For the people closest to Christopher Bouzy, like his wife Jennifer, the battles he wages against trolls online can be both captivating and devastating to watch. “It’s fun when he mops the floor with them,” she said. “I’m really proud! I’m like, ‘Yeah! Get them.’ But it’s stressful. Especially when they put out your address and all this other information. Anybody else probably would have had a breakdown by now. But he’s strong. He can take it.”

Bouzy is the founder and director behind the four-year-old anti-hate research organization Bot Sentinel. For him, the back-and-forth with online haters, the regular smear campaigns and doxxing, even the police showing up at his front door—all of it comes with the job. “It’s impossible to completely stop the targeted attacks. It’s just the nature of the internet,” he said. “But we’re not even doing the bare minimum right now. It is completely out of control. If the platforms actually enforced their own rules, we’d be better off. But they have no incentive to do that.”