It all started with a meme, in December 2019. An image taken from the film Taken, in which actor Liam Neeson, playing a vengeful character, warns his interlocutor on the other end of the line: “I will find you, and I will kill you. »
I will find you, and I will kill you.
The meme is quite well known in the wonderful world of social networks. Just like the rage of nameless and faceless trolls that swarm on Twitter. Sébastien Rioux could have shrugged his shoulders and moved on.
Instead, he decided to file a complaint.
The police found the troll. She questioned him; there were no charges. It could have stopped there.
But the complaint woke up something in this troll. Something monstrous. From then on, the floodgates of online hate opened. And Seb Rioux’s digital life has become hell. His real life, too.
Seb Rioux is a documentary filmmaker and musician from Trois-Pistoles. Long hair gathered in a bun, involved in his community, the 46-year-old man is a left-wing guy, with left-wing opinions on environmental issues and social inequalities. Opinions that he had never been afraid to express on different digital platforms. Until there.
In short, Seb Rioux was an ordinary guy who liked to debate on social networks. Sometimes it caused sparks. Sometimes he was “bumped into it”. It wasn’t particularly pleasant, but it was part of the game.
At the beginning of 2020, therefore, he began to receive a torrent of threats and insults. Hundreds of hate messages, on Twitter, on Instagram, on YouTube, by email. Photos of a glorified mass murderer. Confederate flags. Swastikas. Porn. Nazi salutes.
Seb Rioux had reached a point where he dreaded sitting in front of his computer, fearing what he was going to find there. “You’re trying to carapace yourself. In the morning, you see a new email. You say to yourself, “OK, I’ll open it”. And there, you see hyper violent images towards women… ”
The troll was probably spending a lot of time editing. “I was starting to get scared. I received photos of me with a target in the forehead. Pictures of me as a child being shot by people…”
And this threatening question: “Should I go to Trois-Pistoles?” »
And this meme, which kept coming back: I will find you, and I will kill you.
Seb Rioux did not know who he was dealing with. He didn’t know what to do. In the fall of 2020, he decided to file a complaint again. The police opened another investigation.
While the police investigated, the harassment continued. A photo of a black woman transformed into punch bag, an email containing the word N*GGER 80 times, porn photos involving scatophiles…
Seb Rioux sent me a sample of the messages he received. I watched it for 10 minutes and I stopped; I was frankly heartbroken.
For Seb Rioux, it lasted 18 months.
The worst moment is when the troll wanted to make Seb Rioux look like a pedophile. From a fake account, he made screenshots, in which a fake Seb Rioux implied that he had raped his 14-year-old cousin…
At that moment, the real Seb Rioux was ashamed, even though he had no reason to be ashamed. “Who saw these messages and who believed them? All my life, I’m going to think that there are people who believe it…”
He snapped. Often. “I was trying to be strong but at times I wasn’t at all. No matter how much my girlfriend loved me and wanted to listen to me, at some point it became heavy to talk to her about the messages I received day after day. I didn’t want to bring her into this. »
Seb Rioux found it increasingly difficult to work, to concentrate. Despite himself, he was trying to break through the troll’s anonymity. “Was it someone I knew?” Someone near, far? The time I spent scrutinizing the profiles he created for himself to find a flaw and unmask him… it had become obsessive. I didn’t want to, I tried not to think about it, but I thought about it all the time. »
It was the police, at the end of their investigation, who revealed to him the identity of the troll. Under subtle pseudonyms like Nick Gurr and youranalmaster was hiding a man from Gatineau: Peter Poncak.
On August 4, 2021, the Gatineau police, supported by the Montreal cybercrime squad, arrested the 38-year-old man, after linking his various accounts to an IP address. That day, Seb Rioux’s nightmare ended.
Today, he wants to deliver this message: if you are the victim of online hate, file a complaint. It’s worth it. “The more you do it, the more hateful people will be afraid to act because they know they can get hit. »
Should more be done? Are current laws, which criminalize harassment and threats, enough to stem the scourge of online hate?
Long promised by Ottawa, a bill to combat online hate should be announced shortly by the Minister of Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez.
If it takes time, it’s because it’s tricky. We are talking about freedom of expression and protection of privacy. Ok to remove offensive content, but where to draw the line? When does it become censorship?
Could the authorities abuse increased investigative powers to obtain information on certain Internet users? Could this future law become a weapon against those who protest against the established order?
Despite the potential pitfalls, Minister Rodriguez remains convinced of the relevance of the bill. “Because hate online is real hate,” he said in March. Online hate doesn’t stay online, it takes to the streets. »
Seb Rioux admits it. He’s afraid of that, too.
Fear that the hatred of a troll will end up overflowing in a street in Trois-Pistoles. To be honest, it terrifies him.
” When he came [à Rivière-du-Loup pour sa comparution, fin mars], I got the female dog. I made sure that the doors to my house were securely locked. »
Peter Poncak pleaded guilty to one count of harassment. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. He will receive his sentence on September 15.
At the Bas-Saint-Laurent legal aid office, Peter Poncak’s lawyer writes to me that he does not have the mandate to transmit information on his client. A message left at a homeless shelter in Gatineau, the last address on his court file, has not received a response.
At the end of March, at the Rivière-du-Loup courthouse, Seb Rioux was finally able to see what his troll looked like. “A frail, introverted guy. He didn’t dare look me in the eye. He looked down. In person, he was not capable. »