
Trouble at the Koolaid Point - mpweiher
http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point
======
jmduke
This is an excellent, brave thing to write and I originally had a long comment
highlighting a bunch of particularly poignant paragraphs that I deleted
because really you should just read the entire thing. Neither I nor the vast
majority of the people I know have ever been subject to online harassment and
it makes me thankful that there are incredible people like Kathy out there.
Lord knows I wouldn't have the courage for something like this.

In interest of actually fostering a discussion: I think there's a lot of merit
in bringing back moderation, as suggested in the article, as sort of an
internet cultural norm. Maybe it's confirmation bias: the highest-quality
communities I've ever spent time in, MetaFilter and Something Awful [^1], both
use incredibly stringent moderation -- but I feel HN has had a huge uptick in
overall quality since the comments and content moderation has stepped up over
the past months.

I think that Twitter and Reddit have sort of made their bones on the idea that
as long as you aren't doing anything that threatens the company in any way
then you're given carte blanche. Twitter's ineffectiveness with dealing with
harassment et al requests is notorious; and Reddit, as much as I love it at
times, is a cesspool by default. [^2]

At what point does the value proposition flip the other way?

[^1]: I know, I peaked in like 2004.

[^2]: I know this is not a popular opinion, but is growing increasingly
painful to visit a site that willingly allows to exist subreddits devoted
towards domestic abuse and snuff .

~~~
verroq
>willingly allows to exist subreddits devoted towards domestic abuse and snuff

Serious question: why does this even bother you?

~~~
iherbig
I am not who you asked, but if I may step in?

It bothers me for the same reason it bothers me that those things exist. They
are terrible, and should not be given a platform. I don't feel that we, as a
society, should tolerate terrible things in general, much less let them
prosper.

~~~
kansface
May I ask where you are from? Free speech - bigoted, hateful, maybe untrue, or
otherwise, is perhaps the one enduring (sacred) tenet of American society.

~~~
cmdkeen
Harassment isn't. One of the big points of the article is that when law
enforcement doesn't act that is justification that the action is legal and
thus "free speech". Except that law enforcement almost never acts against
online harassment. There are plenty of laws restricting free speech when it
harms others, and I'd hope you agree that some of the examples in the article
crosses the boundary into things that should be criminal.

~~~
makomk
The boundaries of harassment are very blurry and tend to favour the powerful.
For example, some of the campaigns against online harassers look even more
like harassment than the actions they're going after people for:
[http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/online-
trolls-w...](http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/online-trolls-whos-
hounding-who/15966) Except that because it's the press harassing people to the
point of suicide, we don't see anything wrong with it.

~~~
zimpenfish
> we don't see anything wrong with it.

Not entirely true - the reaction in the UK to this whole incident has been
quite negative from what I've seen. Then again, we're not overly happy with
our press at the best of times...

------
antirez
She really understands social networks trolling and how it works in details,
very good article. It is something like inescapable in the internet, and this
is very sad. I ran an italian social network site for many years and this was
our main problem. If you read Twitter, this is huge. Moreover a few companies
are making the problem worse by polarizing and using this in order to attack
competitors. The DMCA thing is spot-on: creating facts from nothing, since
there are enough people saying it, it must be true. Nobody bothers to actually
check. However, doesn't this just reflect a general lack of "information
analysis" skills of most people on the internet? The "button" trolls are able
to touch to enable certain behaviors in other people, sounds very related to
their inability to take apart true information from false information. Logical
analysis from faked one. So after all the root cause is that most communities
are not the quality they should be.

------
olefoo
After reading this, I'm battling the urge to suggest technical solutions to
social problems. Except that in this case the social problems are caused by
the fact the internet is a house built on sand and the underlying protocols
don't support authentication or accountability to anything like the degree
traditional public conversations did. That said, the choices that were made in
the 1980's and early '90s to support pseudonymity and to allow the flexibility
that meant that tools like NAT and anonymous forwarding could be developed and
deployed may have been the right ones for that time.

I suspect that one outcome of the wave of vicious trolling that has been
building the last few years will be stronger laws against online stalking and
harassment, possibly even a national quick response network to ensure that the
Department of Homeland Security can protect American citizens from these
"lawless online thugs".

I don't have an answer for you; but I know that I am saddened that some of the
smartest and most technically adept people I know are viciously harassed for
their public participation in the technical community. If you think being a
woman in public justifies rape threats or death threats; I have no respect for
you. If you think that sort of thing is just a game, you need to grow up. And
if you think the current situation can go on indefinitely without winding up
in one of a number of drastic failure modes; you're fooling yourself.

~~~
protonfish
I think there are technical solutions to this problem (though nothing that has
to do with protocols and authentication) that are very similar to the ones
encountered when people were moving from small villages to cities. People seem
to be able to behave in a civil and constructive manner in a group at or below
Dunbar's number
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)
For cities to form, the technology that needed to be invented were laws and a
justice system to enforce them.

The logical requirements for reciprocal altruism are: 1. Others are
recognizable 2. You can remember their past behavior 3. There is a reasonable
chance of interacting with them again. It is this simple game-theory situation
that we have to reckon with and the Internet gives us much more elegant and
humane tools than Hammurabi had. Remember when comments were ordered by
submission date? The difference between that pointless cesspool of idiocy
(FRIST!) and the acceptable level of comments ordered by upvotes is striking.
If such a simple change in UI can cause a significant increase in the quality
of community discussion, there must be many other techniques to make online
communication more civilized yet to be discovered. Unfortunately, they are not
easily tested because it requires a large, active community and time.

I am doubtful that more moderation is the answer. If the problem is people
behaving poorly, giving some people more power does not sound like a solution
- just a different problem.

Millions (or billions?) of racist, sexist, cruel and sadistic people exist.
This is not a problem with the Internet. It is a problem with the world. If
there are not laws enforced by traditional justice systems against stalking,
harassment and threats, there probably should be. It shouldn't matter if it is
done verbally, over the phone, through the mail, or online.

tl;dr The Internet did not create jerks, but it may have tools to handle them
better.

~~~
mrcarlosrendon
"2\. You can remember their past behavior" I think this is a big missing
piece. Sure in many communities I can kinda look up their past behavior, but
it is not easy.

I would be good to know if this person: 1\. Adds to the discussion 2\. Has
skin in the game

Systems like karma/points/votes kind of address these, but they aren't
perfect.

------
taliesinb
I'm grateful that I can read the author's account of her experiences, and her
analysis of what is going on sociologically. Her story is utterly shocking to
read and I feel terrible for her.

The general phenomenon of misogynist trolling, and in particular the wave of
misogyny masquerading as #gamergate has been astonishing to read about.
There's something deeply, deeply disturbing and raw going on here and it is
hard to see the contours of it.

It's a pity that a 12-hour old HN submission [1] of Anita Sarkeesian's moving
talk at XOXO [2] didn't get much traction (indeed a sock-puppet immediately
emerged to denounce the submission as 'trash').

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8423719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8423719)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah8mhDW6Shs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah8mhDW6Shs)

~~~
sqrt17
The point of the article linked is exactly that: separate out the misogyny
from the trolling. Expose how the trolls (or that particular troll) use any
kind of story that they can construct, be it misogyny, misandry, censorship,
whatever people at large hate or fear, to construct polarizing narratives
aimed at damaging individual people.

I response to your implied question why this is perceived as much more
interesting than an older submission of a talk by Anita Sarkeesian (which I
didn't watch, I'm just extrapolating here), it's because it separates out the
ideology part from the description of the trolling phenomenon. You don't need
to drink SeriousPony's koolaid to hear her argument about trolling in general
and this troll in particular.

You can't expose trolls by preaching to the choir, you have to talk
everybody's language to subvert trolls' efforts to create a polarized
discussion.

Note how OP's post was met with weird complaints that she "thought
prostitution and being a victim of domestic violence were somehow 'shameful.'"
\- this is again trying to use ideology to polarize a discussion that should
be troll-targeted and not ideology-targeted.

Note: I'm not claiming that we shouldn't try to discuss ideologies, just that
it's something that trolls will try to exploit. And that the difficulty of
moderating such discussions is why Hackernews doesn't even try to be welcoming
to discussions that are or look ideological. Let's put it this way: the
moderators here have a good track record for creating a pleasant, constructive
discussion around technical stuff (including Windows and Linux and upstart and
systemd and a host of contentious issues) and around business/startup stuff.
As we find out how to have a constructive, non-polarizing, non-troll-prone
discussion about other issues (global economy, misogyny/misandry, whatever),
these things will be received more positively on Hackernews. (Or maybe: as
much as they are somewhat related to YCombinator's business with startups).

~~~
pjc50
I don't think you can separate ideology and morality entirely from this. Even
the statement "it's wrong to harass people for entertainment" is ideological.

~~~
sqrt17
The statement "it's wrong to harass people for entertainment" is much less
ideological to the extent that (i) you do not immediately jump to conclusions
such as "you must be a pro-peace rather than a pro-lulz person then" or (ii)
people do not make statements such as "any person who cares for [important
thing X] must support the case of [entertainment rather than boredom || giving
people peace of mind]"

Ideology starts when you automatically view an instance of a decision on a
particular topic as a person's disposition towards that topic, and
automatically view a person's disposition towards one topic as a reason to put
a label on them and ascribe to them dispositions towards totally unrelated
topics.

A non-ideological stance can consist in noting that, while many occasions have
shown a co-occurrence of sexism-related idiocy and trolling, they are not the
same thing (see Lennart Poettering being harassed for non-sexist reasons), and
hence we have multiple angles of attack: combating the trolls through
effective lawful action (which is a bit tedious, but still what OP thinks
should be done when the guy in person has a well-known track record of
harassing people in ways that frequently go beyond what's funny or harmless),
combating people's willingness to act on behalf of trolls (e.g. reddit and
4chan's ban on personal-army type posts), as well as acting on the polarizing
issues that make people more prone to get drawn into these astroturfing-
initiated conflicts (which is a hard thing to do).

Do we have a moral common ground to do any of this? Absolutely. Even if we
suspend contentious arguments and ideological blame-shifting.

------
kartikkumar
Yikes! What an incredibly brave blog to write. I can't even begin to fathom
what life has been like for her over the last 10 years.

I don't know any of the backstory to this, so I'm taking the blog at face
value. Even if only 1% of what she say is accurate (and I'm inclined to lean
the opposite way), it's absolutely horrendous.

How is it possible that people behave this way? I don't understand what the
line of justification can be. It's just cold-hearted, mean and vicious
behaviour. I can't understand what benefit is drawn from treating someone like
this.

Is there by chance a theory of sociopathy that covers this kind of behaviour?

I hope I never, ever make the terrible mistake of even unknowingly treating
someone in this manner.

~~~
pjc50
People maintain their self-image by doing down others. That's all it is.

It happens that this is an extreme example of this common phenomenon. Some men
find successful women _extremely_ threatening.

------
vanelsas
Wow, this is even worse than I ever imagined. It is unbelievable how far
trolling can go and what the costs are in life for the victim. I don't know
you personally Kathy but I really feel sorry for you. You deserve respect for
having the courage writing up these thoughts despite of everything that has
happened to you and your family in the past 10 years. What's even worse how
easy it has become for us to judge from the sideline with smug remarks on
Twitter. Sad, really sad.

------
DanielBMarkham
I only have one story of harassment, but it might be interesting.

When I first started blogging, about 10 years ago, I would also post on
slashdot.

I started getting a lot of traffic. Along with that, I started getting
harassed.

It was some of the vilest stuff I've ever read in an online forum -- attacking
me, my family, my personality, and so on. I found it quite disturbing, as if
one of my friends was secretly insane.

I finally had to institute blocks. After about 100 blocks, I was able to bring
the blog back under control.

At that point, I stopped promoting my blog so much. I was happier just to
write for myself.

They say there's always 2% of folks that you're not going to get along with.
There's also probably 0.2% of folks who actively wish you harm. On the
internet with 2B folks? Those percentages add up big time.

My point is that gender is important here, but I'm not sure it's anywhere near
being the entire story.

~~~
merrua
[http://www.ece.umd.edu/News/news_story.php?id=1788](http://www.ece.umd.edu/News/news_story.php?id=1788)
[http://www.enre.umd.edu/content/rmeyer-
assessing.pdf](http://www.enre.umd.edu/content/rmeyer-assessing.pdf)
[http://nms.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/09/12/146144481245...](http://nms.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/09/12/1461444812458271.full)
(if you have login)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
No doubt there's all kinds of interesting statistics in here. I'd be
interested in finding data about the age of the people harassing others. I
doubt you'd see many 40-year-olds.

It's really crazy that we give adolescents all this latitude growing up --
they can't be tried as adults, their medical care is the responsibility of
others, they are provided free food and medical care if needed, etc. -- and
then we expect these same folks to go online and somehow behave like miniature
adults. At any one time there's probably a thousand 12-year-olds living in
crack houses that are online. And we expect them to behave the same way as a
30-year-old.

By no means am I condoning this kind of trash. But we can explain things
without condoning them.

The internet is nice because nobody can tell anything about you, but when
talking about things like this, that's not a good thing. There's a vast
difference between being harassed by, say, people who are mentally barely able
to care for themselves and being harassed by the guy who lives next door.

~~~
adaml_623
Anecdotal counter example: Google 'sweepyface' and you'll find the sad story
of what I would describe as a conspiracy theorist who tweeted thousands of
times regarding the Madeleine McCann (missing child) case. The technical
question of whether she was trolling and harassing people or merely tweeting
her views repetitively is up for debate but she was 63.

Obsession and outrage comes from all types.

------
fleitz
This was really eye opening for me, I had no idea weev was involved in such
things, I always thought of him as the guy who hacked iPads.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Which is really frustrating, because Weev has been openly bragging about
ruining Sierra's life for years. But every time it comes up, everyone seems to
go "Weev is a hero! LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU SAYING BAD THINGS ABOUT THE
HERO." And then everyone goes on talking about whatever he's in the news for
now and _never ever talks about the trolling._ So nobody knows about it.

~~~
zimpenfish
Yeah, I thought he was just a daft hacker caught by bad laws until I saw the
article about his new swastika tattoo a couple of days ago. Between that and
finally catching up on the finer details of 'gamergate', I'm thoroughly
depressed about the state of the world.

~~~
Mithaldu
What you're not aware of is that the dailystormer itself is very likely a
trolling site in itself, aimed at creating ridiculous and believable content
to draw in support by real white supremacists and enrage the unsuspecting
public. It would make perfect sense for weev to go on there with a photo of
him with fake tattoos to help them in their quest.

That is how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Also, since you mention gamergate, have one adult link on the matter:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/gamergate-a-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/gamergate-
a-closer-look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/)

~~~
ijk
Oh look, an example of the _exact thing_ the original article is talking
about, down to the unsourced accusations of DMCA takedowns for censorship.

~~~
Mithaldu
It's the exact opposite in fact.

The original article is about trolls making up lies and victims having little
recourse.

The lie in this case is "Zoe traded sex for press coverage". Kain explains how
there is no basis for this claim whatsoever ("the initial concerns were
quickly proven to be all smoke and no fire") and then goes on to explain how,
despite being based on nothing, this managed to blow up anyhow by everyone
making allegations that are nearly impossible to make fact, yet are taken as
fact by many others.

This kind of thing is exactly what the original article is talking about, only
that in the GamerGate case it's happening in both directions.

As for the DMCA thing: The video was down. While i haven't even watched it, as
it's probably full of bullshit, you can go to the video (
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5CXOafuTXM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5CXOafuTXM)
), click "... More > Statistics > Daily" and see the view count drop to zero
in august for a few days. This outage may have had several reasons, but due to
the original uploader linking to what seems to be a DMCA takedown notice on
his tumblr ( [http://archive.today/UqAwg](http://archive.today/UqAwg) ) it
appears that she did send that. And that is all Kain said.

Given these two facts, and how they do belong into the greater discussion, i
am curious how you'd expect him to express that differently.

~~~
ijk
Well, Kain's article is a description of the exact kind of harassment campaign
described in the original article. So the first sense I meant is that the
contents of the article are the exact thing talked about.

For the DMCA: "unverifiable" is probably a better description than
"unsourced", but the part I wanted to highlight was how this whole thing
followed the exact playbook described in Kathy Sierra's essay.

Second, while Kain is trying to take a balanced approach, he unfortunately
only looks at the surface of the issues, reporting the accusations in great
detail. This is a dynamic that's _also_ pointed out in the original article:
uncritically accepting a new martyr while glossing over the original
harassment. Lots about "gamers are over" and TFYC, virtually nothing about the
mob harassment for anyone other than Phil Fish. And absolutely nothing about
the organized astroturfing in the IRC channels, which has been documented
extensively.

The accusations are repeated without much introspection, in a way that it can
be used as an apologetic hammer against either side. It may not be actively
harmful in itself, but it doesn't do much to actually inform the reader of all
of the issues.

For an even-handed look at the topic, I'd rather suggest, say, a scholarly
look at the issues that acknowledges some of the problems:
[http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/we-will-force-gaming-to-
be...](http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/we-will-force-gaming-to-be-free/) or
at least an article by someone who is less personally involved than Kain is:
[http://www.vox.com/2014/9/6/6111065/gamergate-explained-
ever...](http://www.vox.com/2014/9/6/6111065/gamergate-explained-everybody-
fighting)

~~~
zyx321
So just let me just get this right...

You believe that an article that describes both sides' claims without judging
either is "harassment" and that instead of something that "can be used [...]
against either side" we should be looking at articles and authors that are
directly and openly associated with Kotaku/Gawker or Polygon/Vox for a more
"even-handed" look?

Is that correct?

~~~
ijk
No, I didn't say that article itself is harassment. Just that it isn't as
even-handed as it tries to appear.

I just grabbed to Vox link because it was one of the more even-handed
summaries from the more general news sites, regardless of association. Read
both and come to your own conclusion if that makes you feel better.

I suppose I can dig up something by someone with absolutely no association
with any of this, but those people generally aren't writing about this at all.
That's part of the problem with that particular mess: everyone who _can_ talk
about it already knows each other and have probably already been attacked by
one side or the other.

------
pinaceae
weev's current webpresence:

[http://www.dailystormer.com/what-i-learned-from-my-time-
in-p...](http://www.dailystormer.com/what-i-learned-from-my-time-in-prison/)

clearly a posterboy for neckbeards around the globe.

if you download an mp3 you go to jail, you harass another human being nothing
happens.

------
rturben
This was a very well-written article. Though I haven't followed any of this
person's journey that she's recounting and can't simply trust her retelling of
what happened (based on the fact that I really don't know anything about weev
or Kathy or their online presences), she hits on something important. It's
shocking how numb a lot of internet culture is toward "trolling" or otherwise
hateful statements.

Nobody goes around in public threatening to rape or murder strangers. This
might seem naive, but honestly, why is this tolerable by so many people if the
words are said on the internet rather than on the streets?

It's not pretend. These are REAL people that are being subjected to threats
that at least aren't innocent and at worst are also real. People's intuition
of "free speech" seems to be warped here. Should it be okay to type these
things to someone? Would it be okay if you called them and said it over the
phone? What if you said it to their face? Mailed it to them in a letter? Does
the medium change the message?

I'm just tired of the "nut up or shut up" attitude that a lot of the internet
seems to overflow with.

~~~
zzzeek
> Though I haven't followed any of this person's journey that she's recounting
> and can't simply trust her retelling of what happened (based on the fact
> that I really don't know anything about weev or Kathy or their online
> presences),

saying this is so unnecessary. The harassment Kathy has received is widely
documented, for years. Do a little googling up front instead of unnecessarily
dishing out assorted seeds of doubt.

~~~
rturben
The intent of the sentence was to point out that her article is important
because it speaks out about something that's outrageous, regardless of if the
reader knows who is writing it.

I did google both of them, and read some of her other blog posts. I'm not
going to proclaim though that I really understand what's happening after 25
minutes on google. It's irrelevant to her deeper point.

~~~
golgappi
Like you, even I was unaware of her and the incidents in the past. I read this
post last night and thought its just another post by a woman in tech seeking
attention. However, saw the comments here and decided to read more about her,
and now I feel sad.

I think it makes more sense to know who whom this is coming from, what she has
suffered rather than someone who was never a victim writing about it.

------
frontsideair
I think it's horrible she had to endure all this. Online harassment and is
real and until we have laws for this we are mostly on our own.

I'm not sure laws will be able to stop all this single handedly. What we
really need is something like shaming. We need to show no tolerance to those
who take part in harassment, and even supporters, maybe. We kind of have this
for racism and it works more or less. It's amazing we're still going through
it when it comes to sexism.

------
w0rd-driven
The immediate "solution" I thought of came from "who watches the watchers?"
Why not form a anti-troll trolling group that's sole purpose is to dox the
doxers as it were? I then realized all you're doing is changing the victim but
at least a tiny bit of karmic justice is served in the process.

There seems to be no real constructive, intellectual or positive way to deal
with this problem. Sociopaths aren't technically sane so how do you deal with
an insane person? Expose them as having a mental illness and getting them
locked away for treatment does seem like one avenue. Like reverse-swatting,
you inform mental institutions of would-be patients but everyone is a tad bit
insane so there's a lot of room for abuse.

This is not an easy problem to solve, verging on unsolvable from an individual
perspective. How does one change culture to make this unacceptable? Because in
the 10 years since this started, I don't see any positive momentum. Not
really. Sure, I do see well more exposure because it's become extremely
prolific but it really feels like nothing is being _done_ about it, just
talked about ad nauseum. That just really reinforces that it is a tough
problem to solve.

------
peterwwillis
Couple of comments:

1\. I know of weev from hacker circles. He really is this douchetastic. But
what's really insane to me is that there's a bunch of women in the hacker
scene who _adore him_. I couldn't quite understand it, until I saw them also
adore Adrian Lamo, and so my theory is very close to Kathy's here: hero
worship distorts reality. In order to stop people from enabling abusive trolls
like this, someone has to debunk the hero status. Which is a lot more
difficult than it sounds.

2\. Being a troll is about one thing, and one thing only: power. The power to
abuse someone and laugh and get away with it. The essential requirement of
trolling is that you make someone upset. So there's a very real requirement
that you do not respond in the way the troll wants in order for them to put
their attention on something else. But trolls are varied, and sometimes
they'll just keep plugging away at you. In cases like these you have to change
tactics, though there's no guarantee anything will definitely put them off.

3\. In general, trolls have goals. Usually it's to harass you until you
literally disappear into the ether. Once they can't find any trace of you
anymore, they have nothing left to do, and so they find another target. In
this sense it's sometimes necessary to literally leave the [online or
physical] community you face harassment in, or find a way to force the troll
out of it. In either case it's basically a war, and you have to decide to
either abandon the area or fight it out to the death.

4\. I believe I understand why she was targeted. She has opinions that some
people _hate_. Why, I have no frigging idea; ask a shrink. The point is, when
people hate something, they lash out. And the internet is basically a hate
delivery mechanism. And here's my opinion that will probably get me downvoted
into hell: there is no way to stop this, other than leaving the internet.

Editorial rant (sorry about the length):

Being abused was not Kathy's fault. Unfortunately, you don't have to do
_anything at all_ to be abused on the internet. Just your picture, or a
handle, or _anything_ can be fodder for trolls. You can do absolutely nothing
but exist and people will still try to abuse you.

In my opinion, from what I know of the internet, there is virtually no way to
stop someone that hates you from abusing you here. There are no closed systems
on the internet. E-mail is public, Twitter is intended to be public, but even
if you make it private there's still a picture and a handle to start with (AND
you can still direct tweets at private accounts), with Facebook you can avoid
non-friends but not on comment sections, and on top of it all these accounts
can be hacked. Private information like address, SS#, phone, etc can all be
gotten incredibly, stupidly easily, without you _ever going online_. The
internet is the easiest attack platform there is.

If you are visible in any way, you are a potential target for trolls, period.
And I don't see any simple solution to any of this. We could re-design our
internet services to protect people's privacy and anonymity better from abuse,
but this wouldn't protect people who want to _publish works_ like Kathy has.
We could try to develop better tools to combat trolling, but that might become
an arms race, who knows. Maybe we need to require a ss# and a picture ID for
people to make accounts on social media. But regular accounts might just get
hacked to be used as sock puppets.

So perhaps there is no technical solution. Perhaps we just need to change the
way our entire society treats itself, both online and off. _Peacefully_
boycott sources of abuse, negativity, ridicule and scorn online (i'm looking
at you, every-forum-on-the-internet). Combat the causes of insecurity and fear
and hate. Provide more social services to support the emotional welfare of all
people. Something other than band-aids and coalitions. Maybe it'll never
happen in our lifetimes, but at some point we've got to sit down and figure
out a way to encourage people to be compassionate, or we're all doomed in the
much larger picture of world-wide human affairs.

~~~
phkahler
>> mechanism. And here's my opinion that will probably get me downvoted into
hell: there is no way to stop this, other than leaving the internet.

What about ending anonymity? Much as I like the idea of remaining annoymous
online (not that I am here), there are legal means to deal with the extreme
end of the trolling spectrum so long as you can identify them.

The next issue that pops up of course is privacy. We need to end anonymity
while making privacy the default. But that allows criminals to communicate
privately - they can now, but it takes effort and many don't know how.

~~~
dragontamer
Honestly, removing anonymity has made things worse over time.

Facebook and Youtube now have _open_ racists who push their malignant opinion
upon everyone now, and are proud enough to sign their name next to it.

~~~
wpietri
I think this is, to put it mildly, undemonstrated.

The KKK wore hoods for a reason. Sure, there were plenty of racists willing to
be open about their views. But letting people be anonymous assholes greatly
increases the awfulness.

Even gamers know it: [http://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19](http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19)

~~~
dragontamer
Your viewpoint is similarly "undemonstrated".

Weev's public identity is known. That didn't stop him from trolling or
harassing the subject of the article.

\-------

EDIT: also, the Penny Arcade comic you linked was from 2004, literally 2 or 3
years before the invention of youtube and long before Twitter and Facebook
existed.

The opinion contained in the said comic does not, and cannot apply to the
modern internet, where Anonymity is beginning to be stripped away and yet the
trolling / harassing problems are _clearly_ remaining.

Indeed, it has only gotten _easier_ to get doxxed online and humiliated by the
trolls, now that we communicate through Facebook and our names are attached to
us in Google / Youtube / everything.

~~~
wpietri
I'm glad we both agree that you have demonstrated no evidence for your views.

As I already said, some people will be assholes under their own names, because
they're just that awful. But that proves nothing about how many people would
be assholes when they can evade accountability.

~~~
dragontamer
True, no hard evidence either way. But real hard evidence is rather hard to
come by.

I'm more worried about the people who shy away from online conversations when
anonymity is stripped away. Anonymity is my _only_ protection from harassing
trolls like Weev.

If I didn't feel secure in my thoughts, I wouldn't be able to talk frankly to
you, and I'd leave.

[http://www.groklaw.net/](http://www.groklaw.net/)

------
grecy
Wow, I had no idea anything like this was even happening. How horrible.

> _You’re probably more likely to win the lottery than to get any law
> enforcement agency in the United States to take action when you are harassed
> online, no matter how viscously and explicitly.......There IS no “the
> authorities” that will help us._

I find this part of the article most disturbing. I can't imagine how law
enforcement doesn't take online threats as seriously as "real" threats. Kids
are thrown in jail for posting about bombing a school on Facebook, but if I
directly say I'm going to rape or kill someone on Twitter or Facebook nothing
happens?

How do we get the authorities to start making examples of these people and
handing down serious jail time for online threats?

------
wtracy
Is it known how doxers are able to get information like social security
numbers? I can understand a determined party being able to find, say, your
phone number and home address, but certain information just shouldn't be
available to the public.

~~~
maxerickson
They may just be buying them:

[http://peopleinfofind.com/find-social-security-
number/](http://peopleinfofind.com/find-social-security-number/)

(and I'm sure others, that's just the first I quickly found)

I have no idea how reasonable their verification of purchasers is.

------
fleitz
He went to jail for something he shouldn't have because he didn't go to jail
for something he should have.

That's karma for ya.

~~~
rwallace
I'd like to believe that. It would certainly be nice if it were true.

Unfortunately it's not. Weev went to jail for reasons that had nothing to do
with the bad things he did. And I think this is worth pointing out, because
unjust laws are not selective like karma; if we tolerate them when they target
assholes, it's not long before they start targeting innocent people.

~~~
Blackthorn
Putting people in prison for unrelated things is a normal and celebrated
aspect of the American legal system. I don't mean celebrated in some
metaphorical sense, either. I mean it is _actually celebrated_ in American
culture. Think "Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion".

Maybe that's not a good thing, but it sure worked in this case.

~~~
watwut
I through that Al Capone really engaged in tax evasion. Even as he did much
worst things, if he was really guilty of tax evasion, then it is perfectly ok
to put him in prison for tax evasion. Putting people to jail for things they
are not guilty of just because they did something else bad is injustice.

Putting people to jail for things they ARE guilty of is fine even if that is
not the worst thing they did.

------
swandriven
Why is it the _only_ time I hear about Kathy Sierra is when she's talking
about being harassed?

The world is full of all types of people who get their kicks in all types of
ways. Unless you propose monitoring everybody so that any offensive speech can
be punished, there is always going to be a contingent that will capitalize on
any chink in psychological armor just to get someone's ire up. When someone's
image primarily consists of being a victim, it's not terribly surprising that
they're going to serve as a lightning rod for all sorts of harassment - it's
known to work after all!

Frankly, what's sickening is seeing otherwise reasonable people proposing that
the solution might be taking away anonymity, perhaps even at the _protocol_
level! If you'd like to be so mollycoddled, then stick to your "web 2.0" VC-
gardens. Please leave the Internet alone with your misguided surveillance wet
dream "solutions."

And finally, if this article itself is about harassment and speaking truth to
power, then why do I feel compelled to use a throwaway account to post this
comment?

~8 year HN member.

~~~
wpietri
> And finally, if this article itself is about harassment and speaking truth
> to power, then why do I feel compelled to use a throwaway account to post
> this comment?

Because you show all of the sympathy and concern of an albino crocodile?
Because you indulge in blatant victim-blaming? Because after (maybe) reading
about the horrific campaign of calculated abuse, all you can care about is
yourself?

And, of course, because you recognize that other people will (correctly) think
less of you. So rather than owning up to your opinions, you are only brave
enough to mewl from the shadows.

~~~
swandriven
That's an awful lot of ad hominem. I made some other points too, you know.

You're right that other people would think less of me, for the same reason I
could never hope to refute your attacks - the narrative for this topic has
left the domain of logic, and is based solely on _hysterical feelings_.

Now that nerds have achieved societal glamor through VC money and social
acceptance from selling their mothers and friends to Apple and Google, they've
eagerly formed the same oppressive mob as everyone else.

At least the jocks ran on a shallow strategy that was easy to understand and
avoid. This new set of bullies exerts endless brainpower fooling everyone
(most importantly themselves) that they're "making a better world." Alas, we
all know how that turns out - same shit, different day.

~~~
wpietri
Yes, your comment was a paragon of unemotional wisdom. You have no interest
here other than cool exercise of rational thought. You aren't upset at all.
It's those other people who have let their feelings run away with them. Just
keep telling yourself that. Because as we know, feelings like empathy and
concern have no place in a discussion about how humans should treat other
humans.

Funnily, I agree with you that nerds are behaving badly now that they have
power. [1] But I disagree with your conclusion. What happened to Sierra is a
great example of nerds misusing their sudden social power. Now we need to
start taking responsibility for the broader effects of our works and our
previously insular culture.

[1] For others, this is a good analysis:
[http://petewarden.com/2014/10/05/why-nerd-culture-must-
die/](http://petewarden.com/2014/10/05/why-nerd-culture-must-die/)

~~~
swandriven
The only thing I'm upset about is what I perceive to be a large case of
groupthink. I have no other dog in this fight.

Weev posted a response that contained specific assertions. If he is lying then
rebutting them should be quite easy, yet the only responses are ad hominem
dismissals.

> _feelings like empathy and concern have no place in a discussion about how
> humans should treat other humans_

The topic starts with that, but takes on a much larger scope. Empathy and
concern don't scale, as illustrated by main stream media's pathologies.

I don't think it's right to harass people, but I think it's inevitable that
some people will be harassed on a global communications network. Even if you
change the culture (all cultures), outliers will always remain. Castigating
"the culture" for the doings of the outliers effectively creates a new
Original Sin.

I could expound on the necessity of anonymity and lack of centralized control,
but it would fall on deaf ears here. The same argument would be well-received
in a Snowden thread.

~~~
wpietri
> The only thing I'm upset about is what I perceive to be a large case of
> groupthink. I have no other dog in this fight.

Suuuuuure. Please link to your many other posts (on a wide variety of topics)
complaining about groupthink, especially ones where you don't open by
complaining about how much you have to hear about these darned women and their
abuse. And then follow up with a defense of how you totally deserve to be free
to be an anonymous dick without consequences, no matter what cost there is to
others.

> Weev posted a response that contained specific assertions. If he is lying
> then rebutting them should be quite easy, yet the only responses are ad
> hominem dismissals.

Weev is a famous troll, willing to say literally anything for entertainment
and/or his own convenience. There is no point in refuting him. If you do, he
will ignore you or come up with another set of lies. It's like trying to
engage with a tobacco company PR rep. Reasoned dialog is a privilege earned
through demonstration of responsible use of dialog.

> I could expound on the necessity of anonymity and lack of centralized
> control, but it would fall on deaf ears here. The same argument would be
> well-received in a Snowden thread.

Which is odd given that Snowden didn't actually make use of anonymity. He used
the traditional method, which was journalist-mediated anonymity.

Look, your precious anonymity is safe. Nobody will end that. It's not even
possible. For at least our lifetimes, literally anybody will be able to rent a
server and open a website. What people want is to prevent anonymity from being
used as a platform for abuse, harassment, and threats.

If you want to preserve the socially valuable sorts of anonymity, the best
thing you can do is to condemn the abuse and work toward limiting it, while
providing those who need anonymity with hard-to-abuse flavors of it. That will
work a lot better than coming here and being anonymously shitty while
demonstrating zero empathy for victims of abuse.

------
VLM
Brand problem and anonymity mismatch.

Plenty of people hate brands. Microsoft, Ford, Chevy, Walmart, Green Bay
Packers. You try to turn yourself into a brand, you're going to pick up hate
because you're a brand not because you're a person and hating brands is
culturally seen as a great idea that should be emulated as much as possible.
So trying to fix hatred toward humans is pretty much a waste of time when the
root problem is hatred directed at brands. Even if they are "personal" brands.
Or rephrased whatever is done to fix this (if anything) the blowback will
eliminate brand hatred (umm, good luck with that BTW). No more hating some
random female programmer or journalist means no more hating walmart or ISIS or
the Jews or Obama (oh wait Obama is a dude not a brand, well, he is both,
whatever).

The other aspect is anonymity mismatch where semi-anonymous people are
attacking very non-anonymous victims. The solution proposed over and over is
less anonymity for attackers. Removal of identity from the victims would work
just as well. This merges in with "personal brands" paragraph above. If
supposedly you truly want to promote a message and not a brand, that brand
being yourself of course, you'd do it for the cause and not the fame. Unless
you really are promoting yourself as a brand using a message as a tool to gain
fame, and unfortunately gains attacks.

Combine the two concepts and a "famous" non-anonymous brand, which happens to
be an individual, will get a heaping dose of trolling for deep seated cultural
reasons related to what it means to be a brand and what it means to be famous
(and not famous). Good luck fixing that by getting distracted by "brands are
people too" and "be nice to people", its the wrong tactic to fix it. You're
trying to install deck screws with a hammer.

~~~
scribu
That's an interesting take on the matter.

An internet where all online identities are decoupled from offline identities
seems possible, at least in theory. The idea that using your real name online
makes you act more responsibly doesn't seem to work anyway.

But wait. That would only solve part of the problem - trolls targeting women,
minorities etc. Even if you have a fictional online identity, once you have
visibility and say something a troll doesn't agree with, they'll still come
after you.

~~~
VLM
I think your last paragraph misses the entire point of my post... No matter
how many people hate General Motors, the spokesmodel of the latest TV
commercial is not likely getting death threats.

Its always the people who insist on making themselves the brands, that self-
promote themselves as a brand, that attract the death threats and nut cases,
just like any other "brand".

If you can separate the brand and the person in a way even the trolls can
understand, let them hate the anonymous brand all they want, what does it
matter?

Maybe a sports analogy helps? Everyone in the state of Wisconsin viciously
hates the brand of the Chicago Bears and the journalists encourage it as much
as possible. But no one sends death threats to Mr. XYZ who is a ticket
collector at gate 3. One is a brand and hating brands is seen as a universal
good (other than on social media, whoops). The other is just some dude making
his way thru life, no problem.

(edited to give you another example. Look how /b/ on 4chan behaves toward
women on /b/. Not women in abstract or women in journalism, I'm talking about
humans with two x chromosomes talking on /b/ itself which is about 99% male
trolls (and lots of lurkers). Frankly, /b/ behaves pretty nicely and civil
almost gentlemanly toward women actually on /b/ AS LONG AS she doesn't go all
self promotional "gimmie attention look here I am a girlie on /b/ everyone
look at me because you're mostly guys and I are a girl so you must worship me
its all about me me me me" and then they turn on her like starving wolves
beginning with "show us (you can guess) or GTFO" and it generally kinda
devolves from there, in fact it gets quite a bit worse, and very quickly. They
now hate her because she is now a brand and not a person. Find me a trollier
place on the internet than /b/ (good luck) and I bet they behave the same way,
people treat people like people, and some people treat some brands like dirt,
worse than dirt, worse than you can imagine dirt being treated, and if the
brand happens to be an intensely self promotional person instead of an
abstract entity or corporation or idea or whatever then things are really
going to suck for that brand-which-happens-to-be-a-real-woman. Or TLDR if you
want to be treated like a person on 4chan on /b/, its really easy no matter
who or what you are, just behave like a person, not a brand or a PR rep or
marketdroid. The internet is very nice to people, and occasionally utterly
shockingly brutal to brands. Go choose your destiny...)

~~~
scribu
Ok, so your argument seems to be that if you hide behind an impersonal brand,
you'll be safe. Sorry, but I'm not conviced:

> No matter how many people hate General Motors, the spokesmodel of the latest
> TV commercial is not likely getting death threats.

The spokesmodel probably doesn't get death threats, but what about the
president or the CEO of GM?

> Everyone in the state of Wisconsin viciously hates the brand of the Chicago
> Bears and the journalists encourage it as much as possible. But no one sends
> death threats to Mr. XYZ who is a ticket collector at gate 3.

Of course not, but are you sure nobody sends death threats to the manager of
the team or the coach?

> One is a brand and hating brands is seen as a universal good

That's a bit hiperbolic. I don't consider Google bashing or Apple bashing, for
example, to be a net good. IMO, it's just a tribal instinct that we haven't
managed to get rid of yet.

~~~
VLM
As short as possible, people don't get undeserved hate, but self promotional
brands get the burning hate of 10000 suns.

Some of those self promotional brands are multinational megacorps and when you
divide the internet hate machine between prez, CEO as you list, plus board
members, major shareholder investors, 10 thousand dealership owners, 10
thousand service dept managers, probably 100 thousand salespeople, the average
"GM dude" gets a middle finger from the internet hate machine about once every
decade and just kinda brushes it off. When the self promotional brand is one
woman as the face of social justice warriors (generally speaking, not the
specific lady from the article, although we know who I'm talking about), she's
going to take the full impact square on full force no protection. Its going to
hurt. GM can take a GM sized punch and laugh it off. One nice normal lady
cannot take a GM sized punch. She, as a basically nice person, doesn't deserve
it at all, but brands will be brands and culturally we think its OK to hit a
brand that hard. And she wants to be a brand, so the painful result is not
exactly surprising when it happens...

You wanna be as big as GM you better be able to take a GM sized punch. Nobody
in the general public understands the difference between her financial
statements and GMs statements, they just know her and GM are both on twitter,
and we all know what twitter is for, so the guy who was screaming at GM for
taking .gov bailout tax money last night is going to be on her case tonight,
with 10 million of his "friends" and she's not going to like it.

"I don't consider ... bashing ... a net good"

Any mistake in my summarization of your position is my own. Given that
disclaimer, the sound you just heard was every clickbait journalist and sports
writer and PR dude in the world just disagreeing with you.

Members of the general public making an emotional connection with a brand is
idealized because optimistic people assume it'll be like a laughter filled
life long infatuation of a love affair right out of a sappy hollywood romantic
comedy movie, forgetting that too many intense human emotional relationships
end in hatred, murder, insanity, beatings. Not that many, thankfully, but
enough to be a problem when you scale it to a 7 billion person marriage. If
you use techniques that give people an emotional response to a brand, you
might not like that response... And if you're GM sized you don't care, but if
you're one human female sized that punch is going to sting a bit.

(Edited to add, think of social media as a multiplier. You can have the force
of a billion dollar brand, if you're lucky and play it well. The bad news is
if you don't play it well, you WILL have to be able to take a punch like a
billion dollar brand. And that'll hurt if it all lands on just you. And the
Billion Dollar Brands like it that way, who needs competition from the little
people?)

~~~
scribu
> people don't get undeserved hate

That is obviously not true. Racism, homophobia, bigotry are every-day examples
of undeserved hate.

Regarding the rest of your hypothesis - that when the brand is represented by
a single person, the hate gets concentrated on that single person - it seems
plausible.

I was going to make the argument that some types of "personal brands" seem to
get more harassment than others, but then I found this piece about Mike
Arrington (a white guy): [http://www.blogherald.com/2009/01/28/michael-
arrington-takes...](http://www.blogherald.com/2009/01/28/michael-arrington-
takes-a-break-after-death-threat-and-spit-attack/)

------
pasbesoin
My two cents:

Years ago, I found Kathy's posts both very informative and entertaining. She
seemed to be very generous with her time and writing. She even took the time
to respond to me, personally, once on some question or other.

Something I read at the time about the Weev "data breach" circumstance, that I
did not see widely reported. I'm sorry I don't have a reference at hand, so
take this as unsupported and from memory: Weev did not immediately reveal the
problem. He first took some time (in relative terms; I don't know or recall an
absolute quantity) to decide what he was going to do about it and with the
data. The reporting implied that perhaps he chose disclosure after realizing
there was no other avenue that was personally more advantageous; or perhaps he
came to the decision to "do the right thing".

I do NOT support the prosecution of Weev especially under the twisted
rationale proffered. The Internet is a public space, and if you are stupid
enough, lazy enough, and/or especially simply uncaring and arrogant enough to
expose your (and perhaps worse, your _customers '/clients'_) private data
there on an unsecured URI/URL, then that is YOUR problem and you DESERVE to be
called on it -- all the more so when you do it deliberately as a part of your
design.

Nonetheless, I was left with the impression that Weev is not Mr. Goodie-Two-
Shoes. (And this was before I knew he was the one who apparently led the
bandwagon against Kathy.)

The prosecution shifted attention from the fuck up that is AT&T, onto Weev.
Another stupid and probably self-serving prosecution...

And that's the last time I want to use his name. Because, as has become
apparent, the loss we are focusing on now has been contributions like those
Kathy made to our online world.

So, my two cents. The post implied it is up to _us_ ; therefore...

------
mightybyte
The best way to do something about this kind of trolling is to make the
punishment fit the crime. This is exactly what laws were originally created
for. Before we had laws and enforcement for actions like rape, murder, theft,
assault, etc, I'm sure those actions had a very similar place in society--the
majority didn't engage in them, but the minority did destroyed the lives of
their victims. This is no different. Internet assault is a recent invention,
made possible by the invention of the internet. Therefore, it follows that we
need to invent appropriate laws and penalties. And the difference in severity
of penalties between internet assault and unauthorized access to a computer
needs to be similar to the difference in penalties between physical assault
and breaking and entering.

If this was the case, then we can clearly see the problems with Tor Ekeland's
statement, "You may think weev is an asshole. But being an asshole is not a
crime, and neither is obtaining unsecured information from publicly facing
servers." Ekeland thinks that the big problem is that weev's AT&T activities
were a crime. Regardless of what you think about that, the bigger problem is
that weev's asshole activities are not a crime.

Ekeland consolidates a broad spectrum of harassment into one term "being an
asshole", and labels it as not a crime. But that is short-sighted. As Kathy
points out, there is a point where the spectrum of digital harassment jumps
over into the realm of real-life damage. And that should be a crime that
carries stiff penalties and is prosecuted aggressively.

Oh, and one other point. Kathy laments how weev has been glorified in the tech
community. My guess is that this is caused by nothing other than ignorance. If
all you know about weev is that he seems to fall into the group of people that
were at least somewhat unjustly targeted by the government for, scare quotes,
"hacking" and received a punishment that seemed too harsh, then you'll
probably express support for him (read, that cause). Even if you've heard that
he says things on the internet that are trollish asshole material, you, like
Ekeland, probably won't change your opinion much. What tips the scale here is
the knowledge that his troll speech has had the very real consequence of
destroying someone's life. That fact is everything. If you don't know someone
is bad, you can't correctly adjust your opinion of them. So props to Kathy for
speaking out.

------
facepalm
The typical mixing up of things that infuriates people. Yes, some people
apparently are mean to women. But the conclusion can not be that women can
never be criticized.

If she could separate one thing from the other, perhaps she would have an
easier time online.

------
McDoku
My take away from this article is simply raise your standards of people.
Esteem should not be so fickle, it should mean something.

Our culture has a very short attention spans and we exalt the wrong people. It
creates a weird tension. Being a bad actor is an equal opportunity field and
the doubt this creates grows until reasonable people are swallowed.

We have no willingness to forgive and this puritanism has in the end soiled
us.

~~~
pjc50
What do you mean by "exalt the wrong people"? People like weev?

~~~
McDoku
A man's worth is no greater than his ambitions. \-- Marcus Aurelius

~~~
mkr-hn
That sounds bleak.

~~~
McDoku
Not really. Ambition is like a bottle for your consciousness. It is the
container. As your ambitions expands so does your mind.

If your ambition is to troll someone, that is your maximum value. I think if
you look deeply many will realize that this is not the value they want. I
believe that they can dream of something greater then to harass someone
online.

If anything it is reminder to avoid being trivial. Ambition leads action. This
cycle is who you are. It is beautiful self awareness.

~~~
mkr-hn
I think we're talking about different kinds of ambition.

~~~
McDoku
This is what I mean by ambition.

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ambition](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ambition)

~~~
mkr-hn
This comes off as very condescending.

~~~
McDoku
It is not. There is an association with ambitious and grandiose in general
language at times.

I think it is related to whole 'the meek shall inherent earth' way of
thinking. Which is a whole other debate if we get into the gospels of Matthew,
Luke and Q issue.

Which if you follow the logic of the statement to Matthew 5:3 it related more
to an understanding of poverty and conduct. Ironically very much in line with
something Marcus Aurelius would say.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_5:5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_5:5)

So I get the confusion, because I used to make the same error.

------
feldir
Am I the only one with the feeling like i'm reading the "diary" of Amy Dunne,
in Gone Girl? Like i'm in the middle of the movie, and the plot could tip
either way.

~~~
acorkery
Possibly, yes

------
jMyles
I don't want to downplay the significance of this writing - thank you for
calling it out!

I do want to gently call into question the danger of the attack surfaces that
you have (I think accurately) spelled out:

1) "Doxxing with calls to action (that — and trust me on this — people DO act
on)."

For the most part, high-profile "targets" from the troll's perspective are
already known to the public anyway.

Those that aren't, and who want to stay anonymous, have a big job doing so -
not just from trolls, but from the NSA and corporate advertising culture.

2) "Swatting (look it up). That nobody has yet been killed in one of these
“pranks” is surprising. It’s just a matter of time."

This is purely a political problem. Clearly there's a flaw in the system when
police can enter a home by the say-so of someone they haven't verified to be
in that home. A sensible solution here is to work to abolish (or nearly
abolish) so-called "SWAT" teams. For those that remain, obviously their
standard of probable cause needs to change so that the scope no longer
includes phenomena that are so easy to defraud.

3) Physical Assualt

In a general sense, this is already illegal under law that is widely
supported. It's worth adding sexual assault as well.

The example that you give, which is disgusting of course, seems solvable by
some kind of client-side solution that prevents machines from activating
photosensitive epilepsy.

At the end of the day, there's not _that_ much that somebody can do from a
world away. To the extent that there is, I assert that the solutions are
largely political, social, and cultural.

~~~
valas
Good points, but they don't help much if you're active victim of trolling.
E.g. try to sleep at night if they doxxed your children :-(

Technology affects culture (and vice-a-versa). Trolling is/was rampant in
blogosphere and Twitter, but I have impression that Facebook and Google+, who
both enforce much hated real-names policies, have less of a trolling
component.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I guess it's because Facebook and Google+ are built mostly around reinforcing
meatspace relationships. It's harder to be an asshole if your family, friends
and cow-orkers read your comments.

~~~
pmjordan
You'd be surprised how happily people will make abusive and hateful comments
on sites with facebook comments.

