Ryan Holiday has a lot of experience using media tactics to stir outrage and gain coverage. And he’s seen his tactics be put into action by the alt-right and various Internet trolls. He understands how they think and what their ultimate goals are. And he has a message for the rest of us: You guys are playing completely into their hands. It always surprises me when celebrities and other influencers retweet or quote the hateful messages of online trolls, many of whom have only a handful of followers (if they’re even human and not just bots). The last thing you want to hand a troll is a megaphone.

+ “The goal here is not to hack computational systems but to hack free speech and to hack public opinion.” Sometimes they are bots, sometimes they are human. And sometimes they are a combination of both. From WaPo: As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work.

+ Backchannel: A young Wikipedia editor withstood a decade of online abuse. Now she’s fighting back. 

+ Someone should create a Twitter bot that spreads upbeat news about the platform’s earnings. Twitter dominates the headlines and drives policy debates. But it can’t seem to have a decent quarter.