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

[floatboth]

I wonder if we can get mainstream media attention if the journalists will see the amount of crap people get…

I mean, not "someone has posted", but a web app that allows people to post the threatening, harassing, trolling, offensive comments and emails they get. With statistics, of course. For email, just select everything and forward.

For filtering, how about a voting system that'll count votes from users logged in with Dreamwidth OpenIDs as 10? Or does anyone who's here really want to specifically read the shit other people get and decide if it's really offensive?

Of course, most assholes won't stop being assholes after seeing an article about what they're doing in a newspaper (or just the content itself). But this can do good. Like, I don't know, parents paying more attention to making sure their children aren't misogynist/homophobic/transphobic/racist? People who aren't actively harassing anyone (thinking that being gay is unnatural, not respecting women enough, trying to avoid black people, whatever) becoming allies, or at least just understanding these people don't deserve it?

[(Anonymous)]

I think there's a serious risk that any kind system that tries to shame trolls will be perverted into an inverse-gamified game of "who can troll the hardest"