An experience I'm not yet acquainted with…

Death threats online are problem faced by many different groups, and here is a woman talking about how hate groups escalated from bad mouthing her and her sexuality up to regular death threats. She also describes some folks who've had to go into hiding because constant threats made online.

I've been lucky thus far in that all my trolls tend to say the same ridiculous things, calling themselves compassionate and longing to help in one sentence, and then dehumanizing half the planet's population in the next. I've had people ask some really mean questions about the circumstances of my rape, and I'm quite used to being told I'm full of shit, misguided, or making a big deal out of nothing. Being dismissed is still just as irritating as it was when I was a kid, but it's nothing new. But no one has threatened to hunt me down. Yet.

But, just so y'all know, I'm in Italy. So those in the US who hate my guts will have to pony up the cash for a ten hour flight. And my house has a moat. With alligators and sharks. When you get to my floor, there's a little kid in a mushroom costume who will tell you "Sorry, stalker, but the princess has fled to another palace."

Seriously, though, it's sad how many time I see examples like this that prove the online world has not led to an era of greater enlightenment. If anything, we're seeing hate become more organized, and we're seeing how effectively targeted hate can make people afraid to speak out.

And instead of addressing issues of personal safety for the users of the Internet, our government and ISPs are more concerned with preserving digital copyrights for corporations. One might think all of those people being paying customers might foster some affection, however fake, from the ISPs, but they really don't care that cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying are easy, generally legal, and are a growing hobby for a number of bored, sheltered douchebags.

So the ISPs will haggle over setting up a three strikes access law to protect Trent Reznor from me pirating his latest music videos, but they won't set up a similar system for cyber-stalkers with a known history of victimizing women and other minorities?

Do I even need to comment how fucked up all of this is?