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    How One Man's Fight Against An AOL Troll Sealed The Tech Industry's Power

    A fight between a Seattle man and AOL in the mid-1990s led to what has been called "the most important Internet law ruling ever." Decades later, the decision still governs how the web functions.
    by Bobby Allyn May 11, 2021 5 minutes
    In 1995, an online troll impersonated Ken Zeran on AOL, posting tasteless ads with his phone number. Zeran sued AOL, and lost. The person behind the ads has never been identified.

    In April 1995, Ken Zeran's phone started ringing. And ringing. And ringing.

    "Lots of calls. It wasn't like every second. But it was just lots of calls," Zeran said in an interview with NPR.

    He ran a real estate magazine in Seattle. But his phone ringing off the hook had nothing to do with that — these callers were irate, often screaming.

    "'How could you do this? What a loser you are,'" he remembers them saying. "You can use your own sense and think of what they might be saying given what had just happened in Oklahoma City."

    What had just happened in Oklahoma City was a domestic terrorist attack at a federal building that left 168 people dead and rattled the nation.

    Unbeknownst to Zeran, an Internet troll fired up a dial-up modem and posted a message to America Online, now AOL, under

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