
One Week of Harassment on Twitter - jsvine
http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter
======
shalmanese
The most recent episode of This American Life
([http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/545/i...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/545/if-you-dont-have-anything-nice-to-say-say-it-in-all-
caps)) has Jezebel writer Lindy West reach out and talk to one of her trolls
who created a page celebrating her father's death and claiming she was a
disappointment to him. He sent her an apology after realizing there was an
actual person on the other end of his trolling and they actually have a
remarkably civil conversation about the incident. It's highly worth listening
to.

~~~
danielweber
See also
[http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/my_embarrassing_picture_went...](http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/my_embarrassing_picture_went_viral/)

"The most common response was not remorse or defensiveness but surprise. They
were startled that I could hear what they’d been saying."

------
hoopism
Scary to think that the venn diagram of young gamers and future programmers is
pretty substantial.

The ratio of men/women in college was pretty abysmal. This may not be the
exact cause, but it certainly doesn't help the cause. Truly is a shame that so
much talent is driven to other fields due to lack of basic social skills.

~~~
cdr
All you have to do is watch the HN comments on any thread that (even
tangentially) mentions women. There's no shortage of of existing programmers /
old gamers that are virulently hostile.

~~~
wpietri
Definitely. I'm involved here because I think of HN as my people. But it's an
embarrassment to me elsewhere. Sort of like that one cranky old relative who
can be perfectly nice but also will spew out some unbelievable shit.

~~~
eropple
Yup. As I've said before, I've considered leaving because this place generally
seems to accept utterly reprehensible behavior. I don't understand why
aggressive sexism (and racism too, though that's not this thread) is tolerated
on Y Combinator's doorstep. I told dang when I spoke to him about this that I
think not eighty-sixing racists and sexists will self-select out the people
who _aren 't_, and that's a real bad look for YC.

I've flagged more posts in this thread than I have at any point on HN, by a
lot. It's kind of amazing.

~~~
DanBC
> I've flagged more posts in this thread than I have at any point on HN, by a
> lot. It's kind of amazing.

There's some inconsistency with flagging. If the comment is flagged it turns
to [flagkilled] at which point it can't attract any more downvotes. But some
posts are not bad enough to flag, but very unpopular, and people can just keep
downvoting those posts - even after the post can't be edited any more.

It'd be nice if the edit period was as long as the downvote period. And it'd
be nice if a [flagkilled] post was still able to be downvoted, or it
automatically attracted some downvotes when it dies or somesuch.

------
ctur
Anonymous free speech can sure bring out some ugly things in people. Freedoms,
though, often cut both ways, protecting important and significant behaviors
but also sometimes allowing sad and pathetic ones.

I think it would be delicious punishment if the author of each of those tweets
were forced to read them out loud, in front of their mothers, sisters, wives,
friends, bosses, coworkers, and children. If someone's willing to send
messages like that to a real life person, they should see how people in real
life react to their hate spew.

~~~
wpietri
As makers and participants in internet culture, I think it's incumbent on all
of us to find ways to minimize the downsides of anonymity and pseudonymity
while maximizing the benefits. Because otherwise, the baby's getting thrown
out with the bathwater.

Note, for example, that Facebook doesn't allow any anonymity, and Quora only
allows it with tight controls. I think the long-term trend is to get rid of
it, which would be a shame.

~~~
DanBC
People are fine being ignorant bigots under their real names on Facebook.

[http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_w...](http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_when_i_starred_in_a_facebook_ad/)

Facebook introduced a new feature; created an ad with a Sikh man; racists
everywhere.

~~~
wpietri
Sure, some people are fine being ignorant bigots in the town square at high
noon, too. But that doesn't mean that people are _equally_ comfortable being
bigots no matter the circumstance. And even if the amount of bigotry were
identical whether anonymous or not, it doesn't mean that people won't perceive
anonymity as the problem because of the broken social feedback loop.

That said, I think anonymity actually is an enabler here. The KKK knew exactly
what they were doing with those hoods.

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ignostic
This is disgusting. It's also disappointing how little most games (CoD, for
example) have done to cut back on back behavior. I've seen players on some
games just spew hate and nasty taunts in games with no repercussions. At most,
they get banned from servers that care to moderate. Often there's not even a
mechanism for reporting other players globally. The lack of oversight allows a
culture of trolling and nastiness to thrive.

Twitter could also do more to proactively prevent troll accounts and monitor
tweets without waiting for someone to report it. I'd be a little more
sympathetic to startup-stage Twitter figuring it out, but they're to the point
where I'd expect something better.

Those who raise the "free speech" argument fail to realize that these are
private companies. Companies like EA and Twitter are well within their rights
to limit what is broadcast on their servers and networks. You can say what you
like (within some reasonable constraints), but that doesn't give you the right
to have it amplified through someone else's work.

------
wpietri
For those who don't normally have "showdead" turned on, it's worth doing so
for this article. A) I'm grateful that HN's more active moderation is taking
out some of the trash. And B) it's worth noting the details of the sort of
awfulness that's getting moderated here. This isn't just a gamer problem.

~~~
MrDom
> I'm grateful that HN's more active moderation is taking out some of the
> trash.

I don't see it that way. I read those comments and there's very little vitriol
in there. There's a lot of legitimate counter arguments being made that are
being flag killed. You're essentially being grateful that HN's moderation is
stifling any attempt at disagreement with their own political views.

~~~
wpietri
Huh. An anonymous dude who thinks that feminism is the enemy is fine with
bigotry. Who could have guessed?

------
cmdkeen
It would be entirely possible for Twitter to create various community driven
feedback mechanisms, they just don't want to.

Plenty of online communities have various moderation systems, including HN
that hugely reduce the potential for abuse, trolling and bullying - and most
don't require your real identity.

~~~
pgeorgi
They have community driven feedback mechanisms. When a user is flagged
sufficiently often, they're pretty much gone.

Of course this is now abused against (some) X people and by (some) X people
(for X being pretty much any cause or philosophy that creates uproar and with-
us-or-against-us camps).

------
Mithaldu
I personally don't like the woman, but while scrolling down the list, the
contrast between these people and the people i know online and in real life is
so stark that i can only wonder:

Who are these people and where do they come from?

~~~
pgeorgi
They seem to be everywhere.

The twitter usernames are public, and reading a sample of those biographies
looked to me like everything from 13 year old boy to female middle aged
graphics designer.

And even though these comments look very much the same, these seem to be
actual accounts with normal use, not some troll battalion.

------
ignostic
This post appears to have been flagged incorrectly. I'm sure we've been using
a bunch of words that would raise a flag, when in reality we're just talking
about the content and important but sensitive issues.

Could some fix that? Remove the flag?

------
endergen
It's illegal to make death threats offline. It should be online too.

~~~
danielweber
It is, but there's a bunch of legal doctrine to say what _actually_ counts as
a threat. Also, SCOTUS has a case before it now that will further refine the
issue, specifically about online behavior.

------
ccarter84
It just keeps scrolling...

------
itistoday2
This doesn't seem like tech news. Flagged.

~~~
sehr
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic.

~~~
itistoday2
I agree very much. I didn't find this interesting, nor did it gratify my
intellectual curiosity. Glad it's off the front page.

Would be terrible if HN devolved into a mess of posts about how dumb and
hateful random comments are on the internet and turned into another outrage
generating machine (just like the TV news you mentioned).

BTW, here's a nice HN alternative that someone pointed me to recently (for
those of us that are sad to see what HN is devolving into):

[https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs)

------
PaulKeeble
The entire internet is full of this. Every comment section every forum its
just absolute anywhere and everywhere someone can post text. Anyone who makes
any statement on the internet will receive hate, the more famous you are the
more you receive.

~~~
jameskilton
What are you saying with your comment? That we should just accept this
despicable hatred? That this is normal?

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realusername
I hate to be that guy, but when you see the twitter account, you only have
some reports of tweets like this, that's not how the situation is going to be
improved. I agree it's outrageous to see people like this, but their twitter
account is effectively completely useless to promote their message, I have to
scroll down ~100 tweet to have something useful about video games. Their
twitter account is effectively doing some publicity to this kind of message by
posting only this kind of content.

~~~
realusername
Please do a constructive comment instead of downvoting me, I'm not posting any
spam here. I just fail to see how only posting this kind of tweets is going to
promote their cause in any ways, just have a look at their twitter account.

~~~
aqme28
I think people are confused about what you're trying to say. I myself am a
little lost.

