They See Me Trollin'

     The internet is a weird place. There's no argument there. But when you take a place like the internet where there are virtually no rules, and a global community, there inevitably grows a kind of culture. And just like all cultures world-wide, there are good and bad aspects to it. One of these weird, possibly bad aspects is "trolling," a phenomenon where posters ("trolls") spam people's internet homes with (usually) rude or offensive content. Is this ethical? Should it be stopped?
     Here's the thing. In America, we have a law about freedom of speech. Other countries, not so much. So how does that translate to the internet? It's hard to say. On one hand, it's easy to argue that trolling, while not necessarily ethical, is certainly legal in America thanks to free speech, as long as the messages don't cross into hate speech or threats. But the internet is global. Other countries can and do use the internet, and their people occasionally troll.
     So the only option, then, is to approach this issue on a country-by-country basis, which is certainly not the most efficient (though we could always establish the internet as its own entity, with its own set of rules to be followed globally, but that would probably be even harder.). Some countries, like New Zealand, have already realized that trolling is a problem and taken steps to fix it. However, as this article points out, there are some very large problems with this law: the law cites punishable speech as speech that is "indecent," "false," or "used to harass an individual." And as the article also says, this is very broad. It could technically encompass political cartoonists. It's also not clear whether the law applies to people posting this content, or if it would include people responding to it as well.
     Under this law, would re-posting this image be punishable in New Zealand? Many people found it indecent and false. The law is simply too broad to do any real good, and could end up infringing on the critical speech needed in large spaces like the internet.
     Controlling trolling on the internet is one of the hardest problems to solve in today's world. It's obvious that many of the trolls, such as those mentioned in this article, are clearly causing ethical harm. They shouldn't be doing what they're doing. But unfortunately, until the internet is given its own division of millions of people whose job is to screen the web for these sorts of trolls, nothing is to be done. Nothing can be done, without infringing on the critical speech of millions of innocent parties. Unfortunately, this is one of those times where people just have to block and ignore, as unfair as that may be. But, hey, it's the internet. Anything goes there.