I do refer to myself professionally and also on Twitter as Mike Jagger…
But my friends and family all call me Mick.
Mick. Jagger.
Not the Rolling Stones singer, but an Australian engineer with more than twenty
thousand followers on Twitter.
In his bio, Mike describes himself as a climate realist.
Someone who doesn’t perhaps take hook,
line, and sinker the message and the agenda of climate alarmism.
Scientists have proven - beyond reasonable doubt - human activity
is driving climate change, and threatening all life on Earth.
But Mike is not convinced - and, on Twitter,
he found a willing audience among conspiracy theorists.
People who think climate change is a scam or that Covid-19 was a hoax.
I don’t actually just swallow an agenda and a narrative, I keep looking at facts. That’s all.
Until one day, Mike hit… a bit of a snag.
On the 14h of April last year, I got banned.
At the time, Twitter’s rules were clear.
If you repeatedly posted false or misleading content about Covid-19,
you might get your account suspended.
I know the exact tweet… I’ve got one of these funny memories…
Mike had put out a tweet suggesting Covid
vaccines were triggering a medical condition that does not exist.
And they said: your account is permanently suspended, it will not be reinstated.
Mike didn’t know it at the time, but - for months - a group of internet vigilantes
had been keeping a close eye on his feed. Working to get him kicked out of Twitter.
Their name? Team Ninja Trollhunters.
This is Trolled from BBC Trending. I’m Marco Silva.
In this series, we’re investigating how people are targeted and abused on
social media - and who’s behind the trolling - from Myanmar to Brazil.
In this episode I meet a secretive group of internet vigilantes set on cleansing
Twitter of wrong information about climate change.
But in the heat of battle,
are they at risk of *becoming* the social media trolls they claim to be fighting?
I’ve come to a small town on the Spanish coast to meet two members
of Team Ninja Trollhunters. I’m calling them Maria and Arthur.
I am not telling you their real names, or where exactly we’re meeting. They’re
afraid doing so would put them at risk. Do you guys want something to drink?
From the top of a hill, I can see the deep blue tones of the Mediterranean
Sea. It couldn’t look more inviting on a hot, sunny day like this one.
As we sit down with cool drinks,
I notice the tenderness with which Arthur looks at Maria. The way they hold hands.
We fought many battles together, and we had a lot of fun also, yes?
If it weren’t for Team Ninja Trollhunters, they might never have met each other.
So, the group has a special place in their hearts - especially Maria’s,
who was one of the original ninjas. When we started, we were five.
One thing I personally did was to debunk all these false claims…
Anything that contradicted the basic science of climate change. Like this:
The Earth is not getting warmer, it is coming out from a cold period. #ClimateScam.
Another thing that I started realising would be very useful
is reporting violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service.
If you’re on Twitter, you’ll have agreed to them when you sign up. You know that long
blurb you - and most people - always skip? Those are the rules of Twitter.
Climate change denial was never an issue for Twitter.
As in it was never forbidden.
But I realised there was some obvious overlap between climate change denial
and some other things that were indeed reportable.
Things like hate speech, abuse, or misleading information that harms
people. The sort of content anyone can report, and that might get an account suspended.
So, the “ninjas” used this to their advantage. They thought…
Twitter might be okay with people spreading climate denial but if they
tweet something else that breaks the rules, we’ll be on to them.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether they get suspended
because of Covid-19 misinformation or Nazi symbols. When they’re gone, they’re gone.
Someone might then look at your group and
perhaps fairly describe you as the thought police. What would you say to those people?
When you open your account, you know the rules you agree. If you’re posting things
that are explicitly forbidden on Twitter, I have the right.
I’ll have to push you on that because it’s a slightly disingenuous view,
isn’t it? Who are you to decide who gets and doesn’t get a say?
The point is: there is a huge overlap between people posting climate change
denial and other things that are explicitly forbidden.
From very early on, the “ninjas” knew that secrecy was of the essence.
For you to be able to do your work, to be effective,
and not be scared of the consequences, you really have to fly under the radar.
But the group soon realised theirs was a number’s game.
If you really want to put pressure on Twitter to say suspend an account,
a single report may not be enough.
You need dozens of them: constant,
unrelenting pressure. But, for that, you also need more “ninjas”.
When you are doing this, you saw other people trying to do the same thing you
started doing. You just observe and realise: okay, we could maybe tell them to join us.
And Arthur I assume was one of those people then?
Yes.
Do you remember that first contact?
Like it was yesterday. She was very nice and I noticed that she wasn’t alone. She asked if
I would like to be part of a group. And I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody. And I was very excited.
Today, the group has about 25 members scattered all around the globe.
Some of them have a science background, but not all of them.
What does bring them together is their overwhelming concern for the planet.
Arthur is tall but soft-spoken.
As we speak, he distractedly rolls a cigarette.
A mischievous grin appears on his face as he recalls some of his battles as a “ninja”.
When I engaged climate change deniers. I noticed some of them,
they got agitated. So I continued to, until the point they showed harassive behaviour,
which is not allowed. And then you can get rid of them.
But you’d never really know who’s at the other end of the line. You don’t
know whether they are in a bad place in their lives. And, by pushing them
over the edge you might be inflicting real world damage. Does that sit okay with you?
I can’t see any real world damage worse than what they’re doing. When they are trying to convince
people that climate change is a myth or something, they’re really inflicting damage upon all of us.
In some people’s eyes, what you’re doing is effectively becoming a troll to fight the trolls.
You could say that, because it partially is true.
I can’t tell for sure whether Arthur ever had any exchanges with Mike Jagger… Remember
him? He got suspended from Twitter for posting a false claim about Covid vaccines.
But when I told Mike about these vigilantes and their methods,
he seemed to know what I was talking about.
Some people like this vigilante group would engage with you,
and then immediately stop playing the argument but start to play the man and very, very quickly,
rapidly start to do things like troll and research behind you and find that you’re
no scientist. You’ve got a joinery company, what a fraud, what a fake.
Maria insists that she never used Arthur’s
tactics. She never “played the man”, as Mike puts it.
So I knew the rules very well. And I knew where the line was.
As a result, she was never suspended for her activities as a “ninja trollhunter”. But Arthur?
I did get suspended a couple of times.
I think you’ll agree with me: he doesn’t sound particularly remorseful.
But, as we speak, it soon becomes apparent that trolling the trolls, as it were
it changed Arthur’s behaviour offline.
My patience was, back then when I was still very engaged,
at a very low threshold. Hearing nonsense could provoke harsh reactions.
Is it fair to say that this online troll was becoming a troll in real life?
In general, yes. Spending hours every day with those people, that really leaves a mark.
Arthur’s words made me wonder: how differently do we behave online and offline? And is the persona
that we build for ourselves on social media a true reflection of who we are?
I’ve come to a small village in the south of England to meet another member
of Team Ninja Trollhunters. Like Maria and Arthur, he too asked to use a pseudonym.
Hello Frank, how are you? Nice to meet you.
We’re surrounded by picturesque countryside.
Green hills stretch out onto the horizon. Chickens roam around excitedly as I
make my way into an old farmhouse where Frank lives with his family.
Frank is possibly one of the group’s most active members.
On his computer, he’s got hundreds of bookmarks for academic papers and scientific reports.
I need to have all this information at my fingertips so that, no matter what the claim is,
I'm able to fact check it and then post more accurate information, if necessary.
And how much time are you giving at the moment?
My wife's not listening. So probably two or three hours a day.
Wow, two or three hours a day?
I do have a little bit of an obsessive personality. So I
try not to let it get out of hand. More often, I just need to be given
a nudge in the evening when it's time to go to bed and I'm still trying to tweet.
But Frank’s obsessive personality may not have been the sole reason
why the “ninjas” recruited him in the first place.
I think they'd seen me debating vigorously,
shall we say, with people who were spreading misinformation.
What does that mean, debating vigorously?
Unfortunately, I'm not always as restrained as I should be. If I'm really satisfied,
somebody's not engaging in good faith, I can be a little bit impatient. I try not
to name call. But I would not say that I'm completely free of that.
That’s true. I’ve looked at his tweets. Frank doesn’t shy away
from giving others a piece of his mind using sometimes rather colourful language.
I'm not proud of it. And the thing is when one is dealing with perhaps 50 or 60
different people all of whom are attacking the comment you've made, sometimes it's very hard
to put forward a polite, rational and reasoned answer to those 60, before you get overwhelmed.
Do you get a kick out of, you know, engaging in those very combative
exchanges with the people you call trolls?
Sometimes I do and sometimes it’s just depressing.
According to Frank, the “ninjas” have also made it their job to
protect high-profile climate activists on Twitter.
Katharine Hayhoe, a terrific example of somebody who puts
up with a huge amount of trolling on her timeline.
What stands out to me the most is the way climate change is touching every part of our lives.
Katharine Hayhoe is one of the world’s most influential
climate scientists. She’s followed by more than 235,000 people on Twitter.
She doesn't engage with the trolls. So, I think, if we do it on her behalf,
and she’s not asked us to do this, it’s merely for us to try and say: don’t believe the trolls.
And this is what it looks like.
She’ll put out a tweet.
And, quite often, get hundreds of replies. That is where the ninjas come in.
They will sift through those replies, fact-check false or misleading claims
being made, snd report any tweets that break the rules…
You know abusive tweets, rape threats,
targeted harassment. The sort of stuff that could get the trolls’ accounts suspended.
I was curious to find out whether Katharine Hayhoe herself was aware of
the work Team Ninja Trollhunters had been doing in the shadows.
This was the first occasion that I’ve heard that name and I need to know more.
And she told me about the abuse she’s exposed to.
So in a given day, on Twitter, I might have three or four people saying that’s not true
or you’re an idiot. Or, some days, i might have five hundred or even maybe a thousand.
It must be quite taxing on you.
It is. If you’re going to persist in this, you have to make a decision. And
the decision you have to make is that you’re not going to engage the trolls.
Which, on the face of it, sounds like the exact opposite of what the “ninjas” would do.
So, does she see the point in confronting climate deniers
with facts, the same way the “ninjas” would?
If false information is very publicly shared, especially by high-profile accounts,
then commenting below those accounts for anybody else who honestly doesn’t know which way to
fall in the issue, then in that case posting accurate and correct information is very useful.
And yet, I feel the need to tell her about the tactics used by some
of the “ninjas” be it name-calling or provoking people into crossing a line.
I don’t endorse or support any trolling of any kind, whether I agree with the person’s
perspective on climate change or not. I don’t want to see it and if I do see it,
I will block it. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Team Ninja Trollhunters claim that, as a result of their work,
about 600 Twitter accounts promoting climate denial got suspended.
Now, I can’t fully verify their claim. Ultimately,
only Twitter knows why it decided to suspend each individual account.
But I have seen a list of the suspended accounts,
and also links to specific rule-breaking tweets the “ninjas” reported.
Their work might have been paying off after all - but their victory wasn’t going to last.
Twitter's new owner Elon Musk has just announced amnesty for
many banned Twitter accounts after carrying out a poll on the platform.
In November last year, less than a month after billionaire Elon Musk took over Twitter, thousands
of previously suspended accounts were reinstated - including that of Mike Jagger in Australia.
Out of the blue, one of my people at five o’clock on a Sunday morning said:
Hey Mike, I think your prime account has been reinstated.
For Frank, for Maria this meant hundreds of hours spent reporting tweets, putting pressure
on Twitter to suspend rule-breaking accounts well, it was all in vain.
That was a slap in the face. I want to make this clear: I didn’t suspend these accounts. Twitter
did. So, if Twitter decided that these people should be suspended, there was a reason for it.
I think ee've seen the return of a lot of people who did have accounts
suspended which has been a bit disheartening,
because they’re repeating some of the same old nonsense that they’ve said in the past.
Twitter didn’t respond to any of my requests for comment - but Elon Musk’s takeover of the company,
with all that it has entailed, has made the “ninjas” think again about their future.
I haven't deserted Twitter at least yet but unfortunately Twitter has not helped over the
last however many months. Because we've seen an uptick in the misinformation that's been provided.
For the time being, Frank - and several other “ninjas” are sticking around to
continue waging their war on climate denial.
But not Maria, nor Arthur. They have both left Twitter.
We started something that, even if we’re not there anymore,
it’s still rolling. And it’s still working. And I wish more people would do it.
If just a fraction of regular people would do what we did,
we would be much, much louder than all deniers together because they’re in the minority.
Maria and Arthur have hung up their boots. They’re a couple now and share
their beautiful home with a black and white cat. Scattered around the world, their fellow “ninjas”
have yet to meet in person - offline, away from the keyboards and the prying eyes of social media.
Their battles continue to rage online, but as Maria and Arthur tell me the
bonds they’ve built as a group are much, much bigger than Twitter.
I miss the fun we had. I miss the conversations, because they are very
fine people, really very curious. I miss this part.
I don’t know if you’re aware but one of our members died. We managed to visit him in Scotland
before he died. One of his wishes was to give us a hug. A real one. And we made that happen.
That’s it for this edition of the BBC Trending podcast.
I’m Marco Silva. I produced and presented this episode.
Neva Missirian was the sound engineer. Flora Carmichael is our editor.
Thanks for listening - and goodbye.