The Inevitable Death of the Internet Troll

HughPickens.com writes James Swearingen writes at The Atlantic that the Internet can be a mean, hateful, and frightening place — especially for young women but human behavior and the limits placed on it by both law and society can change. In a Pew Research Center survey of 2,849 Internet users, one out of every four women between 18 years old and 24 years old reports having been stalked or sexually harassed online. "Like banner ads and spam bots, online harassment is still routinely treated as part of the landscape of being online," writes Swearingen adding that "we are in the early days of online harassment being taken as a serious problem, and not simply a quirk of online life." Law professor Danielle Citron draws a parallel between how sexual harassment was treated in the workplace decades ago and our current standard. "Think about in the 1960s and 1970s, what we said to women in the workplace," says Citron. "'This is just flirting.' That a sexually hostile environment was just a perk for men to enjoy, it's just what the environment is like. If you don't like it, leave and get a new job." It took years of activism, court cases, and Title VII protection to change that. "Here we are today, and sexual harassment in the workplace is not normal," said Citron. "Our norms and how we understand it are different now."

According to Swearingen, the likely solution to internet trolls will be a combination of things. The expansion of laws like the one currently on the books in California, which expands what constitutes online harassment, could help put the pressure on harassers. The upcoming Supreme Court case, Elonis v. The United States, looks to test the limits of free speech versus threatening comments on Facebook. "Can a combination of legal action, market pressure, and societal taboo work together to curb harassment?" asks Swearingen. "Too many people do too much online for things to stay the way they are."

Comments

Re:Not just women

[DarkOx]

Women generally are the ones who get offended and emotional about this stuff,

Nice troll.

Re: Semantics

[PvtVoid]

Its the feminist definition. They can go around dressed like whores, but if you dare look and make them even the slightest bit uncomfortable, that's harrasment.

And I guess you're the person who gets to decide what's "dressing like a whore" and what isn't, right? Because what the world truly needs is you telling women how they are and are not allowed to dress.

Slashdot, Stop Spinning the GamerGate Content

[Kunedog]

One reason this topic pops up so suspiciously often lately is that Slashdot wants to cover Gamergate, but doesn't want to be upfront or honest that it's doing so (and taking a side). Two months in, there has yet to be a straightforward article summary/thread covering the journalistic lapses, the universal media blackout including user comment/forum censorship, and the desperate synchronized "Gamers Are Dead" propaganda blast.

Disagreement is not trolling. Refusing to fund contemptful clickbait is not trolling. Exposing corruption is not trolling. The submission template of "misogyny, harrassment, terrorism, misogyny, harrassment, terrorism . . . oh btw Gamergate" (even if the GG mention only comes in the extended summary or TFA) has one purpose: a thinly veiled smear. And it doesn't fool us.

Someone else accused Slashdot of censoring Gamergate coverage in the firehose, as in outright deleting multiple submissions that had been voted up. A year ago I still had enough respect for Slashdot to give it the benefit of the doubt, but the condescension and contempt demonstrated by the Beta fiasco and the abysmally one-sided GG submissions has taken care of that.

Re:Semantics

[rochrist]

Jesus, come out of your Mom's basement.

Re:No chance

[ultranova]

queue the tumblrina's with "just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's not real"

Which is false, that's exactly what it means. A random internet meanie saying something that bothers you is kind of like letting a barking dog hurt your feelings. =/

A barking dog might not hurt anyone's feelings, but one that's growling and running at you is a legitimate cause to assume you are in danger and react accordingly. Lots of trolls aren't saying "your mom's fat", they're saying "I'm coming to kill you in your home at Hummingbird Line 1".

Another problem with your analogy is that a dog barking at you doesn't affect how any dogs you might meet in the future interact with you. On the other hand, humans take their cues about how to behave and even how to think from their environment. A random internet meanie saying something that bothers me makes the ideas they expressed seem more acceptable to anyone who hears him, thus shifting the culture into a direction I don't like. That's how propaganda (and brainwashing) works: if people hear something repeated often enough, they start accepting it as truth, or at the very least accept it as something the group believes and thus they must at least pretend to least they get excluded, no matter how absurd it might be.

So, whether the Internet is a magical wonderland outside of reality or not, and whether people using it have or should have the emotional sensitivity of rocks and the willingness to be virtual punching bags, it doesn't matter, since the crap you take on others there will stink up reality too. And that means its going to stop, the only question being whether it stops because people stop acting like crazy assholes, or because all the crazy assholes are busy making Bubba the Prison Rapist an insanely happy man.