A lot of people often ask what the biggest problem is today that has to be answered on the web. These types of questions often lead to some great new startups or products. For a long time I’ve been thinking that problem is email overload. While Gmail revolutionized email management, it doesn’t solve all the problems you run into as we all start to get more and more emails everyday. But now I’m starting to think there may be a more pressing problem: Comment trolls.

You know trolls, those douchebags who are often anonymous and go from site to site leaving dumb ass comments. Some are simply stupid — “First!” — others are very, very nasty. As a longtime user of services like Digg and YouTube, I’ve been following the trolling trend for a while. But I hadn’t really gotten to involved with it personally until I was working at VentureBeat, where as we grew in size, the trolls started coming out. Now that I’m with a site that gets even more traffic, TechCrunch, the situation is getting ridiculous.

While still at VentureBeat, my usual approach to trolls was either to not respond, or to be a complete and utter jackass with the most sarcastic responses possible. But now at TechCrunch, with the number of comments we get, it’s simply impossible to take the same approach. Occasionally, I’ll post links to previous articles pointing out whatever half-English jackass thing they are saying is wrong. Sometimes I’ll still be a jackass, but that only works to rile them up even more (something which I enjoyed at VB, but completely overwhelms our comments at TC). And so most of the time I’m just silent.

Unfortunately now, it’s gotten to the point where we simply have to moderate out comments. These aren’t just any old comments, they’re either completely out of line personal attacks, or straight up threats. While I have been threatened in comments both on VB and TC, I’ve never really felt any fear for my safety — they just make me mad. But as most people know, my current boss has. The situation is so ridiculous. We write news and opinions about technology. Technology. And that’s leading to threats. Absurd.

The problem with moderation is that even though it eventually works, it’s time-consuming and we still have to read all the threatening comments that come in. It also detracts from what should otherwise be a good conversation around the stories we write. And that’s what is really at stake here.

I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said that they love TechCrunch but simply cannot read the comments. I agree, too many of them are completely useless bile spewed up by people that it’s probably too kind to call “losers.”

There are millions of people who read TechCrunch every month, the overwhelming majority of them read our stories, enjoy them, but never comment. If a story is of particular interest to someone, then they might comment — but some are now telling me they won’t because the trolls make it impossible for any sort of intelligent discussion to happen. Again, I agree.

So what’s the solution? I’m not sure. Hopefully one of you will come up with it. The closest thing I see right now is to do something like only accept comments from a system like Facebook Connect and/or Google Friend Connect. These at the very least tie the comments to a real person and stop the anonymous assbags from leaving bullshit.

I shouldn’t have to even say this, but obviously it’s perfectly fine if someone has something to say in opposition to what I write. Hell, I would even encourage that. As long as it’s constructive, it encourages debate and discussion. But the bullshit comments that do little more than call one of us an “asshole” or worse, without knowing any of us, are just unacceptable. If people have their comments tied to a real online identity, they’re obviously going to be less likely to leave some kind of dbag comment — and if they were to leave a threatening one, if it were serious, it’s much more likely that they could be tracked down.

What really saddens me today is that as some people have just started noticing, TechCrunch removed its official FriendFeed account last night. I love FriendFeed, have for a long time, but I ultimately agree with why Mike removed it. Following the whole Mike/Leo blow up thing (which both apologized for and moved on from almost immediately), the comments in the thread about the show were ridiculous. This worries me because these aren’t completely anonymous people, but FF users.

As I see it, it’s not that it’s surprising that a few people would start calling a person they’ve never actually met every name in the book — that sadly, seems to be a part of human nature — the problem is that this led to a mob situation where tons of users were piling on with this bullshit. It’s just unacceptable, and has the potential to be ruinous for what is an awesome service.

Because it’s so easy to leave comments on FF, everyone starts running theirs mouths at a rapid pace without thinking. Speed is a key to mob-mentality situations, and because FF is so good, it makes it easy. I’m worried that such situations will only grow as FF continues to. I know that it’s in some people’s nature to pick on those that are at the top of what they do, but remember, this is an actual person. That’s not the same as picking on some big, nameless company.

So while moving to a Facebook Connect style system may work, the comments on FriendFeed prove that being tied to a real account won’t necessarily stop all of this crap. Maybe the more real identity name of Facebook will help with that. I don’t know. But also what sucks about the identity-constrained concept is that it goes against the anonymous aspect that started out as a powerful thing on the web.

But we’re so far beyond that now. We need a way that holds people accountable for what they say. Because once a site hits a certain size now, the comments system is absolutely useless. And that’s just sad and pathetic. Hopefully someone can provide some sort of solution.

[photo: flickr/lmamon]