Truth is Fiction – My Story of Being Trolled

A quick Google search will reveal that Michael Gale is, “a professional con-artist, consistently making false representations” he is “dishonest, a pathological liar and sociopath.” The statements are completely and absolutely false. It’s a series of lies deliberately posted by multiple “anonymous” sources on multiple sites to defame me and harm my ability to work, my family and my colleagues. Not only is it false, but it’s all the work of just one online troll.

When it first happened I just waited for it to go away and heeded the advice not to feed the troll but it just got worse and worse and really negatively affected me and all those around me. Many people began to wonder if maybe where there is smoke there is fire! It was awful. In the end once my kids were being threatened and then I got death threats I decided to fight back.

The Troll’s goal was to cause me damage and indeed he has. But there are plenty of much worse cases. Many thousands of businesses have been ruined by trolls hiding behind the gripe sites and sadly too many adolescents have committed suicide because of trolling.

Behind the cloak of anonymity the Internet has created a lawless Wild West where anyone can shoot anyone and very little is as it seems. Whole fake personas can be created; people can be bombarded with hate and literally trolled to death.

Ban Anonymity

But what can be done? Actually it’s pretty simple. As soon as you start interacting with any of the world’s major online content purveyors they immediately are tracing you. It’s not a big jump from there for those sites to make you identify yourself. People should be forced to log in to all sites before they can leave a comment, post a review, make a complaint or generally disparage others. Imagine if we removed the cloak of anonymity from people. The trolls would vanish, people who defamed others would get sued, people would stop insulting others.

Of course there are legitimate reasons for anonymity. I’m not sure we would have much political dissent in authoritarian countries, or whistle-blowers doing us all a great service without it. But I’m pretty sure all those smart tech execs could work out how to provide anonymity when it is truly justified but make the rest of us take responsibility for the harm we do online.

If you’d like to volunteer your own Troll story, your time or your ideas, please send me an email at michael@michaelgale.com.