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- [Narrator] The internet,
what began as exclusive tool to connect militaries,
governments, and then universities,
has now, more than 60 years later,
transformed everything about how
modern societies operate and communicate.
Today, no one can escape the grasp of social media,
or evade the mind-boggling connectivity
that nearly all humans worldwide, now have access too.
But few have been prepared for what has also emerged,
with all this human connectedness.
A new, and ominous, strain of human behavior
has been unleashed.
Increasingly,
people are hiding behind a cloak of anonymity,
waiting to provoke, harass, and even threaten anyone
they choose.
They are called, Internet Trolls.
(sinister laugh)
- A troll is someone, devoting larger parts of their life,
to attacking other people on the internet.
Basically, trying to make that other person's life
miserable in some way.
- They sent things to my home.
It terrifies me to think what they could do,
if they wanted to, knowing exactly where I lived,
knowing where my children go to school.
(bell rings)
- [Narrator] Trolls can be a minor annoyance,
or a life crippling terror.
But what happens, if society tries to silence them?
Who loses then?
- Trolling is a free speech issues,
and if aren't free aren't free to hate someone,
then you're not free.
- I'd been associated with all kinds of
organized trolling groups.
We're stretching the bounds of free speech.
You either use it, or you lose it.
Feelings will be hurt.
- [Narrator] Politicians and the courts,
are now grappling,
with who really is a dangerous troll.
- I've been called troll by very powerful people
that should know better.
Homophone, misogynist, racist, all this stuff,
is just lazy people, not wanting to interact.
- [Narrator] Artist Gregory Alan Elliott,
is at the center of a landmark trolling case,
that might land him behind bars, and forever change,
what any of us, anywhere, can or cannot say online.
- If Mr.Elliott is convicted of a criminal offense,
watch out, nobody will be safe, you'd better shut up,
because if you don't, you could be going to jail.
(loud typing)
(soothing music)
- My name is Gina Crosley-Corcoran,
I write a blog called the Feminist Breeder,
and I deal with a really steady onslaught of very vicious,
and dedicated trolls.
Trolls can be really, really sneaky.
When you think about patterns of stalking,
stalkers don't just do it really quietly,
they leave their victims clues that they're being stalked,
in order to scare them.
So, today, I got a Working Person's Store Magazine,
addressed to the Feminist Breeder,
with my home addressed.
My trolls sent me this,
probably to imply that I'm too lazy to find a real job,
besides blogging, so.
Guys, hey. - Hi, mom.
- Come here, pumpkin pie.
- [Narrator] Gina's blog earns her family a decent income.
She writes about being a stay at home,
but from a pro-choice, modern feminist perspective,
and a large active community of like-minded women,
has grown around her blog.
- I like to see that recognition response, when someone else
goes, (gasps), "Me, too."
And that's so validating.
That's why I do it.
- [Narrator] Feminists are frequently targeted by trolls.
Gina knew to expect attacks,
but she's been overwhelmed by the volume of abuse,
and stunned to discover who her trolls are.
- The trolls and the really dangerous people
that I attract, are themselves mothers,
and have small children at home.
They get something out of taking out their frustrations
on someone like me.
They see me as a figurehead, and,
they're really angry about the attention I'm getting
from people, and they want to discredit me,
in any way they possibly can.
These people spend all day, taking screenshots of
every word I type on the internet,
they all pick it apart, they talk about my children,
they talk about my clothes,
they spend an incredible amount of energy,
focusing exclusively on something that they claim
to completely hate.
And to me, that's the difference between someone
who just disagrees with you,
or someone who's really stalking every move you take.
And those are the trolls.
- [Narrator] Gina sees little difference between
her trolls and her stalker.
They want to see her react,
and they know how to push her buttons.
- A stalker wants to upset that person,
they want to make them afraid,
and that's what these trolls do,
they leave comments in such a way that makes you
feel afraid of what they're gonna do, and say.
They'll leave comments about my address, or my kids,
and they do it, because they wanna get a reaction
outta me.
They wanna see me lash out, and it all feeds into this
sick and twisted entertainment value to them.
- [Narrator] So, what is it, that motivates trolls?
In London, England, psychologist Raj Persaud,
believes the internet has spawned an entire new,
yet unexplored set of human behaviors.
- Psychologists, or psychiatrists,
have been someone taken back, by the huge amount
of negativity there appears to be on the internet.
And it maybe that the internet has unleased,
a kind of dark demon within millions of people out there,
in the general public.
We think that one of the things that's problematic
about the internet, is it normalizes
extreme behavior.
So, because you see a lot of people on the internet
behaving in an extreme fashion,
you think it's more normal, than it might actually be.
And the other thing is, is it seems to encourage
a heard-like piece of behavior.
If one person starts being negative,
and a group of people pile in behind them,
there's a kind of cascade effect,
which you don't see in ordinary life,
outside of the internet.
- [Narrator] Psychologists truly believe,
that one thing has compounded the effects,
and numbers of trolls.
- Anonymity seems to be a very important factor
on the internet, in that it seems to
make people less inhibited about doing nasty things.
It means that
people feel free to get away with bad behavior,
because they think they're not gonna get called to account,
no one's gonna point the finger at them.
So, the anonymity, in fact, seems very important,
and may explain, why so much dark, and negative,
and extreme behavior occurs on the internet,
but doesn't seem to occur in real-life,
in face-to-face interactions.
- [Narrator] But what inspires a troll?
What do they get out of it?
Operating out of an undisclosed location in North America,
one hardcore, and self-professed troll, agreed to tell us,
provided we maintain his anonymity.
- I'm wild goose, and I'm a member
of the Bill Waggoner crew,
and I've done a podcast for the past several years,
documenting internet troll activity,
hacker activity, Gamer Gate, Anonymous, Occupy,
you name it, I've been a part of it.
There's a serious darkness in not only us,
but I think in everybody online.
I think a lot of people just don't tap into the
the power of anonymity and what it can do for them.
When you're anonymous,
you're free to do and say a lot things,
that you otherwise wouldn't do in real-life.
You would be powerless to do, in real-life.
Goose joined forces with like minded trolls he met online,
and they work as a team,
to offend and infuriate as many people as they can.
- If you were to Google "Bill Waggoner Crew",
chances are, you've come across a term called
R.I.P. Trolling.
When somebody dies, and their family puts up a memorial,
up in their honor,
we might set up a separate page,
or we might just go on that page,
and create a ruckus.
But the idea is to get as many followers as possible
on that page, and make it seem as legit as possible,
so that we can offend as many people as possible,
when we start posting more,
other kinds of shocking material.
(dramatic music)
(church bell)
- [Narrator] Hounding people when they are most vulnerable.
Like at the time of a loved one's funeral,
is a sure-fire hit for the troll.
- That's the easiest way for us to create a mass effect,
is really effective when you have
all these people who are already emotional,
we drop this bomb on them,
with the gore photos, maybe some kind of
sexually explicit photos.
It sends their emotions into over drive.
- [Narrator] But what do the trolls get,
out of seeing these distraught reactions?
Lulz. L-U-L-Z.
That's the currency of the troll,
and it's what they're after.
Lulz, or laughs, fun and amusement,
at the expense of others.
The Waggoner Crew, will prod people online for reactions.
The bigger their response, the more popular
the target becomes.
- Someone who gets really animated,
and waves their arms around on camera,
preferably, or they'll into scream into a microphone
on a podcast,
they might start crying, they become Lulz Cow.
They're like an ongoing target.
We love that kind of reaction.
We wanna make them cry, we love to make them cry.
- [Narrator] The open internet is a playground,
for Goose, and trolls like them.
And the stark contrast, to what they can get away with
in normal society, is not lost on them.
- I really can't, I mean, the real world's so boring,
and it's lacking in lulz, it really is.
I don't think we'll be able to find this in real life.
The internet presented something that was never
available to us before.
(trumpet music)
- [Narrator] But today, if you go on the internet,
you're entering the domain of the troll.
But where did internet trolling all start?
This unassuming, computer science professor,
may hold the answer, and may himself,
be one of the very first trolls, on the internet.
- I am doctor Adam Steele, I am an associated professor
of Computer Science at DePaul University in Chicago.
I think I am the first record trolls on the internet.
Certainly not the first troll, but the first one
that was actually written up.
This is piece that is here because my wife hates,
called the Alchemist.
I didn't really notice, but it sure does look like a troll
and I guess he's stirring the pot.
- [Narrator] Adam will first access the internet,
while attending university, in the province of
Quebec, Canada.
And it wouldn't be long, until he was stirring the pot,
with his wry sense of humor.
- I was a grad student in 1993, at Concordia University
in Montreal, essentially, at that time,
the internet was still very nascent,
and at that point, was just a relatively small number of
universities that were connected together.
And there was this kind of, quasi bulletin board system,
called the News Network.
You had, for example, a group like rec.humor,
people would trade jokes.
And I guess what happened at some point, was that,
there were people on rec.humor, who had a certain penchant
for tasteless jokes that was not appreciated
by the rest of the community, and so,
the tasteless denizens were kind of hived off,
and started their own group.
And, alt.tasteless was born.
- [Narrator] As the chat group alt.tasteless got going,
the jokes started getting more and more extreme,
but soon, the jokes just couldn't get the rise they wanted.
- I think it was a long, hot summer, and
everybody was kind of getting a little bored,
and there was this idea that the people of alt.tasteless,
should invade a newsgroup, and somebody suggested
rec.pets.cats.
- [Narrator] Yes, cat lovers, would be the next target,
and Adam would be the lead.
- Like any community, they wanted to discuss problems
that their cats had, so I guess my contribution was,
that we should actually engage them, by writing
a story that would appear to be from somebody who was
genuinely concerned, get them to respond.
A stealth attack.
So, I created a fictitious identity,
and it was posted anonymously to rec.pets.cats.
- [Narrator] And what happened next,
would be recognized by Wired magazine, as something
that had never happened on the internet before.
- I have two cats. Sootikin, two year old female,
and Choad.
Choad's problem is that he has really stinky shits,
paint peelers.
- [Narrator] Adam's post was vulgar, and over the top,
but he took care to keep it believable.
- Sooti goes into heat something fierce,
yowling, and presenting all the time.
While dinner was cooking, I tried to stimulate her
with a Q-tip, because I had heard that
one can induce ovulation that way.
By date came into the bathroom while I was doing this,
and needless to say,
I don't think she bought my explanation.
- [Narrator] The cat lovers, however,
bought Adam's story, hook, like and sinker.
- Initial responses to the post were very helpful,
and essentially suggested that Sooti should get spayed.
Then slowly, other suggestions started popping up.
- [Narrator] As the off-color suggestions became grosser,
and more extreme, the cat lovers were outraged,
and the alt.tasteless gang, had a blast.
- So, what we did was, we essentially trolled,
you know, in the way you throw a liver out behind a boat,
and motor over the fish, until somebody bites.
- [Narrator] Adam, and the alt.tasteless crew,
had become the Internet's first gang of trolls.
(laughter)
Back then, Adam was one of about 14 million internet
users, worldwide.
25 years later, there are three billion people online.
And the nature of trolling has evolved.
- What's happened now is that trolling has taken on
a meaning different from sort of the fishing metaphor.
And more towards that of the troll under the bridge,
where someone will post something,
and the responses will be very destructive,
basically laying waste to whatever's bieng said.
- [Narrator] In the early 1990s, Adam and his friends,
were trolling for fun.
But now, negativity is everywhere on the internet.
Back in London, doctor Raj Persaud,
suspects that we all have a potential troll,
lucking in our psyches.
- The answer to the question of whether we're all
potential trolls, is delivered by
a simple question, "Have you ever gossiped negatively,
"about someone else?"
'Cause if you have, it is a sense in which you
were doing a kind of micro-trolling behavior.
- [Narrator] It's not pretty, but science has now proved,
that putting someone else down, can make us feel better,
about ourselves.
And there's a specific name, for the feeling that results.
- The psychologists are taking increasing interest,
in what's called the Schadenfreude effect.
And Schadenfreude is a word from German,
which is about feeling pleasure at someone else's downfall.
There're a lot of people on the planet,
feeling low self esteem, feeling beaten up by life.
Maybe watching other people doing badly,
watching other people suffer, seems to correct
your low self-esteem.
- [Narrator] Deriving pleasure from the pain of others,
is a character we all seem to have, to a degree.
But psychologists are now finding,
that hardcore trolls, are likely to express,
four dark personality traits.
In Winnipeg, Canada, a landmark study of internet trolls,
has now shown that one of those dark traits,
stands above the rest.
Sadism.
- Sadists do it because they like.
Some people get their jollies by being rude, and obnoxious,
and causing hard to harm to other people.
Sometimes, serious harm to other people,
and it gives them pleasure.
- [Narrator] Doctor Paul Trapnell, and his colleagues,
have confirmed, that the internet, with millions of
potential victims, and anonymity to hide behind,
is a playground for people with sadistic tendencies.
- It's a venue where a person can go on and
ruffle somebody's feathers, or embarrass or humiliate them,
or make them feel anguish, and there is no consequence
to that, and it's easy to do.
So that might attack people
that take pleasure in harming people,
and that seems to be what we found.
- [Narrator] Trapnell and his team, began their studies
by focusing on people who frequently leave comments
on message boards, a significant number of them,
unabashedly rated trolling,
as their favorite commenting activity.
- Then we asked them to also fill out a number of
personality questionnaires,
and those questionnaires included some measures of
well-known, widely, studied, forms of nasty tendencies.
We found, as expected, that the trollers,
were highers on of those in the level of traits.
It's not a stretch, but nobody had investigated that,
with data, and so we did so,
and sure enough, that's true.
Let me illustrate what I mean
by these four, dark tendencies,
that have especially toxic social consequences.
Psychopathy, we can be callously indifferent,
by our reckless pursuit of things that we want.
In narcissism, we are callously indifferent to others,
by our pursuit of grandiosity,
of wanting to hog the limelight,
wanting to think that we are superior to other people.
Machiavellianism, the pursuit of strategic harm,
in order to benefit ourselves.
Sadism is a particular malevolent way that we can do
harm to others, and that is by seeking to harm people
purposely, because it's pleasurable to us.
So, all of us have the potential to be dark in these
four different ways, and indeed,
some people combine these tendencies in ways that make
them especially dark, malevolent individuals.
And that is, a very, very malevolent person.
This is not somebody you wanna have anything to do with
at all, definitely not.
- [Narrator] Nasty individuals have had free reign,
on the internet, and trolling is on the rise.
But more and more people, are starting to fight back.
This accused troll, has been forced off the internet
for three years, by a Toronto court.
And today, his artwork has been forced off these cafe walls,
by angry protests.
Gregory Allen Elliott, is in limbo,
awaiting verdict, in a landmark Twitter harassment trial.
When I use Twitter, I use it at as pure form.
As an artist, I explain that is is a brush,
this is some paint, this is a canvas.
I used it comment on politics,
I used it to help people.
But I just used it everyway possible.
One day, I responded to every tweet that came across
my feed stream.
And then someone said,
"You don't have to respond to everything."
And I said, "I know."
Right, but today I'm doing, that's what I'm doing,
as an artist and an experimentor.
- [Narrator] At one point, Gregory was sending
300 tweets per day.
It was ascorbic, sometimes crude,
and very opinionated.
Inevitably, he made some enemies,
who wanted to shut him up.
Chris Murphy, Gregory's lawyer,
explains how Gregory went from volunteering,
to design a logo for feminist organization,
to being arrested, and jailed, for three days.
- When Greg called me, he had no idea why the police were
there, and neither did I, obviously,
and it wasn't until, sometime after this arrest,
when he was in custody, that he first learned,
what the police were doing that.
And it turned out, there was a woman named
Steph Gutharie, who had said that Mr. Elliott,
had been criminally harassing her on Twitter.
The medium that Mr.Eliott is alleged to have harassed,
the complain that Miss Guthrie is on Twitter,
that's it.
No personal emails, not Facebook, nothing in person,
no in-person meetings, no stalking behavior.
- Here is the one they threw coffee on.
You can throw coffee on it, but creating the picture's
worth more than a thousand people destroying it.
This is like freedom of speech,
this is saying, you know, like I can comment,
on what you're doing.
As long it's not a threat.
If the truth hurts you, it's not problem,
because I'm just telling the truth.
- Mr. Elliott was disagreeing with
Stephanie Guthrie's politics,
she's a founder of a political organization in Toronto,
called Women in Toronto Politics.
Mr. Elliott was an ally of hers, for a number of months.
But then, there was a break in the relationship,
because, Mr. Elliott, stuck up for someone he believed was
being bullied by Miss Guthrie and her friends, on Twitter.
- [Narrator] Miss Guthrie, who refused to be interview
for this film, asked her followers to quote,
"Tip the internet, on a young man who had made
"an anti-feminist video game, a game that even
"Mr. Elliott admits was clearly offensive."
- It was an orchestrated and dangerous attack on this guy.
Right up to that point, I was sending tweets to them saying,
"Look, the guy only has 11 followers, ignore it,
"it's not good branding, to destroy people's lives."
But they said, "Screw you, Greg."
And I said, "Well, you have to take me seriously.
"You're not gonna stop."
I sent a tweet, that I'm gonna paraphrase it, it said,
"If he commits suicide, I'm holding you all responsible."
And at that point, my helping stopped,
and the attacks started, and I had to start defending.
- [Narrator] Gregory didn't know what he was up against.
A community had labeled him a troll, and they were
determined to get rid of him.
- I knew they were trying to get me kicked off Twitter.
So, at first it was a campaign of intimidation.
Second, it was, fake identities.
Using my face, and names that were similar to my names,
and that's illegal, and if I had felt like it,
I could've got whoever did it, kicked off Twitter.
And then it was hastag, GAEhole.
Gregory Allen Elliott Asshole. So, GAEhole.
So, this was an orchestrated campaign, that ramped up.
- [Narrator] Gregory fought back with tweets that were
often abrasive and confrontational,
but he never broke Twitter's terms of service.
That hasn't stopped the justice system
from charging him with criminal harassment,
and imposing bail conditions, taking away his internet use
for three years.
- So, what I've had to do for
for the three years, to,
because I was banned from the internet,
and banned from email, is I've had to rely on family
and friends, and try and cut into their lives and schedules.
Yeah, to be forced back onto a pencil and eraser is
very interesting.
- I've spent, I couldn't even count,
thousands of hours, like this, sitting like this,
out of my own time, because he was not able to do his own
evidence gather for his case.
- So, you have to do,
the most painful thing is having to go through
stream of consciousness, blather of Twitter.
Not exciting for me, and I can imagine,
it's even less exciting
for everyone that was helping me out, so.
- [Narrator] Sifting through the intricate web of thousands
of tweets and retweets, made one thing abundantly clear
to Gregory's lawyer, Chris Murphy.
- Gregory Allen Elliott is not a troll.
There's no way.
He's either communicating a political message,
or he's defending himself against their slander.
Those two things do not make you a troll.
He wasn't going near them, physically,
wasn't saying anything threatening,
wasn't saying anything sexual to them.
He was communicating about politics.
And he was following the rules on Twitter.
- [Narrator] But because Gregory wouldn't shut up,
his accusers went to the police, saying that
they felt threatened.
Now, Gregory waits for the judge to decide his fate.
Freedom or six months behind bars.
- If Mr. Elliott is convicted of a criminal offense,
watch out.
Because, nobody will be safe.
What you're gonna do if you're involved
in a political conversation, online,
and the mob comes to shut you up,
you'd better shut up,
because if you don't, you could be going to jail.
(door slams)
- [Narrator] Internet trolling has two essential parts.
The attack, and your reaction.
A big reaction is what the trolls crave,
and the way you respond, determines whether or not
you are a worthwhile target.
- If it's just somebody, that's gonna, you know, block us,
that's the end of the game, battle you got sucked.
That doesn't provide too much entertainment.
- [Narrator] Prolific Wild Goose, and the Waggoner Crew,
are all about the lulz, the laughs, their victims provide.
They call them Lulz Cows.
So, there's a logical limit to how far they'll push them.
- There's a symbiotic relationship between the
internet troll, and the Lulz Cow.
The Bill Waggoner crew has never pushed anyone towards
suicide, nor have we tried to,
that's never our intent.
Why would we kill a perfectly good Lulz Cow?
If we were to knock them off the internet,
or out of real life, what benefit would that provide us?
How're we gonna get any lulz our of someone
who's six feet underground.
You know,
last I looked,
dead people don't come on the internet.
- [Narrator] Stay at home mom and professional blogger,
Gina Crosly-Corcoran, faces a politically motivated faction
among her trolls.
They disagree with her opinions on home birth,
breast feeding, and the health care system.
And they want to drive her blog
off the internet, altogether.
- I have a large reach, but I don't feel like
it somehow makes me better than anybody,
or makes me some sort of powerful figure,
but they see it as very powerful,
and that's why they want to shut it down.
- [Narrator] A few years ago, a coordinated trolling
campaign, drove away all of Gina's sponsors.
- There were a couple of brands that hung on,
but ultimately they were like,
"Listen, these people are flooding our Facebook page,
"with negative comments, and hateful comments,
"and talking about our families now,
"and we just can't do it."
So, suddenly, almost overnight, I had no income base,
but I had, what had become an expensive blog to run.
- [Narrator] Gina took a chance,
and put up a paywall, and fortunately,
it turned out that most of her audience,
was willing to pay to be part of
the Feminist Breeder community.
But the frustrated trolls, have since stooped,
to new lows.
(police sirens)
- One of them called the police,
and told them that I was committing suicide.
So the police showed up at my house,
at like three in the morning, woke up out of bed,
and said, "We got an anonymous tip, that you are suicidal.
"And we have to put you under a 72 hour psych hold."
So, I was being thrown in the back of an ambulance,
crying, you know, upset, afraid that my children
were gonna wake up and see mommy being taken away.
Luckily, I was able to talk to the EMT,
and I explained to him, like,
"Listen, this person you're saying from Twitter,
"this person doesn't know me, please don't take me anywhere,
"I have kids up to in the morning."
And luckily, he sort of saw the situation for what it was,
and he let me out of the ambulance, and said,
"Okay, go back to bed."
So, I found out from the police that anyone can
make a call, and say that they're worried about you
committing suicide, or they're worried about your
children's welfare, or anyone can make an anonymous tip,
they don't have to leave their name, so,
there's really nothing legally speaking
that I can do about that.
My trolls realized that was a good way to
use my own local police to harass me,
and get me out of bed at three in the morning.
(loud knocking)
In the course of a year, it happened three times.
So, I went to the police, and I said,
"This has to be illegal."
And, you know, the local police's response was basically,
"Well, if you don't like it, get off the internet."
- [Narrator] When the police cannot, or will not help,
there is another place that trolling victims can turn.
- Nice to meet you.
- Please come have a seat.
The victims I deal with, come to us, very frustrated.
They're frustrated with the situation,
because they feel helpless.
- [Narrator] Roman Horak, is lead forensic investigator,
at Infotransic, an international cyber security firm.
He tracks down the trolls that law enforcement won't,
or can't find.
- The reasons why the police won't engage the cases,
is because they won't believe
they have enough of a serious threat,
or they won't have, the person themselves won't have
enough evidence.
- I've been getting a lot of people threatening me online
and it's scary, I'm not really sure what to do with this.
- What sites mainly are the treats coming through on?
- Mostly Twitter, but there's couple on Facebook.
- Okay.
One of the big questions, is understanding the motive
of the troll.
There's some trolls that they just
go on the internet, looking for someone random to,
you know, harass.
However, the vast majority of trolls that we deal with
are someone who they know.
They would've had a relationship somehow with the offender.
- [Narrator] Indeed, in the course of their investigations,
Roman and his team have discovered that
it is people we know,
family, and friends, and work mates,
who are most often behind,
the heinous attacks we can face.
But Roman's team has also uncovered a new,
more dangerous type of player in the trolling game.
Professional trolls.
Those who can be hired to settle a score,
and attack others for money.
- Online trolls for hire, this service is available online,
almost like a hitman.
Some of the guys are very professional.
They even create their own malware,
target to that victims, so they're right there on coding.
These guys know what they're doing.
These trolls for hire could be
pretty much anywhere in the world.
Romania, or Ukraine, Russia, lots from there.
Trynna track them down, often becomes
an international operation,
having to coordinate between different law enforcements
in different countries.
- [Narrator] But, thankfully, the vast majority of trolls
are outright amateurs,
who don't really know how to cover their tracks.
- About 85% of people who're doing these things,
you know, trolling and harassing people online,
are not tech savvy.
Most offenders are leaving
a vast amount of digital evidence, everyday.
I mean every second, every minute, right now.
Pretty much everything we do online is potentially archived.
- [Narrator] Many trolls operate with
a false sense of security, about their anonymity.
And the potential consequences they face, if exposed.
In England, the law has taken a hard stance,
and a line has been drawn in the digital sand.
- Yeah, I sent some tweets in 2014,
and end up getting 12 week prison sentence,
for those tweets.
- [Narrator] It wasn't her habit to abuse people online,
but today, Isabella Sorely, is known as one of England's
most notorious trolls.
So, what was Isabella's online offense?
In 2013, feminist activist Caroline Criado-Perez,
was campaigning to have a woman's face appear
on the next printing of the English 10 pound note.
The public reaction was largely positive.
But she was also deluged by a torrent or abusive,
irrational and threatening messages on Twitter.
Isabella joined that mob.
- That particular night, I was incredibly drunk,
and I decided to go home and just send tweets.
It wasn't about the campaign, I don't overly care
what's on a British bank note.
I know she was campaigned, to have a woman,
and the Queen's on the bank note anyway, so,
I don't, yeah, did really not care at all,
what she was campaigning about.
Even now, I don't even know why I sent them.
I'd love to know why, and I'd love to give like
a clear answer, but the real thing is just that,
I was drunk and just jumped on the bandwagon,
and followed a lot of other people.
- [Narrator] The trolls were not debating,
they were spewing hate,
and hating Criado-Perez personally,
for her feminist agenda.
Isabella added six threatening tweets of her own.
She threatened rape, and worse.
- I woke up in the morning,
obviously worse for wear, realized what I'd done,
I was physically sick, I don't know if it was down to tweet,
or just the hangover, but absolutely vile.
What I had tweeted was disgusting,
so, to think that I actually typed that out,
I felt disgusted in myself,
that I had sent those specific words to another person.
- [Narrator] Filled with remorse the night after
spewing her online hate,
Isabella took to the internet, to both confess,
and say sorry.
- I apologized to her, went,
"Look, it is an empty threat, do not worry. I'm sorry."
I don't know if I reassured her at all,
but, kind of, it made me feel a little bit better that,
"Yeah, she's getting all these other real death threats,
"at least mine is an empty threat,
"she doesn't have to worry about me following through
"with what I said."
- [Narrator] But rape, and death threats,
are taken very seriously.
Four months later, Isabella was arrested,
along with another troll.
Her trial, was widely publicized,
and she faced the scorn of a nation.
- I got a 12 week prison sentence,
in Holloway prison, it was hard.
It was really hard.
So obviously like how high profile it was,
I couldn't hide away, I had all the prisoners asking
why I did it, I had all like the prison guards,
asking why I did it.
I was getting a lot of abuse from everywhere,
I was made out to be a woman hater,
and obviously, I'm in a woman's prison, so I was like,
"Oh dear, now I got my head kicked in, because
"what someone had saw what I'd tweeted on the news."
I saw myself on crime watch in the prison cells,
so that was hard.
- [Narrator] After her time in jail, Isabella
was ordered to do community service,
and also pay money, to Caroline Criado-Perez,
personally, for her online attacks.
In England, Isabella Sorely's case,
was a precedent setting one,
a very clear message had been sent by the crown.
But not everyone agrees, with the goverment's stance.
- I think trolling is a free speech issue,
I think what we have is a situation
where people are being prevented from saying
certain things, often quite shocking things,
and not very socially useful things, you know,
it's often just insults or abuse, but in my mind,
it falls under the category of freedom of speech.
And if you aren't free to hate, then you're not free.
- [Narrator] Brandon O' Neil is editor of the
online current affairs magazine, Spiked.
He's no stranger to controversy,
or trolling.
- Well, I've been attacked as an individual all the time,
I get abuse, I'm defamed, I'm libeled.
If I search for myself online,
there's all sorts of abuse.
And sometimes it becomes physical.
I've had an envelope of human shit
sent to this office.
So, you know, you get abuse all the time.
If you put yourself out there,
if you express an opinion, if you say what you think,
you will get abuse.
But in my mind, that's the price you pay,
for living in a free society
in which everyone is allowed to express their opinion.
- [Narrator] Today, opinions are everywhere,
but increasingly, tolerance of opposing views, is not.
It seems, anyone can be attacked for saying anything
remotely offensive, and the line between internet trolling,
and what is called public shaming, is blurring.
- I guess, my definition, that trolls are like a
kind of extreme, outrageous minority, who will use
kind of extreme language.
With the public shaming, it's like nice people like us,
we tear somebody apart because we're trying to be good,
kind, empathetic people.
And we're the ones who really do the damage,
because being torn apart by like tens of thousands
of lovely people like us,
for a joke that lands badly on Twitter,
that is profoundly and horrendously traumatizing.
- [Narrator] Best selling Welsh author, John Ronson,
thinks that social media pile-ons,
and the public humiliation
that many of us take part in daily,
is out of control.
- Take somebody like Justine Sacco,
you know, who just before getting onto plane to Cape Town
wrote, "Going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS.
"Just kidding, I'm white."
And she chuckled to herself, and press send,
and got no replies,
got on the plane, turned off her phone, fell asleep.
Probably the last decent sleep she had in a year.
- [Narrator] Justine had only 170 Twitter followers
when she posted her now infamous joke.
But as she slept on that flight,
the internet exploded.
When she woke up, and turned her phone back on,
she discovered that she had lost her job,
and was now despised, by a global audience,
with millions of people attacking her online.
- Justine's tweet overwhelmed your timeline,
yet, everybody, me too, I was in London, like in bed,
and I thought what everbody else thought,
which was, "Wow, somebody's fucked."
(audience laughs)
So, I sat up in bed, then I thought,
"I'm not
"certain that that was intended to be a racist tweet."
- [Narrator] John Ronson was so unnerved
by the public response
to Justine Sacco's tweet, that he went to see her.
- When I met Justine a couple of weeks later,
just crushed and broken, and mangled up,
I asked her to explain the joke, and she said,
"Living in America, puts us in a bit of a bubble
"when it comes what's going on in the third world.
"I was making fun of the bubble."
"And then came the trolls."
"I'm actually kinda hoping Justine Sacco gets AIDS, lol."
Somebody else that night wrote,
"Somebody HIV positive should rape this bitch,
"so, then we'll find it out if her skin color protects her
"from AIDS."
But you know what, nobody went after that person,
that night.
We were all so thrilled to go after Justine,
we were so happy to be destroying Justine,
we didn't have enough space in our brains,
to destroy somebody who was inappropriately
destroying Justine.
So, that person got a free ride.
With a public shaming,
you are being told by hundreds of thousands of lovely people
that you are worthless.
And the people who I met,
who were really crushed, traumatized, depressed,
a smattering of trolls may have said,
"We're gonna rape you, and kill you."
But what really killed those people was,
was our righteousness.
- [Narrator] The line between bad behavior and trolling,
is blurry.
And as Briton's most notorious troll, Isabella Sorely,
has found out, that consequences are profound.
She spent 12 weeks in jail for sending
six threatening tweets, after a night of binge drinking.
- 20 minutes just still defining my life.
Which, again, I struggle to, to cope with that,
'cause it was such a short period of time,
and I'm always gonna have that stigma attached,
that I'm that Twitter, that Twitter girl.
- [Narrator] She's sorry for what she did,
but she's not sure the punishment fit the crime.
- I think, obviously what I sent,
if you had said it face, you're gonna get in trouble.
I don't think I would've got prison.
I was definitely made an example of,
'cause of how high profile it was.
- [Narrator] Isabella would like to apologize,
to her victim, face to face one day,
but a lifetime restraining order means,
that likely won't happen.
Today, she works with youth to educate them about the
dangers of alcohol abuse, which she believes,
ignited her trolling behavior.
But for now, and likely forever, Isabella will have to live
with the very public, and criminal consequences,
of her online actions.
Free speech advocate and journalist, Brandon O'Neil,
doesn't mince words.
He thinks Briton is creeping closer to a 1984
George Orwell police state, when it comes to what
can or cannot be said society.
He sees trolls, as a scapegoated minority,
pawns in a game where much more is at stake.
- We present the trolls as powerful,
and the trolled, as these kind of victims,
I think it's the other way around.
I think troll hunters, the people, usually the media people
who present themselves as these brave warriors
against offensiveness on the internet,
they are the greatest threat to the internet.
They are the ones undermining the freedom of the internet,
the accessibility of information,
the right of people to express themselves.
And it's the trolls, the sad man or woman,
stuck in their bedroom, talking rubbish on the internet,
they are the victims.
- [Narrator] As governments legislate to deal with trolling,
there maybe unintended consequences for everyone,
who communicates online.
- And my concern, with the way in which trolling
is discussed is today, is that everything gets conflated.
So, you have a situation where trolling can be
everything from someone issuing a death threat,
which is obviously a serious thing to do,
to someone writing an article saying,
"I don't think climate change is the biggest problem
"facing humanity."
Everything gets lumped together as trolling,
and if you believe in freedom of speech as I do,
you should be outraged by the arrest,
not to mention the imprisonment of someone simply
for expressing an idea.
- [Narrator] Six thousand kilometers
away in Toronto, Canada,
after three years of being forced off the internet,
having his artwork vandalized,
and wondering he would go to jail for the
tweets he sent,
the verdict in Gregory Allen Elliott's case,
is finally handed down.
He is innocent of all charges.
The judge says his tweet contained nothing,
of a violent or sexual nature,
and there was no indication that he intended to hurt
his accusers.
- I was not doing anything wrong,
and I was protecting myself and my freedom of speech,
and I wasn't gonna be bullied or intimated by people
that were trying to protect the world from
bullies or intimidators, you know,
for lack of a better word, you know.
- [Narrator] Gregory has his freedom,
but he's paid a heavy toll, for the speech his opponents
considered trolling.
- The emotional toll's brutal, it's brutal.
And the monetary, the money and stuff,
I lost my job of 17 years, I had to cashout my pension.
Absolutely destroyed me financially.
Destroyed me financially.
- [Narrator] Gregory's reputation,
has also been damaged, even his most abrasive tweets,
pale beside the trolling he received,
and the hands of the twitter mob.
- Even though he was in the right,
there is a permanent record that's going to follow him
on the internet, of Mr. Elliott being labeled as a
men's rights activist, a misogynist, and a pedophile.
And I guarantee you one thing, nobody who accused him
of being those three things, is going to apologize.
- [Narrator] Gregory's detractors say that misogyny won,
and the most vicious anti-feminist trolls,
see his acquittal as a victory.
Tragically, this case has done nothing,
to make discourse on the internet any better.
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, blogger Gina Crosley-Corocoran
is tired.
Despite the validation she gets from her
Feminist Breeder Community,
the trolls are wearing her down.
Constant snarky comments, cruel pranks,
threats against her family,
and late night police intrusions,
she's learned to manage it, but it's exhausting.
- I wish that people would use the internet more as a
buffet, just take what you want and leave the rest,
as opposed to feeling like anything that doesn't apply
to them, or anything that they're bothered by,
is a reason to go on the offensive, you know.
When I go to the buffet,
I like the chicken, and I like the mac and cheese,
but I'm not insulted by the other things that are there,
that are might be useful for other people,
and other people might find paletable.
I'm just like, "Yeah, those aren't for me."
And I walk away, I don't like, go up to the manager,
and scream,
"How dare you have this available at your buffet.
"It doesn't personally meet my needs."
But I feel like a lot of people on the internet,
that that's exactly the way that they react.
- [Narrator] Will this new psychological phenomenon
of trolling ever end?
The answer is likely, no.
Instead, we need to gain the tools,
to recognize how to fight trolling,
and recognize how not to become trolls ourselves.
Perhaps ironically, notorious troll, Wild Goose,
advocates for anonymity, and cautions that our real,
physical lives, should be kept off the internet,
altogether.
- People need to disassociate themselves
from their internet persona.
I think it's dangerous, to
sort of plug your personality into the internet.
You're leaving yourself open to a lot of dangerous actors,
more dangerous people than the Bill Waggoner Crew.
Privacy is just as big of an issue,
as freedom of speech, they go hand in hand.
- [Narrator] We think of our real world, physical lives,
as distinct from our online activity,
but that separation is rapidly breaking down.
The biggest challenge we face,
as we adapt to this change,
is maintaining our freedoms in the digital space.
Freedom of speech, maybe the most difficult to transition.
For first time in human history,
the masses can express their opinions,
in a published forum.
I think that's a wonderful thing,
and my concern with troll hunting,
is that it's undermining that demographic breakthrough.
- [Narrator] Physical threats should never be tolerated.
But we may need to ensure that others have the right
to disagree with us, insult, even hate us, online.
- If we are serious about freedom of speech,
then we have to allow people to say, hateful,
obnoxious, racist, sexist, things.
Freedom of speech covers all forms of speech.
(dramatic music)