Just When You Thought it Was Over: Fighting Back Against Bullying and Continued Harassment Across Social Media (on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Tumblr)
This story is worth telling because it just keeps getting better.
And by better, the meaning is "worse".
You might want to catch up on the 10 Everyday Information Warfare Tactics You've Already Fallen For - and the case of the AltSciFi zine project (the number has grown to 15 tactics, with examples illustrating how they're used).
Here's a timeline of the past year or so:
Our Tumblr blog reaches ~1,500 subscribers (unlike AltSciFi Twitter, the Tumblr follower count is not curated, so many followers are probably bots). The AltSciFi Tumblr blog has several hundred posts accumulated over at least four years.
A prototype of the AltSciFi gallery/store site is posted to GitHub. Four out of 15 pages have working PayPal links, but the site is obviously not complete. Hint: it's on GitHub -- a site for programming and web development, not e-commerce; 11 pages have no links at all.
The attack begins on Twitter. An artist finds the GitHub site. The artist (we'll call her "MiraKillian") does not contact AltSciFi, but instead creates a Twitter slander/libel attack about how AltSciFi is "stealing art". This attack spreads across social media. Many artists on Twitter use copyright-trolling this way to earn "clout". In this case, MiraKillian is a member of a gang called "The (Twitter) Artist Community" who obsessively Like and Retweet each other's posts to get more magical "clout". Ironically, the Like/Retweet game rewards the best narcisssists and biggest bullies who rise to become "Influencers", some of whom act like megalomanaical miniature Harvey Weinsteins lording their imaginary status over less-popular followers who beg for "signal boosts", prostrating themselves to win the Influencers' favour.
AltSciFi is accused of "promoting" the unfinished site via Tumblr. The Tumblr blog's homepage is the only one that links back to the Github site, since that page was used for testing Tumblr's layout. The Github pages that have PayPal links aren't connected anywhere on the homepage at all -- meaning that no one could find them in any case. (And in case you've ever tried to sell anything via social media, it's a complete waste of time unless you have an extremely specific niche, or ten of thousands of followers. AltSciFi had neither of those, since we haven't publicly marketed, promoted, or launched the zine yet.)
The slander/libel attack reaches GitHub. One sci-fi makeup artist whose work was posted to the AltSciFi Github test site submitted a mostly-false DMCA takedown notice. GitHub never investigates, but rather automatically posts all DMCA takedown notices. This creates the illusion of "guilt" -- but also puts the makeup artist in legal jeopardy for libel based on her own gullibility.
A few months later, MiraKillian's name appears above the title of a cyberpunk webcomic created by a popular artist (we'll call her "Miirai") who has been publicly scammed quite recently. Miirai has built a public persona around being shy and trusting, which makes her the perfect target for yet another scam. This time, MiraKillian has taken over drawing Miira's webcomic along with one other artist, while Miirai herself begs her followers on social media for money to "support" the comic due to repetitive-stress injuries (art is hard work). That is a well-known tactic called a "sympathy scam".
The slander/libel attack reaches Reddit. Nona goes on Reddit and creates a topic to ask, "would you raise funds to help Miirai get proper medical attention for her injuries?" One of Miirai's new "team" appears and lies that Miirai is still creating art for the cyberpunk webcomic herself, which contradicts what she wrote on recent entries of her own blog about being disabled due to her injuries.
The slander/libel attack poisons a Reddit community. A day later, Miirai herself shows up and defends MiraKillian, making up a conspiracy theory about how a fake Patreon account claimed to be her -- therefore it must have secretly been AltSciFi! And the idea about her being scammed is "fake news"! (Note: a key tactic in any scam, obviously, is to gain the confidence and complicity of a vulnerable person.)
The slander/libel attack poisons a subreddit's moderators. The subreddit in which this conversation takes place starts arbitrarily deleting Nona's posts about the topic. Nona quickly narrows down exactly which moderator was likely the culprit based on who was active on Reddit when the most recent post was taken down, and asks a different moderator to deal with it.
Instead of disciplining the culprit, the moderator starts bullshitting, trying to make the problem about Nona instead. Nona contacted the moderator using a relatively new account to create distance from the attackers who are on Reddit. The moderator used that as an excuse, saying "creating alt accounts and posting about the same thing repeatedly is 'suspicious'." The mod also lied that adding links to further information about the incident was "spamming", and intentionally misinterpreted Reddit's rules (do not post the same comment repeatedly) to mean, "do not post about similar topics more than once".
The Reddit admins do nothing. Nona messages the Reddit admins. A week passes. No response.
Note: on that same subreddit, Nona previously posted a topic about the zine, and a well-known copyright troll appeared, spamming the comments section. After Nona reported the troll's comments, Nona was banned for "spamming the moderators". So Nona wrote a blog entry about it, and two years later, another artist commented on the blog that they were dealing with the same idiot. It's been _two years_ and the moderators of that subreddit are still allowing the troll to use their sub as his personal toilet for trolling. So much for "just ignore the trolls."
So you can see that as this story unfolds, it shows how much of a sham the idea of "free speech" really is on social media. Tribalism by a small, aggressive group of motivated (and mostly illiterate) bullies (the "Artist Community" on Twitter, who are actually just a few hundred idiots who are heavy Twitter users) spreads into an internet-wide disinformation campaign.
TL;DR The fallacy of "free speech" on the modern internet is a question of what is deleted or people who are bullied into silence. You can't know what's missing if you never see it in the first place.
Sounds like the perfect starting point for a dystopian sci-fi story, doesn't it?
The AltSciFi project is now fully dedicated to the fight against misinformation, disinformation, internet bullying and copyright trolling. The AltSciFi concept is only the beginning. We are here especially to support members of maginalised communities online (nonwhite, women, LGBT as well as non-neurotypical and older users). A safe and empowering internet for marginalised users creates a better internet for everyone.
If you want more information about ongoing and upcoming efforts to help independent artists and fans like you to create a better internet, send a DM -- or email altscifi at tutanota dot com.
P.S. Keep fighting for net neutrality. If we stop fighting, copyright trolling will become multinational corporate law, and the open web will effectively cease to exist. In other words, welcome to a real cyberpunk dystopia. The only way to stop that from happening is to create a better future for ourselves, since no one else will do it for us.