Given that modern harassment (particularly on Twitter) involves being targets by thousands of accounts over a period of months or years, how long do you think would be appropriate to turn your devices off for?

This isn't about someone "[taking] things personally" -- this is about organized groups making existing platforms unusable for their targets.

I think that's called DDoS, not trolling.

Who is targeted by that and why? Who organizes that - I mean, why would thousands of people suddenly have reason to hate you?

Caroline Criado Perez noticed that UK banknotes were changing. Bank notes have an image of a notable person on one side, and the monarch on the other. Criado Perez noticed that the new designs didn't include any women (apart from the queen, and she's only there through luck of birth).

Criado Perez started a petition to ask Bank of England to consider including a woman on the notes, and to remember to include women in future re-designs.

That's not much.

For that she was subjected to months long campaigns across all her social media accounts, extending to her AFK addresses, with severe threats of sexual violence.

One man was sending 50 messages an hour over 12 hours across multiple accounts.

It's disappointing that some people are defending those who make death threats. It's common over a keyboard, but AFK a death threat is serious business.

https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Document...

> Here there were a series of communications (not just a single one as referred to in the guideline) where extreme language was used and substantial fear was caused.

> Indeed it is hard to imagine more extreme threats (death, rape, and worse [Sorley]) and rape [Nimmo]. The harm is, and (despite what is said on your behalf) must have been intended to be, very high.

> The fact that they were anonymous heightened the fear. The victims had no way of knowing how dangerous the people making the threats were, whether they had just come out of prison, or how to recognise and avoid them if they came across them in public.

And about blocking:

> The messages were posted on a number of different sites, and continued after being blocked and or warned

So you are calling a harassment campaign "trolling" and then are surprised that people are dismissing you?

As I said in response to your other post, this is something you report to the police. And I bet she did.

  And about blocking:

  > The messages were posted on a number of different sites, and continued after being blocked and or warned*

Exactly. This isn't trolling. Your social network can do nothing for you. You accidentally pissed off many people, now you are in trouble, you go to the police for protection, prosecute those who are serious and, unfortunately, ignore the rest because little can be done about thousands of people hating you personally for their insecurities.

Agreed. There needs to be a point where authorities step in, identify the individuals and arrest the one making the threats.

One scenario: A celebrity with a million followers says something. A non-celebrity tweets an opposing response. 0.1% of the celebrity's followers take that as an attack on their idol and start heaping abuse on that person. (numbers sourced from rectal data repository, for illustrative purposes)

In that case, it's not really "organized" by anyone in particular.

The real-life equivalent of that scenario is a random Joe showing up at some political rally shouting "you're WRONG!". Of course shit will fly; the best realistic scenario is being corteously manhandled out of the venue. Why would you expect it to be different on teh intertubes?

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the issue is that the scale of these phenomena on the internet produces emergent qualities that don't exist in real life, which makes attempts at analogy particularly fruitless.

For example, in your analogy, they're not being manhandled out of the venue. Someone at the venue is taking their picture and following them home, distributing that information, then random people are showing up at their house for the next eighteen months or more. Then people are showing up at their family's house with threats, and their boss's house demanding that they be fired.

Is this the type of "shit [flying]" that you think people should be prepared to expect when they post things online?

What I mean is that "there will be consequences" is a thought that should cross one's mind before doing or saying anything in a public forum. Why should one not accept any responsibility for what he says in public? Can I walk around Harlem with a racist sign without expecting to be roughed up at some point?

(Btw yes, that sort of reactionary persecution can happen and does indeed happen in all sorts of places. It's part and parcel of meaningful political activism anywhere in the world.)

> Why should one not accept any responsibility for what he says in public?

Why should the consequences be so completely out of proportion to what was originally said? "In public" covers more situations than it used to, and the size of your audience isn't always intuitive.

> Can I walk around Harlem with a racist sign without expecting to be roughed up at some point?

Probably not. Will you be roughed up by thousands, be followed home, and be stalked and harassed for years? Probably not.

Proportionality is "in the eye of the beholder", unless you enshrine a measurement in law.

The fact that "in public" situations might have expanded (and sometimes replaced more private ones) is a problem that can (and should) be fixed with education. NBD.

Just because some people seem unable to comprehend the (massive) scale of internet space, it doesn't mean that we can magically make it a paradise where real-world behaviour honed in thousands of years simply does not happen. Internet space is a new all-encompassing dimension, the scale of which we've never seen. One should think carefully before acting in such an environment. It's not like interacting with press or peers in a given niche; it's like broadcasting on all channels in all countries at all hours. The chances of getting reactions you might not like are higher than with any other media or venue; but on the positive side, the chances of getting reactions you will like are also disproportionately higher than anywhere else. Continuously complaining that the glass is half empty will just provoke someone in smashing the glass to solve the problem -- because "you didn't like it much anyway, always complaining".

If you're making an innocent comment, it's horrible that you should have to worry about long-term consequences purely because of venue.

"I mean, why would thousands of people suddenly have reason to hate you"

Because you're a woman on the internet, and said something.

There's a big difference between trolling and stalking. The problem is that what happens to pass as trolling today isn't even trolling it's just plain stalking. When you post someone's address, a photo of their house, or call someone's local PD to coax them to send the SWAT to their house then you're not a troll. A troll is all about flames and absurd reactions from people.