My recent New York Times Magazine article, "The Trolls Among Us," discusses the escalating phenomenon of Internet trolling -- users who intentionally antagonize other users and disrupt online communities. It also discusses Postel's Law, also known as the Robustness Principle, which reads: "Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others."
The late Jon Postel originally intended this law to apply to Internet Protocol. In my article, I suggest it may have broader applications as one possible cure for trolling, and perhaps as a universal law of human communication.
In an RFC interpreting Postel's law, the computer scientist Robert Braden wrote: "The most serious problems in the Internet have been caused by unenvisaged mechanisms triggered by low-probability events; mere human malice would never have taken so devious a course!"
This may have been true in 1989, but today it appears Braden grossly underestimated the power of human malice. As Jonathan Zittrain demonstrates in his excellent and frightening book, The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It, the Web is teeming with fraudsters, spammers, and shadowy masters of vast botnets, all wielding their facility with technology to the most devious ends. To this rogue's gallery, we might add the trolls.
Today, the most serious questions facing the Internet are not engineering problems but social problems. Recently, for example, Red Herring reported on trolls attacking a group of security researchers, breaking into their Yahoo! email accounts, publishing one man's IRS filings and sending pornography to another's contacts.
Trolling incidents like this are a new species of privacy threat -- one that existing U.S. law isn't equipped to deal with.
We have 18th-century Constitutional law protecting individuals from undue intrusion by the government.
We have the right to privacy as construed by Warren and Brandeis in the late 19th century, giving individuals an umbrella of seclusion from the mass media.
We have the consumer protection laws of the 1970s, which limit how much information businesses can keep on their customers.
What we do not have is protection for individuals whose privacy is violated by other individuals. The existing legal architecture simply isn't equipped to deal with a world where anyone can say anything, at any time and at no cost, under conditions of nearly perfect anonymity.
In my Times piece, I suggest that new laws -- such as the proposed Megan Meier Cyberbullying Protection Act -- might not be the answer. Trolling can be aggravating or worse to its victims, but it can be hard to distinguish trolling from a heated and open debate. We can't expect the government to protect our feelings from loose-cannon commenters and deranged sock-puppets.
Instead, we should take a cue from Postel's Law and be liberal in what we accept. In the case of trolls making our email public and sending porn to our contacts, that probably means not overreacting and ignoring whatever we can possibly ignore. Don't feed the trolls.
A few hours after my Times piece appeared on the Web, an anonymous 4chan poster wrote: "YES! OH PRAISE THE LORD! I haven't gone to a Jew-lynching in SO LONG. PLEASE FILM THE BURNING."
And yet somehow I did not fear for my life. The rest of the thread bore this intuition out. The lynching scheme was soon supplanted by the more practical idea of sending pizzas to my old address.
— Mattathias Schwartz is a freelance writer who lives in New York
You're so correct -- it's an opportunity to rethink ideas about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I believe this represents a challenge to the very core of our belief system, and that is why we are finding such a resistance at all levels of society. An information society with a knowledge-based economy -- what does that mean, what does that look like? No one knows because it hasn't been defined yet (at least not completely). It's hard to even imagine changes that will/must result in religious, social, political and economic spheres .
I'm writing a book entitled "Inert America: Crossroads to the Future" where I try to capture the essence of these ideas. The real concern I have as I write this book is the point you make -- will we take the time and think everything through slowly or rush forward and make a big mess? We, as human beings, can create phenomenal things. We can also create phenomenal messes.
Nicole: No, ignoring someone who is trying to hurt you isn't easy. But the millions of everyday people who participated in nonviolent civil disobedience over the course of the 20th century suggest that it is possible. Ignoring a troll who is trying to get a rise out of you is much easier, I think, than ignoring a policeman's baton. Best, Matt
"we must establish a civil society that is reflected even in the virtual world."
... the Internet is a space where physical harm and coercion can't occur, at least not in the same way they do in the real world. It represents a chance to construct ideas about rights and personhood over again, from scratch. This is just the beginning, and we need to think things through and go slowly.
Thanks for writing. It's exciting to hear that people in Russia are discussing my article.
I'm not sure that an international law cracking down on trolls could—or should—be implemented. My view is that the question of regulating who gets to say what where is best addressed by individual site moderators, not legal authorities.
I agree that trolls pose a problem for online communities, and trolls often have enough time on their hands to overwhelm the resources of moderators. However, the benefits of free speech on the Internet—open communication, open discussion, the freedom to get angry and even stupid at times—far outweigh the discomfort caused by trolling. I also worry what would happen if repressive governments began labelling dissidents as trolls, and used the international anti-trolling law that you've suggested to legitimize repression.
Hello Mattathias! I have to say that your article raised a lot of discussions about trolling in Russian Speaking Livejournal.People tried to compare whose trolls were worser :)))
My question is- trolls are not nessesary -Americans.A lot of international people can troll all over the world including USnet as well as the citizens of USA can troll European or Asian web-sites. So, I guess the problem is a little bit wider. Don't you think that we need an international law that will regulate the behaviour of the world users not only Americans.
I enjoyed reading this post Mattathias.As a social scientist, this area is one that greatly interest me.I couldn’t agree more that the most serious problems on the Internet today are social problems and not engineering problems.
You bring up two points I specifically want to comment on.First, you state, “Trolling incidents like this are a new species of privacy threat -- one that existing U.S. law isn't equipped to deal with.”Absolutely right, the U.S. legal system and the laws are totally incapable of dealing with this right now.If you also consider that now 1 billion people are on the Internet around the world, this becomes an even more difficult problem as laws vary greatly from country to country. If the U.S. legal system can’t handle it, you can be sure there is no world legal system that can handle it.Even if this did exist, would we want to bring U.S. citizens under the legal framework of a world body?
Second, you state, “What we do not have is protection for individuals whose privacy is violated by other individuals. The existing legal architecture simply isn't equipped to deal with a world where anyone can say anything, at any time and at no cost, under conditions of nearly perfect anonymity.”Again, you are absolutely correct.For the Internet to achieve its greatest potential, we must establish a civil society that is reflected even in the virtual world.In moving to establish protections of individual rights, we must not allow individual liberties to be violated.We should have rule of law even on the Internet, but we must also have due process.Until these get worked out, I’m afraid we are constrained from realizing the true potential of the Internet.
Isn't it kind of idealistic to think people are capable of simply ignoring their tormenters? It probably makes for more of a healthy lifestyle to adopt a thick skin and let harsh comments pass you by, both on Internet message boards and in real life. But I don't think most people can do this easily. So to rule out laws against trolling or working to expose trolls hiding behind anonymous identities in favor of just letting it all go seems, I think, like half an answer.
The future of the Internet and How to stop the world...
Hi Mattathias,
The solution lies in not to ignore and nither to harm them but to make thier identities revealed.... But that again is a big challenge in itself in this digital world... and this is what that make this world different and complex....
Anonymity is a good idea.... but you must have the idea on who the Enemy is ....
Don't take everything personally. Don't even take the things directed at you personally. Most people don't know you, and anonymous trolls don't know you, they're just throwing shit at you and hoping something will stick.
Don't take the bait. Most of those who react violently to trolling are really projecting. When I was growing up, one form of trolling was to walk down the street calling, "hey asshole!" Then, when someone turned around, you'd say, "not you, the other asshole!"
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