What is internet trolling?

The ultimate goal of internet trolls, regarded as people who engage in an offensive and provocative online behavior, is getting some kind of online attention. For example, posting offensive comments in response to an article or post is known as the most common example of internet trolling. Popular Science magazine’s editors turned off the ability to comment on their website’s articles in 2013. Apparently, things went that bad. Internet trolls contribute to an overall decline in the quality of online debate and discussion and aren’t well regarded in the online community. 

Popular Science then referred to a study which showed that “uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant's interpretation of the news story itself”. Trolls can cause the readers to question the truth. An increase in trolling behavior has been brought along with the explosion of the popularity of social networking.

Does All Trolling Carry Criminal Sanctions?

In Australia, Internet trolls can actually be prosecuted under law as the Australian government prohibits using any kind of online service to cause an offence to, menace, or harass the reasonable person. On the other hand, in the United States, “trolling” by itself is not necessarily something that can be sanctioned under the federal law. In Wales and England, the Parliament seeks to find a way to make online sexual or verbal harassment a crime with an amendment to the criminal justice bill.

In Australia, trolling is partly regulated by the Criminal Code Part 10.6 (Division 474.17(1)). It includes the regulation of internet services and areas such as using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause an offence to the reasonable person, child pornography and child abuse material. There is also the Crimes Act in Victoria and NSW, as well as the Queensland’s Criminal Code – state-level laws that prohibit offensive online behavior as well.

When Disagreement Turns to Trolling

There’s not much you would be able to do about your disagreement with someone in YouTube comments. Trolling isn’t that much of a discrete crime. However, the police can get involved once “benevolent” trolling turns into bullying, stalking, or harassment. The federal government could potentially get involved as well, because these are all state crimes, but the communications travel over an interstate connection.

Paul Fletcher, Australia’s Parliamentary Secretary for Communications, has revealed in 2014 that the government’s latest cyberbullying laws will put social media giants, such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook on a two-step monitoring system. While talking with some of the best criminal lawyers Sydney provides for expertise in this area, I learned that this new legislation should lay out the mechanism for developing an effective complaints system in order to target, find and remove the cyberbullying material harmful to Australian children from social media sites.

Possible Penalties

Possible civil penalties for Internet trolling depend on a country’s legislation and the type of comments trolling individual posts. Internet trolls can be sued for money damages by the ones that are being trolled. Portrayal in a false light, invasion of privacy and defamation are only some of the possible civil actions that can be used against a troll, whether it occurs out in the real world or on the Internet.

There’s only one problem with this – in order to accuse someone for behaving in an obtrusive or harassing manner, you have to know his or her identity. However, this can be extremely difficult in the world of the Internet, because a user’s online identity probably differs from his or her real one. Also, police officers who think online harassment isn’t that big of a problem are the ones people have to rely on, which makes the problem even more complicated.

The other thing is that the person feeling harassed realizes that it is actually happening, apart from the possibility that he or she misinterpreted the troll’s sincere nature of intent. According to Poe’s Law (written Nathan Poe in 2005), the line between trolling and sarcasm is thin. The “law” states that it is impossible to parody certain extreme views exaggerated that obviously that some readers or viewers won’t mistake it as a genuine expression of the views parodied without a clear indicator of the author’s intent.

Internet trolling is on the rise and trolls are ruining the Internet, while trolls are protected by their anonymity. Factors like the lack of authority, invisibility, not communicating in real time, and anonymity remove the social communication rules, customs and practices that took millennia for our civilization to build.