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Comment by crazypyro | Hacker News Reader

Oh give me a break... the most offensive/threatening one that was posted by Kurt on his blog was:

"Teach me your knuckleball technique so I can fist your daughter"

You really think this is a creditable threat of violence and not someone trying to make a very, very, very poor taste joke? There are very few tweets I would even consider threats, most were just scumbags trying to get some twitter fame by making terrible baseball sexual innuendos.

There are other ones like "Kurt bleeds more from his sock than gaby does when shes on her period" that in no way could even be construed as a threat, but I feel they are getting lumped into the same category, simply because they are distasteful.

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Here's the problem: the woman receiving these threats has no way to know whether this is some teenager on the other side of the country or the creepy guy down the block. She has to spend time thinking about each one and wondering whether to be worried or not, or whether the harasser is going to escalate from being an ass on Twitter to contacting her friends, relatives, coworkers, etc. on email/Facebook/etc.

The one thing which I would bet on is that if something bad did happen – and given that her dad is a celebrity hated in some circles, that's less hypothetical than it might seem in your first reaction – there would be people coming out of the woodwork to ask why she didn't report it.

Unfortunately, the goal of prosecuting threats is to prevent violence, not prevent people from being scared. If the chance of violence is relatively nil, (I already argued that I believe these guys are just terrible, wanna-be comedians) I don't think there is any case to be made that these guys are anything near sexual predators, just assholes and scumbags.

The goal of prosecuting threats is because threats are violence, or at least are damaging in and of themselves.

Threats are also illegal under 18 U.S. Code § 875(c). Even if there was no intent to carry out the threat, if the threat can be interpreted by a reasonable person as being intended to cause fear, it counts as a true threat. [1]

[1] https://verdict.justia.com/2014/12/10/supreme-court-consider...

Thank you. I was about to make a similar comment. Threats are intimidation, and a form of violence.

Really? This is OK for you?

https://38pitches.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/tweets-10.jpg

Nobody said it was OK. It's dubious to call it a threat.

It's not at all that dubious. Threatening to "shred her hymen" is, well, a threat. Curt didn't know this guy, and he's a father who just had someone tell them they want to rape his daughter. I'd consider that a threat too.

Amid comments that imply she wants the(ir) D, that comment says she'll be slutting around with him, first.

Completely irrelevant. If you told me that my daughter was "slutting around", then I'd assume she was being forced. I'd be even more likely to consider you a rapist.

What makes something a threat or not is not the conclusions the recipient of the message jumps to.

Wrong. You might want to look at ''Elonis v. United States'' [1].

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonis_v._United_States

Not wrong, because the case you linked does not conclude that what constitutes a threat (even in this legal sense) is what the recipient of the message believes.

It did conclude that it was a threat, and amongst the finer points of the case was that Elonis argued that the test should have been whether he intended the threats or not. The jury decided that a reasonable person would have perceived the accused comments were threatening.

Even a reading of a cursory summary of this case would have told you this. Did you actually read the outcome?

What. How does your reply have any logical connection to what I wrote?

I just showed you a case where a threat constituted the conclusions the recipient jumped to. Do try to keep up.

This is the same kind of deluded apologism that the gamer gate crowd uses and it is dangerous. How can anyone judge the credibility of a threat made by a stranger on the internet? A threat is a threat.

I haven't read through the tweets but what crazypyro posted aren't threats, they would be considered bullying though.

Didn't the gamergate lady have actual threats on her life? I know her information was doxxed and people actually put her house in their threats.

I'm afraid yes, even if I'm one of those who suspect that there's foul play on both sides.

>A threat is a threat.

I disagree completely, especially in the eyes of the law. If a comedian says he's going to kill someone, nobody is going to prosecute him. Threats have to be creditable. The tweets posted by Kurt all make some reference to his baseball career and then try to use that to make sexual jokes about his daughter. They are just terrible jokes and should be socially ostracized, but we should not be using the legal system to punish these kinds of tweets. The line is too unclear. None of the posted tweets contain any serious threat that doesn't contain some baseball innuendo, at least the ones Kurt published. There is a difference if someone said e.g. "I'm going to rape your daughter when she gets here" and that tweeter lives in the town of the school. One might be able to consider that creditable. We don't prosecute people who make others scared, we prosecute people that we believe have a creditable chance of harming another human being.

The question is, do these type of comments on Twitter cause harm? If you've read anything by people being subjected to online bullying and harassment then you know that it does cause psychological harm by itself. Especially when a number of people all start in on one person, but even one person can cause a lot of fear and harm from cyber stalking someone. Does someone doing this deserve to have their life ruined, probably not, but they should not be free from all repercussions.

Can we stop dragging gamergate into this?

(Or might I suggest you read up on KotakuInAction on reddit and tell me how it is anywhere borderline close to this?)

KotakuInAction is one of the major GamerGate organizing sites – that's like telling someone to go to the Scientologist Temple for opinions on Dianetics.

… and, yes, it's rather relevant: GamerGate started with a bunch of people on 4chan attacking a stranger on social media at the behest of her ex-boyfriend but it escalated quickly to coordinated harassment on a bunch of different forms of electronic media and attempts to bring it close to home with real-world stalking at work & conferences, SWATing, etc.

That's the problem here: the people who started it might have had no intention of anything beyond enjoying making someone else unhappy but they repeated things widely and loudly enough that other people fell for the cover story and escalated it further.

> KotakuInAction is one of the major GamerGate organizing sites – that's like telling someone to go to the Scientologist Temple for opinions on Dianetics.

The ideaisn't too bad in this particular case when the question is "what do gamergaters write?" : )

> repeated things widely and loudly enough that other people fell for the cover story and escalated it further.

this reminds me of someone else.

Quite the opposite, Zoe Quinn herself has been discovered to have played a role in SWATing her critics [1]. Incidentally, KotakuInAction has been featured elsewhere today [2]. I agree with your last sentence.

[1] http://www.crimeandfederalism.com/2015/01/gamergate-swatting...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditoftheday/comments/2yb80x/m...

Oh, go away! These links are hardly credible.

As opposed to the credible links you have provided?

I need to provide credible links to prove that someone didn't do something?

How about shedding light on the matter with actual information rather than trying to score with empty rhetoric? I'm sorry if I'm asking for too much.

Yep. If KiA isn't Subreddit of the day that should be easy to prove.

What? He's providing the link to reddit to prove that Zoe Quinn called in a Swot team. The source is reliable for matters on Reddit, but that's not what we are discussing.

NO!

Now you start reading before making assumptions!

SERIOUSLY: The reddit link is about KiA being subreddit-of-the-day.

The other link is about the Swot[sic] team, and it is NOT on reddit.

Now you wait until you are sober and/or ready to read before you comment : )

You are correct, I misread the original post. I apologise for that - the error is mine.

It very much seems like KiA is subbreddit of the day.

If you have reason to believe otherwise, please bring the links. ;-)

(Now, if you don't mind, take a minute to consider what you have just said in your last comments.)

Reddit is not a reliable source of information. Full stop.

It as the only reliable source on what is subreddit-of-the-day though.

And you still haven't provided evidence of anything else.

As the sign next to the radios used to say: think-push-speak.

What's your point? It's not a reliable source that Zoe Quinn called in a Swot team against someone falsely!

No, I didn't mention that link, which btw isn't from reddit but from someones blog. (I haven't made up my mind on that one but it seems he makes a leap yes.)

I'm trying to point out that you are acting as if you have already made up you mind: whatever the facts, gg-ers are wrong.

In this case it seems you are, among other things, denying that KiA is Subreddit-of-the-day. Which is very easy to prove.

I suggest you read through this very carefully and find out exactly what you commented on instead of jumping to conclusions[1]. Because, you know, -this isn't reddit.

[1]: Protip: This often a good idea elsewhere as well.

I misread the original post. I apologise, you are correct about the second link. I stand by my comments on the first link, but I've been very silly in commenting about the second one. Sorry about that.

Please though, stop making personal attacks.

No problem : )

> Please though, stop making personal attacks.

Sorry. My apologies for that. Will stop.

“Quite the opposite” ignores that people involved with GamerGate have actually SWATed people (see e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/13/gamergate-...) and has engaged in all of the other activities I listed. Even if true, a single incident doesn't magically cancel out half a year of real harassment no matter how many times GamerGaters have tried use that logic to avoid addressing bad behaviour by their fellows.

That said, you're linking to a post written by Mike Cernovitch, one of the more vociferous people in GamerGate, where he's making the popular argument that he's the real victim here.

Again, let's review the evidence: if you read more than the headline it's immediately obvious that there was no actual SWATing or even threat to do so and, more importantly, none of it was done by Zoe Quinn. The person who actually posted his address used the information which he'd listed on a business directory before removing it and apologizing:

https://medium.com/@ManfredVonKarma/mike-cernovich-based-law...

The key thing, of course, is that he wouldn't have been able to use a stranger’s actions to justify the anti-Zoe hate campaign. If you read it closely, notice how each claim in the article starts with something true but then adds unsupported insinuations that Zoe was masterminding it in an effort to shift the ire to her rather than the person who actually wrote the post.

I agree that there was no actual SWATing in Cernovich's case. He has been reported to the LAPD (probably several times) for harassment. However he has been doxxed, and I don't know how you're saying none of it was done by Quinn. Quinn has 52K followers on twitter. I think I can conclude that her tweets are widely read. And she has repeatedly publicized dox articles. Does that make her any less guilty than actually writing those articles herself? And Quinn herself admits that doxxing and SWATing are a package deal. SWATings are usually initiated as an anonymous tip, "stranger's actions", as you put it in a different context. I don't know how the law works in the US, but if it were up to me, I'd hold the doxxer responsible for it.

The Guardian article is probably right in naming baphomet (on 8chan), but then follows it up with some very shady language to link it with KiA. I have visited baphomet a few times, and they seem to be doing their own thing, whatever that may be.

As far as I know, Reddit has very strict policies in place to discourage doxxing (except on r/doxme). KotakuInAction, the one you called gamergate's organizing site, cannot be involved in doxxing. Though I'm not a regular reader, I visit it every few weeks to see what they're up to. Not only have I not seen any doxxing there, I have seen threads discouraging such behavior. Also see their Rule #2: "This is the quickest way to a ban, not just from us, but the Reddit admins. Seriously, don’t do it. Take every effort to ensure that your posts do not include any personal information, especially in screenshots."

I do occasionally glance at KIA, and frankly it is terrifying. There are a lot of angry, naive people there.

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