Trolls and Trolling

It is likely that any public information outlet which allows commenting will be trolled. By trolling, I mean the type of comments which are merely mean-spirited, destructive and without any actual content. In other words, vandalizing the source which allows the comments. I make this distinction because other sites have defined trolls somewhat differently, such as was done at the popular science site, which shut down comments altogether, with this comment:

"A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.

In other words, dissent to the "established scientific undeniable Truths" is considered trolling at popsci.

And there is this, from Slate regarding a study (behind a paywall) on the Dark Tetrads to which trolls belong (Looks more like "pentads" to me):

"...what a new psychology paper has to say about the personalities of trolls themselves. The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).

It is hard to underplay the results: The study found correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior. What’s more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet.

In the study, trolls were identified in a variety of ways. One was by simply asking survey participants what they “enjoyed doing most” when on online comment sites, offering five options: “debating issues that are important to you,” “chatting with others,” “making new friends,” “trolling others,” and “other.” Here’s how different responses about these Internet commenting preferences matched up with responses to questions designed to identify Dark Tetrad traits:
[emphasis added]

I encourage dissent here, if it is principled and disciplined, up to the point where it becomes obtuse and/or obstructionist. But the purposefully destructive trolls must be eliminated; they are psychologically damaged and demented. Now there is evidence to that effect.