4 ms·

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 surfa

by jMyles 12y ago

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.

rjknight 12y ago
> For the most part, high-profile "targets" from the troll's perspective are already known to the public anyway. According to Dunbar's number, the average human can maintain meaningful social relations with around 150 people. If you have more than 150 followers on Twitter, you therefore must have followers who are not known to you personally, viz. "the public". That makes most of us "known to the public" in some way. Calls to action matter. History has plenty of examples of situations in which somebody manages to provoke a group of people into attacking some individual by selectively or misleadingly disclosing information about that person, even if that information is untrue or nonsensical. My favourite example is the case of a mob attacking the home of a British paediatrician after someone confused the word "paediatrician" with "paedophile"[1] (yes, this actually happened). This could happen to anyone, and the information being released doesn't even need to be true. Are you sure you've never done anything publicly that couldn't be twisted against you by a sufficiently malevolent person? And if you haven't, what would stop them from just making something up? [1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.society http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.so...
- thesteamboat 12y ago
  Furthermore mobs are much easier to rile up than to disperse. I'd suspect the problem is even worse online where the mob is distributed and whose only coordination is around mutually inciting each other. Literary evidence from Shakespeare, when a mob wishes to avenge Caeser's death, from Julius Caeser, Act 3 Scene 3: Third Citizen Your name, sir, truly. CINNA THE POET Truly, my name is Cinna. First Citizen Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator. CINNA THE POET I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet. Fourth Citizen Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
pmjordan 12y ago
Ugh. At the very least, this kind of victim blaming attitude and lack of empathy is presumably exactly the setup for people jumping on the harassment bandwagon without thinking things through. 1. You're pretty much advocating mob rule. Also, are you seriously comparing the threat that internet hate-mongers vs. the NSA poses to the average Joe or Jane with an internet persona? I dislike corporate and government spying as much as the next person, but what immediate threat does the NSA pose to Kathy? 2. It's not hard to dream up a scenario (any immediate severe danger to one or more members of the public?) which, once the police starts believing the "witnesses", would make it irresponsible for them not to act on it. You just need enough "witnesses". From what I gather, the attitudes of some police forces, particularly in the US, could certainly do with adjusting, but that's an entirely separate problem. 3. Yes, as I'm sure you'll remember from the OP, once someone gets beaten up or worse, the authorities will take an interest. Not before that. You can't run around in real life constantly threatening people with violence, what makes it OK to do so via electronic media?
- rjknight 12y ago
  I didn't see any victim-blaming in that post - the victim is obviously due our full sympathy in each and every case. The question is what to do about it. The OP suggests that we might be able to form better communities, suggesting that the existence of communities in which this kind of thing does not happen proves that it must be possible. The GP appears to disagree, believing that we need technical and legal solutions to the problem instead. That's something about which reasonable people can disagree.
  - pmjordan 12y ago
    Victim blaming/"they deserve it": "For the most part, high-profile "targets" from the troll's perspective are already known to the public anyway."
    - paddyoloughlin 12y ago
      I read that differently from you. I think the author was simply pointing out that well-known people are well known, so their privacy is, almost by definition, limited anyway.
valas 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    You'd be surprised how happily people will make abusive and hateful comments on sites with facebook comments.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 12y ago
  The real-names policy is itself a vector of "trolling", especially transphobia and homophobia; when it was instituted on Facebook some people took it upon themselves to report drag queens and transpeople in very large numbers.
Pitarou 12y ago
I don't know what the solution to the troll problem is, but I don't think anti-epilepsy filters are a part of it, any more than I think bulletproof vests are a solution to gun violence.
- scribu 12y ago
  I don't know; I think anti-epilepsy filters can be a _part_ of the solution (at least for the epilepsy trolling sub-problem), among many other things. Bulletproof vests aren't a solution to gun violence due to practical reasons (uncomfortable, expensive, only protect your torso, not your head etc.), most of which wouldn't necessarily apply to software.

by jMyles 12y ago

rjknight 12y ago

> For the most part, high-profile "targets" from the troll's perspective are already known to the public anyway. According to Dunbar's number, the average human can maintain meaningful social relations with around 150 people. If you have more than 150 followers on Twitter, you therefore must have followers who are not known to you personally, viz. "the public". That makes most of us "known to the public" in some way. Calls to action matter. History has plenty of examples of situations in which somebody manages to provoke a group of people into attacking some individual by selectively or misleadingly disclosing information about that person, even if that information is untrue or nonsensical. My favourite example is the case of a mob attacking the home of a British paediatrician after someone confused the word "paediatrician" with "paedophile"[1] (yes, this actually happened). This could happen to anyone, and the information being released doesn't even need to be true. Are you sure you've never done anything publicly that couldn't be twisted against you by a sufficiently malevolent person? And if you haven't, what would stop them from just making something up? [1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.society http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.so...

thesteamboat 12y ago
Furthermore mobs are much easier to rile up than to disperse. I'd suspect the problem is even worse online where the mob is distributed and whose only coordination is around mutually inciting each other. Literary evidence from Shakespeare, when a mob wishes to avenge Caeser's death, from Julius Caeser, Act 3 Scene 3: Third Citizen Your name, sir, truly. CINNA THE POET Truly, my name is Cinna. First Citizen Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator. CINNA THE POET I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet. Fourth Citizen Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.

pmjordan 12y ago

Ugh. At the very least, this kind of victim blaming attitude and lack of empathy is presumably exactly the setup for people jumping on the harassment bandwagon without thinking things through. 1. You're pretty much advocating mob rule. Also, are you seriously comparing the threat that internet hate-mongers vs. the NSA poses to the average Joe or Jane with an internet persona? I dislike corporate and government spying as much as the next person, but what immediate threat does the NSA pose to Kathy? 2. It's not hard to dream up a scenario (any immediate severe danger to one or more members of the public?) which, once the police starts believing the "witnesses", would make it irresponsible for them not to act on it. You just need enough "witnesses". From what I gather, the attitudes of some police forces, particularly in the US, could certainly do with adjusting, but that's an entirely separate problem. 3. Yes, as I'm sure you'll remember from the OP, once someone gets beaten up or worse, the authorities will take an interest. Not before that. You can't run around in real life constantly threatening people with violence, what makes it OK to do so via electronic media?

rjknight 12y ago
I didn't see any victim-blaming in that post - the victim is obviously due our full sympathy in each and every case. The question is what to do about it. The OP suggests that we might be able to form better communities, suggesting that the existence of communities in which this kind of thing does not happen proves that it must be possible. The GP appears to disagree, believing that we need technical and legal solutions to the problem instead. That's something about which reasonable people can disagree.
- pmjordan 12y ago
  Victim blaming/"they deserve it": "For the most part, high-profile "targets" from the troll's perspective are already known to the public anyway."
  - paddyoloughlin 12y ago
    I read that differently from you. I think the author was simply pointing out that well-known people are well known, so their privacy is, almost by definition, limited anyway.

valas 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  You'd be surprised how happily people will make abusive and hateful comments on sites with facebook comments.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 12y ago
The real-names policy is itself a vector of "trolling", especially transphobia and homophobia; when it was instituted on Facebook some people took it upon themselves to report drag queens and transpeople in very large numbers.

Pitarou 12y ago

I don't know what the solution to the troll problem is, but I don't think anti-epilepsy filters are a part of it, any more than I think bulletproof vests are a solution to gun violence.

scribu 12y ago
I don't know; I think anti-epilepsy filters can be a _part_ of the solution (at least for the epilepsy trolling sub-problem), among many other things. Bulletproof vests aren't a solution to gun violence due to practical reasons (uncomfortable, expensive, only protect your torso, not your head etc.), most of which wouldn't necessarily apply to software.