A young woman whose confrontation with a cyclist during Monday's Extinction Rebellion protest that shut down the Macdonald bridge was recorded and widely shared on social media has faced cyberbullying as a result.
However, the climate activist group wants to avoid exacerbating the situation by drawing more attention to the online trolls.
Patrick Yancey, spokesman for Extinction Rebellion Nova Scotia, said it was "really unfortunate" that the 17-year-old girl has been getting personal attacks.
"It was off to the side of the protest, but the conversation had become kind of escalated, and before it could be de-escalated, someone took a video of a little snippet of it and that video was shared profusely and used to personally attack one of the people in the conversation and we completely regret that," Yancey said in a telephone interview on Wednesday morning.
"We encourage everyone to stop engaging in that sort of thing."
He said Extinction Rebellion shared a post from climate activists involved in the Friday school strike the last week of September asking people to stop attacking the young woman and sharing the video but it had the opposite effect.
"What we were asking people to do was attracting a lot of abuse and cyberbullying in the comments, so we had to remove the post," Yancey said. "Facebook does not currently have the option to turn off comments on an individual post or page, unfortunately."
He said one of Extinction Rebellion's principles is respective and constructive discourse at all times.
"We regret that that conversation did escalate beyond that but we fully condemn cyberbullying and personal attacks on anyone in all of their forms," he said.
The Nova Scotia chapter is just one arm of the international activist group, which began in England last year in response to the climate crisis.
Monday's bridge closure in Halifax was one of several organized across the globe.
Police arrested 18 people at the protest in Halifax.
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