Reddit Has Become a Battleground of Alleged Chinese Trolls

I think right now there are three main kinds of internet trolls in things like this. First would be the government sponsored ones who tend to post in unison or have some theme. These seem to mainly be Chinese and Russian. Second are the freelance trolls, people in it to make money by building an audience for advertisements. A lot of these people are in Macedonia where they can make relatively good money spreading false blogs on Facebook or something. Finally are the home grown true believers who are just posting their honest views in an abrasive, hostile, or threatening manner. I think the majority of trolls belong to the last group, but the first two have an outsized impact at creating new stories and coordinating messaging that is amplified by the third.

If you're going by the original meaning of troll you're missing the fourth category; the people who post something inflammatory because everyone freaking out and arguing at each other is amusing to them

If you're going by the original meaning of troll you're missing the fifth category: monstrous cave-dwelling creatures.

:)

Well, actually...

In the Internet sense of the word, the trolls in question live under bridges and spring out to surprise those who would cross with unpleasant demands and behaviour. Not cave-dwellers at all.

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Hey, this is Hacker News, if we can't bikeshed the etymology of "troll," what use is this medium?

The internet sense comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing) rather than the bridge dwellers.

“Trolling is a method of fishing where one or more fishing lines, baited with lures or bait fish, are drawn through the water.”