TrollBusters: online pest control for women writers

March 14, 2016 1:07 PM

Winner of a top prize at the 2015 New York Hack-A-Thon, TrollBusters "provides just-in-time rescue services to support women journalists, bloggers and publishers who are targets of cyberharassment. We use our virtual S.O.S. team to send positive memes, endorsements and testimonials into online feeds at the point of attack. We dilute the stings of cyberbullies, trolls and other online pests to support you, your voice, your website, your business and your reputation." Recently, GamerGate [previously on MeFi] has magnified the sense of urgency behind anti-troll strategies for women.

TrollBusters was developed by a team headed by Dr. Michelle Ferrier, the first African-American woman columnist at the Daytona Beach News-Journal in the mid-2000s. Ferrier was racially and sexually harassed and threatened via hate mail, and eventually resigned her position at the newspaper after receiving no meaningful protection from the harassment.

A few years later, when Ferrier (now an Associate Dean at Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University) was a professor at Elon College, a young local woman was the target of a racial attack. In response, Ferrier initiated a discussion in her classes about hate speech. She brought some of her old hate mail from the newspaper to illustrate the depth of the problem, and this inspired the idea behind TrollBusters.

To provide a real recourse to targets of online harassment, TrollBusters is built with three separate elements:

Online rescue service: Targets of online abuse can send an alert to TrollBusters, who will respond by flooding the relevant thread on, say, Twitter with positive, supportive messages, which will provide a counter narrative to drown out hateful trolling. The longer-term goal, Ferrier says, is that women will eventually be able to set up personal SOS teams of friends and family, who can send personal messages. Ferrier says she knows first-hand, as well as anecdotally from other women, that support matters. She wants to use TrollBusters to formally research the idea that positive messaging can help women maintain their voice online, despite harassment.

Support center: TrollBusters wants to be an easy, go-to guide for women publishers and writers who are targeted by trolls and looking for legal or psychological support.

Exterminate ‘troll nests’: Through technology developed at Ohio University, TrollBusters will work to identify trolls, primarily on social media. While the software will allow the team to “out” trolls, it will also help them identify and reach out to targets to offer support.(Columbia Journalism Review)

posted by hurdy gurdy girl (37 comments total)

This is fantastic.
posted by clockzero at 1:27 PM on March 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

The longer-term goal, Ferrier says, is that women will eventually be able to set up personal SOS teams of friends and family, who can send personal messages.

It makes me really very angry when I reflect on the fact that cyberbullies and trolls not only attack women directly in myriad gross ways, but also increase the emotional labor of the people (mostly women, I suspect) around their targets. The way this is framed just made me realize how much labor goes into anti-troll stuff. Apart from everything else it's just so much work performed because of something that shouldn't exist in the first place.
posted by sallybrown at 1:33 PM on March 14, 2016 [25 favorites]

Although on the other hand, yeah, it does sort of address the problem of men's sociopathic behavior by giving women more work to do rather than stopping men from making more problems for them in the first place. Which is more a critique of American society itself than of TrollBusters.
posted by clockzero at 1:41 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I like this word: Exterminate. May we kill it with fire, perhaps?

Seriously, cutting through their anonymity and publically shaming trolls is all to the good as far as I'm concerned. Civilized people don't behave like trolls in public because there are well-understood social consequences to their actions. I'm all for sharing their anonymous online exploits with family, friends, and employers.
posted by Lighthammer at 1:52 PM on March 14, 2016

It makes me so, so sad that the word "troll" has changed in meaning from "baiting a reaction" to "general harassment." Much like how candid camera shows used to be light-hearted pranks, and now there's YouTube videos with behavior that's completely unacceptable, but "it's just a prank!"

Have people gotten worse, have we become more tolerant of shitty behavior, or has our language/ability to label this behavior just failed us?

Because "targeted by trolls" doesn't even parse correctly for me. The etymology of trolling is from fishing! You're just putting the bait there and seeing if there's a bite. If you've got a specific target, you're not "trolling" anymore.

I realize I sound a little old, crotchety, and "back in my day" about it, but I'd rather abusive assholes not be allowed to hide behind a word that implies a joke.
posted by explosion at 1:54 PM on March 14, 2016 [19 favorites]

It's interesting and strange to me that my initial reaction to this was so negative. I mean, we're essentially talking about a service where women who are being harassed online can push a button and get support and help. That sounds really good. But my first instinct was more along the lines of "does the world really need more brigading?" even if it's intended to serve a good cause. People organize up groups of harassers on reddit and the chans and such; is the right response to that really to use the same tactics to bring a counter-harassment brigade? Does that help the situation or inflame it, with more people yelling at each other (and perhaps that's still a useful function in terms of moving the harassment away from just targeting one person)?

I'm not sure, and I'm surprised I had such an instinctively negative reaction before reading about it more. I like the idea of focusing on positive words of support, and hope they're able to keep it at that level, even once the obligatory backlashes occur and the anti-harassers are harassed themselves. In any case, I do think we have to keep experimenting, because "just sit there and take it" continues to not be an acceptable answer to harassment.
posted by zachlipton at 1:56 PM on March 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

I love this. I hope they learn a lot and discover ever more effective ways of dealing with trolls.

I'm totally on-board with this being a women-centric thing but I do hope it's use expands outside of that box eventually.
posted by VTX at 1:57 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

As long as they don't cross the streams I think this is a fabulous idea!
posted by AGameOfMoans at 2:00 PM on March 14, 2016

Seriously, cutting through their anonymity and publically shaming trolls is all to the good as far as I'm concerned. Civilized people don't behave like trolls in public because there are well-understood social consequences to their actions.

Unfortunately even here there are also going to be people who think that the shamers are going too far.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:13 PM on March 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

It makes me so, so sad that the word "troll" has changed in meaning from "baiting a reaction" to "general harassment." Much like how candid camera shows used to be light-hearted pranks, and now there's YouTube videos with behavior that's completely unacceptable, but "it's just a prank!"

I feel the same way. So much "trolling" I see is just someone being offensive as possible and then, if someone is offended, yay, that means they win! Being obnoxious is neither difficult nor something to be proud of. Where's the abusurdism?
posted by Karmakaze at 2:29 PM on March 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

it does sort of address the problem of men's sociopathic behavior by giving women more work to do rather than stopping men from making more problems for them in the first place. Which is more a critique of American society itself than of TrollBusters.

Women are in the unenviable position of working harder in many aspects of their lives to make safe spaces for themselves and others (carrying pepper spray, learning self-defense, going to events with friends to protect each-other from aggressive and/or creepy assholes). And it's not just American society that has failed women, but I digress too far.


explosion: Because "targeted by trolls" doesn't even parse correctly for me. The etymology of trolling is from fishing! You're just putting the bait there and seeing if there's a bite. If you've got a specific target, you're not "trolling" anymore.

"Troll" has been a mixed term for centuries, in terms of the very different meaning for fishing (or general trying to lure with bait) and the Norse folk creature, which made it easy to blend the two ideas: monsters baiting unsuspecting targets. It's too late to change now, unless you want to start a campaign to re-brand trolls, which seems like an odd fixation.


All that aside, this is an awesome project. Flooding out hate with support and kindness is wonderful (and sadly, probably the most effective tool to stop these attacks, as Twitter and other forums still suck at shutting down trolls, or ogres if you prefer a nastier monster - but I couldn't think of a good way to verbify that noun).
posted by filthy light thief at 2:32 PM on March 14, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah this is good.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:42 PM on March 14, 2016

One analogy that came to my mind was the abortion clinic escorts who shield women accessing services. They provide an ally and human shield for vulnerable women being attacked by crowds of asshole anti-choicers.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 3:01 PM on March 14, 2016 [10 favorites]

This is worth a try. And I say that, because the best possible solution, the ability to quickly pierce anonymity and have an effective police response to harassment is not going to happen any time soon, probably not in our lifetimes.

So either targeted populations abandon the internet en masse, or we start coming up with more subtle social media ways to dilute the harrasers' attacks. Hopefully this will have a good effect.
posted by happyroach at 3:30 PM on March 14, 2016

Have people gotten worse, have we become more tolerant of shitty behavior, or has our language/ability to label this behavior just failed us?

All of the above.

And the Privileged among us have more leisure time to practice the kind of shitty behavior that Privilege far too often generates. This also ties into the recent discussion of "When You're Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression", because it seems so much more satisfying to abuse those below you than to perform "emotional labor". It all ties together far too easily.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:41 PM on March 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

does the world really need more brigading?

As with free speech when this question is asked it is never with respect to the assholes. It only silences the people trying to do good.

In the same way the protesters at the UIC Trump rally were viewed as attacking the free speech of an asshole rather than engaging in free speech themselves.

Don't be the devil's advocate. He already has plenty of lawyers.
posted by srboisvert at 4:32 PM on March 14, 2016 [17 favorites]

It makes me so, so sad that the word "troll" has changed in meaning from "baiting a reaction" to "general harassment."

But why? Even in the "good old days", trolls were assholes being assholes. "Baiting a reaction" is a shitty thing to do. Taking joy in fucking with other people and riling them up for no reason is shitty. It was then, and it still is now.

There wasn't some Golden Age of Trolling. It was jerks being jerks, but now they're even bigger jerks.
posted by Sangermaine at 4:39 PM on March 14, 2016 [16 favorites]

There wasn't some Golden Age of Trolling.

Totally agree. When the internet was a non mainstream place, trolls were the equivalent of pick-up artists at a bar: putting some effort into dehumanizing other people. Now that the internet's a much more public space, they're much more like catcalling jerks, except with the ease with which they can form a mob.

Having a system to counteract that where people can hang out in public and be surrounded by benign friendly attention the minute the mob gathers can only be a good thing, surely?
posted by ambrosen at 5:44 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am totally An Old about the neologism "brigading"; I don't like it and I won't use it. As I see it, it's become a generalized term referring (in a negative sense) to any organized group action online. As words go, it's not particularly useful — mostly I've just seen it used as a scare term against the concept of organization itself.

Terminological beef aside, though, it is necessary to acknowledge that the meaning of a given action doesn't reside entirely in the nature of that action, but instead depends in part upon the purpose and effects of that action. Moreover, acknowledging this doesn't require falling into ends-justify-means-ism or anything like that.

In this case, it seems pretty clear that the criterion separating bad from good does not concern methods at all; the problem with men and boys organizing online to harass women is that they're harassing women, not that they're organizing online. As such, one can be on safe ground asserting that organizing online to harass women who attempt to speak is bad, while organizing online to prevent women from getting harassed online, and to help out women who are being harassed online, is good. Because the problem with systematic campaigns to harass women off the Internet is a problem of ends rather than methods, earnestly discussing methodological overlaps between gamergaters and trollbusters as if it's an indictment of the trollbusters is at best a waste of time.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:45 PM on March 14, 2016 [9 favorites]

Forming a protective buffer around people being attacked is so the opposite of "forming a brigade" or instigating harm that I am really glad you shared you thought this way because it's a really common, and harmful way of thinking that keep good people from standing against abuse and protecting the vulnerable because we have somehow deluded ourselves into thinking that's "causing trouble". Trouble has already been caused, and protecting those being harmed is not causing trouble.
posted by xarnop at 5:45 PM on March 14, 2016 [7 favorites]

Well, if you're looking for a Positive way to react to harassment - The new alchemy: turning online harassment into Wikipedia articles on women scientists. It still seems like a lot of "emotional labor".
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:52 PM on March 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

That's absolutely true, and I very much hope this stays in the "protective buffer" mode (clinic escorts are a good analogy) and not in the "angry mob shouting at other angry mob" mode which is so easy to fall into, especially once people start harassing the anti-harassers. Their stated focus on "positive, supportive messages" is a good step toward that end.
posted by zachlipton at 5:57 PM on March 14, 2016

But why? Even in the "good old days", trolls were assholes being assholes. "Baiting a reaction" is a shitty thing to do.

That's like saying "pranks are cruel." They can be but that doesn't mean they always are. Really, trolling by the "traditional" definition is a tactic that can be used to all sorts of ends. I said this before but e.g. the "ShitRedditSays" communities have pretty obvious troll DNA - and I don't mean that as a bad thing.

(The definition of trolling is a little beside the real point here, sorry.)
posted by atoxyl at 5:58 PM on March 14, 2016

And holding yourself to higher standards just lets the people dominating the conversation talk shit bout your low energy and your "black" child and whether you stopped beating your wife.

I used to have a certain grudging respect for McCain until he cuddled up to Bush after the elections. Dude sold out his family.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:00 PM on March 14, 2016

This is awesome, and I'm off to see what code, time or other help I can contribute.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:57 PM on March 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

Can we call acting like an ogre ogreling?
posted by yarntheory at 8:02 PM on March 14, 2016

Wait a minute, this busts trolls by getting your friends to try to outflood the trolls rather than trying to actually track down and stop the trolls?

I avoid social media and all its cooties so beats me if this sounds effective to those who use it, but....shouldn't the focus be on getting the bad guys rather than recruiting your friends as backup to outshout? Or is that just a total loss to try to do and we're going for a missing stair approach? Serious question.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:25 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

So my initial reaction was the same as zachliption's. Flooding? That's the answer, just out-shit-post the harassers, making the medium useless?

But then, sure, why not? I mean, it's essentially useless with the harassment anyway, so no loss. Plus, the inevitable flooding race happening a few times on one of the services might piss the operators off enough to do something about the fucking harassment already.
posted by ctmf at 8:41 PM on March 14, 2016

It's not just flooding the channel with positivity, it's also naming and shaming those who attacked the person in the first place. If you think that's wrong, well, you probably enjoy Reddit.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:22 PM on March 14, 2016

Jenfullmoon, they have developed tech to identify and out the trolls as well, as part of their 3 pronged approach:

Exterminate ‘troll nests’: Through technology developed at Ohio University, TrollBusters will work to identify trolls, primarily on social media. While the software will allow the team to “out” trolls, it will also help them identify and reach out to targets to offer support.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:52 PM on March 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

I realize I sound a little old, crotchety, and "back in my day" about it, but I'd rather abusive assholes not be allowed to hide behind a word that implies a joke.

I'm not sure how old and crotchety we're talkin' here, but when alt.tasteless trolled rec.pets.cats, they were being abusive assholes.
posted by ryanrs at 1:17 AM on March 15, 2016 [5 favorites]

Yay! I approve of the development of good tools, since the underlying social media technologies aren't taking much into account with it. I'm sure the griefers and trolls will try to game that system, too, though, so more tool evolution will be needed.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:06 AM on March 15, 2016

"I very much hope this stays in the "protective buffer" mode (clinic escorts are a good analogy) and not in the "angry mob shouting at other angry mob" mode which is so easy to fall into, especially once people start harassing the anti-harassers."

I really don't care. I used to think this way, don't get me wrong, I used to think if someone gets in my face and screams I don't even deserve to live that I'm "equally" a jerk if I yell fuck you or some other flustered angry retort. I used to think really hard about maintaining pacifism and love and understanding in the face of abusive cruel people. When they start telling my family members and friends lies about me and skipping the violence and threats they've made.

Trying to destroy foundational relationships that are really life changing ad destructive to lose. I used to take it to heart all the guilting and shaming and blaming and expectation of perfect peaceliness in the face of abuse and now I actually think those tactics themselves are part of abuse culture. Making the people injured and continually harmed think they need to spend every ounce of energy maintaining passivity and never speak of it, not even try to clarify among ones peers the lies being told because speaking about it at all is "stirring the pot!" People don't want to "take sides" or "get involved" because "it takes two to tango!"

I'm just exhausted of giving a single fucking fuck about whether people handle abuse with pacifism or with anger. I have no guilts left to offer those who stand up for themselves and insult those who insult them, I have no sad laments about how they've "stooped to the same level" and everyone involved is responsible and wrong.

The people attacking others are responsible. I don't think self defense falls in the same category at all. I think it's critical they be seen and handled differently. That's just where I'm at right now, maybe when I hurt less I'll feel like being the picture of perfect peacefulness and love again. In all honesty it's part of my nature, I love even my enemies, even wretched people, even I get angry, I can still find love in there. I have to actually work AGAINST that in myself.
posted by xarnop at 7:08 AM on March 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm talking about things more akin to flat-earthers, where it's something relatively absurd or contentious just sort of lobbed out there, and inevitably someone falls for it and starts the debate. A few are in on the joke, the majority are either ignoring it, or watching it happen, and 1-2 are earnestly debating someone.

Not brigading, not flooding forums with offensive posts, not sea-lioning. A trolling well-done wouldn't even have any victims if they didn't take the bait. These days, "I see what you're doing and I choose not to interact with you" doesn't work. Even if you're not taking the bait, you're still harassed.
posted by explosion at 7:08 AM on March 15, 2016

A trolling well-done wouldn't even have any victims if they didn't take the bait.

Why do you have the need to create and then blame victims at all?
posted by srboisvert at 10:36 AM on March 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

Online bystander intervention. I thoroughly approve.
posted by eviemath at 1:38 PM on March 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

SXSW Put On A Harassment Summit After It Was Threatened By Gamergaters. Here’s How It Went.
posted by homunculus at 10:01 PM on March 17, 2016 [2 favorites]