What Do You Do When A MAGA Influencer Wants You Dead?
Who knew researching the neuroscience of pornography would be dangerous? Dr. Nicole Prause did. BJ Mendelson speaks with Dr. Prause about the Wellness Industry funding dangerous fascists and weirdos, and how you can protect yourself from them.
Apologies, my friends. We missed a week of this newsletter.
But. I have good news.
The manuscript for How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos is finished.
Right now I'm just doing this weird, psychotic thing I do when I edit. Which is me reading the manuscript out loud. Over and over again. Until the book is in a rhythm that I like.
I don't know of many authors that do this. It's a quirk I have. Yes. I do have OCD. But this isn't OCD for me. It's not a compulsion to want to speak the manuscript out loud repeatedly.
My OCD is more interruption based. Interruptions to what I'm doing triggers an intrusive thought, which then distracts or upsets me until it passes.
I tell you this, because it irks me when people refer to anal retentiveness as OCD.
Not the same thing, buddy.
Reading the manuscript out loud is a task I am choosing to do. Because it brings me closer to both my career and life goals.
And one of my life goals is arming at least 5% of Americans with the information to protect themselves from fascists and weirdos.
For 20,000 words, I'll probably be done doing this by the end of April.
That means the .pdf and .mp3 should hit in July. (The full text of the book will be available here on the website at the end of April.)
It's later than we had expected, but I feel the re-write following the deaths of Alex Preeti, Renee Good, and Ruben Ray Martinez was worth it.
You'll see for yourself soon enough.
Enjoy this week's episode.
(Yes. I know. The newsletter is a week behind the podcast. Just pretend it's not.)
-BJ
Hello. Farewell. Hello. Farewell.
You can follow me here on Bluesky
Show Notes
Stupid Sexy Privacy Show Notes For Season 1, Episode 31
Episode Title: What Do You Do When A MAGA Influencer Wants You Dead?
Guests: Dr. Nicole Prause, Ph.D., is a data scientist/statistician and mental health care provider and founder of the sexual biotechnology company Liberos LLC.
Episode Summary: Who knew researching the neuroscience of pornography would be dangerous? Dr. Nicole Prause did. BJ Mendelson speaks with Dr. Prause about the Wellness Industry funding dangerous fascists and weirdos, and how you can protect yourself from them. BJ also runs down steps you can take to log harassing behavior when you're on the receiving end of it.
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Stupid Sexy Privacy, Season 1, Episode 31
[Editor's Note: This episode's privacy tip is actually a placeholder. I am going to be recording a longer, expanded version on what to do if someone is harassing you, and then place that presentation here with this episode. When we make the swap with the new audio, we'll let you know in the newsletter.]
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Stupid Sexy Privacy Intro
Rosie: Welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy.
Andrew: A podcast miniseries sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo.
Rosie: I’m your host, Rosie Tran.
You may have seen me on Rosie Tran Presents, which is now available on Amazon Prime.
Andrew: And I’m your co-producer, Andrew VanVoorhis. With us, as always, is Bonzo the Snow Monkey.
Bonzo: Monkey sound!
Rosie: I’m pretty sure that’s not what a Japanese Macaque sounds like.
Andrew: Oh it’s not. Not even close.
Rosie: Let’s hope there aren’t any zooologists listening.
Bonzo: Monkey Sound! ... Or IS it?
Rosie: Ok. I’m ALSO pretty sure that’s not what a Snow Monkey sounds like.
*Clear hers throat*
Rosie: Over the course of this miniseries, we’re going to offer you short, actionable tips to protect your data, your privacy, and yourself from fascists and weirdos.
These tips were sourced by our fearless leader — he really hates when we call him that — BJ Mendelson.
Episodes 1 through 33 were written a couple of years ago.
But since a lot of that advice is still relevant, we thought it would be worth sharing again for those who missed it.
Andrew: And if you have heard these episodes before, you should know we’ve gone back and updated a bunch of them.
Even adding some brand new interviews and privacy tips along the way.
Rosie: That’s right. So before we get into today’s episode, make sure you visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and subscribe to our newsletter.
Andrew: This way you can get updates on the show, and be the first to know when new episodes are released in 2026.
Rosie: And if you sign-up for the newsletter, you’ll also get a free .pdf and mp3 copy of BJ and Amanda King’s new book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” All you have to do is visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com
Andrew: StupidSexyPrivacy.com
Rosie: That’s what I just said. StupidSexyPrivacy.com
Andrew: I know, but repetition is the key to success. You know what else is?
Rosie: What?
Bonzo: Another, different, monkey sound! ... Or IS it?
Rosie: I’m really glad this show isn’t on YouTube, because they’d pull it down like, immediately.
Andrew: I know. Google sucks.
Rosie: And on that note, let’s get to today’s privacy tip!
This Week's Privacy Tip
BJ Mendelson, co-producer of Stupid Sexy Privacy: Now my friends, in an earlier episode, I told you about the difference between a troll, a goblin, and an ogre. We're really not concerned with trolls in this series. A troll is someone or a bot that you just want to score an RBI on. That is, you want to report them to the platform, block them, and then ignore their existence. RBI.
A goblin requires some additional steps. For example, understanding libel and defamation law within your country.
We're primarily focused on the United States in our series and understanding how to document and log instances of harassment. We'll get to the legal stuff in a future episodes, but just keep in mind if you're not based in the United States, your mileage may vary with some of the advice.
Once the harassment reaches a certain point, you need to bring documentation with you to the police and to the attorneys. No documentation, no case. So first, I have to show you how to track this stuff. Later in this series, we'll talk about using more sophisticated tools such as hunch.ly and PageVault. We're not quite there yet. So the following discussion is going to have an asterisk next to it. We're going to revisit it later when we're talking about those two other options. When documenting goblins and ogres, if you have the money to do so, you should use PageVault. That is your best option, and that's true around the world. Your other option is hunch.ly which is a good option, but not quite as good as PageVault.
The worst option, which is the one we're going to talk about today's episode, is just taking a screenshot. Screenshots are better than nothing though. So I don't want to discourage you. Like if you don't have any other options, that's okay. You take a screenshot, do what you can. PageVault and hunch.ly both offer free trials. So if you need either of them temporarily, those free trials can come in handy. For now, a spreadsheet and screenshots are fine. The key is to keep everything organized.
You want to create a folder with the name of the person harassing you, and you want to create a folder for each date an incident occurred with that person. Finally, you want to make sure each file within that folder is properly labeled, like I'll show you in today's article. And if your listing says you could just click through to the story and you'll see how we did it. Now I'm going to reference this spreadsheet quite a bit. Your spreadsheet should include the following information. Number one:
You want to name the file after the person that's harassing you. So in the example from today's article, we're going to use the name Denise Chance.
Second, since your spreadsheet could become a legal document later, don't guess with the names. Use the one the person is using to bother you.
Next, as you create your spreadsheet, you're going to want five columns. And from left to right, they should be labeled as follows. First column is the date and time. The second column is the platform. And this could be your email, voicemail, text, social media, however the goblin or ogre reached you. Third is content. So this is word for word, what was said. Although we're not being on AI, you can use something like Riverside's free audio and video transcription tool to transcribe a voicemail. And if you don't want to listen to it again, you can always have a friend do this. Either way, you want to make sure that the content provided is word for word. Column number four is feeling. We're gonna talk a lot about this one. This is especially important when speaking to the police. For example, do you feel threatened? If so, this is where you would put that. And the last column is the name of the file. So be specific, include the date, time, and person's name. For example, 730, Denise Chance, first post, 733 PM is the date, the name, the order of post, and time it was posted.
That's what I named my first file. And in the article that goes with this episode, you'll see what the spreadsheet looks like. So don't worry about taking notes. You can always go back and reference it and listen to this. And yes, I know it's a Google Sheet. We're going to talk more about secure and private alternatives to Google Docs later. For example, there's Only Office, which is what we recommend. Proton also now has Proton Sheets. You can use those too. Just for demonstration purposes, we're using Google.
Every time my new sock puppet friend, Denise Chance, and if you don't know, a sock puppet is a fake account being operated by a person or bot that's bothering you ... Now every time the sock puppet pops up, I'm gonna go ahead and update my spreadsheet. When Denise and her comments escalate into libel and defamation, that's when I take it to a lawyer. When Denise and her comments escalate to specific threats of violence, that's when I take it to the police.
Note that some police want there to be at least three instances of a threat in order to demonstrate to a district attorney a pattern of harassment. But again, this will really depend on what country you're in, what state you're in, and in some states what county you're in.
When I spoke to the police about a goblin I was dealing with, they stressed it was important to document how those comments and actions made me feel. And that's why that fourth column is so important. So for example, did they make you uncomfortable? If so, Why? Did they make you feel unsafe? If so, why? As much information as you can provide to a police officer and later a prosecutor about how the harassment impacts you, the better. That also makes column four the hardest to fill out. First, because you need to start by describing the content as objectively as possible before you can get to the other stuff. So this is an example of like an objective description. "This is a screenshot of a Facebook comment left by Denise Chance posted on July 30th at 7.33 p.m in a Facebook thread. The content felt personally invasive and distinct from the usual trolling, so I decided to document it." Your situation may be different, so here's a template that you can use. This is a screenshot of a comment on Insert the Name in the Platform by Insert the Name, Posted on, Posted on Insert the Date. In this screenshot slash voicemail slash video you will see slash here, insert name, do, insert the specific action that they did.
Only after you do this can you then continue to explain your mindset. And we also have another template that you can use. So insert name continues to threaten me in an aggressive manner that makes me feel unsafe and threatened because insert your first reason, insert your second reason, and insert your third reason. Be as specific as you can.
If you feel like you're in danger, say that you feel you are in danger. If you feel like you're being harassed, say you feel like you were being harassed and explain why.
And finally, if you did something to provoke the response, let the police and attorneys know that too. Don't hide anything because if you do go to court, you need to make sure the police and the attorneys have an absolute airtight case.
And of course, we're going to get a lot deeper into this as this series progresses, but this is just our first stop on this tour of dealing with goblets and ogres.
Like I said, your mileage may vary depending on where you live, but this is just a good starter to get people rolling.
Our Interview With Dr. Nicole Prause
[Editor's Note: Just a note that this interview was previously recorded in 2023.]
BJ Mendelson: Dr. Prause, thank you so much for joining me. For people who might not be familiar with you and your work, would you be so kind as to introduce yourself and just tell us? ... I hate to say, give us a brief overview, but if you have a shorthand for describing your work, what would it be?
Dr. Nicole Prause: I am a neuroscientist and statistician and I largely study sexual psychophysiology and in the last few years have gotten more interested in health disinformation. So also do some studies with social media, internet.
BJ Mendelson: Yeah. And so I came across your work with dealing with disinformation. So I would love to hear a little bit about just what caused you to move in that direction from what you were studying before.
Dr. Prause: Yeah, it was ... a very strange experience. So I, by chance, I had a student who wanted to study the theory of pornography addiction as a part of his dissertation. And he happened not to find evidence for it. And it became the first neuroscience study on that topic. And we published in 2013 and I didn't have any background in pornography research, especially, I mean, we use porn all the time in our research. But when that published, I was immediately contacted by people threatening me and immediately became [getting] death threats. I hadn't said a word and they were, "you we're going to take you out." And I was like, what is happening? Like, who are these people?
Being a sex researcher, we do have protests. Like I worked at the Kinsey Institute. We had physical protesters there somewhat regularly. We needed to know about bomb threats and things there because people are hostile to this research in the U.S. but I'd never had anything at the volume and scale that that was happening. And so as I got to know these groups over time, you know, I learned a little bit more about like how they were operating, how they were similar or different from other groups that people had already studied extensively. And so now I'm getting to know more about kind of what the strategies are, how these groups operate. And that's become a primary interest now.
BJ: Yeah. And I think it's something that we're seeing in all facets of life, you whether it's from our politics down to walking the dog. You can't seem to escape what I like to dub fascist and weirdos on the internet, which is why I'm doing the podcast, right? Because I want to be able to help people better protect themselves.
Tell me like what... So they were angry at your research assistant put out a paper. What made them so angry? Like what got them so wound up?
Dr. Prause: It was my doctoral student, and we didn't find evidence for pornography being addictive, and they were convinced that it was.
And anyone who said otherwise, you know, was lying, a shill in porn, a liar, you know, a bitch, a cunt, you know, all the... Jew was one of them. So it kind of was like this convergence of a number of conspiracy theories that demonize pornography. And so, you know, if you had anything to say about it, that wasn't that it was evil and addictive and destroying men, white men. Then you were part of this conspiracy in some way and they just weren't sure which part of the conspiracy I was in yet.
BJ: Right, Having been called a Jew multiple times on Twitter and being accused of being part of a vast globalist conspiracy, I feel for you. Let me ask you, what did you learn about these groups? Were they coming from the right? Were they coming from the left? Were they maybe foreign actors that were disguised as American citizens, because we see that a lot in disinformation research. I'm curious about what the source was behind these people.
Dr. Prause: There had been some research already written about the anti-pornography movement in the US. And what had been remarkable so far about it was there was a coordination between feminist scholars and religious groups, which normally those two groups do not get along. They have very different viewpoints and goals.
But in the case of pornography, their goals were aligned. They wanted to see pornography removed from the internet, just done very censorship oriented. But what I felt was novel, so this was a paper that was 15 years ago and a couple of kind of related, was these new groups, they were purely online. And now we've got some more research coming out about them, but that we're looking to profit off of it. So they're selling treatments to young men saying, you have erectile dysfunction, you have this, you have that, you're going to be so embarrassed with women if you don't come to me to treat your problem. And these are not problems that we've studied them extensively, not erectile dysfunction exists, but not in the way that they claim.
BJ: Yes.
Dr. Prause: You treat erectile dysfunction, not in the way that they claim. so I think now there's a collusion of those three groups where we've got religious groups, some feminists who've always opposed pornography that have been around. And there's always been that schism in the feminist community about pro, pro versus anti pornography viewpoints. And now this new profiteering group that really seems motivated by, you know, I'm going to get something from this. And I do think it's not always necessarily financial. Some of them seem more fame driven, you know, like I want to go on TV shows and debate me, I'll see you on this and that show. Maybe it's financial underlying that, I don't know. But those are the groups that I'm doing a bit more work with.
BJ: And if you see me making faces, I'm making faces at those people, not you. Because this is something that we've heard again and again and again. Are you finding that the people that are trying to attack you for profit ... what would you say the split is between the three groups? Like, are you finding that it's a majority of people trying to profit or is it more evenly distributed between the three groups?
Dr. Prause: I think it's the same kind of unholy alliance some of those early research papers wrote about that is these groups generally seem to oppose what their religious groups that they're now openly coordinating with would oppose.
One of them says, you we're anti censorship. We don't want to censor anything. And yet they're speaking on behalf of this religious group that wants to remove all porn from the Internet. It's a good one. You can't say both. You can't say we're not anti porn, but we just want to remove it all from the Internet and we'll speak on your behalf if you pay us. It's a ... I think it's one of those kind of unholy alliance things. My sense is that there certainly are still anti porn feminists, but they don't seem to have as loud of a voice. It really seems to be this alliance of the profit profiting life coach kind of style online. And then these religious groups that seek to ban porn where they can kind of feed off each other's energy for their own purposes.
BJ: Right. And so it's fascinating that it's like, cause we always, we, we be like journalists, right? Or always reading about the creator economy. And one of the things they tell you in the creator economy is to take strong polarizing positions in order to stand out. But you're like on the receiving end of that, right? Like we always hear of the positive side of it. Yeah, you should take strong positions. But then we have people that are taking strong positions and attacking you for profit. Are you finding that these people are utilizing bots and fake accounts to do their like, to form an echo chamber and create an appearance of an audience, right? Like, so they're building a fake audience and they're attacking, they're attacking you. And then they're hoping the fake audience is large enough to attract the attention of other journalists to write about it? Does that make sense?
Dr. Prause: Yeah, some of that is definitely happening and it's at least in two interesting ways. So on the one hand, like some of the larger accounts in these kind of online profiting movements appear to have a high amount of fake followers. So of course they're hoping to conceal that. And so we use algorithms that have been published that... You have all pluses and minuses as to how they make those estimates. But like the largest account in that space has 40 % estimated fake followers on Twitter. So I said, okay. It turns out the identifying bots on Reddit is a bit more tricky. And that's a place they do a lot of their writing. To some extent, 4chan, to some extent Discord, but things are even less developed in those spaces. And so a lot of the messaging for them is on Twitter.
So I'm assuming there's comparable amounts on Reddit, but I could be wrong there. It's difficult to estimate. So that's the one. And the other is just sock puppetry. So when they find people they don't like, they know they can't have their main person go threaten to kill them or use misogynist language. So they'll always create anonymous accounts and they'll even brag about it. A lot of the, like all the death threats I get are from anonymous accounts. And I feel like I know who they are the most likely, but. You know, it's ... that kind of, it's almost like they have these hired attack dogs, you know, they know their stuff they're not supposed to do, but they they're going to do it anyway. And so they, do the abuse through these anonymous accounts. So like when the kiwifarms.net that just went down, they listed me on there, you know, like go get her. And I was like, of course they did, you know, anonymous account. So it's not just me to be fair, you know, but it's so I think they're kind of using at least those two. So heavy use of like sock puppetry to abuse attack, do things they know they're not supposed to be doing. And then also some amount of fake accounts that I have a good sense are at least heavy on Twitter. So I'm assuming on other platforms as well. But that's always a problem in science and social media research is a lot of us are platform specific. You know, we study this area or that area. And we don't know how much they bridge across. And this is definitely one of those cases where it's like they're present in multiple environments. And some of them also have their own forums. They host their own forums. And so I have no real access to it. And they threaten to, you know, if you study our open forums, we'll sue you. Like they threaten to sue scientists if they study them. You know, good luck. It's, you know, they really do not want to be studied. They want to be outside of the law and outside to do whatever they want to do. And so they created some of those forms, I think, to try to shield themselves from those issues.
Ad For Our Kick Ass Book
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These days, I spend most of my time talking to businesses and clients about search engine optimization.
But that's not what this is about.
I wanted to tell you a little bit about a book I've co-authored with BJ Mendelson called How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos. And the title tells you pretty much everything you would want to know about what's in the book.
And thanks to our friends at DuckDuckGo, we'll actually be able to give you this book for free in 2026.
All you need to do is go to the website stupidsexyprivacy.com and sign up to our newsletter.
Again, that website is stupidsexyprivacy.com and then put your name in the box and sign up for our newsletter. We'll let you know when the book and the audiobook is ready.
If you want a PDF copy that's DRM free, it's yours. And if you want an MP3 of the new audiobook, also DRM free, you could get that too.
Now, I gotta get outta here before Bonzo corners me because he doesn't think that SEO is real and I don't have the patience to argue with him. I got a book to finish.
Our Interview With Nicole Prause, Continued
BJ Mendelson: Right, and just to stress the people listening at home, I was watching a clip of you on the Today Show and was about how masturbation can be relieve pain which is something that I think is what people need to hear. So you're not out there saying crazy things. You're out there saying, no, this is what the sign says and they're still coming after you. So tell me, I always hate asking this question, what's, obviously it's terrible, but what's it been like, if you can describe to people listening who haven't been on the receiving end of this, so they understand that there's a human toll involved. Could you tell us a little bit just about what this experience has been like?
Dr. Nicole Prause: Yeah. So, and maybe it's helpful to folks who may be experiencing some of this, the things that can be helpful in that space also. I'm very lucky to be in California. In California, we have what's called a safe at home program. It's an address protection program. So because I can show I'm a victim of stalking and doxxing threats, I'm eligible for this free program where my address is not listed anywhere. So I go to the DMV and they don't take my physical address, even though they require, you know, other folks. If somebody puts it on their website and they don't take it down, they can face, you know, face civil fines. They do it anyway. It's going to be very hard to get down, but there's at least a mechanism there to contact. Then if the person won't do it, generally their website will, you know, with some unfortunate exceptions.
So there's, there are sometimes like state by state, they'll have programs that can kind of help protect and enforce these things. I'm very cautious to never talk about family.
I don't take photographs with my family for the express purpose of being concerned about them being hacked from a cloud where people could become aware of who I spend my time with.
I belong to some recreational clubs. I always ask them not to take photographs even though they have social media accounts because I don't want people to know where I am regularly because that can create a problem.
I don't have any mail ever delivered to me for packages. So all Amazon must go to lockers, use those services to keep things safe and away from you. And it's a variety of things like that. Those are the ones that come to mind, but you know, being mindful of IP addresses, like when I visit websites, you know, if I need to use VPN, you know, I've had people try and trick me. Literally send me a redirecting URLs that scrape the IP address. And I thought it's a good thing I know what those are because most people I think don't work in that space and don't know that it's a trick. And something that was legit. I was familiar with the service they were using to scrape the IP address. It's yeah, just being mindful of all of those, those kinds of things. And it's hard because they're earlier on, you know, there were some people that asked about, like they asked for family photos with early media I had done. And I'd given those at the time. I wouldn't do that anymore.
But you know, it's like, okay, those are out there. That's something I can't take back. And so people know that at least I came from this family from this part of that country. I'm not thrilled about that being out there. So I just don't repeat it, but I can't really get those back. And so if I get some other advice, you know, I wouldn't give that stuff up in general now. And it does suck to see other people talking about milestones and, if they have kiddos that are doing cool things or family events, but you just, it's not worth the risk. It's just not to participate in social media in that way.
BJ: I think that that's, that's good becoming more, I think more people are going to start to do that though, right? Like to just separate themselves from the platforms for, for that reason, right? Like you can't share and you can't participate with them while you're there. Right? Like the other, the fun goes away. They've taken that fun from you, which I think really sucks.
Let me, let me ask you in the research that you've done, you mentioned that you've had access to Twitter's API. Have you found anything within that that surprised you?
Dr. Prause: Yeah, I've started doing research mainly on Twitter and on Reddit on these communities and the Twitter, I started doing network analysis and network analysis, general, generally you call it social network analysis to see how people are connected. And so I'm trying to replicate some other work. None of this is currently published in this space. So they're just very basic questions about comparing accounts that are pro pornography and anti-pornography. And these are generally accounts where we wouldn't debate. You know, there's, it's not unclear which side they're on. And you look to see how they tend to use the media differently. So if they're retweeting at higher rates.
If they're liking a variety, a more wider variety of accounts, you know, if they're primarily cross-posting, how tight their networks are, that is if they're really just talking to each other. I'm really interested in a lot of the work Sinan Aral has done, who's an MIT in this space. So I poke him periodically for insight when I can get his time. And just understanding, in part how those behaviors are similar, different, and then how the information flows through those networks because you know, a lot of what's frustrating about how they operate is these anti porn groups claim to own science, but they don't work with any scientists. And so we see them put out this stuff of porn does this point does that? OK, that's definitely not true. But is there a space to combat that disinformation? Because we know they they don't want to hear it, but there are people that see it and also journalists and journalists can discriminate. They say there was a paper out recently by Dr. Kelsey Burt that looked at expertise in the media on the pornography topic and especially in the neuroscience area. Like the top 10 cited people on neuroscience and pornography. None of them were neuroscientists or had any training.
BJ: Wow. Wow. I shouldn't be surprised, but wow.
Dr. Prause: Because because they're, you know, we're not a huge group. Sex researchers are a very niche specialty, a small specialty, but but we're easily accessible. You know, we're not hard to find. So it's frustrating to see that bad information get out when we're working to try and get accurate information out. And so hopefully if you understand the information flow, you can see, you know, in the case of some of these networks that have been analyzed, like is there a particular bad actor, someone who's really the source of a lot of it? So we definitely had that. So I have an interesting kind of natural event. One of the main people spreading scientific disinformation in that space died in May of 2021. I'm not sure why I've heard conflicting reports of how that happened.
BJ: They won't be missed. I said it on you, not you.
Dr. Prause: So it's interesting because I now have that historical Twitter information and a natural experiment where when that disinformation source was cut off, you know what happened. Now, someone's taking over his account and started posting. But it.
BJ: Of Course.
Dr. Prause: It's very different flavor and interaction style now. He used to be very aggressive and threatening and that's a little more modest. So like all those kinds of things, we're trying to take advantage of to understand what the information flow looks like within Twitter. And what I was really excited about is Twitter has paid to your access for researchers. Like you can pay to additional information or you can be an academic and get permission for specific projects, which I was recently granted for a project I'd been hoping for. And they give us some nice data. So, for example, I get to see now how people are posting. So some of the tweets were part of Twitter ad campaigns. They're paying for it. Are you kidding me? I was like, no wonder. And so, you know, seeing which of these anti porn accounts are actually, you know, relying on monetization, like they're capital, they're not just passively, you know, oh, I'm just here to help. You know, you're making money. Here's the advertising campaign. This is where that one went. And so now I can look at it in more in-depth way to understand, you know, what's the impact of their utilization of that.
You can see instances where a lot of different people are accessing an account versus primarily having one person over time and that's based primarily on behavior. So if you're worried, I don't get IP addresses, you know, it's not at that level. But we do get geo. So we have some sense of where things are. I was surprised by that and I'm still kind of learning. Geo data are kind of tough to work with if you've ever worked with them before. It's not that I can go and figure out what house, you know, something came from. It's not at that level. But it's useful for me to see, you know, how are these accounts being sometimes shared among activists or, you know, is it, does it really appear to be a sole actor in some of the cases? So, you know, one of the accounts, it was the opposite. I thought, you know, they said they had a staff, like this big group that was running it is definitely one person. That's one person, the way that's operating, the time, you know, series posting. So it's interesting to be able to look at those behaviors in a really fine grained way to get insight into, you know, like how is this network coordinating to spread this information in the way that they are. And the strategies do differ. So I wouldn't say I have like a unifying strategy for Twitter at this point. It's a very complex social network. And so I'm still trying to understand like how to best conceptualize this. But if people are interested, we also use Gephi, which is a free public tool. And you can have pretty low level account access and still use Gephi to scrape and do social network structures at a very basic level to see what accounts are connected, how do people interact over time. So that's even if you're a citizen scientist, you can get hold of that. And with a little trouble, I get it up and running to see how groups are connected and how they communicate with each other. So I'm really interested in how connected they're actually overlapping or not overlapping with other scientific communities. So my assumption is we're probably looking at an echo chamber, and that's what I'm going to be looking to document. But maybe not, if they do have contact with those communities that they claim to represent as science, how are they doing that? Is there any information flow from the science into them? Is it all out where they're trying to solicit, you know, and the scientists are like, stay away from me. Yeah, which like, uh anecdotally, that's what I've seen, you know, is they try and tag the scientists and the scientists don't respond or ignore them for the most part, but they don't always know who these groups are. So there are just lots of cool questions we can answer by looking at it from a kind of network perspective.
BJ: Yeah. Tell me, so tell me about the, back to the individual that passed away, what were you able to see with that data of their influence into other, like what were you able to pull from that trove of data that that surprised you or maybe confirms what you had thought about them?
Dr. Prause: So they give us access to person tagging. So noting any time identifiable name has been noted. And that person was especially like vicious and attacking individual people. They name people individually more than almost any other account proportionately that I've been looking at, which would have been my guess. That's why I look into the data. And they also, so you can do what's called a sentiment analysis. So sentiment looks at just generally what the emotional tone is of posts. And that person also like their posts expressed a significant amount of disgust.
So the way that they would post to say, you know, "John Smith is a filthy what, what, what disgusting piece of garbage, blah, blah, blah" And now rather than just saying, I think this person's mean. You can demonstrate with numbers like this person expressed a lot of negativity, especially around individual scientists and in particular using the affect of disgust. So you can see where he's ginning up that hatred, you know, and trying to say, go after these people. They're bad. They're, you know, they use the word vile a lot, which is, you know, a really strong, terrible word. So it gives you a way of kind of saying, you know, what is that actually look like when it's enacted.
And similarly, like they had a large enough following that appears to have shifted a lot, which is interesting, where you can see that higher affectivity getting more engagement. So they were doing it for the clicks. You know, "I'm just trying to communicate. These people are coming after me" like, no, you're, you know, the, more vile you are in terms of the language the more engagement you're getting from an audience. So you're looking for fame in this case, that person didn't have a business around it. And now we have some documentation of it.
And so it's like, okay, do I want to write something scientifically about that person and kind of how they were being interacting? But I see it, that's part of the network. His job was to be the really disgusting kind of nasty person. Who everyone would pretend they were clean up. I wouldn't talk that way, but you should go read what so-and-so is writing. So a lot of people linked into him and kind of used that language. And I see it in a very similar vein to, I'm not sure this is the perfect comparison, but I'm going to try it on public pages. So it's kind of like with abortion debates, obviously people feel very strongly about abortion. And sometimes the language of anti-abortion activists would be, you know, these doctors, they're murders, they're serial killers. We got to slash them. And then someone would kill a doctor and they'd be like, "well, we didn't do that. I don't know what you're talking about."That's we don't own that." And so, you know, like you do own this person. You incited this. You were using that kind of language in a very intentional way. And so I see this interaction very similar to that. You know, it's like they try and gin up as much hate as possible. And then, you know, when someone acts out. So we had ... As far as I know, there have just been two mass murders that have had some interaction with those communities that I'm studying. In at least one case, he didn't cite the community at all. So I don't know if it was related or just by chance that he was interacting there. But that was a great example of where I'm sure they disavow. you know, we're not telling people to go kill a bunch of people on here or shoot them up. And that's true. Like, I don't see them saying like, go, you know, commit mass murder right now. But at what point do you say you should anticipate the language that you're using, that it's going to have these kind of effects? That got me interested in looking at some of the homicidal language that they were using. And so we did a survey looking at how many people that were had engaged with that community, had experienced witnessed homicidal postings, suicidal postings, a whole variety of other types of postings. And I want to say the homicidality was around 15 percent. The suicidality, it was around 24 and a half percent, something like that. And these are not representative. You know, we don't do that. This is a first convenience sample. But that just highlighted for me, there is a lot of violence on these forums. And, the public needs to be aware of that. I think law enforcement, frankly, needs to have that on their radar because there, you know, there have been several cases now where we're like, was that related? You know, there's something in the news and we say, do they have a Reddit name? Do they have a Twitter account? Is there something we can trace? And we need to start monitoring that and having that be in the same way. I think, the Incel movement, you know, incel and voluntary celibates. I'm not an expert on them. I have several colleagues who are.
BJ: I just call them assholes.
Dr. Prause: I try and have empathy where I can. It's like I can see where like the struggle, dating is a common shared experience but they've had nine mass murders attributed to their community. And so we say, okay, they weren't openly saying go kill women, but they did. And so how did that happen? What does that look like? And I think that's what we're seeing in these communities as well. It's like the same kind of trajectory where some of that inflammatory language, but it's not ... it's clearly misogynist in many cases. And there are lots of papers about that now, but there's also a real targeting of the pornography industry. So they say, "porn did this to me, porn hurts everyone, porn is only trafficking. And then their forums are filled with chill pornographers, hang pornographers, put their heads on a pipe, do this" and I won't repeat the rest of it. It gets pretty explicit. And so then they turn that to, oh, he's in pornography, oh, she's in pornography. And so then anyone who's identified with the industry becomes a target. I'm still working to understand how they weaponize that kind of rhetoric, but that's where my concern is. like when we see aggression against sex workers or against the pornography industry, I believe that these groups are starting to incite real life violence and we've seen some evidence of that. So I believe they're growing into kind of what the Incel movement became. What might reflect in the abortion doctor debate, that murder debate, is how much that rhetoric has fed into actual real life violence. And so it may not have been their original intention. It may be that most of the community rejects that. But if you act and behave in this way and post those things, is this something you should expect?
BJ: And just just to clarify for people listening at home, how much of this is would you say from the data you pulled is homegrown versus being egged on from overseas accounts?
Dr. Prause: That's actually a really interesting question. So. In the Reddit community, we in general call those online asynchronous support groups. So there is lot of groups on Reddit for helping quit alcohol consumption. For whatever reason, you don't have to be alcoholic, right? You just go on and get help. People who are trying to stop marijuana for whatever reason, yeah, they don't want to consume it anymore. You can go to a support group on Reddit. And those are pretty widely studied. To see, how effective are those? And one of the things that's often cited in that research is the benefit of Reddit is that you get perspectives from across the world. Anyone who can speak English generally, most of them are English speaking, can come and get support, can get input, you know, and those kinds of things. But I think in the pornography and sexuality space, that's actually a huge problem. So I've consulted for the World Health Organization and when we meet, we always have to be mindful. For example, we want to ask about anal sex incidents in some cases because it's linked to a variety of outcomes we're interested in, but it's illegal in some of the countries, so we can't ask. And so we okay, is there a way we could phrase it that kind of gets at it? And if we asked in that way, is that even still valid in the States? Are people gonna understand it in the way that we're hoping? And so what I'm seeing in some of these accounts is, Reddit, you don't have to identify anything. So there's no guarantee. Number one, I'm seeing a lot of children. So Reddit's supposed to be 13 and over. These accounts are not over 13 in many cases. They're children. And we're not allowed to study children. So we have to work with our ethics board to try and create standards to remove the child data as best we can. So for those, just, we're not supposed to be looking at it as scientists. So we're trying to remove it. And also there's a lot of foreign accounts, know, where someone else says, I'm from Iran. I'm from Singapore. And their expectations and understanding of sexuality is very, different than it is in the US. So, for example, we have for people who aren't familiar, it's kind of an interesting history with homosexuality. Many people know that homosexuality used to be pathologized. It used to be diagnosable. You know, so we had the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in the US said that homosexuality was a pathology for a long time. I think it finally got removed and I'm going to get the date wrong. I want to say is like mid-eighties or something. What was interesting is once it was removed from the DSM, it was put into the international classification disorders of the ICD and it in there until 1994.
So for 1990 or 94, somewhere in that range. So not long enough ago. And so what's interesting about that is the ICD reflects kind of diagnoses worldwide. So when the WHO committee that forms that met and discussed it, they said, no, we think homosexuality is a pathology and needs to be included in this. And so we see some of that similar attitude reflected when you look in these accounts that are international, where they say pornography isn't something people might choose to look at or a sexual preference or experience or choice. This is evil. This is the devil at work.
So they talk about big porn a lot. And although I don't know where big porn lives.
BJ: It's a very funny, weird description.
Dr. Prause: Yeah. And they so I think it's a combination of like the forums tend to be very international, which you normally would think of as a good thing. But in this case, because it's a sexual content based forum, that creates problems because we have a lot of repressive communities that are also being represented where, if we had these more progressive representation, we might not see some of the shaming, the suicidal talk, the homicidal threats. And so these people say, you know, if I touch myself again, that's it. I'm putting the barrel in my mouth. And I'm like, what? You never. You know, not to laugh. You know, it's not I don't think it's funny. It's horrible.
BJ: I think we're laughing at how how extreme and ridiculous the suggestion is.
Dr. Prause: Yeah. You know, I really wish someone, you know, so it's a combination of like these these boys. Yeah, they're largely very, very young. And we think and having this international flavor where they don't think about like, who are these people I'm talking to? You know, that they're all over the place. And I don't know to what extent these are bots. You know, so like the the forms that I studied in this space have a very high deletion rate, for example, that seems really unique. And they tend to be deleted by the moderators. And so there are ways of grabbing those before they're deleted. So we'll use those. And the deletions are strange. You sometimes it's like, they're definitely deleting dissent. So like when people say, Hey, I think this forum is BS that gets deleted. there's no debate allowed. The, they make threatening posts. Sometimes they're deleted, but they're often not. You know, so I can still pick them up and find them later on. And so that's another thing that's really interesting to me is like, what is the nature of this really high deletion rate? So in comparison to other actual support forums, like doing a contrast with an alcohol support forum in this case, they have very low deletion rate. And why would you? You know, these are just people trying to talk through their alcoholism and get support online. If that was the same thing that was happening here, why is there so much that needs to be taken down?
BJ: Exactly. So I just want to ask you real quick about what your recommendations would be, like what, just from your own experience and then from what you've seen from the data, like what would you fix this?
Dr. Prause: How do we fix this? It has two potential meanings here. One is the disinformation issue, like correcting this bad stuff that's going on. And the other is um the personal threat safety kind of issue and how to handle that. So. I'll try both. I do not think in uh the case of the space that I'm working in, the kind of anti-porn movement in the US, it's so early that I'm not sure. But if I look at my colleagues research, a lot of it is suggesting that confrontational escalation is not useful, but consistently delivering accurate scientific information can be effective. It just is slow. So. When you feel like no one's listening, I'm talking to a wall, you are, and there won't necessarily be a lot of movement. But consistently providing science-based good information, being sure you've checked your own sources. We're all guilty now and again thinking like, oh, I know what this is. And then you click to be like, oh, that's not what I thought it was. Click through first, oh make sure it has the content that you believe is in something before you share it. So that slow sharing movement, I think is a good one for everyone.
You know, that's not to be one sided or the other. You know, we all need to be mindful of what we're sharing. And so those are the two that I've seen that are kind of data-based approaches to slowing disinformation spread. h I do think there's a space for censorship, which I know a lot of people don't like, but I will say the conditions under which I think that's appropriate are the violence ones. That is, think there are groups like I did not lose over Kiwi Farms going down and some people are screaming censorship and are upset about it. uh As far as I can tell, you know, I'm not an expert on Kiwi Farms, but my read of it was it was just for breeding hate and harassment. And I see no purpose in a forum like that. It's not really helping anyone. It's not advancing even an unpopular opinion. Really, it's just just to harass people.
That I think it was a, an easier decision than some others might be. And so I think we, you know, we can make cases in some of these to say, like, this person is really just inciting violence. Doesn't have a role to play here. And so I think those are three, three places that are probably reasonable for that suggestions on the safety side. If you're facing this, or God forbid, decide to do research in this area, which I don't highly recommend.
There are a few things you can do. They're, the FBI has a site that it's called IC3 reports. So these are where you can make internet crime complaints and these are indexed and they can only be retrieved by you or by a court order. So if you experience harassment and you say, I don't really want it, the police don't write these down. I go to talk to them. I don't think they're taking them seriously. And I'm not even sure how serious this threat is, but I want it documented. You want a timestamp on it. You can fill out these complaints. Be sure you keep a copy of it with the date. And then if you ever need it, you can actually write to the FBI and ask for your own files, but no one else can get your files. So if somebody's bothering you and they write the FBI and say, you Hey, what does this person said about me? The FBI will say we have no records. So it's a nice way for you to document harassment if you need to without much risk. You know, there's always some risk without, without much risk of like your people coming after you causing problems.
When you go to the police, if it's gotten to that point, think making sure that you insist that there is a report filed, even if it feels insignificant to you to say, you know, officer, I understand this may seem like nothing. It's a consistent pattern kind of thing where I need to document it. Can I bother you to, you know, put a report on it? So make sure it's not just an incident where they say, hey, this woman called us. We don't know what's happening.
So like there was a case where I'd received a death threat and I wasn't persistent enough and wish that I had been at the time to kind of document what had happened. So when it gets to that point, being sure that that's the case, knowing what your state laws are. And if it gets to the point where it's ... you're not direct physical harm necessarily, but they're trying to harm you or your business. So they're saying, I'm gonna come after you. Most people can't afford to file defamation lawsuits. Like those are extremely expensive matters.But I found there are some small claims courts that will hear these matters and that can help in one of two ways. So one is you could try to actually follow it all the way through and you have some judgment in that way. I'm not an attorney, so I don't know to be fair with the likelihood is there. But one of the big benefits of filing is when you have these anonymous accounts and they're saying, you know, this like I had an anonymous account even last week saying this person, you know, is a criminal, she's a stalker, she's an asset. All right, enough. You know, you're bothering me, you're coming after me, you're telling this person, you're telling a journalist I did this, this is beyond. You can use small claims actions in a defamation matter to discover the identity of the person that's making these posts. states differ in terms of how they handle those requests.
But you have a legitimate claim to need to know who they are at that point. It doesn't always work. I think we've all seen media experiences where that was the case. But often, think with these harassers, they're an individual person who thinks they can get away with it because they have for years. And so if you can afford an $80 small claims action, you might be able to use your court in that jurisdiction to discover who that person is to possibly stop the harassment, even if just by outing them saying like, you know, you know, you shouldn't be doing this and that you're lying. And this has gone so far beyond it. It's not tolerable anymore. This is not just an Internet troll. This is someone who's becoming threatening and worried about, you know, if people, for example ... I always like to use the famous example with the Clinton pizza factory, marketing children, supposedly in the basement. then this poor pizza owner has some guy come in with a weapon. You know, like I'm going to shoot the place up because they incited violence against this guy with just an internet rumor. so internet rumors really can become a problem like that. so if you feel like it's going there, it might be, I don't think it's .. it's a healthy level of paranoia is ok to have here
BJ: Yes. Yes. I think that it's so important now. I honestly think that that's I think we all that sort of our default is to have a healthy level of paranoia because it's I think the people that are doing this are so well organized in turn and a little more sophisticated than the rest of us in terms of using bots, right? In terms of using sock that we have to be. You have to be a little paranoid.
Dr. Prause: There have definitely been some cases where like someone was bothering me. And as soon as I say, look, I'm going to follow smart claims if you don't stop this. And I will find out who you are. All of a sudden, they don't only stop bothering me. They delete the entire account. And I was like, oh, but I know who that was. You know, because it's these people. And I think the people who are really obnoxious, it's, I think, a fairly tiny group that takes it that far. know, most people get bored before they get to that point or they realize that's that's assholery. This is just trolling. So how vested are you in just living your life to be a jerk? And some people are, you know, so it's it's been very interesting. Like since that guy passed away, we found a lot more sock puppet accounts because they all stopped posting the day he died.
BJ: That does not surprise me. Let me ask you real quick, just as just as we wrap up, is there anything that we didn't talk about that that you would want? Did you just want to highlight?
Dr. Prause: I think in general, I'm really interested in ... yeah, the research we're doing is very much on the front end and trying to catch up with some of the research on more established extremists and misogynist groups online. So I'm doing a lot of outreach now as starting to do a lot of scientific talks around these data that we're gathering. So folks know of other interesting data sources, you good comparison sources. I am interested to hear what kind of connections people may have or interests in that space, because it is so, kind of amorphous how people and scholars seem to end up finding each other or getting to a particular topic. And my skill set is in statistics, so I can pull the numbers, but I don't necessarily know the communications end as well. And so I'm starting those collaborations, but would love to talk to more folks who may have experience and know where to look or interesting data sets.
BJ: I will definitely help get the word out with the show. Thank you.
Duck Duck Go Live Read - They Do Identity Theft Removal Too!
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Stupid Sexy Privacy Outro
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