The Online Abuse Prevention Initiative | Hacker News Reader

The Online Abuse Prevention Initiative

onlineabuseprevention.org

27 pointsfrostmatthew24 comments

While it would be nice if Twitter addressed the abuse issue, in addition to acknowledging it, Randi Harper's efforts have provided some respite. Hopefully this organization can build on that work.

Are these "anti-abuse tools" going to be as poorly-made as the GG blocker? Because if so, you're going to do more harm than good.

Been working pretty well for me, and the code's been pretty straightforward. I mean, unless you have more substantive issues with it you can raise and substantiate, this reads as just static and noise, really.

The issue is that it works on the premise of guilt by association. It blocked an IGDA chairman FFS. The only thing it serves to do is filter out opinions you disagree with, which does nothing but harm anyone who cares to think outside their comfort zone.

It did block an IGDA chair! One who had deep connections to MRA sites, responded by tagging in #gamergate to get his friends to take up his fight against this "unfair" censorship, and shortly after this incident found himself to no longer be associated with the IGDA.

System working very very much as intended there!

The only /real/ false positives it's ever generated that I'm aware of are a handful of people closely following hate group leaders to report on them, all of whom easily passed through the whitelisting process, and support the blocker wholeheartedly.

Would a campaign to get someone fired because they held progressive political views, be considered harassment or abuse?

Wait, first the problem is that it's poorly-made, then the problem is that it's really good at what it does (but it's supposedly bad at it), then the problem is that it was way too easy to make something that effective?

These all seem like mutually exclusive criticisms (still lacking in substantiation). Which one is it?

Also, even if you granted all of the above concerns, what business is it of anyone's if they choose not to have to listen to people? Right of association, and all. If it's really as damaging as you claim, either people will see that (and stop), or they won't.

p.s. 'hugbox' is a pretty amazingly offensive term, especially on a community site which has generally shown broad support for neuro-diversity, and I don't think it honors the community guideline to "Be civil".

It works exactly according to its intended algorithm, which is very clearly documented on the GitHub page. Yet you claim it's poorly coded.

The "only thing it does" is block people who follow specific accounts, as they overwhelmingly tend to be annoying GamerGaters on Twitter. You only find it harmful because people you haven't personally annoyed yet are pre-emptively blocking you from doing so.

It's a <300 line Perl script that anyone could have thrown together in less than an hour. If that's all it takes to be a coder worthy of anything other than code monkey work then I've been looking for jobs in the wrong places. And if you really think that someone following someone you disagree with on Twitter is grounds for never interacting with them at all, then I'm sorry to say but you exist in a nice little hugbox.

Your primary objection to it seems to be entirely predicated on the fact that it prevents you from annoying people who would rather be left alone. "<300 line Perl script" isn't a substantive or useful criticism.

Indeed. I would think a hastily coded perl script written in a fog of tequila being so effective is a pretty good vote in my favor.

I mean, imagine what I can do with gin.

Say the word and I'll postmates a bottle of Bombay Sapphire to your office.

When the two choices given you are to exist in a hugbox or get abused and insulted every day for a few years, I think I know what sane people are going to do. Including you, despite your bluster. There are other ways to counteract being in an echo chamber that don't involve constantly turning the other cheek to a mob of wild assholes.

If you can offer me a more effective GamerGate blocklist, I'll gladly switch to it. Or if you could make GamerGate stop being so repulsive, that would be even better.

Why are you criticizing a solution to a problem you don't have without offering an alternative? It's almost like you don't care about the problem or the people it impacts at all.

>The only thing it serves to do is filter out opinions you disagree with, which does nothing but harm anyone who cares to think outside their comfort zone.

For me it's simply a matter of making twitter usable.

I wasn't aware this existed and never had the slightest need, but following GDC on twitter this year was a spam fest without it.

oh for sure man

The problem with abuse is that it is an ambiguous term.

For example suppose I were to criticize Zoe Quinn or Anita Sarkeesian. And suppose other people read my criticism, and decided to make nuisance phone calls, or even more severe forms of harassments. Was my original criticism harassment? Because that is how the GamerGate movement has been characterized. Since some people allegedly engaged in things that were clearly defined as harassment or abuse, it was considered that the entire "movement", i.e. everyone making the criticism, was engaging in harassment.

Let's turn this around, and consider whether it is "abuse" when people criticize right wingers.

The situation is especially problematic because the law also contains ambiguous crime such as harassment.

GamerGate is not interesting beyond the fact that it's made abuse a topic of conversation, and that the rate of engagement is high enough to provide a steady stream of abuse for analysis.

They are not the real issue, but a symptom of a larger problem.

We've also been very, very careful to not give any specifics about what we've been doing, yet. You're jumping the gun when you don't even know what this is about, but given that Zoe and I are involved, I can't say that it's surprising.

"Abuse" isn't ambiguous at all. Anyone with a lick of common sense can easily distinguish criticism and abuse.

Criticism is when you civilly express an opinion of someone or something else, or an action or statement they've made. Criticism is calling someone out and saying you expect more, or have X problem with Y statement, etc.

Abuse is when it moves into personal attacks, or calls for others to engage in personal or physical attacks. Criticism is fine if you disagree, but threatening physical harm or violence to someone isn't criticism - it's a threat. Digging up someone's home address and posting it online isn't criticism. Calling the police to raid someone's house with a SWAT team isn't criticism. Asking if someone would like to be raped because it's a "funny joke" or "satire" isn't criticism - it's threatening and abusive behavior. Any school psychologist can tell you which kids are joking around playfully and which kids are engaging in bullying, and those terms don't suddenly disappear just because we added 20 years to everyone's age.

A movement like GamerGate has many many people in it who willfully engage in what is clearly abuse - and yet the other members who claim not to support this kind of harassment or abuse have done absolutely nothing to stop it. If you're upset that your movement is branded as a bunch of harassers, maybe you should spend more time with the "good" people publicly calling out the ones doing the harassment in your name and asserting some kind of authority.

There's no ambiguity at all - you just want to pretend there is to avoid any responsibility.

When people are exposed as saying "racist" things, they often experience a torrent of abuse, including violent threats.

Do you think the ant-racist movement is morally equivalent to GamerGate because they have "done absolutely nothing to stop it"?

Done absolutely nothing to stop it? GamerGate rooted out one of Anita's harassers and gave her his info. GamerGate has a harassment patrol that actively reports abusers. Maybe you should look at your own perception and realize that you're focusing on the 1% that is bad and ignoring the 99% that isn't?

So you're saying GamerGate proceeded to dox someone it didn't like and gave that person's info to Anita? Yeah, good job differentiating "criticism" and "abuse" in that example.

Who cares about the 99% that is good when GamerGate is continually defined, in every Google search, every Twitter search, every news article in well-known international journalist papers does nothing except point out the continual stream of violent, sexist, and disgusting rhetoric and vitriol come from the hashtag?

Let me give you a piece of advice: if you don't want to be affiliated with the harassment aspect of GamerGate, stop affiliating yourself with GamerGate. Because there is literally no one else outside of GamerGate itself who thinks it's about anything other than harassment.

You seem to have moved the goalposts here, from actually being responsible for abuse, as a group, to being perceived as being abusive.

And strike 2. The "Gamergate harassment patrol" operates like the "firemen" from Farenheit 451. They actively seek out new twitter users to harass, particularly those who call them out for doing so.

By all means keep trying to hold up terrible people as examples of "the good ones" though. It's entertaining.

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