How to Combat IRC Trolls (in Our Experience)
"Be excellent to each other" (or "don't be a dick") sounds promising, but sometimes it's just not enough
Last time my wife and I were on holiday it was 2023. Last year we were too busy preparing a lawsuit against Garrett [1, 2], who was later bolstered by Microsoft money (they're willing to spend over a million pounds against us, basically 'bombarding' our home with threats; about 6 kilograms of it so far). Prior to that we were attacked in some 'hybrid' sort of way, but I'd like to focus on IRC, where illegal things were being done against us. In summer of 2023 we began reporting the crimes to British Police, which opened several cases (still open by the way). Banning people for doing illegal things isn't censorship; when we say illegal we mean immoral too, it's not like they were sharing songs or something like that in violation of copyright laws. To some people and companies the law is like a joke; they even openly mock the law enforcement system. Some of them (not all) call themselves anarchists.
Today I want to share my experience (or knowledge) of how to deal with IRC trolls without resorting to dictatorial tendencies:
- Issue warnings to people who violate rules; warnings and actions (actionable things) aren't the same thing. Sometimes asking politely can help.
- Use your own IRC network, don't rely on others doing the "policing" for you.
- Link related accounts, such as sockpuppet accounts
- Publicly report abuse and name the culprits; that can be a form of deterrence
- Establish a healthy culture of debate and resistance to bad discourse (wherein peers in the channel/s would verbally oppose bad behaviour)
- If bad actions get reported to the authorities, make it publicly known (finer details needn't be made public); that can discourage repetition
- At least try to be nice to people, even bad people, give them an opportunity to improve rather than immediately sanction them
Freenode is where we started our IRC channels in 2008. We are glad and relieved that we left it in 2021. It's not about "right wing" or "left wing"; it's about incompetent people being in charge. █