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Trolls, cyberbullies—whatever you call them, they are the bane of the blogosphere. They come to your site and harass you. They post nastly comments about you on other sites. Trolls try to start inflammatory conversations to provoke emotional, often off-topic, responses. Then they sit back and enjoy everyone's anguish.
Meg Fowler defined trolls in how not to be an asshole or encourage assholism on the internet: a handy guide:
They’re the ones making inflammatory and threatening comments, trying to create conflict where none is necessary. They’re the ones who send vicious mail to mommy bloggers because they made some cosmic mistake like feeding their child a donut. They’re the ones who take other peoples’ pictures and writing and pass them off as their own. They’re the ones who believe that debate is a bloodsport, whether it be political, social or anything in between.
They’re the ones who infect peoples’ screens with hate. They’re the ones who use their OWN blogs to comment on how other people live/work/write/exist… and then send their anger zinging towards their targets with trackbacks.
What can you do about them?
BlogHer's policy is that unacceptable content is not allowed on the site. The Community Guidelines spell out in full what unacceptable means, but two of the unacceptable behaviors posting content which is:
- Being used to abuse, harass, stalk or threaten a person or persons
- Libelous, defamatory, knowingly false or misrepresents another person
On BlogHer, unacceptable content is removed. Period.
When I was teaching fourth grade, children would come up to me on the playground and complain that "so and so keeps chasing me." My response was, "Don't run, then they can't chase you." This advice confused many ten-year-olds, who couldn't quite grasp the implications of what I was telling them.
I agree with Huffenglish, who said, Don't feed the trolls. With trolls, no response is a good response. Don't play their vicious game. Delete their comments and ignore them. In ListServ groups, don't particpate in threads that turn into flame wars. If you're in a ListServ that is prone to that, unsubscribe. If someone launches a vicious attack against you on their web site, don't engage. Instead, notify their web hosting company with documentation that shows what they are doing. Trolls may think they are anonymous, but you can often find out who they actually are if you use the tools available for tracing IP numbers and identity on the Internet.
There are some very famous bloggers who seem to attract trolls because of their visibility. Some bloggers have stopped blogging because of it. Some have shut down the comment function on their blog. Some have hired help just to moderate comments.
For a while, there was a bug on Facebook that allowed troll attacks, such as this one on Hillary Clinton's Facebook page. This has been fixed, but be sure that the software you are using will support your efforts to eliminate the unwanted from your site.
Can you suggest other good methods of dealing with trolls?
More Resources:
- Dealing with hate speech, flaming, and trolls includes a number of tips
- A Tweet Too Far about Twitter's lack of enforcement of its terms of service.
- Commenting Policy from Teh Portly Dyke
- Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
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Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
