How to deal with 4chon cyber bullying?

March 8, 2011 3:40 AM

Asking-for-a-friend filter: How to deal with 4chon cyber bullying?

OK, so a female friend has a profile on a dating site, and somebody on 4chon (yes, chon, I thought it was 4chan, but no) has linked to her profile as "chixor is picky LOL AMIRITE?!1!!1?" and now she's getting harassed by the people from the 4chon thread.

She's reported the people who've sent her abusive messages on the dating site, but that isn't stopping the flow of new people from the original 4chon thread.

Is there any way of getting the 4chon thread shut down? Do they have moderators? Any other way of handling this?

posted by anonymous to human relations (20 answers total)

Is taking down her profile an option? I don't know these chonners of which you speak, but if they're anything like 4channers, they will scrape her profile for every last bit of information (username, email address, name, photos, etc) and potentially hunt her down on other sites as well. If I were her, I'd delete the profile or at least blank out the information, and make sure her passwords to email, Facebook, etc. are strong and unique.
posted by Gordafarin at 3:48 AM on March 8, 2011 [2 favorites]

Sign up with a different account at the same dating site? If they have a paid subscription that would make it trickier, but maybe if they explain to the dating site's admins about the harassment they can transfer any existing subscription to a new account.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:50 AM on March 8, 2011

I feel a little bit naive for suggesting this, but have you tried contacting the 4chon admins? They have some rules which would seem to cover this kind of behaviour. email [e-mail] with a link to the thread and any details of the personal messages, though they might not be able to link up the messages with user accounts. Worth a shot though. Failing that, I'd definitely have to agree with deleting the profile.
posted by londonmark at 4:24 AM on March 8, 2011

Looking over the site, it looks like it's definitely a direct 4chan export, so I very, very much doubt you'll get any traction with site admins.

Your only recourses are shutting down the account or just generating a thick skin for a few days. They'll get bored when the thread disappears. I don't have statistics handy for 4chon, but if this were on /b/ I could guarantee it would be gone within an hour. Certainly it won't be more than a day on 4chon. So I would just resolve not to read any of her messages today and if it's really hurtful stuff, have you come over and screen it for her so she doesn't have to read it herself.
posted by heresiarch at 4:58 AM on March 8, 2011

Her best shot would be to ignore it, possibly hide her profile temporarily. Whatever she does, she must not communicate back. She's dealing with a mob of people, who are most likely too young or too dumb to feel any empathy for others online.

I think it's important that she doesn't underestimate the potential for cruelty and inhumanity amongst this kind of nerdmob. She's a source of entertainment for them. If she responds, she continues to be. She might get a nickname and web pages dedicated to mocking her and her profile, which might show up in google searches for her name forever. However, if she does not respond, she's pretty much guaranteed to be forgotten in a few days.
posted by cheerleaders_to_your_funeral at 5:06 AM on March 8, 2011 [7 favorites]

Take it down for a couple days? If it's possible to undelete it, I mean.

And don't respond to anything.
posted by NoraReed at 5:08 AM on March 8, 2011

The best thing to do is hope it blows over. Contact law enforcement if anything crosses the line (not even sure where that line is).

Don't be surprised if this AskMe thread get pulled into the "discourse" over on 4chon.
posted by davey_darling at 5:11 AM on March 8, 2011

Derp. Should've previewed.

If it's really getting to her, she might want to hand over the reigns to whichever account is getting the harassment to someone who can read (and save) all the harassing messages and then delete 'em so she doesn't have to see them.
posted by NoraReed at 5:11 AM on March 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

I agree with the advice to wait for it to blow over. There's not much else one can do. Just try to ignore them and don't do anything to rile them up.

Oh and it looks like they've already got the link for this thread.
posted by MrFTBN at 6:07 AM on March 8, 2011

The rule in these situations is always: "Don't feed the trolls."

Don't give them anything to work with. Delete the profile if you can. Never answer messages. Stop even looking at the 4chon threads. Stay away from it.
posted by smitt at 7:02 AM on March 8, 2011 [2 favorites]

I think in situations like this the best course is to just ignore it until the cretins lose interest and move elsewhere. Trying to resist will just keep them at it. More lulz that way, I suppose.
posted by Decani at 7:06 AM on March 8, 2011

First, close or make this thread anonymous.

Shut down the profile and change ALL of her passwords that she uses. Explain to her some of the basic techniques they'll use to get passwords (ie pretending to be admins, trolling facebook for security question answers).

She is now fighting a grizzly bear. Play dead until it loses interest and walks away.
posted by JimmyJames at 7:29 AM on March 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

I don't want to start a new AskMe and I asked something very similar in the stalker thread on the blue so I'm putting it out here as well, if that's okay.

The general consensus in suggestions seems to be change passwords to everything and ignore the trolls - sounds almost like an abusive situation. Now I read JimmyJames saying "fighting a grizzly bear". Is there already a description or would someone share (if you are not closing this thread) exactly what the danger is and what one needs to watch out for... the warnings have been increasingly ominous as I follow this thread.
posted by infini at 7:35 AM on March 8, 2011

Whatever she does, she must not communicate back. She's dealing with a mob of people, who are most likely too young or too dumb to feel any empathy for others online.

I think it's important that she doesn't underestimate the potential for cruelty and inhumanity amongst this kind of nerdmob. She's a source of entertainment for them. If she responds, she continues to be. She might get a nickname and web pages dedicated to mocking her and her profile, which might show up in google searches for her name forever. However, if she does not respond, she's pretty much guaranteed to be forgotten in a few days.

This is dead on. I hate the internet sometimes. Shut the profile, remove breadcrumb traces to her own Twitter account, FB account, private site, etc. Lay low for a month, and come back. And maybe to a different dating site, with some stricter privacy settings or something.

And for the love of God this part: Whatever she does, she must not communicate back.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 7:49 AM on March 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hving looked at EncyclopaediaDramatica in the past, they can get pretty hacky. I've read accounts of people's personal details being found and used long after the person's taken it down or walked away from the thread. It'd be useful to know from anyone with more direct experience as I don't use chan sites myself (unless my friend wants to show me odd tentacle pictures...)
posted by mippy at 7:50 AM on March 8, 2011

Infini, Cheerleaders nailed the description.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 7:51 AM on March 8, 2011

Just to be clear - they found the profile out of chance, not because she posted on the site herself? So they've gone after her for no apparent reason?
posted by mippy at 7:58 AM on March 8, 2011

I don't know 4chon, but 4chan is ruthless, cold, and dangerous. Some of the threads they do are "life ruin" threads, where the objective is to dredge up as much personal information and use it as maliciously as possible. As more information is gained, they gain a greater ability to manipulate the information. Anyone connected to you will be called, emailed or harassed. They usually try and share some information that they've dredged up (naked photos, incriminating emails, anything that you once wanted to keep private).

At some point, they'll get your personal address and start sending pizzas, hundreds and hundreds of pizzas. They'll sign you up for every spam, junkmail and telemarketer scam. A car will drive by to see if you're home, throw eggs, key your car. Hopefully by now, they don't have access to your personal email, where they'll get into your facebook, bank accounts, and anything that uses email to verify password changes. I'm describing close to the worst case scenario, but I've seen this and worse unfold.

Be careful, this is not something to take lightly.
posted by JimmyJames at 7:59 AM on March 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Do all of the above and think about anyone you may have crossed in recent times. While the nature of 4chan/chon seems to pick their victim randomly at times, sometimes they don't.
posted by p1nkdaisy at 9:49 AM on March 8, 2011

From 4chon:

Well, I just read over the thread and see that it wasn't posted on this site. I'd post over there to clarify, but I don't have the money to pay to finish registration over there. If someone could kindly link this post or copy over my response, it would be appreciated.

With that said this person sums it up with their post
http://ask.metafilter.com/180276/How-to-deal-with-4chon-cyber-bullying#2593507

You'll probably have luck contacting the staff over there since that is a separate site from us.

Should something like that happen here, there's always the option of using the thread report feature, email at admin @ 4chon.org or even our irc @ irc.tsukihi.me #4chon

Also, we don't bite as much as the people on 4chan do. We just do our own little thing.

posted by turkeyphant at 10:41 AM on March 8, 2011 [1 favorite]