The Problems with Unmasking Online Trolls

The final AoIR 2015 speaker for today is Emily van der Nagel, whose interest is in the unmasking of prominent Reddit troll Violentacrez. There are thousands of Reddit sections that provide a space for the formation of various communities, some of which are highly confrontational and offensive.

The moderator of one of these spaces, Violentacrez, was recently unmasked by an investigative blogger – a process known as doxing –, and this is seen as destructive and a form of violence by Reddit users themselves. The unmasking practice is similar to the Chinese "human flesh search engine", a form of public shaming through online media.

Such unmasking is a form of control, and can have significant chilling effects; there is significant research work on such processes, through which different personal identities collapse into each other, with substantial and often detrimental repercussions. Unmaskers tend to justify their actions by saying that if perpetrators didn't want their activities to be publicly known, but this is a highly problematic position; doxing affects plenty of other participants as well, not just the target of the unmasking.

Doxing is also problematic as it bypasses standard law enforcement processes – it is thus a form of vigilantism and may be done just as much to generate public attention as it is to address a perceived problem. This may be beating the creeps at their own game, but is also stooping to their level.

And there is ongoing, relentless doxing of successful and outspoken women, which sometimes serves to silence their public and online voices. The effects of such online harassment must be communicated more publicly, and safe online spaces need to be fostered. As Internet researchers, we have a responsibility to lead this process.