Fixing the web’s biggest bug: Online harassment

David Klepper

It should have been a time of celebration: Brittan Heller would soon graduate from college and head to one of the nation’s top law programs.

But when a classmate with unrequited feelings for Heller wasn’t admitted to that same school, he turned his rage on her. He wrote a manifesto titled “A Stupid B---h to Attend Yale Law School” and posted it on a site popular with anonymous trolls.

The man urged them to do their worst. Soon strangers were making derogatory, sexualised comments and posting her pictures online.

They made threats. Posted her personal information. At one point, FBI agents escorted Heller to class for her protection. “People say, ‘Oh, just log off. Don’t read it. Turn off the computer,’” said Heller, who turned her personal experience from 15 years ago into a legal specialty as a leading expert on online harassment.

“This the 21st century, and people have a right to use the internet for work, for pleasure or to express themselves. Telling people not to read the comments is no longer enough. We don’t talk enough about this problem, and we need to.” Health care workers, journalists, teachers, police and government workers have all reported increases in online harassment in recent years, as the pandemic and political polarisation led many people to release their anger and fear online.

“We’ve made so many strides — there’s more awareness now — but it’s easy to get frustrated and to feel like we’ve gotten nowhere,” said Tina Meier, who started a foundation to teach kids and parents about online harassment after her daughter’s suicide in 2006. Thirteen-year-old Megan Meier had been bullied by someone she met online who she thought was a teenage boy named Josh.

The two had flirted until the person suddenly turned against Megan. “Everybody hates you,” “Josh” wrote. “The world would be a better place without you.” Police later determined that “Josh” was actually an adult woman, the mother of one of Megan’s classmates.

While polls show all types of people are susceptible to online harassment, extensive research has shown that women and people of color are far more likely to be targeted. That’s also true for people with disabilities, people who belong to religious minorities and members of the LGBTQ community.

Women are more likely than men to say online harassment is a serious problem, Pew found. They’re also more likely to report being the victims of online sexual harassment and more serious abuse such as threats of physical harm.

The difference is so great that many men may not understand the severity of the demeaning language, sexualised insults and unwanted attention that women frequently face online. Anonymity can make it easier to be cruel without fear of offline repercussions.

It’s a phenomenon called the online disinhibition effect, and it’s one reason why trolls feel comfortable saying things they would never say to someone in person. As part of a 2009 settlement of Heller’s lawsuit against her harassers, she asked to meet them face to face.

One was a 17-year-old boy who had posted that he’d like to gouge Heller’s eyes out and have sex with her corpse. “They all essentially said the same thing: that they didn’t realize their actions were impacting a person in that way, that they didn’t realise there was a person on the other side of the screen,” Heller recalled. “And they all said, ‘I am so sorry.’”Tech companies say they are getting better at identifying and stopping harassment.

For example, Instagram, which is owned by Facebook parent company Meta, made several changes designed to reduce harassment, including putting warning labels on potentially abusive language and making it easier to block or report harassers.

“People said similar things about the telegraph, the telephone and the television — that they were somehow going to ruin society,” she said. “They were all regulated about 25 years into their life cycle. Those regulations didn’t kill the telephone, the television or the radio.” —AP