In any case, that someone so influential in the progressive online space could make such a complete 180 has shaken the social justice community to its core. How could a defender of equality change so much, so quickly? And what does it mean for those who had come to trust Green’s safe space online?

The answers to these questions are chillingly incomplete — and raise questions anew about the safety of online spaces for those who routinely face harassment.

To understand the gravity of Green’s shift, it’s important to grasp how online harassment has evolved over the years — and how profound its dangers can be.

When Green created her anti-harassment Facebook group, it was largely in response to the rising trend of “response videos,” YouTube videos created by trolls who have devoted their lives to attacking feminist content. Creators of these videos often claim that their content does not itself constitute harassment, while simultaneously ignoring the actions of their followers, who frequently bombard their targets with an overwhelming number of slurs and violent messages.

Lindsay Amer, a queer YouTuber who has experienced response videos firsthand, explains:

“You see these anti-feminist YouTubers who gain hundreds of thousands of followers in under a year. I think there’s a lot of money in anti-feminism. The content is really easy to make and it doesn’t have to be high quality. Someone can just turn on a camera and rant and say something controversial and know that it’s going to get a ton of views. I see people who recut my videos with their bullying commentary added.”

Troublingly, up until recently, such videos were not only supported by YouTube, but incentivized. Because response videos are so easy to make, it was easy for reactionary YouTubers to churn out a lot of content, which YouTube then prioritized in an algorithm that favored prolific output, high view counts, and abundant comments — even if those comments were toxic. Gaming the very closely held secret of the YouTube algorithm became a de facto path to internet stardom, and the format was perfect for response-video creators. Even after changes to their algorithm in December of last year, YouTube has continued to discourage vloggers from preventing harassment — according to Amer, when users disable comments and the sidebar for other suggested videos, their content is less likely to be promoted by the algorithm, and their view counts plummet.

‘I think there’s a lot of money in anti-feminism.’

Amer explains how these response videos can in turn breed serious abuse. After uploading her first video on her YouTube channel “Queer Kids Stuff,” she was surprised to see it take off — but after it was picked up by the Nazi “alt-right” website Daily Stormer, she was swiftly confronted with a slew of response videos. In turn, she says, the audiences of the YouTubers who created those videos “came at my channel and abused me and my followers”; the harassment included pictures of nooses, death threats, and anti-Semitic messages about ovens, showers, and being gassed.

Moreover, this abuse isn’t always “just” virtual — often, the threat can become physical. Just last weekend, for example, abusive YouTubers made their presence known at Vidcon in Anaheim, California, the largest online video convention in the world. During the panel “Women Online,” response-video trolls occupied the entire front two rows of the venue in order to harass the panelists in person. Eventually, feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian exclaimed to Carl Benjamin, a troll popularly known as “Sargon of Akkad”:

“You make your name on YouTube by making these dumbass videos that just say the same shit over and over again. I hate to give you attention because you’re a garbage human, whatever dude.”

Sarkeesian’s comment, which elicited a gasp from the audience, was rooted in a long and ugly history; over the last two years, Sarkeesian’s name or appearance has been displayed in roughly 20 video titles or thumbnails on Benjamin’s channel.

Benjamin especially likes to gripe about Sarkeesian’s speaking fees and the amount of money she makes — neglecting to mention that, in reality, she has had to cancel speaking events due to death threats. Meanwhile, according to a 2015 article by Daily Kos, Benjamin makes about $1.50 per thousand views on his YouTube channel. Assuming those numbers are still accurate, that would mean his latest video on the fallout from his Vidcon encounter with Sarkeesian has netted him about $546 in just three days. Benjamin also makes over $5,500 a month on Patreon, a website for creators to find funding. (Multiple efforts to seek comment from Benjamin for this story went unanswered, with several of his Twitter followers making accusations of bias.)

In a statement released on their official Medium account today, comments attributed to Vidcon founder Hank Green (no relation to Laci) addressed the controversy from this weekend, noting:

“He [Hank Green] apologized to her [Sarkeesian] for not having been more aware of and active in understanding the situation before the event, which resulted in her being subjected to a hostile environment that she had not signed up for.”

But this comment is difficult to believe given that this type of trolling is becoming more commonplace. In March of this year, a panel led by political activist Cenk Uygur at SXSW was crashed by alt right troll Steven Crowder in order to generate content for Crowder’s YouTube channel, an incident which was only really covered by the right wing press. Even Laci Green’s boyfriend got into the act the day before the Sarkeesian/Benjamin conflict by filming a Kat Blaque panel for retweets. The problem has been prominent enough that, according to a screenshot, Laci Green herself emailed YouTube staff about the presence of certain YouTubers at VidCon just a few months ago.