Crime Trolls on 'dragging sites' can ruin lives. It's time they answered for their actions - (Sali Hughes)


Suppose a website published hundreds of false allegations about your work, relationship and personal life. That, say, you’d had your hand in the till, were accepting bribes from clients, were abusive to an employee, had plagiarised a peer’s design. Let’s also say – if you can bear it – that the same site claimed your past was a fabrication, your kids were neglected, your marriage simply a means of acquiring a free nanny. You’d just get it taken down, yes? See your union rep and lawyer, take the website to the cleaners for libel, defamation, harassment, and see justice prevail. Good luck with that. This has been my life for the past two years, and unless I choose to spend thousands of pounds to prosecute a “dragging site” for each individual lie about me, it’ll probably be my life for the next 10.

Dragging or “trashing” sites are a relatively new kind of forum dedicated to following every move of people with a prominent online presence – bloggers, journalists, celebrities and the like – and slating who they are and whatever its (usually anonymous) users imagine they’re doing.

Their existence is thinly predicated on a quest for transparency in social media coverage. This would be something if they made formal complaints involving actual evidence, thus allowing victims to properly defend themselves with documentation, but site users habitually concoct stories on a suspicion or hunch and there they stay, in the public domain, in perpetuity, regardless of the erosion to someone’s hard fought-for reputation. Once marked as a bad person, every detail of your life can be rubbished with abandon and wild assertions simply become accepted fact.

My own contingent went as far as to send their entirely unfounded allegations to a global industry gossip account which published them unchecked, albeit briefly before taking them down and issuing a half-apology. The human cost is both huge and dismissed out of hand. Several victims have posted publicly about the effects of dragging sites on their mental health. The grieving relatives of a beloved friend of mine have had the misery of reading false speculation about their daughter’s funeral. My child’s teacher read how I would sell my kids for money. I spent most of last year in depression and a colleague of mine – not in the public eye – was bullied relentlessly online to the point where she became mentally unwell.

And yet, the more unchecked hate piled on to victims, the higher the site climbs in Google results. As we’ve learned from Netflix’s Social Dilemma, abuse is great for business. The dragging platforms earn money from advertising, while victims stand a very real chance of losing their livelihoods (only last week, I spoke to one woman whose small business is on the brink of collapse after site users left fake customer reviews).

Last week, the makeup artist and new mother Katie Hayes posted a video pleading for dragging site users to leave her alone, after police had arrived at her front door in response, she alleges, to fabricated reports that she had broken lockdown. (I can relate. Someone on a dragging site suggested I’d breached lockdown in order to accept a donation to my charity from someone in New York – an extraordinary accusation perhaps based on the assumption that internet banking had yet to hit the US.) In her video, Hayes said: “I don’t know how much more I can take of this … These trolls want me to have a mental breakdown.”

During the making of the BBC Radio 4 programme, Me and My Trolls, about dragging site culture, I asked a psychologist and leading expert in cyberstalking to take a look at the site. In just a few hours, she identified incidences of hate speech, harassment and classic behaviours of stalkers and other abusers. And finally, the law may agree with her that dragging sites cross the line.

The Law Commission has recently published recommendations for an overhaul of the law surrounding online abuse. Critically, they include provisions for “pile-ons”, where a number of individuals subject someone to a sustained campaign of online behaviours that cause harm. No distinction is made between direct communications to victims and indirect communications the victim will probably hear of (the “if you don’t like it, don’t read it” argument features prominently in the self-justification of dragging site users, but is largely meaningless in law). I’ve spent the past two years wishing these trolls would have the decency to defame me privately in WhatsApp, but the Law Commission wants to include that form of bullying, too.

While the much-feted online harms bill – designed to better protect citizens from harmful online behaviours – makes its way through parliament at glacial pace (thank Covid, and the Department for Culture Media and Sport’s insistence that tech companies be consulted), I hope they’ll get there in time.

Because as trolls gaslight victims, accusing them of inventing posts they have printed out in front of them, of faking their pain and trauma for attention, none of them, seemingly, are wondering how they might feel when somebody dies. The very notion is laughably absurd to them, despite the dozens of victims in my inbox (all too frightened of the certain repercussions from contributing to the documentary) who say that they are in therapy, on medication, or experiencing depression, OCD or agoraphobia as a direct result of being victimised on dragging sites. They and their families are living a daily hell. If, as legal experts told me in interview, the “known causing of harm” is to be the threshold, then these sites may long since have dragged themselves over it.

• Sali Hughes is beauty columnist for Guardian Weekend magazine. File on 4: Me and My Trolls, written and presented by Sali Hughes, is on BBC Radio 4 at 8pm on Tuesday and available afterwards on BBC Sounds.

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Sali Hughes #21 A Sali by any other name would smell as sweet with pretty bitter topnotes

Thanks to @Aude for the title with 13 votes, I had to change the title from “A Sali by any other name would smell as sweet (with somewhat bitter topnotes)” to the above for length. Little recap of previous thread - lots of Nuface chat, anti capitalist musings, Caitlin Moran’s book (she has...
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Sali Hughes #20 Private Sali, always on parade

I hope I’ve done this right! Summary of last thread. SH’s is on holiday in Greece, she announced she’d had breast reduction surgery in February pre lock down and made an informative IGTV about it. She has made reference to a documentary on bullying she is making. She’s also read her friend...
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Sali Hughes #19 When Harry met Sali (I'll have what she's having)

Thanks to @TriviaNewtonJohn for the thread title! Recap: Sali is now flogging Missoma glasses chains that she received at a 40% discount She refuses to say where she's going on holidays in case some "arsehole, mad people" speculate that it's for free Many people still haven't recovered from...
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Sali Hughes #18 No valid criticism, just endless speculation about her height and glasses.

Thanks to @Aude for thread title. I'm afraid @Mselvista Sali Hughes #18 Prick 😂 could not be used as against title rules! I've had a scan of the previous thread for recap: We found out Sali takes instruction from the sea 🌊 She doesn't like flipflops but loves a clog or a Birkenstock Sali and...
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Sali Hughes #17 So shady she doesn't need an SPF.

Thanks to @Jade Mitzi for thread title!
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Sali Hughes #16 The sell-out who couldn't sell out, and that is a legal fact.

Thread title is a joint effort this time - thanks to @Aude @Mselvista and @AmberSpyglass (Bumper amount of good quotes from Sali to chose from this time though 😂) Btw just noticed the Most Liked button, top right, orders posts in, erm, Most Liked ranking. Brilliant.
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Sali Hughes #15 Ugg slipper, a red lip, when dressing for Leonard don't let standards slip

Thanks to @TriviaNewtonJohn for the thread title. As also suggested by others we have moved to 'influencer'. (Thank you @zcfthc5 btw!)
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Sali Hughes #14 Went to the pub during a pandemic, for real! Never mind, feel as you feel

Thanks to @Satisfying Click for thread title. Stay at home people.
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Sali Hughes #13 The best new products I’ve been using for years

New thread, not sure who suggested it but please do step forward for your applause 👏 View all threads https://tattle.life/tags/sali-hughes/
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Sali Hughes #12 This is not a thread. It is not paid for, not sponsored, nor required by Sali

Definitely not a thread 😂 Definitely not any other threads: https://tattle.life/tags/sali-hughes/
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Sali Hughes #11 A red lip, a pink tight, a leopard boot - how very singular!

Title by @Aude . I hope I've done it right.
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Sali Hughes #10 Hiya! Am I in the wrong place? I came here to seethe about Sali.

I hope I'm doing this right. Old thread https://tattle.life/threads/sali-hughes-9-i-put-myself-online-and-people-had-opinions.3565/page-56 Thanks to @Loulou de la Falaise for the thread name!
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Sali Hughes #9 I put myself online and people had opinions

Thread title by @Aude view all threads https://tattle.life/tags/sali-hughes/
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Sali Hughes #8 The palpable absence of chill

Mod edit New thread, guys. by @joancrawford Please see this admin post concerning some of the recent activity - http://tattle.life/threads/sali-hughes-8-the-palpable-absence-of-chill.3480/post-607000
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Sali Hughes #7 Yes I threatened and yes I lie, but can I interest you in beauty pie?

thanks to @Carryonnursing for the thread title (y) @Yel first thread and not sure I did it properly, could you intervene for me?
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Sali Hughes #6 Eric's at the cat flap, hide your side of beef with a shower cap!

Thread title: Eric’s at the door, hide your side of beef with a shower cap!
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Sali Hughes #5 Punched in the titters by all those lovely blue tickers

Thread title by @Jelly Bean view all threads: https://tattle.life/tags/sali-hughes/
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Sali Hughes #4 The Keats of foundation

New thread for Sali Hughes. Thread title by @BettyDoodah I also would like to take this opportunity to say no posts have been deleted that correspond to what she said on her video. Messages of that nature have just never been posted here. But hey being pretty honest wouldn't get a viral video...
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Sali Hughes #3 Weak dilutes & boiled piss, if only! I invented the aubergine penis emoji.

Carrying on from thread #2 thanks to @splitpea for the title
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Sali Hughes #2 Pretty Dishonest

New thread! Thanks to...me for the witty title :ROFLMAO:
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Sali Hughes

She said she’d never do an #ad and that anything she ever recommended was a ‘true’ recommendation. But, without explanation she’s suddenly started selling shit - in the last month she’s done at least six #ad on her stories and posts, plus a swipe up for Selfridges beauty. So I guess that means...
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This is the second article I've read this week about the need to rein in the various methods of crowd sourced harassment that the Left has been so fond of for the last several years. I wonder if the elites are growing fearful that the monsters they have been nurturing are slipping from the traces to turn on their masters? Do they think the weapons they have handed to the mob will be used against them?

I hope they are afraid. I hope that they choke on their terror as they reap the whirlwind.

After all, the wages of sin are death.
 
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The Law Commission has recently published recommendations for an overhaul of the law surrounding online abuse. Critically, they include provisions for “pile-ons”, where a number of individuals subject someone to a sustained campaign of online behaviours that cause harm. No distinction is made between direct communications to victims and indirect communications the victim will probably hear of (the “if you don’t like it, don’t read it” argument features prominently in the self-justification of dragging site users, but is largely meaningless in law).
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Twitter doesn't exist without this, though.

LOL, there's more. I predict a book deal followed by a Netflix documentary preceded by several rounds of crowdfunding.

Sali Hughes: I met the woman who trolled me online
By Sali Hughes
Journalist & broadcaster
6 October 2020
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Image copyrightSALI HUGHES
A few weeks ago, in a chilly London plaza, I met a woman called Becky*. The smart, affluent-looking, 30-something mum smiled warmly as she approached me. We'd never met before. But until fairly recently, Becky had been trolling me online.

Imagine if a group of strangers spent up to 16 hours a day feasting over nasty and imagined details about your personal life and family, telling livelihood-endangering lies about your job.

That happened, and still happens, to me and many others on what's known as a "dragging" or "trashing" site.

If you search my name you'll find I'm a journalist. You'll see my posts about beauty and lifestyle all over Twitter and Instagram. But when Becky searched my name, alongside a cosmetic procedure, a link to the "trashing" site had come up as a result.

The lies about my personal and professional life spanned pages; talking about my children, my marriage and my mother who'd recently died of cancer.

False rumours and hurtful insults
The site is an online forum, dedicated to trashing the lives and reputations of people with a social media presence.

About a year ago, the insults, hurtful conspiracy theories and speculation migrated from that forum to a beauty industry gossip site.

A false rumour appeared, albeit briefly, suggesting that I had an undeclared financial relationship with a major brand. I decided I had to act.

I posted a video on Instagram, talking about the ceaseless trolling I - along with many others - had received on the site, how it threatened my livelihood, affected my mental health and hurt deeply those I love. Having watched that video, Becky stopped posting.

Sali Hughes
The Sali Hughes being denigrated online was not one I would recognise

A few months later, she wrote to me. And that eventually led us to meet, shivering, outside a cafe in Victoria, where she had agreed to be interviewed for an edition of File on 4 I was making about my experience of online abuse.

In her email to me, Becky had acknowledged there was "a lot of projection going on". And when we met, she spoke about how issues in her personal life had fed into what she wrote.

"I think what you see of influencers, people on the internet, media personalities is potentially only 40 seconds of content a day. It's very easy to fill in with your own narrative.

"For me specifically, I can say 100% what was going on in my own life is reflected in what I posted… it was nothing really to do with the content creator. It was what I filled in."

But while my name may have been on the posts, were the contributors like Becky really talking about me? The Sali Hughes that was being denigrated there was not one I would recognise.

Scant facts would be extrapolated into large fictions. Competition to come up with the juiciest speculation would lead to nonsense being accepted as fact, then more speculation built on top of that, until the person at the centre of the abuse seemed to be a fictional character with my name.

Impossible to win
When I met Becky outside the cafe I could tell we both felt nervous, and her voice broke as she told me she's a "normal person".

"I am. I'm a nice mum. I'm a good friend," she insisted. "I've been back to what I wrote, it was so nasty and I thought: how was I so blind to how thoroughly unpleasant I was being? Just knowing that I was any way involved makes me feel really upset at the thought of that."

One of the most upsetting aspects is that once targeted, it is impossible to not be found wanting - it simply isn't possible to win.

Put your kids in social media posts and you're exploiting them and invading their privacy. Choose not to, as I do, and you're clearly never with them, always palming them off on others, marrying the love of your life merely to nab a free nanny.

Post too often and you're a narcissist, post too little and you're lazy. Ignoring allegations is to tacitly plead guilty and put an entire career at risk, confronting them head on is to amplify them, play for attention and waste your time "when you should be looking after your kids" (one of their comments on my Instagram at the time).

Part of the problem with getting trolls to understand the impact of their abuse is often they convince themselves - and each other - that they're the good guys, cutting through dishonest posts with the sword of truth.

"Oh, absolutely 100%," says Becky. "I think, you know, particularly with (commercial) partnerships, people are there saying: oh, you know, people are getting paid tons of money behind the scenes, not declaring ads properly."

There's a strict code of conduct and failing to declare paid-for posts online is something that needs to be effectively policed. But that's the job of the Advertising Standards Authority - to whom anyone can report behaviour that breaks the rules - and there's a process in place that gives those accused a right of reply.

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After I made my video, I received dozens of messages from people telling me they were now on medication or in therapy as a result of the treatment they'd received on the same site.

Somebody else told me they'd developed agoraphobia, another that she'd even had suicidal thoughts. Paranoia is evidently a common effect in victims, thanks to the anonymity afforded to online trolls. I found myself feeling scared to go out because I didn't know who might be watching me.

Despite it all, I respected Becky's bravery and honesty in speaking to me. But if we're speaking of honesty, the truth is my sympathy was limited. Because Becky, albeit having escaped the world of online abuse that had sucked her in, still represented to me something deeply painful, unfair and ultimately mystifying.

Why would people devote so much of their time insulting and lying about someone they don't even know? If they don't like me - which of course is absolutely fine - why didn't they just unfollow me?

"It was a way of me trying to solve my own problems," reflected Becky. "It's actually nothing to do with you."

Before leaving, she shrugged and added: "It doesn't make sense to me either".

Sali's story is on File on 4, Tuesday 6 October 2000 BST on BBC Radio 4 and afterwards on BBC Sounds.

*real name has been changed.
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'You don't have the right to shit on assholes'-The absolute state of the UK.
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The same people expect the privilege to shit on others too. People who made fun of Abbot laughed till they were targeted and how horrible trolls are for daring to make fun of britbongland.

A Tory MP or MSP kept crying about Scots calling him six chips Tory Cunt because he wanted to appeal more to the "working class" and was called out for only having six fucking chips with his meal like it was fine dining. Got really mad and tried to tell his the tory youth division how horrible it is and how nobody wants to join them.

At the end of the day. People cry free speech till they become the target and now want to curb free speech because they got assmad that it works both the same way.
 
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Ly Erg said:
The same people expect the privilege to shit on others too. People who made fun of Abbot laughed till they were targeted and how horrible trolls are for daring to make fun of britbongland.

A Tory MP or MSP kept crying about Scots calling him six chips Tory Cunt because he wanted to appeal more to the "working class" and was called out for only having six fucking chips with his meal like it was fine dining. Got really mad and tried to tell his the tory youth division how horrible it is and how nobody wants to join them.

At the end of the day. People cry free speech till they become the target and now want to curb free speech because they got assmad that it works both the same way.
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A nation of children running to daddy government, 'stop the meanie from saying things'.
I have no words to express my level of disgust.



I know the reason behind this is all the dead men of WW2 not raising their children with a firm helping of 'stop crying pussy', but even knowing that....
 
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Because as trolls gaslight victims, accusing them of inventing posts they have printed out in front of them, of faking their pain and trauma for attention, none of them, seemingly, are wondering how they might feel when somebody dies. The very notion is laughably absurd to them, despite the dozens of victims in my inbox (all too frightened of the certain repercussions from contributing to the documentary) who say that they are in therapy, on medication, or experiencing depression, OCD or agoraphobia as a direct result of being victimised on dragging sites.
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I thought this might be vagueposting about this site, until this passage. Rest In Pepperoni Chloe Sagal
 
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"Yes, journalists, I know that feeling".
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