Online 'Trolls' Target Family Tribute Pages
10:25am UK, Tuesday April 12, 2011
Lisa Dowd, Midlands correspondent
A "community" of internet users is targeting grieving relatives by posting cruel comments and pictures to memorial pages created on social networking sites.
Some so-called "trolls" have attacked a site dedicated to a teenager who hanged himself after being bullied over the web.
"It's organised, they target recent memorial pages and it's mostly the young where they can cause the most upset," said Robert Mullaney, whose son, Tom, took his own life.
They go on there - two, three, four of them - they leave vile comments and they sit back and see who responds the most.
"I assume they have some kind of points system. It's a sick game."
Tom was 15 when his dad discovered his body at the family home in Bournville, Birmingham, last year.
He and wife Tracy were at first comforted by tributes left on Facebook, but then horrified by other, vicious postings.
One by a user calling himself 'Pro Fessor' read: "Good news everybody I got a shovel from the store, now us facebook bullies can get to little Tom Mullaney."
Call me callous, but it doesn't bother me, I have never lost any sleep over it and never will.
Troll 'Peter-Ian Staker'
Digitally-altered pictures were posted showing Tom's neck in a noose, with the caption: "Hang in there Tom!"
Another posting said: "Why would you make an RIP page about someone that's clearly a wimp? That's just embarrassing."
"I was shocked," said Tom's mum, Tracy. "I'd never heard of trolls.
"The anger kicks in and you think, how dare they post comments about my son, my child, that they've never even met?".
The troll name comes from the 'trollface' picture that accompanies some postings.
They have targeted a Facebook site dedicated to another 15-year-old.
Natasha MacBryde, from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, was struck by a train on Valentine's Day.
It is thought she may have committed suicide after being bullied.
The 'trollface' image accompanies some of the cruel postings
Within days disturbing images and phrases appeared online.
One troll, calling himself 'Peter-Ian Staker' posted: "I heard she caught the midnight train goin nooooo whereeeeeee".
I messaged him over Facebook to ask him if he realised the impact his posts had on those grieving.
He replied: "I do and I'm sure so do the others. But call me callous, but it doesn't bother me, I have never lost any sleep over it and never will."
Professor Russell Beale, a computer scientist at Birmingham University, said: "One of the things about the internet is that no one knows who you are at the end of the keyboard.
"That can be very advantageous for lots of people.
"It can allow them to overcome all sorts of social disadvantage but it can mean that people escape the consequences of their actions, because you don't get the reactions face-to-face that you would with other people.
"The social norms that stop us doing things in a physical social situation just don't exist in the online world."
Robert and Tracy Mullaney were shocked at comments directed at their late son
Facebook said it acted swiftly to disable trolling accounts once they were reported.
A spokesperson said the site had the largest "neighbourhood watch" in the world, with 500 million users ready to respond to offensive behaviour.
"Once we identify a trolling account, or one is reported to us, we have systems in place that analyse the account to identify other suspicious profiles, allowing us to identify and remove other malicious accounts."
But Tom's family want more action. Tracy added: "We'd like to see some sort of legislation put into place to see that somebody would get prosecuted if they persisted on posting these comments.
"Then perhaps people would think twice about doing things like this."
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