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Trolls Are Swarming Young Climate Activists Online

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Re: Trolls Are Swarming Young Climate Activists Online

#3
The media and activists are largely to blame here.

If a child wants to opine on climate change or abortion or whatever, that's fine. But activists and the media shouldn't push to elevate that child to the national stage to score political points.

Once you've set yourself up as a political activist, people will respond to your beliefs, and they won't always be kind.

Re: Trolls Are Swarming Young Climate Activists Online

#7
post #5

I cant help but think that those girls were selected specifically because they re underage. That they would attract trolls is an inevitability.

Is the solution to suppress their voices, rather than protect them from trolls and suppress the voices of the trolls?

Re: Trolls Are Swarming Young Climate Activists Online

#8
It would be nice if there was some kind of scoring about the probability that something like this was organic or a coordinated campaign with sockpuppets.

It's also a glaring example of weak points in current law and Twitter specifically. First, Twitter really needs expand its privacy options. Someone should be able to publicly share an opinion without allowing anyone to reply to their timeline or DM them. On the legal point, sending graphic pictures to underaged girls is a sex crime, and underfunded law enforcement is not keeping up given physical crimes and multijurisdictional nature. Interpol or a related entity has to start chasing down criminals that send sexual material to young people. It is plainly child abuse regardless of politics.

Re: Trolls Are Swarming Young Climate Activists Online

#10
Sad to see. Although, honestly, the parents shouldn't have allowed their kids to put themselves in these 'activist' positions to begin with. What did they expect? And also, a 16 year old girl speaking at the UN? Is that a joke?

I fully support protecting the environment but this is child exploitation for political purposes. These movements should be led by scientists, not children. Is it any wonder people are still skeptical?

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