{"id":11842,"date":"2016-08-30T16:21:38","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T02:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=11842"},"modified":"2016-08-31T16:34:12","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T02:34:12","slug":"time-magazine-and-japan-times-on-how-online-trolls-particularly-reddit-are-ruining-the-internet-and-media-in-general","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=11842","title":{"rendered":"TIME Magazine and Japan Times on how online trolls (particularly Reddit) are ruining the Internet and media in general"},"content":{"rendered":"

Books, eBooks, and more from Dr. ARUDOU, Debito (click on icon):
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Hi Blog. I recently received the following post from a Debito.org Reader who (for obvious reasons) wishes to remain anonymous:<\/p>\n

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\nXY:<\/strong> There are some people on \u201cReddit\u201d (Including Eido Inoue\/letteradegree <\/a>& Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson<\/a>\/KenYN<\/a>) probably former colleagues or ex friends which apparently knew you in the past but seems that they hold a grudge against you all these years and now they have a mission to literally ruin your name and your reputation, as a activist, as a writer, but above all as a human being.<\/em><\/p>\n

The pattern goes like this: Every time someone makes a positive post about you on Reddit, these people swarm to either down-vote into invisibility the positive post or comments about you, or they mock you and they spread lies about your personal life. Frankly, I don\u2019t know what you can do in this case and what action you can take, but we’re talking about Reddit, with million of users and visitors on a daily basis, and not some small blog as Tepido\/Japologism <\/a>was. Below I\u2019m giving you a few links with threads on r\/Japan & r\/Japanlife etc Subreddits as proof of the things I said earlier.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note (1): Obviously many of the comments of these threads fall into what they call the \u201cCirclejerking\u201d category so please skim through.<\/em>
\n Note (2): In some cases you have to expand\/expose the full conversation\/replies on the down-voted comments, which means you need to click the small cross next to the faded user name.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Threads)<\/em>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japan\/comments\/2u8k66\/why_is_debito_arudou_so_angry_all_the_time\/<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japan\/comments\/2h146w\/what_are_your_thoughts_on_the_author_arudo_debito\/<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japan\/comments\/hydru\/to_people_in_rjapanespecially_the_gaijins_what_do\/<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japan\/comments\/3bypbo\/middleaged_japanese_faces_down_canadian_racism\/<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japan\/comments\/2ofo8w\/debito_arudou_to_foreign_japan_residents_you_are\/<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japan\/comments\/4xsqwy\/debito_racism_in_japan_by_deep_in_japan\/<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/np.reddit.com\/r\/japancirclejerk\/comments\/46cf17\/meta_how_do_you_know_debito\/<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japanlife\/comments\/2tnyw7\/debito_arudou_deleting_my_japanese_only_sign_is\/<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japan\/comments\/40qs5l\/dr_arudou_debito_and_his_haters\/<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japan\/comments\/4x7akz\/dr_arudou_debito_in_action_negotiating_with_a\/<\/a><\/p>\n

(Profile\/Comment history overview)<\/em>
\nEido Inoue\/letteradegree<\/em> https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/user\/letteradegree\/<\/a>
\nKen Yasumoto-Nicolson\/KenYN<\/em> https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/user\/KenYN<\/a><\/p>\n

(Single comment\u2019s thread)<\/em>
\n Proof that \u201cletteradegree\u201d is Eido Inoue:<\/em> https:\/\/np.reddit.com\/r\/japancirclejerk\/comments\/46cf17\/meta_how_do_you_know_debito\/d05lgva<\/a><\/p>\n

If you go through on some of his comments, he actually believes that you\u2019re actually some user on Reddit and you post with a sockpuppet account:<\/em>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japancirclejerk\/comments\/4xtdnh\/man_has_serious_crush_on_lil_debbie_and_is_in_no\/d6jcsu5<\/a><\/p>\n

And some comment about the Otaru Onsens Case<\/a>:<\/em>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japancirclejerk\/comments\/4xtdnh\/man_has_serious_crush_on_lil_debbie_and_is_in_no\/d6jidz3<\/a><\/p>\n

And some self-styled ex-friend:<\/em>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japan\/comments\/4xsqwy\/debito_racism_in_japan_by_deep_in_japan\/d6koj8j<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/japancirclejerk\/comments\/47xljl\/debito_has_a_message_for_you_jland_clowns\/d0gu7l1<\/a><\/p>\n

There are lots of people who follow you, support, and admire your work for many years now. So please don\u2019t let these few toxic people affect your work. Thanks for your time to read my message<\/em>. XY<\/strong><\/p>\n

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COMMENT<\/strong>:\u00a0 Thanks for the notification.\u00a0 This is in fact symptomatic of a larger problem.\u00a0 Here’s a recent article in a mainstream American newsmagazine talking about how trolls are having deleterious effects on the media, specifically mentioning Reddit.\u00a0 It’s long, but read on (and this will weed out the tl;dr online reactionaries who are allergic to doing real research):<\/p>\n

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\nHow Trolls Are Ruining the Internet<\/strong>
\n By Joel Stein @thejoelstein<\/strong>
\n TIME Magazine, Cover Story, Aug. 18, 2016<\/strong>
\n They\u2019re turning the web into a cesspool of aggression and violence. What watching them is doing to the rest of us may be even worse<\/strong>
\nCourtesy http:\/\/time.com\/4457110\/internet-trolls\/<\/a><\/p>\n

This story is not a good idea. Not for society and certainly not for me. Because what trolls feed on is attention. And this little bit\u2013these several thousand words\u2013is like leaving bears a pan of baklava.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It would be smarter to be cautious, because the Internet\u2019s personality has changed. Once it was a geek with lofty ideals about the free flow of information. Now, if you need help improving your upload speeds the web is eager to help with technical details, but if you tell it you\u2019re struggling with depression it will try to goad you into killing yourself. Psychologists call this the online disinhibition effect, in which factors like anonymity, invisibility, a lack of authority and not communicating in real time strip away the mores society spent millennia building. And it\u2019s seeping from our smartphones into every aspect of our lives.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The people who relish this online freedom are called trolls, a term that originally came from a fishing method online thieves use to find victims. It quickly morphed to refer to the monsters who hide in darkness and threaten people. Internet trolls have a manifesto of sorts, which states they are doing it for the \u201clulz,\u201d or laughs. What trolls do for the lulz ranges from clever pranks to harassment to violent threats. There\u2019s also doxxing\u2013publishing personal data, such as Social Security numbers and bank accounts\u2013and swatting, calling in an emergency to a victim\u2019s house so the SWAT team busts in. When victims do not experience lulz, trolls tell them they have no sense of humor. Trolls are turning social media and comment boards into a giant locker room in a teen movie, with towel-snapping racial epithets and misogyny.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

They\u2019ve been steadily upping their game. In 2011, trolls descended on Facebook memorial pages of recently deceased users to mock their deaths. In 2012, after feminist Anita Sarkeesian started a Kickstarter campaign to fund a series of YouTube videos chronicling misogyny in video games, she received bomb threats at speaking engagements, doxxing threats, rape threats and an unwanted starring role in a video game called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian. In June of this year, Jonathan Weisman, the deputy Washington editor of the New York Times, quit Twitter, on which he had nearly 35,000 followers, after a barrage of anti-Semitic messages. At the end of July, feminist writer Jessica Valenti said she was leaving social media after receiving a rape threat against her daughter, who is 5 years old.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A Pew Research Center survey published two years ago found that 70% of 18-to-24-year-olds who use the Internet had experienced harassment, and 26% of women that age said they\u2019d been stalked online. This is exactly what trolls want. A 2014 study published in the psychology journal Personality and Individual Differences found that the approximately 5% of Internet users who self-identified as trolls scored extremely high in the dark tetrad of personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and, especially, sadism.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But maybe that\u2019s just people who call themselves trolls. And maybe they do only a small percentage of the actual trolling. \u201cTrolls are portrayed as aberrational and antithetical to how normal people converse with each other. And that could not be further from the truth,\u201d says Whitney Phillips, a literature professor at Mercer University and the author of This Is Why We Can\u2019t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. \u201cThese are mostly normal people who do things that seem fun at the time that have huge implications. You want to say this is the bad guys, but it\u2019s a problem of us.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A lot of people enjoy the kind of trolling that illuminates the gullibility of the powerful and their willingness to respond. One of the best is Congressman Steve Smith, a Tea Party Republican representing Georgia\u2019s 15th District, which doesn\u2019t exist. For nearly three years Smith has spewed over-the-top conservative blather on Twitter, luring Senator Claire McCaskill, Christiane Amanpour and Rosie O\u2019Donnell into arguments. Surprisingly, the guy behind the GOP-mocking prank, Jeffrey Marty, isn\u2019t a liberal but a Donald Trump supporter angry at the Republican elite, furious at Hillary Clinton and unhappy with Black Lives Matter. A 40-year-old dad and lawyer who lives outside Tampa, he says he has become addicted to the attention. \u201cI was totally ruined when I started this. My ex-wife and I had just separated. She decided to start a new, more exciting life without me,\u201d he says. Then his best friend, who he used to do pranks with as a kid, killed himself. Now he\u2019s got an illness that\u2019s keeping him home.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Marty says his trolling has been empowering. \u201cLet\u2019s say I wrote a letter to the New York Times saying I didn\u2019t like your article about Trump. They throw it in the shredder. On Twitter I communicate directly with the writers. It\u2019s a breakdown of all the institutions,\u201d he says. \u201cI really do think this stuff matters in the election. I have 1.5 million views of my tweets every 28 days. It\u2019s a much bigger audience than I would have gotten if I called people up and said, \u2018Did you ever consider Trump for President?’\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Trolling is, overtly, a political fight. Liberals do indeed troll\u2013sex-advice columnist Dan Savage used his followers to make Googling former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum\u2019s last name a blunt lesson in the hygienic challenges of anal sex; the hunter who killed Cecil the lion got it really bad.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But trolling has become the main tool of the alt-right, an Internet-grown reactionary movement that works for men\u2019s rights and against immigration and may have used the computer from Weird Science to fabricate Donald Trump. Not only does Trump share their attitudes, but he\u2019s got mad trolling skills: he doxxed Republican primary opponent Senator Lindsey Graham by giving out his cell-phone number on TV and indirectly got his Twitter followers to attack GOP political strategist Cheri Jacobus so severely that her lawyers sent him a cease-and-desist order.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The alt-right\u2019s favorite insult is to call men who don\u2019t hate feminism \u201ccucks,\u201d as in \u201ccuckold.\u201d Republicans who don\u2019t like Trump are \u201ccuckservatives.\u201d Men who don\u2019t see how feminists are secretly controlling them haven\u2019t \u201ctaken the red pill,\u201d a reference to the truth-revealing drug in The Matrix. They derisively call their adversaries \u201csocial-justice warriors\u201d and believe that liberal interest groups purposely exploit their weakness to gain pity, which allows them to control the levers of power. Trolling is the alt-right\u2019s version of political activism, and its ranks view any attempt to take it away as a denial of democracy.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In this new culture war, the battle isn\u2019t just over homosexuality, abortion, rap lyrics, drugs or how to greet people at Christmastime. It\u2019s expanded to anything and everything: video games, clothing ads, even remaking a mediocre comedy from the 1980s. In July, trolls who had long been furious that the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters starred four women instead of men harassed the film\u2019s black co-star Leslie Jones so badly on Twitter with racist and sexist threats\u2013including a widely copied photo of her at the film\u2019s premiere that someone splattered semen on\u2013that she considered quitting the service. \u201cI was in my apartment by myself, and I felt trapped,\u201d Jones says. \u201cWhen you\u2019re reading all these gay and racial slurs, it was like, I can\u2019t fight y\u2019all. I didn\u2019t know what to do. Do you call the police? Then they got my email, and they started sending me threats that they were going to cut off my head and stuff they do to \u2018N words.\u2019 It\u2019s not done to express an opinion, it\u2019s done to scare you.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Because of Jones\u2019 harassment, alt-right leader Milo Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter. (He is also an editor at Breitbart News, the conservative website whose executive chairman, Stephen Bannon, was hired Aug. 17 to run the Trump campaign.) The service said Yiannopoulos, a critic of the new Ghostbusters who called Jones a \u201cblack dude\u201d in a tweet, marshaled many of his more than 300,000 followers to harass her. He not only denies this but says being responsible for your fans is a ridiculous standard. He also thinks Jones is faking hurt for political purposes. \u201cShe is one of the stars of a Hollywood blockbuster,\u201d he says. \u201cIt takes a certain personality to get there. It\u2019s a politically aware, highly intelligent star using this to get ahead. I think it\u2019s very sad that feminism has turned very successful women into professional victims.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A gay, 31-year-old Brit with frosted hair, Yiannopoulos has been speaking at college campuses on his Dangerous Faggot tour. He says trolling is a direct response to being told by the left what not to say and what kinds of video games not to play. \u201cHuman nature has a need for mischief. We want to thumb our nose at authority and be individuals,\u201d he says. \u201cTrump might not win this election. I might not turn into the media figure I want to. But the space we\u2019re making for others to be bolder in their speech is some of the most important work being done today. The trolls are the only people telling the truth.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The alt-right was galvanized by Gamergate, a 2014 controversy in which trolls tried to drive critics of misogyny in video games away from their virtual man cave. \u201cIn the mid-2000s, Internet culture felt very separate from pop culture,\u201d says Katie Notopoulos, who reports on the web as an editor at BuzzFeed and co-host of the Internet Explorer podcast. \u201cThis small group of people are trying to stand their ground that the Internet is dark and scary, and they\u2019re trying to scare people off. There\u2019s such a culture of viciously making fun of each other on their message boards that they have this very thick skin. They\u2019re all trained up.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Andrew Auernheimer, who calls himself Weev online, is probably the biggest troll in history. He served just over a year in prison for identity fraud and conspiracy. When he was released in 2014, he left the U.S., mostly bouncing around Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Since then he has worked to post anti\u2013Planned Parenthood videos and flooded thousands of university printers in America with instructions to print swastikas\u2013a symbol tattooed on his chest. When I asked if I could fly out and interview him, he agreed, though he warned that he \u201cmight not be coming ashore for a while, but we can probably pass close enough to land to have you meet us somewhere in the Adriatic or Ionian.\u201d His email signature: \u201cEternally your servant in the escalation of entropy and eschaton.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

While we planned my trip to \u201ca pretty remote location,\u201d he told me that he no longer does interviews for free and that his rate was two bitcoins (about $1,100) per hour. That\u2019s when one of us started trolling the other, though I\u2019m not sure which:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

============================<\/p>\n

From: Joel Stein<\/strong>
\n To: Andrew Auernheimer<\/strong>
\nI totally understand your position. But TIME, and all the major media outlets, won\u2019t pay people who we interview. There\u2019s a bunch of reasons for that, but I\u2019m sure you know them.<\/em>
\n Thanks anyway, Joel<\/em><\/p>\n

From: Andrew Auernheimer<\/strong>
\n To: Joel Stein<\/strong>
\nI find it hilarious that after your people have stolen years of my life at gunpoint and bulldozed my home, you still expect me to work for free in your interests.<\/em>
\n You people belong in a f-cking oven.<\/em><\/p>\n

From: Joel Stein<\/strong>
\n To: Andrew Auernheimer<\/strong>
\nFor a guy who doesn\u2019t want to be interviewed for free, you\u2019re giving me a lot of good quotes!<\/em><\/p>\n

============================<\/p>\n

In a later blog post about our emails, Weev clarified that TIME is \u201ctrying to destroy white civilization\u201d and that we should \u201copen up your Jew wallets and dump out some of the f-cking geld you\u2019ve stolen from us goys, because what other incentive could I possibly have to work with your poisonous publication?\u201d I found it comforting that the rate for a neo-Nazi to compromise his ideology is just two bitcoins.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Expressing socially unacceptable views like Weev\u2019s is becoming more socially acceptable. Sure, just like there are tiny, weird bookstores where you can buy neo-Nazi pamphlets, there are also tiny, weird white-supremacist sites on the web. But some of the contributors on those sites now go to places like 8chan or 4chan, which have a more diverse crowd of meme creators, gamers, anime lovers and porn enthusiasts. Once accepted there, they move on to Reddit, the ninth most visited site in the U.S., on which users can post links to online articles and comment on them anonymously. Reddit believes in unalloyed free speech; the site only eliminated the comment boards \u201cjailbait,\u201d \u201ccreepshots\u201d and \u201cbeatingwomen\u201d for legal reasons.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But last summer, Reddit banned five more discussion groups for being distasteful. The one with the largest user base, more than 150,000 subscribers, was \u201cfatpeoplehate.\u201d It was a particularly active community that reveled in finding photos of overweight people looking happy, almost all women, and adding mean captions. Reddit users would then post these images all over the targets\u2019 Facebook pages along with anywhere else on the Internet they could. \u201cWhat you see on Reddit that is visible is at least 10 times worse behind the scenes,\u201d says Dan McComas, a former Reddit employee. \u201cImagine two users posting about incest and taking that conversation to their private messages, and that\u2019s where the really terrible things happen. That\u2019s where we saw child porn and abuse and had to do all of our work with law enforcement.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Jessica Moreno, McComas\u2019 wife, pushed for getting rid of \u201cfatpeoplehate\u201d when she was the company\u2019s head of community. This was not a popular decision with users who really dislike people with a high body mass index. She and her husband had their home address posted online along with suggestions on how to attack them. Eventually they had a police watch on their house. They\u2019ve since moved. Moreno has blurred their house on Google maps and expunged nearly all photos of herself online.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

During her time at Reddit, some users who were part of a group that mails secret Santa gifts to one another complained to Moreno that they didn\u2019t want to participate because the person assigned to them made racist or sexist comments on the site. Since these people posted their real names, addresses, ages, jobs and other details for the gifting program, Moreno learned a good deal about them. \u201cThe idea of the basement dweller drinking Mountain Dew and eating Doritos isn\u2019t accurate,\u201d she says. \u201cThey would be a doctor, a lawyer, an inspirational speaker, a kindergarten teacher. They\u2019d send lovely gifts and be a normal person.\u201d These are real people you might know, Moreno says. There\u2019s no real-life indicator. \u201cIt\u2019s more complex than just being good or bad. It\u2019s not all men either; women do take part in it.\u201d The couple quit their jobs and started Imzy, a cruelty-free Reddit. They believe that saving a community is nearly impossible once mores have been established, and that sites like Reddit are permanently lost to the trolls.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When sites are overrun by trolls, they drown out the voices of women, ethnic and religious minorities, gays\u2013anyone who might feel vulnerable. Young people in these groups assume trolling is a normal part of life online and therefore self-censor. An anonymous poll of the writers at TIME found that 80% had avoided discussing a particular topic because they feared the online response. The same percentage consider online harassment a regular part of their jobs. Nearly half the women on staff have considered quitting journalism because of hatred they\u2019ve faced online, although none of the men had. Their comments included \u201cI\u2019ve been raged at with religious slurs, had people track down my parents and call them at home, had my body parts inquired about.\u201d Another wrote, \u201cI\u2019ve had the usual online trolls call me horrible names and say I am biased and stupid and deserve to be raped. I don\u2019t think men realize how normal that is for women on the Internet.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The alt-right argues that if you can\u2019t handle opprobrium, you should just turn off your computer. But that\u2019s arguing against self-expression, something antithetical to the original values of the Internet. \u201cThe question is: How do you stop people from being a\u2013holes not to their face?\u201d says Sam Altman, a venture capitalist who invested early in Reddit and ran the company for eight days in 2014 after one of its many PR crises. \u201cThis is exactly what happened when people talked badly about public figures. Now everyone on the Internet is a public figure. The problem is that not everyone can deal with that.\u201d Altman declared on June 15 that he would quit Twitter and his 171,000 followers, saying, \u201cI feel worse after using Twitter \u2026 my brain gets polluted here.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Twitter\u2019s head of trust and safety, Del Harvey, struggles with how to allow criticism but curb abuse. \u201cCategorically to say that all content you don\u2019t like receiving is harassment would be such a broad brush it wouldn\u2019t leave us much content,\u201d she says. Harvey is not her real name, which she gave up long ago when she became a professional troll, posing as underage girls (and occasionally boys) to entrap pedophiles as an administrator for the website Perverted-Justice and later for NBC\u2019s To Catch a Predator. Citing the role of Twitter during the Arab Spring, she says that anonymity has given voice to the oppressed, but that women and minorities are more vulnerable to attacks by the anonymous.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But even those in the alt-right who claim they are \u201cunf-ckwithable\u201d aren\u2019t really. At some point, everyone, no matter how desensitized by their online experience, is liable to get freaked out by a big enough or cruel enough threat. Still, people have vastly different levels of sensitivity. A white male journalist who covers the Middle East might blow off death threats, but a teenage blogger might not be prepared to be told to kill herself because of her \u201cdisgusting acne.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Which are exactly the kinds of messages Em Ford, 27, was receiving en masse last year on her YouTube tutorials on how to cover pimples with makeup. Men claimed to be furious about her physical \u201ctrickery,\u201d forcing her to block hundreds of users each week. This year, Ford made a documentary for the BBC called Troll Hunters in which she interviewed online abusers and victims, including a soccer referee who had rape threats posted next to photos of his young daughter on her way home from school. What Ford learned was that the trolls didn\u2019t really hate their victims. \u201cIt\u2019s not about the target. If they get blocked, they say, \u2018That\u2019s cool,\u2019 and move on to the next person,\u201d she says. Trolls don\u2019t hate people as much as they love the game of hating people.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Troll culture might be affecting the way nontrolls treat one another. A yet-to-be-published study by University of California, Irvine, professor Zeev Kain showed that when people were exposed to reports of good deeds on Facebook, they were 10% more likely to report doing good deeds that day. But the opposite is likely occurring as well. \u201cOne can see discourse norms shifting online, and they\u2019re probably linked to behavior norms,\u201d says Susan Benesch, founder of the Dangerous Speech Project and faculty associate at Harvard\u2019s Internet and Society center. \u201cWhen people think it\u2019s increasingly O.K. to describe a group of people as subhuman or vermin, those same people are likely to think that it\u2019s O.K. to hurt those people.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As more trolling occurs, many victims are finding laws insufficient and local police untrained. \u201cWhere we run into the problem is the social-media platforms are very hesitant to step on someone\u2019s First Amendment rights,\u201d says Mike Bires, a senior police officer in Southern California who co-founded LawEnforcement.social, a tool for cops to fight on-line crime and use social media to work with their communities. \u201cIf they feel like someone\u2019s life is in danger, Twitter and Snapchat are very receptive. But when it comes to someone harassing you online, getting the social-media companies to act can be very frustrating.\u201d Until police are fully caught up, he recommends that victims go to the officer who runs the force\u2019s social-media department.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One counter-trolling strategy now being employed on social media is to flood the victims of abuse with kindness. That\u2019s how many Twitter users have tried to blunt racist and body-shaming attacks on U.S. women\u2019s gymnastics star Gabby Douglas and Mexican gymnast Alexa Moreno during the Summer Olympics in Rio. In 2005, after Emily May co-founded Hollaback!, which posts photos of men who harass women on the street in order to shame them (some might call this trolling), she got a torrent of misogynistic messages. \u201cAt first, I thought it was funny. We were making enough impact that these losers were spending their time calling us \u2018cunts\u2019 and \u2018whores\u2019 and \u2018carpet munchers,’\u201d she says. \u201cLong-term exposure to it, though, I found myself not being so active on Twitter and being cautious about what I was saying online. It\u2019s still harassment in public space. It\u2019s just the Internet instead of the street.\u201d This summer May created Heartmob, an app to let people report trolling and receive messages of support from others.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Though everyone knows not to feed the trolls, that can be challenging to the type of people used to expressing their opinions. Writer Lindy West has written about her abortion, hatred of rape jokes and her body image\u2013all of which generated a flood of angry messages. When her father Paul died, a troll quickly started a fake Twitter account called PawWestDonezo, (\u201cdonezo\u201d is slang for \u201cdone\u201d) with a photo of her dad and the bio \u201cembarrassed father of an idiot.\u201d West reacted by writing about it. Then she heard from her troll, who apologized, explaining that he wasn\u2019t happy with his life and was angry at her for being so pleased with hers.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

West says that even though she\u2019s been toughened by all the abuse, she is thinking of writing for TV, where she\u2019s more insulated from online feedback. \u201cI feel genuine fear a lot. Someone threw a rock through my car window the other day, and my immediate thought was it\u2019s someone from the Internet,\u201d she says. \u201cFinally we have a platform that\u2019s democratizing and we can make ourselves heard, and then you\u2019re harassed for advocating for yourself, and that shuts you down again.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been a columnist long enough that I got calloused to abuse via threats sent over the U.S. mail. I\u2019m a straight white male, so the trolling is pretty tame, my vulnerabilities less obvious. My only repeat troll is Megan Koester, who has been attacking me on Twitter for a little over two years. Mostly, she just tells me how bad my writing is, always calling me \u201cdisgraced former journalist Joel Stein.\u201d Last year, while I was at a restaurant opening, she tweeted that she was there too and that she wanted to take \u201cmy one-sided feud with him to the next level.\u201d She followed this immediately with a tweet that said, \u201cMeet me outside Clifton\u2019s in 15 minutes. I wanna kick your ass.\u201d Which shook me a tiny bit. A month later, she tweeted that I should meet her outside a supermarket I often go to: \u201cI\u2019m gonna buy some Ahi poke with EBT and then kick your ass.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I sent a tweet to Koester asking if I could buy her lunch, figuring she\u2019d say no or, far worse, say yes and bring a switchblade or brass knuckles, since I have no knowledge of feuding outside of West Side Story. Her email back agreeing to meet me was warm and funny. Though she also sent me the script of a short movie she had written (…).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I saw Koester standing outside the restaurant. She was tiny\u20135 ft. 2 in., with dark hair, wearing black jeans and a Spy magazine T-shirt. She ordered a seitan sandwich, and after I asked the waiter about his life, she looked at me in horror. \u201cAre you a people person?\u201d she asked. As a 32-year-old freelance writer for Vice.com who has never had a full-time job, she lives on a combination of sporadic paychecks and food stamps. My career success seemed, quite correctly, unjust. And I was constantly bragging about it in my column and on Twitter. \u201cYou just extruded smarminess that I found off-putting. It\u2019s clear I\u2019m just projecting. The things I hate about you are the things I hate about myself,\u201d she said.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As a feminist stand-up comic with more than 26,000 Twitter followers, Koester has been trolled more than I have. One guy was so furious that she made fun of a 1970s celebrity at an autograph session that he tweeted he was going to rape her and wanted her to die afterward. \u201cSo you\u2019d think I\u2019d have some sympathy,\u201d she said about trolling me. \u201cBut I never felt bad. I found that column so vile that I thought you didn\u2019t deserve sympathy.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When I suggested we order wine, she told me she\u2019s a recently recovered alcoholic who was drunk at the restaurant opening when she threatened to beat me up. I asked why she didn\u2019t actually walk up to me that afternoon and, even if she didn\u2019t punch me, at least tell me off. She looked at me like I was an idiot. \u201cWhy would I do that?\u201d she said. \u201cThe Internet is the realm of the coward. These are people who are all sound and no fury.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Maybe. But maybe, in the information age, sound is as destructive as fury.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

—————————————-
\nEditor\u2019s Note<\/strong>: An earlier version of this story included a reference to Asperger\u2019s Syndrome in an inappropriate context. It has been removed. Additionally, an incorrect description of Megan Koester\u2019s sexual orientation has been removed.<\/em>
\nThis appears in the August 29, 2016 issue of TIME.<\/strong>
\nENDS<\/p>\n

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/<\/p>\n

COMMENT<\/strong>: As described above, I’ve also endured online bullying, death threats, and other anonymous libel for decades now. And I’ve made it clear in previous comments<\/a> to articles decrying the harmful activities of trolls <\/a>that trolls simply just cannot be ignored:<\/p>\n

======================================<\/p>\n

[…] For example, I have numerous online stalkers, who dedicate many electrons on cyberspace (even devote whole websites and hijack Biographies of Living People on Wikipedia<\/a>) not only to misrepresent my arguments, but also to track my personal life and advocate that I come to harm. I\u2019ve endured death treats for decades, and I can\u2019t conclude that merely ignoring trolls and hoping they\u2019ll go away is an effective answer either. After all, as propaganda masters know, if enough people claim something is true, it becomes true, as long as through constant repetition they gain control over the narrative.<\/em><\/p>\n

I for one never visit these stalker sites, but lots of people who should know better do look at them without sufficient critique, and (as you noted above) assume that my not commenting about their false allegations is some kind of admission in their favor. What the stalkers actually get out of all this wasted energy truly escapes me.<\/em><\/p>\n

So after realizing that being ignored still works in their favor, now they are going after journalists, which brings into the debate issues of freedom of the press. Plus journalists have a more amplified public soapbox and credibility to advocate for change than we activist-types do. I hope you will continue to research and speak out against this, and not fall into the mindset that anonymous threats and stalking are simply part of being a public figure.<\/em><\/p>\n

======================================<\/p>\n

Even in Japan, despite the hand-wringing found in this FCCJ No. 1 Shimbun article<\/a>, we’ve had calls for action for many years now.\u00a0 Here’s Phil Brasor of the Japan Times:<\/p>\n

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\nMedia must take a stand against trolls<\/strong>
\n by Philip Brasor<\/strong>
\n Special To The Japan Times, Aug 31, 2013<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/news\/2013\/08\/31\/national\/media-must-take-a-stand-against-trolls\/<\/a><\/p>\n

We live in an age of contention, when any comment can spark righteous indignation. Nominally conservative or progressive viewpoints become meaningless when every response is reactionary. This situation supposedly arose along with the Internet, which provides an unmediated outlet for every voice. Traditional media insisted on readers and viewers providing certifiable identification before printing or broadcasting their feedback, one of the ideas being that commenters will be more responsible for their opinions if forced to reveal their real names and addresses.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently, the Asahi Shimbun has slightly altered this policy. Though it still insists that letters to the editor be accompanied by real names, the paper no longer prints the city of residence, opting instead for the prefecture. In the past year, a number of letter writers\u2019 home phone numbers were located by parties with opposing opinions who then systematically harassed the letter writers. Last spring, the paper published a letter from someone in central Japan who disagreed with the view that the \u201ccomfort women\u201d were all professional prostitutes rather than sex slaves. The person was bombarded with anonymous phone calls at home, some of which contained threats. Later this person found out his phone number had been distributed on Internet bulletin boards.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The National Consumer Affairs Center says that complaints about harassment centered on media correspondence increased markedly this past spring, and Asahi itself acknowledges that at least 30 people whose letters it published have had their home phone numbers revealed on the Internet, with 14 becoming victims of harassment. Tokyo Shimbun reports that one recent letter writer to the Asahi who complained about nationalist sentiments at sporting events was systematically harassed even though the paper only printed his prefecture. There are many ways of finding out a person\u2019s phone number. The paper said it discovered at least 800 examples of letter writers\u2019 phone numbers and addresses being posted on Internet bulletin boards.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This sort of behavior is not new. Trolls \u2014 individuals who purposely send insulting and threatening messages to comments sections and social media sites \u2014 may be an Internet-specific phenomenon, but the impulses that drive them are general and eternal. Some say the difference is less ideological than psychological: serial harassers hide behind masks to express their grievances with the world, regardless of political leanings. But ideology, or at least the presumption of a \u201cposition,\u201d is always the delivery device for the grievance. […] Media outlets should prevent intimidation any way they can, but they\u2019re failing their mission if they don\u2019t stand up to it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Entire article up at http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/news\/2013\/08\/31\/national\/media-must-take-a-stand-against-trolls\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/<\/p>\n

CONCLUSION<\/strong>:\u00a0 Notwithstanding the claim that Japanese society turns a blind eye to foreigners committing crimes against other foreigners <\/a>(whereas, as I argue in “Embedded Racism<\/a>” Ch. 6, leniency greets Japanese-on-foreign crime and merits unusually harsh penalty for vice versa), in the end this is dangerous stuff.\u00a0 Cyberstalking is still stalking, and Japan no longer tolerates it like it used to outside of the Internet<\/a>.\u00a0 Debito.org reiterates its stance that something should be done to make these anonyms into real people taking responsibility for their statements.\u00a0 To me, that means registering real names under traceable conditions, as has happened (abortively) in South Korea.<\/a>\u00a0 Short of that, the trolls will continue to sour and soil the online environment, depriving others of the freedom of speech the trolls themselves allegedly cherish (and use as their excuse for abuse) by remaining anonymous, immune to the same critique and exposure they mete out to others.\u00a0 Dr. ARUDOU, Debito<\/p>\n

=================================<\/em><\/strong>
\n Do you like what you read on Debito.org? Want to help keep the archive active and support Debito.org’s activities? We are celebrating Debito.org’s 20th Anniversary in 2016, so please consider donating a little something. More details here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TIME: This story is not a good idea. Not for society and certainly not for me. Because what trolls feed on is attention. And this little bit\u2013these several thousand words\u2013is like leaving bears a pan of baklava.<\/p>\n

It would be smarter to be cautious, because the Internet\u2019s personality has changed. Once it was a geek with lofty ideals about the free flow of information. Now, if you need help improving your upload speeds the web is eager to help with technical details, but if you tell it you\u2019re struggling with depression it will try to goad you into killing yourself. Psychologists call this the online disinhibition effect, in which factors like anonymity, invisibility, a lack of authority and not communicating in real time strip away the mores society spent millennia building. And it\u2019s seeping from our smartphones into every aspect of our lives.<\/p>\n

The people who relish this online freedom are called trolls, a term that originally came from a fishing method online thieves use to find victims. It quickly morphed to refer to the monsters who hide in darkness and threaten people. Internet trolls have a manifesto of sorts, which states they are doing it for the \u201clulz,\u201d or laughs. What trolls do for the lulz ranges from clever pranks to harassment to violent threats. There\u2019s also doxxing\u2013publishing personal data, such as Social Security numbers and bank accounts\u2013and swatting, calling in an emergency to a victim\u2019s house so the SWAT team busts in. When victims do not experience lulz, trolls tell them they have no sense of humor. Trolls are turning social media and comment boards into a giant locker room in a teen movie, with towel-snapping racial epithets and misogyny. They\u2019ve been steadily upping their game…<\/p>\n

Japan Times: This sort of behavior is not new. Trolls \u2014 individuals who purposely send insulting and threatening messages to comments sections and social media sites \u2014 may be an Internet-specific phenomenon, but the impulses that drive them are general and eternal. Some say the difference is less ideological than psychological: serial harassers hide behind masks to express their grievances with the world, regardless of political leanings. But ideology, or at least the presumption of a \u201cposition,\u201d is always the delivery device for the grievance. […] Media outlets should prevent intimidation any way they can, but they\u2019re failing their mission if they don\u2019t stand up to it.<\/p>\n

COMMENT: This is dangerous stuff. As the veteran of many years of online death threats myself, Cyberstalking is still stalking, and Japan no longer tolerates it like it used to outside of the Internet. Debito.org reiterates its stance that something should be done to make these anonyms into real people taking responsibility for their statements. To me, that means registering real names under traceable conditions, as has happened (abortively) in South Korea. Short of that, the trolls will continue to sour and soil the online environment, depriving others of the freedom of speech the trolls themselves allegedly cherish (and use as their excuse for abuse) by remaining anonymous, immune to the same critique and exposure they mete out to others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,52,5,13,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debitoorg-website-updates","category-hate-speech","category-human-rights","category-media","category-tangents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}