There Are No Good Trolls. Forget About Making Any Deal
With Them
They're the pond scum of the Internet,
and trying to reason with these no-lifes is pointless. Follow these rules to
keep a bad situation from getting worse.
By Howard Tullman Executive
director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship,
Illinois Institute of Technology @tullman
I've
spent too much time recently in sessions with talented technical people who
already have more than enough on their plates to have to worry about trolls.
For those of you lucky enough not to have had to deal with them, trolls are
social media-enabled nobodies who spend their days making trouble online for
legitimate businesses. They write strident screeds filled with empty
assertions about alleged system flaws and security holes and threaten to
"publish" these mostly misleading and always provocative commentaries
if their "concerns" and comments aren't immediately addressed. Say,
with cash. I wish that having to deal with this Internet pond scum was just my
own misfortune, but the problem is growing and there's a real concern here,
especially for startups, which don't have the luxury of dedicated resources
devoted to breach and security issues.
The
issue isn't so much about the alleged flaws and security issues that these
trolls and fake "researchers" report or threaten to publish (using
click-happy and equally craven "reporters"); it's because (a) they
burn tremendous amounts of what could otherwise be productive time on the part
of your technical people and (b) they specifically target those techies who are
the brightest yet most naïve, who tend to be the most committed and the
thinnest-skinned, not to mention the most conscientious and diligent
members of your team. These attributes may make them great coders and
developers, but they absolutely make them the worst possible people to deal
with trolls. They mistakenly think it's a fair contest; and then they take
every criticism and complaint about their work to heart and much too
personally.
Sadly,
your tech naïfs think that if they can simply explain things properly to the
trolls everything will be better, and the problems will go away. This is a lot
like hoping that the hungry lion won't eat you because you're a vegetarian.
There really isn't a polite or politically correct way to say this but there
simply are NO good trolls. Not a one. The thought that you can engage with the
good trolls--or that you can even figure out who those might be-- is basically
and badly deluded.
Trolls
are fundamentally damaged people who can't help themselves, like the scorpion
that stings the turtle that carried him safely across the river. Why did he do
it? Because it's the scorpion's nature, so what else would you expect.
These guys have no one's best interests in mind other than their own. And
it's not totally clear that they even know what their own motives might be,
since this is no way for even asocial morons to spend most of the waking hours
in their sad little lives. Nitpicking and scab scratching - day in and day out
- for no good reason and to no good end.
I admit
that it can be a little confusing because some of these people can actually
carry on what appears to be an intermittently rational (albeit usually
anonymous) email or text conversation - or a Twitter storm - for periods of
time until the "crazy" breaks through, their Mom calls them for
dinner, or the tin foil hats come back out. You have to wonder why the ones of
a certain age don't have day jobs that might actually give them a chance (and
pay them) to employ some of their skills and analytical abilities in a
productive - rather than abusive and erratic - fashion. But their distorted
world doesn't work that way.
When
you deal with them repeatedly you discover pretty quickly that in most cases
(forget the real crooks and the ransom assholes) you actually can't pay them to
come to work for you or to go away. It could be as simple as the fact that many
of these people couldn't function in a business environment, don't know how to
conduct themselves in polite company, or have just spent too much time alone in
their basements talking to themselves and their pet whatevers. Needless to say, these aren't your typical dog
and cat owners. They're much more likely to keep a couple of snakes and random
rodents around their place. Making your tech people miserable seems to be what
they do for fun.
So, I'd
propose a couple of simple ideas that will help save you a lot of time and
money and also help you curb the good-natured and well-intentioned, but foolish
and dangerous, instincts of your tech people. Give them my five little rules.
1) If
you assume the worst motives possible, you'll almost always be right.
2) Send
all the trolls to Tom (or Biff or Bev) so he/she's the only one wasting his
time.
3)
Don't explain, don't complain, don't share, and don't commit to do anything.
It's a slippery slope and an endless deluge of demands.
4)
Threats and deadlines are a dime a dozen--don't be bullied or bluffed into
doing something dumb.
5) Fast
fixes and shortcut solutions always screw something else up.
Save
yourself all the headaches and the heartaches by not getting started in the
first place. There's no upside to wrestling with a pig --you get dirty and the
pig enjoys it. You've got much better things to do and the pig has nothing but
time. Trying to get a fair shake from a troll is like trying to find the clean
end of a shit stick.