Isinbayeva defends anti-gay laws as Swedish athletes give Russia the (rainbow) finger

Places like Whites and the Garrick?

Would explain why they have a penis-owners-only rule. Are they bisexual knocking shops, or are only boys of ill repute on the menu (probably codenamed as "spotted dick" – see attached)?

Not in conventional usage. Which is clearly what is meant here.

This is the bit that completely throws me. I honestly can't get my head around the idea that there are folks who don't think their day is…

It is true that some people have a lot more trouble with that whole "growing up" thing than others, but as I sit around twiddling my thumb…

And at least one of the outed trolls claimed his Twitter account was hacked. Another one for the Tui billboards.

And yet somehow, despite the sexist culture in which we are steeped, most of us manage not to send rape threats to feminists.

It's more like exposing members of the KKK during a prayer meeting...

Two things I noticed about that article:

1: The first troll named had been arrested for his trolling.

2: The links down the righthand sidebar seem to do a very good job of helping perpetuate the sexism.

I disagree strongly with…

I don't think so. It's unmasking people who abuse their online anonymity to make threats of violence. What these troll-men are saying is quite extreme stuff.

While it is always nice to attack the cause and cure it, it's worth remembering that medicine has succeeded for a long time in improving peoples lives and extending and saving lives by addressing symptoms first. Usually because that's all they could do at the time.

I…

Isn't that rather like a 21st Century equivalent of the stocks, though?

Personally, I can think of quite a few people who could do with an hour or two of being pelted with shit, but…

It works with spammers. Well enough that spam doesn't significantly intrude on anyone's experience. And it makes the community standard clear: no spammers, nohow.

Tracking down and publicly humiliating rape-threatening trolls…

Good luck with that.

1) How're you going to identify them? Possible in many cases, but don't we all get online from many places – home, work/school/university, phone/tablet, cafe's free wifi, etc.... that would…

Hoisting them on their own petard, and and publicly humiliating them by outing their real identity (and other dirty laundry for good measure), would probably be far more effective than attempting…

Of the couple of dozen bannings here (yes, that few), two or three have attempted to come…

So glad you got some action. Sorry you had to deal with…

And believe it or not, not every misog-troll is some techno-wizard. They’re sad little gits who shit on uppity women because they can, because they’re never had to face any cost or consequences.

I got a super not nice comment on my website not too long ago, in response to…

IMO, no. Because Twitter is too big and too diffuse to be a coherent community.

I think it’ll make a big difference.

I... yeah. I think they need to do it. I don't think it'll…

Twitter seems to be very, very heavily optimized at the distribution of tweets (and deletions are a tweet saying "delete this tweet" to the various tweet servers) I could…

I dunno, haven't looked at Twitter…

Me too, but I'm not sure that's what Deborah suggested. I'd've thought a "report abuse" button at the bottom of each tweet and algorithms that flag suspicious tweets, with both alerting a moderator who makes the call. And…

That's great. In the end, community sanction may be more powerful than anything else.

To be fair, Twitter runs an amazing service, and none of its competitors — the IM services, Tumblr, Blogger, Google+, Facebook, etc — do that level of…

Agreed. And that’s what they say. I RTed the original threat to preserve it, but Twitter still didn't care.

What DID happen was a…

Yes, it does. However. I raise my eyebrow very high indeed at Twitter's assertion that they can't see a deleted tweet. That's either a lie or an extraordinarily poor decision.

"bomb warning on somewhere street, don't go down there"

Is a threat, or helpful information (some places get a lot of bomb warnings, like London in the 90's).

I assume suspension freezes the account, so the user can't just delete the evidence?

It never occurred to me that the answer was to shut it down. I think the business model as it exists may not be viable, if they can't pay people enough to…

Accounts are suspended on a purely automated basis. The account holder can then complain and get the suspension removed. So for instance…

Isn't it more that the culture of the internet in general (with a few exceptions) is lacking? I mean, any comments section anywhere (I know, I know, never read the comments) is absolutely rife with "I'd hit that" and "feminazi"…

Yes but some of the comments were so far above the bar The Hubble 'scope would have trouble imaging them. What caused the service desk to fail to identify them as bad? Sadly my guess is that the corporate…

Absolutely. The difference between abuse and the kind of conversation a lot of us might have with our closest friends is __not…

You're right, of course. And in the end, the problem isn't one company's processes, but the legion of men who do this. It's six years…

I take your point, Russell and it's a fair one. OTOH, telling someone on Twitter they're an uptight cunt who deserves to…

That strikes me as putting the emphasis on the wrong end of the transaction. How about putting the weight on the abused…

And when that's precisely what misogynist trolls are depending on (and they do), it's not good enough for Twitter (and Facebook and ISPs) to say "it's just…

Every hurdle you put up (so you block the account and the email it's attached to), a percentage of people fall at.…

If they've done the latter, then even setting the law on them would have little effect – probably encourage them that the…

Yup. Agreed. I'm always amazed when totally gross obvious abuse is treated as part of a grey continium. I get that there are cases where it really is difficult to know whether someone meant…

That's the message it sends to the people on the receiving end. The message it sends to the people who do it is even worse.

Basically, every time this sort of thing happens and responses both official and unofficial are variants on a shrug and a "whaddahyagonnado", it sends the message that it's not possible to change things and that being regularly threatened with rape and…

This, indeed, is absolutely true. And their volume of traffic is mind-numbing. I…

I would have thought so, but unprofitable businesses can be sold for stupid amounts of money.

As you put it, to protest about being harrased off the internet by not being…

Then perhaps it's not a viable business.

I understand the logic behind this, not many would like to see what is a business, taking on a role as judge, jury and executioner. But equally Twitter operates a service, if, as in this case, it…

Yup, I can totally grok that. I guess the sticking point for me with #twittersilence is that it really helps to me mindful of the kind of privilege involved in choosing to…

You must lead a very ascetic existence, then. The way the economy is structured there's no way you could not give your money to companies/countries whose pracices you disagree with.…

Okay, in this case, we're talking about a…

I remember it. In the sense that I know about it. The 1976 Olympic Boycott happened during my Dad's OE. You know that…

Our out NZ speed skater Blake Skjellerup is taking his stand to the Olympics (as well as magazine covers – SFW, roughly). Louisa…

"...tactics which are clearly intended to silence women" – I've seen variants on this phrasing used quite a bit, and it always seems to…