
Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women - fredfoobar42
http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/10/game-developer-brianna-wu-leaves-home-after-receiving-death-threats-for-speaking-out-in-support-of-women/
======
throwawayGG
It's interesting what a chilling effect the evil "gamergate" people have.

By making it clear they target anyone who stands up for women in gaming or for
freedom of press they have intimidated people who would usually be up front in
their support for the people attacked.

I hope someone can come up with a sensible strategy for dealing with these
trolls. I'd like to see real-world consequences.

The article indicates there are "some well known names" involved in the group.
Who are they and what companies do they work for?

(Written from a throwaway, which says a lot doesn't it?)

~~~
uvTwitch
This narrative you're pushing here is a very hard sell considering this is one
of their most prominent banners:
[http://www.nichegamer.net/media/2014/09/gamergate.jpg](http://www.nichegamer.net/media/2014/09/gamergate.jpg)

Being the interenet, there are naturally aggressive and violent people who
will throw harassment around. With regard to this issue, it is downright false
to claim that they originate from, or are encouraged by, any one camp, as
there are examples of harassment originating from both sides. One of the more
prominent journalists writing articles supporting gamergate was mailed a
syringe filled with mystery liquid; far from a friendly gesture.

There are, however, a lot of people who wish to paint gamergate as woman-
hating trolls - the kind of people in the media who have a lot to lose, who
always pick up on these sort of outliers and point to them as the bulk of the
movement, to try to distract the public from the real message of gamergate,
which is that they want proper ethics and integrity in gaming journalism, not
10/10's for games made by your friends, or articles brazenly insulting your
readership.

~~~
fenomas
Neither side of things is that simple. While people who openly support
gamergate now focus on journalism and condemn misogynistic threats, a look at
GG's origins (e.g. the #burgersandfries IRC logs, which as much as anything
else started the whole thing[1]), reveals plenty to abhor - way more
discussion of how to effectively character-assassinate Zoe Quinn and Anita
Sarkeesian than of how to reform games journalism, anyway. If the "real
message" of the movement is now completely removed from that, that's great,
but I don't think the idea that misogynistic threats have no connection to the
"real" gamergate stands up to scrutiny.

[1] [http://puu.sh/boAEC/f072f259b6.txt](http://puu.sh/boAEC/f072f259b6.txt)

~~~
Malician
TotalBiscuit supports GG, and he's the most trustworthy person reporting on
games out there. (He's also received threats for his stance, though he did not
receive a series of news articles reporting them.)

[https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/520247895996395520](https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/520247895996395520)

~~~
eropple
The guy who doesn't disclose when he's being paid to pimp a game, while
pimping that game, is "most trustworthy"? Interesting. Or is it just that he
waves his hands at SJWs that you like him?

~~~
Malician
No. TB has been plenty trustworthy in my experience and I started watching him
when he started making Starcraft content. Care to back up that allegation?

Frankly, the last line is irrelevant. Anti-GG involves plenty of classism
(cheeto basement dwelling loser) and more than enough icky gender policing
(not a real man!)

------
uptown
The way Twitter handles these types of incidents needs to change as well:
[https://twitter.com/StuHorvath/status/520750049702473729](https://twitter.com/StuHorvath/status/520750049702473729)

~~~
gojomo
Are you certain? What exactly do you propose Twitter do?

Twitter is not a real-space police force and in many cases does not have true-
identity information.

It's possible that a faster move against threat-originators, through action
like a ban on their Twitter account, would do one or both of (1) escalating
their misguided anger; or (2) limiting evidence-gathering by real authorities.

Also, note that new Twitter sign-ups are very easy. That's a policy which
overall provides benefits to Twitter and many Twitter users, especially
newbies. But it means that it's trivial for griefers to circumvent simplistic
account bans. So it may be better that they keep abusing via the one account,
which collects evidence and can be blocked/muted by reputation, than they burn
through the namespace with short-lived throwaway accounts.

It's a bit like managing antibiotic resistance with bacterial diseases. Sure,
if you have a killer formula, deploy it and fix the problem. But if all you've
got are incremental amelioration and escalation mechanisms, you need to use
those very carefully to avoid training-up even worse malevolence. Practice
game theory, not knee-jerk symbolism.

~~~
acdha
A few simple things which would help and are easy to implement:

1\. Stop auto-discarding abuse reports which aren't from the target of an
attack. Right now, Twitter won't investigate a credible death threat unless
you say you're the target. 2\. Limit new accounts ability to send messages to
people who don't follow them 3\. Apply blocks to email addresses, requiring
griefers to churn validated addresses rather than reusing them 4\. Give you
better filters for notifications: i.e. currently there's no way to have it
default to only notifications from people you follow so you can't avoid seeing
crap unless you use a bookmark. Similarly, filtering out messages from new
accounts you don't follow or which don't have n followers in common, etc. etc.
would reduce the dog-pile effect. 5\. Allow friends to help: auto-block/mute
accounts which people you follow have blocked (specific people, threshold,
etc.); hide tweets which people you follow have flagged as annoying / abusive;
etc. There's a ton of interesting opportunity to use the social network for
good here.

None of this is perfect but increasing the frictional costs matters a lot for
this kind of thing when they're only in it for fun. A lot of prior art from
the email spam prevention world applies here as well – the main thing is
simply that Twitter's management clearly don't care to make any significant
investment in this area.

~~~
thezilch
Twitter is not an investigation authority. Nor should they be. Report it to
the proper authorities.

None of your suggestions are going to do anything but aggravate the offender
further, which is the entire point of the post you've replied to.

It's like suggesting Snapchat monitor and deny underaged teens from from
taking suggestive photos.

~~~
orionblastar
Or like asking Twitter or Instagram to delete accounts used by ISIS, a
terrorist group that coordinates things via social networks.

------
demachina
I have no interest in taking sides in #gamergate but it should be pointed out
that someone trying to make #gamergate look bad could have posted the threats
on twitter.

As heated and complex as this dustup has become you really can't take anything
at face value any more. Its become a pretty intense propaganda war by both
sides, or maybe all sides, so unless you have posts from a verified account or
video of someone saying something you should take just about everything else
with a grain of salt.

Its pretty naive to think anyone knows the true motives of someone posting
with a probably throw away twitter account.

------
gojomo
The out-group homogeneity bias, it runs deep in everyone loudly discussing
these issues:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-
group_homogeneity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity)

------
PhasmaFelis
Ms. Wu's bitterly sarcastic tweet pretty much says it all:

> _The police just came by. Husband and I are going somewhere safe.

> Remember, #gamergate isn't about attacking women._

~~~
imanaccount247
The question is, why does "#gamergate" get the blame for this? This trend of
vilifying any group one disagrees with based on the actions of individuals
with no indication they are even connected to the group is pretty disturbing.
Remember when Jack Thompson got death threats? Remember how it was not
acceptable to pretend "gamers" were at fault for that, but rather the
individual people committing those crimes were at fault for their own
behavior?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Because #gamergate is a name that was _created_ to attack one woman based on
completely spurious claims.

If you really care about corruption in games journalism (and I do) then it
makes no sense to continue rallying behind this banner that was tainted from
the start.

~~~
imanaccount247
>Because #gamergate is a name that was created to attack one woman based on
completely spurious claims.

No it was not. Again, where are people getting this bizarre idea? It was
created by Adam Baldwin, on twitter, specifically about games journalism and
the game websites silencing discussion of games journalism. It seems really
hard to believe that these constant claims that #gamergate was started to
attack someone (who?) is all honest ignorance rather than deliberate
dishonesty.

------
orionblastar
Before anyone jumps to any conclusions these threats are anonymous and nobody
knows if they are tied to any group.

There have been a series of feminists who make fake Twitter accounts to
threaten themselves and later on were proven to be hoaxes for attention.

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/womens-rights-
activist...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/womens-rights-activist-
charged-with-rape-threat-hoax-on-face)

[http://www.goingyourownway.com/mgtow-lounge-main-
forum/rok-a...](http://www.goingyourownway.com/mgtow-lounge-main-forum/rok-
article-anita-sarkeesian-fake-2826/)

[http://www.returnofkings.com/42602/did-anita-sarkeesian-
fake...](http://www.returnofkings.com/42602/did-anita-sarkeesian-fake-death-
threats-against-herself)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErGcBxMpgwA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErGcBxMpgwA)

Apparently they can create all of the fake Twitter accounts they want, sign
out, and take a picture of it 12 minutes later. Then log back into the account
and delete all of the history.

The news media just has to believe them, because they believe that these
anonymous people are behind death and rape threats to everyone. Even if the
Twitter accounts doing the threats have the same IP as the feminist's
accounts. Sometimes the police catch the feminists and arrest them for filing
a false report.

[http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/false-claims-of-rape-
an...](http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/false-claims-of-rape-and-
harassment-are-now-employed-by-activists-as-tools-of-social-change/)

This fake rape and fake death threats and fake sexual assaults are nothing
new:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case)

Feminists will keep doing this stuff to get popular, and attention, and
speaking gigs, and sell books and promote blogs and websites.

They think by faking this stuff they raise awareness for it.

With this past history of hoaxes, it is hard to tell with each new case of
harassment if it is real or just another hoax for attention.

If real she and her family have my deepest sympathies, if fake she will be
found out eventually I guess?

~~~
valas
You don't do yourself much favor in this discussion when you post links to
returnofkings.com or avoiceformen.com :-)

~~~
imanaccount247
The source of a fact does not matter. Your post is the very definition of ad-
hominem.

~~~
eropple
I don't think you know how things...like...work. Being an _ad hominem_
argument and being _accurate_ are not disjoint sets. You don't just get to
blow the whistle and say "AD HOMINEM, ARGUMENT GOES TO THE RECEIVING TEAM!".

It's not even an _ad hominem_ , though, because the credibility of your
sources is at the core of your argument. returnofkings and avoiceformen have a
storied and well-covered history of being astonishing shitheads towards women
and doing everything in their (meager, thankfully) power to turn the clock
back to 1950 or thereabouts. They have an inherent bias, and a real real
disgusting one, that makes them immediately incredible. It's like citing
Andrew Wakefield on autism--you aren't entitled to the respect of having an
argument when you _don 't have an argument based on reality_.

There isn't enough _there_ to the spittle-flecked, cheeto-dusting link parade
to argue about. It's _prima facie_ nonsense being peddled by people with much,
much more of an axe to grind than anyone on the "other side" that you
(strangely) fear; there's no serious coverage of this sordid stain on a hobby
of mine that's pro-#GG except from people whose entire worldview is predicated
on being anti-women. And you know it, which is why you would rather blow the
whistle and hope the ref stops the fight because-- _gasp!_ \--somebody used a
fallacy.

~~~
EvenThisAcronym
>there isn't enough there to the spittle-flecked, cheeto-dusting link...

Why, exactly, did you use this particular choice of words?

~~~
eropple
Because I felt like reaching deep and verbalizing the contempt I have for this
brutally disingenuous crowd. (And before you step up about oh, no, it's not
disingenuous at all, answer yourself this: why's everyone making a big stink
about Nathan Grayson at Kotaku and not, oh, the lack of a wall between
marketing/ad-sales and content generation at IGN?)

~~~
orionblastar
The whole thing is the gaming industry is corrupt. People can pay for good
reviews or have sexual relations with the reviewer in exchange for a good
review.

It doesn't matter if one is male or female that does those sorts of things.
But when one gets caught he or she can fake threats with Twitter accounts to
cover it up.

For some reason most of the people doing this are feminists, I don't know why,
nor do I know why the mainstream media and news media won't cover it. Why is
it a non-story if a feminist does bad things for a good review and when caught
does a Twitter hoax, and then rewarded for it?

Sure those sites might be crappy towards women, but they uncovered some facts
about the hoaxes. Something the news media refuses to do, which is why those
websites report on it. I wish the news media would investigate it and find out
if it is a hoax or not.

But taking a picture of a Tweet 12 minutes after it happened is very
suspicious, esp when that Tweet is deleted in less than half an hour and the
account gets deleted as well. So nobody else can see it or what IP it got
posted from.

------
wu_wu_wu
Harassing women is NOT okay, in any form.

That said, Brianna is extremely inflammatory and vitriolic in her speech. She
doesn't help her cause, at all.

Of course, no one will notice that, or care one whit.

~~~
irv
oh, she was asking for it! well, that changes everything.

------
sremani
This is totally tragic and unacceptable. I hope the troll is met with
punishment he/she deserves. But I am wondering - is our reaction to them is
empowering these trolls. Its better to be safer than sorry. This is truly
disturbing.

~~~
LandonAB
Yeah, I am wondering the same thing. When they hide behind anonymity (cowards)
what the hell can anyone do to A) support these women and B) stop these people
from creating a new account and repeating the behavior.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
Here's a different perspective on anonymity that I think few people appreciate
or even consider [http://kazerad.tumblr.com/post/99022123468/shepherd-of-
the-m...](http://kazerad.tumblr.com/post/99022123468/shepherd-of-the-masked),
which also might point to a solution to the problem you mention.

------
annandvirk
Things like this make me feel physically uncomfortable.

How do you even deal with something like that?

------
fenomas
Just a meta-question, but is there some kind of flagging/downvoting system on
HN that's hidden to newer users? It seems odd that this thread quickly fell
off the top page, below older posts with fewer upvotes.

~~~
whyenot
> is there some kind of flagging/downvoting system on HN that's hidden to
> newer users

yes.

------
brandonmenc
This sort of thing makes me glad I quit playing video games 20 years ago. What
an absolutely toxic scene.

Games were an escape, but I feel that's been ruined because you have to deal
with so many real people, both in-game and in the "community." I wonder how
many other people avoid getting (back) into games because of that.

~~~
Gigablah
That's a surprise, because I'm able to enjoy my video games without feeling
any connection to the "scene" whatsoever.

------
chaostheory
My question is how crazy jerks are able to find addresses for targets they
want to harass? Simple public record searches? I think in this age, having a
very common first and last name combination helps protect your privacy.

~~~
XorNot
Internet anonymity died when the net went mainstream. Most of us have public
profiles which are explicitly linked to your real life identities.

Where we've lagged is deciding how we deal with pseudo-anonymous harassment.
This has probably been an issue longer then the net though: stop and think for
a moment just how utterly ridiculous it is that people can call you on your
telephone, but don't have to disclose the phone number they dial from (i.e. so
you can't just block them trivially).

I somewhat suspect communications policy of the future needs to, at the very
least, enforce the idea that big providers have to take some steps to allow
easy selective filtering of contacts.

------
ps4fanboy
This is no different than fringe radical feminists attacking people on the
internet, I dont have a link but there was an incident of a grown woman doxing
a 13 year old kid.

If that doesnt make all feminists bad then this shouldnt make all gamers bad
at least apply consistent logic and standards.

~~~
throwawayGG
I think you might lack a little perspective here. Radical feminists attacking
people is _NOT_ the same as someone threatening to go to a persons house, rape
and kill them, and then proving they know where the person lives.

"ps4fanboy". Hmm.

~~~
ps4fanboy
Sorry to be clear by attacking I meant threatening peoples safety in much the
same way. My username is caricature so I am not sure why you are trying to
attack me based on it, very childish.

Just a single example.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Pizzey#Overview](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Pizzey#Overview)

"Pizzey has been the subject of death threats and boycotts because of her
research into the claim that most domestic violence is reciprocal, and that
women are equally as capable of violence as men. Pizzey has said that the
threats were from militant feminists."

No sane person would suggest because of this that all feminists support this
action. Why is it ok for you to say the same about Gamers?

