Why Trolls Spew Hate and What to Do if They Work for You

[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications]

Impossibly, daily headlines keep coming at us outing people at every level of society who insist on blurting out heinous, racially insensitive soundbites, tweets and posts in the wake of the horrifying killing of George Floyd.

• Amid the ensuing protests, the incoming chairman of a county Republican party in Houston posted a Martin Luther King Jr. quote next to a banana on Facebook. He then apologized saying he only meant to indicate that the protests were “bananas.” He subsequently resigned before assuming his position.
• A nurse for the OSF Healthcare system in Peoria, owned by Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, got the boot after allegedly posting to Facebook that racial justice protesters “make great hood ornaments.”
• Reebok announced it will end its partnership with CrossFit after CrossFit’s CEO criticized a University of Washington Health Center’s statement that racism is a public health issue, calling it “Floyd-19,”
• Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced that a National Guard member is being removed after the FBI learned the soldier made white supremacist remarks on social media posts.

Social media is one leitmotif tying all these racist and tone-deaf sentiments together. Social media began as a place for college kids to connect. It then evolved into a place glutted with eye-rolling cat and baby photos before taking an ugly turn into the self-reinforcing hate machine it has become.

While in this country the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, it does not protect us from the consequences of the free speech we take for granted. Because social media algorithms create a powerful, far-reaching virtual breeding ground for confirmation bias – the human tendency to seek points of view reinforcing our own – trolls feel empowered to spew invective and misinformation.

Until they’re caught, called out and have something to lose – like their jobs.

Then the knee-jerk apologies and half-baked excuses fly.

Are these people genuine in their contrition or simply doing the most expedient thing when they’re jolted by the sobering realization that outside of social media’s echo chamber, their point of view is reviled by the vast majority of American society?

And when these people work in your organization, what is a company leader’s appropriate response?

• Act swiftly: Bring leadership together and decide if this individual has to go. Is the havoc they’ve wrought on social media spilling over onto your company, threatening its reputation? How will your other employees now feel and react, working next to this person? If you’d discovered this social media post during the hiring process, would you have brought this person on? Depending on your answers, separation may be the only option.
• Communicate quickly: This is not the time to create a statement by committee. Have your company’s top communicator and/or your agency of record create priority messages, fly them by legal and post them on every platform your stakeholders see as soon as you can.
• Less talk, more walk: Don’t talk about your company’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion unless you walk the walk and can document what you’ve actually done, how you’ve progressed or results you’ve achieved in your culture.

If you feel you’re coming up short, retain a professional diversity consultant and commit to an audit of your company’s culture. Don’t just promise to do better by laying out specific initiatives or programs unless you intend to follow through, however.

Companies remaining neutral or engaging in disingenuous puffery in this historic time do so at their own risk. Bad actors may never stop spewing hate to their online comrades-in-arms, but you have the power to seize this important inflection point to drive positive change throughout your company and your corner of the world.