Comment by monksy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by monksy | Hacker News Reader

This is a strange article for me. It feels more like another push to be tribal rather to admit there is a problem.

The problem that I see: Social media has emboldened people to look at attention and fame as something that has to be achieved. People actively fight over it. It's a pretty self absorbed approach to label people who disagree in an extreme manner (poes law here.. but trolls is what I was suggesting.. it's not far way from calling people nazis) .

Also, something to mention.. it's rather frustrating to see people dealing with being a minor to major internet celebrity. (That's what people are fighting over and for) For the most part that was a self selected goal to get there, and when they're there they don't like the bad side of it. The article in question completely ignores who she's referring to when she talks about "hate". (Is it a pro troll army, how does she even get to the ire of their attention, has she been pretty aggressive towards them?)

Sly edit: All those who downvote me support javascript and are haters. No reason to disagree with me. /s

Have you talked to any women about their experiences online? I have friends who are not at all famous, who consistently get men messaging them out of the blue on social media. Commenting on their public photos. Some even make extra accounts after being blocked.

If you’re a dude, it’s easy to assume that the issue only affects people who are “internet celebrities”. But that’s not the case.

It's basically the rapist mindset, but applied to online services. There are many men out there with diseased rapist minds.

In my comment I was referring to the article's approach to classifying the "trolls".

According to the article.. the [implied numerous] people they classify as the enemy are there because of her "ground breaking work".

The average person doesn't get a huge wave of trolls by just being there. Being the focus of an NPR puff piece interview, I would say she is a minor celebrity.

Does she deserve the hate? The person no, the celebrity image: hesitant yes. (I have a hard time saying no to the second part due to the influence and analogues .. i.e. public figures/politicians)

I believe that people are probably fighting with the celebrity image/influence. I mean why would you care about some individual that had some opinions as is with the person in the article.

----

On to what you mentioned:

Yes, there are unhinged people. The levels of "abuse" (their definition, which I disagree with what's classified as) between someone that agressively tries to influence others and an individual. There are probably many reasons for their behavior, but I would agree that they aren't acceptable to society. Are group block lists a good reason for these individual 1 on 1 interactions? No, The Travis scenario is not healthy. (Scala reference right there.. it's a guy who maintains blocklists based on you who follow)

I don't know why you're so resistant to the idea that harassment is commonplace for certain groups of people. Look at the stark difference when this founder replaced her picture with her male cofounder's on their support chat, for example [1].

Or again, just ask women or other marginalized people in your life what their experience is like online. Tons of ordinary non-famous people I know have stories just like these.

[1] https://www.kapwing.com/blog/why-i-dont-use-my-real-photo/

I think the above poster isn't resistant to the idea that harassment is commonplace for many people. What they are resistant towards is the repeated insistence that we should try and extrapolate broader trends from anecdotes.

Here's some research on the distribution of online harassment with respect to gender that's a bit more rigorous than "just ask women": https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08944393198655...

Maybe they are, but that’s not the argument they made.

Anyway, the problem with posting links to studies in online discussions is that it’s very easy to cherry-pick data that fit whatever conclusion you want to draw (here’s some research that comes to the opposite conclusion as yours [1]). Everyone ends up soapboxing and the discussion is fruitless.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/07/11/online-haras...

The Pew study also found that men are more likely to experience harassment. I'm not sure why you seem to think it reaches the opposite conclusion.

> Men and women experience and respond to online harassment in different ways. Overall, men are somewhat more likely to experience any form of harassing behavior online: 44% of men and 37% of women have experienced at least one of the six behaviors this study uses to define online harassment.

Because context matters, e.g.:

> Similarly, women are about twice as likely as men to say they have been targeted as a result of their gender (11% vs. 5%). Men, however, are around twice as likely as women to say they have experienced harassment online as a result of their political views (19% vs. 10%).

> By contrast, women – and especially young women – encounter sexualized forms of abuse at much higher rates than men. Some 21% of women ages 18 to 29 report being sexually harassed online, a figure that is more than double the share among men in the same age group (9%). In addition, roughly half (53%) of young women ages 18 to 29 say that someone has sent them explicit images they did not ask for. For many women, online harassment leaves a strong impression: 35% of women who have experienced any type of online harassment describe their most recent incident as either extremely or very upsetting, about twice the share among men (16%).

The context is that I provided research that reached the conclusion that men were more likely to experience online harassment. You provided an article that corroborates this claim, and now you're moving the goalposts to just specific types of harassment.

I think if you look up the thread at the harassment I've been discussing from the beginning, you'll find that I'm not moving the goalposts.

The problem that I see: Social media has emboldened people to look at attention and fame as something that has to be achieved. People actively fight over it.

This does seem to be the problem in my view attention is a 0-sum game on one social media networks, and it's easier to get attention by being divisive and combative and by spreading outrage than by trying to actually engage with people. The places become toxic as a result.

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