I have a great idea for dealing with Internet trolls.

What if you type in every possible combination of hurtful words you can think of and then mute them so you don’t ever see them?

That’s essentially what Twitter has done with a new mute setting today. It’s a lame attempt to deal with a growing problem. The issue of course is that Internet trolls are both sadistic and inventive. They can come up with a million different ways of hurting you — inventing new slang terms and hashtags, hammering you with photos that seem harmless until you understand the context and history of the image, and by adding extra characters to a racial slur. I’ve been the victim of vicious attacks on social media several times, and the one thing I’ve noticed is that these attacks are almost always slightly different. You could mute the word “drown” I suppose and never see the notification when someone tells you to go drown yourself (this has happened to me), but the troll would use a different word like “suffocate” next time. In security circles, this is known as an endless pursuit, an ongoing and never ending battle to block viruses, malware, and other dangers. When you think you have “muted” a criminal hacker, he or she comes up with a brand new method of destruction. As a side benefit, this is what keeps security firms in business.

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