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?

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  1. #1 by CMTheAuthor on March 30, 2013 - 10:36 am

    I think the issue is that they define free speech as a human right. By their logic, human rights are infallible, unassailable, so on and so forth. They cannot be forfeited, they cannot be taken, they cannot be paid for; they apply in every situation, every place, and every time. A human right is in effect 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365/366 days a year, 10 years a decade…you get the point.

    If you accept that as the basic definition of human rights, and free speech as a human right, it follows logically that TVTropes is violating a human right, courtesy of the content policy. As such, the hacktivists have it in their sights, and there’s not a lot of counterarguments that can be offered against their efforts other than that hacktivism itself is morally wrong.

    Keep in mind I’m not advocating either position, just explaining the logic here. I know you probably can figure out who I am on TVTropes, being a moderator and all, so don’t hold it against me or anything.

    • #2 by fighteer1 on March 30, 2013 - 12:18 pm

      Even if you accept that premise, it does not mean that a website about, for example, penguins, must allow people to use it as a platform to talk about hydroponic farming or goat herding. The owners of a site get to decide what the site will be used for. If Safebooru decides not to allow pornographic images, it is not a freedom of speech issue. If someone wants to make a Porn Tropes wiki, it’s a free Internet.

      These attacks, while conducted under the notional umbrella of free speech, are in reality a temper tantrum that we told them they couldn’t use our wiki to masturbate.

      Also, the staff of the wiki does not engage in retaliatory moderation. Please don’t worry about that. If we did, there would indeed be a legit beef about us.

  2. #3 by CMTheAuthor on March 30, 2013 - 12:54 pm

    I’m aware of that. I also suspect they believe that wikis (in a general sense) should not be prescriptivist about their usage, in the vein of Wikipedia. (This is something I am more inclined to agree with.)

    Or to put it in more plain language, the fact that you justified the policy by saying they “use our wiki to masturbate” basically sends the message that the content policy is in place for all the wrong reasons, and thus justifies their views in turn, and will continue to do so as long as you paint the policy as anything other than a pure financial necessity.

    • #4 by fighteer1 on March 30, 2013 - 1:13 pm

      The point is that private websites may choose what content they permit. Should a wiki about Star Wars be compelled by this principle to talk about Firefly or cooking?

      As for the masturbation thing, that is not just the staff’s opinions; it is how TV Tropes was becoming perceived in the Internet community at large. It’s for much the same reason that Troper Tales and It Just Bugs Me were removed. They were a stain on our reputation.

      • #5 by CMTheAuthor on March 30, 2013 - 3:00 pm

        By your logic, pornographic works are not actually fiction (which presumably is the purview of TVTropes), and do not have tropes. The only way that analogy you’ve made is actually relevant is if this is the stance behind the policy. If you’re going to defend the policy, I suggest you find better arguments.

        I am starting to suspect that, in hindsight, it isn’t prudent to run a website as diverse and varied in subject material as TVTropes and have its continued existence almost entirely dependent on a certain level of traffic (in order to keep ad revenue up). This isn’t solely aimed at Adsense either, but at using any ad providers at all. It seems far too easy to offend the wrong people, and be in a bad situation because of it.

      • #6 by fighteer1 on March 30, 2013 - 5:30 pm

        Porn is fiction, but not all sites that discuss fiction allow pornographic works. It is generally recognized that it is up to the discretion of a site whether it will do this. What has people mad is that we initially appeared to allow it, then took it away.

        Anyway, this is not the point. The point is the ridiculousness of subjecting TVT to the same kind of terrorism that is directed at big sites like Google. The inability of the hacktivist world to distinguish worthy causes from petty ones is what is fundamentally discrediting them in many eyes.

        That it is attached to something as trivial as whether they get to talk about rape and porn tropes only makes it more absurd.

  3. #7 by StarSword on April 2, 2013 - 11:37 pm

    I find it mildly amusing that this happened the same month as a spate of DDOS attacks against major companies (see http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/27/175524516/worst-attack-in-history-of-the-internet-threatens-web for one version of the story). Think they’re connected at all?

    • #8 by fighteer1 on April 3, 2013 - 12:00 am

      It seems unlikely, but I suppose that there is no way to rule it out. TV Tropes is being specifically targeted; we know that for certain. It isn’t a collateral casualty of a broader attack.

  1. TV Tropes, Part Two | lementalia

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