TV Tropes, Porn, and Internet Terrorism

I’ve got something a bit more interesting and involved to talk about in this blog, as opposed to the typical gaming, family, and/or political fare: Internet terrorism (aka “hacktivism”), and how it’s lost its claim to anything resembling a moral high ground.

Some of you who know me may know that I’m a long time member of TV Tropes, a wiki dedicated to identifying and cataloging tropes in media.  A trope, as the wiki defines it, is a storytelling convention, a literary device, plot element, setup, narrative structure, character type, camera trick, editing technique, game mechanic — it’s a recognizable pattern that shapes our perception of media.

As a very simple example, take the Damsel In Distress: a character, usually female, who’s put in danger to set the plot in motion.  If it isn’t to get the hero involved, it’s to make the conflict personal for the hero or to distract the hero from his attempt to defeat the villain.  Frequently, said damsel is the hero’s love interest or becomes his love interest. I could go on for hours, and there’s even a trope for that:  TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life.

I am a moderator on TV Tropes, meaning it is my “job” (I don’t get paid for this) to help keep things orderly on the wiki and forums. Although I have no administrative control, I do get to witness a lot of what goes on under the hood of a site of this size and complexity, and one of those dubious privileges is dealing with the kinds of folks who don’t play nicely with rules.

TV Tropes has been subject to numerous forms of malicious activity, including simple vandalism like defacing articles and placing insulting comments in discussion pages or forum threads, attempts to recreate articles that were deleted or to delete existing valid articles, attempts to exploit security flaws, and even denial of service attacks, over the site’s administrative and content policies.

Much of the recent furor apparently stems from disagreements over a decision made last year to delete most references to pornographic media and tropes specifically derived from pornographic media, in an effort to keep the site “family friendly“.  What this means is, essentially, that the staff don’t want TV Tropes to be thought of as the kind of place where people go to gush over porn.  As the site is specifically about fandom (although its opposite is acknowledged, that doesn’t mean it is encouraged), it’s inevitable that talking about porn will get it talked about, and not in a favorable way.  It can even get the site in trouble with its advertisers. TV Tropes doesn’t attract nearly enough donations to function ad-free, it doesn’t enjoy the support of a large foundation or sponsors with deep pockets, and Google threatened to pull or actually pulled its ads on at least two occasions over content complaints (despite the suspicion that they may have been malicious). But more than anything, the staff just don’t want it.

Of course, the removal of this content raised a stink with certain parts of the troper community, and that spilled out into the Internet at large.  It was necessary to ban a number of users who wouldn’t accept the decision and committed acts of vandalism in protest, all in the name of what they consider “free speech”. It’s fair to note that there have been other protests against the site’s policies as well, particularly in terms of the enforcement of rules (users can’t talk about themselves or have conversations in the articles, proper grammar and consistent style are required, potholes to the latest fad meme are discouraged, examples require explanation, etc.).

However, this week, the attacks escalated to a full-on denial of service, to the point where TV Tropes was shut down for several hours.  Even after countermeasures were installed, the attacks continued and the site has had to deal with waves of accounts created specifically to vandalize the wiki or to recreate deleted articles.

Which brings me to the subject of this post: Internet terrorism, or “hacktivism” as it is sometimes called.  We all hear talk about groups like Anonymous, who seek out transgressors of various sorts and orchestrate hacks, denial of service attacks, and other forms of vigilantism.  We all know that there’s a hacker underworld that operates botnets (networks of zombie computers employed to send spam, host illegal websites, or conduct attacks).

It seems to me that there is a qualitative difference between hacktivism in the service of a principle or a societal ideal and hacktivism for the sake of redressing a personal slight.  Freedom of information and/or anti-censorship is one such principle, and I’m generally in favor of it.  Societies work best when information flows freely and unrestricted.  If a news organization squelches an article because of its political stance, if government demands that the media not report on something that embarrasses it, if a TV show is taken off the air for having an unpopular message, those are all issues that may merit protest from concerned citizens.

TV Tropes, by contrast,  is not a place where freedom of speech can really be said to apply.  It is a privately run fansite, it’s not for-profit, it doesn’t have a broadly scoped mission like Wikipedia, and it never claimed that it would allow anything anyone ever wanted to add.  It has a single owner/administrator (well, two, technically) and a handful of unpaid moderators who do their best to keep a vast and disparate collection of media fans working together in something resembling an orderly fashion.

To be clear, I don’t support criminal activity in the service of activism, even if the cause is something I sympathize with.  Breaking into computers and using them to attack other computers is wrong, and those who do it deserve punishment, regardless of the motive.  Conversely, governments and big businesses have something of an expectation that they will be targeted by people who dislike them, and there is an onus on them to develop proper security measures.  If a company like AT&T gets hacked, it’s no less illegal on the part of the hackers, but it’s an indication that its (presumably well-funded) IT department is not doing its job.

When the services of a botnet and the attentions of these self-styled vigilantes are turned towards sites like TV Tropes without deep pockets or huge IT departments, who rely on the support of their communities to continue existing, it stops resembling anything like nobility and starts looking like plain old bullying.  These people are using the resources of a criminal organization, which are presumably not free, to target a site that annoyed them because it won’t let them talk about porn. One wonders if they are paying money for it, or if the vast gulf between the slight and their response to it occurs to them in any way.

What’s worse is that it discredits the very notion of internet vigilantism as a force for useful change. I can at least sympathize with hacktivism when it’s targeted at a company that has draconian copyright enforcement policies or at a government that supports the suppression of human rights.  It’s still wrong, but I can see why they might feel it serves a greater good.  But attacking a site like TV Tropes that exists solely for the enjoyment of its users, makes no profit, and seeks only to be a useful resource for writers and fans of media in general just makes the perpetrators look petty and makes their cries for freedom of speech sound hollow.

I don’t expect to change anyone’s minds with this post, of course.  I want to get my thoughts out there and maybe have some conversations about it.  TV Tropes will continue to operate whether these attacks continue or not.  If they stop, the site can relax some of its anti-DDoS countermeasures, which have inconvenienced a few tropers.  But the wiki will be up either way, and its policies are not going to change.  I also have to wonder if whoever’s running the attacks is spending money (theirs or someone else’s) on them.  Even in the wild world of hackers and crackers, botnet time isn’t free, even if the cost isn’t expressed in money.

Do they really think they are accomplishing anything?