1. I know of weev from hacker circles. He really is this douchetastic. But what's really insane to me is that there's a bunch of women in the hacker scene who adore him. I couldn't quite understand it, until I saw them also adore Adrian Lamo, and so my theory is very close to Kathy's here: hero worship distorts reality. In order to stop people from enabling abusive trolls like this, someone has to debunk the hero status. Which is a lot more difficult than it sounds.
2. Being a troll is about one thing, and one thing only: power. The power to abuse someone and laugh and get away with it. The essential requirement of trolling is that you make someone upset. So there's a very real requirement that you do not respond in the way the troll wants in order for them to put their attention on something else. But trolls are varied, and sometimes they'll just keep plugging away at you. In cases like these you have to change tactics, though there's no guarantee anything will definitely put them off.
3. In general, trolls have goals. Usually it's to harass you until you literally disappear into the ether. Once they can't find any trace of you anymore, they have nothing left to do, and so they find another target. In this sense it's sometimes necessary to literally leave the [online or physical] community you face harassment in, or find a way to force the troll out of it. In either case it's basically a war, and you have to decide to either abandon the area or fight it out to the death.
4. I believe I understand why she was targeted. She has opinions that some people hate. Why, I have no frigging idea; ask a shrink. The point is, when people hate something, they lash out. And the internet is basically a hate delivery mechanism. And here's my opinion that will probably get me downvoted into hell: there is no way to stop this, other than leaving the internet.
Editorial rant (sorry about the length):
Being abused was not Kathy's fault. Unfortunately, you don't have to do anything at all to be abused on the internet. Just your picture, or a handle, or anything can be fodder for trolls. You can do absolutely nothing but exist and people will still try to abuse you.
In my opinion, from what I know of the internet, there is virtually no way to stop someone that hates you from abusing you here. There are no closed systems on the internet. E-mail is public, Twitter is intended to be public, but even if you make it private there's still a picture and a handle to start with (AND you can still direct tweets at private accounts), with Facebook you can avoid non-friends but not on comment sections, and on top of it all these accounts can be hacked. Private information like address, SS#, phone, etc can all be gotten incredibly, stupidly easily, without you ever going online. The internet is the easiest attack platform there is.
If you are visible in any way, you are a potential target for trolls, period. And I don't see any simple solution to any of this. We could re-design our internet services to protect people's privacy and anonymity better from abuse, but this wouldn't protect people who want to publish works like Kathy has. We could try to develop better tools to combat trolling, but that might become an arms race, who knows. Maybe we need to require a ss# and a picture ID for people to make accounts on social media. But regular accounts might just get hacked to be used as sock puppets.
So perhaps there is no technical solution. Perhaps we just need to change the way our entire society treats itself, both online and off. Peacefully boycott sources of abuse, negativity, ridicule and scorn online (i'm looking at you, every-forum-on-the-internet). Combat the causes of insecurity and fear and hate. Provide more social services to support the emotional welfare of all people. Something other than band-aids and coalitions. Maybe it'll never happen in our lifetimes, but at some point we've got to sit down and figure out a way to encourage people to be compassionate, or we're all doomed in the much larger picture of world-wide human affairs.
>> mechanism. And here's my opinion that will probably get me downvoted into hell: there is no way to stop this, other than leaving the internet.
What about ending anonymity? Much as I like the idea of remaining annoymous online (not that I am here), there are legal means to deal with the extreme end of the trolling spectrum so long as you can identify them.
The next issue that pops up of course is privacy. We need to end anonymity while making privacy the default. But that allows criminals to communicate privately - they can now, but it takes effort and many don't know how.
Two comments. First, weev is known, not anonymous. That hasn't seemed to stop him, if Kathy's post can be believed.
Second, do you remember the old Smurf attack? You sent pings to a bunch of networks' broadcast address, with a forged address. So the machines on the networks replied to the pings. For one packet sent out, you could get a hundred aimed at the victim's machine. You can wind up with something like that here: If you end anonymity, then someone can forge something horrible as coming from you, and all the honest, morally upright people online will come down on you in outrage. (In her article, Kathy mentions trolls/harassers already using tactics like this.)
There is no such thing as total security, and so there is no such thing as total privacy, nor anonymity. And at the same time, there's no way to completely track everything done online (or in person), as there's always a way to cover your tracks. But none of that address the human behavior aspect.
If you have a room full of people and someone is saying something bigoted, a couple things happen. One, if others agree with the person, they will clump together and gain strength. Two, if they are shunned, they simply go to a corner of the room where nobody minds them and they're allowed to continue. The bigger the room, the more people there are, thus both of these factors simply amplify the behavior. And the internet is the biggest room in the world.
It's quite easy for this stuff to propagate, anonymous or not. Even if public shaming worked they'd just go underground. Most people who have shitty opinions actually believe in them and will defend them if challenged. So whether you 'expose' someone or not won't typically change their thoughts, and thus not their behavior either.
Congratulations, now you've opened up a lot of trans, gay, and other minority-status people to endless physical harassment every time they use the Internet in their preferred personae.
> We need to end anonymity while making privacy the default.
The only way I can understand this is if it's like the postal service without postcards: Senders and recipients are known, but message contents aren't. This... works, I suppose, but it removes nearly all the benefits the Internet provides.
I think this is, to put it mildly, undemonstrated.
The KKK wore hoods for a reason. Sure, there were plenty of racists willing to be open about their views. But letting people be anonymous assholes greatly increases the awfulness.
Weev's public identity is known. That didn't stop him from trolling or harassing the subject of the article.
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EDIT: also, the Penny Arcade comic you linked was from 2004, literally 2 or 3 years before the invention of youtube and long before Twitter and Facebook existed.
The opinion contained in the said comic does not, and cannot apply to the modern internet, where Anonymity is beginning to be stripped away and yet the trolling / harassing problems are clearly remaining.
Indeed, it has only gotten easier to get doxxed online and humiliated by the trolls, now that we communicate through Facebook and our names are attached to us in Google / Youtube / everything.
I'm glad we both agree that you have demonstrated no evidence for your views.
As I already said, some people will be assholes under their own names, because they're just that awful. But that proves nothing about how many people would be assholes when they can evade accountability.
True, no hard evidence either way. But real hard evidence is rather hard to come by.
I'm more worried about the people who shy away from online conversations when anonymity is stripped away. Anonymity is my _only_ protection from harassing trolls like Weev.
If I didn't feel secure in my thoughts, I wouldn't be able to talk frankly to you, and I'd leave.
I wasn't talking about opinions, I was talking about threats. If one of those racists advocates violence against a specific persons, they will get a visit (so long as someone notifies the the police) Sure, if you don't want to see opinions you need to avoid the people that have ones you don't like.
1. I know of weev from hacker circles. He really is this douchetastic. But what's really insane to me is that there's a bunch of women in the hacker scene who adore him. I couldn't quite understand it, until I saw them also adore Adrian Lamo, and so my theory is very close to Kathy's here: hero worship distorts reality. In order to stop people from enabling abusive trolls like this, someone has to debunk the hero status. Which is a lot more difficult than it sounds.
2. Being a troll is about one thing, and one thing only: power. The power to abuse someone and laugh and get away with it. The essential requirement of trolling is that you make someone upset. So there's a very real requirement that you do not respond in the way the troll wants in order for them to put their attention on something else. But trolls are varied, and sometimes they'll just keep plugging away at you. In cases like these you have to change tactics, though there's no guarantee anything will definitely put them off.
3. In general, trolls have goals. Usually it's to harass you until you literally disappear into the ether. Once they can't find any trace of you anymore, they have nothing left to do, and so they find another target. In this sense it's sometimes necessary to literally leave the [online or physical] community you face harassment in, or find a way to force the troll out of it. In either case it's basically a war, and you have to decide to either abandon the area or fight it out to the death.
4. I believe I understand why she was targeted. She has opinions that some people hate. Why, I have no frigging idea; ask a shrink. The point is, when people hate something, they lash out. And the internet is basically a hate delivery mechanism. And here's my opinion that will probably get me downvoted into hell: there is no way to stop this, other than leaving the internet.
Editorial rant (sorry about the length):
Being abused was not Kathy's fault. Unfortunately, you don't have to do anything at all to be abused on the internet. Just your picture, or a handle, or anything can be fodder for trolls. You can do absolutely nothing but exist and people will still try to abuse you.
In my opinion, from what I know of the internet, there is virtually no way to stop someone that hates you from abusing you here. There are no closed systems on the internet. E-mail is public, Twitter is intended to be public, but even if you make it private there's still a picture and a handle to start with (AND you can still direct tweets at private accounts), with Facebook you can avoid non-friends but not on comment sections, and on top of it all these accounts can be hacked. Private information like address, SS#, phone, etc can all be gotten incredibly, stupidly easily, without you ever going online. The internet is the easiest attack platform there is.
If you are visible in any way, you are a potential target for trolls, period. And I don't see any simple solution to any of this. We could re-design our internet services to protect people's privacy and anonymity better from abuse, but this wouldn't protect people who want to publish works like Kathy has. We could try to develop better tools to combat trolling, but that might become an arms race, who knows. Maybe we need to require a ss# and a picture ID for people to make accounts on social media. But regular accounts might just get hacked to be used as sock puppets.
So perhaps there is no technical solution. Perhaps we just need to change the way our entire society treats itself, both online and off. Peacefully boycott sources of abuse, negativity, ridicule and scorn online (i'm looking at you, every-forum-on-the-internet). Combat the causes of insecurity and fear and hate. Provide more social services to support the emotional welfare of all people. Something other than band-aids and coalitions. Maybe it'll never happen in our lifetimes, but at some point we've got to sit down and figure out a way to encourage people to be compassionate, or we're all doomed in the much larger picture of world-wide human affairs.