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Hello! I’m curious how your different organizations deal with trolls and hostile comments, specifically on X where the environment has become more volatile. I’m referring less to the one-off negative comment that we’ve just ignored and not engaged with and more to the pile-on behavior of dozens of accounts. We had a situation recently where one of our posts (which we’ve shared before) got picked up and retweeted by an account that caused a slew of 100+ negative comments, retweets, and just general misinformation. 

We typically don’t engage with these accounts and very rarely do we block accounts because of how it might reflect on us as an organization to silence comments or limit access to our account (and not to mention ignite more hostility). But this recent example of troll behavior has us rethinking our approach and if it’s worth exploring more proactive strategies to limit the toxicity and prevent future troll behavior directed at our account.

Has anyone had similar experiences of this happening with X? What strategies and actions have worked well for you to limit this kind of behavior?

Thank you all!

I have dealt with issues on Reddit and in private in FB groups. We have taken a more direct approach of engaging with people in those platforms - knowing that many accounts on Reddit are fake - and even in FB groups - you can’t be sure they really are who they say they are. 

X just seems less relevant every day - depending on your organization’s mission - I am seeing less downside to just blocking trolls - they are probably fake accounts. 

Good luck! Reputation management online is always changing! 

Thank you so much for this! It’s affirming to know that this is an ongoing and evolving part of our work. We ended limited comment access to accounts our organization follows for that particular post and that seems to have solved things for now, but we’re continuing to keep an eye on things while also being realistic on how much X has devolved as an information-sharing platform. Thanks again for your input!

I have utilized the “hide”  and “restrict” functions on platforms that have the feature. Then these people can scream into the void. Also, advance filtering to filter out certain words and phrases from posting to comments. 

Unfortunately, with X there’s not much you can do aside from blocking. You can mute them so you won’t see their replies for your sanity, but others still will.  

I work for an ACLU affiliate, and we’re pretty committed to free speech, but we’re also a small team who needs to protect our sanity. We developed and published the following policy:

The ACLU welcomes vigorous debate and differing views on our social media accounts, including posts that disagree with our own views. However, as a non-governmental, private organization, we reserve the right to hide or delete posts, as well as to block users, according to the following criteria:

  • Threatening or suggesting violence or harm, directly or indirectly, to another person. We may report threats to appropriate authorities.
  • Harassing or demeaning other people or groups of people, including but not limited to degradation on the basis of race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.
  • Spam and/or large volumes of repetitive content.
  • Advertisements, promotions, or solicitations of a commercial product or service.
  • Confidential, personally identifying, or private information.
  • Accounts we have reason to believe are bots or are malicious.

If you are requesting legal assistance, do not post those requests in our social media accounts - we will not respond. Instead, please fill out a legal intake request form so that we can assure your confidentiality. We reserve the right to remove or hide requests for legal assistance.

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