Why we're taking the internet back from online trolls

Can you reclaim the internet - or rather the version of yourself that appears online when you type your name into a search engine?

We live in a world where anyone can write anything about anyone else and publish it without any real repercussions. Newspapers and media outlets have to prove what they publish to be true or face hefty fines and the might of the law.

But the wild web is free - and can be nasty. 

And while our MPs try in vain to entice tech titans like Facebook founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg to grace them with his presence in a grey select committee meeting room, trolling of individuals and the spreading of misinformation carries on apace. Although it’s painfully clear that tech companies must do more to stop the dissemination of fake information on social media and personal websites, I’ve never been a fan of just pointing the finger.

It’s naive to think that they hold the key to stopping cruel behaviour driven by societal ills which have always been there - though it's true that individuals have never before had such powerful outlets through which to express this.

So can you take back your online identity, if it has indeed been hijacked, without the help of expensive lawyers? Can they even help anymore? What would you do if something you wrote or said was suddenly taken out of context, went viral and your reputation was destroyed as a result? Or if a loved one publicly posted those saucy snaps you shared in a moment of trust? Suddenly, you find that the top Google results linked to your name only bring humiliation, and there’s nothing you can do without power, connections or cash. Or is there?

It’s a question I’ve long been preoccupied with ever since I was the tech correspondent for this newspaper, and something I explored in greater depth for a 2011 Radio 4 documentary back in 2011, ahead of an EU law change intended to allow people greater control over the information about themselves freely available online.

My quest? To have an embarrassing image of myself deleted from the internet. But before you get too hot under the collar, it was a cringeworthy shot of me celebrating my A-level results, which was published by several newspapers. I failed - miserably. But during my unsuccessful mission, I interviewed reputation managers, publishers and lawyers and eventually concluded that, while we may not have the right to be forgotten, we do have the ability to look at the information presented about our fellow man on the internet with a critical eye.

Alas, things seemed to have worsened in the intervening years. Revenge porn cases make headlines almost every week; trolling of public and private individuals seems to have all but become a national sport. And anyone, it seems, can be caught in the crossfire. 

More often than not, it is women who bear the brunt of the worst vitriol, heaped on them by both women and men. That’s why over the past six months, in a project for Woman’s Hour, I came up with the idea for the programme to feature four wronged women – Charley Hough, Jackie Teale, Charlotte Proudman and Kelly McGurk - to see if it was possible for them to change the negative top search results associated with their names.

They bravely shared their stories - of death threats, rape threats and being a called a feminazi - with me on Woman’s Hour in a bid to see if anything could be done to reclaim their identities. 

Today, we reveal the fruits of their labour. Having introduced them to an advertising agency, Mother, who worked with them on their mission, a song was eventually born called ‘Save Our Trolls’ featuring a whole host of celebrities including Andy Serkis, Charlotte Church and Miranda Hart.

The four women have been desperate to attach their names online to something other than identities forced upon them. If politicians and celebrities can't stop the trolls, what chance do ordinary women stand? 

The idea of the tune is to make people think of trolling as a public health issue - and to provoke a national discussion about the mental state of those who choose to indulge in such damaging behaviour. Instead of solely focusing on the targets of the abuse - turn the mirror onto those who abuse. The hashtag? #TakeBackConTROLL. 

The song and it’s lyrics won’t float everyone’s boat. That’s for sure. To some it will seem a soft touch like the Hug a Hoodie approach and to others, bang on. But we still aren’t making enough progress on stopping digital abuse. I honestly thought that by 2018, our offline and online selves would have grown closer together; things we wouldn’t dare say to someone in real life, wouldn’t be written online. That the deterrents would have worked better. But they haven’t. And something has to give. 

I just don’t want it to be the victims anymore.

To find out more and listen the Woman’s Hour #TakeBackConTROLL series visit bbc.co.uk/womanshour

Emma Barnett is a BBC broadcaster and journalist who presents the Emma Barnett Show on BBC 5 Live and Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4. 

@emmabarnett