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Former MLB Pitcher Doxes Internet Trolls, Delivers Real-World Consequences
An anonymous reader writes: When Twitter trolls began posting obscene, sexually explicit comments about his teenage daughter, former MLB pitcher Curt Schilling responded by recording their comments and gathering personal information readily available to the public. He then doxxed two of them on his blog, resulting in one being suspended from his community college and the other being fired from his part-time job as a ticket seller for the New York Yankees. There were seven others in Curt's crosshairs, all college athletes, but although he hasn't publicly doxxed those individuals, he hints, "I found it rather funny at how quickly tone changed when I heard via email from a few athletes who'd been suspended by their coaches. Gone was the tough guy tweeter, replaced by the 'I'm so sorry' apology used by those only sorry because they got caught."
There are far too many sociopaths in the world, and the Internet seems to be a perfect playground for their misanthropy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's using information to garner a public lynching response. Just because the information exists somewhere public doesn't mean it's not doxxing. My drivers license is public information. But if you put it next to a "guy flips old lady the bird" video on YouTube, you are inciting a public response. You are conveniently linking data to the emotional information that would incite someone to act.
But that's just like, uh, my opinion man. So feel free to disagree.
The guys who were just messing around with stuff like "Can't wait to date her!" he responded in kind, and the people who were total shits he took the gloves off with.
So shitposters are allowed to be as vile as is possible to be, and nobody is allowed to do anything to fight back or we're "stooping to their level."
How very convenient... for the shitposters.
Let me guess, you still believe the "don't feed the trolls" line? And I guess you also fell for "if you ignore them they'll stop teasing you" too? Most kids eventually discover that the only way to actually make that stop is to, completely out of the blue and unexpectedly, knock the teaser's front teeth out... and that's basically what Schilling did.
There's a reason why no culture on Earth uses the idiom "as smart as a troll."
Likewise "as pretty as an airport." -Douglas Adams.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
is that sooner or later we're all witches.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
The irresponsibility with which the modern media operates astounds me. The cheerleading tone of this article is unmissable. We are supposed to rise from our seats and applaud this sportsmensch who hunted down the skeeves speaking ill of his daughter. And hey, on one level, I do.
But here's a little perspective that NJ.com apparently can't be counted on to supply. Just because this case is pretty black and white doesn't mean they all will be. The next time, some jackass will create social networking profiles with breadcrumbs leading back to their real target, and with minimal effort will get a Curt Schilling to do the dirty work, and bear the legal liability, for them.
This is why we have police departments. I fully recognize that they've deteriorated in capability and trustworthiness, losing their role as guardians of the real public interest to politics and less esoteric concerns like meeting budgets and justifying headcounts, but that's a reason to fix what's broken about our system, not replace it with every-man-for-himself vigilantism.
The comments were horrific. Directed at her, because she was his daughter. Her only "crime" was being the daughter of a sports star. She had done nothing, but comments ranged from raping her, to penetrating her with a baseball bat.
I hope every one of these sick little fuckers loses their job, gets kicked out of school *and* has their name attached to the story. I want somebody to find these comments *every* time that one of these guys is googled, forever.
This shit won't stop until there are actual consequences. It won't ever stop completely, but it could certainly help.
For example, "murder" is someone kills someone else, be it by accident, pre-mediated, etc.
Incorrect, and also a terrible example for the point you're trying to make. Murder is the malicious, unlawful killing of someone. It is certainly *not* appropriate to use "murder" to describe an accident. Manslaughter is killing someone with mitigating legal circumstances. Accidentally kiling someone is usually called involuntary manslaughter.
The Salem Witch Trials were good thing. After all, there might have been some real witches there.
In this case you have people literally flying around on metaphorical brooms on Twitter.
If there had been actual witches eating children, are you saying they should have done nothing? Because that's what you are saying should be done in the case of people talking on Twitter about how they want to rape his daughter.
We aren't talking about witch-hunts here against people who have done nothing. We are talking about bringing consequences to people who in fact HAVE done something and expect nothing to happen as a result.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Come on, you realistically expect the police to handle every case like this?
Police departments that currently exist? Not in every case we'd be talking about, no. We evidently need something new, but that something new is more like a police department than mob justice.
This is no different from having a reasonable right to self defense to protect your life.
The claim that mob internet justice is "no different" than individual right to self-defense is so utterly ridiculous that it borders on not worth responding to. Here is a rather meaningful difference: when you're going to shoot someone, you can see them and know what you're aiming at. I guess you didn't think of that.
If you are being harassed online you should be able to do something about it
I completely concur. That's the point of what I'm saying. You totally should be able to do something about it, and that something should not require you to become a private investigator, politician, lawyer, judge, and security guard. Nor should it only be available to those with enough resources: time, money, knowledge, physical or intellectual capabilities, etcetera.
The earlier you take action, the more you cut off the really bad stuff.
This behavior pattern - acting before thinking it through - leads to what's called "flailing". Experts will tell you pretty universally that this is one of the worst things to do if you're being stalked and harassed on the internet.
What if what is broken is having inherent trust in the system to do everything for you?
Then you've engaged in a strawman. Nothing about what I've just said demands "having inherent trust in the system to do everything for you".
The police only investigate serious crimes or imminent threats where either a lot of money or someone's life is on the line, and even then, they aren't fast, accurate, or trustworthy. The legal system does not have the time or the motivation or the resources to deal with what is the online equivalent of schoolyard antics.
That is not to say what these idiots were doing was trivial or harmless. But let's put it this way: suppose every time you had someone come up to you and say something completely disgusting and violent to your face, that your response was to do absolutely NOTHING except file a police report, do you really think that would stop such behavior? If someone punched you, are you just going to stand there and not defend yourself, instead electing to wait until you can go to the nearest station and file a report?
The bottom line is that you cannot reasonably expect to have a free internet while at the same time tell the government or law enforcement that users must be held accountable for their online actions. People suggesting that victims simply shrug off such behavior are either themselves psychopaths or have never themselves been the target of such abuse. And to then call out the victim for vigilantism is the height of delusion. Oh, but what if this opens up a slippery slope of unchecked vigilantism and real-world consequences for people who are the mistaken subject of retaliation?
Um,... I have some news for you: it's already lawless out there. It has always been. You can't simultaneously tell people to shrug off the trolls because "oh well that's the internet for you," yet cry foul when people fight back, saying "but what if innocent people lose their jobs?" That's hypocrisy. People are already suffering real-world consequences of the behaviors of trolls. You are just selectively inured to it because it happens a LOT more often and it's been going on for a lot longer than people successfully fighting back...and when they do fight back, it goes viral and makes the news because so many people are so desperate for a solution that it feels good to see the good guy winning for once.
That should tell you how completely nonexistent civility is in the online realm. People SHOULD be accountable for their actions online. But don't fucking tell me that it's the job of the government to do that for me, because we all know how PERFECTLY that works. What a joke. Accountability is not actually kicking someone in the balls for being a jackass. It's being able to carry out the promise of that consequence.
The trolls threatened to rape his daughter.
He exposed their identity leading them to be kicked off their teams due to their actions.
I fail to see how he "stooped to their level." Did he threaten them with violence? Did he pledge to jam a baseball bat up their rear? Did he post their address and claim he was going there to beat them to a bloody pulp? No. He just mentioned who they were. That was it.
I'm sick of this "posting graphic statements saying you're going to rape someone and then claiming 'just joking' when you're called on it." I'm sick of people even trying to claim freedom of speech. We have freedom of speech, but not freedom of consequence. If you threaten someone with violence (and, yes, raping someone *IS* violence), don't expect to use "freedom of speech" as a Get Out Of Jail Free card.
Part of this is personal for me. Growing up, I was bullied by a group of kids. I'm male, so the bullying didn't involve rape threats, but it did involve following me around and taunting me. Every. Single. School Day. Multiple times a day. Doors to my classroom would be blocked so I'd have to push past them enduring more taunts. I began to become paranoid that anyone who was laughing was laughing at me. One push one way or another and I could have been another story of a teen taking his own life or going out in a blaze of bullets. Luckily, a friend of mine spoke with my bullies who backed off. Turns out they just thought they were "having a little fun".
And this is what galls me the most. The trolls' friends telling Curt that this was all just kids "having fun." Because, apparently, some kids are so psychopathic that they can't even begin to fathom what their "fun" does to people until it is either made blindingly obvious to them or until they suffer personal consequences.
As a father and as a victim of bullying, I applaud Curt for what he did. He didn't get violent. He didn't rant and rave. He just stood firm, acted like a protective father, and took down some nasty Internet trolls.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.