There are at least two types of troll or trolling in the internet. There are “innocent” trolls that just try to mess a bit with people online just like a friend would. The other kind of internet troll is the one that is trying to harm or bully someone and this is the one causing the most problems online. The “bad” troll goes as far as to commit online harassment.
The “innocent” trolls are things like youtube commenters or people on twitch chat. These trolls will simply spam random stuff that could be or not be related to the content in which they are posting. In the case of something like twitch they make fun of the streamer if they are getting frustrated with a game or post links to things like rick rolls. It could also be something like saying Darude Sandstorm when another person’s ask about the music playing in the background in a youtube video or posting a sarcastic comment. This type of behaviors is yes annoying but for the most part can be ignore and does not cause major problems but when it moves pass this is when you get a “bad” troll.
The “bad” troll simply does not care about anybody else on the internet. They will trough insults around, make racist comments and goes as far as stealing your dead parents identity to harass you even more. They also target specific people because of their beliefs. In many cases the people that get targeted the most are females in any sort of public presence like youtubers, bloggers or even on something like twitter specially if the write or talk about anything relating to feminism. The trolls will take anything the person said and turn it into an argument or a reason to harass that person not even because they are against the point the blogger is trying to make but simply because they can.
The problem on the internet is that the anonymity gives these trolls too much power since they can have multiple accounts and there is no way to hold them accountable for their actions. The people that are open to the most harassment online are those that have real names attached to their accounts since they cannot take advantage of the anonymity in the internet. Still I do not think that any sort of “real name” policy would help since it could take away the voice of many people that would prefer to remain anonymous for reasons other than trolling. Also trolls would be more willing to find ways and having the mean to circumvent the policy to remain anonymous than someone just trying to enjoy the internet anonymously.
Companies should attempt to prevent and suppress online harassment in any way they can and many do. Some companies like Facebook give the user the ability to block and report other users for online harassment but even this can something not be enough and it also can cost facebook a lot of money since they then need to have people go over the reports to see if they are real or not.
Trolling has become a major problem in the internet in recent years since more and more people are getting access to it and younger and younger people also. These younger people can then do whatever they want without their parents knowing so they decide to be dicks since it what they find funny at their age. I personally have never had any too bad trolls other than the random ones in games like League of Legends but for the most part just end up ignoring them since that way I avoid giving them ammo to use against me.
Norman Morales 