers to find and share information of every kind easily and quickly.
   The downside is that malicious users can flood web sites and search engines with wrong information and propaganda favoring or opposing individuals and groups.
   The trolls, as they are called, can harass their targets so much that some vulnerable individuals, especially teenage girls, have been driven to suicide.
   On a larger scale, trolls can overwhelm the open information network with false or misleading data, prompting higher status on their favored subject. Nations, moreover, use this same computer technology to suppress information about their regime and to push their propaganda.
   There has been so much misuse of the Web's capabilities that the man who devised the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, is considering revamping or revising the system, or even developing a new method of information sharing that would disallow the abuses that have become so common.
   Online surveys are particularly vulnerable to packing by trolls.
   For example, self-appointed trolls can pack an online survey or opinion poll to promote or to drown an issue or a political candidacy. An organization that claims to represent Irish-Americans released a survey of 7,000 Americans of Irish heritage who strongly supported the candidacy of Donald Trump for the U.S. presidency, and posted a Facebook page showing Trump at his oceanfront golf course in Ireland and touting the many jobs that the course brought to the region. It did not, however, note his request to build a wall to keep out the tide, and his threat to shut down the course if his plan be rejected by local officials.
   The alleged survey was promoted as evidence that Trump's candidacy is supported by a majority of Irish-Americans. But whether another poll by one of the older reputable opinion survey firms would bring the same results is an open question. One problem traditional pollsters face is the decline of landline telephone surveys, especially among younger folk, many of whom don't have landline telephones.
   Another example was a bid by Time Magazine, asking readers to nominate someone for Person of the Year. Overwhelmingly, many thousands of computer users -- or a few users filing multiple nominations -- promoted Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea. It's possible, of course, that the dictator could well be the person who most influenced the fate of the world for good or ill in a particular year. It's also possible that trolls packed the survey results.
   And, of course, there is the issue of dictatorial regimes blocking access from other countries and monitoring the activities of computer users within its borders.
   All this has prompted Berners-Lee to say it's time to set up a new system that really would be unrestricted, immune to misuse, and open to all computer users worldwide.