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1. 'Trolling' is not harassment. You can harass someone by trolling them incessantly, but harassing people is not 'trolling' them. Don't use them as synonyms.

1. 'Trolling' is not harassment. You can harass someone by trolling them incessantly, but harassing people is not 'trolling' them. Don't use them as synonyms. 2. They've never been the focus of a harassment campaign because they're not stupid enough to put their personal details out there on the internet and then be surprised that people will use that to harass them. They also don't feed the trolls in the first place. >I've never experienced such harassment myself and used to sing the "ignore" mantra too, until I tried to imagine myself in the shoes of those who receive frequent harassment, and I'm not sure I would be able to ignore at the same level they are expected to. 99.9% of people that complain about being harassed would be well-served by just not using Twitter. Twitter sucks, and has always sucked. It's the epitome of short attention spans and soundbites. Don't use Twitter. >Also, I'm not sure you are arguing whether a cause of the issue is identity being coupled to your internet presence, but I'm not sure we can go back to the internet of the early 2000's or late 90's, so we need to deal with the world as it exists now instead of thinking appeal to tradition will solve issues we have today. Nobody is saying we have to go back to the internet of the late 90s. We just need to understand that there aren't more trolls now than there were then. There are more people in general, and when you are anonymous, they don't have anything to harass you with.

ksenzee 10y ago
> 99.9% of people that complain about being harassed would be well-served by just not using Twitter. This is a cop-out. You may not need Twitter for your work, but a lot of us do. If I can't use Twitter, I lose an important way to connect to others in my profession (specifically in open source). And I'm an unimportant software developer. What about women in journalism? What about women in entertainment? They need Twitter, and they need it connected to their real-world identity. You might as well tell them "quit walking on the street, or wear a burka, and you won't get harassed or assaulted." It would be the same cop-out. We have police to keep the streets safe. We need Twitter to be safe too.
- 5thaccount 10y ago
  > We need Twitter to be safe too. In theory agree keeping things safe seems great, but I struggle with the idea that we can define "safe" in a way that is reasonable and makes sense, and where the punishment is effective and reasonable. The vast majority of times I have seen claims of harassment, the usual process is that someone makes a controversial statement, then realises the group that objects was larger than they imagined as they receive hundreds and thousands objections, some of which are almost certainly awful. I understand how that can feel like harassment when 10,000 people tweet at you, and in 10,000 tweets half a dozen are guaranteed to sound batshit insane and downright scary, but it isn't harassment to be disagreed with, nor to have ideas that you promote subject to scrutiny. SM amplifies what that scrutiny looks like massively, but pure numbers don't constitute harassment. Nor does people watching everything you say and commenting on it. And this is where it gets tough, nor does having people say mean things about you, because mean is just so subjective. Any definition of harassment is really tricky, and a definition of "safe" is even more difficult, and we haven't even got to the punishment part yet. Ultimately, the idea we can stop people disagreeing, and disagreeing passionately enough to border on troubling, is impossible, and what is needed is a something proactive an individual can do to protect themselves. And I have no idea what that is!
- milesrout 10y ago
  No it is not the same, it's not the same at all. There's a massive, massive difference between someone on the other side of the world sending a nasty message on Twitter and being harassed in the real world by someone on a dark street at night. These are so completely different that I can't believe that you are so tied up in your views that you forget that. Anyone that would suggest they are the same has clearly not been the recipient of the latter. People have a right to be safe in the real world. Harassing someone physically or verbally as they're walking down the street for wearing religious clothing or a short skirt is completely unacceptable and makes people not feel safe in their own neighbourhood. It's not possible to anonymise yourself in real life. That's completely different from having someone send you a nasty message on the internet. Completely different. Twitter is safe. Nobody can harm you through Twitter. It's simply impossible to harm you through Twitter. What people can do is send you nasty messages through Twitter. You have two solutions: 1. Stop using Twitter, an utterly worthless dis-service that has never produced anything of value, or 2. Get over yourself and grow a thicker skin. >You may not need Twitter for your work, but a lot of us do. No, you don't. You think you do, but you don't. The only people that 'need Twitter' are 'social media' people and quite frankly they're the worst part of Twitter. >If I can't use Twitter, I lose an important way to connect to others in my profession (specifically in open source). No you don't. Twitter is not a good way to connect to anyone. Nobody can have any sort of technical discussion through Twitter without completely subverting Twitter's model through hacks like multi-tweet messages, self-replying, twitlonger, etc. Twitter has never been, is not and never will be a good platform for discussing anything. Use email, like the adult you claim to be. >What about women in journalism? What about women in entertainment? They need Twitter, and they need it connected to their real-world identity. Don't use Twitter. Female journalists have existed for a very long time, much (much) longer than Twitter, and the vast majority of them don't use Twitter. Twitter is a shitty, toxic platform. It's not some sort of official place. It's not a public service. It's not part of our culture. It's a shitty social media site that you should stay away from. Twitter is not useful to journalists. Twitter is not useful to entertainers (and you'd be a fool to think that hate mail to celebrities didn't exist before twitter. They employed people to filter and reply to their fan/hate mail before, they can employ people to filter and reply to their fan/hate tweets now).
  - 10y ago
meheleventyone 10y ago
On one hand you could blame the victims for making themselves available targets and tell them to hide. On the other you could blame the perpetrators looking for targets and try to stop them. The former abdicates societal responsibility for the problem and the latter seeks justice. With more of society now online we should be thinking towards the latter rather than cowering in fear?
- milesrout 10y ago
  Firstly, don't extrapolate and call everyone that's had something rude said to them on the internet a 'victim' just because a very few people have been on the receiving end of genuine harassment. Secondly, nobody is 'telling them to hide'. You can filter out your twitter replies, you can just not read that material. You can read it and say 'wow there are a few nasty people on the internet'. That's up to you. You can also, yes, remove yourself from toxic, shitty sites like Twitter. But what you shouldn't do is read all the nasty shit and then go 'hey this shit is nasty'. Like, yeah, of course it is. What do you expect? That everyone likes you? Stop hitting yourself. TotalBiscuit, a minor YouTube celebrity, has said a few times that he's disabled YouTube comments not because he wants to isolate himself from criticism or because he is so offended and thinks those people should be banned from the internet, but because he had a morbid obsession with reading through all the comments even though he knew some things in there would make him feel hurt. He had a problem (he couldn't stop himself from reading things he knew he'd not like) and so he found a solution: disable the comments on YouTube, and only interact with people on a subreddit that he has people he trusts moderate. That's not 'cowering in fear', it's being an adult and solving problems. He's doing basically the same thing celebrities have been doing with fanmail for centuries: getting someone to filter it out for him. I'm sure many people could get someone to do the same thing with their Twitter replies, and I'm sure many people do. That's your choice, that's their choice. It's not 'abdicating social responsibility', it's not hiding, it's being pragmatic and creating a practical solution to a problem. It doesn't restrict the actions or freedom of others, it doesn't get people arrested or banned from Twitter, it stops you from seeing things you don't like. It's like installing AdBlock instead of legislating that internet ads should not contain pornography because your kids use the computer. How do you propose to 'try to stop them' anyway? I definitely think that real sources of real personal information, like whois records, need an overhaul. It needs to be possible to register a domain, register a company, etc. in a way that still involves your identity (so that people can dispute copyright, Government can collect taxes, you can be arrested if you're hosting child pornography, etc.) without letting any random person on the internet type in a shell command and getting my home address. And it shouldn't just be 'the Government can access it and nobody else can', that's a shitty solution (although probably better than the current one). Ignoring that (which is a real problem, unlike 'OMG I got a nasty message on twitter telling me to kill myself, whatever shall I do? Shall I just ignore it, like an adult? No, I'm going to throw a tantrum about it despite being a 26-year-old professional journalist'), what do you propose that 'we' as 'society' should 'do' about the 'problem' of people sending rude messages on Twitter?
inopinatus 10y ago
> 2. They've never been the focus of a harassment campaign because they're not stupid enough to put their personal details out there on the internet and then be surprised that people will use that to harass them. They also don't feed the trolls in the first place. This is a) simple victim blaming and b) impossible to fix in some situations. Illustration of (b) is that the companies of which I'm a director are a matter of public record, and for very little money indeed you can buy online a copy of that record including my home address and telephone number.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Can't you use a POB and special business number? It's not "victim blaming". It's just what's so. With the Internet, every obnoxious jerk on the planet can come after you, if you attract enough attention.
  - inopinatus 10y ago
    No, here in Australia, director's information must be place of residence; although there is a process for suppression or replacement based on personal safety needs, for most that'd be closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. What's more, the information is still in the database, it's just masked in standard extracts; the data is one weak password away from exfiltration. I believe it is most certainly victim blaming. The existence of terrible people may well induce one to recommend countermeasures, but the phrasing "stupid enough to put their personal details out there" is first-class (and thoroughly obnoxious) assignment of responsibility for bad behaviour to the victim of that behaviour. It's the same logical construction as blaming rape victims for their clothing. As for "attract enough attention", the bar for that has been lowered in recent times to "one tweet". These are not happy times to be a private citizen communicating online in anything but the most closed fora.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      OK, but as director of whatever, perhaps one shouldn't be tweeting controversially. And if one is tweeting controversially, perhaps as part of one's job, then one ought to practice good OpSec. This isn't a new issue: http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/anonymity-and-doxing-in-the-1787-ratification-debates/ http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/anonymity-and-doxing-in-the...
nullc 10y ago
> short attention spans and soundbites. Don't use Twitter. It does what it says on the tin-- "Twit", right there in the name.

ksenzee 10y ago

> 99.9% of people that complain about being harassed would be well-served by just not using Twitter. This is a cop-out. You may not need Twitter for your work, but a lot of us do. If I can't use Twitter, I lose an important way to connect to others in my profession (specifically in open source). And I'm an unimportant software developer. What about women in journalism? What about women in entertainment? They need Twitter, and they need it connected to their real-world identity. You might as well tell them "quit walking on the street, or wear a burka, and you won't get harassed or assaulted." It would be the same cop-out. We have police to keep the streets safe. We need Twitter to be safe too.

5thaccount 10y ago
> We need Twitter to be safe too. In theory agree keeping things safe seems great, but I struggle with the idea that we can define "safe" in a way that is reasonable and makes sense, and where the punishment is effective and reasonable. The vast majority of times I have seen claims of harassment, the usual process is that someone makes a controversial statement, then realises the group that objects was larger than they imagined as they receive hundreds and thousands objections, some of which are almost certainly awful. I understand how that can feel like harassment when 10,000 people tweet at you, and in 10,000 tweets half a dozen are guaranteed to sound batshit insane and downright scary, but it isn't harassment to be disagreed with, nor to have ideas that you promote subject to scrutiny. SM amplifies what that scrutiny looks like massively, but pure numbers don't constitute harassment. Nor does people watching everything you say and commenting on it. And this is where it gets tough, nor does having people say mean things about you, because mean is just so subjective. Any definition of harassment is really tricky, and a definition of "safe" is even more difficult, and we haven't even got to the punishment part yet. Ultimately, the idea we can stop people disagreeing, and disagreeing passionately enough to border on troubling, is impossible, and what is needed is a something proactive an individual can do to protect themselves. And I have no idea what that is!
milesrout 10y ago
No it is not the same, it's not the same at all. There's a massive, massive difference between someone on the other side of the world sending a nasty message on Twitter and being harassed in the real world by someone on a dark street at night. These are so completely different that I can't believe that you are so tied up in your views that you forget that. Anyone that would suggest they are the same has clearly not been the recipient of the latter. People have a right to be safe in the real world. Harassing someone physically or verbally as they're walking down the street for wearing religious clothing or a short skirt is completely unacceptable and makes people not feel safe in their own neighbourhood. It's not possible to anonymise yourself in real life. That's completely different from having someone send you a nasty message on the internet. Completely different. Twitter is safe. Nobody can harm you through Twitter. It's simply impossible to harm you through Twitter. What people can do is send you nasty messages through Twitter. You have two solutions: 1. Stop using Twitter, an utterly worthless dis-service that has never produced anything of value, or 2. Get over yourself and grow a thicker skin. >You may not need Twitter for your work, but a lot of us do. No, you don't. You think you do, but you don't. The only people that 'need Twitter' are 'social media' people and quite frankly they're the worst part of Twitter. >If I can't use Twitter, I lose an important way to connect to others in my profession (specifically in open source). No you don't. Twitter is not a good way to connect to anyone. Nobody can have any sort of technical discussion through Twitter without completely subverting Twitter's model through hacks like multi-tweet messages, self-replying, twitlonger, etc. Twitter has never been, is not and never will be a good platform for discussing anything. Use email, like the adult you claim to be. >What about women in journalism? What about women in entertainment? They need Twitter, and they need it connected to their real-world identity. Don't use Twitter. Female journalists have existed for a very long time, much (much) longer than Twitter, and the vast majority of them don't use Twitter. Twitter is a shitty, toxic platform. It's not some sort of official place. It's not a public service. It's not part of our culture. It's a shitty social media site that you should stay away from. Twitter is not useful to journalists. Twitter is not useful to entertainers (and you'd be a fool to think that hate mail to celebrities didn't exist before twitter. They employed people to filter and reply to their fan/hate mail before, they can employ people to filter and reply to their fan/hate tweets now).
- 10y ago

meheleventyone 10y ago

On one hand you could blame the victims for making themselves available targets and tell them to hide. On the other you could blame the perpetrators looking for targets and try to stop them. The former abdicates societal responsibility for the problem and the latter seeks justice. With more of society now online we should be thinking towards the latter rather than cowering in fear?

milesrout 10y ago
Firstly, don't extrapolate and call everyone that's had something rude said to them on the internet a 'victim' just because a very few people have been on the receiving end of genuine harassment. Secondly, nobody is 'telling them to hide'. You can filter out your twitter replies, you can just not read that material. You can read it and say 'wow there are a few nasty people on the internet'. That's up to you. You can also, yes, remove yourself from toxic, shitty sites like Twitter. But what you shouldn't do is read all the nasty shit and then go 'hey this shit is nasty'. Like, yeah, of course it is. What do you expect? That everyone likes you? Stop hitting yourself. TotalBiscuit, a minor YouTube celebrity, has said a few times that he's disabled YouTube comments not because he wants to isolate himself from criticism or because he is so offended and thinks those people should be banned from the internet, but because he had a morbid obsession with reading through all the comments even though he knew some things in there would make him feel hurt. He had a problem (he couldn't stop himself from reading things he knew he'd not like) and so he found a solution: disable the comments on YouTube, and only interact with people on a subreddit that he has people he trusts moderate. That's not 'cowering in fear', it's being an adult and solving problems. He's doing basically the same thing celebrities have been doing with fanmail for centuries: getting someone to filter it out for him. I'm sure many people could get someone to do the same thing with their Twitter replies, and I'm sure many people do. That's your choice, that's their choice. It's not 'abdicating social responsibility', it's not hiding, it's being pragmatic and creating a practical solution to a problem. It doesn't restrict the actions or freedom of others, it doesn't get people arrested or banned from Twitter, it stops you from seeing things you don't like. It's like installing AdBlock instead of legislating that internet ads should not contain pornography because your kids use the computer. How do you propose to 'try to stop them' anyway? I definitely think that real sources of real personal information, like whois records, need an overhaul. It needs to be possible to register a domain, register a company, etc. in a way that still involves your identity (so that people can dispute copyright, Government can collect taxes, you can be arrested if you're hosting child pornography, etc.) without letting any random person on the internet type in a shell command and getting my home address. And it shouldn't just be 'the Government can access it and nobody else can', that's a shitty solution (although probably better than the current one). Ignoring that (which is a real problem, unlike 'OMG I got a nasty message on twitter telling me to kill myself, whatever shall I do? Shall I just ignore it, like an adult? No, I'm going to throw a tantrum about it despite being a 26-year-old professional journalist'), what do you propose that 'we' as 'society' should 'do' about the 'problem' of people sending rude messages on Twitter?

inopinatus 10y ago

> 2. They've never been the focus of a harassment campaign because they're not stupid enough to put their personal details out there on the internet and then be surprised that people will use that to harass them. They also don't feed the trolls in the first place. This is a) simple victim blaming and b) impossible to fix in some situations. Illustration of (b) is that the companies of which I'm a director are a matter of public record, and for very little money indeed you can buy online a copy of that record including my home address and telephone number.

mirimir 10y ago
Can't you use a POB and special business number? It's not "victim blaming". It's just what's so. With the Internet, every obnoxious jerk on the planet can come after you, if you attract enough attention.
- inopinatus 10y ago
  No, here in Australia, director's information must be place of residence; although there is a process for suppression or replacement based on personal safety needs, for most that'd be closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. What's more, the information is still in the database, it's just masked in standard extracts; the data is one weak password away from exfiltration. I believe it is most certainly victim blaming. The existence of terrible people may well induce one to recommend countermeasures, but the phrasing "stupid enough to put their personal details out there" is first-class (and thoroughly obnoxious) assignment of responsibility for bad behaviour to the victim of that behaviour. It's the same logical construction as blaming rape victims for their clothing. As for "attract enough attention", the bar for that has been lowered in recent times to "one tweet". These are not happy times to be a private citizen communicating online in anything but the most closed fora.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    OK, but as director of whatever, perhaps one shouldn't be tweeting controversially. And if one is tweeting controversially, perhaps as part of one's job, then one ought to practice good OpSec. This isn't a new issue: http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/anonymity-and-doxing-in-the-1787-ratification-debates/ http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/anonymity-and-doxing-in-the...

nullc 10y ago

> short attention spans and soundbites. Don't use Twitter. It does what it says on the tin-- "Twit", right there in the name.