Perhaps not directly on-topic, but here’s a recent study that highlights a couple of points that, IMO, are important to consider in this discussion:
"Title: Anyone Can Become a Troll: Causes of Trolling Behavior in Online Discussions
Authors: Justin Cheng, Michael Bernstein, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Jure Leskovec
(Submitted on 3 Feb 2017)
Abstract:
In online communities, antisocial behavior such as trolling disrupts constructive discussion. While prior work suggests that trolling behavior is confined to a vocal and antisocial minority, we demonstrate that ordinary people can engage in such behavior as well. We propose two primary trigger mechanisms: the individual’s mood, and the surrounding context of a discussion (e.g., exposure to prior trolling behavior). Through an experiment simulating an online discussion, we find that both negative mood and seeing troll posts by others significantly increases the probability of a user trolling, and together double this probability. To support and extend these results, we study how these same mechanisms play out in the wild via a data-driven, longitudinal analysis of a large online news discussion community. This analysis reveals temporal mood effects, and explores long range patterns of repeated exposure to trolling. A predictive model of trolling behavior shows that mood and discussion context together can explain trolling behavior better than an individual’s history of trolling. These results combine to suggest that ordinary people can, under the right circumstances, behave like trolls."
The full paper is at:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.01119.pdf
or, in Ebook format, at:
https://files.clr3.com/papers/2017_anyone.pdf
Several of the many on-line reviews of the study also elucidate the problem
well, and some consider possible solutions.
The points that I find significant here are:
1: allowing any troll posting whatsoever tends to snowball into further
troll behavior;
2: in the presence of troll behavior, people who wouldn’t normally
behave so themselves are highly (I would suggest: dangerously) likely
to get sucked into similarly unskillful behavior.