FAQ Off: An Open Source Project to Defeat Harassment Mobs and Anti-Intellectualism
Tags: opensource, php, showdev
Published: 2020-04-13 09:23:23

**Social media is inherently asymmetric.** That observation shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, most of us have a very small number of followers, but some people command the attention of hundreds of thousands or even millions.

But the asymmetry of social media cuts both ways. Ask anyone who has ever been the target of a harassment mob, and they'll tell you all about it.

A popular technique used by Internet trolls and mob-harassers is called [Sea-Lioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning), which involves (often multiple) throwaway accounts demanding answers to a tired line of loaded questions, usually while maintaining the veneer of civility.

Even when a victim is successful dealing with sea-lioning, it can be very exhausting and draining for them to do so.

![Sea-lioning from Wondermark](http://wondermark.com/c/2014-09-19-1062sea.png)

Which brings us to **[FAQ Off](https://github.com/soatok/faq-off#faq-off-features-at-a-glance)**, an open source toolkit for undermining the tactics of trolls and harassment mobs.

# FAQ Off Aims to Invert the Exploitable Asymmetry of Social Media

It used to be the case that you had two options:

1. Engaging with a (potentially large) number of boring Internet trolls who are not acting in good faith.
2. Say nothing and let their replies pollute your community with their toxicity, thereby tacitly endorsing [the radicalization of your friends](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g).

With *FAQ Off*, you're given a third choice: **Take control of the narrative** by writing responses to their questions, and the obvious follow-ups to those questions, and so on recursively. And then, all current and future iterations of the same tired line of questioning can be answered by a simple hyperlink instead of wasting your time again.

If this sounds confusing, how about a demonstration? **Here's a URL you can link people in response to them saying, "I hate furries."**: https://faq.dhol.es/@Soatok/furry-fandom/i-hate-furries

***FAQ Off* is the cross-product of Q&A sessions with text adventure games**.

Here's another demo. This one deals with common misconceptions about VPN services: https://faq.dhol.es/@Soatok/cryptography/which-vpn-service-will-protect-me-from-hackers

Of course, if you'd prefer the dog-fooded explanation for this project, [read here](https://faq.dhol.es/@Soatok/public-beta/what-is-faq-off) instead.

## Write once, link *ad nauseum*

If you're in touch with the news and recent events, you may be concerned by the trend of anti-intellectualism that's taken hold for the past decade or so.

If nothing else, FAQ Off may provide a platform for experts to automate the uninteresting conversations debunking common myths and falsehoods that perpetuate the 24-hour breaking news cycle and tabloid journalism so they can focus instead on providing *actual* insight into their area of expertise.

The sky is the limit.

## What Are FAQ Off's Features?

* **Interactive Question and Answer Website**:
  * Guide your readers to the answers to their question.
  * Short-circuit common lines of disruptive discourse.  
    *Write once, answer ad nauseum!*
* **HTML and Markdown Support**
* **Troll and Spam Defense**:
  * Administrators can enable "invite only" mode, which requires an invitation code
    from an existing user to sign up.
  * The invitation tree: Administrators can see who invited who, to identify common
    entry points of misbehaving users to curate their own community.
* **Collaboration**:
  * Users can share an **Author** profile with colleagues and publish as a group.
  * Users can belong to an unlimited number of **Authors**.
  * Authors can share access to an unlimited number of users, or just one.
* **Security**:
  * Entries are written in HTML / Markdown and processed by [HTML Purifier](http://htmlpurifier.org)
    to protect against cross-site scripting attacks.
  * Passwords are [stored securely](https://github.com/soatok/dhole-cryptography#password-storage), or you can use Twitter. 
  * Your username or Twitter handle is only knowable by *administrators*.
    A randomly generated `Public ID` is provided to keep your login handle
    and/or Twitter handle anonymous to everyone else.

## Where Can I Find It?

**FAQ Off is on Github: https://github.com/soatok/faq-off**