“Don’t feed the trolls” also ignores an obvious method for addressing online abuse: skilled moderation and the willingness to kick people off platforms for violating rules about abuse. At one website I used to write for, everyone constantly remarked that we had the most amazing, thoughtful commenters. How did we achieve this? Easy: a one-strike policy. Complete zero tolerance. Did people complain? Of course they did. But it stopped people with bad intentions from being a part of the community, and it kept all the well-meaning people on their best behavior. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good.
It also a took a ton of effort on the part of the entire writing team. We had to ignore the other popular sentiment of “don’t read the comments” (which is largely about trying to maintain sanity while staring at the void) and embrace a jaw-droppingly obvious fact: what truly derails any given thread or conversation lies not in a given response to trolls, but the very troll who is trying to derail in the first place. The second you treat them as a “constant” or inescapable part of your community, you have given them permission. You make them a missing stair. And the impact of doing so is only exacerbated when you scale up.
Don’t feed the trolls & other hideous lies
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