
Instagram Has a Massive Harassment Problem - dsr12
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/instagram-has-massive-harassment-problem/572890/?single_page=true
======
wgerard
Bringing this to a top-level comment:

People wildly underestimate how dedicated and adept some people are at finding
PII given even minute details [1]. The only real way to avoid sharing PII is
to stay off the internet entirely.

Even then, pandora's box has already been opened. Your PII is available even
if you haven't explicitly chosen to share it [2].

Once it's out (and spoiler alert, it's out), "stepping away from the computer"
is no longer an option. The article describes in detail how it transitions
from online to real-life harassment: Swatting, stopping by your personal
residence, calling your work, calling your friends and family, etc.

Yes, it happens to people of moderate means and very minor celebrity. Yes, you
can suffer physical harm or death as a result [3]. Yes, we should also try and
solve the swatting problem from the police side as well.

1: [https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/4chan-shia-labeouf-
secret-l...](https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/4chan-shia-labeouf-secret-
location/)

2: Equifax

3: [https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/30/us/kansas-swatting-death-
affi...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/30/us/kansas-swatting-death-
affidavit/index.html)

~~~
reggieband
Reminds me of a video [1] posted by Tom Scott from "Things you might not know"
youbtube. He and a friend posted a photo of themselves watching the eclipse
somewhere in the USA and it is scary how accurately their location was found
by Internet sleuths.

I feel bad for the new generation of Twitch/Youtube people who are exposing
themselves to the Internet. There are some freaky good stalkers out there.

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGqEBvlmFAQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGqEBvlmFAQ)

~~~
legostormtroopr
I mean if you want a great account of how little information can be used to
find you, you have to include the greatest game of capture the flag: Shia
LeBeouf's "He Will Not Divide Us" vs 4chan.

> a flag emblazoned with the words "He Will Not Divide Us" would be flown for
> the duration of the presidency. The camera was pointed up at the flag, set
> against a backdrop of nothing but sky.

> Within 38 hours of resuming transmission, the flag was located by a
> collaboration of 4chan users, who used airplane contrails, celestial
> navigation, and other techniques to determine that it was located in
> Greeneville, Tennessee.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaBeouf,_R%C3%B6nkk%C3%B6_%26_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaBeouf,_R%C3%B6nkk%C3%B6_%26_Turner#HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US,_2017_%E2%80%93_ongoing)

~~~
neumann
it is the first link in the gp post.

------
jerf
I continue every month to be more convinced that the fundamental problem is
that any platform where anybody, unsolicited, can for free send messages to
anybody else, will forever have the "thundering hordes of assholes"[1] problem
once it hits even modest scale. Having to hire people by the hundreds to
"moderate" is desperately trying to salvage a fundamentally unworkable system,
not a solution, even before we get into the interesting second-order effects
such "solutions" can create, and what it does to the moderators themselves
psychologically. You can't build a solution based around A: hoping the
assholes just don't show up or B: that you will be smarter or more dedicated
than the assholes.

I don't necessarily have a perfect solution all lined up, but just correctly
identifying the problem is step one. I've mentally noodled with a number of
models. But the thing they have in common is that none of them start with a
new user being able to fling whatever they want to whomever they want for
free.

[1]: I don't actually consider it a failure of the system if you encounter
_an_ asshole every so often. That's life. But when you start a video stream
and you end up with so many assholes typing asshole comments so quickly that
you literally can't even read them before they scroll away, even if you want
to, that's a structural problem, not just a social problem.

~~~
noobermin
This is HN, the glorified peanut gallery, but seriously, what are your ideas?
I'm curious to have a discussion about them and see what others think too.

~~~
devinhelton
Anything that makes the user invest a bit in the reputation of their account
before they are allowed to message strangers would do the trick. Charge $10
for signing up. Limit @-mentions until you have built up a small following and
activity track record. Require an application to join the forum. Etc, etc.

If a cost is evenly moderately costly to create, and abusive comments quickly
result in bans, then the ratio of abusers quickly goes down to a very low
level.

The problem is that making it costly to sign up goes against the business
model and growth model of sites like Twitter, Reddit, or Instagram.

~~~
jfim
> Charge $10 for signing up.

The problem is that it makes it hard to get enough of a critical mass to
convince people that it's worth the ten bucks.

That being said, something awful did it well over a decade ago [1] and has a
relatively low amount of assholes/harassment, but it's not zero.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful#Forums](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful#Forums)

------
danso
The problem is "massive" in the way that Instagram itself is massive, and
having a public account opens you up to a massive attack surface (i.e. the
global, growing audience of Instagram and the Internet at-large). As in the
case with Facebook and Twitter, there's only so much a social network can do
without putting real controls on who can create an account and who can
participate:

> _Like Twitter, Instagram enables the easy setup of endless anonymous
> accounts: All you need is an email address and you can start posting within
> minutes. Abusers leverage this functionality to create armies of fake
> accounts to attack people. But while Twitter now allows users to protect
> themselves—by muting replies from people who don’t follow you, who you don’t
> follow, aren’t verified, haven’t confirmed an email address, and
> more—Instagram has only implemented some of these controls._

Instagram had a nicer overall "personality" to it initially because it was
centered around the posting of attractive, innocuous photos. But in the end,
it's still a platform that allows anyone to disseminate information of any
kind (not just comments, but screenshots and images of text memes), so there's
no reason to think that as it becomes massively mainstream, it won't have the
exact same problems as Facebook and Twitter.

edit: fixed grammar

------
marcodave
"... Instagram enables easy sign up via just an email address"

Is the "easy sign up" such an important selling point, that anything more
complicated drives away users?

I'm wondering how could be possible to avoid hoarding burner accounts just for
the sake of trolling, while at the same time not requiring 1Billion people to
send in scans of their ID to prove their identity.

Not to mention that even requiring ID for proving identity, one can still
troll and harass as long as it's not caught on the fact

~~~
bearcobra
Requiring confirmation with an SMS code seems like a reasonable step to tie
accounts to a more permanent identifier which can then be used for moderation.

~~~
tracker1
For a nominal fee, one can get a burner phone/account to sign up for any
number of sites. It does _very_ little to de-anonymize someone.

~~~
scott_s
It doesn't de-anonymize someone, but it's a much bigger hurdle than an email
address, which is free and someone can get on a whim. More friction could curb
troll accounts.

~~~
doyoulikeworms
And existing anti-troll measures will be more effective, able to focus on
fewer trolls (presumably)

------
monksy
For a primarily phone-based application, this seems pretty weird to me. (It's
harder to navigate and participate in compared to say reddit or fb)

I use Instagram, however, the only "harassment" I receive is spam and
occasional mentions from p_rn bots. I also keep my profile and I'm not trying
to push, sell, or make myself a celebrity.

What I think that may be happening: There are a lot of people who are trying
to leverage their message or themselves to a level of celebrity and they don't
realize that this is one of the consequences of it (or that they refuse to
accept it).

~~~
Sharlin
_> For a primarily phone-based application, this seems pretty weird to me._

You seem to be pretty out of the loop when it comes to Instagram's primary
user group. Many teens/early 20s these days don't even _have_ a computer, a
smartphone is all they use. They're definitely accustomed to phone UIs.

> _I use Instagram, however, the only "harassment" I receive is spam and
> occasional mentions from p_rn bots._

Don't generalize from a single datapoint, especially when that datapoint is
not a representative sample at all.

> _What I think that may be happening: There are a lot of people who are
> trying to leverage their message or themselves to a level of celebrity and
> they don 't realize that this is one of the consequences of it (or that they
> refuse to accept it)._

This is just straightforward victim blaming without even trying to understand
what is actually going on.

~~~
monksy
1.

They may be accustomed to the UI but from using the IG App you don't have the
full capability to be aggressively persistent on the phone as you would on the
desktop. Yes, mean things do get said, but I would hardly believe that it's as
easy as they claim.

2.

This was my experience. I'm a private individual whom doesn't use it to build
an audience, sell anything, or any of the like.

3.

Celebritihood has it's upsides and downsides. Am, I saying it's a good thing
that it happens no.

~~~
Sharlin
The whole point was that you don't have to be a celebrity to get harassed and
bullied. You don't need to be _anyone_ in particular. Social media can be used
to magnify your old-fashioned highschool bullying to completely different
levels. And even if it didn't, if cyberbullying was "just" at the level of IRL
bullying, it would still be a problem, of course.

------
Sharlin
> _The platform has cast itself as the internet’s kindest place._

Excuse me but _what?_ I thought it was common knowledge that Instagram is one
of the worst places on the net when it comes to bullying.

------
village-idiot
I think social media operators are under-valuing the risk that harassment has
to their organizations. Social media companies live and die by the network
effect. New social sites sometimes hit a magic threshold point after which
they take off like a rocket as "everyone" is on it. Dying social sites drop
below that same point, after which it's a "ghost town", and usership falls
flat.

There are all kinds of things that can cause that to happen, famously
redesigns and changes to moderator actions has done it in the past. But in
general having a continuously shitty experience as people harass you is a
pretty compelling reason to not use a social site. I cannot help but wonder if
enough people will leave to trigger a mass exit or not.

------
tomp
I was thinking of a potential solution to this (and many other problems) -
filter lists. Instead of putting the onus on the company/social network to
police the users, all the content they post and potentially (well, definitely)
angering significant parts of the population (e.g. either the democrats, the
republicans, or _both_!), they could just add opt-in _" filter lists"_ that
would be curated by (groups of) users. A few would be enabled by default (e.g.
gore, NSFW, etc), others you could discover simply by searching for specific
keywords (e.g. "filter all neo-nazis" or "filter all anti-fa") (like browser
add-ons) or by ranking them by popularity, and whatever filters you have
enabled, the webpage would also show you how many users/posts/comments are
hidden by your filters. That way, noone could accuse any organisation of
censorship, the lists could be shared between websites (reducing the effort
and enabling smaller companies to function), and the only real responsibility
of the companies would be to keep illegal content off the site (or something
that break all online etiquette, e.g. doxxing).

~~~
danso
Twitter has had (unofficial, via third-party services) user created blocklists
for awhile now, but still feel like something only used by power users. And
the complaints/anger over censorship still exist — IIRC, Wil Wheaton (the
uber-Twitter power user) was hounded off of Twitter and Mastodon because of
his promotion of a controversial user’s blacklist:

[http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-
place-...](http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right-
now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/)

[https://medium.com/@AmberEnderton/wil-wheaton-has-a-
listenin...](https://medium.com/@AmberEnderton/wil-wheaton-has-a-listening-
problem-accdf6277b88)

~~~
criddell
My favorite user blocklist was the one that listed every Twitter advertiser. I
think the maintainer shut it down, but I thought it was a pretty neat idea.

------
pkamb
With the popularity of non-real-name Instagram pages and "finstagrams" it
seems strange that Facebook has not implemented a checkbox for "seriously,
this is not my main account, please stop linking it to my main account or
phone number or facebook account or suggesting it to ANYONE I might know in
real life". But, then again, it is Facebook we're talking about.

~~~
gaius
_" seriously, this is not my main account, please stop linking it to my main
account or phone number or facebook account or suggesting it to ANYONE I might
know in real life"_

Their T&Cs prohibit having more than one account, so they would never
implement this feature no matter how much sense it makes.

~~~
ecnahc515
That's for Facebook.com not instagram. Instagram actively promotes multiple
accounts.

------
moneil971
A better system is needed to allow for verified accounts, without requiring
the kind of info that would allow hackers and bad actors to access your real
email, address, phone number, etc. Dual authentication is a start but for now,
it requires putting even more info out there (I didn't share a phone number on
any site until I had to for authentication purposes).

------
Animats
Harassment is mostly a problem because of anonymity. Facebook has a point with
their "real names" policy.

Maybe we need systems where you can either be anonymous and censored, or
identified and uncensored. You get to pick.

~~~
yarrel
Real names don't stop harassment, whether on the WELL in the 90s or YouTube in
the 2010s.

They do however harm the most vulnerable in society, either excluding them
from platforms or making it easy for their harassers to find and target them.

Anonymity is at worst neutral for harassment. Removing it doesn't do what
people hope.

------
peterwwillis
*Humanity Has a Massive Harassment Problem

FTFY

~~~
seany
Maybe it isn't actually that big of a problem?

~~~
bilbo0s
Internet crazies waiting for you at your home or place of employment, most
definitely is a problem.

Internet crazies swatting you because you got a portafort in fortnite, or some
equally trivial offense like that, most definitely is a problem.

And that's not even getting into the more sinister stuff that the fbi has to
deal with.

~~~
tomp
Then surely the problem isn't harrassment, but assault? Also, if you put
enough information online, all it takes is one crazy/creepy stalker/murderer
to track you down and do anything, that's completely orthogonal to the general
problem of "online harrassment".

~~~
bilbo0s
> _Then surely the problem isn 't harrassment, but assault?..._

Woah, woah, woah.

I said internet crazies showing up at your place of employment is a _problem_.
That doesn't make it _assault_.

For instance, the outrage brigade might show up to protest in front of the
company where you work for a few weeks. This is their right as Americans, and
I realize and acknowledge that. At the same time, I believe it is harassment.
I didn't say we should do anything to _stop_ it. I only said that it most
definitely is a problem. And if it happened to you, I'd bet that right around
the time your boss called you into his or her office to give you your final
paycheck, you would start to think it is a problem too.

I think you went about 5 bridges _WAY_ too far with calling a lot of that
harassment "assault". A lot of the harassment is _not_ assault. That's why
it's so hard to stop. The assault stuff is the stuff that the fbi would be
called in on generally speaking.

~~~
tomc1985
Parent is not equivocating harassment (or presence, as you seem to take it) as
assault. They are simply stating that one often leads to the other.

------
megaman8
I dont understandy, Why doesn't instagram just come up with some negativity
filter/heuristic? Once someone reports being harassed to instagram, they can
activate the filter and block all messages/tagging with negative content in
it, for any and all messages directed towards the target.

------
liftbigweights
Then stop using instagram.

What's with nytimes, theatlantic and the rest of the media and their endless
spam and whining about social media?

If you don't like it, stop using it? Leave HN alone.

HN has a massive nytimes, theatlantic, etc spam problem too. We don't have a
way to filter useless clickbait media.

If the "journalist" at theatlantic don't like instagram, go start your own
version of "nice" instagram and make billions.

~~~
untog
> Leave HN alone.

You realise these things appear because HN users submit them, and other HN
users upvote them?

------
dickinson99
Close the tab, app, etc. Walk away from the computer.

~~~
wgerard
Bit hard to do when they're calling your work, visiting your house, swatting
you, etc.

~~~
izzydata
Posting identifiable information on the internet should never be done. Perhaps
middle schools and high schools need to teach kids about the dangers of the
internet.

~~~
jnty
This is literally the definition of victim blaming.

~~~
jm__87
How else would you avoid people identifying who you are online, other than not
posting any identifiable information? If you post your home address and phone
number on Facebook and people start prank calling you in the middle of the
night and sending pizzas to your house, is Facebook really to blame here?

~~~
macintux
It is extremely difficult to avoid leaking information somewhere, as others
have pointed out. Eventually there's a trail.

People often (or at least used to) share their current location on Twitter
without having any idea they were doing it. Venmo payments default to public,
again something that people often don't know.

And often it's not you who leaks the information but someone you know. Good
luck controlling the social media presence of everyone in your family and
circle of friends.

~~~
jm__87
Okay, so again how is the site to blame if your family or friends leak your
info. I agree that these sites should be defaulting most options to non public
until people explicitly choose for something to be public - but beyond that,
the only thing I can see working is heavily discouraging the bad behavior, and
we likely need the legal system for that. All a social media company can do is
ban someone for bad behavior, not fine them or throw them in jail.

