...researchers from Stanford and Cornell developed an early warning system for trolls. After conducting a study that examined close to 40 million comments, it was found that trolls can be algorithmically identified before they've written 10 posts. The team took the comments sections from websites CNN, Breitbart and IGN, looking at the contributions of 1.7 million users over 18 months as well as the up and down votes each post got. The team then dug in to work out what differentiates a banned user from those who are deemed to be worthwhile members of the community. it turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that trolls are pretty easy to spot. For instance, trolls are more likely to write less coherently and often with more profanity than other users. They're also found to concentrate their discussions in a narrow group of threads and often generate more responses than less inflammatory comments. The team thinks that this latter point is because they're adept at "luring others into fruitless, time-consuming discussions..."
