How do we realistically stop harassment online?

[Plunkies]

If Anita wants to stop receiving death threats then perhaps she should stop writing death threats, sending them to herself, and then posting them on the internet to get attention. Of course, that's her entire business model so I seriously doubt she would do that. Then she wouldn't be able to put out a press release that she's going into hiding, the inconspicuous master of stealth that she is. Maybe she can get another 150,000 dollars donated to her to make a handful of videos whining about princess peach.

Provide evidence for any of these accusations.

I am doubting you can. In fact, I am unsure you actually believe what you just typed.

http://imgur.com/p6eaary

Do I have to even say it?

This only proves 3 things:

1. The person making the threats has really good syntax.

2. Anita takes screenshots of threats quite quickly given how fucking scary they are.

3. You have yet to prove anything aside from you are sorely misguided and indulge in bizarre delusions.

So you don't find any of it suspicious? Knowing when the threats will start? Knowing when they'll stop? The typical, silly, Twilight fantasy nonsense? The timing to coincide with her video release while Zoey Quinn is taking her spotlight? The fact that she logged out for some inexplicable reason? The request for donations shortly after so as to immediately profit off of these "scary" threats? Which, by the way, she posted on the internet instead of shutting up and letting law enforcement investigate. You'd think someone with so many "threats" would know SOP for receiving a death threat. Almost like it was all done for her benefit, isn't it?

There are two kinds of people in this world, carnies and rubes. Anita has been fleecing rubes since the first day she showed up in the gullible gaming community.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Plunkies, speaking as a trained historian, I think you really don't understand the difference between innuendo and evidence. Permit me to demonstrate the difference.

What you have is innuendo. There is no direct link to Anita Sarkeesian, besides the fact that the threat is directed at her. There is no smoking gun, where Sarkeesian brags about a false flag attack on herself, or makes any suggestion that it is anything but legitimate. Every single incongruity in the picture can be explained in any number of different ways, with nothing actually balancing it towards your own interpretation.

Now, here is undercover work by Zoe Quinn with members of 4chan in a chat channel discussing how to engineer #gamergate: https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate

Here is a chat log with further members of 4chan directly discussing tactics against Quinn: http://archive.today/Ler4O

Please note how these provide a direct link between 4chan and what happened to Zoe Quinn. THAT is evidence of a conspiracy.

You may take it from a trained historian with a defended MA thesis.

 

[Sticky]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but short of actual physical acts of terrorism, how far further is there left to go? We're at the point of abuse and harassment campaigns and death threats - and they're acting like they speak for the entire gaming community. Phil Fish got driven out of the industry because he dared to support Zoe Quinn. You're talking about them as though they just want a seat at the table, when they're actively trying to ensure that they are the only people allowed to come close to the table.

We're already at the point of online lynch mobs. Appeasement will only embolden them. Anybody wanting to make this stop has to take a stand against it.

I don't want to get too much into this particular point, but there is WAY farther anyone can go then sending a few 150 characters or less threats to people. Again, I don't think anyone should spin it as being the end of the world when the stark reality is that the troll specifically acted in that manner specifically so you would act this way. It took no time investment on his part to make those threats, so when you act as if they have all the power against you, then you've completely and utterly lost the mental battle against trolling. You're just laying down and letting them walk all over you, and you shouldn't be. You should realize that twitter is a two-part communication medium. And if you don't participate, there isn't much more the troll can do to harm you without committing a felony. And if he had the option to hurt you in that way in the first place, would he really be using twitter to pick on you? You can usually safely assume no.

Considering that is the extent of their ability shown so far, one could conclude that is their only method of recourse and they are therefore toothless as long as you don't pay attention to them. Anita has done herself the biggest disservice of all because she's the one who put her life on hold because of the actions of a sock puppet account that someone made in less than a minute and tweeted a series of tweets that took ten minutes to finish in total. Twenty minutes of effort on a troll's part has taken away weeks of Anita's life, all because she just couldn't look away from the screen, call the police, and let that be it. By publicly acknowledging that this troll has damaged her life, she has painted a big target on herself for anyone else who now knows how to push her buttons and make her run fleeing into the night.

So, should you feel sorry for her? Should you feel pity for her? The answer to these, if you think Anita is a grown adult capable of making her own decisions, should be neither. Shame on the troll for what he did, but he's a troll, this is what he specifically wanted to do. He wanted this reaction from not just Anita, but you too for getting so frustrated at him and his actions. He is the happiest person out of all of this because of how much attention he is getting.
At the same time, anyone who wants to abandon their life because of a few mean internet postings has done a poor job analyzing their opponent and determining what the realistic response should be for the amount of effort invested by the troll.

Let's do a bit of threat analysis on one particular post in this thread,

This shits different though. Fuck, I wish, I WISH most bullying was physical. At least then you'd know where the lines where drawn.

Hah, nope. What we got is calculated large scale harassment and stalking. ITS FUCKING TERRIFYING. Like shit outta some horror movie.

Its not 'words on a screen hurting their precious feelings'. Its literal threats to their life and creepy as hell phone calls to THEIR PRIVATE PHONES. Or people literally breaking into their accounts or exploiting features that allow them to continue campaigns of harassment.

What the fuck are you suppose to do? Just sit there and 'not react' to day-in day-out harrassment of this kind? Fuck, not even the police know how the hell to stop it aside from the person just up and becoming silenced and removed from the internet and any networked device. Its fucking terrible.

This is perfect, it's a post that I'm not even sure is meant to be taken seriously. It's Poe's law in motion that a person takes internet words so seriously that they believe them to be like a hacker movie in the 90's where the internet text is coming from inside the house. I'm going to assume it's a serious post for the purpose of this demonstration of threat analysis

What is the threat: Harassment on twitter.

Okay, twitter has a lot of mean, nasty, ugly people. All of them can bombard you at once. This particular posting seems to take people on twitter as being a kind of eldritch god of hacktivism, so we'll go with that assumption that is the threat we're dealing with.

So for the analysis, let's ask ourselves a small question: If people on twitter, a public message space, were seriously able to cause harm to you or really be the all-seeing hackers with unlimited resources that you believe them to be, would they really waste their time threatening you in the span of 150 characters on a public forum?

We can assume the most obvious answer is probably the right one and say no. The reason they threaten on twitter is because it's a very simple site that people take very seriously. The reason it's day-in day-out harassment is specifically because it is so easy to make harassment that is taken seriously. So going overboard and trying to mentally treat them the same as someone who is calling your phones or stalking you is only letting them win. You're letting people who you should be looking at as your opponent get inside your head because you take twitter so seriously.

Really I think twitter should have a page dedicated to the teachings of good threat analysis against the trolls to determine who is or isn't a threat against your personal safety. There used to be an adage on the internet: Don't believe anything you read.

 

[Sticky]

Plunkies, speaking as a trained historian, I think you really don't understand the difference between innuendo and evidence. Permit me to demonstrate the difference.

What you have is innuendo. There is no direct link to Anita Sarkeesian, besides the fact that the threat is directed at her. There is no smoking gun, where Sarkeesian brags about a false flag attack on herself, or makes any suggestion that it is anything but legitimate. Every single incongruity in the picture can be explained in any number of different ways, with nothing actually balancing it towards your own interpretation.

Now, here is undercover work by Zoe Quinn with members of 4chan in a chat channel discussing how to engineer #gamergate: https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate

Here is a chat log with further members of 4chan directly discussing tactics against Quinn: http://archive.today/Ler4O

Please note how these provide a direct link between 4chan and what happened to Zoe Quinn. THAT is evidence of a conspiracy.

You may take it from a trained historian with a defended MA thesis.

And again, I hate to reiterate points I made in another thread, but you're also making the same mistake people in that other thread were making AND the same mistake the person you were quoting in making in trying to tie two unrelated people together on an assumption that is impossible to prove.

4chan and that chat room had no links to one another. The chat channel is hosted in Rizon, no 4chan moderators or staff participate in #gamergate or #guysandfries (I think that's the name?) and Rizon isn't owned or funded by 4chan staff in any way, shape, or form. Therefore, 4chan is as much to do with that channel as /r/4chan on reddit has to do with 4chan. It's arguable if that channel even originated on 4chan, again, assuming that it must be 4chan and Zoe 'infiltrated' them is a series of assumptions that everyone framing it has jumped to conclusions on without a shred of proof. Zoe Quinn really only has her words that it's related to 4chan, and she's obviously not being an unbiased source of evidence any more than that chat channel is because they're both fighting on two opposing sides.

Really, making that assumption that the people in there speak for 4chan is the same kind of assumption the person your arguing with is making. Not trying to bust down your argument, but it's a pretty poor assumption to assume those two places are one in the same when the mediums have nothing to do with one another. And to top it off, you throw in two appeals to authority at the end which doesn't actually add to the conversation or rebuff your argument at all. Though I do congratulate you on having defended an MA Thesis, it just doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand.

 

[Inglorious891]

We chip away at it bit by bit. People always think situations like this can only be won with one big battle. It's not. It's gonna be a million small ones. Taking stands in minor situations to stand against it.

Also we stop saying "Well it's the internet, what do you expect" every single time it happens. Stop making it acceptable.

I agree that phasing out death threats and the like is going to take time more than anything, but there are situations where I feel saying, "Well it's the internet" is appropriate. Those situations are like the example I gave in the OP, where the law isn't being broken and where no one is getting treated particularly poorly and the abuse is just someone being a dick in-game/being obnoxious by calling people faggots, for example.

snip

Most of the "trolling" I do isn't with the intent to just piss people off. Some yes, but most is just dicking around in situations where I feel I'm not being too abrasive, and where I feel it's ok to do so (for example, endless 2fort games). It just so happens that some people get really pissy reall quick, but what are you gonna do about them? And generally speaking I do try to be clever about it. Don't succeed most times but I at least try.[/quote]

snip

Hey now, I wasn't honestly recommending we do any of those things. They were just ideas that I had but dismissed because they're all awful. I'm just curious to see what ideas people have to end harassment since when the topic gets brought up all I hear are cries to end it but no solutions. That's the main reason why I'm against harassment but don't get involved with people who cry for its end. If you want me to support a cause I will, but you have to give me logical reasons to support that cause and you have to give me solutions to the problems you're bringing up, otherwise the whole thing will be just a massive waste of time, and I don't feel like wasting my time.

 

[SNCommand]

There's always something you can do to mitigate harassment, but you can never stop it, that's like asking humans to stop being self centered, it's a core part of our nature, sometimes we're just assholes to each other

 

[Sticky]

Megasnip

Alright, cool, just so long as we can both agree those things were ridiculous.

It's not an easy issue. I think the best thing to do is to just stand up for what's right. I'd even recommend going in to places that you know are festering cesspools and just being the quiet voice of reason. You'd be amazed how effective this can be if done right. You don't take a side, you don't get emotional, you just go to the center of chaos and vitriol and stand as a beacon of reason and empathy.

Hardly an easy thing to do, but if done right, it can be really effective.

And this, right here, is probably the best anyone can hope for on their own. Really, by trying to shut out the opposition and insist that you are the only one that's right, you only embolden your foes and make more enemies.

Which is why someone has to be the level-headed voice of reason, even in a climate that seems to be harsh and unforgiving.

 

[FancyNick]

We can't. Plain and simple. We're all humans and if nothing else the internet has proven that deep down, the majority of us will take the opportunity to be assholes if there are no consequences. Best we can do, I imagine, is accept it as part of human nature. It will eventually become a part of our lives and lose all it's meaning. To be honest, I thought it already had. But then you get stories like this.

 

[NateA42]

Shut down the internet.....

 

[Sticky]

Shut down the internet.....

Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like going back to a time where everything online was fractured. Maybe it's the old man inside of me speaking, but I do occasionally pine for the days where everything wasn't interconnected and it was like having your own tribe on the edge of the internet where everyone knew who you were and you knew everyone else.

Oh yeah, it had a LOT of downsides, but it also had a lot of upsides. Like for one, controversies wouldn't spread like wildfire unless someone actively brought the controversy to their own little internet tribe. Trolls were a LOT easier to spot and they were usually outed pretty quickly. And even if they weren't outed, there wasn't much of a 'public venue' that everyone went to for them to spit their rambling and venom onto everyone.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Sticky: "Really, making that assumption that the people in there speak for 4chan is the same kind of assumption the person your arguing with is making. Not trying to bust down your argument, but it's a pretty poor assumption to assume those two places are one in the same when the mediums have nothing to do with one another."

That is a point. I should have said:

Now, here is undercover work by Zoe Quinn with members in a chat channel discussing how to engineer #gamergate: https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate

Here is a chat log with further members directly discussing tactics against Quinn: http://archive.today/Ler4O

You are correct - accuracy is important.

 

[Sticky]

Sticky: "Really, making that assumption that the people in there speak for 4chan is the same kind of assumption the person your arguing with is making. Not trying to bust down your argument, but it's a pretty poor assumption to assume those two places are one in the same when the mediums have nothing to do with one another."

That is a point. I should have said:

Now, here is undercover work by Zoe Quinn with members in a chat channel discussing how to engineer #gamergate: https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate

Zoe Quinn isn't an unbiased source of information in this argument. Zoe Quinn is fighting in this argument all the same with the chat channel, and therefore has her own agenda and personal interest. Which is why you shouldn't take her words at face value OR the words from the chat channel at face value, either. Even if we assume the chat channel is somehow a conspiracy ring that is keeping #gamergate alive (which we can see is probably not true, there are WAY more people involved than just a few guys in an IRC channel) that doesn't even prove if the people in the #gamergate channel are the ones posting on internet forums and twitter and not just people who went into a channel to talk about it.

And again, you posted an archive which took quotes out of context from an IRC chat log. Being a history major, I'm sure you understand the value of context. After all, context is EVERYTHING in words.

So instead of coming to conclusions based on what other people said about it, why not read the full, unabridged, uncut chat log and come to your own conclusions of it like I did?

http://attackongaming.com/The-infamous-IRC-Channel.log

That is all of it, every word posted for the whole time that Zoe Quinn was infiltrating that chat channel and then some. It's a gigantic read that will take several hours or days to get through, but that's the only way to understand the context of the IRC channel and the information posted on it. I'm sure you have a lot of professional experience reading through extremely long, boring texts that's are only relevant in hindsight, so it's a good place to start in understanding this whole mess.

My conclusion after reading it is that it's the same as any other IRC channel in existence, a place to generate noise for people who have shared interest. Trying to say that an IRC channel is part of a big conspiracy is a silly conclusion to come to. IRC channels are just public chat rooms that anyone can join, especially that chat room because it did not have invite-only enabled. Which means that anyone can just waltz into the room and start talking or listening at any time they wanted. Hardly the mark of a giant conspiracy ring when your shadowy meeting room has an open door policy. Which is why I'm taking anything said there with a grain of salt.

Even assuming that the majority of arguments for #gamergate originate in that chat room (I don't believe it, but I'll assume that for a minute) then they're still perfectly valid argumentative points that people need to address. Zoe Quinn doesn't get labeled as running a conspiracy even though she seems to be the one doing most of the legwork to take down #gamergate because that, too, would be silly. It would be labeling a person and their interest in a topic in a malicious way to discredit their argument.

Which is what you, and most of the internet, has done to a bunch of people whose only crime has been forming an IRC channel so they can talk about it together. I'm not an advocate of two wrongs making a right, so I like to think that an IRC channel existing is barely any evidence of a 'grand conspiracy'. At least not any more than Zoe Quinn trying to 'infiltrate' the publicly viewable chat room with intent on slandering her opposition and trying to out a 'conspiracy' that can only be seen when you chop off the context to a bunch of IRC logs.

 

[carnex]

You don't. You tell people to grow a pair and accept free speech for what it is.

Your freedom of expression ends the moment it violates someone else's freedoms (classic example being hate speech). Death and rape threats are actual crimes and are never acceptable. I thought this was obvious.

Actually there were number of trials and I'm not really sure but if I remember correctly unless you are calling for physical violence or other transgression of law you are perfectly withing legal limits of freedom of speech. So talking about soperiority or inferiority of genders, races etc is perfectly legal. Law has very little to do with morality.

 

[Lejsen]

People being shit on the internet most likely weren't raised very well by their parents. It's the parents' fault, what can the internet do about that?

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Sticky: You're right - I'm a trained historian. Why, then, do you assume I didn't open the full log and start reading?

Yeah, I DID open it up and start reading. It's what I'm trained to do with primary sources.

I think I only needed to page down 4-6 times on my screen before I came across people talking about the success of the campaign and gathering information to launch another attack in it. The context was pretty clear.

 

[Fappy]

You don't. You tell people to grow a pair and accept free speech for what it is.

Your freedom of expression ends the moment it violates someone else's freedoms (classic example being hate speech). Death and rape threats are actual crimes and are never acceptable. I thought this was obvious.

Actually there were number of trials and I'm not really sure but if I remember correctly unless you are calling for physical violence or other transgression of law you are perfectly withing legal limits of freedom of speech. So talking about soperiority or inferiority of genders, races etc is perfectly legal. Law has very little to do with morality.

I never meant to imply that preaching narrow-minded rhetoric is or even should be illegal. There is a reason KKK rallies are allowed to organize in Atlanta in 2014 and why the Westboro Baptist church is allow to spread their hate at every funeral they attend. It's when their doctrine actually promotes violence (and other crimes) against others within society that it actually becomes a legal issue. It's a fine line to tread, but it's definitely one that should exist.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Honestly, I don't get how people can see people accusing Anita of fabricating the death threats in favor of Gamergate then somehow insinuate that means they're somehow pro-harassment.

Dismissing harassment as unimportant, blaming the victim, or worse, accusing them of lying, is supporting the harassment.

What makes Anita different however is that she plays the victim card as much and as often as she possibly can. Don't get me wrong, I'm not "victim blaming" her or anything but it comes across to a lot of people as just plain unethical to bring that much attention to such a thing when at the same time trying to raise money, especially if the harassment isn't somehow impeding the amount of money you can raise.

What, it's unethical for someone being harassed to tell people that they are being harassed? The right thing to do is to pretend it's not happening?

 

[Ryan Minns]

"Hey, that person spoke *IGNORE LIST* Aww, they're probably still talking to the wall"

Seriously, having easy to access ignore lists saves so much time and when I told a friend about it she used it as an example in one of her speeches

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

=I was going to respond, but I think we'd be talking in circles, since I don't think you care about what I'm trying to say, and I just think you're wrong across the board.

I'd stop responding if I were you, too.

I did want to respond to this though.

Trying to compare me to a religious bigot is kind of gross and extremely insulting, to start.

Good thing I only compared your logic to that of a religious bigot. I specifically said you were utilizing a form of argument identical to that deployed by a religious bigot. If you can't grasp the important difference between the statement I in fact made and the statement you accused me of making, it's probably for the best that you're no longer responding.

The reason this analogy doesn't work is - the vast majority of Muslims reject extremists, not just in word, but in action. Many - if not most or all - of those fighting the current wave of terror in Iraq, for instance, are themselves Muslims. That community has collectively rejected its extremists, in spite of the amount of hate they get from people and the fact that they often get lumped together.

And despite the vast majority of Muslims rejecting extremists, Muslim extremists still exist. Still terrorize. Still murder. And what's the one thing you never do with terrorists? Give them what they want. An online troll is a type of terrorist seeking attention and hurt feelings. When you give them these things, you're literally letting a terrorist win.

I feel like you're making my arguments for me at this point.

Often - faaaaaaaaaar too often - the kind of people who purport to have a legitimate argument in online discussions only pay lip-service to silencing those who would subvert their position in order to spew vitriol. They point to arguments like yours as an excuse to shrug their shoulders and do nothing, while letting harassment exist as a tool to wear down and drive their opponents out of the discussion. They couch inflammatory statements behind 'I'm against harassment, but' and reap the benefits of raging masses that spew hate while trying to present themselves as having clean hands.

If you want to conflate enablers and supporters of harassment with the masses (instead of the with the harassers, which makes infinitely more sense), then sure, what you're saying here makes sense. I think that's incredibly dishonest.

And those people, who try to utilize online harassment as a tool to further their agenda while pretending they are against it - those people are the ones you should be calling cowards.

If someone presenting an opinion in a public and unregulated space is harassed and ridiculed by people who are not under my control, and that opinion giver decides to use said harassment/ridicule as a means to dismiss any criticism of their assertions (instead of opting for a legitimately useful course, such as blocking/ignoring trolls and reporting psychos to the police), then I am a coward for not rising to the defense of my ideological opponent in a fashion that will only exacerbate the harm befalling them. Air-tight.

I've got what I believe to be a stronger theory. People who know perfectly well how to shut down trolls and harassment make a conscious decision not to do so because it's far easier to paint your ideological opponents with the worst possible brush and dismiss their assertions out of hand than it is to honestly debate people who could, in fact, defeat you fair and square. Better to take the easy way out than risk the destruction of ideas so firmly entrenched in your psyche (by years in the echo chamber) that they've become load-bearing pillars of your fragile identity.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

The simple truth is you can't stop people from being assholes, regardless of how you feel about this simple fact is irrelevant. assholes will always be assholes and there will always be assholes on this planet so long as humans live here. that's not me being a downer or depressed it's just being realistic. so when it all boils down and you know you can't silence these voices you have a choice to make either:

Ignore them: We now have more than enough empirical evidence to say that if you just refuse to engage the threat makers they will tire out and go away, I mean the hateful comments section is a stereotype in all industries not just ours, and tons of MALE youtubers get death threats as well but they ignore them and it goes away. Anita's tactic of publicizing every last hurtful comment she gets offers these people exactly what they want, attention. she's proven that if you have an axe to grind and you swing it in her direction she will display your axe on a wall for all to see and the other axe wielders can admire how shiny it is. that's not to say they shouldn't be taken seriously or that she should just "get over it" or anything of the sort, file the police reports, call a friend and get all the support you need. but the harassment won't end as long you allow it to define the conversation and drown out the legitimate discussions.

Separate them: Don't associate with people who do that kind of thing. whenever I face the issue of stopping harassment I always have the same response, i'm not an asshole, my friends aren't assholes, I don't associate with assholes so who am I supposed to tell this wondrous news of zero harassment tolerance? i'm reminded of a story penn jillete told on his podcast and in his book. During an atheist speaking engagement a Christian stood up and asked "If there's no god what's to stop people from killing and raping everyone they want." The girl seated next to him immediately got up and moved several chairs away from him. Society will shun you for that type of behavior even without a god to punish you for it. that's really the most powerful weapon we have, when someone is an asshole just don't hang out with them anymore. it also lead to one of my favorite quotes "I have already raped and killed everyone I want to. because the number of people on that list is 0."

OR

You can go the Anita route and let the harassers define the conversation, chase you from your home and prove to everyone that they can get a little attention by throwing some hate your way. now weather she's doing this knowingly or not we all kind of agree she's going about it the wrong way yeah. I won't comment on if it's just frustration and ignorance or if she is exploiting it for publicity because frankly I don't like speculating on the content of another persons heart.

at least that's how I see it.