10 years of troll abuse published by violinist by Lisa Vaas.
From the post:
…
Matsumiya, who’s based in Los Angeles, describes herself as a violinist and a “perv magnet.” Reading the messages published on Instagram under her perv_magnet account, it’s obvious that she’s not exaggerating.She’s using Instagram to demonstrate the violence, aggression and volume of messages she’s received and captured via screenshot over 10 years, in an effort to show how relentlessly women are abused online.
…
I won’t quote any of the abusive messages but you can see the entire collection at: perv_magnet.
Lisa does a good job of covering the issue and possible responses and then says:
The rest of us non-celebrities must bear in mind that taking on trolls can have extremely dangerous consequences.
I’m thinking here of swatting.
Unless you are cultivating marijuana in the basement with grow lights or running a meth lab, I’m not sure how dangerous “swatting” is to an ordinary citizen.
To be sure, don’t make sudden moves when heavily armed police burst into your home but how many of us are likely to be cleaning an AK-47 or RPG when that happens?
The real danger is dealing with trolls is going it alone. One on one, since trolls don’t appear to have any life beyond their closets and keyboards, a troll can spend more time on you can you can possibly use to reply to them.
But what if there were a network of troll fighters? Could the average troll deal with five people responding? What about 50? For really troublesome trolls, how about 500? Or more? In combination with hackers who push back against them in the real world.
No one wants government regulation of the web so it falls to its users to reduce any cause for government intervention.
Simple ignorance on my part but are there any anti-troll networks currently in operation? I would like to volunteer some cycles to their efforts.
PS: I am untroubled by the “freedom of speech” argument of trolls. In the struggle between abusers and the abused, I chose sides a long time ago. Helps get down to concrete cases without a lot of theoretical machinery.