Trolls can be hunted down, rooted out. Why aren’t social media giants doing it?

Last May investigators at Sportradar, who spend most of their time identifying match-fixing, conducted a pilot scheme at two exhibition tennis tournaments where they tracked down trolls.

Those targeted included Taylor Townsend, who was abused by six trolls because of her skin colour, and a male tennis star who was threatened with physical violence against himself and his girlfriend. In total 44 people sent abusive messages to players during those weeks. Sportradar tracked down 21 of them.

They then alerted the appropriate authorities and helped them pursue an appropriate course of action – from kicking the trolls off social media platforms to working with law enforcement to bring legal proceedings. Of course the response was different depending on the severity of the threat and location. But it helped the victims feel as if someone was watching their backs.

  Then the authorities would be alerted. [...] A flight of fancy? Perhaps. But it is not as ridiculous as it sounds. 

Is the author correct in thinking that sounds 'ridiculous' to many readers? If someone seriously harasses or threatens you in virtually any other situation (eg: telephone, snail mail, face-to-face) it's no surprise to involve the police.

If big tech is evil.

Why would anyone support granting them additional power to randomly hunt people down without accountability or oversight.

why would they hunt their largest content providers?

Without trolls world would be tedious.