internet troll

Lemons Into Lemonade: How To Deal With Online Harassment, Share Your Story

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This post by Christina Katz originally appeared on The Christina Katz Writing & Publishing Studio on 2/18/15.

I am always encouraging my students to turn their lemon life experiences into written lemonade. And this is me following my own advice.

I was persecuted and harassed in a huge online community yesterday, and lemme tell you, it was WEIRD.

The person doing the bullying seemed quite fixated on me and was following me around as I moved from group to group, offering me chastisements in a private Facebook message thread that she initiated.

I persistently asked to understand what her issue was with me, and my question was never answered.

The only comment that came close was, “I want you to buy into what I’m trying to do, that’s all.”

Sooo, yeah. Let’s just say chasing me around on social media is not a good way to get me to buy into to WHATEVER you are trying to do. Especially when you fail to communicate to me what that is.

In the end, I could not reconcile with the person, so I left a group she facilitated that I was part of, and reported her to the folks responsible for the larger groups’ existence.

But I did not get away from her before she took some totally uncalled for swipes at me.

 

Read the full post on The Christina Katz Writing & Publishing Studio.

 

Judge Orders Unmasking of Amazon.com “Negative” Reviewers

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This article by David Kravets originally appeared on Ars Technica on 7/11/14. While the case in question concerns nutritional supplements, this precedent has wider implications for ALL Amazon reviews, including book reviews.

Decision broaches anonymous commenting versus unfair business practices.

A federal judge has granted a nutritional supplement firm’s request to help it learn the identities of those who allegedly left “phony negative” reviews of its products on Amazon.com.

The decision means that Ubervita may issue subpoena’s to Amazon.com and Cragslist to cough up the identities of those behind a “campaign of dirty tricks against Ubervita in a wrongful effort to put Ubervita at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace” (PDF).

According to a lawsuit by the maker of testosterone boosters, multivitamins, and weight loss supplements, unknown commenters had placed fraudulent orders “to disrupt Ubervita’s inventory,” posted a Craigslist ad “to offer cash for favorable reviews of Ubervita products,” and posed “as dissatisfied Ubervita customers in posting phony negative reviews of Ubervita products, in part based on the false claim that Ubervita pays for positive reviews.”

 

Click here to read the full article on Ars Technica.

Also see this related story on Consumerist: Court Orders Amazon To Reveal Identities Of Negative Reviewers.