Trying to shut down trolls

The Wash. Free Beacon reports:

The National Science Foundation is spending roughly half a million dollars to combat “online trolling.”

A joint project by Northwestern and Northeastern universities is examining how to create “trolling-free environments” on the Internet. The researchers define online trolls as those who try to influence public opinion by boosting “misleading” and “inauthentic comments.”

When the authorities are lying to us, there is a fine line between trolling and telling the truth.

The Russian have their own anti-trolling police:

The basis for the prosecution was a particular passage in a pro-Ukrainian-nationalist article that Luzgin reposted:

The Communists and Germany jointly attacked Poland, beginning World War II on September 1, 1939.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, of course, did provide for a partition of Poland between the USSR and Nazi Germany, and the Soviets did indeed invade Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, implementing that partition.

The press reports emphasize
that the blogger was shut down for telling the truth.

Why is that surprising? No one cares about trolls who are telling obvious lies. The authorities are most eager to shut down those telling dangerous or embarrassing truths. It is much more important to censor the truth.

China is always wanting to censor something with the same initials or birth year as Taylor Swift.

If the subject matter is forbidden, then you can bet that there is at least a grain of truth.