
Study finds women are responsible for half of some online abuse on Twitter in UK - MollyR
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/05/26/women-are-responsible-for-half-of-online-abuse-study-finds/
======
lambda
This is self-published research by a think-tank, not a peer reviewed scholarly
publication; also, the actual paper for this finding doesn't yet seem to be
available, just summaries by news organizations. This article does link to
some older papers by them, which go into very little detail on methodology.

As such, it's really hard to say what kind of abuse they are talking about;
slut shaming and rape threats, while both awful, can be quite different. Also,
I am curious about how they accurately determine gender of Twitter users;
there are many fake accounts on Twitter, and I don't believe Twitter even
reports gender identity of users.

~~~
nxzero
Is there any research that show being peer reviewed in fact makes a
difference? General speaking, I would think research should just speak for
itself.

~~~
Aelinsaar
Generally speaking, you think... well that's nice. Meanwhile, in the world of
the scientific method, the issue is that everyone needs to know that you
didn't just write something down for fun or profit. If your results can't be
replicated... thbbpt.

~~~
trentmb
> If your results can't be replicated

Results aren't replicated during peer review, are they?

~~~
Aelinsaar
Not necessarily, but at least the methods can be evaluated to see how likely
it is that they can be. A black box with, "Trust us, here's what we found" is
weak as hell, unless you're still into Pons and Fleischmann I guess.

~~~
nxzero
Strange that you believe any science that's not reproducible is science. Or
assume that if the science is not reproduced, it's sciencifically valid.

Science is not a singlar effort, nor is peer review without replication.

Please question your assumptions about what science really is.

~~~
Aelinsaar
_Strange that you believe any science that 's not reproducible is science. Or
assume that if the science is not reproduced, it's sciencifically valid._

That's the exact opposite of what I said. What's wrong with you?

~~~
nxzero
What did I say that's conflicted?

~~~
nitrogen
Try reading the thread closely, looking for nuances you may have missed.

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zxcvvcxz
> When an article makes a politically correct claim:

"Yeah I totally feel this is true, this one time [insert anecdote here]"

> When an article makes a not-so politically correct claim:

"Well it's not peer reviewed / look at the paper that's publishing it / this
is the wrong definition / headline is misleading / [insert criticism not
related to the claim]"

~~~
stdbrouw
It's not necessarily wrong to expect different standards of evidence for
different kinds of claims, and to expect a very high standard of evidence for
claims that might have profound social implications.

~~~
Loughla
The problem is that it doesn't often come down to what will have profound
social impacts, instead it tends to be what the loudest group of folks
disagree with.

Those are two different things.

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vectorpush
Headline seems a bit misleading. "Half of online abuse" seems to suggest that
this study is representative of the internet as a whole instead of just
twitter. While the findings are still worthwhile, I think we'd see different
results if the study could have included sites like 4chan, reddit, tumblr or
even facebook. Of course, there are practical challenges to getting accurate
demographic information on those platforms, but I suspect that fact also
factors into the nature of abuse that persists on those sites.

~~~
7Z7
Additionally it wasn't looking at broad online abuse, it was looking
specifically at (according to the Guardian reporting of this study) the uses
of the word "slut" and "whore" in terms of online misogyny.

~~~
fnovd
It's like looking at mentions of the n-word and coming to the conclusion that
NWA is the more racist than the KKK.

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rm_-rf_slash
Just like in real life, all kinds of people can be equally reprehensible to
each other. It just varys in the ways. Men are typically assaultive, with in-
your-face accusations and threats. Women often use exclusivity and shame as a
weapon in equal parts. Because men are typically louder and more violent in
their abuse, we tend to register it more often.

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gluelogic
The title should probably reflect the fact that the study focuses specifically
on Tweets containing the words "slut" and "whore"

~~~
zenogais
You forgot the word "rape". It was actually "rape", "slut" and "whore"

~~~
Joeboy
The article says:

> Women are responsible for half of all misogynistic Tweets

> using the words "slut and whore", a new study has found.

?

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zenogais
The article isn't accurate, here's the study:
[http://www.demos.co.uk/project/misogyny-on-
twitter/](http://www.demos.co.uk/project/misogyny-on-twitter/)

------
beloch
A more accurate title:

Half of misogynistic abuse aimed at female twitter users in the UK found to be
from other women.

The reality is that, in other countries, things may be very different. Also,
this study in no way attempted to quantify all forms of online abuse. Heck, if
women are this bad to each other, they may actually commit well more than half
of all abuse if you include abuse aimed at males. Boys can be pretty nasty to
each other too, but I suspect more of it is "offline".

~~~
vonklaus
I think the most important thing we can do is continue to try and bring people
together by grouping them based on a single feature and then ascribing traits
to them, then arguing about it on the internet. We need to keep telling our
children to be nice to "black people" and "women are mean to men" and
sometimes(honestly a lot of times) "men are mean to women".

We need to start censoring the internet immeadiately and NEVER identify as a
diverse difficultly grouped species that cooperates and gets a long.

Now more than ever we need Democrats to hate Republicans, conservatives to
hate transexuals and people who use Vim to continue to identify as the gods
they are against inferior morons who use Emacs.

also, PCMaster race, if you use linux or microsoft you need to die.

This should be the next X Prize, finding interesting arbitrary (or obvious)
distinctions and continuing to allow them to detract from solving real
problems.

edit: inb4 Poe's law. If you didn't catch it, this is frustration-sarcasm.

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mark_chosenberg
And most likely if you parsed specifically tweets containing the n word, you'd
find most of said tweets are authored by black people.

Not sure what the point of this article is.

~~~
vectorpush
Which "n word"? Do a simple twitter search with the two spelling variants and
you'll immediately notice completely different results.

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DanielBMarkham
Anecdotal hand-waving BS: Something I've noticed over the last several years
are people who feel so victimized in some way that they actually begin acting
like their victimizer. Gay people who anonymously act violently homophobic.
Black people who paint KKK images on campus property. Weird.

I'd guess it's just a very small minority of people who are like that, but
online, in aggregate form, it could turn into a significant number. It'd be
interesting to see some stats about this.

~~~
Karunamon
Also related, IMO, would be politicians vehemently campaigning against X
(where X is marriage equality, sexual promiscuity, abortions, or otherwise
some social wedge issue), and then it turns out that the politician was
directly and hypocritically involved in X.

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antihero
Honestly though, equating "online abuse" to some name calling on Twitter is
totally disingenuous. What about harassment and rape threats and doxing and
swatting?

~~~
beachstartup
don't worry, females are probably responsible for half of that other stuff
too.

~~~
antihero
I don't see it that way at all. I think the sort of casually calling other
women slags and hoes or whatever (ie normalised internalised misogyny) is a
very different ball game to the gamergate style evil shit that happens.

~~~
chongli
Why not? Look at the case of Lori Drew [0]. She cyberbullied her daughter's
friend into committing suicide. Women are not incapable of committing nasty
stuff on the internet.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Drew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Drew)

~~~
antihero
I'm not claiming they aren't, but again, saying "probably" and assuming the
iceberg extends equally the whole way down is entirely unsubstantiated.

I was merely saying that name calling and harassment are often completely
different mindsets.

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smoyer
This actually mirrors what I've seen in the workplace over the last 35 years -
women can be very brutal to each other (just like men). The main difference
I've observed is that men tend to forgive each other and move on. Women seem
more likely to hold a grudge. I'm obviously not interested in making sweeping
generalizations - and this is not a scientific study.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
> I'm obviously not interested in making sweeping generalizations

That is not obvious to me given the antecedent observations that ultimately
brought us to this claim.

~~~
smoyer
What I meant is that these characteristics were observed in only the small
number of workplaces that have employed me. And I could have gone on to
correlate these behaviors to other characteristics but purposely didn't do
that. More importantly, I could elicit corroboration from others who worked in
these locations including the woman who first pointed this trend out to me.

Of course, the better technique would be to collect aanonymized data from a
wide range of HR departments and look for statistical trends. When complete
you'd still see biases ... just like only studying trends by analyzing
Twitter.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
That makes _much_ more sense but wasn't clear from the way you put that.

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angelbob
I do kind of wonder whether sock-puppet accounts were a significant factor. I
wouldn't necessarily expect them to follow the same gender distribution as the
folks abusing.

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anoonmoose
I'd like to know what percentage of online abuse was directed at women. My
hunch would have been 50/50 for dealing it out, but I am not so sure the split
is even for taking it.

~~~
wonks
The article does link to one investigation from The Guardian about abusive
comments left on articles written by journalists whose genders are known.

~~~
Joeboy
I'm rather doubtful about what conclusions can be drawn from that
investigation, given that it doesn't really present much clear data. It
measures how many comments moderators have deleted, assuming most deleted
comments are abusive. Sometimes moderators go rogue and start deleting large
numbers of comments that are not abusive but which they don't like for some
other reason, leading to more people posting the same comments, leading to
more deletions. It's as much a study of moderator behaviour as of commenter
behaviour.

Eg. I saw huge numbers of comments deleted for saying a lot of redditors
turned against Ellen Pao because of the perception that she sacked Victoria
Taylor. Which doesn't seem abusive to me.

------
scythe
I thought this was consistent with prevaling theories on how sexism works, and
how abuse works more broadly?

There's a kindergarten-esque explanation of the phenomenon: humans tend to
imitate each other, and we imitate more the people we're around more, and the
targets of abuse tend to be around their abusers (or women in an abusive
society) so they become like them.

It's not entirely accurate, but similar phenomena are known, most infamously
the correlation between being abused as a child and:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_violence#Intergenerati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_violence#Intergenerational)

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kohanz
Why wouldn't they frame the title as "Men and women are equally responsible
for misogynistic tweets" instead of singling out women?

~~~
jshevek
The popular myth is that men are responsible for the majority of online abuse.
Its more dramatic to phrase the claim in a way that is more explicit in
contradicting this myth.

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leecarraher
trying to see the good in things, perhaps this bodes well for gender equality,
suggesting (psychological underpinnings of the aggressors aside) that there is
less bias in the feeling of personal empowerment on the internet.

~~~
nxzero
Equality between genders is unlikely, there will likely always be imbalances
one way or another. Studies like this to me help counter myths related to
gender though, which is important; aka science is good.

------
vonklaus
this is super important research the institute for social media has conducted.
the biggest threats humanity has ever faced are 140 charachters.

------
internaut
I have an adequate supply of bile for the social justice advocates but this
isn't a news story that plays against their beliefs.

If you exclude the mob then the majority of them would say that many women
have internalized misogyny.

This isn't a fantastic claim as it may at first sound. Many people thinks ill
of themselves, many people also hate themselves on a group level. The
stereotype of the self hating Jew has some basis in fact. Each nation has
people who dislike the people within it despite being members of it.

It is possible to hate your own class, race or culture. It is reasonable to
extend that to sex.

I think like with many things there is often a reasonable kernel of truth to
why you'd choose to go against your own tribe, but taken too far it can slip
over into irrationality.

I am working class but I see a lot of toxic behaviors in it. It is true for
example that they are more violent. On the flip side I would also say they are
less dishonest than the middle class and much more reliable when the going
gets tough. Many middle class people have noticed their neighours flake out
easily over little things.

Of course I don't hate my class but at one point as a teen I struggled with it
until I realized the other classes have their own suite of flaws as well,
they're just less obvious to outsiders.

The most important thing.

Remember that in proximity like competes with like. If you understand this
you'll see why the SJWs eat their young, why siblings fight and why in civil
wars you're more likely to get attacked by some group that is more similar
than different.

If you compete for the same resource you develop enemies. The modern focus on
xenophobia ignores the internal competition. The No.1 enemy to Bernie Sanders
supporters is Hilary until the nomination, and then Trump. Something like ISIS
is at the end of a long list. This truth also explains the existence of fellow
travelers.

When you get attacked by a foreign faction everybody joins together. The SJWs
unite against non-SJWs. The siblings band together against bullies. The Sunnis
and Shias band together as Muslims when faced with western forces. That's why
many strategists think an alien invasion would generate world peace!

I'm sure you remember if you're old enough that shortly after 9/11 everybody
bought flags. That day was when they realized they were in Team America.
People who betray their tribe for whatever reason get torn to pieces because
an enemy can use divide and conquer tactics to destroy all of you.

Evidence for my claim would probably be found in the study above. Those women
are attacking other women, not other men.

------
unlinker
A woman calling another a whore is misogyny? Being against promiscuity is
misogyny?

~~~
vertex-four
Being against female promiscuity while praising or ignoring male promiscuity
is definitely misogyny.

Edit: Additionally, being against both in the current society is, while not
necessarily misogynist in itself, contributing to a misogynistic society -
there's many more people who will speak up to tell a man that the weird-ass
person who told them they're bad for being promiscuous is wrong then would
tell a woman the same, the result being that telling a woman that she's bad
for enjoying sex has more impact than telling a man the same. You don't
actually see many masculine-gendered terms for shaming the enjoyment of sex,
and those that do exist are not used in a derogatory context very often.

~~~
unlinker
And how do you detect that with a bot that just skims through tweets?
Nonsense.

~~~
vertex-four
Well, how do you know that "whore" in all these cases was used as an insult to
promiscuity, rather than a generic insult (with a certain bite) as it's more
generally used, where a less sexually-focused insult might be used against
men?

We could, of course, just point out that this is a terrible study in general.

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wrong_variable
It makes sense.

A 'whore/slut' women in a society has the most destructive effect on other
women's sexual prospect. So I am surprised that there is a taboo against that
- the only thing that surprised me is when men think its a bad thing - since
it doesn't hurt them having many sexually adventurous women around.

~~~
vkou
It's probably about control of their partner.

------
dsfyu404ed
A month from now there will be a debate/argument in HN comments about women
being harassed online, someone will claim something along the lines of most
online insults toward women are posted by men and someone will link this
article. Tune in to next month's broadcast to see who gets down voted into
oblivion, the person making the unsubstantiated claim or the person rebutting
it.

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adrianlmm
In my almost 40 years of living, I've learned one thing about women, they love
attention, and you better learn when is necessary to give it to them and when
is better for both if you ignore them.

~~~
jessaustin
True but trivial, in that what you say is also true for men.

It might still be useful to say, since some men occasionally need reminding
that women are humans with human behavior.

~~~
adrianlmm
>since some men occasionally need reminding that women are humans with human
behavior.

I never implied the contrary.

