I do not want the Internet to be safe.

I do want curated parts of the internet. Places which are safe for kids, or where information is carefully checked for accuracy. If I really want to find something out, I read the meta-analyses on Cochrane, not the summary on Wikipedia. I want places kids and play that those who would prey on them cannot get at.

But I don’t want all the internet to be like that. I want free speech, particularly speech I don’t like. In fact, I enjoy, most days, the opposition, because it exercises my satire gland.

I disagree with these antipsychiatrists who were picketing the meeting I was at for half the week. But let’s be fair about them: I don’t deny their right to speak, but they don’t harass me online or stalk me at home.

Trolling, arguing, online is equivalent to putting up a placard and standing outside a meeting. It may be useful. You are fair game. But trying to destroy a person is criminal, and trolling that is not.

If Zahorian is sincere about her efforts to make the web a “safer” place, she is indeed wise to distance herself from these two activists. Harper, in particular, is notorious for her two-faced attitude to online abuse. As we have reported at length, Harper has been at the centre of some of the most vicious and sustained campaigns of abuse on the web.

Just one day before the Google Ideas event, she boasted about “destroying men for sport.” This wasn’t an exaggeration: a number of her victims, such as academic Vivek Wadhwa, software engineer Roberto Rosario and data scientist Chris von Csefalvay endured horrendous personal upheaval due to Harper’s protracted campaigns of abuse, which extend well beyond the internet and into their offline lives.

It’s hard to know what Google Ideas were thinking when they extended invitations to Harper and other online abusers, including a feminist game developer who gloated about a DDoS attack on a rival feminist games project and a journalist who helped trigger the high-profile public shaming of “comet scientist” Dr. Matt Taylor.

The decision has led to a social media storm, taking a considerable toll on the Google Ideas’ public image. The #GoogleAbuse hashtag, started by abuse victims and their supporters as a means to protest the invitations, has been tweeted almost 12,000 times in just two days.

This episode serves as a cautionary tale for any organisation looking to delve into the topic of online abuse. With so many online abusers engaging in doublespeak – claiming the mantle of anti-abuse activist as a means to cover up their own trail of online victims – choosing whom to invite can be treacherous.

The trouble is that many people think those who disagree with them are trolls. Or fools. Or just needing reprogramming. Forgetting that the people they are against think precisely the same things. But there are limits.

It’s the old rules: sticks and stones break things, and the correct response is the naked sword of justice. But names invite mockery. It is those, that when mocked, destroy by SWATing, DDOS, or other wankery they consider hacking, despite knowing not even how to write a script in visual basic.

You can judge by the fruits. And the petunias who Google invited are… toxic. They will not respond to mockery with repentance but doubling down. Shun them, and if they force their way into your circles. destroy them.