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 r

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?