
Online shaming: The return of mob morality [video] - cperciva
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/online-shaming-the-return-of-mob-morality-1.3071354
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peteretep
There is a certain irony to Adria Richards, who got someone fired by online
shaming them[0], complaining about online shaming.

[0]
[https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/](https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/)

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cperciva
While I think it's entirely appropriate that she got fired over the incident,
nobody deserves the death and rape threats that she received.

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peteretep
I don't think anyone reasonable has suggested she _did_ deserve them.

The parent link however gives many more examples of her manufacturing and
building outrage to try and self-promote, and attempting to whip up the mob to
get her way.

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calibraxis
That's the thing. Adria Richards inhabits a world where many women — Kathy
Sierra, etc etc — get death and rape threats DAILY. To their families too.
SWAT teams ordered to their house.

As far as I'm concerned, Adria Richards did pretty much zero wrong. Such a
backwards world with its daily bullshit will get on your nerves and make you
snap one day.

No way in hell would I ever comment on whether Adria Richards was ever a less-
than-pleasant snowflake, because that'd make me part of the problem.

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littletimmy
> As far as I'm concerned, Adria Richards did pretty much zero wrong. Such a
> backwards world with its daily bullshit will get on your nerves and make you
> snap.

You can make that argument about literally anyone who is oppressed. A black
man in a ghetto might get tired of being in a shitty situation all his life
and "snap" to shoot up a police station. That does not mean he "did pretty
much zero wrong".

In general, your trials and tribulations should not become somebody else's
trials and tribulations. Adria Richards did a lot of wrong when she tried to
ruin someone else's life because she didn't find a joke funny. And no, saying
that does not make me "part of the problem".

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jellicle
> Adria Richards did a lot of wrong when she tried to ruin someone else's life

Since ludicrous lies like yours are so common, I feel compelled to reiterate
that the sum total of what Ms. Richards did was say something was "not cool"
and ask the convention organizers "Can someone talk to these guys about their
conduct?"

Those two direct quotes are the complete entirety of her actions against them.

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Aqueous
I think you have left out an important detail: She did so on Twitter. Because
it was on Twitter, at least one was (at least temporarily) let go from their
job (and has 3 kids).

Neither were given any opportunity to apologize, or to explain the perceived
offense. In that moment, she acted foolishly and irresponsibly and most
importantly publicly, without any regard for the lives of the people she was
acting against.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464](https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681)

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jellicle
> Because

Well, no. Because some manager somewhere decided to do something, something
happened. Ms. Richards had nothing to do with it. It is really fascinating how
you've avoided putting the slightest blame on the employer here. What ability
does Ms. Richards have to control the employer's employment actions?

Your statement is also utterly false. PyCon met with the individuals at the
time, who apologized for their vulgar remarks. Of course, the one then later
posted to HN, apologizing again but blaming his woes on Richards instead of
his dumb employer, which started the whole witch-hunt, so perhaps his apology
was not entirely sincere.

In case you aren't used to thinking in these terms, the legal profession
provides some guides. One of them is proximate cause. Was the action of
calling an action "not cool" sufficiently close to the action of a person Ms.
Richards never met or spoke to in firing the developer as to be the cause of
that firing? And further, was the result reasonably foreseeable by an average
person at the time? Does it often happen that calling something "not cool"
results in the object of the remark being fired?

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Aqueous
There's plenty of blame to go around. The individual who was fired said "As a
result of the picture she took I was let go from my job today. Which sucks
because I have 3 kids and I really liked that job."

That certainly seems to be drawing a causal link between the picture being
taken / Tweeted, and the firing. Is that not accurate or are there details
that I haven't understood?

I would agree with you if it wasn't clear that the entire purpose of the Tweet
(with picture) was public shaming. She knew the audience (her thousands of
followers) and she knew their possible (even likely) reaction. That was the
whole point. She took a semi-public, fundamentally local act and made it
completely public and potentially global. That does not seem to be a
proportionate reaction to the offense.

She should have known about the public fallout this could have on the
employees and their employer. As a PR professional Adria Richards is / ought
to be fully aware of what she puts out into the world and the potential
consequences of putting it out there.

"PyCon met with the individuals at the time, who apologized for their vulgar
remarks." But not before Adria Richards had already tweeted a picture of the
offenders. Neither were given a chance to apologize before Adria Richards made
the split-second decision to go completely public.

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jellicle
> The individual who was fired said "As a result of the picture she took I was
> let go from my job today. Which sucks because I have 3 kids and I really
> liked that job."

Isn't it really "As a result of my manager firing me, I was let go from my job
today"?

Or even "As a result of my shameful actions at PyCon, I was let go from my job
today"?

Do you blame the reporter in all circumstances? If you hear about Texas
executing a murderer, do you think to yourself "it's the fault of the person
who reported that crime that that man was executed"? Or do you think the state
of Texas and possibly the person's own actions may have had something to do
with it?

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deciplex
His actions at PyCon were not shameful, and his employer had to let him go to
avoid being drawn into the witch hunt any more than they already had been.
Perhaps I can blame his employer for not standing a little stronger, but
mainly I'm going to blame the person who instigated the witch hunt in the
first place. And Adria Richards, who as a developer evangelist is necessarily
social media-savvy, knew exactly what she was doing when she took the incident
onto Twitter.

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jellicle
> drawn into the witch hunt

What witch hunt? The fired developer has literally never even been identified
publicly. To this day.

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commentnull
The faux crowdrage these days is depressing. I suppose it is the modern
version of the crowd gathering to watch a stoning, hanging or other public
spectacle from the middle ages.

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rrss1122
It really is, and I do think most of the time it's the crowd being manipulated
into a rage. When you see in the news someone demanding an apology from
someone else or from a corporation, online shaming and crowd morality is what
makes these demands effective.

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RyanMcGreal
Monica Lewinsky recently gave an excellent TED talk in which she explored the
phenomenon of online shaming:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_8y0WLm78U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_8y0WLm78U)

Arguably, Lewinsky has the dubious distinction of being Patient Zero for this
modern trend.

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whoopdedo
The bizarre thing is most reactions to a shame posting are negative. Which
results in the poster being publicly shamed on social media for daring to
shame someone.

That is, the most frequent online recrimination I encounter is shame-shaming.

Which I think can be generalized to it being socially incorrect these days to
express a negative opinion. It seems to be an overreaction to trolls and
brigades that anyone who says something that isn't supportive of the main
topic is considered to be disruptive. Except among communities that are small
enough so the frequent contributors are well known and trusted to be able to
express their possibly controversial opinions.

Essentially, if you consider reputation the currency of social trade, then
there is a tragedy of the commons in large forums.

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PopeOfNope
> The bizarre thing is most reactions to a shame posting are negative.

Do you have data for this, or are you judging this based on the reactions from
your own social circle? If the latter, then it sounds like you hang out with
cool people. Kudos. Unfortunately, I don't think that's the common reaction to
shame postings. GamerGate is a great counter-example where shaming those who
support GamerGate is positively received by a great number of people.

> Except among communities that are small enough so the frequent contributors
> are well known and trusted to be able to express their possibly
> controversial opinions.

And even then, if those communities are able to be viewed by the public (ie:
on a public forum, like a subreddit), they will eventually have negative media
campaigns run against them. Public shaming on the scale of an entire
subreddit.

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whoopdedo
> GamerGate is a great counter-example where shaming those who support
> GamerGate is positively received by a great number of people.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. The controversy of GamerGate was
not that there was sexism among gamers. It was that there was conflict
regarding when someone complains about sexism. The debate turned away from the
salient issue and to arguing for and against whether there should even be a
debate. People were complaining about other people complaining, which leads to
complaints about those people complaining and so on.

Of the public shaming instances I've been aware of, the discussion on the
internet has been about whether or not the incident should have been made
public, and less about justifying or recriminating what originally happened.

It's an odd and frustrating social feedback loop. I wonder if it's related to
bureaucratic inertia. Where problems fail to reach a solution because the
bureaucracy gets stuck in a cycle of studying the problem, then studying the
study of the problem, etc.

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cperciva
Thanks to the anonymous moderator for adding the [video] tag. I wouldn't
normally post a video here, but I think it does a better job of covering the
topic than most essays I've read.

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thaumasiotes
Return? When did it go away?

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Aoyagi
The player doesn't load anything on any of my browsers (
[http://puu.sh/hLDaV/068f76f8d1.jpg](http://puu.sh/hLDaV/068f76f8d1.jpg) ). :(

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brohee
Didn't try nearly as many, but same thing for me.

