How to Deal with Online Trolls

How do you deal with online trolls?

I often help com­pan­ies and organ­isa­tions deal with online trolls. 

“Of course, humans have always had this poten­tial for the irra­tion­ally vin­dict­ive, but the advent of the inter­net finally allowed it to thrive. Because as soon as you stuck someone behind a com­puter, a dan­ger­ously insu­lar shield of anonym­ity came down and, for those inclined, hap­pily took over.“
Source: Gizmodo ¹Feinberg, A. (2014, October 30). The Birth of the Internet Troll. Gizmodo; Gizmodo. https://​giz​modo​.com/​t​h​e​-​f​i​r​s​t​-​i​n​t​e​r​n​e​t​-​t​r​o​l​l​-​1​6​5​2​4​8​5​292

Here we go:

Pick Your Opponents Proactively

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The Paradox of Prominence

The ever-loom­ing “dark side” of what drives people’s interest can be chal­len­ging for pub­lic rela­tions (PR) and com­mu­nic­a­tions pro­fes­sion­als. This phe­nomen­on, where every strength inher­ently pos­sesses a cor­res­pond­ing down­side, can be called the “para­dox of prominence.” 

An example of this para­dox is the halo effect, where phys­ic­al attract­ive­ness becomes an asset for a spokes­per­son. Attractiveness often leads to pos­it­ive biases; attract­ive indi­vidu­als are fre­quently per­ceived as more cred­ible and com­pet­ent. ²Eagly, A. H., Ashmore, R. D., Makhijani, M. G., & Longo, L. C. (1991). What is beau­ti­ful is good, but…: A meta-ana­lyt­ic review of research on the phys­ic­al attract­ive­ness ste­reo­type. … Continue read­ing ³Silfwer, J. (2023, December 17). The Halo Effect: Why Attractiveness Matters in PR. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​h​a​l​o​-​e​f​f​e​ct/

However, this same attrib­ute can spark neg­at­ive reac­tions. Critics might claim that the indi­vidu­al’s suc­cess or vis­ib­il­ity is primar­ily due to their looks, under­min­ing their com­pet­en­cies. This dual­ity illus­trates how the qual­it­ies that draw pos­it­ive atten­tion can sim­ul­tan­eously attract cri­ti­cism and scepticism.

Competence, anoth­er valu­able trait, often encoun­ters sim­il­ar pit­falls. Highly com­pet­ent indi­vidu­als inspire con­fid­ence and admir­a­tion. Nevertheless, this com­pet­ence can be per­ceived neg­at­ively when will­fully inter­preted as arrog­ance. Studies sug­gest that while com­pet­ence garners respect, it can also lead to social pen­al­ties, such as envy and resent­ment. ⁴Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A mod­el of (often mixed) ste­reo­type con­tent: Competence and warmth respect­ively fol­low from per­ceived status and com­pet­i­tion. Journal of … Continue read­ing

Examples of the Paradox of Prominence

The para­dox of prom­in­ence seems to be an inher­ent aspect of human interest dynamics. 

Prominence	Positive Outcome	Negative Outcome
Physical attract­ive­ness	Enhanced cred­ib­il­ity and trust	Accusations of super­fi­cial success
High com­pet­ence	Respected and trus­ted as an expert	Perceived as arrog­ant or unapproachable
Charisma	Ability to inspire and attract followers	Viewed as manip­u­lat­ive or insincere
Strong advocacy	Increased sup­port and mobil­iz­a­tion for a cause	Target of intense cri­ti­cism from opponents
Wealth	Seen as suc­cess­ful and influential	Resentment and accus­a­tions of greed or unfairness
Assertiveness	Effective lead­er­ship and decision-making	Labeled as dom­in­eer­ing or aggressive
Innovation	Admired for cre­ativ­ity and forward-thinking	Resistance to change and cri­ti­cism from traditionalists
High vis­ib­il­ity	Greater recog­ni­tion and influence	Increased scru­tiny and loss of privacy
Generosity	Viewed as kind-hearted and philanthropic	Suspected of ulteri­or motives
Success in com­pet­it­ive fields	Role mod­el and sym­bol of achievement	Envy and attempts to under­mine accomplishments

We must recog­nise that with every increase in vis­ib­il­ity, there is a cor­res­pond­ing increase in scru­tiny and criticism.

Pick Your Opponents Wisely

Public aware­ness comes with inev­it­able costs.

In the quest for great­er vis­ib­il­ity and influ­ence, it is crit­ic­al to acknow­ledge that “being uni­ver­sally well-liked” is a naïve and unreal­ist­ic goal. 

• “Public rela­tions pro­fes­sion­als must stra­tegic­ally decide the audi­ences they aim to attract and — of equal import­ance! — the adversar­ies they are will­ing to con­tend with.”

By stra­tegic­ally har­ness­ing this para­dox, pub­lic rela­tions pro­fes­sion­als can man­age pub­lic per­cep­tion by inter­n­al­ising expec­ted “down­sides” as addi­tion­al aware­ness drivers. 

Learn more: The Paradox of Prominence

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Categorise Your Online Trolls

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Types of Online Trolls

There are vari­ous types of online trolls — and they behave dif­fer­ently. Depending on how and where they com­mu­nic­ate, you can find clues on how to best deal with them.

I use the fol­low­ing cat­egor­isa­tion of online trolls:

• Online Vandals are motiv­ated by destruc­tion. They could flood your feed with troll com­ments for no reas­on oth­er than to wreak hav­oc. They are sel­dom the first to arrive but typ­ic­ally leave when it gets ‘bor­ing.’
• Keyboard Warriors are typ­ic­ally anonym­ous or use pro­files with few fol­low­ers or friends. Their motives are often polit­ic­al, and their aggres­sion is often fueled by social exclu­sion. It’s worth not­ing that this pub­lic often does­n’t tar­get the brand but its followers.
• Virtue Signalists often move in coördin­ated packs and will attack you on mor­al grounds. This pub­lic is eager to report your con­tent and might even tar­get employ­ees (or their friends and fam­ily) via email campaigns.
• Bleeding Hearts will pro­claim their vic­tim­hood and blame your brand for des­troy­ing their lives. Emotions will run high, and there will be no con­ver­sa­tion. It’s worth not­ing that hear­ing this pub­lic out might aggrav­ate them even more.
• Social Activists are sim­il­ar to Virtue Signalists. While Virtue Signalists will attack your brand to make them­selves feel bet­ter, Social Activists will look for a tan­gible brand response (often seen as a victory).
• Bot Accounts come in many vari­et­ies, but since they should be quickly blocked and deleted, they can be cat­egor­ised as one single pub­lic account.
• Meme Flooders often mean no harm and are just look­ing for some fun. However, a sud­den flood of memes can still spell trouble for a brand’s social feeds. This pub­lic moves in packs and typ­ic­ally does­n’t stay for long. 
• Ambulance Chasers are a curi­ous bunch. They turn up whenev­er there’s a scan­dal because they’re look­ing for front-row seats. While they might be pass­ive, they can some­times try to add fuel to the fire for entertainment.
• Brand Haters are typ­ic­ally per­sist­ent and tend to stay around until the brand finds a way to settle their reas­on for being angry. Brand Haters can some­times let go if they get some form of compensation.

Please note: Publics provid­ing fair cri­tique or voicing legit­im­ate con­cerns should nev­er be cat­egor­ised — or treated! — as online trolls.

Learn more: How To Deal With Online Trolls

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Use the High Road Tonality

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The High Road Tonality

An organ­isa­tion is the poly­phon­ic sum of all its cowork­ers. Imagine tak­ing the most mature traits from each cowork­er and com­bin­ing them into one voice — the High Road Tonality.

• Openness. A mature organ­isa­tion under­stands that every­one must be allowed to express their thoughts and opinions.
• Fairness. A mature organ­isa­tion will see (and respect) both sides of a divis­ive argument.
• Strength. A mature organ­isa­tion is con­fid­ent in its chosen strategies and acquired abil­it­ies, not because they’re per­fect, but because they are grounded.
• Wisdom. A mature organ­isa­tion will take the time to explain com­plex top­ics without condescending.
• Humility. A mature organ­isa­tion under­stands that no one can have everything com­pletely figured out and that we all have learn­ing and grow­ing to do.

Learn more: The High Road Tonality: Don’t Be Pushed Around

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Establish House Rules

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Online House Rules (Social Media Policy Statements)

An organ­isa­tion’s social media accounts must be man­aged. While social media reac­tions can­not be fully con­trolled, a sup­port­ive cul­ture can be cul­tiv­ated in your organ­isa­tion’s feeds.

Keeping branded social media accounts, for­ums, and com­ment sec­tions in check will require act­ive mod­er­a­tion. Active mod­er­a­tion means delet­ing, ban­ning, block­ing, unfol­low­ing, and report­ing abuse.

It’s bad form to kick someone out arbit­rar­ily. Kicking someone out for mak­ing your brand uncom­fort­able is a recipe for PR backlash.

All brands must, there­fore, estab­lish online house rules.
(Also known as social media policy state­ments.)

Still, estab­lish­ing online house rules is easy. You need only one short and pos­it­ive state­ment to cla­ri­fy when, how, and why some user-gen­er­ated con­tent will be removed.

House Rule Examples

Here are a few short, encour­aging, and pos­it­ive state­ments for dif­fer­ent types of brands:

• Coffee shop: “Join our cosy corner of cof­fee lov­ers. Share your love for great brews and friendly chats. Let’s keep it warm and wel­com­ing for everyone.”
• Fitness centre: “Welcome to our fit­ness fam­ily. Cheer each oth­er on and share your pro­gress. Together, we cre­ate a sup­port­ive and motiv­at­ing community.”
• Fashion retail­er: “Fashion is fun and express­ive! Share your style, inspire oth­ers, and let’s keep our space styl­ish and kind for all fashionistas.”
• Tech com­pany: “Innovate, share, and learn with us! Our tech com­munity thrives on pos­it­iv­ity and respect. Let’s build some­thing great together.”
• Travel agency: “Embark on jour­neys with fel­low trav­el­lers! Share your adven­tures and tips. Let’s keep our travel tales inspir­ing and respectful.” 
• Bookstore: “Dive into a world of stor­ies! Share your favour­ite reads and dis­cuss them with fel­low book lov­ers. Let’s keep our book­ish com­munity open and friendly.”
• Pet sup­plies store: “A place for pet lov­ers! Share your furry friends’ stor­ies and tips. Let’s keep it paws­it­ive and sup­port­ive for all pet parents.”
• Organic food brand: “Healthy liv­ing starts here! Share your organ­ic recipes and well­ness tips. Let’s cul­tiv­ate a nur­tur­ing and pos­it­ive space.”
• Gaming com­pany: “Game on! Share your scores, tips, and game stor­ies. Let’s keep our gam­ing com­munity fun and inclus­ive for all players.”
• Beauty brand: “Celebrate beauty in all forms! Share your beauty tips and exper­i­ences. Let’s make our beauty com­munity kind and empowering.”
• Automotive brand: “Drive your pas­sion for cars! Share your rides and auto­mot­ive tips. Let’s keep our auto­mot­ive com­munity respect­ful and enthusiastic.”
• Music store: “Rock on! Share your favour­ite tunes and music stor­ies. Let’s keep our music­al com­munity har­mo­ni­ous and supportive.” 
• Sports brand: “Fuel your pas­sion for sports! Share your achieve­ments and tips. Let’s keep our sports com­munity encour­aging and spirited.”
• Home décor brand: “Create your dream space! Share your décor ideas and inspir­a­tions. Let’s keep our home décor com­munity cosy and inspiring.”
• Outdoor gear store: “Explore the great out­doors. Share your adven­tures and gear tips. Let’s keep our out­door com­munity adven­tur­ous and respectful.”
• Education plat­form: “Learn and grow with us! Share your know­ledge and study tips. Let’s keep our learn­ing com­munity pos­it­ive and collaborative.”
• Green energy com­pany: “Power a green­er future. Share your eco-friendly tips and exper­i­ences. Let’s keep our green energy com­munity sus­tain­able and inspiring.”
• Art sup­ply store: “Create your mas­ter­piece. Share your art and cre­at­ive tips. Let’s keep our art com­munity vibrant and encouraging.”
• Health and well­ness brand: “Embrace well­ness with us. Share your health tips and exper­i­ences. Let’s keep our well­ness com­munity sup­port­ive and uplifting.”
• Cooking brand: “Cook up some­thing amaz­ing! Share your recipes and cook­ing tips. Let’s keep our culin­ary com­munity deli­cious and friendly.”

If it’s unclear wheth­er or not someone viol­ates your house rules, revise them and make any changes known to your brand community.

Learn more: Online House Rules (Social Media Policy Statements)

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Spring Clean Your Accounts (Ban, Block, Report)

“Canadian psy­cho­lo­gists Erin Buckels, Paul Trapnell, and Delroy Paulhus set up a sur­vey of per­son­al­ity invent­or­ies matched with ‘Internet com­ment­ing styles’ — in oth­er words, they attemp­ted to psy­cho­ana­lyse com­menters, which should be cause for a Nobel prize (and haz­ard pay) in itself. What came from the study will likely sur­prise no one: people who like to troll are also likely to show signs of ‘sad­ism, psy­cho­pathy, and Machiavellianism.’”
Source: Time ⁵Chayka, K. (2014, February 13). Internet Trolls Are Actually Sadists, Study Finds. Time; Time. https://​time​.com/​8​2​6​5​/​i​n​t​e​r​n​e​t​-​t​r​o​l​l​s​-​a​r​e​-​a​c​t​u​a​l​l​y​-​s​a​d​i​s​t​s​-​s​t​u​d​y​-​f​i​n​ds/

People who viol­ate your online house rules (e.g., com­ment policy) are online trolls. You can ban, block, and delete them. It’s tedi­ous work, but you should spring clean amongst your fans, fol­low­ers, and sub­scribers, even if there are thousands.

Spring clean­ing means sift­ing through your online com­munity and look­ing for prom­in­ent troll accounts. When you find such accounts, delete them, ban them, block them, or unsub­scribe them. Banning, block­ing, and report­ing are applic­able when online trolls are enga­ging in the feeds of your brand’s social accounts or com­ment forms on your web­site or app:

While spring clean­ing might decrease your com­munity num­bers, you’ll bene­fit from bet­ter algorithmic scores.

Affiliate: I use Email List Validation to pro­tect my sender’s repu­ta­tion by keep­ing my PR email lists free from boun­cing emails.

Nurture a Brand Community

Nothing will pro­tect your brand bet­ter than nur­tur­ing a pos­it­ive and ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion across all your social channels. 

When the shit hits the fan, hav­ing your com­munity take your side is cru­cial. And if they favour your brand’s online envir­on­ment, they won’t eas­ily allow online trolls to des­troy what they’ve helped build.

Affiliate: I use Mailchimp as my default email list manager.

Implement Social Tech

Social tech­no­lo­gies could allow you to shape and man­age your online com­munity’s behaviours.

You can nur­ture a pos­it­ive online brand cul­ture by util­ising indi­vidu­al com­ment replies, reac­tions, pins, high­lights, badges, top lists, scores, sort­ing mech­an­isms, rewards, etc.

Here are a few on-site examples:

Implement “Staff Mode”

When online trolls attack your brand, their activ­ity must be mon­itored, and actions must be taken imme­di­ately. The soon­er you take action, the better.

If online trolls are allowed to wreak hav­oc without the brand tak­ing any meas­ures for too long, their activ­ity will attract oth­ers, and your prob­lems might become more prom­in­ent than they have to be.

So, when your brand deals with online trolls, staff up accord­ingly. It’s rarely a good idea for every­one to leave work while online trolls ramp up dur­ing the night.

Use Fancy Copywriting

Online trolls might be bad people, but you can throw many types of them off by react­ing in a way they wouldn’t expect you to.

There are many suc­cess­ful case stud­ies of brands using fancy copy­writ­ing to fight against online trolls. The idea is to make the gen­er­al online audi­ence favour your brand instead and turn them against online trolls.

Fancy copy­writ­ing might be your choice weapon if you take the fight. 

Be charm­ing.
Be clev­er.

Fancy copy­writ­ing is an art form, though.

You need a copy­writer or a PR writer who can pro­duce glim­mer­ing online responses in a high-pres­sure situation.

Monitor and Evaluate

When online trolls attack, it’s chal­len­ging to gauge pro­por­tion­al­ity. Coworkers might be upset and feel per­son­ally attacked, and lead­ers might feel pres­sured to push for action.

Your brand’s first line of defence against mak­ing bad calls is data. Data is har­ves­ted through online mon­it­or­ing sys­tems and then evaluated.

Attempt De-Platforming

If online trolls are giv­ing your brand grief out­side your brand plat­forms (social accounts, web­sites, apps, etc.), you might still be able to ban, block, or report their con­tent. However, this is a high-stakes strategy and should only be used cautiously.

Brands should be care­ful about try­ing to de-plat­form someone. Although they might be online trolls, they’re not in viol­a­tion of your house rules any­more. Because they’re not in your “house.”

The only time de-plat­form­ing is a reas­on­able course of action is if an online troll viol­ates the terms or con­di­tions stated by the social net­work. But even then, there’s a high prob­ab­il­ity that the social net­work won’t respond to your reports.

“Scores on the Dark Tetrad per­son­al­ity test revealed that trolls are, by far, more likely to have nar­ciss­ist­ic, Machiavellian, psy­cho­path­ic, and sad­ist­ic per­son­al­ity traits. Okay, so that’s not so sur­pris­ing. But Buckels and col­leagues wanted to take it a step fur­ther: how much enjoy­ment are these trolls get­ting from their online shenanigans? The research­ers con­struc­ted their own Global Assessment of Internet Trolling (GAIT), which asked such ques­tions as ‘I have sent people to shock web­sites for the lulz’ and ‘The more beau­ti­ful and pure a thing is, the more sat­is­fy­ing it is to cor­rupt.’ (Sadly, some people indeed answered these ques­tions with a ‘yes’).“
Source: The Guardian ⁶Jordan Gaines Lewis. (2014, February 25). Internet trolls are also real-life trolls. The Guardian. … Continue read­ing

Read also: De-Platforming as a Public Relations Strategy

PR Resource: List of Social Media Issues

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List of Social Media Issues

Social media isn’t just sun­shine and rain­bows. With massive change come new social media issues we must deal with.

Here are a few examples of social media issues:

• Fake Bots, Scam Bots, Troll Bots
• Ghost Followers
• Filter Bubbles (Social Media Algorithms)
• Echo Chambers (Confirmation Bias)
• Media Logic & Social Media Logic
• The Silent Switch
• Dark Web, Dark Social
• Facebook Zero
• Cyberbullying
• Online Trolls, Online Hate
• Fake News, Alternative Facts
• Conspiracy Theories
• Online Disinformation Campaigns
• Electoral Tampering
• Government Surveillance, Facial Recognition
• Cyber Terrorism
• Spam, Phishing, Identity Theft, Online Fraud
• Cancel Culture, De-Platforming
• The Useful Idiot Syndrome
• Selfie Generation
• Online Wannabeism
• The Copyright Mafia
• The Techlash, Cambridge Analytica
• The Splinternet
• Paywalls (Journalism)
• Clickbait Journalism
• Social Media Fakers
• Fear of Screen Time
• Mental Health Issues
• Programmatic Brainwashing
• Information Overload
• Filter Failure
• Deepfake Videos
• Artificial Intelligence (Threat)

Read also: Social Media: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

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