5 ms·

Are we talking about online comments, or real-world harrassment? They are two different topics.

• ch4s3 9y ago
  I'm talking about three things here, online harassment, how that activity can bleed into the real world, and how it's hard to tell when the second thing is beginning to happen. When does harassment slip into incitement for example? When does brigading by trolls shut down the online spaces of marginalized groups and make them less safe in real life for lack of a digital space to organize? Doxing again, is online harassment that may have nasty effects in the physical world, as does outing people based on their hidden minority status e.g. sexual orientation. Online and real world harassment aren't two different things is more or less my conclusion. They are different vectors for similar anti-social behavior. Would you defend someone following another person around every public space they visit screaming in their face as free speech and say the victim should toughen up? I doubt you would, and in fact it probably constitutes several crimes depending upon where you live. You could probably get a restraining order. Blocking online works similarly, but you have to do it site by site, alias by alias which doesn't scale. However, many of the tactics that trolls use scale rather well. So I think platforms have some responsibility here.