Algorithm 'identifies future trolls from just five posts'

A website commenter who will end up being banned for antisocial behaviour can be spotted with 80% accuracy simply by examining their first five posts, claim researchers

It is possible to tell comment trolls apart from other users simply from looking at the way they write, researchers have found.

Studying the comments on three sites - CNN, Breitbart and IGN - over an 18 month period, the researchers at Cornell and Stanford universities found that users who went on to be banned wrote differently to other users in the same comment thread, using fewer words indicative of positive emotion.