Who, what, when, where and why

Hacks/Hackers Berlin #28: Trolls, journalism and image verification

Ever had to deal with trolls online? Have you ever thought about how trolls could affect the work and life of journalists? Ever wondered if the solution could be to be a good troll? It increasingly seems that we are surrounded by trolls. Trolls are people online who deliberately seek to provoke their interlocutor in comments, chats, forums, etc.

Located in an ambitious new venue (for the first time outside a newsroom or co-working space) and with an incredible lineup of speakers, this month’s Hacks/Hackers Berlin event was focused on how to deal with trolls. So what did we learn?

Laughter is the best medicine

The evening kicked off with an incredible testimony from Azerbaijani journalist, blogger and human rights activist Arzu Geybullayeva. Arzu touched the audience by sharing her very personal story of dealing with trolls. It all started with an interview to a small media outlet and ended up (and quickly escalated to) death threats.

Her recipe for dealing with this? Humor. “At the beginning it really gets to you,” she said. “But with time, if you are able to start laughing about it and expose them, you can get over it. The important thing is not to let this stop you from doing what you’re doing.”

When asked if and how we should stop hate speech online, Arzu replied that we can’t block everything and that it is important to educate people on how to behave and express themselves behind a keyboard and screen.

Beat them at their own game: how to be a good troll

Next up was Linus Neumann (aka Linuzifer), who began his talk with a disclaimer: “My job is in IT security. After having studied humans (I’m a psychologist), I went back to machines”. His entertaining presentation focused on practical ways of dealing with online trolls. The solutions range from fighting back with good trolling to humor to creating tools to filter trolls.

On the internet, there are no winners, but you can try not to lose. So troll on. but be a good troll. “You’ve lost if you don’t laugh. If you take yourself too seriously. You’ve lost if you get mad,” said Linus. “Haters were here before the internet and are here to stay.” What can you do? Don’t take them seriously and ridicule them.

Or you can always resort to hellbanning. What is it? A very clever simple tool that makes the trolling comment visible only for the publisher, whilst it erases it without the trolls even realising.

Last but not least, our very own Douglas Arellanes presented Verified Pixel, an open source project aimed at making image verification as easy as not verifying. Verified Pixel built the working prototype to enable verifiers to easily detect the technical backside of an image (whether it’s been tampered with, where it was taken if it’s on the internet somewhere else). After its successful first phase, the project is looking for partners for further development. If you'd like to work with us on this, we'd like to talk.

All in all, it was a wonderful evening at Hacks/Hackers Berlin, probably the most attended event (so far). Looking forward to more!

This month Hacks/Hackers Berlin was organised in collaboration with Sourcefabric and n-ost, around a project of the Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung: Shift_Shape_Mobilize - a tools & skills workshop for bloggers.