Cheap Tricks: The Low Cost of Internet Harassment

Cheap Tricks: The Low Cost of Internet Harassment(propublica.org)

19 points by jpbutler 8 years ago | 3 comments

soyiuz 8 years ago |

A simple solution would be to restrict your professional communications to an online "contact me" form, which in itself would require CAPTCHA or some sort of registration. That would require a culture shift within ProPublica--easier to achieve than policing all WordPress installs or all mailing lists.

gumby 8 years ago | |

For a reporter, like this author, that barrier would probably be too intrusive for them to be able to do their job.

soyiuz 8 years ago | | |

Perhaps. However, we do a similar thing with telephone numbers--to reach most professionals I have to go through a receptionist. The added friction to contact has to be weighed against safety and susceptibility to disruption.

At the very least, a single point of entry to ProPublica's journalists is something the organization can control. It is by scales of magnitude more difficult and intrusive to control spam in the wild.

"Too" intrusive is a question of expediency. In other words, the cost to harassment is low because the price to contact has been set low. Raise the barrier to entry. It will make legitimate contact SLIGHTLY more difficult, but it would also make opportunistic harassment in bulk MUCH more difficult.