Let’s Talk about the North Face Defacing Wikipedia | Hacker News Reader

Let’s Talk about the North Face Defacing Wikipedia

wikimediafoundation.org

233 pointsericzawo85 comments

The AdAge video is completely infuriating — it has this completely triumphalist tone celebrating the "cleverness" of the marketing campaign. As if it were a "hack" rather than an unethical and distasteful idea unbefitting an ad agency. North Face would do well to part with Leo Burnett Tailor Made.

Their target customers are businesses that want an innovative company to boost their public perception. They don't care what consumers think about them. So, to AdAge, it is a triumphant moment as it showcases their ability to do so without hurting the perception of AdAge to large companies.

Which means that their customers (North Face) have to be made ethically responsible - so that other potential customers look for more ethical companies (while advertisment is unethical almost by definition as they try to manipulate behavior and online even worse, as they spy on you ...)

I might get heavily downvoted for this one but so be it:

I was curious why this article we're discussing doesn't show the after pictures, since it's about defacing. (The picture at the top is the one that was replaced - so we only see the before pic.)

From the video, it seems because the after pictures are beautiful and way better, which I'd guess is why the real volunteer Wikipedia editors kept them rather than reverting them and why it was so successful. They do show a tiny logo incidentally as part of travel gear that is in the photo but other than this it seems the photos are way better. It's not like the logo takes up more than a few pixels.

Any counterexamples? (A photo that was worse than the one it replaced)? If not I think I can't agree with the word "deface". Maybe if the brand placement were more conspicuous or damaging to the photo -- but the ones I saw honestly seemed fine to me and seemed like an improvement.

"we improved wikipedia with fantastic royalty-free images of popular destinations, taken with travelers who were also wearing our gear" seems like an alternative way to phrase what happened. then we wouldn't be talking about it.

I'm happy to be proven wrong if someone can show a before/after example that wasn't an improvement. Any examples?

Wikipedia and Wikimedia have a heavy preference for landscape photos without people in them. Not that they're totally against it, but it still runs against the norm.

The photos were uploaded as CC BY-SA, which I think is probably a silver lining, even though the deletion nominations often talk about blurring or removing the trademarked logo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_North_Face_W...

if there's a heavy preference for not having people, why were the replacements kept by the original editors? (why did they stick).

Does Wikipedia have a policy on logos in photos in general?

There is a ton of stuff companies could do that include their brand in an incidental way. Here is the article on kidney stones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_stone_disease

imagine a medical supply company took an objectively much better photo but had its logo in tiny letters somewhere on the tape measure or a beaker or something. seems to me a fair trade, it's pretty hard to take stunning photos and there are lots of subjects that don't have it. as long as it's just a few pixels and passes a normal human filter (it's better than what it replaced) I am just not seeing the huge harm. if the after picture was worse, it should get shown in this outrage article.

Companies could also just provide good photos under open licenses above board. Sure, no guarantee your pictures will get taken, and the marketing agency doesn't get to talk how cleverly they avoided getting caught by Wikipedia editors, but that's the kind of thing that makes people unhappy about your contributions.

When I'm interested in a national park or landscape, I'd prefer to see a landscape, not someone posing in front of a landscape. That in itself makes it worse to my mind.

If Wikipedia were to let that pass, we could "look forward" to product placement attempts in every damn photo on the site.

Few pixels it may be, but it's a line that's important not to cross. Ever.

I don't know man. A ton of companies clearly edit their own articles and it's often fine for me for information purposes. If it's true that one of the main reasons to check these pages out is for tourism ideas then these better, professionally-shot results are really hard for me to get outraged about.

If a medical supply company replaced medical article photos with much better versions but which showed their logos in a few pixels on some equipment, would this be unacceptable for you?

For me the production value would probably be worth it.

> If a medical supply company replaced medical article photos with much better versions but which showed their logos in a few pixels on some equipment, would this be unacceptable for you?

I think the key difference is that the hypothetical medical supply company produces the products that the article you're talking about is written about. I'm fine with seeing Coca-Cola logos on the Wikipedia article about Coca-Cola.

The North Face, however, does not own the national parks and scenic locales from the articles they defaced. They were not adding professionally shot photos to articles about North Face products.

I meant in a wikipedia page about something medical, such as kidney stones, say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_stone_disease (I don't think that picture is the best ever.)

not on a page that's related to them or their equipment. What do you think about such a scenario, if the logo is small?

I think there's a fundamental conflict of interest allowing corporate-backed editors to slip in photos of their logos like that. I don't think it's something that Wikipedia should endorse (and remove when they find it).

I don't have a problem with the logo itself. I have a problem with the motivations behind a corporation having the power to manipulate the information seen on such a global resource like Wikipedia that has almost nothing to do with their company.

of course, the conflict of interest is obvious. I just don't see it as a big deal if the result is better. if the result is worse I think it would get reverted.

I think it extremely important to stay distinct from any messages of commercial intent - except only on pages relevant to that - like a page about advertising, or Nestle's and North Face's pages etc.

The risk is ruining the whole thing by introducing commercial bias everywhere. The already imperfect mods now have a new, and probably impossible, spam filtering job. It's already imperfect and shows considerable bias on some pages, so you want to explicitly permit more?

Where does it stop? Who defines "better"? If you allow ABC Medical to discretely brand the image, do you allow XYZ Medical to replace those with photos with their brand? If not, that's hardly fair, so why not? What if it's ever so slightly less discrete? Are we expected to keep trusting the advice on the pages when an illness page is covered with Pfizer images - who entirely coincidentally just happen to have a drug for that illness? Do they get to bombard Wikipedia with "better" advertising laden photos ad nauseum until there's a can of Brawndo in every article, or every editor gives up and quits?

There's far too much advertising, branding, empty PR, and corporate shilling in the world already without proposing more vandalism and allowing idiots to shit adverts and brands all over one of the few spots that remains relatively clean.

Everywhere is not a sales opportunity.

in theory if XYZ Medical and ABC medical get into a war of replacing the image with better and better ones, while making their logos smaller or smaller, the articles win by ending up with the best photos of all.

so it's a question of whether the result is objectively better.

the shilling concerns you raise about article text are more than real. they're a battleground of socket puppet manipulation.

in theory that's why things have to be sourced, original research isn't allowed, neutrality has to be kept, etc. but in practice it's a really bad.

so I'm much more concerned about article text than I am about images and you raise a really valid concern.

How can I sensibly choose if to do business with someone if I am only getting positive spin? When I see a page that's clearly been sanitised I try and dismiss it completely - and often the firm with it. Or go hunting for balance - which might be hugely counter productive for my overall view of the company if I land up on a complaints site.

Of the "landscapes", take the image of the woman in black in dead centre of shot - it's terribly framed unless you just wanted a photo of your wife's ass. For deciding if I'd like to visit the region the only thought is "get out of the damn way". The orange tent in corner of landscape? Crop that shit out and have a decent landscape shot. Better still, get a photographer bright enough to take 3 steps left first.

The production value is solely of product placement not landscape photography, suited only for their website. Now then, if North Face had paid a renowned landscape photographer to take some excellent photos for Wikipedia it could become well known with no logo or product in sight. Positive PR, and probably a note on North Face's page for genuine production values. Except that's no longer an advertising campaign.

What did North Face achieve? Made sure I buy Patagonia, or Jack Wolfskin etc next time I'm buying outdoor gear - which I do fairly regularly.

If the shots were distracting or not appropriate for the pages, do you know why the changes didn't get reverted?

You have tried to make this argument several times. Do you actually think that a committee of editors carefully reviews every single change made to Wikipedia? That is not the case.

yes, I think that editors on most pages act like little lords and ladies over what they view as their property and instantly revert anything from outsiders that doesn't fit with their conception or isn't a clear improvement. (This has been my experience). sorry, that was my experience.

You're presenting a personal pov that's grossly hyperbolic even in its subjectivity and does not reflect reality. With the exception of a hand-full of highly sensible topics that are prone to brigading, such as political issues, most articles barely receive any edit and are far from being monitored. Articles that are particularly vulnerable are articles on geography-related topics from nations that don't have a strong wikipedia presence.

I mean, it's not that hyperbolic. Wikipedia is a highly toxic place for many people. Even the foundation appreciates this.

People are not nesessary in those photos. They are obstructing the view.

"paying absolutely while collaborating with wikipedia"

Collaborating my ass.

Not to give these guys a pass, at all — this is some seriously skeezy marketing — but I think this underscores a deeper issue of paid accounts on Wikipedia, which is totally a thing as I found out recently. Apparently there people, or maybe a whole ecosystem, who are essentially lobbyists who get paid to edit Wikipedia pages, and that's okay, as long as they mark that they're a paid account, or something.

I guess if you follow Wikipedia's rules for paid accounts, it's okay to update pages in favor of your brand?

Didn't even know paid accounts are a thing at Wikipedia! Wow...

Wikipedia is routinely manipulated to promote corporations and individuals. It's no surprise that some of the people engaged in this sort of practice are paid to work exclusively. In fact, I peronally know a case where congress promoters had among their marketing strategy creating and maintaining wikipedia pages that helped them promote their event.

The name is rather unfortunate, even misleading - there is not a paid account in the sense "you pay Wikipedia to get perks"; rather "a third-party company pays you to edit Wikipedia in their favour".

This seems to me a "least bad option" case. The alternative is that they'll do it without showing their colours, so you won't even know that it's a possibly biased edit.

Corporations are also frequently under attack on Wikipedia, so that they want to do some kind of reputation management is quite understandable. Better they do that openly and have to be clear in their intentions, than that it's hidden.

Funny that now someone can update the North Face wiki entry with the "Wikipedia Incident" paragraph...hahahah death by a thousand cuts? Edit: lol already live [1][2]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_North_Face#Controversies

It turns out that Wikipedia is a really bad organization to piss off.

Here you can see some of the images they uploaded: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_North_Face_W...

There are at least two ongoing community discussions about the incident:

- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...

This account made the edit removing the image in the Wikimedia Foundation blog post: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Adamjonn...

Most of the pictures are fine i.e. you can't really see the North Face logos. A few of them though are just really terrible and don't belong on Wikipedia.

A few of the images don't even contain the logo at all (AFAICT). Maybe those were uploaded as distractions so it didn't look like a single-purpose advertising account.

That’s exactly it

Of note:

In at least one of these the bag is photoshopped in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pico_do_Agudo_Santo_Anton...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vale_do_paraiba_montanha....

This is just vandalism. It is like painting your ad illegally on the walls of buildings and boasting that you invented a "smart trick" to get your ad placed for free.

Very disappointing that they did this. Apparently AdAge posted a video bragging about what they did, which is how Wikipedia caught on.

https://adage.com/creativity/work/north-face-top-imagens/217...

Warning: page requires Javascript and even with an adblocker, it connects to nearly 30 tracking and ad domains.

>Warning: page requires Javascript and even with an adblocker, it connects to nearly 30 tracking and ad domains.

Color me not surprised. Shady in one area, shady in other areas.

Thanks for the heads up.

TBH, most major companies, especially media ones, do this nowdays. I was used to be surprised when adblocker counts 20+ blocked entities on the page (and that's not counting second and third level ones that would be loaded by blocked ones!) but now it's just routine.

Warning: page requires Javascript and even with an adblocker, it connects to nearly 30 tracking and ad domains.

I use Firefox + NoScript + JavaScript disabled by default.

The page was very readable as soon as I did:

   View
      -> Page Style
         -> No Style.

That's a simple workaround for many sites. And it doesn't pull in any ad trackers either. Granted, the formatting isn't the prettiest.

Here's the start of the article:

The North Face used Wikipedia to climb to the top of Google search results

Campaign from Leo Burnett Tailor Made updated photos with images of brand, raises flags with Wikipedia editors for violating user terms

By Ann-Christine Diaz Published On May 28, 2019

That's a very useful tip. I use Firefox + NoScript + JS disabled by default as well, and have made my peace with lots of sites being unreadable if I don't temporarily disable NoScript for that site, but the No Style trick is a game changer.

Man, that's really disappointing to read. I'm a fan of North Face gear. With that said, this will definitely push me towards their competitors like Patagonia and Arcteryx.

No doubt that there will be some sort of apology incoming from the CEO, but in reality the damage has been done.

Sorry to hear that. I can't speak about Arcteryx but I've been a long time customer of Patagonia and have only the absolute best things to say about them. Their products are expensive but they back them with lifetime guarantees. I had a $400 Gore-tex jacket that after two years of use, started letting water in at the seams. I took it to a Patagonia store and told the clerk, who gave me a free bottle of a liquid wash that helps restore water repellency. When that didn't work, I returned to the store and the clerk apologized, took the jacket and told me to grab a new one off the shelf.

I've had other friends get replacement gear years down the road, and have also had down jackets get repaired by them for free after regular wear and tear. It's those little things, along with their support for environmental causes, that have made me a lifelong customer.

I tend to think well of both Arcteryx and Patagonia, but I'd also say that their initial solve of using a DWR replenisher[1] for a jacket that was leaking at the seams feels like a fairly lukewarm example of customer service (then again, some places might have sold you the bottle too...)

1: https://www.backcountry.com/explore/dwr-decoded

Arcteryx has phenomenal customer service as well. They mailed me a new jacket in the middle of trip (picked it up at a Chilean post office as we moved to a new mountain), and let me mail the original leaking one back a month later.

This has to be one of the worst marketing ideas ever conceived of. What consumer, in their right mind, would admire their efforts to put their brand on wikimedia images? This is exactly how you should not do marketing.

Unless...unless this is a meta-advertisement - I would imagine this intent: "Look, everybody is talking about our agency, see how good we are? [Never mind that we achieved this by vandalizing Wikipedia and by making our client look bad]"

Let’s also talk about how terrible their clothes are, from material to construction, and mainly exist as some kind of pyramid sandwich-board scheme to sell more clothes rather than protect wearers from the elements.

North face is two companies under one logo.

One is a hardcore mountaineering company, who makes equipment where the owner dies if it fails. Their tents and sleeping bags can be found in the most inhospitable places on earth, including Everest.

The other makes fleece for college students.

Wikimedia is right. We should be angry. And I am. I'll never buy anything North Face as a result of this.

The saddest part is that their photos could have easily just been used in an innocuous ad campaign, showing wonderful photos and making sure their products are in it.

Manipulating Wikipedia for the goal, is the opposite of wonderful, it is distasteful. :/

I hope that the terms can be re-written to impose some sort of liability on anyone who tries this sort of thing. The only disincentive is the wrath of editors and the foundation, which, frankly, doesn’t amount to much.

They will add the usual to the company wikipedia page: "Wikipedia articles got manipulated for commercial promotion... etc." And link to the articles.

They should require two things.

1) Label accounts with conflicts of interest if necessary.

Personal accounts that are only personal (and never used in an official capacity for any other organization or entity).

"Professional" accounts for which one or more professional entities (potential conflicts of interest) are disclosed.

2) All work should be submitted to the public domain, or as close to the public domain as possible; and any fair use material clearly marked as such and why. (I believe they already require this, I'm just not a Wikipedia contributor so I've not read their specific guidelines.)

Your suggestions are already reflected in the existing Wikimedia Foundation TOU: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use/en

1) It already prohibits paid editing without disclosure. (ctrl-F "Paid contributions without disclosure" in link above)

2) Wikimedia projects require that almost all content be licensed under a free license (ctrl-F "Licensing of Content" in link above). Specifically, text is usually dual licensed under CC BY-SA and GFDL. Wikimedia Commons allows images under any free license. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing)

Exceptions are allowed for fair use content, which needs explicit justification and may only be used sparingly (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non-free_content_cri... for the English Wikipedia's rules, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-free_content for other WMF wikis).

In that case shouldn't the headlines be about charges related to unauthorized access of a computer system?

I am a very big purchaser of frivolous outdoor clothing and gear, REI is like a candy store to me. I will be boycotting The North Face for at least one year starting today, because this is so obviously unethical. Can't wait to score some Patagonia gear for summer hiking :)

Does North Face understand the image licencing here?

I can take every single one of their photos and caption it "North Face sucks, buy Patagonia" or whatever I like, and then republish it, and NF can't do anything about it so long as I give attribution.

Thanks for the info. Now know to steer clear of NF.

Maybe Wikimedia will lambaste the Israeli Ministry of Foreign and Strategic Affairs for also "defacing" Wikipedia? That is, "unethically manipulating" (Wikimedia's words) the site to provide a Zionist friendly narrative of the conflict with the Palestinians. https://israelpalestinenews.org/israel-partisans-work-censor...

Of course this wont happen since the site's founder Jimmy Wales recently won a $1 million Israeli prize and is not a neutral voice himself. https://mondoweiss.net/2018/08/wikipedia-suggests-antisemite...

State actors and corporations have been infiltrating Wikipedia for ages. That Wikimedia pretends it doesn't happen and that this The North Face incident was unheard of is just dumbfounding. Paid editing is everywhere on Wikipedia, believing otherwise is very naive.

https://wikipedia.fivefilters.org/agenda.html

Of course, we can't discuss North Face behavior without getting to the topic of The Joos and their attempts to take over the world with their dirty money. And of course since Israel recognized the achievement of Wales - who btw has zero control over Wikipedia content - he is forever tainted and everything he does is now part of the Jooish Conspiracy. Shameful.

> Paid editing is everywhere on Wikipedia, believing otherwise is very naive

If you spent about 10 minutes researching the topic, you'd know Wikipedia community knows that, and has specific disclosure rules, templates and requirements for acknowledging and disclosing paid editing and conflict of interest. Nobody pretends it does not exist. Undisclosed paid editing (known in Wikipedia community as UPE - use this to look it up) is what is prohibited and would get one banned.

Yup, I think state-sponsored editing of Wikipedia is shameful.

"In 2008 the pro-Israel activist group Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) launched a campaign to alter Wikipedia articles to support the Israeli side of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The campaign suggested that pro-Israeli editors should pretend to be interested in other topics until elected as administrators. Once administrators they were to misuse their administrative powers to suppress pro-Palestinian editors and support pro-Israel editors.[59] Some members of this conspiracy were banned by Wikipedia administrators.[60]

In 2010 two pro-settler Israeli groups, Yesha Council and Israel Sheli, launched courses to instruct pro-Israel editors on how to use Wikipedia to promote Israel's point of view. A prize was to be given to the editor who inserted the most pro-Israel changes.[61]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_o...

"“Students work in four teams: Content, Wikipedia, Monitoring and New Media,” according to the program description. It details the responsibilities for each team:

The content team is responsible for creating original content in a news format.

The monitoring team is responsible for “monitoring efforts while reporting and removing anti-Semitic [sic] content from social networks in a variety of languages.” (The program conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism; see below.)

The New Media team is responsible for social media channels, “including Facebook accounts in English, French and Portuguese, Twitter, YouTube channels, and so on.”

The Wikipedia team is “responsible for writing new entries and translating them into languages that operate in the program, updating the values of current and relevant information, tracking and preventing bias in the program’s areas of activity.”"

https://mediareviewnet.com/2018/03/how-israel-and-its-partis...

Can't this be discussed without you invoking antisemitic tropes? If you think these efforts have ceased because they happened a long time ago, then I have a bridge to sell you. The only thing that has changed is that they have become more covert. Possibly other state-sponsored actors have also infiltrated Wikipedia so it is not just about Israel.

> Yup, I think state-sponsored editing of Wikipedia is shameful.

You are free to think anything you like, but it makes no sense. Why state-sponsored editing is worse that, say, Taliban-sponsored or Hamas-sponsored or just-random-dudes-hating-jews-sponsored one?

> Can't this be discussed without you invoking antisemitic tropes?

Me invoking tropes? You came to a topic that has nothing to do with Israel and started blaming The Joos and their dirty money, somehow presenting Israel recognizing Wales - who, again, does not have editorial control over Wikipedia - as something shady. I think you've made your bed.

> Possibly other state-sponsored actors have also infiltrated Wikipedia so it is not just about Israel.

You don't say!

> You are free to think anything you like, but it makes no sense. Why state-sponsored editing is worse that, say, Taliban-sponsored or Hamas-sponsored or just-random-dudes-hating-jews-sponsored one?

Because being paid to advance a state's interests by editing Wikipedia is morally wrong. Especially if you don't disclose that you are in a conflict of interest situation and you instead pretend to be a normal user.

> Me invoking tropes? You came to a topic that has nothing to do with Israel and started blaming The Joos and their dirty money,

I did nothing of the sort and I think you look very foolish by pretending that I did.

> somehow presenting Israel recognizing Wales - who, again, does not have editorial control over Wikipedia - as something shady.

Wales does have and exercises editorial control over Wikipedia. He has stepped in in numerous disputes and imposed his will. He has used his powers to get articles undeleted and reverted bans of users he thought were unfairly banned. Yes, I think it is odd that the WMF has never criticized Israel or its lobbying organizations for infiltrating Wikipedia, but The North Face's amateurish attempt gets scorned. The reason must be Wales' political biases.

The North Face has a storied history of abusing every law or process in the books to "defend" its brand, and this is just a continuation of it. They also make utter crap for consumers. I've been happier with Arcteryx or REI's own brand of apparel.

I am really curious why would they even try this type of stunt? Like what were they trying to prove?

Free advertising, not just for The North Face, but for the ad agency, Leo Burnett Tailor Made, who I'd never heard of before. I hate them both now, but the fact remains that they've forced their names into my awareness, and that alone will attract work from large, out-of-touch companies.

Disgusting. To extent I can will transition out of NF gear. Will share broadly to encourage others to do so.

The thing is, they probably would've got away with it except for the triumphal video talking about it!

How about banning north face from having site on wiki... Or just having this article in it

That would go against Wikipedia's mission. I think referencing this event in their article as they've done is the correct response.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_North_Face#Controversies

well, you're totally correct, just write this comment based on frustration :)

I’m obviously not in line with the tenor of this thread, but I really don’t think it’s a big deal. People make edits. Other people revert them. The outrage here seems silly. “Defacing” is hyperbole.

I remember when Hacker News was politically against the idea that Terms of Service were in any way binding.

I'm going to spraypaint my corporate logo on the local community center. The volunteers that work there will remove it. The outrage here seems silly!

Spray painting is another thing people get very upset about which I don’t think is a big deal.

Have you ever owned a house? Would you be ok with everybody drawing on it whatever they'd like, including things you personally hate?

Probably yes, if I lived in a dense city it would fine. I can’t imagine what someone would paint that would be so bad. If I really disliked it I could paint over it.

Who is the homeowner in the Wikipedia analogy though?

> I can’t imagine what someone would paint that would be so bad.

You are either exceptionally tolerant, or have rather restricted imagination.

> Who is the homeowner in the Wikipedia analogy though?

The community of Wikipedia editors.

> I’m obviously not in line with the tenor of this thread, but I really don’t think it’s a big deal.

If this sort of abuse isn't nipped in the bud, it will only get worse and become standard operating procedure for each and every single ad company, big and small.

People could complain about low quality edits without clutching their pearls over the idea that a marketing team would deign to edit anything.

If a marketing team wants to edit anything then let them put up their own blog or website instead of abusing other people's service.

It's this sort of abuse that brought spam into the world and pretty much destroyed fundamental services such as email and also usenet.

It’s just hard to take your concern seriously because I doubt you have spoken out against the top spammers on Wikipedia, but you care about this one silly project. But please correct me if I’m wrong and this is an issue you are invested in.

You have no idea who I am so refrain from making up accusations and personal attacks founded on your personal baseless assertions. If you have nothing of value to add to the discussion, simply don't add noise or drama to the discussion.

What personal attack? I expressed doubt and a willingness to be corrected. If you can name another “vandal” party who you’ve spoken out against, or even another party you are aware of then I will stand corrected.

Alone, it's not a huge deal. However if not controlled, such behavior would erode and eventually ruin the trust in the community, and as such should be nipped at the bud, before it becomes the real issue. If non-huge-deal instances would receive solid pushback then there would be less likely to be huge ones. And let's also not exaggerate the other way - other than temporary public shaming, there's no huge consequences for the perpetrator too, so the punishment meets the crime here.

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