How Sweden Handed Its Official Twitter Account Over To A Troll
from the what's-next,-rickrolling? dept
Over the weekend, the NY Times profiled the fact that Sweden hands its official @Sweden twitter account over to a different citizen each week, and lets them control it. It was the brain child of the Swedish Institute and the national tourist agency -- with the idea of showcasing some of Sweden's quirkiness. And, from the sound of the NY Times article, it had been mostly working. Some of the tweets were a bit edgy or weird, but nothing too crazy. Until now. Right after the article came out, Sweden handed the account over to a woman named Sonja Abrahamsson -- who proceeded to surprise a lot of people (including many new @Sweden followers, due to the NY Times coverage) with a series of tweets that one could deem offensive to just about anyone -- including ignorant or offensive statements and questions about Jews, gays, Africans, those with downs syndrome, those with AIDS and a variety of other people/groups as well. An example:
This has, not surprisingly, received a fair bit of media attention, with people questioning what happened.
Of course, the most obvious answer is that Sweden handed its Twitter account over to a troll. The topic choices are so troll-worthy that it's hard to believe that the person behind the account is genuinely saying these things. It seems quite clear that it's standard troll behavior: say stupid stuff to get people to react -- and tons of people are feeding the troll in response. The really stunning part, of course, is that the folks who manage the account didn't realize this ahead of time. As multiple people have pointed out, Sonja's own blog has plenty of evidence of similar trolling activities on a smaller scale.
And, perhaps, the Swedish tourist board actually did this on purpose. A spokesperson defended giving Sonja control of the account:
“It’s very important for us to let everyone take a unique viewpoint,” said Tommy Sollen, Social Media Manager at VisitSweden, in a phone interview. “Every one of our curators is there with a different perspective.” ....So they seem to recognize that trolling is a "brand of humor." And I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the fact that the NY Times article was sent from the town of Trollhattan, Sweden. It's like they were born to troll...
“Some of them have been talking about music, some of them have been talking about food,” he said. “Sonja is more focused on her own brand of humor and asking probing questions.”
Of course, if Sweden is going to let @Sweden be trolled, it was only a matter of time until Stephen Colbert asked for control of the account, and urged the Colbert Nation to convince the Swedish tourism bureau to allow non-Swedes to control the account -- something they've said they might consider "in the future."
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Filed Under: social media, sonja abrahamsson, sweden, troll
Companies: twitter
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Can't you think of anything worth writing any more ?
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Trolls of the world unite!
Good job in representing us, Sonja. I'll be nominating you for Troll of the Year at our next meeting.
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Oh come on!
She did write another couple of things, less well-known, that imho were far worse than the "Jew tweets", but that's a completely different story.
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Re: Oh come on!
But, I don't see why Sweden should have excluded her from curating.
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Trollhatten
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Re: Re: Oh come on!
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Once again, "bad speech" must be fought with more (and better speech), not by silencing it.
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You should follow suit - let bob write articles for a week. *evil laugh*
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If i had seen all of her other tweets and obviously saw her as a troll, it wouldn't be as funny but out of context, pretty humorous. That also goes along with the offensive nature of the tweets. By themselves, those tweets are not offensive but once you know that she's a troll and doing it on purpose, you would take offense pretty quickly.
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One needs to realize that different parts of the world vary in their tolerance of PC versus non-PC. I'm betting most Swedes don't see her comments as trolling either.
It's an interesting question too. With skin color the difference is obvious, making that type of racism self explanatory. With Jewish folks it's not so obvious, so one inevitably wonders why so much hate when there is no apparent difference between the hater and the target of their hate? Especially when being Jewish technically has nothing to do with race, something the Nazi's were really big on. I know the answer, but from the point of view of someone who doesn't their question would feel purely innocent.
Could it have been written better? Probably. You have to ask yourself which is more important though, enforcing your own personal definition of what's politically correct on others, something that can be very subjective, or forgiving the person who asked in a manner that was obviously an unintentional blunder born out of language difficulties?
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Mike - Along similar lines to your recent post stating you will no longer link to whoever it was who demanded you negotiate a fee for "fair use", how about stopping linking to content which will only stream in certain countries?
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We are already doing it here ;)
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Re: Oh come on!
She actually works for the government of Swedish tourism or something like that...that's why she got control of the account, NOT because they pulled her name out of a hat consisting of the census.
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I don't care to see how varied the visitors of Techdirt are.
If I wanted to go to a place where anyone can post articles, I'd go to Reddit.
I read Techdirt, because it has consistently proven itself as a place that highlights news that's important to me and provides interesting insights. In the past, there have been commenters who have been invited to write articles here (e.g. Nina, DH, etc). They have proven themselves as insightful people that make significant contributions to discussions that are important to this community. And that's been great. I wouldn't come here so often,if I had to wade through lots of troll articles before I found something interesting.
ACs, like myself, purposely avoid building a history of comments. We accept not accumulating good karma as the price we pay for our anonymity. I'd recommend not letting us near the keys to the Techdirt car.
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Sonja is a very funny person, who does what she pleases.
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Seriously...
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No, actually only Americans deem them offensive. Super politically correct Americans that use N-word in the news but are fine dancing to some black dude singing about his N....r (lol, this word is censored haha) life fucking some bi...es.
If anything Sonya just showcased your bigotry.
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No, actually only Americans deem them offensive. Super politically correct Americans that use N-word in the news but are fine dancing to some black dude singing about his N....r (lol, this word is censored haha) life fucking some bi...es.
If anything Sonya just showcased your bigotry.
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Re: Seriously...
If it was just that one set of tweets, I would have just thought her to be ignorant. But as the Forbes article points out, she's basically hit on just about every possible hot button topic with similar tweets of ignorance. That's what makes her a troll. Not just this set of tweets.
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Fucking Hulu
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I've seen a late night Sarah Silverman stage broadcast which was way more offensive (directed towards Mexicans) - I was pretty shocked actually that these kinds of jokes fly in America. In some parts of the world they'd be considered hugely racist.
I suppose the medium does partially account for the level of outrage, though.
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Did anyone suggest that only Swedes can troll? Of course Americans do trolling all the time too...
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Troll = Troll
Hätta = Hat (sort of)
"n" at the end = usually the same as "The"
Trollhättan = Thetrollhat
Sometimes things get lost in translation :)
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In what way AT ALL is that trolling?
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To paraphrase Azealia Banks:
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