Monica Lewinsky: TIME's 'Person of the Year' title should go to Internet trolls

Updated

On Wednesday, Donald Trump was named Time's 'Person of the Year.' Monica Lewinsky, in a Vanity Fair piece, suggested her own preference for the title.

She wrote, "If Time Magazine had asked my opinion about their Person of the Year (and they didn't), I would have told them: The Trolls. If you've been on the Internet at all this year, you probably know that an Internet troll is a person who promotes discord by purposefully posting inflammatory comments or content."

Lewinsky further noted, "It's not as if 2016 gave birth to the troll...But this year they sprouted and proliferated, passed a tipping point, and ran rampant across the Web."

RELATED: Donald Trump is named Time's Person of the Year 2016

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As part of the solution, she suggested better tools by major social media companies to flag and monitor abusive behavior online.

Additionally, Lewinsky said, "...we can consider engendering empathic responses and creating environments in social media that, from their initial designs, foster support, compassion, and community. Bake empathy into the cake rather than frosting it later. "

RELATED: Monica Lewinsky through the years

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