[geofft]

Yes, I agree, but there's still a humongous difference in scale - backchannels are not public posts, and "trolls" / harassers picking up on public information are different from "trolls" / harassers with direct connections to people with information on their targets.

"Both sides did it" isn't a defense (both sides can be wrong), and it's definitely not a defense if one side is doing it to a much larger and more organized scale than the other, and the other side is generally trying to do the right thing and happens to have some outside trolls who are being misguidedly sympathetic to the cause.