How Not to Have 1100 Men Turn Up at Your Door

Since writing my recent blog posts about being trolled I have had lots of people contact me with support which I really appreciate and many to share their similar stories. Some are quite horrific. The worst by far is the story about people who stalk the parents of children killed at Sandy Hook claiming it was staged. Then there are all the revenge porn sites! One article I read recently was about a guy who had a former partner set up fake Grindr accounts and 1100 men turned up at his door looking for sex.

The point his lawyer makes is that tech companies have all the tools to stop this sort of thing, they just don’t until we force them. This is really my main call to action on all this trolling. It’s hard to stop people wanting to be trolls.

We can’t stop the crazies from being crazy, we just have to assume they always will be, so instead we need to do what we can. We need to hold the tech companies accountable. Facebook is doing something about fake news because of the public outcry not because they suddenly became good corporate citizens. Google can easily de-index revenge porn sites but it doesn’t because those controversial sites bring a lot of clicks.

These companies are some of the biggest and most profitable in history. They could so quickly and easily change the whole dynamic of internet trolls, stalking and harassment along with fake news. Doing so would save lives, reputations and hope and make people trust the online world again. They just have to give up some of that easy money that comes from running with the devil and spend some on the good of society.