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He drove me off Twitter, hacked my Facebook, and abused and terrified my family. Yet the biggest shock of all was meeting him
Leo Traynor
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 September 2012 04.31 EDT
In my blog of 12 August entitled Walking, Not Running, I talked about my time on Twitter and my basic reasons for leaving. I stand over a lot of what I said. The atmosphere there has changed and there have been negative stories in the media about trolling, etc, for months now. The brand has been damaged and Twitter needs to act fairly swiftly to repair it. At the time of writing that blog, for reasons that will become obvious, I was very sketchy about my own personal experience.
When I left Twitter numerous people thought it was as a result of an overreaction on my behalf. That my departure was a kneejerk reaction to a couple of "trolling" or "flaming" incidents or that I was attention seeking. The reality of the situation is that my wife and I were targeted for over three years.
It started in July 2009. I'd been on Twitter for over two years at that point, having joined in May 2007, and I'd never had a problem. My account was followed by a fairly innocuous looking one which I followed back and within 10 minutes I had received a direct message (DM) calling me a "Dirty ****ing Jewish scumbag". I blocked the account and reported it as spam. The following week it happened again in an identical manner. A new follower, I followed back, received a string of abusive DMs, blocked and reported for spam. Two or three times a week. Sometimes two or three times a day. An almost daily cycle of blocking and reporting and intense verbal abuse. So I made my account private and the problem went away for a short while. There were no problems on Twitter but my Facebook account was hacked, my blog was spammed and my email address was flooded with foulmouthed and disgusting comments and images. Images of corpses and concentration camps and dismembered bodies.
Read the rest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/26/day-confronted-troll?CMP=twt_gu
Leo Traynor
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 September 2012 04.31 EDT
In my blog of 12 August entitled Walking, Not Running, I talked about my time on Twitter and my basic reasons for leaving. I stand over a lot of what I said. The atmosphere there has changed and there have been negative stories in the media about trolling, etc, for months now. The brand has been damaged and Twitter needs to act fairly swiftly to repair it. At the time of writing that blog, for reasons that will become obvious, I was very sketchy about my own personal experience.
When I left Twitter numerous people thought it was as a result of an overreaction on my behalf. That my departure was a kneejerk reaction to a couple of "trolling" or "flaming" incidents or that I was attention seeking. The reality of the situation is that my wife and I were targeted for over three years.
It started in July 2009. I'd been on Twitter for over two years at that point, having joined in May 2007, and I'd never had a problem. My account was followed by a fairly innocuous looking one which I followed back and within 10 minutes I had received a direct message (DM) calling me a "Dirty ****ing Jewish scumbag". I blocked the account and reported it as spam. The following week it happened again in an identical manner. A new follower, I followed back, received a string of abusive DMs, blocked and reported for spam. Two or three times a week. Sometimes two or three times a day. An almost daily cycle of blocking and reporting and intense verbal abuse. So I made my account private and the problem went away for a short while. There were no problems on Twitter but my Facebook account was hacked, my blog was spammed and my email address was flooded with foulmouthed and disgusting comments and images. Images of corpses and concentration camps and dismembered bodies.
Read the rest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/26/day-confronted-troll?CMP=twt_gu
