Internet troll problem

October 26, 2007 5:07 PM

Help me catch an internet troll.

I'm posting anonymously in case the troll stumbles across this, but there is a psychopath in my community who has been threatening bloggers in the comments section of their blogs, and has been extremely disruptive on other sites. He has been banned, blogs have shut down because of him, but he just keeps popping up. The only way to get rid of him is to find out who his is and expose him publicly, because he is hiding behind a veil of anonymity, including using proxy email and IP addresses.

I would like to catch him and out him, by setting up a phony blog of the sort that he is most likely to respond to, but I need to know if it is possible, despite his caution, to track him down through the comments section. Hive mind, help!

posted by anonymous to computers & internet (5 comments total)

better idea: california lets you sue "doe" defendants, i.e., defendants whose identities you haven't discovered yet. once you have an open casefile against the does, you can take the deposition of the company or isp that owns that ip address to find out which user was on it at the time, at which point you can amend your complaint to identify the doe if you choose to go forward.
posted by bruce at 5:20 PM on October 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

If the poster is doing something legally significant (threatening bodily harm, etc.), then you can possibly get the proxy operators to reveal where the request came from, etc. If they're using multiple proxies, then you only need to find one cooperative proxy owner (and then hope their originating ISP is cooperative, or that the originating IP is also used by a commenter who identified themself in a way you like). But do you have a reason to believe that exposing the poster publicly will cause them to stop?

Short of that, treat them as you would a spammer. Filter, ban, and ignore. Getting worked up feeds the troll.
posted by hattifattener at 5:22 PM on October 26, 2007

Start by reading this article:
How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community

If he's using proxies and anonymous emails, you'll never track your troll down by IP. I don't know that exposing the troll is the best way to discourage them anyway.

Trolls generally go away if you swiftly delete their comments without making note of it. (Hey! Like Metafilter does!) Wasting time on comments that don't get read by anyone is enough to discourage most trolls.
posted by chrisamiller at 5:25 PM on October 26, 2007 [7 favorites]

Are you a moderator in this community? It always helps to make clear what sort of conduct will not be tolerated, and to enforce the code of conduct strictly and even-handedly. Also make clear that an internet community is not a democracy, and bitching about "freedom of speech" will garner no sympathy - every single troll I have ever dealt with has pulled that one out, and I have seen vibrant communities go dead because it worked on the mods. I second deleting offending posts without comment or engagement, and encouraging others to post around this person.

Unless the troll is engaging in things that are legally actionable (threats of RL violence) you don't need or want to deal with this person's real identity. Posting a blog to "out" them will further validate their actions. If this person is threatening people, continue to delete the posts, but copy them to a dated log so you can document the threats.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:02 PM on October 26, 2007

This was just posted on internets.
posted by nazca at 6:40 AM on October 29, 2007