Yardley Syndrome - how anti-troll campaigners end up as trolls

It's a Twitter version of Stockholm Syndrome where those who spend most time shouting about trolls (especially but not exclusively alt-right trolls) end up being trolls themselves:

Twitter do me a favour, I'm on a train and my signal is rubbish and I'm writing a thing about biting back at alt right trolls and my search function isn't working. Send me your favourite burn I've ever done to a sexist. Ta. X

So it begins. This Tweet, sent out by one of the most vociferous of the "we must do something about the Trolls" MPs, makes my point beautifully. What does Jess Phillips think will be the result of this message? Maybe it's a bit thoughtless or perhaps it's an indication that Ms Phillips has, in her desire to have a social media impact, succumbed to the same tricks and tactics as any teenaged 'troll' (or indeed - teenagers probably get a bad rap here - trolls of any age).

"I'm writing a thing about biting back..." This isn't a mature, considered approach such as we might expect from a member of parliament but rather the sort of mindset that produces those interminable blogposts setting out the evils of the blogger's chosen subject of hatred. You know, the ones filled with out of context drags from social media, long screeds on how horrid these people are to the blogger and lots of bold headlines. All interspersed with chunks of text in capital letters.

An MP sat on a train chooses to spend her time writing a 'piece' about horrid people on the Internet and how she socked it to them. Among things that we might expect an MP to do faced with an hour on the train and no phone signal, this is not what folk would put at the top of the list. Yet it seems increasingly, from MPs of all stripes, to be the thing that bothers them the most. I'm sure they'll snap back with catty comments about how their constituents love them and "what would you know about what I'm doing anyway" but it isn't a good look when an MP uses that time to write about trolling ("favourite burn" is merely a celebration of that trolling, nothing else) groups of people on social media.

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People who think Twitter - with or without Russians - decided the referendum need to get out more

There is an almighty panic afoot. It seems that a vast army of trolls in fur hats with snow on their boots are ruining our democracy by doing stuff on Twitter. Yes folks, it's the Russians - even the Prime Minister was moved to say how naughty they are albeit in a wonderfully sinister way ("we know what you're doing").

Some perspective is needed here because, while it may well be the case that Russian spies sat at computers in St Petersburg are bombarding Twitter with stuff, the impact on elections ranges from pretty much zero to really not very much at all.

According to Oleksandr Talavera at Swansea University there are 150,000 accounts with "links to Russia" that Tweeted about Brexit during the campaign. Talavera is at the upper end of the spectrum of guesses about these Russian bots most other researchers give much lower figures for accounts that can be clearly linked to the folk in St Petersburg - 419 from researchers in Edinburgh, 13,493 from London University and just 54 from Oxford University.

Taking the 419, this is what they were doing:

Professor Laura Cram, director of neuropolitics research at the University of Edinburgh, told the newspaper that at least 419 of those accounts tweeted about Brexit a total of 3,468 times – mostly after the referendum had taken place.

Commenting on the Brexit tweets, she told The Guardian the content overall was “quite chaotic and it seems to be aimed at wider disruption. There’s not an absolutely clear thrust. We pick up a lot on refugees and immigration”.

I'm pretty sure that the same will go for the bigger numbers. For a little context, however, we should note that there were literally millions of Tweets about the referendum - the LSE, for example, looked at 7.5 million in their analysis. Those Russian tweeters represent a drop in this ocean of Tweets. Let's remember also that there are about 10 million UK Twitter accounts (this matters because they're the ones with a vote) and let's also note that 17.4 million people voted to leave - rather more than have those Twitter accounts.

Even accepting that Russia did try to interfere in - disrupt, influence - the referendum (something that probably shouldn't surprise us), the evidence presented by researchers tells us that it really didn't make much difference at all, indeed it was swamped by a vast tide of Tweets from real people about Brexit. Indeed that LSE study showed just how Brexiteers were much more engaged and active:

There is clearly a pattern in the way the referendum campaign unfolded on Twitter, with those wanting to leave communicating in greater numbers and with greater intensity. Districts with a greater share of Twitter users supporting Leave also tended to vote for leaving the EU, so that Twitter activity correlates with voting in the referendum.

We also know from that LSE blog that the same goes for Facebook, Instagram and Google search - as a senior politician (and remain voter) said to me: "Brexit voters were going to crawl over broken glass so they could vote to leave". I've been involved in politics for 40 years and have never seen ordinary voters - the sort who often don't bother - so motivated to turn up and vote. Public meetings were a thing of history in British elections, yet we held a debate in Cullingworth and filled the hall with over 250 people, most of them planning to vote leave.

This latest conspiracy theory - hot on the heels of the "it was big data" nonsense - reminds us that many of those who voted to remain are still in denial as to what the campaign outcome was down to. These inconsolable remain voters simply can't countenance that their 'business as usual' message got both barrels from an electorate that frankly didn't think that 'business as usual' was doing them any good. The result has been firstly to shout about how it was all the stupid people who did it and it's not fair, then to blame the Daily Mail followed by lots of overhyped scare stories about 'hate crime'. We then got the conspiracies - it was shadowy American billionaires, it was manipulating 'big data' and now it's the Russians.

The truth is that two-and-a-half million mostly older and working class voters who don't usually vote or vote infrequently decided on this occasion to go down to the church hall or school and stick a big firm X in the box marked "Leave the European Union". There were a pile of reasons why they did this but the main one was that the EU is a distant, unaccountable, corrupt and undemocratic institution a very long way away filled with people who have absolutely no connection with or idea about what matters in Denholme or Wyke or Scarborough. It really had absolutely nothing at all to do with Twitter, the Russians, Cambridge Analytica or whatever stupid conspiracy sobbing remainers dream up and if you think otherwise you really should get out more.

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Trolls (both kinds) are both necessary and important

Trolls (non-internet version)

A bunch of people who have a platform to say what they want (and mostly don't) have decided that we need something akin to an ASBO for Twitter:

A group of MPs has called for people spreading abuse on social media websites to be slapped with an 'internet Asbo' which would ban them from using Facebook and Twitter.

Introducing such a scheme would make it open season on anybody sailing close to the wind - what starts with 'anti-semitism' soon becomes 'Islamaphobia' then slowly extends to people who say the wrong things about women or think it just fine to hunt and kill foxes. Particular attention will be paid to people who are 'anonymous' with much prurient chuntering about 'vile, internet trolls' and so forth.

Nothing is served by this process. The law is pretty clear on threats, racism and homophobia, there really isn't any need to extend this to encompass some sort of ban (a frankly unenforceable ban as it happens) on people using social media because they said the wrong sort of stuff.

So without wanting to labour the point, here's why anonymous internet trolls are important:

He runs a Facebook and Twitter account in Persian using a fictional character to parody the religious politics of Iran's imams and mullahs. BBC Trending spoke to the man behind Ayatollah Tanasoli - which can be translated as "Ayatollah Genitals" or "Ayatollah Penis."

Tanasoli has 20,000 likes on Facebook and 7,000 followers on Twitter - not enormous numbers but significant for Iran, where many people are afraid of openly aligning themselves with scathing satire and criticism.

How long do you think this man could do this if - as some of our MPs think - they shouldn't be allowed to stay anonymous on social media? Perhaps those ayatollahs, famed as they are for tolerance and understanding, would just laugh off the lewd micky-taking from Tanasoli. Or more likely he'd find himself languishing in jail awaiting one of the creatively vicious punishments the ayatollahs are wont to enjoy?

So next time you're "offended" be a "troll", stick to crying or moaning and try to avoid calling for them to be banned, locked up and punished. Even in our (supposedly) open and liberal democracy having folk who sit behind the mask of anonymity and tell us we've got no clothes on is an essential part of the freedom that we cackle on about so much. Let's grow a pair and keep it that way, eh?

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Trolls. Proper trolls.

None of this Internet troll stuff. We're talking the real thing - a whole essay on the real thing courtesy of Medievalist.net:

“Mucus was hanging down in front of her mouth. She had a beard but her head was bald. Her hands were like the claws of an eagle, but both arms were singed, and the baggy shirt she was wearing reached no lower than her loins in back but all the way to her toes in front. Her eyes were green and her forehead broad; her ears fell widely. no one would call her pretty”

This is what we want - fewer spotty oiks or self-indulgent masked Internet warriors - although this might put ideas in one or two folks' minds:

...calling someone a troll carried also a stiff penalty. Knutson and Riley remark, “Personal honour was taken very seriously, and to slander someone or spread false rumours could be expensive or even deadly”. In his book, Trolls: An Unnatural History, John Lindow recounts that calling someone a troll was considered vicious slander akin to accusing a man of bearing children, anally penetrating another man, or insinuating he was a mare, bitch, witch or whore. In The Saga of Finnbogi, Finnbogi’s young sons tease an old neighbour and call him a troll. The neighbour promptly kills them even though they are only aged five and three. This causes Finnbogi to take vengeance on the man and slay him. So remember, next time at the bar…thinking of calling that annoying drunk a troll? Just don’t.

Do go and read the article -more fun than the latest moan from some social justice warrior or headline-seeking politicians about trolls on Twitter!

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In defence of anonymity...

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Writing at Conservative Home, Charlie Elphicke the MP for Dover and Deal has called for the banning of anonymity on social media:

We should target the anonymity hate-tweeters use to harass people online. At the moment it’s just too easy to set up a bogus account and viciously stab at people from behind the curtain. Ensuring people can’t set up anonymous accounts would mean hate-tweeters would be forced to be responsible for the hate they spew.

Elphicke goes on somewhat egregiously to suggest that wanting to ban anonymity isn't a free speech issue arguing this point by creating a new definition of free speech that no-one had used until he dreamt it up:

There are some who will claim this undermines the principle of free speech. They are wrong. It’s an insult to all those who fought for our right to speak out. Free speech is not there to protect people who spread hate while hiding their identity.  The whole point of free speech is the right to speak freely in your own name.  There is also a big difference between the privacy of surfing the internet and claiming “privacy” in aid of anonymity to launch attacks on people. There should be no hiding place for the trolls.

Unlike Mr Elphicke I think this is absolutely a free speech issue and the right to speak anonymously - whether offline or online - is an essential element of that liberty that, in the MP's words people "fought for". And there are very good reasons why we should allow anonymity. Here's one:

A blogger who used the user name, "Miut3" was kidnapped and killed in Reynosa Tamaulipas. She was a "Tuitera" with the over 41k followers on her popular twitter page, that sent out situations of risk, and narco news tweets.

This women - a 'citizen journalist' in a place where the mainstream media and government is coerced by violent criminals - used anonymity to protect herself and to allow the brave resistance to the Mexican borderland's dysfunctional society. If the price of allowing this woman and others like her to challenge and question criminal conspiracy, corruption and murder is that some people use anonymity to post abuse then it's a price I'll take.

Now I can hear Mr Elphicke saying that the UK isn't Mexico and that things are different here. But imagine some other situations - perhaps someone wants to expose wrongdoing within their industry. Do you think that posting under their own name would enhance their career prospects? People simply won't take the risk.

Look at the great blogs exposing some of the management problems in the police - closed down because the blogger got identified. We'd be worse as a society without blogs like Night Jack. And there are tweeters and bloggers who use anonymity to catalogue their struggles with drug addiction or alcoholism safe knowing that anonymity protects their life from intrusion and attack.

Look also at the lengths to which public authorities will pursue bloggers who challenge and criticise them - local councils such as Bexley, South Tyneside, Carmathen and Barnet have all expended council taxpayers money pursuing bloggers (with differing degrees of success). Anonymity facilitates challenge and criticism and this is one of the reasons why public authorities are so keen to see it stopped.

It isn't pleasant to be abused online anymore than it's pleasant to be abused in the street, the pub or at work. But most of the time we walk away, a little upset maybe but not otherwise harmed. The same applies online - switch off the computer, go and make yourself a cup of tea and read a book or watch the telly. The abusers will soon go away if they don't get a response. And don't - unless you're a troll yourself - play the silly game of broadcasting on Twitter, Facebook or your blog that you're being 'trolled'. All that does is make you even more of a target - you've responded so the trolls know they'll get a rise from you.


So I say to Charlie Elphicke, get a thicker skin, stop claiming it's all "for the children" when it's not and read and remember the final tweet from Miut3 - posted by her murderers:

Friends and Family, my real name is Maria del Rosario Fuentes Rubio, I am a doctor, now my life has met it's end.

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A good week for mythical beasts and monsters...

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Not trolls this time - although the proper trolls are, I'm told rather put out by being associated with spotty teenagers. Nor is it gnomes, which will disappoint Steiner-watchers.

It is firstly unicorns:

"Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom,"

This is wonderful news. Although it all seems wrong. We all know that unicorns live in enchanted woods and have a thing for virginal girls (or something like that). So I wonder whether we've been told the full story of King Tongmyong? Could this legendary king have really been a girl?

And then we have vampires:

The story of Sava Savanovic is a legend, but strange things did occur in these parts back in the old days," said 55-year-old housewife Mil-ka Prokic, holding a string of garlic in one hand and a large wooden stake in another, as an appropriately moody mist rose above the surrounding hills.

Indeed, the local council in this remote part of Serbia has even advised the pocketing of garlic and the waving of crosses!

In other news there are still fairies at the bottom of my garden. ....


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An Echo of Old Magic and Old Song

A good firm path - dry, with a good surface. Firm, secure fencing. Someone cares for this place - or cares enough to separate me from the woods. Perhaps the steepness of the slope and the looseness of the surface motivates that someone - he or she would rather those passing through didn't slide, tumble and crash into the river below. Or maybe there are beasts in the wood.

I hope there are beasts - or at least the memory of beasts. The wolves, bears and boars who once owned these woods - and the magic folk too. The trolls, the gnomes - and is that flash of white a glimpse of the unicorn. It can't be a wind blown supermarket carrier bag, can it!

On a wild night you must stay even more firmly on this path. Or else suffer the fate of Tam Lin - perhaps without a true love to save you from that mad ride into the gates of Hell.

gloomy was the night
and eerie was the way.
this lady in her green mantle
to miles cross she did go.

with the holy water in her hand
she cast the compass round.
at twelve o'clock the fairy court
came riding o'er the mound.

first came by the black steed
and then came by the brown.
then tam lin on the milk-white steed
with a gold star in his crown.

she's pulled him down into her arms
and let the bridle fall.
the queen of fairies she cried out
young Tam Lin is away.

The darkness is always close by - the legends are part of our heritage. The magic of these places - however safe they're made - is the deep magic of England. Step off the path and into the woods and listen carefully - you may hear the song of our ancestors. A song of woods, of trees and of the security that light and a clear view bring. It is a fine song.

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Wednesday Whimsy: saving trolls

I want to rescue trolls – not that they’re especially nice creatures but it rather annoys me that unpleasant, rude, interfering and often anonymous frequenters of on-line comment environments have muscled in on the act.

For the record this is what a troll is:

“The average troll stands nine feet high and weighs roughly 500 pounds, though females tend to be a bit larger than males. The hide of trolls is rubbery, and usually either moss green, putrid grey, or mottled gray and green. Their coarse hair is typically iron grey, or greenish-black.

Trolls initially seem to be somewhat shorter, due to their sagging shoulders and tendency to hunch forward. They walk with an uneven gait, and their arms dangle and drag the ground when running. Despite this apparent awkwardness, trolls are quite agile.

Trolls are infamous for their regenerative abilities, able to recover from the most grievous of wounds or regenerate entire limbs given time. Severing a troll's head results merely in temporary incapacitation, rather than death. After cutting off a troll's head or other limbs, one must seal the wounds with fire or acid to prevent regeneration. Because of this, most adventurers will typically carry some sort of implement capable of creating fire.”

Or maybe not....

...some trolls live under bridges and scare less experienced goats, while others just look like big ugly humans (with a penchant for raw flesh). What ever, trolls are not spotty teenagers with nothing better to do than annoy folk on line, trolls are not self-appointed queens of snide and trolls are not irritating automated bots sending out crap spam.

I suspect there might be a better word for these people so trolls can be left in peace to annoy goats, waylay passing parties of adventurers, eat up small children and generally deliver on their mission of being rather nasty mythological beasties.

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