INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
For the nearly 20 percent of Americans who experience severe online harassment, there a new company launching in the latest batch of Y
Combinator called Tall Poppy that giving them the tools to fight back.Co-founded by Leigh Honeywell and Logan Dean, Tall Poppy grew out of
the work that Honeywell, a security specialist, had been doing to hunt down trolls in online communities since at least 2008.That was the
year that Honeywell first went after a particularly noxious specimen who spent his time sending death threats to women in various Linux
Honeywell cooperated with law enforcement to try and track down the troll and eventually pushed the commenter into hiding after he was
visited by investigators.That early success led Honeywell to assume a not-so-secret identity as a security expert by day for companies like
Microsoft, Salesforce, and Slack, and a defender against online harassment when she wasn&t at work.&It was an accidental thing that I got
into this work,& says Honeywell
&It sort of an occupational hazard of being an internet feminist.&Honeywell started working one-on-one with victims of online harassment
that would be referred to her directly.&As people were coming forward with #metoo… I was working with a number of high profile folks to
essentially batten down the hatches,& says Honeywell
&It been satisfying work helping people get back a sense of safety when they feel like they have lost it.&As those referrals began to climb
(eventually numbering in the low hundreds of cases), Honeywell began to think about ways to systematize her approach so it could reach the
widest number of people possible.&The reason we&re doing it that way is to help scale up,& says Honeywell
&As with everything in computer security it an arms race… As you learn to combat abuse the abusive people adopt technologies and learn new
tactics and ways to get around it.&Primarily, Tall Poppy will provide an educational toolkit to help people lock down their own presence and
do incident response properly, says Honeywell
The company will work with customers to gain an understanding of how to protect themselves, but also to be aware of the laws in each state
that they can use to protect themselves and punish their attackers.The scope of the problemBased on research conducted by the Pew
Foundation, there are millions of people in the U.S
alone, who could benefit from the type of service that Tall Poppy aims to provide.According to a 2017 study, &nearly one-in-five Americans
(18%) have been subjected to particularly severe forms of harassment online, such as physical threats, harassment over a sustained period,
sexual harassment or stalking.&The women and minorities that bear the brunt of these assaults (and, let be clear, it is primarily women and
minorities who bear the brunt of these assaults), face very real consequences from these virtual assaults.Take the case of the New York
principal who lost her job when an ex-boyfriend sent stolen photographs of her to the New York Post and her boss
In a powerful piece for Jezebel she wrote about the consequences of her harassment.As a result, city investigators escorted me out of my
school pending an investigation
The subsequent investigation quickly showed that I was set up by my abuser
Still, Mayor Bill de Blasio administration demoted me from principal to teacher, slashed my pay in half, and sent me to arubber room, the
DOE notorious reassignment centers where hundreds of unwanted employees languish until they are fired or forgotten.In 2016, I took a
yearlong medical leave from the DOE to treat extreme post-traumatic stress and anxiety
Since the leave was almost entirely unpaid, I took loans against my pension to get by
I ran out of money in early 2017 and reported back to the department, where I was quickly sent to anadministrative trial
There the city tried to terminate me
I was charged with eight counts of misconduct despite the conclusion by all parties that my ex-partner uploaded the photos to the computer
and that there was no evidence to back up his salacious story
I was accused of bringing &widespread negative publicity, ridicule and notoriety& to the school system, as well as &failing to safeguard a
Department of Education computer& from my abusive ex.Her story isn&t unique
Victims of online harassment regularly face serious consequences from online harassment.According to a 2013 Science Daily study,cyber
stalking victims routinely need to take time off from work, or change or quit their job or school
And the stalking coststhe victims $1200 on average to even attempt to address the harassment, the study said.&It this widespread problem and
the platforms have in many ways have dropped the ball on this,& Honeywell says.Tall Poppy co-foundersCreating Tall PoppyAs Honeywell heard
more and more stories of online intimidation and assault, she started laying the groundwork for the service that would eventually become
Through a mutual friend she reached out to Dean, a talented coder who had been working at Ticketfly before its Eventbrite acquisition and
was looking for a new opportunity.That was in early 2015
But, afraid that striking out on her own would affect her citizenship status (Honeywell is Canadian), she and Dean waited before making the
move to finally start the company.What ultimately convinced them was the election of Donald Trump.&After the election I had a heart-to-heart
with myself… And I decided that I could move back to Canada, but I wanted to stay and fight,& Honeywell says.Initially, Honeywell took on
a year-long fellowship with the American Civil Liberties Union to pick up on work around privacy and security that had been handled by Chris
Soghoian who had left to take a position with Senator Ron Wyden office.But the idea for Tall Poppy remained, and once Honeywell received
her green card, she was &chomping at the bit to start this company.&A few months in the company already has businesses that have signed up
for the services and tools it provides to help companies protect their employees.Some platforms have taken small steps against online
Facebook, for instance, launched an initiative to get people to upload their nude pictures so that the social network can monitor when
similar images are distributed online and contact a user to see if the distribution is consensual.Meanwhile, Twitter has made a series of
changes to its algorithm to combat online abuse.Twitter algorithm changes will hide more bad tweets and trolls&People were shocked and
horrified that people were trying this,& Honeywell says
&[But] what is the way [harassers] can do the most damage Sharing them to Facebook is one of the ways where they can do the most damage
It was a worthwhile experiment.&To underscore how pervasive a problem online harassment is, out of the four companies where the company is
doing business or could do business in the first month and a half there is already an issue that the company is addressing.&It is an
important problem to work on,& says Honeywell
&My recurring realization is that the cavalry is not coming.&