How to Fight Off Internet Trolling and Abuse. Promptly.

Ah, nasties. They really get to you. They ruin your lovely Internet experience with their nastiness. They aren’t following the rules, but somehow, the site moderators haven’t caught on.

Fighting the meanies is one of my pastimes. I fight them on Twitter. I’m part of the Internet brigade defending the actress Rose McGowan, who was assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, against smears. You can message Rob Marczak on Twitter to help with that coordinated campaign, called #DivSubRosa. And I fight trolls on Quora, on my Israel-Palestine peace Space and on another Space I started about anti-Semitism. If you want to get oriented contributing to Quora Spaces, you can read this tutorial. But here, I’m going to teach you a little trick that stops mean people. Promptly.

Feed them back their words.

Yes, that’s right. And know the rules of the site. Those are tools at your disposal.

I’m going to start with how NOT to handle abuse.

Let’s say someone writes this.

This was the actual reply. It turned the thread into a long, hostile argument.

Here’s what I might have replied instead.

BNBR is Quora’s “Be Nice, Be Respectful” rule, that posts should not be disparaging or adversarial to a person or a group. With a reply like that, there is no more place to attack. Instead, it turns the attention wholly on the violation. At that point, I will often report. And with a reply like that, everyone else can see what’s reportable.

Here’s how I did basically the same thing, shutting down hostility on Facebook. The hidden comment was too long to show, but there’s no replying to this.

On Twitter, the character limit of tweets makes this approach more difficult. Here’s a Twitter troll I shut up as part of #DivSubRosa. I had been messaged about this User’s hostility toward Rose McGowan.

In the first tweet, as Waffles North, I trivialized the accusation and pointed to the hostility. Read this if you’re curious about what Waffles North means.

Then, I refused to budge on the issue of Harvey Weinstein’s very serious offenses.

And finally, I equated Lara’s actions to her own accusations of Rose.

At the first signs of lowered hostility, I dropped my own hostility, reminded Lara of the violations, and closed things.

Happy writing.