Joe Hildebrand: Online trolls have no guts and soon they’ll have no glory

The day of reckoning is coming as momentum builds to hold vicious trolls who spew anonymous bile online accountable for their actions, writes Joe Hildebrand.

The most revealing thing about the government’s plan to expose anonymous online trolls isn’t the reason behind it but who would possibly oppose it.

And now we know.

But before we get to that, it is worth pointing out that some of us have known for years. Around a decade ago, I led a Daily Telegraph campaign to crack down on trolls. It won some significant reforms and had widespread public support, including from the then communications minister Stephen Conroy and participants at a special forum on the issue on the SBS Insight program.

So a broad mainstream cross-section of media and politics.

But it’s fair to say it was not particularly well-liked by the trolling community and they did not particularly like me. And of course when trolls don’t like someone there is only one thing they know how to do.

The day is coming when social media trolls will be held accountable for their actions. Picture: AFP

This gave me a somewhat unique insight into the nature of the problem and the people behind it, even if “people” is perhaps an overly generous word to describe some of them.

While some were just your stereotypical basement-dwelling sociopathic misanthropes who simply got a kick out of upsetting people — some trolls have actually admitted this and there have been studies showing an overwhelming link between trolling and psychopathy — many more seemed to see themselves as non-ironic keyboard warriors, part of an anonymous army of freedom fighters holding truth to power.

And indeed if you scour Twitter today you can see that there is now almost a professional class of troll, anonymous accounts which deliberately and strategically target politicians with abuse or bombard companies with complaints or simply try to get certain topics of people trending.

Common to all of these is a desperate bid for attention without identification. It is like a man in a mask screaming “Look at me!”

And it is here that the tired old “free speech” argument such trolls and their sympathisers often employ falls flat on its face at the very first hurdle.

For one thing, it is axiomatic to the point of cliché that the principle of free speech does not extend to yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.

In other words, free speech does not mean the freedom to cause unfounded panic or harm. And of course we know of many cases where trolls have driven people to self-destruction and sometimes death.

It is also axiomatic that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from its consequences. In every society there is a tension between rights and responsibilities.

If you want to say something, fair enough. But you must also be held to account for what you say.

This is what online activists relentlessly demand of politicians — as per the ubiquitous Morrison hashtag “#liarfromtheshire” — yet how many of them put their real name to their own public statements.

This brings us to another fig leaf used by trolling types, which is that they are poor little helpless citizens merely trying to have a voice or hold the powerful to account.

And yet many of these troll accounts delight in nothing more than bragging about how powerful they are.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been dubbed “liar from the Shire” on social media. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Some were formed precisely for the purpose of getting people to boycott companies or advertisers to boycott media organisations. Others brag about their extensive connections and insider knowledge.

And what is the point of having a voice if no one knows its yours? If these people are so desperate to be heard why are they trying to hide who they are?

And this brings us to the ultimate myth that extreme online activists on both sides try to perpetuate — that they are the many, that they are, to borrow the Occupy movement’s mantra, “the 99 per cent”. Needless to say the Occupy movement was strongly backed by the online “Anonymous” group.

Well, a poll of more than 1600 people by Resolve Political Monitor published in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald — again, hardly an outpost of right-wing hate media — has proven this claim unequivocally false.

Waleed Aly has been targeted by left-wing trolls for daring to stray from the accepted line. Picture: AAP Image

It found that 70 per cent of Australians thought anonymous social media accounts should be made illegal and a further 20 per cent were undecided or neutral. Just six per cent disagreed and only three per cent strongly disagreed.

In other words these people are not the 99 per cent. They are the nine per cent.

And little wonder.

More recently trolls on the extreme left have extended their scope to target figures such as Leigh Sales, Lisa Millar, Dave Hughes and Waleed Aly for daring to stray from leftist orthodoxy.

When you think the ABC and The Project are too right-wing it’s probably time to log onto Vote Compass and find out if you’re Leon Trotsky.

Although Trotsky at least had the courage to put his name to what he wrote. Today’s socialist trolls are too gutless to even do that.