(Originally posted at Greater Democracy)

It has been many years since I read Rousseau’s Social Contract. It was back in college and I didn’t read it as closely as I should have. Yet it often comes to mind as I read discussions about the role government in the age of Internet technology, and how to handle trolls, spam and scamsters.

Recently, Craig Newmark wrote a message to a mailing list that I am on talking about issues that craigslist has had. “Starting in early October 2004, in our discussion boards, we saw a very large surge of disinformation. Specifically, we saw a lot of new people who were posting information that had already been discredited ..., and who also posted highly abusive personal attacks”

He goes on to say, “These folks seem to be organized as a decentralized network and are very persistent, a problem to this very day.

On our site, they're an annoyance; on Wikipedia, they're a societal problem, given the importance of Wikipedia.”