That mean person on the internet might be a paid troll

They might be a paid troll, but they might not be. A lot of people are doing the same thing as the paid trolls, for free. Some literally believe what they are saying is true. Others simply don't care about truth, as long as it enrages and disorients the people they oppose.

People enjoy being outraged and outraging others. It drives a lot of engagement on social media. The paid trolls nudge it along, but they didn't invent it. They're just helping us do what we're already doing to ourselves.

Nor is this just basement dwellers. Trolling-like behavior has been endorsed and engaged in at the very highest levels of leadership. Nor is that a both-sides-are-bad situation -- a common tactic of trolls.

As many web sites have learned, you won't succeed in just ignoring the trolls. We can do better than we do, but this is a serious and endemic problem. Perhaps it's made harder than it needs to be, but only by exaggerating our existing tendencies. I know of no other way to fix that except to plead with those doing it to stop attacking other Americans. But having watched that become worse year by year for decades I have zero reason to think that will happen.

I have long suspected this. Some of Mike Masnick's most loyal opposition seem like obvious paid trolls, but not from Russia, rather RIAA and MPAA. I suspect some HN users are paid trolls.

This article badly underestimates the magnitude of this problem in China. The amount of paid trolls in China is so big that the views of real people have been actually significantly distorted by them.

HN guidelines blithely dismiss the idea that there are any significant number of trolls here, and forbid suggesting it, but I just think that is out of date.