Order with me thru @hellaveganeats for all of your Anti Fascist Cake needs ❤️🖤 tag someone who would love to punch a nazi #antifa #antifascist #killnazis #antinazi #igvideo #cakevideo #cake #hellaveganeats #ashleyshotwell #vegan #vegancake #vegansofig #veganfoodshare #whatveganseat #cakeart #cakedecorating #cakestagram #chocolatecake

A post shared by Ashley Shotwell (@ashleyshotwellcakes) on Aug 23, 2017 at 4:59pm PDT

When Tina Fey recommended we stay home and eat sheetcake in response to white supremacist and neo-Nazi rallies being scheduled across the U.S., one Bay Area confection lover had another idea. They decided to take back the cake, and asked East Bay bakery Ashley Shotwell Cakes to make the ‘Kill Nazis’ cake seen above as a sort of coping mechanism against Sunday’s unpleasantness in Berkeley. But cake baker Ashley Shotwell, who looks fabulous, has had a pretty tough couple of days since posting a Facebook video, as the Chronicle reports her page turned a troll magnet for online harassment, hateful comments, and hundreds of toxic fake reviews.

Our story begins two weeks ago, in the immediate aftermath of the of the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rallies and attacks. Here in the Bay Area, someone commissioned the ‘Resist Fascism’ cake seen in the timelapse Facebook video above. That video has since enjoyed nearly 9,000 views and about 800 shares, inspiring one customer to request ‘Kill Nazis’ cake.

“I was like, ‘Why not?’ I didn’t even think twice about it,” Shotwell told the Easy Bay Express. She made the cake and posted her signature time lapse video on Wednesday afternoon last week. But within hours a few hours, Shotwell’s Facebook page had tuned into a cesspool of online harassment, misogynistic memes, and hundreds of blatantly false one-star reviews from all over the country.

“They were saying there were maggots in the cake, it was spoiled, there was a rat in the cake, a bike lock in the cake,” she said. “They were all fake. Some complained about bad customer service in my bakery but I don’t even have a storefront.”

The negative reviews have now pretty much been scrubbed from the Ashley Shotwell Cakes Facebook page — but the ‘Kill Nazis’ cake video has been removed as well. You can, however, still see the ‘Kill Nazis’ cake video on Instagram embedded at the top of this post.

It does not sounds as if Shotwell is willing to make another ‘KiIl Nazis’ cake, even if you ask nicely. "I'd probably suggest it say 'Punch Nazis' instead," she told the Chronicle.

Related: Heart Of Humans On Ocean Beach To Counter Hate

In their unenviable, continuing quest to rid the site of its "most toxic" troll population, Reddit has just shut down two related subreddits, r/altright and r/alternativeright, over the repeated practice of doxing. As TechCrunch reports, via the ban explanation on the Reddit page, the ban was because of "the proliferation of personal and confidential information," otherwise known as doxing, or the spreading of personal "docs" like home addresses and phone numbers — leading to prank calls, harassment, and the occasional COD pizza delivery. Also, it can lead to actual "I know where you live"-style death threats, and as we heard shortly after the election, it led to one subreddit moderator's car being vandalized, IRL.

As CNet reports, despite the unapologetically racist and disgusting nature of the r/altright subreddit, it wasn't their racism or any implied incitements of violence that got them banned. It was just the doxing.

A cached screen of the message that welcomed new subscribers to r/altright explains exactly who they are, via a moderator whose screen name is LetThereBeWhite, and they don't want anyone mistaking their brand of racism with that of anyone on the r/The_Donald subreddit.

If you only know of the alt right from The_Donald, then do not know what the alt right is. You probably think it means something along the lines of cultural libertarianism or just being "more conservative". It doesn't... The Alt Right is a racial movement and has always been a racial movement. Race is at the very core of the alt right and there is absolutely no way to be alt right without discussing racial realism, especially from a white perspective. The mainstream media was not lying to you when they said we are full of white nationalists, racial realists, and fascists. That is what we are and we really do not give a shit about tax cuts or other policy issues.

According to CNet, some in the r/altright subreddit had been engaged in a campaign to dox the individual who punched alt-right hero Richard Spencer in the face on Inauguration Day, and that was perhaps the reason the community got banned.

In a statement on the ban, Reddit said it is "very clear in our site terms of service that posting of personal information can get users banned from Reddit and we ask our communities not to post content that harasses or invites harassment. We have banned r/altright due to repeated violations of the terms of our content policy."

Reddit has a major struggle at its core these days, having become a haven for "free speech" in that it hosts message boards for people with (often highly offensive and gross) niche beliefs, and unsurprisingly some of these people don't behave according to normal rules of internet civility. As TechCrunch framed Reddit's troubles back in November, "if it can’t stop the trolls from blatantly abusing the rest of the community or projecting hate, it will have failed society and more mild-mannered users will move to cleaner pastures."

And meanwhile, the denizens of r/altright will scurry back to 4chan, or whatever.

Previously: Reddit Will Crack Down On Its 'Most Toxic' Trolls; CEO Still Apologizing For Editing Comments

Twitter, the proverbial bridge under which trolls can spawn and spew, has been a particular hotbed for anti-Semitism, so much so that the nonprofit Anti-Defamation League Task Force on Harassment and Journalism has released a report quantifying anti-Jewish hate speech. A keyword study looking at Tweets from August 2015 to July 2016 and searching for anti-Semitic terms like holocaust, kike, etc., yielded 2.6 million results.

Reviewing the study, the New York Times points out that 19,253 tweets were directed at journalists. More than two-thirds of the tweets directed at these journalists were sent by just 1,600 Twitter accounts (of 313 million Twitter accounts that have been created).

The words that appear with the most frequency in the bios of these accounts are “Trump,” “nationalist,” “conservative,” and “white.” Here the ADL feels the need to clarify that "this does not imply that the Trump campaign supported or endorsed the anti-Semitic tweets, only that certain self-styled supporters sent these ugly messages."

“The spike in hate we've seen online this election cycle is extremely troubling and unlike anything we have seen in modern politics. A half century ago, the KKK burned crosses. Today, extremists are burning up Twitter,” Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a release. “We are concerned about the impact of this hate on the ability of journalists to do their job and on free speech, which is why we established this Task Force."

Another election tie-in: According to the report, "Seventy-six percent of tweets at journalists were posted between February to July 2016. This corresponds with intensifying coverage of the presidential campaign, the candidates, and their positions on a range of issues."

Anything you can do about this, @support?

Related: Disney And Salesforce Dropped Twitter Bids Because Of Trolls

Twitter has a troll problem. That the social-media service has become a tool for those wishing to harass others is well documented, as are the company's seemingly ineffective attempts to combat the toxicity found on the platform. Well, Twitter's Product Manager Emil Leong wants you to know that he's aware of it, and today announced a new way for users to hopefully make their experience a less hostile one.

Say hello to "Quality Filter." When enabled, the feature essentially allows users to ignore accounts that meet certain criteria or exhibit certain behavior. For example, if a prominent Twitter user encourages his followers to tweet racist and sexist remarks at you, as happened recently to Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones, you will theoretically be able to auto-block all that content.

"When turned on, the filter can improve the quality of tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior," explains Leong. "Turning it on filters lower-quality content, like duplicate tweets or content that appears to be automated, from your notifications and other parts of your Twitter experience."

This is not the first time we've heard of this feature. In March of 2015, Tech Crunch reported on a tool of the same name, however it was in beta and only made available to a small segment of users.

Now, according to Leong, the feature is available to everyone with an account. This announcement also comes with news of a simple change that may radically improve the Twitter experience of those suffering from online harassment. "Starting today, everyone will have the ability to limit notifications to only people they follow on mobile and on twitter.com," he writes.

This means that people who still want to engage with those they follow will be able to receive notifications from said users without having to open themselves up to being pinged every time someone decides to tweet a slur at them. Before, you could either turn notifications on or off — it was an all or nothing situation.

Time will tell how big of an impact these new features actually have, but hey, it's a step. Albeit one that is frustratingly late, but still.

Related: Twitter Launches Cheesy Ad Campaign To Explain What Twitter Is

Look, you guys. Things remain bad with the housing! We know all the ugliness that's out there! But must people really get on Craigslist and post things like this, which are clearly fake, just in an effort to make everyone feel that much worse.

Two different people have sent this ad to our inbox today, and I'm not buying it. Also, the "Reply" button to send an email to this landlord does not work.

That is not to say that a few people did not consider it today, clicking that button out of desperation, or just out of curiosity to see if some asshole would really try to rent to this torture attic for $2,000 and call it a "charming studio" with a "bathroom" and "kitchenette" without even bothering to paint it. Some of you might have even thought, "Maybe there's a window," or "I could paint that and it might not be so awful." For all of you, I am very sorry.

Whatever. Anything is possible. But I don't have time for your games. April Fool's Day is on Friday, and I won't be reposting your fake crap then, either.

Update: Yep — reverse-image-search that pic and you can find it being used in this 2012 French article about the "Sovietization of housing" in France.

David Murphy has a problem. It's not a big problem, but it's a problem. It's his license plate. A lot of people think that, after looking at it, he's a troll. Wrong! His license plate, which reads "TROLOLO," is actually in reference to Mr. Trololo, the onomatopoeic nickname of Eduard Khil, a Russian crooner turned internet meme. And Murphy, a tech writer in Silicon Valley, has a singing voice that resembles Khil's, which prompted his pals to give him the personalized plate for his birthday. Sweet, right? Well, not to the many rabid Reddit readers who foolishly mistook Murphy's plate as a proud proclamation of trollism.

Murphy writes about his experience in an article for BuzzFeed:

The Reddit post was not a compliment. The title: “This guy cut me off today in Palo Alto. At first, I was mad...then, I was totally okay with it.” It hyperlinked directly to an Imgur-hosted photo of my car, taken during my drive home from work from earlier that evening.

The image had more than 160,000 views. The thread, more than 182 comments. (Today it has over 424,000 views and over 200 comments.)

I have thick Internet skin. I live a fairly open Web life. I don’t lock down my Facebook. I don’t care who sees what I post on other social media. So it wasn’t the occasional Reddit comments about my driving skills that bothered me — apparently, “Trololo” has been more of a California driver lately than a grandmother. Or comments that I was “ probably a total db” and a “scumbag. Or even the Internet Tough Guy who thought someone should “smash [my] fucking windshield in.” Suck on a downvote.

Egads.

Soon after the post went live, some Reddit readers suggested forming a hit squad "to track [Murphy] down," collecting data on all sightings of the car, keying his vehicle, and (worst of all) figuring out where he lives and works. Close readings have never been this scary. In the end, though, Murphy got rid of the license plate out of understandable fear. "I turned my plates into the DMV two days after the post hit Reddit. Now it’s the next Trololo's problem to deal with," he writes.

In an interesting twist, the original Reddit poster was also a tech writer. Read all about it.

[BuzzFeed]

Yeah. This is a day late. Digesting solid food was a fresh and exciting experience for us, so most of our Thanksgiving was busy doing that. Anyway.

This year we weren't sure for what to be most thankful. The choices were aplenty: mentally-challenged PR people? The chronic stupidity of certain Chronicle editors who angrily "demand" SFist reveal their sources? Civic leaders turning into Norma Desmond before our eyes. Baskets of fried pickles? Clemency reports?

All of those moments were golden.

But what we've been most appreciative of this year? SFist commenters.

No, really.

Your comments have done an awe-inspiring job of showing just how readers add to a story's richness. Many of you have typed out more intelligent, more thoughtful, more fiery, and more humorous supplements than the actual posts.

You guys -- oh my God, no wait, seriously -- rock the site. Most of you don't use the threads to pimp your sites. You (try to) keep name-calling, death threats, and racial slurs to a minimum. You represent different views on the political and social spectrum. You don't bullshit readers with incestuous oh-my-what-an-informative-post comments like other sites. In fact, most of you fucking loathe us. (Speaking of which, to the scant handful of you we had to ban this year: that was just icing on the schadenfreude cake.)

Thanks a whole bunch. And on that note: flame away.