[M] climate trolls targeting young activists

[RS Wood]

From the «reduce population pressure by killing douchebags» department:
Title: Trolls Are Swarming Young Climate Activists Online
Author: he...@slashdot.org
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2019 17:10:00 -0400
Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/uJj-YyB8Wo0/trolls-are-swarming-young-climate-activists-online

A new movement of teenage climate activists -- most of whom are girls -- are
getting dragged, doxed, hacked, and harassed online. Zahra Hirji, reporting for
BuzzFeed News: On the morning of August 25, 11-year-old Lilly Platt tweeted a
video clip of a Brazilian Amazon tribe speaking out against deforestation.
Awareness of the Amazon wildfires was already at a fever pitch, and the tweet
exploded. Then, within an hour, a swarm of troll accounts started flooding her
mentions with porn. Shortly after the attack, her mom, Eleanor Platt, made an
online plea for help: "Dear Friends of Lilly, this is Lillys mum she is being
targeted by revolting trolls who are spamming her feed with pornography. There
is only so much i can do to block this. Please if you see these posts report
them." Over the course of the day, some of Lilly's nearly 10,000 followers did
just that. Young girls like Lilly, who has been striking in her hometown of
Utrecht, Netherlands, every Friday for the last year, are overwhelmingly
leading a growing global movement to draw attention to the climate crisis. They
spurred an estimated 4 million people across seven continents to walk out of
work and school on September 20 -- and they are getting attacked for it. They
have faced a barrage of daily insults, seemingly coordinated attacks (like the
one that targeted Lilly), creepy DMs, doxing, hacked accounts, and death
threats. This is the new normal for young climate leaders online, according to
BuzzFeed News interviews with nearly a dozen of the kids and their parents.
Personal attacks have always been a part of the climate denial playbook, even
as fossil fuel companies secretly funded campaigns and researchers to question
the scientific consensus on climate change. The most famous incident, 2009's
Climategate, involved scientists getting their emails hacked and then facing
death threats. And as the politics of climate change begins to mirror the
broader dark trends of global politics, weaponized social media -- in the form
of intimidation, memes, and disinformation -- has emerged as the dominant
vehicle for climate denial. But the rise of a new climate movement means
there's now a much more visible -- and especially vulnerable -- target: kids.

[image 2][2][image 4][4][image 6][6]

Read more of this story[7] at Slashdot.
[image 8]

Links:
[1]: http://twitter.com/home?status=Trolls+Are+Swarming+Young+Climate+Activists+Online%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F2lKgjWw (link)
[2]: https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png (image)
[3]: http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F19%2F09%2F25%2F1948231%2Ftrolls-are-swarming-young-climate-activists-online%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook (link)
[4]: https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png (image)
[5]: http://plus.google.com/share?url=https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/09/25/1948231/trolls-are-swarming-young-climate-activists-online?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=googleplus (link)
[6]: https://www.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png (image)
[7]: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/09/25/1948231/trolls-are-swarming-young-climate-activists-online?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed (link)
[8]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/uJj-YyB8Wo0 (image)


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Port 80 is overrated.