
On All That Fuckery - idan
https://www.tinykat.cafe/on-all-that-fuckery
======
codingunicorn
Thanks for writing this. As a female developer with 60K followers on
Instagram, I went through all this:

– “Programmers don’t look like that!” – “You’re fake. Some dude writes your
content.” – “Are you a model or a coder?”

Bullies are not happiest people on the planet: some of them have been harassed
or bullied by their parents, in schools etc. I discovered the hard way that
when I pay back with the hate, it makes me feel bad and also feeds their hate.
The hardest and probably wisest solution is to respond with love to those
unhappy folks. Or not responding at all. It's very hard, but it works.

– Julia

------
noneeeed
I never stop being amazed by how much time and energy people will put into
being awful to other people.

It's so frustrating that after being in this industry for over 20 years
nothing's really improved, and far too many arseholes are still getting a free
pass for their arseholery.

~~~
tluyben2
It's getting worse. It used to be socially inadequate highly educated geeks
who thought it was funny and/or couldn't really cope with anything other than
highly intelligent white males. Now it's far broader than that. Logically
because non-phd's can (luckily) work with computers and enter the industry
now, but it has the good and bad side effect that people who I would not have
to mingle with and who would've never made it to software developer 30 years
ago, now suddenly are clients/colleagues etc. This means a rather large (and
growing) share of racists, bigots, white supremacists (I thought those were
some kind of fringe types living in the woods but then suddenly some rather
good coder starts to talk politics to you...) and such. And a lot of guys I
know act like they see women coders as equals, but from their subtle (and not
so subtle sometimes) actions show they really don't, even while she might have
superior skills/experience.

------
squibbles
Free speech is a noble ideal, but it seems like the current implementation of
the Internet has turned that ideal on its head.

Yes, everyone should be able to say whatever they want to say, but no one
should be forced to hear it. The way we implement discussion forums, chats,
issue trackers, wikis, etc. is perhaps giving too many privileges to the mob.

I am partial to the idea of someone getting to decide, in advance, who they
can see or hear. Letting the mob in, and then muting or banning after the fact
can be exploited too easily.

~~~
serf
>I am partial to the idea of someone getting to decide, in advance, who they
can see or hear.

Who decides? Why were they chosen? How were they vetted? Is the vetting
process continuous throughout their stay?

In other words: What checks and balances are in place to make sure they don't
abuse the position for the advantage or disadvantage of a group due to
personal motivation?

The idea of a constant lifetime blacklist/whitelist makes me envision a world
filled with small echo-chambers, all supportive of their own ideas, and filled
with ire towards anything they view as opposition.

~~~
gnat
I believe you misunderstand the post you replied to. I understand it to mean
"I want control over what I see" (i.e, the author is the "someone" who should
decide what they see). We had whitelists and blacklists back in Usenet days,
and they let you plonk bozos just fine.

------
throwaway77384
I keep thinking back of the days of the wild west of the internet, when I was
a teenager. Back then, 'trolling' felt like it was done in 'good spirit', and
it seemed as though everyone was sort of 'in on it', maybe because people
shared similar values and knew there was no ill-intent behind the 'trolling'
of the old days. But at some point (and I suspect it has something to do with
money, as always), it turned into a weird team-sport. And political. It's no
longer acceptable and needs to end.

~~~
dencodev
I was a little shit as a teenager and I hate that I was. Trolling was only "in
good spirit" because I was a heartless asshole that completely lacked empathy
for others. What comes to mind to me as the epitome of my teenage years was
thinking this was funny:

[https://www.somethingawful.com/news/were-all-
gonna/](https://www.somethingawful.com/news/were-all-gonna/)

A writer for the SA website made fun a website of a mother who was grieving
her stillborn children. Forget any opinion you might have about the mother or
her presentation: this a woman who had several children die before she ever
got to know them. It's potentially one of the most traumatic things that can
happen to someone, and this writer decided to ridicule how this mother
grieved:

>Your poison womb is making heaven too fucking crowded.

I hate myself that I thought this was funny. I hate that I used words to
belittle the LGBTQ community. I hate that I was that edgelord that held to
statistics about crime rates and intelligence as they related to race. I hate
that I made fun of people for their sexuality. I hate that I discounted
sexism, racism, and ableism.

It was never in good fun. Some people grow out of it and others don't. I am
still working constantly to better myself and catch myself when I have
prejudice thoughts.

~~~
AgentME
I think a lot of people online don't understand how to get attention besides
by acting outrageous like this. Getting attention online by doing something
good that everyone else is doing is really hard. A lot of people seek out the
seemingly underemployed strategy of doing the outrageous things that others
aren't.

Maybe it's got to do with the fact we're competing with everyone online for
attention, and the issue could be helped if more activity was in smaller
clusters, where people didn't have to resort to outrageous strategies to get
attention because there's less competition. (Discord servers provide one
specific example of what I'm thinking of.) But it seems like as long as the
global cluster exists too, people will seek attention on it too for its
greater rewards, unless there's something about the smaller clusters that's
even more rewarding.

~~~
hatenberg
Thats exactly why you hand out bans or send the teenager to timeout - it
teaches them that bad attention seeking is not desirable and not rewarded with
attention.

The internet lost the lesson some time ago because even bad attention is good
attention when it comes to KPIs. More sharing is good sharing.

------
onion2k
Charlie Gerard made a Github Action recently that uses tensorflow's toxicity
classifier to block some of the more horrible PRs and comments on repos -
[https://github.com/charliegerard/safe-
space](https://github.com/charliegerard/safe-space) \- it'd be good if Github
could roll something like that out across the entire platform.

~~~
Qub3d
While neat, this seems like an even more protracted version of the Scunthorpe
problem just waiting to happen. We already know mass-automation of morals is
problematic (see YouTube, Twitter, Facebook et al's attempts).

This stuff is deplorable, but for now it requires human eyeballs and
judgement. Perhaps allow for more granularity on repo visibility and
interactivity beyond public/private.

~~~
onion2k
_We already know mass-automation of morals is problematic (see YouTube,
Twitter, Facebook et al 's attempts)._

This is different. On Facebook, Twitter etc is that they're trying to use AI
to automate detecting _general speech_. That's a hard problem. PRs and
comments on GitHub aren't really general speech, which simplifies the issue,
and GitHub already has access to billions of legitimate PRs to use as a
dataset for training. It is at least worth exploring.

I'll also add that while I think such an automated system should be opt-out by
default for public repos there absolutely _should_ be an opt-out if people
want to use one.

------
maest
I'm curious, what did the poster do to cause 4chan/trols to focus on her?

I know she pointed out some stuff in her article (she's a woman, mixed asian
background, lists her pronouns on her page), but, usually, there's some sort
of inciting incident that causes people to dogpile.

To ward off any non-constructive replies, I'll point out from the beggining
that I'm not blaming her of anything, and the trolls are _obviously_ in the
wrong here.

~~~
tomatotomato37
You can trace it yourself by using one of the 4chan archives, but to save you
the trouble it started over someone complaining about GitHub having a readme
page with a random profile as the example pic, other users looked up that
profile, at which point the usual 4chan process took over. Also something
about food pics.

[https://rbt.asia/g/thread/76729744/](https://rbt.asia/g/thread/76729744/)

[https://rbt.asia/g/thread/76735740/](https://rbt.asia/g/thread/76735740/)

------
educationcto
Thank you for documenting and sharing your experience. Nobody should have to
go through that yet it happens every day, over and over.

~~~
uniqueid
Yes, because we designed the internet and web "wrong". I've commented with my
opinion on this, here on HN, before. In my opinion, the world should have two
internets: the current internet, and a "safe for life" internet.

The former would serve as a staging area and playground for new features. Just
as the internet does today, it would provide, roughly speaking, no
accountability and no security. My guess is that its main audience would be
high-school seniors and college-age kids. In addition, you'd have a minority
of techies, and — yes — some vile wingnuts.

The "safe for life" internet's network-layer would have baked-in
authentication (eg: part of your IP is a user-id). It would have a protocol
for notarization (ie: the ability to have a third party vouch for information.
eg: the choice to tie your real name to your user-id, or remain pseudonymous).
Its "web" markup would be far simpler and more semantic (no per-site styles,
no dynamic features, no scripting).

When someone invents a very useful web feature/paradigm on the _old_
internet/web, the _new_ internet's web-standard could add special tags to
support it. So, for example, the NewW3C could introduce a set of "store-front"
tags with which one could create an entire online-store _without any
scripting_. The NewW3C would include all sorts of functionality, eg: tags to
host a Twitch-like site to stream video, _with no JS whatsoever_.

With this sort of accountability, the alternate internet would finally provide
the ability to effectively moderate — bad actors wouldn't easily "respawn" a
sockpuppet or bot account, to evade a ban. It would make commerce and data-
sharing much safer (via the lack of dynamic features).

The situation today is absurd. What content do we want the web to promote:
interesting photos of Japanese food, by a serious developer... or hackneyed
ramblings by a bunch of 20-year old trolls? The internet we have today is
"wrong" for most people.

~~~
aembleton
This is an interesting idea, but it wouldn't have helped in this case. The
trolling on Github was using a logged in account; this would exist within the
"safe internet". The co-ordination of this occurred in 4chan, which would
likely be in the "unsafe internet".

With your proposal, the trolling would still happen, but it might have been
harder for her to track down where it was coming from.

Trolling is a societal issue, not a technological one.

~~~
uniqueid

      it wouldn't have helped in this case.
    

I'm not certain that is the case.

    
    
      The trolling on Github was using a logged in account
    

Except, if Github bans the user, that user (the actual human being, not their
worthless handle) is gone — banned _permanently_. That's both a disincentive,
_and_ a rate-limiter.

Also, if the abuse is egregious enough (ie: a death threat), the troll is now
in legal peril. The cost/benefit of reporting a troll to the police (even
under a pseudonym) on the new internet is much more attractive. Currently,
trying to track down an IP is fairly worthless. It's not tightly-coupled to a
human being.

    
    
      Trolling is a societal issue, not a technological one. 
    

We disagree on this, but — let's be honest — there's no way to prove either
position conclusively. I'm tempted to bombard you comparisons and contrasts
from the various historical periods, but I doubt it would convince you. There
are myriad counter-examples with which you could reply.

My take is that the internet, in its current form, enforces so little
accountability, that it gives bad actors far more power than good actors.

------
itronitron
Excellent post. Whenever I see the full extent of harassment that an
acquaintance endures it usually turns out to be far more than I assumed. So if
someone you know is dealing with this keep in mind that there is probably a
lot more than they are initially letting on.

------
catbuttes
Normally I don't support going to peoples employers for shit they do outside
of working hours, but I am willing to bet that some of those fucknuggets were
using work email addresses/accounts. If I was their boss I would want
Kat/Github to reach out and let me know about this.

By using their work accounts, they are stating that the company condones their
behaviour - and I suspect that isn't the case in the majority of cases. I
would definitely want to know if any of my employees were engaging in this
shit so I could explain in very simple terms why it is unacceptable - because
they clearly don't get it on their own.

~~~
ramraj07
I went through a couple of these GitHub usernames, they are all first deleted,
but there's some presence in other sites, and it's clear that none of them
likely hold a regular job in any place of consequence. One of these accounts
seems to spend time finding other female GitHub accounts and making
condescending PRs while another was busy on far right subreddits crapping on
various groups of people.

~~~
iagovar
Do yourself a favor and don't contribute to another history of $regular_dude
who got fired/life ruined because his account/name was similar to someone
else's in the Internet.

~~~
schwartzworld
when has that happened before?

------
TurkishPoptart
>I also received an email from what appears to be an MRAsian... It's sadly not
uncommon to see Asian men upholding white supremacy and targeting Asian women
for living our damn lives.

This is a bit fishy. The email sender was asking her opinion on certain
matters related to racial politics, and our dear author just accused him/them
of "upholding white supremacy". This makes me lose sympathy for the author
here.

~~~
eutropia
I think you and author have different connotations of white supremacy. It
seems to me as though you are thinking Skinheads, KKK, etc.

In typical equity/inclusivity language, the breadth of White Supremacy goes a
lot farther. It's similar in concept to Structural Racism -- It's not that the
MRAsian emailer literally supports Nazis, it's that they're parroting
political and societal points that were created as a result of the White
Supremacy being the default state in the USA.

White Supremacy (i.e, Whites, and in particular, (rich) White Males being the
defacto "person" that US policy and culture was/is created for) is essentially
the state of the world after centuries of actions and policy based on the idea
that the White Man is most deserving the fruits of the world, and that their
place must be defended from colored people and women. White Supremacy will
remain a fact until the long and hard work of including and raising all other
people up to the same level of consideration and opportunity is complete, and
society stops transmitting toxic memes which are rooted in it.

At least, this is how I understand it. (as a member of the most privileged
class; happy to be educated by someone more knowledgeable than I)

------
mrkwse
I think the call for action by teams/management to ensure sufficient support
(including time off) is a really important one. Lots of organisations are
investing time and effort into trying to build a more diverse workforce, but
the bulk of that attention tends to be in hiring, rather than retaining and
supporting minority groups in the workforce.

------
teraku
Lots of energy and thanks for taking the time to protocol your experiences!

Stay strong!

The amount of malice is just very sad

------
D13Fd
This sounds awful and she obviously does not deserve this. No one does or
could. These people attacking her are being absolutely horrible and
disgustingly wrong. It's sickening.

I hope that one day their employers (and really, their friends and family) end
up finding out the kinds of things they have been saying. It's a lot harder to
be a horrible racist bigot in real life than it is to be a semi-anonymous one
on the internet.

That said, I would have liked to see more in the "so why me?" section. There
are other Asian women in tech, and her "radical" profile honestly seems pretty
mundane to me. It's definitely possible that she was just targeted at random
like she suggests, but it would be nice if she linked the threads (in addition
to screenshotting them) or otherwise provided some more context.

~~~
reeestandard
She mentioned giving talks, and those are floating around online, as well as a
decent twitter following. Chances are they just stumbled upon her randomly and
decided that pure vitriol was the natural response, as is the way with certain
communities.

~~~
D13Fd
I'd still rather hear her thoughts than guess.

------
peltier
Nobody deserves all that fuckery.

Interesting read.

------
BTCOG
You are never going to be able to control others' speech. The internet went
wrong in my opinion when folks started using their real identity and their
real life information. When I was growing up and getting online in the early
90's it was the most common of knowledge to use a handle, and never endanger
yourself or contaminate your real life with your online persona. I have an
ongoing theory that quite a lot of modern day anxiety and stress levels is due
to making this switch to always being connected to online conversations with
your real identity that you cannot back out of or turn off.

All that aside and not trying to go really in depth into that whole pocket
theory of mine, it's the same as in real life, it's just amplified. You can't
do a whole lot about other's opinions about you, or what they say to you and
if you're online and you become a target for any reason it just becomes
something you have to deal with on your own terms.

It's nasty, it's petty and it's a hurtful thing to continually attack someone
else, but it's the internet. All celebrities deal with the way they are talked
about online in their own terms. You do understand all the mainstream Brad
Pitts, Britney Spears and whoever get death/sexist/racial harassment all the
time as well I assume. It's being a public persona that now becomes the
problem. You are willingly putting yourself out there where essentially
millions of people can online swarm you. It's a responsibility to have all
your personal information online, and to talk about what you like, who you
are, hobbies and passions and associate these things to your identity on
platforms in which millions can hate/obsess/harass.

I think it's a very serious mental and social problem, a load that is taxing
the entire human psyche right now. It's obvious to me what this is doing to
humans, with everyone trying to be a public celebrity for likes and fans. I
don't think it's good.

------
ggm
ICT has a huge problem. We've been collectively in denial about it for far too
long. My cohort at compsci classes in uni was a class of ten, in an industry
only 20-30 years deep at best and already the gender ratio was in decline.
(This is the seventies)

I might say I think gamer culture is bound up in this but it's not just about
that. Something very toxic is empowered by current s/W engineering.

I'm retiring inside ten years. I worry it won't be fixed before I leave the
field.

~~~
enriquto
What's ICT?

~~~
jjgreen
It's what UK schools called IT when it entered the school curriculum. Not
really sure what motivated the C, maybe it justified classes using the nascent
web.

~~~
ggm
Communications. I used it, because "software engineer" is too specific,
"engineer" is too broad, and we now have sociologists, artists, AI
theoreticians, mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists, VLSI design and
layout specialists, systems management, network administration, protocol
design....

ICT is a useful umbrella term. I do not believe it is UK specific or School
specific.

------
inshadows
> Fix. This. Shit.

Not trying to defend the bullies but people shit talking on Internet is pretty
common thing. If you decide to share your photos and lifestyle, that is if you
open the gate to your private space, you have to account for consequences.
People mocked other people before the dawn of Internet and unless there's
verifiable harm being done I think this should fall under freedom of speech.
It was her decision to go public with her private life. I don't see any way to
fix this except being tied into mind rewriting program like in Clockwork
Orange. If people mock you behind your back, that's life. You may as well
ignore them.

------
iagovar
> Fix. This. Shit.

How? I mean, what do you suggest?

> It's a white supremacy problem.

US Cultural hegemony is inevitable, but please, try to contain this stuff in
your anglo world, everytime it spills over other countries it's not an
improvement.

~~~
lvturner
She's already done step one - highlighted the issue - I had _no_ idea this
kind of behaviour was prevalent and if I ever caught one of my employees
engaging in it, they'd be out the door.

~~~
iagovar
This issues have been highlighted by at least a decade now, when I started to
read english media and sites. If you had no idea, then congratulations, you
saved yourself a lot of drama.

------
dakial1
Free speech shouldn't be anonymous speech. You can say what you think, but you
should be ready to face the consequences of it as the view society has on you
will change. Also I think not all kinds of speech should be free. Racism and
hate speech should be something to be clearly defined and prohibited (in my
country, Brazil, Racism is a crime with clear consequences).

------
Wald76
I’m so sorry people have to suffer from such awful behavior.

Last year a troll at my company Slacked his friend a horribly misogynistic
remark about a women’s mentorship group meeting. But by mistake, he sent it on
the general channel. Within minutes he was fired and escorted out the door by
security.

------
fellellor
It’s alarming that github is being used for this bullshit. 4chan is a pile of
trash anyway, but GitHub is supposed to be different. This makes me fearful
for the future and very sad that people are being harassed in professional
platforms like this.

------
drcongo
Seems there's enough of these kind of trolls on HN too for this to get
flagged. Maybe even some of the same people.

~~~
thinkingemote
I think this is uncharitable and paints users of HN who want to avoid flame as
to enemy. Furthermore as shown in the article trolls are happy to comment with
their real accounts. Even furthermore an internet troll craves attention.
Therefore the very last thing they want is for this to be flagged.

~~~
drcongo
The alternative is that there's enough people on here who find it
uncomfortable when the spotlight is turned on the misogyny and racism that
they share, that they flag this kind of article every single time one comes
up. It's embarrassing for the community, because tech is deeply toxic and HN,
arguably the biggest, most respected tech community online, shuts down every
discussion of that toxicity among us. Every time this happens, I lose a little
more respect for my fellow HN users, and care less about getting downvoted for
calling it out.

~~~
dang
> shuts down every discussion of that toxicity

That's far from accurate. There have been many major discussions.

It's true that some people feel that those topics are underrepresented, but
that's because _every_ topic is felt to be underrepresented, including the
most common topics. It seems to be a consequence of front page space being
such a scarce resource [1]. Sometimes people even end up with the idea that
the most-commonly-discussed topics are actually being "aggressively removed
from discussion" [2].

It's true that users sometimes flag articles that don't deserve to be flagged.
We sometimes turn flags off on those. We don't always do that, because not
every article on a given topic (e.g. misogyny or racism) is equally likely to
support a meaningful discussion.

[1]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962)

------
theshadowknows
I’ve always wondered if internet trolls are all 14 y/o boys or if some of them
are like legal adults. The constructions and logic they use are are so
simplistic. Is there a pervasive mental disorder common among trolls? Or are
they all just a bunch of bad people?

------
mrlonglong
It's sickening.:-( To see so much hate directed at women.

------
ncmncm
This mystifies me.

They have accounts on Github. Does Github not have any sort of code-of-
conduct? If not, why not?

------
DC-3
It's insecurity. I browse /g/ sometimes and while there's some very talented
and interesting engineers there, there's also a lot of people who are trying
to get into programming because it's the path of least resistance for a
socially awkward young white guy who spends 18 hours a day on a computer. I
think these vitriolic threads mostly involve this latter group of users.

Unfortunately not everyone is disposed towards becoming a good programmer and
these guys don't tend to have the best study skills or work ethic anyway, so
they often struggle to acquire the skills that they believe are their only way
of finding success in life. This causes them to lash out with great ferocity
at people who are both technologically able and socially graceful - especially
women and non-white people. It infuriates them that these normies with
friendship groups and romantic partners and progressive political views are
able to do the things that they are inclined to believe are the sole preserve
of the lonely basement dwelling nerd, and do those things much better than
they can. So they convince themselves that when a non-white woman gets hired
in tech it's all the fault of the (((diversity thought police))) and that
she's actually a technological incompetent, because to believe otherwise would
shatter their world view and force them to come to terms with their own
mediocrity.

~~~
b0rsuk
You're employing the tactic of "poisoning the well", which is a pre-emptive
personal attack. Many programmers are introverts, and you calling them
antisocial basement dwelling nerds is just a hostile stereotype. There is no
way extroverts are inherently better than introverts. I don't like the false
dichotomy you're implying. Also, making people "guilty" by association. Also,
dehumanizing while taking high moral ground.

Downvoting you, and I'm saying this openly because I despise cowardly
anonymous ostracism present on sites like this. Sometimes I wish all
downvoting was done with stating the reason.

There were civil ways you could have described these behaviors, but you
didn't. For example covert narcissisim, passive aggressive. I have some covert
narcissist traits, but at least I'm trying.

~~~
DC-3
I didn't mention introversion and I didn't imply all introverts are antisocial
basement dwelling nerds. I'm just describing a particular class of /g/ users
and the attitudes they hold.

------
Toutouxc
You can say from the language in those screenshots that at least some of the
bullies are not from the US. I don't really know how the US racial 'dynamics'
work and feel, as I don't live there, so I'm not taking sides here.

There's just one thing I would like to bring your attention to.

I'm a white guy, born and raised in Europe, in an almost all-white country (+
Vietnamese and Gypsy minorities, but basically no big racial tensions). In my
20-thousand-people hometown there was a black guy and everyone knew him by
name, because he was THE black guy. My country had been through fourty years
of communism, then had a revolution and then went through a slow, uphill
struggle to become a modern country where people vote in free elections every
few years, have MacBooks and drive BMWs too fast. The living standard isn't
exactly like Germany or the Great Britain, but we manage.

And yet, every time I go online, there are people talking about "white
supremacy". About "white privilege". People blaming the whites for slavery and
wars, people saying whites are responsible for everything bad that has ever
happened to the blacks. There are people who get so offended about everything
they slightly disagree with, who are so sensitive and self-righteous, they
wouldn't even be taken seriously in my country.

To a white person whose ancestors never took part in any colonialism or
slavery, the internet feels pretty hostile and just as judgemental as those
4chan weirdos. I don't like feeling guilty and being judged just because I
don't support BLM, don't condemn Trump or don't care for "diversity" in
companies whose products I use.

I don't vote in your elections, I'm not the one who doesn't greet your black
neighbor, I didn't install an obscure bipartisan system in your country.

I don't feel guilty, yet every time I try to express any of those opinions
online I get downvoted into oblivion by a US-centric virtue signalling mob.

I understand the world is a complicated place and I kind of let it fly, but
there are people getting slowly pushed over the edge by the hostility and
shaming.

Here's a link [0] to a news site discussion under a BLM related article. The
opinions expressed there are pretty much in unison with what I hear from
people around me.

[0]
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=cs&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=cs&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.idnes.cz%2Fzpravy%2Fzahranicni%2Fseattle-
usa-black-lives-matter-cernosi-bydleni-
gentrifikace.A200819_162800_zahranicni_jhr%2Fdiskuse)

~~~
aasasd
What you're seeing is utter dominance of the US over English-language web.
It's like people in the UK, Canada, Australia and company barely ever post on
the web, and Europeans just hang out on local sites instead. Hence, English-
language web is pretty much ‘US web’, and US politics is all over it.

Ironically, you're posting this on a California-specific site where even other
US people complain of too-local content and discussion.

Among top non-regional sites, one that has more Europeans than Americans is
9GAG—but I doubt it that it's very interesting to grownups.

~~~
BTCOG
I'd disagree and say that what we are seeing with all the constant talk about
racism and over sensitivity to every little thing that can be turned into an
offense of the most egregious nature, is the loudest victim using nasty speech
to strongly convey negative-attention seeking behaviors. This is at global
scale even if it started from the US social media.

------
square_usual
This has been flagged, and I would like to speak to why it _shouldn 't_ have
been. HackerNews is a site for hackers, and among hackers there is still a
wide cohort of people who will absolutely deny that women face (and more
generally, marginalised people) do not face hate for who they are. This ought
to stay up, just so we have another very visible example of what tonnes of
people go through.

~~~
waihtis
Per the guidelines, hacker news is a "site for things that hackers might find
interesting."

Based on that, having the sufficient amount of flaggings suggests that hackers
do not find this interesting.

I see why it is important to highlight this, but don't see a reason why HN is
the right place for it.

~~~
monkin
Because it talks about harassment in IT? Those trolls or “kids” as few people
names them, are in most cases HN target audience. :)

~~~
waihtis
> Those trolls or “kids” as few people names them, are in most cases HN target
> audience. :)

Not that I've spent a meaningful amount of time on any "chan", but based on my
limited understanding just reducing HN and 4chan into "tech sites" is
insufficient.

Again, the flaggings are the obvious signal of what interests people here. Why
enforce arbitrary moderation on top?

~~~
monkin
Yes, for me it’s obvious signal that most of them was hurt by this. It’s not
about interest.

~~~
waihtis
> It’s not about interest.

How do you know?

Example: I flag, on every opportunity, posts related to US politics. It's not
because I'm "hurt" or annoyed by US politics, it's because I have close to
zero interest in them and don't want that to be a content category that takes
up space in HN from the actual interesting stuff.

I bet many feel the same for posts about social issues like this, _whether it
's morally right or wrong._

~~~
monkin
This social issue is tied with IT, HN and communities/companies alike. It
shouldn’t be flagged because it’s hard for many, it should be talked about.
Women in tech are treated like second class citizens.

But maybe i spent too much time in tech social media and I see those patterns
regularly. Eg. Abuse woman online, if she starts talking about it, discredit
her skills, and try to humiliate as much as possible, presenting it as a
snowflake kind of attitude.

All of this is typical “nice guy” kind of shit.

~~~
BTCOG
This is not an issue tied to IT any more than it's an issue tied to a corner
store gas station. You cannot regulate morality.

------
mijndert
How is this post flagged.

~~~
KKPMW
I am glad it was flagged.

People are mainly talking about US politics here. And look at the discussion.
Every different opinion is downvoted and dead.

~~~
justusw
How is gender bias, discrimination and online harassment US politics? Can you
point out something in this discussion to me that gives you the impression
that this is _mainly_ about US politics? Because I was not under that
impression at all.

~~~
KKPMW
All of those harassments and trolling mainly happens as a back and forth
between two streams of culture within the USA. And typically revolves around
the topics of: "Black lives matter", "Racism", "Sexism in tech", "Transphobia"
\- all these things are internal US politics stuff.

From the perspective of where I live (Eastern Europe):

"Black lives matter" \- We have very few black people living here. And very
few problems with police in general. When something bad happens it typically
happens to the police, not by the police.

"Racism" \- we have no history of slavery nor racism, except being subjected
to it. Even more - originally the word "slave" was derived from the word
"slav".

"Sexism in tech" \- there is no sexism in tech here. Tech is not even a
prestigious field. People want to work in law, medicine and finance. Some can
even be quite ashamed to admit they work in a technical field.

"Transphobia" \- even such things as thinking about "sex" and "gender" as
different concepts are quite US specific. i.e. where I live we typically refer
to people by their sex, and don't even have a term for a separate concept like
gender.

Yet these things are so pervasive on the internet. People even post their
pronouns on twitter and (in this case) fill their GitHub profiles with that
stuff. They can do it of course, it might even be a good thing to do. But I do
not think this deserves a front page of HN. Hence why I am glad it was
flagged.

~~~
eesmith
"all these things are internal US politics stuff"

I do not believe your statement is correct.

Literally the first search I did was "police Poland" in a DDG news search on
DDG and the third link was to earlier this month
[https://www.out.com/news/2020/8/10/polands-stonewall-
police-...](https://www.out.com/news/2020/8/10/polands-stonewall-police-
attack-and-arrest-queer-protestors) titled "Poland's Stonewall: Police Attack
and Arrest Queer Protestors" :

> Nearly 50 people were arrested following the arrest of trans activist
> Malgorzata Szutowicz, better known as Margot, on Friday. The protests come
> amidst a rise in homophobic hate and rhetoric, and the recent re-election of
> President Duda who called LGBTQ+ rights a foreign ideology that seeks to
> destroy basic Polish values.

Or from
[https://euobserver.com/justice/149112](https://euobserver.com/justice/149112)
:

> Police were also investigating a separate case, in which a man on a balcony,
> next to a rainbow flag, grabbed his crotch during a World War II memorial
> march last weekend, Marczak said earlier. ...

> "No democratic country should allow the kind of incidents we saw, in which
> police enters people's private homes," [Rafał Trzaskowski] added, referring
> to police efforts to stop the balcony protester last weekend.

A DDG news search for "racism in Bulgaria" (literally my second search)
includes this summary at [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
europe-50060759](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50060759) about
repeated racism by Bulgian football fans.
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/20/bulgaria-
sofia...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/20/bulgaria-sofia-racism-
roma-everybody-hates-us-anti-gypsy-abuse) points out "While racist abuse of
players inside stadiums attracts attention outside Bulgaria, within the
country it is the Roma who are the principal targets of thugs in black and men
in suits."

A DDG news seach for "black lives matter Croatia" finds
[https://balkaninsight.com/2020/06/10/balkan-protesters-
show-...](https://balkaninsight.com/2020/06/10/balkan-protesters-show-
solidarity-with-black-lives-matter-movement/) where we read "Activists in
Zagreb, Belgrade, Podgorica, Warsaw and Sofia rallied to show solidarity but
also to point out the problem of racism and police violence in their own
countries. ... Dozens of people took part in a protest march in the
Montenegrin capital Podgorica on Monday evening. “There is no doubt that
racists are also hiding among all our local Balkan fascists.“"

~~~
KKPMW
I do believe my statement is correct.

You find some articles via google search about things like "black lives
matter" in Croatia and claim it is relevant there somehow. There was a BLM
protest in Lithuania too (where I am from). There were maybe 10 black people
in that protest. Half of them when interviewed said they were traveling
through different countries (Estonia, Lithuania, Poland) to create and
initiate those protest. Then if you look at the people who attended - mostly
teenagers. When asked why they are attending this protest they came up with
"to show solidarity for US". Which is to say - they are being fed US politics
over the internet and found an opportunity to join an event here.

So that's how I see it. These US political things leak to other countries.
Through media, through twitter and instagram, and now even through HN.

~~~
eesmith
Are LGBTQ+ rights a foreign ideology that seek to destroy basic Polish values?

Is Malgorzata Szutowicz an Eastern European who thinks about "sex" and
"gender" as different concepts?

I quoted a BLM protesters as saying they were there "to show solidarity _but
also to point out the problem of racism and police violence in their own
countries_ ", which includes racism against the Roma people.

~~~
iagovar
Hammering it won't make your point across. Most of this issues are not really
very relevant to those societies. What you're looking for is activists (now
journalists) writing pieces, and drinking from US narratives.

People in other countries is worried because every time a problem is framed
under anglo-narrative constraints it becomes distorted, unnecessarily
confrontational, and it distracts media from talking about the real problems
people care about.

BLM protests in particular were weird in many places. In my city there was a
bunch of people (mostly whites) and it wasn't very well received, because
there were other very pressing issues (like people dying by the thousands by a
virus).

------
PeterKropotkin
Why is this flagged?

~~~
dang
Users flagged it. This is in the FAQ:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

 _What does [flagged] mean?_

 _It means that users flagged a post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise
not belonging on Hacker News._

 _Moderators sometimes add [flagged] for the same reasons, and sometimes turn
flags off when they are unfair._

------
joosters
The fact that this was flagged so quickly shows that HN and its readers are
part of the problem :(

------
appleflaxen
The behavior demonstrated by the mob is utterly abhorrent, and we should all
oppose it as vigorously as possible.

But the "suggestions" section is not constructive.

> When these events happen to your employees, are you investing actual money
> to support them?

I'm sorry, but you don't even know the human beings on my team.

> It's easy to dismiss these trolls as incel 4channers that we shun and don't
> associate with. Lol no. These are your people. They work at your companies
> and write your code. They are harassing or doxxing your other employees.
> This toxic behavior is still very much a part of your tech culture, and you
> keep rewarding it.

Well, after building an airtight case for incredibly gross behavior on the
part of the mob, you lost me completely. The implication is that "incel
4channers" _are_ mainstream programmers. They are not. Not even close. I have
worked with hundreds, and not one of them is like this. This is the vocal
minority that the internet enables to speak out of proportion to their
numbers, and make us all miserable. And the phenomenon of a vocal malignant
minority is present in every domain, so why are we making this about our
colleagues in the tech community?

No normal adult with a job, maybe a family, maybe a pet, and a million other
things to do has time for this. They are either children, or bitter social and
emotional pariahs.

I'm extremely sorry this talented programmer had to deal with them, but
becoming bitter only fuels their sense of importance.

The best revenge is living well.

~~~
Ndymium
> No normal adult with a job, maybe a family, maybe a pet, and a million other
> things to do has time for this.

This is simply not true. "Normal", regular people do this too. I remember a
while back a Finnish journalist wrote an article about meeting one of his
online abusers[1], who had - on a Finnish copy of 4chan - wished that an
immigrant would stab him and his whole family to death. Turned out the
offender was a regular family man with a job and young children. He could not
offer an explanation for his words and was not politically active.

These boards, their super hateful environment, and the presumed anonymity can
get even a normal person to sling online hate. Even this person in the article
said that his public persona in his normal life was completely different and
not representative of his online comments.

[1] [https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2019/05/30/nettivihaa-
tyossaan...](https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2019/05/30/nettivihaa-tyossaan-
kohtaava-sami-koivisto-tapasi-miehen-joka-toivoi-hanen) (in Finnish)

EDIT: Found it in English: [https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2019/11/06/face-to-
face-with-a...](https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2019/11/06/face-to-face-with-a-
man-who-wished-an-asylum-seeker-would-kill-my-family-the)

~~~
appleflaxen
that's really interesting. thanks for the relevant anecdote.

But say that guy works for me, and he is hiding his behavior well.

What am I supposed to do with that possibility?

~~~
mdoms
As an employer or manager frankly it's neither your responsibility nor your
business to investigate how your reports are spending their personal time.

First of all, don't lose any sleep over it. If one of your guys is a huge
troll it's not your fault that you didn't know. These assholes are going to
look like everyday normal people in RL. Secondly don't go snooping on your
employees without cause. This should go without saying.

