Feeding the trolls

[mjg59]

A few years ago I got up on stage and briefly talked about how the Linux community contained far too many people who were willing to engage in entirely inappropriate behaviour, how this discouraged people from getting involved and how we weren't very good at standing up against that sort of behaviour. Despite doing this in front of several hundred people, and despite the video of me doing so then being uploaded to the internet, this got me a sum total of:

• No death threats
• No discussion about any of my physical attributes or lack thereof
• No stalkers
• No accusations that I was selling out the Linux community
• No accusations that I was a traitor to my gender
• No real negative feedback at all[1]

Which is, really, what you'd expect, right? The internet seems intent on telling me otherwise:

Well, she didn't do herself any favors by talking at conferences about women in tech, or setting up a feminist movement. If you wanted to attract abuse, that's a good way to go about it. It should be expected.
(Source)

MikeeUSA is a troll. He has no means to actually harm anyone, and he does it purely for the lulz.

Thus, MikeeUSA trolled a woman, and she took the bait. I just don't get why this is news, I've been trolled before, I don't get a news story.
(Source)

I was going to start a rant about how this behavior is encouraged by the macho men online, but this was just one guy harassing her. "Due to harassment" reads as due to harassment from the community, but she gave in to one idiot. She let him win.
(Source)

The full comment thread has rather more examples. If you stand up and say anything controversial, you should expect abuse. And if you let that abuse change your behaviour in any way, you've let the trolls win.

These attitudes are problematic.

The immediate assumption underlying such advice is that the degree of abuse is related to what you've said, not who you are. I'm reasonably visible in the geek world. I've said a few controversial things. The worst thing that's happened to me has been Ryan Farmer deciding to subscribe me to several thousand mailing lists. Inconvenient, but not really threatening. I haven't, for instance, been sent death threats. Nobody has threatened to rape me. And even if they had done, I wouldn't need to worry too much - there's a rather stronger track record of violent antifeminism being targeted at women than men.

I don't have to worry about this kind of thing. That means I don't get to tell other people that they should have expected it. Nor do I get to tell them that they should ignore it, or that if they don't call the police then they have no grounds to complain. And nor does anyone else.

The trolls don't win because someone decides that getting out of the tech business is more appealing than continuing to face abuse. The trolls win because we consider their behaviour acceptable and then blame the victim for inviting them in the first place. That needs to change.

[1] It was justifiably pointed out that saying all this while standing on stage next to a mostly naked guy wearing a loincloth with a raccoon tail covering his penis may have weakened my message somewhat.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder how many tongue-in-cheek versions of all of the above types of negative feedback you'll get as a result of *this* post?

[floatboth]

Also, Skud quit a tech job which involved going to conferences. Not the geek feminism community!

Community

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Matthew. The behaviour of the person that's harrassing this woman is unacceptable, probably criminal. I can't see how it's possible to excuse it.

To be honest, I can't see how the comments you quote can be seen as an excuse for this behaviour.

I wouldn't have made these comments myself. But you fail to address what the comments are really saying: that you can't blame the community for the behaviour of an individual, specially if the individual in question is clearly a scumbag that should be in jail or an asylum.

Should "the community" be more supportive of the victims of such behaviour? I would say yes, of course. But putting blame and shame on people you want support from is not as good an idea as you might believe.

[jack]

Well said.

[denise]

Man, all the people who keep talking about "letting the trolls win" can have ... *counts on fingers* seven years of my inbox, and see if that makes them just a wee bit disinclined to keep doing this shit.

And Skud's been in tech longer than I have. I honestly don't know how she managed it for as long as she did.

[reddragdiva]

Hacker News comments are YouTube quality with bigger words and better spelling. These morons are our brightest startup flowers? We're doomed.

[(Anonymous)]

Every time I read these types of articles I get so confused :/

[(Anonymous)]

For the record, because I don't think it gets said nearly enough: I'm male, and I find the comments quoted in this post offensive too.

Personally, I find these comments offensive because of the premise they started from: that blaming the victim is OK for trolling in general, because they "took the bait". I don't find that acceptable behavior for any kind of troll.

I can understand where the logic came from (treating everyone the same), but that logic started from a faulty premise.

[lnr]

Can I just say "thanks" here, for the fact you're still fighting this stuff, when it's so much easier to give up.

[(Anonymous)]

Sir, get your bleeding mangina in check. It's embarrassing you.

It's frankly amazing that Red Hat tolerates you.

[(Anonymous)]

Always the first to jump to Microsoft's defense when they bribe motherboard vendors to sabotage Linux.

I'm not surprised to see you jump up and start attacking people who claim Secure Boot is what it is, a ploy to lock people into using Windows and OS X.

Maybe this is because your employer doesn't care if Joe Everyone can go out and buy a PC to boot Linux on. Red Hat can probably get a signing key for whatever they decide to ship or certify RHEL on, but a guy that gets a PC with an expensive placeholder like Windows will be screwed.

-Ryan Farmer