User:Stephen Ewen/Scratch Pad2

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

An Internet troll is a person who delights in sowing discord on the Internet. Typically carried out pseudonymously, but not always, they seek to achieve their task by provoking people with biased predispositions to take up their cause to damage a person, entity, or idea with which they disagree. Carried out within a psychology of meeting their own attention-needs, often lacking from their real life, Internet trolls are a perennial problem wherever they can find an immediate Internet platform: discussion boards (forums), USENET groups, blogs, wikis, and other Internet venues that allow open access. Whether trolling is a protected free speech activity or whether it amounts to libel and defamation depends upon the nature, content, and result of the statements by the troll.

Psychology of trolls

Assertions about the psychology of Internet trolls varies only moderately; yet, there is considerable agreement on certain markers.

Internet trolls have been described as "sad people, living their lonely lives vicariously through those they see as strong and successful." They have few real social skills. Moreover, they are typically callous to the fact that they are harming real people, but instead account Internet users as "digital abstractions", not real humans. They may thus feel no remorse for harm they cause, and in fact may judge their own level of "success" by the amount of that harm. Typically, the psychological neediness of the Internet troll is so substantial they are impervious to rationale, mature arguments against their wares. They may protest that their right to free speech is being curtailed if ever there is an attempt to call them on their trolling.

Trolling and the law

Libel and defamation

When the identity of a particularly troublesome Internet troll is known, remedies are much more probable. In a case involving the AudoAdmit discussion board (forum), two women at Yale Law School filed a suit on 8 June 2007 in a U.S. District Court against several Internet trolls, charging they had made false claims about the women that prevented them achieving positions as new, top law school graduates.